Tonight’s meal is all about convenience. I went grocery shopping earlier and saw the slow-cooked pork knuckle in the display case of the meat section, and it caught my eye.
The last time I ate pork knuckle was with Dad in a Bavarian restaurant in Brisbane. The meal consisted of the pork knuckle with a heap of sauerkraut.
When I think of pork I’m conscious of the amount of salt and so I wanted something sweet to balance the meal. I chose some apple sauce.
Instructions on cooking
The convenience factor of this meals is the fact I used a mostly cooked piece of pork, Polish sauerkraut that I bought in a jar, Australian grown apple sauce in a bottle, and potato mash cooked with microwave radiation.
It’s a good thing this pork is Australian and not imported German pork.
Recipe
Ingredients
Slow-cooked Australian pork knuckle
Polish sauerkraut
Australian grown apple sauce
Potato mash
Instant gravy
Instructions
Turn on the oven and heat it to 220 °C.
Remove the pork from the packaging and dry off the surface with kitchen paper.
Put the pork knuckle onto a lined baking sheet with the rind exposed.
Cook the pork for about 50 minutes.
Remove the pork from the oven and allow it to rest.
Tear off the crispy crackling and set it aside.
Dissect away the cooked muscle meat from the bone.
Slice the meat and place it onto a dinner plate.
Spoon some sauerkraut onto the dinner plate.
Spoon some apple sauce onto the dinner plate.
Irradiate the potato mash with microwaves.
Place the potato mash onto the dinner plate.
Boil some water.
Put a tablespoon of instant gravy powder into a glass jug and then whisk through the boiling water.
Pour the gravy over the potato mash.
Photographs
The following block is a gallery of photographs. Click on one of them and then scroll through them to check out the pictures in all their glory.
Polish sauerkraut and Apple grown apple sauce
Uncooked
Uncooked
Cooked
Cooked
Cooked
Questions
Did you eat the whole pork knuckle?
The packaging suggests the pork knuckle is enough for five people. I ate the whole thing. Yes, I do feel full.
Why not cook everything from scratch? Why be so lazy?
Do you not know me? I’m all about efficiency.
I prefer the word efficiency rather than lazy. By being efficient, I have more time to do other things. For example, today, I watched a couple of movies and relaxed a little.
What’s so good about sauerkraut?
Well, it’s lactic acid fermented cabbage. Lactobacilli elaborate the lactic acid. In a Gram’s stain, especially of normal vaginal flora, lactobacilli are quite beautiful. They appear a deeply and evenly stained violet which is contrasted by the pink background proteinaceous matrix.
The only downside of sauerkraut is the potential for producing large volumes of flatus.
How was the pork knuckle?
It was good. The muscle meat was tender, and the flesh was moist and juicy. The crackling was crisp and not overly salted.
The sauerkraut and apple sauce complemented the pork to a tee.
Final thoughts
Do you like pork knuckle?
Do you like sauerkraut?
Do you agree that apple sauce and pork go together?
At about this time of year, I see my American friends on-line going mad for pumpkin spice. According to Wikipedia, pumpkin spice is similar to what we might know as mixed spice.
Pumpkin spice soup and olive pane di casa with butter
Pumpkin spice usually contains cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves and allspice.
What I find odd is that pumpkin spice is used to flavour all sorts of things from coffee to pumpkin pies.
Tonight, I’m making a pumpkin soup, but it won’t be pumpkin spice as my American friends might know it. Instead, this will be a pumpkin soup with a spicy Asian influence using ginger, coriander, and a curry paste. Rather than using dairy cream, I’ll also use coconut cream.
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'”
Matthew 4:4 NIV
Pumpkin, streaky bacon, laksa paste, red onion, ginger, garlic, lime, coconut cream, and vegetable stock.
Equipment
Heat source
Saucepan
Stick blender
Coriander, red onion, garlic, lime zest, and ginger.
Ingredients
Bacon
Garlic
Ginger
Laksa paste
Cooking sherry
Butternut pumpkin
Vegetable stock
Coconut cream
Lime juice
Coriander leaves, stems, and roots
Red onion
Olive pane di casa
Butter
Ground cinnamon
Pumpkin, coconut milk, vegetable stock, streaky bacon, grated garlic, grated ginger, lime zest, lime, coriander, and red onion.
Instructions
Slice the streaky bacon.
Peel and dice the pumpkin.
Grate the ginger.
Grate the garlic.
Chop the coriander leaves, stems, and roots.
Finely chop the red onion.
In a cold saucepan slowly heat up the sliced bacon until the fat renders.
Add in the grated ginger and garlic and cook until soft.
Pour in a little cooking sherry to deglase the bottom of the saucepan.
Add in the diced pumpkin and laksa paste. Cover with vegetable stock.
Bring the vegetable stock to the boil and gently simmer until the pumpkin is soft.
