Sous Vide Chuck Roast

I've cooked short ribs of beef sous vide and am pleased that the result tastes like very good roast beef. But having done it, it seems a little pointless to take days of cooking to make one expensive cut of meat taste like another expensive cut. So I decided to take an inexpensive cut of meat to see how sous vide cooking might transform it.

I read several blogs of others' experience cooking various beef cuts sous vide. Beef round roasts and steaks appear to be too lean to cook well sous vide, but chuck has enough fat and connective tissue to benefit from the cooking method. So I bought a supermarket boneless chuck roast and looked for a recipe.

I found a recipe entitled "24-Hour Melt-in-Your-Mouth Beef with Mushroom  Sauce" by Hillary Nelson and tried it. Her recipe provides good background information, photos, and detailed instructions.

I followed the recipe fairly closely, trimming the fat and silver skin from my 2 1/2 pound chuck roast. Removing the silver skin involved cutting into the roast and I ended up with 3 thick pieces, which I sliced in half, resulting in 6 pieces each about 1 1/4 inches thick. I put 2 pieces into the bottom of each of three 1-quart Ziploc freezer bags and added 3/4 cup of marinade into each bag, saving the unused marinade for the sauce. I sucked most of the air out of the bags using a straw, but wasn't concerned about the little bit of air remaining, since the beef was totally covered with the marinade. Cooked the chuck in my Sous Vide Supreme at 135℉ for 24 hours.

Continued with the recipe, making the mushroom sauce (the recipe says to "add onions to the pan" but didn't say how much onion, so I sliced and cooked one medium yellow onion). It took about 20 minutes to reduce the liquids down in a large frypan to a sauce-like consistency and didn't need any further seasoning.

Dried the beef pieces with paper towels and seared them in a hot pan with oil, as instructed, for 30 seconds on each side.

Although the pieces weren't very pretty, given their odd shapes from cutting the silver skin, they were reasonably sized servings.

The meat came out an appealing medium-rare and the taste was terrific! Texture somewhat like a beautifully tender strip steak and the marinade gave it a delicious sweet taste. I was so happy with the results that I decided to write up this experiment to share it immediately. The sous vide preparation turned my $3/pound chuck into a $12/pound steak; quite a deal!

Thank you, Hillary Nelson, for your recipe! My next trial will be with grass-fed beef from my Amish beef purveyor, now that the farmers market season will soon be starting.

Sous Vide 3: Hamburger

Following the good example of Slow Food Columbus leader Bear Braumoeller, I bought some locally produced grass-fed ground beef at my local farmer's market and made burgers sous vide. The were deliciously palate-opening!

I took 1/3 of the 1 pound of meat I bought and gently shaped a burger patty. Just a little salt and freshly ground pepper, then into a Ziploc Freezer Bag. As with my other sous vide foods, I sucked the air out of the bag with a straw and sealed it.

Cooked the burger in its sous vide water bath at 127°F (between the temperatures recommended for rare and medium rare beef) for about 90 minutes. Very little of the meat juices had been exuded; they were almost all left inside the beef.

As with my other sous vide foods, the burger came out an unappetizing color ...

... but that was fixed with a quick 45 second searing on each side in a hot fry pan with a little oil. I accompanied the burger with slices of pan-grilled Vidalia onion and locally grown tomato.

The burger was uniformly and beautifully medium rare inside. The taste was remarkable: It had real flavor! The combination of grass-fed beef and sous vide preparation that kept the juices in the meat made a real difference in taste.

The best grilled burgers I've had are at Squire's restaurant in my Mom's home of Briarcliff Manor. They're flame broiled and for 40+ years have been the juiciest, tastiest burgers I've ever had. (Okay, the $32 burger at db Bistro Moderne in NYC is remarkable, but it's filled with braised short rib and black truffle.) But even the Squire's burger lacked the flavor of my sous vide burger. Maybe it's because its meat juices drip out of the burger onto the bun.

I thought of how I always load my burgers with Heinz ketchup. I savored my sous vide burger without that condiment, enjoying every bite. This was the first time in memory that I chose to have a burger without ketchup.

I'm looking forward to making my next sous vide burger tomorrow without the salt and pepper to see how the grain-fed beef tastes really plain.

Sous Vide 2: Short Ribs of Beef

Given my experience with the tenderness of sous vide steak, I recalled the incredibly tender short ribs I had 14 years ago prepared by chef Daniel Orr at NYC's La Grenouille restaurant. To this day, I've searched for but not found another short rib dish as tender as Orr's, with no sign of stringiness of the meat. Could he have cooked it sous vide?

