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.

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.

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.