I looked for several days for short ribs of beef and finally found some frozen at Carfagna's Italian market. After I thawed the vacuum packed meat, I was disappointed to find the pieces weren't the nice, thick, meaty short ribs I was accustomed to, but rather thin and fatty. Nevertheless, I cooked on.

With the 8 pieces in the 2 pounds of short ribs I had bought, I tried two different recipes: classic, with salt, pepper, minced garlic, and olive oil; and Chinese, with five spice powder, soy sauce, and sesame oil. Again, simple preparation: I rubbed the spices in, packed the meat in 1 quart Ziploc Freezer Bags, and poured in the oils; sucked the air out with a straw; but this time, the recommended cooking time was 36 to 48 hours at 133°F for medium rare.

By the second day of cooking, though, I had been invited out to dinner for that night. So I took out one packet after about 40 hours of cooking to try as an afternoon snack. It was the Chinese preparation.

The meat was medium rare and nicely tender. I thought the bag had leaked, though, as there was a lot of cooking liquid; I noticed a small hole in the bag, caused by a sharp rib bone.

While the meat was tender, it wasn't ethereally so, and the gristle between the meat and bone was chewy, though edible. When braised in the normal way, the gristle is very tender. I left the other pieces to cook.

I took out the other pieces for lunch the next day - a total of 62 hours cooking! I opened the classic style ones. They still looked medium rare. There was less cooking liquid too; these bags hadn't leaked.

I pan seared the ribs for about 45 seconds on each side to give them their classic browned appearance. Sliced open, the were still medium rare.

They tasted like my favorite part of a roasted prime rib: the outside layer between the fat and the rib eye. Although that part is always well done - and I like my beef very rare - it is the most flavorful and tender part, given all the fat that marbles and surrounds it.

The short rib meat was succulent and very tender - and it didn't have the stringiness that braised short ribs always have. The gristle was still chewy, but tender enough to eat and enjoy. I savored eating every piece, though there was rather little meat, given the big bones and thick layers of fat.

I'll have to try sous vide short ribs again with some meatier pieces. I think I may have discovered chef Daniel Orr's secret to his short rib preparation at La Grenouille in that truly memorable meal I had so many years ago.

Sous Vide 1: First Trials

Inspired by rave reviews in cooking shows and by my foodie friends, I had to try cooking Sous Vide. It's a cooking technique where food is sealed in vacuum pouches and cooked a long time submerged in water at relatively low temperatures - the temperature at which the cooked food should end up. Made popular by famed chef Thomas Keller (The French Laundry, Per Se, and the recipes for the movie Ratatouille), the cooking method is often seen on Iron Chef America. I've tried cooking a few things so far and they've all come out wonderfully tender.

Keeping food within the narrow cooking temperature range required by this technique requires special equipment. I ordered a SousVide Supreme Demi from Bed Bath & Beyond through my local store (using a 20% off coupon, saving over $20 in handling costs rather than ordering online), which cost < $280 net and arrived less than 1 week after I ordered it.

I immediately tried soft-boiled eggs, since my friend May Lee's Facebook description of Onsen Tamago sounded so yummy. Easy to do: I just plunked a couple of raw eggs into the warm water after the machine brought the temperature up to the 146°F. I cooked them for about 1 hour. (While the cooking times are long, given the low cooking temperatures, the cooking times aren't strict, since once the food is done, it can be kept at that temperature without harm.) The eggs came out as others have described: The yolks were custardy; the whites, somewhat runny (the yolks cook require a lower temperature to cook through).

I tried cooking salmon steaks next. This required sealing the salmon pieces in plastic bags and sucking out the air. (Air is an insulator that prevents the food from cooking properly.) Rather than spending $150 for the SousVide vacuum packing machine, I tried using 1 quart Ziploc Freezer Bags. Preparation was quick and simple. After seasoning the fish, I sucked the air out of the bags using a soda straw. I cooked it to between rare and medium rare - according to the cooking chart: 122°F for about 45 minutes. I usually eat salmon sashimi raw on the inside, just quickly grilled on the outside, to keep it from being cooked too dry. The medium rare sous vide salmon came out creamily moist and tender.

Next I experimented with chicken leg quarters. I tried a recipe for chicken with 40 cloves of garlic - reminded me of one of the first recipes I tried ages ago front the Galloping Gourmet, cooked in a Romertopf clay pot - here leaving the skin on, seasoning with salt, pepper, herbs, garlic, and olive oil. Cooked at 176°F for 6 hours, as recommended in the recipe. When it was done, the pouch had a lot of oil, making the preparation somewhat akin to a confit. Under the broiler to brown the skin after cooking. I was a little disappointed: The chicken was overcooked and I preferred the taste and texture of my various chicken curry and stew recipes. The 176° had made sense to me, since that's the temperature I roast a whole chicken to. Now I see other recipes calling for cooking chicken legs at 140°. I'll try that next time.

Then on to a rib eye steak. Like the salmon, I seasoned it simply with a little salt and pepper, sealed the bag, and let it cook at 127°F for 1 hour to a rare medium rare. As recommended, I quickly pan seared the steak after its sous vide treatment to provide a crusty brown outside. The uniformly cooked steak had a nice toothy texture, yet tender throughout. My leftover steak was even more impressive the next day served cold in thin slices.

Since the salmon, chicken, and ribeye were experiments, I had bought inexpensive supermarket fish and meats and didn't bother taking pictures. My mistake! Despite their humble origin, the salmon and steak were fairly impressive in taste and appearance, worthy of showing.

Also, the Ziploc bags worked fine. With the chicken, partway through the cooking I saw a big air bubble in the bags causing them to float. I clearly hadn't gotten all the air out. So I just unzipped the bag, used my straw, sucked out the air, resealed it, and let it go on cooking.

The experiments were fairly successful, so on to the next round. Since cooking sous vide results in food that is incredibly tender, I wanted to try it on short ribs of beef. More to come.

Hairy Melons - Restaurant Style

Last year, I posted a blog on my adventure cooking a hairy melon grown by my friends, Roger & Sherran Blair, from seeds I provided. Well, this year, they grew more, but this time, I took them to one of my favorite restaurants to see how they would prepare them.

On Tuesday night, I dropped off 2 hairy melons with Andrew, owner of Ming Flower in Westerville, OH. He said for the 5 of us who would be eating, the 2 melons would be enough for 2 dishes, and he suggested a soup and a stir-fried dish. I also ordered a few other dishes that I've really enjoyed there, only one of which is on their menu.

Wednesday night, we arrived for dinner with guests Bob and Ann Reves and sat down to the first course: Hairy Melon Soup with Mushrooms and Pork. It was light and delicious. The melon was tender yet with still enough firmness to provide textural interest.

Next course: classic Crispy Skin Chicken. This is one of my all-time favorite Cantonese dishes. The whole chicken is blanched and seasoned, hung to dry for a day, then fried in a large wok of oil. Somewhat like Peking Duck, though fried, not roasted. Still, much too involved to do at home, given the huge wok of hot oil involved in the cooking. When it's done properly, the chicken is moist and juicy -- even the white meat. It's served with fresh lemon and seasoned salt, accompanied by shrimp chips. Ming Flower again did this dish wonderfully. No left overs here.

Then came the remaining courses. Stir-fried Hairy Melon with Pork, Straw Mushrooms, and Carrots -- a stir-fried version of our soup dish. It was a huge platter and again, light and delicious.

Chow Fish Kew -- chunks of fish filets -- with Chinese Broccoli and Ginger. The main components were clearly cooked separately then brought together, for the fish and vegetables were each perfectly cooked. This was the only dish that's on their regular menu.

House Special Pan-fried Noodles. A classic Cantonese dish, but not on Ming Flower's regular menu. The crunchy/soft pan-fried noodles were in a bed under the mixed meat, seafood, and vegetable sauce.

Our wines for the evening: a 2006 Grgich Hills Fumé Blanc and a 2006 Sterling Vineyards Reserve Chardonnay. Both went nicely with the meal.

It was a lot of food for the 5 of us, because each dish was banquet sized -- the equivalent of 2 times a normal order. Despite the quantity, we ate almost all of it because it was all quite delicious and light.

Roger picked up the bill, but I caught a look. It totaled only $63 for the 5 huge dishes! Andrew charged us only $5 each for the two hairy melon dishes -- quite a gift! I asked Roger to tip lavishly.

Ming Flower has become my "go to" restaurant in the Columbus area for Chinese food. Andrew and his son Sam have been incredibly accommodating to my special requests (see my prior blog on Chinese dinners with dietary restrictions), and the food always comes out delicious and interesting. I wonder how I'll challenge them next?

Chinese Pancakes

Moo Shu Pork. Peking Duck. These familiar restaurant dishes are traditionally served encased in thin Chinese crepes.

I recall wonderful dinners in the late 1960s at the home of my parents' friends I-Cheng & Jane Loh. Their cook Wang Sao kept a steady stream of her freshly handmade two-layer pancakes coming out of her kitchen while we, in the dining room, gleefully peeled them apart, filled them with savory stuffings, and greedily consumed them for, it seems, hours at a time. As much as I enjoy cooking, the memories of Wang Sao's unceasing work while we ate kept me from every attempting to make my own Chinese pancakes.

In 2007, when my Mom and I visited her friends in the Chinese suburbs of Toronto, we were taken to a restaurant with Beijing cuisine - my first. I had grown up learning that the food of Beijing, as China's capital, was called "Mandarin" and represented the best of dishes from the various regions of China.  Well this Beijing restaurant's menu was quite an education. The menu was filled with crepe-filled dishes. I concluded that Peking Duck became the most famous of their cuisine's filled pancake dishes.

Mom just reminded me, though, of a scene in Ang Lee's movie Eat Drink Man Woman in which the crepes aren't rolled out, as Wang Sao had made them, but are formed by swirling a lump of dough on a hot griddle. She asked for the clip to share with our foodie friends, so here it is:



The film's cook's skill reminded me of Chinese cooks making hand-pulled noodles - getting 1,000 to 16,000 noodle strands from a single lump of dough. It undoubtedly looks a lot easier to do than it really is!

Fresh Pumpkin Pie

It's National Pumpkin Pie Day, so to celebrate, I made my first fresh pumpkin pie! Thanks to the information at PickYourOwn.org, I learned the difference between pie pumpkins and carving pumpkins and found one of the former at my local Whole Foods. Since they were selling for $2.50 each, I picked the biggest one they had, weighing in at 4.15 pounds, which worked out to 60¢/pound - significantly cheaper than usually recommended alternative butternut or acorn squashes in the supermarket.

As directed in the detailed, illustrated, step-by-step instructions by PickYourOwn, I cut the pumpkin in half (using a heavy Chinese cleaver), cut off the stem, and scooped out the seeds and stringy insides. I steamed each half on a steamer basket, covered, in my tall stockpot (on high heat for 15 minutes, then lower heat for another 10 minutes). The skin came right off in one piece.

Rather than roll out whole graham crackers, I bought a box of graham cracker crumbs and made a graham cracker pie crust with the crumbs, adding sugar and butter as per the box's instructions (mixing the ingredients in my food processor). I spread the fairly loose mixture into a pie pan and pressed it into the pan using a matching pie pan on top, then baked the empty crust for 8 minutes as instructed to make it golden brown.

I cut the pumpkin flesh into big chunks and used my stick blender to puree it. I ended up with almost 6 cups of pumpkin puree. It was quite thick - not at all watery.

Trying for the freshest flavors, I hand-ground whole cloves, allspice berries, and fresh ginger using a mortar and pestle and mixed together the PickYourOwn recipe's ingredients. I ladled the pie mixture into the pie shell, to within 1/4" of the top and loosely covered the edge of the crust with strips of aluminum foil, crimped over the edge of the pie pan. I baked it as instructed using my convection oven at 425° for 15 minutes, then 350° for another 45 minutes.

The doneness testing knife came out clean, so I removed the pie from the oven and let it cool while I ate dinner.

Not wanting to scratch my new pie pan, I cut the pie with a plastic spatula. When I licked the spatula clean, though I was horrified! It didn't taste quite right. I realized that in my multi-processing effort to cook an eggplant parmigiana for dinner while preparing the pie, I had neglected to add the honey to the pie filling!

Resigned to discard my failure and cook another pie tomorrow, I finished eating my eggplant then tried the slice of pie I had previously cut. To my surprise, it tasted quite good. It wasn't the classically sweet pumpkin pie I was used to, but I thought that my Mom would actually prefer it to the normal sweet version, since she doesn't care for sweet desserts. The crust was yummy; the pie mixture had soaked into the crumbly crust, giving it a nicely toothy texture.

So I'll wait a couple of days before using the excess pumpkin mixture and some of the remaining puree to make another pie - this time, hopefully, remembering to add honey to see how sweet it turns out. Meanwhile, I can guiltlessly devour the rest of my under-sweet pie knowing I'm benefiting from the anti-oxidant virtues of the superfood pumpkin, with less sugar! I'll freeze the leftover pumpkin puree - and go buy another pie pumpkin, cook, puree, and freeze it, since it's been very hard to locate canned pumpkin.

Here's PickYourOwn's ingredients, cut down by about 1/3 to reduce the amount of excess pie filling for a 9" pie:

Pumpkin Pie Filling

2/3 cup sugar - or 2/3 cup Splenda, or 1/2 cup honey
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (another superfood!)
3/4 teaspoon ground cloves
3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
3 large eggs
2 cups cooked pumpkin puree
1 can (12oz) of evaporated milk (I used the nonfat version)

Slow Food: Hairy Melon

Inspired by a delectable Slow Food evening at Saturday night's IWFS-Columbus dinner hosted by Jack & Vivian Davis, and having enjoyed Julie & Julia, yesterday I tackled the challenge of preparing a dish with Chinese hairy melons grown by Roger & Sherran Blair.

Slow Food is a movement I learned about in my Barolo, Italy vacation with the Blairs 2 years ago. The movement was founded in nearby Bra in 1986 in reaction to the opening of the McDonalds hamburgers there. During our week in Piedmont, we savored our dinners and 4-hour dining experiences and came back looking for the opportunity for more.

The Slow Food philosophy: "We believe that everyone has a fundamental right to pleasure and consequently the responsibility to protect the heritage of food, tradition and culture that make this pleasure possible. Our movement is founded upon this concept of eco-gastronomy – a recognition of the strong connections between plate and planet. "

It's a philosophy akin to that espoused by Michael Pollan in his books In Defense of Food and The Omnivor's Dilemma. I should write a blog on those books, but until then, I'll just note that I was impressed his pragmatic, non-preachy observations and conclusions. Advancing the careful and aware production, preparation, and consumption of real food - in contrast to the highly-processed stuff we all buy today - Pollan has convinced me to change my old eating habits, and he has influenced my thinking about the food industry.

Meanwhile, back to the hairy melons. Every spring, I give Roger & Sherran packets of Chinese vegetable seeds to try in their garden - veggies that they don't find in the local markets. It's always an adventure to see what comes up. The first product this year from these seeds has been two large hairy melons (mo gua in Chinese). A few years ago, they took that year's hairy melon crop to Wing's Chinese restaurant and Kenny had them stir fried with pork for us. Sherran & Roger invited me to dinner and asked how to cook the melons without pork, for dinner in their Kosher home. I picked up the melons on Sunday morning and volunteered to cook them after consulting my collection of Chinese cookbooks.

Most of the recipes I found for hairy melons - or "fuzzy melons" as they're also known - were for soup (like wintermelon soup). Alas, soup wouldn't fit into the dinner menu. In Kim Chee Lee's Chinese Cooking, I found a simple recipe for Stir-Fried Fuzzy Melons, but was afraid the taste would be too delicate to accompany the grilled steaks on the menu. On the next page of the cookbook is a recipe for Abalone Mushrooms and Green Vegetables in Oyster Sauce. It sounded like the delicious dish that Mom and I often order at Central Seafood in Hartsdale, NY. Mom has been excited about the health benefits of eating a variety of mushrooms (and we were delighted with a Braised Mushroom dish at a dinner Ray Chen invited us to at the new Three Ocean Restaurant in NYC's Chinatown last week). Since fuzzy melon takes up the taste of the sauce it's prepared with, I thought combining the recipes would work well.

I drove over to the New Asian Supermarket (which has the best selection of Chinese produce I've found in Columbus), and bought fresh King and Shitake mushrooms and baby Shanghai bok choy. I also found some Mushroom Stir-Fry sauce to substitute for Oyster Sauce (trying to keep Kosher - oyster-flavored sauce is made from oyster extract).

As this was a first-time preparation for me, I tested my approach with a little of the ingredients and tweaked the combined recipe. Since the recipe cooks so quickly, I decided to prepare all the ingredients at home and take them to the Blairs to cook just before dinner.

The dish was a big hit. The melon was tender, but not mushy, and as expected, took up the flavor of the sauce. The King mushroom slices were nicely chewy and contrasted with the tender Shitake mushrooms. The green Shanghai bok choy provided another textural and color accent. The entire dish tasted umami! And it was so guiltless, healthwise. The seven of us happily ate almost the entire double recipe (some of us had three or four servings!).

The actual cooking time was less than 15 minutes, but the preparation was quite time-consuming (about 3 hours for twice the below recipe, but that included the trial run). Though the mushrooms, bok choy, and sauces were not from local sources, the preparation was certainly in the spirit of Slow Food, celebrating the home-grown melon as an experience to be savored, lovingly prepared for and enjoyed with good friends.

As in cooking Julia Child's recipes, I've found that spending hours carefully preparing a dish or a meal for family and friends, then savoring it with them, can and should be a tremendously enjoyable experience. At times, it can even be sublime.


Stir-Fried Hairy Melons, Mushrooms, & Shanghai Bok Choy in Mushroom Sauce

INGREDIENTS (for 4-6 side-dish servings)

1 large hairy melon (football-sized)
1 knob ginger, peeled and julienned
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 lb baby Shanghai bok choy
½ lb fresh Shitake mushrooms
½ lb fresh King mushrooms
2 T cornstarch
peanut oil, for cooking
1 T sesame oil

Seasoning Sauce:
¼ c soy sauce
¼ c mushroom stir-fry sauce
¼ c sugar

PREPARATION

Peel the hairy melon. Scoop out & discard the seeds and inner membranes. (If smaller melons are used – like zucchini - the seeds are tender and don’t need to be removed.)
Slice vertically into quarters.
Cut across into1/8” thick slices, using a mandolin, if available, to ensure uniform thickness.

Cut the King mushrooms across into thin slices (about 1/16” thick).
Remove the stems from the Shitake mushrooms. Wash to remove dirt.

Blanch the bok choy and Shitake mushrooms separately in boiling salted water for 1 minute.
Drain & put into ice water to cool. Drain again. (This process preserves the color of the vegetables.)

Mix together the soy sauce, mushroom stir-fry sauce, and sugar.

Mix corn starch in 3 T cold water.

COOKING

Heat oil in deep fry pan, pot, or wok over high heat.
Stir-fry melon slices. Stir fry for 1-2 minutes, until the slices start to cook. Remove melon from pot.
Stir-fry ginger and garlic. Stir-fry until garlic starts to brown.
Add melon back to pot. Stir and cover to steam 2 minutes. (Add a little water, if needed.)
Add mushrooms, stir-fry, cover to cook 1 minute.
Add bok choy, stir-fry.
Add seasoning sauce (use more or less, to taste). Stir and bring to a boil. Add water or chicken stock, if needed, to make enough liquid for sauce.
Stir in cornstarch mixture to thicken the sauce.
Stir in sesame oil and serve.

Julie & Julia

Though it differed from what I expected, I thoroughly enjoyed the new movie Julie & Julia. I was psyched for it, having just cooked a big dish of garden fresh Chinese Long Beans for my friends Roger & Sherran on Sunday. Following a week's worth of media hype about the movie and the glowing reviews for Meryl Streep (and less praise for Amy Adams), I went out on Monday for a premium-priced showing ($9 vs. $7 regular price in Columbus, OH) of the film.

With my home theater system and over 900 DVDs, I don't go out for movies very often. I usually wait 6 months, buy a used DVD, and get the same audio/visual theater experience (10' projection image and 7.1 sound from a 2800 watt A/V receiver and a 2500 watt subwoofer), in the comfort (Ekornes Stressless chairs), and convenience (fresh-popped corn with known additives from flavorings and a wide selection of legal beverages - my wine cellar abuts my home theater), of home - at 1/3 the cost for me, plus no additional charge for guests. However, the foodie in me was allured to catch Julie & Julia now.

I grew up inspired by Julia Child on PBS. Her whimsical demeanor delightfully deflated the starched stuffiness of the French cuisine mystique. Combined with my father's genes and his own love for food and cooking, Julia's TV presence reinforced my expectations that cooking should be fun and the resulting food would be delicious.

Writer/director Nora Ephron has woven together two memoirs - Julia Child's story of her cooking and cookbook-writing beginnings in France, and Julie Powell's year of cooking and blogging her way through Julia's cookbook - to provide a delightful comparison and contrast of their lives. At the start of their stories, Julie is actually a better cook than was Julia. But Julia's life was certainly more glamorous and intriguing, with her living the leisure life of an American diplomat's wife in France, settling into a luxurious Parisian apartment, while Julie and her magazine-writing husband have just upgraded to a 900 square-foot apartment above a NYC Queens pizzeria. Julia's need to occupy herself leads her from hat-making classes, to bridge lessons, and finally to cooking school at Le Cordon Bleu. Julie needs a release from her 9-to-5 phone-bank job helping NYC's 911 victims, so commits herself to cook every one of Julia Child's 524 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year and blog daily about her experience. Both husbands are lovingly supportive, through their own trials, as are their friends. The development of these very different yet similar stories, intertwining 8+ years of Julia's life and 1 year of Julie's, carried me along, savoring every scene.

Meryl Streep's portrayal is absolutely marvelous. I've experienced two memorable portrayals by an actress of a celebrity. I recall being mesmerized by Zoe Caldwell's portrayal of Maria Callas in Master Class on Broadway in 1995. It took all of 30 seconds for Ms. Caldwell to have me believe she was Maria Callas - another notable personality from my high school years - on stage, right in front of me, conducting a master class with aspiring opera singers. Ms. Streep never had me believing she was Julia Child, but her absolute mastery of her craft had me admiring, for the entire 2 hours and 5 minutes, how well she could invoke my fond memories of Julia without ever having me feel she was presenting a caricature of her. And somehow, through the magic of film and the film maker, she always came across as the full 6' 2" that Julia Child was, instead of Meryl Streep's own 5' 6", hence never breaking the spell.

I must confess that in the 1980s, I really didn't like Meryl Streep as an actress, despite friends who swooned over her performances. Several years ago, however, I found my opinions completely reversed over the Metropolitan Opera tenor, Richard Leech. For over a decade, I had seen him perform the role of Pinkerton in Puccini's Madama Butterfly - and I really didn't care for him. Then I saw Mr. Leech perform as Romeo in Gounod's Roméo et Juliette - and I realized that what made me dislike him all those years was that he portrayed the role of his character so well, he had me believing he was the despicable Pinkerton! In that same sense, Meryl Streep conveyed Julia Child, as she did all the characters that I didn't like in her earlier films.

While the critics seemed to share my adoration of Ms. Streep's acting prowess, they were less kind to Amy Adams. I don't know her work (I've seen a couple of movies she's been in but don't really recall her), and came to expect little after the reviews of Julie & Julia. Well, I was pleasantly surprised. Since I don't know Julie Powell, Ms. Adams had different challenges portraying her to me. It's hard to say why Julie wasn't as clearly defined or nuanced as Julia. Was it the character (by her own definition, not the goddess on a pedestal that Julia Child is as Julie's muse), the book, the screenplay/direction, or acting? It's hard to blame Ms. Adams; she may have played the part perfectly. Certainly, Ms. Adams quickly had me feeling she was Julie and got me sympathetic for her.

But to my real surprise, this wasn't really a film about food. There aren't any salivation-generating scenes of irresistibly alluring dishes. Even Julie's year-long intimidation of her known need to eventually tackle de-boning a duck was laughable to me, given the fact that my father taught me to de-bone not by slitting the skin down the center, as Julia instructs, but to remove the bones through the duck's vent to retain the skin's shape and minimize the stitching required to enclose the stuffing.

Julia's story is initially about learning to cook, but then moves to her years of working with the original authors of the would-be first English-language French cookbook and the re-writes needed to get the magnum opus published for the American housewife audience. Julie's story is about her self-imposed need to get through preparing Julia's 524 recipes in 365 days and the affect this quest has on her life and marriage. There are nice insights into the impacts and changes of the times - from the McCarthyism of the 1950s to an unknown's blogging of today leading to fame and presumed fortune.

More, it's about two individuals persisting to fulfill their dreams - of maintaining their happy marriages and of completing their self-assigned challenges. In this era in which so many of us require immediate gratification of our desires, Julie's commitment of a year to complete her task may seem to be a lot. Yet the underlying contrast with Julia's 8-year work on her cookbook - and celebration of her $250 advance from a publisher - shows how much times have changed.

Julia Child's efforts made her an icon. Julie Powell's efforts made her a movie character. It was an enjoyable movie - one that I look forward to seeing again when I buy the used DVD for my collection.

Chinese Long Beans

I gave my friends Roger & Sherran a pack of Chinese Long Bean seeds in the spring. Today, we got to try the grown beans from their garden.

Also known as Yardlong Beans, these are a staple in Chinese markets. They are also great fun for kids - I tell them they're "Jack and the Bean Stalk" beans because of their unusual length. Fresh from the garden, they were more tender than those from the store because we picked them fresh at only about 18" long. Rather than searching my Chinese cookbook collection for a recipe, I found one online by famed restaurateur/chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten (he's been serving Chinese food for decades in his NYC restaurant Vong). I modified his recipe somewhat, since Pop taught me to blanch Chinese long beans in oil to cook through their tough skin.

The result was delicious! The beans had a much meatier taste and texture than American green beans. The onions and red bell pepper added an umami savoriness that plain stir-fried beans don't have.

Since I knew I'd be using a small pot of oil to blanch the beans, I used the oil first to puff up a batch of instant sizzling rice cakes that we had as an appetizer with a fresh tomato and mozzarella salad. The beans were a delicious accompaniment to the perfectly grilled marinated chicken breasts Roger prepared. Watermelon closed out the tasty, healthy meal. Yum!


Chinese Long Beans with Cracked Black Pepper
Recipe by Jean-Georges Vongerichten, modified by Rod Chu

2 cups peanut oil

1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 small onion, thinly sliced
2 pounds Chinese long beans, washed and thoroughly towel dried, cut into 3-inch lengths
1 medium red bell pepper, peeled (see note) cut into 1/3-inch dice
4 tablespoons sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 teaspoon cracked black pepper

Heat the peanut oil in a small saucepan to 375°. Blanch the beans in the hot oil, a handful at a time, until they begin to blister (30-60 seconds). Drain and set aside each batch while blanching the rest of the beans.

Saute the onion in 1 T oil over moderately high heat, stirring occasionally, until lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Add red pepper and stir-fry to soften the pepper, about 1 minute. Add the long beans and stir-fry until the beans are slightly softened and browned in spots, about 3 minutes. Add the sugar and stir to coat. Add the water, cover and cook over moderately low heat until the water has evaporated and the beans are tender, about 5 minutes. Add the soy sauce and cracked pepper and cook for 1 minute. Adjust sugar and soy sauce to taste. Transfer to a platter and serve.

Next time, I'll try adding a couple of cloves of minced garlic.

NOTE: Peeling bell peppers

There are two basic methods for removing the tough outer membrane from bell peppers. The classic method is to roast the peppers over a gas flame, searing the skin until it's black in spots. I used a long handled barbecue fork to hold the whole pepper, skewered through the stem end, over the flame of Sherran's industrial range burner. However, I found the skin rather tedious to remove when seared this way. (I recall another tip was to put the seared whole pepper into a paper bag to rest to loosen the skin; I didn't have a bag handy nor the time to try this time.)

The easier method I've used is from Thomas Keller's (of The French Laundry and Per Se restaurant fame) recipe for Ratatouille, from the movie: Heat oven to 450°. Halve, seed and de-vein the bell pepper. Place pepper halves on a foil-lined sheet, cut side down. Roast until skin loosens, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let rest until cool enough to handle. Peel and dice. This works well for doing multiple peppers, since they can all be done at once. However, I didn't want to heat up the oven for just one pepper this time.

Love of Eating and Cooking: Pop's Cold Sesame Noodles

My father developed my foodie tendencies and from them, my love for cooking. From Pop, I learned to love to cook for my love to eat! Alas, I don't prepare fancy, home cooked dinners much anymore - and never got up to Pop's standard of preparing gourmet Chinese cuisine - but I still enjoy preparing specialty dishes for gourmet cocktail parties, picnics, and dinners at friends' homes. Having grown up with so many happy memories of home cooked meals, it's been wonderful to recreate these dishes - some that I haven't had for decades.

I usually carry around a camera to catch pictures of dishes I've eaten and enjoyed sharing them in my holiday letters and more recently online. The pictures help me remember the wonderful meals I've had and let me recommend specific dishes and restaurants.

My friend Kaity Tong's blog has inspired me to go further and share the recipes of my favorite dishes. I've enjoyed reading her stories about her mother's recipes and salivated in anticipation of trying them out.

I recently learned how important it is to share recipes, even amongst family members. While visiting my sister, I found she didn't know Pop's recipe for cold sesame noodles; she had been using Mom's recipe. While I love my Mom, she's not the great cook that Pop was! The simple cold sesame noodle recipe proves this.

So here's the first of what I plan to be a series sharing the recipes I use - recipes I've collected from watching Pop cook (and taking measurements as he did, since he never had to measure anything), to others I've collected from the Internet. I've tweaked these recipes along the way (with great hubris, in some cases, daring to modify recipes by chefs as legendary as Thomas Keller of French Laundry fame), to make them what I think is clearer and more foolproof. While those modifications make the recipes longer and look more imposing, I've found they help me avoid mistakes that I've made in trying to follow the original recipes. Enjoy!

Norton Chu's Cold Sesame Noodles

1 lb dried noodles or thin spaghetti
2 T sesame oil

SAUCE:
¼ c sesame paste (tahini) or peanut butter - or both
¼ c sesame oil
1 T sugar
¼ c soy sauce
¼ c Worchestershire sauce

OPTIONAL TOPPINGS:
1 peeled, julienned cucumber
2 c shredded chicken
1 c dried shredded pork
2 T toasted sesame seeds

1. Cook noodles in salted water until tender, but still slightly firm.

2. Drain and rinse cooked noodles in cold water to stop cooking.

3. If serving immediately, chill noodles in ice water. Drain well.

4. Toss noodles in sesame oil. Chill in refrigerator.

5. Put sesame paste and/or peanut butter in mixing bowl.

6. Stir in sesame oil to make a smooth paste.

7. Slowly stir in sugar, soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, making a smooth sauce. Chill.

8. Toss chilled noodles in sauce, thoroughly coating the noodles.

9. Serve with optional toppings.


NOTES:

This recipe is so quick and easy, it makes a terrific snack even just for one serving, after cutting down the proportions.

I prefer the texture of plain white Chinese noodles, available in Asian grocery stores in 5 pound boxes. Spaghetti also works well, though.

In addition to adding flavor, the sesame paste and peanut butter act as binders. Mixed with the watery soy and Worcestershire, the resulting sauce clings to the noodles and prevent the ingredients from dripping onto diners' clothing.

If you use the long English cucumbers, you can julienne the skin too. It adds an interesting textural difference (a little tougher, but still tender), and beautiful color.

Using a mandolin makes easy work of julienning long strips of cucumber that make a wonderful presentation (they look like green noodles).

The optional toppings add interesting textural and visual contrast to the noodles, but for a snack, the noodles don't need any toppings.

This dish works very well for tailgating. The ingredients are less prone to spoiling, so they keep well in a cooler for an after-game snack while waiting for the traffic to clear out.