Turn the heat off and blend the soup with a stick blender until it’s smooth.
Turn the heat back on and coconut cream to the soup to make it silky smooth.
Taste the soup and add some lime juice to enhance the sourness.
Ladle the soup into a bowl and garnish with the chopped coriander.
Serve with buttered toast that has had cinnamon sprinkled on it.
Pumpkin spice soup and olive pane di casa with butter
Questions
Are you into the pumpkin spice thing?
I think I’ve only ever had pumpkin spice in a pumpkin pie which I tried when I was a young fella. A lady at a church I used to attend made one, and it tasted good.
I’m not sure that I would be adding pumpkin spice to my coffee though. That said, I can appreciate how some ginger might go well in a frothy milk drink with some cinnamon and nutmeg.
Pumpkin spice soup and olive pane di casa with butter
What’s with the bread with an Asian soup?
Well, as per the quote, you can’t live on bread alone. 🤣😉
Why not have a little Italian bread with my Asian soup?
Pumpkin spice soup and olive pane di casa with butter
Final thoughts
Do you like pumpkin spice?
Do you like spicy pumpkin soup?
Have you ever had bread with an Asian flavoured soup?
Pumpkin spice soup and olive pane di casa with butterIt was a nice day outside
Tonight I cooked garlic Udon noodles, coconut cream, pork belly, prawns, and choy sum for dinner.
During the week, Lorraine from Not Quite Nigella posted a recipe for quick garlic prawns and spaghetti recipe, and it got me thinking that garlic prawns would be nice on the weekend.
In my refrigerator, I also had some strips of pork belly, which needed eating too, so I combined everything into a meal for Saturday night.
Garlic Udon noodles, coconut cream, pork belly, prawns, and choy sum
Ingredients
Udon noodles
Coconut cream
Garlic
Choy sum
Pork belly
Fresh prawns
Instructions
Dry the skin of the pork belly strips and place into a hot (200 °C) oven for 45 minutes to get the crackling crispy.
Cook the Udon noodles in boiling water for about 7 minutes and then with 2 minutes to go, toss in the choy sum.
Rinse the noodles and choy sum in cold water and drain.
Heat a skillet with the leftover fat from the pork belly and sautée the garlic gently.
Add the noodles and choy sum.
Pour in some coconut cream and bring it to a boil and then reduce the heat to a simmer.
Add in the prawns and cook through.
Cut the pork belly into small pieces and add to the skillet.
Transfer everything to a bowl and eat with chopsticks.
The meal was delicious. The question is, is this Asian or Italian?
Garlic Udon noodles, coconut cream, pork belly, prawns, and choy sum
I have no idea anymore what sort of food I cook. I take what I have bought and put it together into a meal I think will work. More often than not, the meal tastes okay. I don’t know that anyone else would like to eat it, but it keeps me going, and it keeps my imagination ticking over. In my mind, that’s the important thing.
Over many years of living alone, I’ve worked out what I like and what I don’t like. The trick is keeping the things I want in a list that also aligns with keeping in good health.
Garlic Udon noodles, coconut cream, pork belly, prawns, and choy sum
The trick mentioned above is not a unique problem. I know other people struggle with it. It’s one of the advantages of the Internet and various cooking forums that we can get ideas from people from all over the world.
I’m not sure cooking with coconut cream is necessarily healthful though. It’s certainly delicious.
I did buy some spaghetti instead of Udon noodles this week so that I can transition from Asian pasta to Italian pasta. 😉
So, it’s another week and another non-recipe post. This post is more like a status update of what I cooked on Saturday night.
Sous vide pepper eye fillet steak with scallops and roe with broccolini and hollandaise sauce
My weight loss motivation has got a bit stagnant, so trying new things has also suffered a little.
I wanted a moderate dinner, but still something special for a Saturday night. I went with eye fillet steak again because it cooks without a lot of fuss, and if you treat it well, it will be tender and moist.
I wanted something with a little kick too so I tied up the meat and pressed in some freshly ground black whole peppercorns, iodised salt, and garlic powder. As always, I pulverise my spices and salt together in a heavy mortar with a nicely weighted pestle.
Salt and Pepper Eye fillet steak
Because the temperature of the water bath would never exceed 55 °C, there was no chance of the pepper burning, so I was happy to coat the steak in pepper before cooking.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever burnt pepper, but it has an unpleasant, acrid odour and you never want to sear a pepper-coated steak for too long.
Salt and Pepper Eye fillet steak
While I was shopping, I saw there was scallop meat in the delicatessen display. The scallop meat with roe and the alimentary tract was $29 per kilogram while the scallop meat sans roe and the alimentary tract was $34 per kilogram. The roe adds a lovely coral colour to the dish, so I went with the cheaper option. For those readers who don’t know me, I never remove the alimentary canal from an invertebrate, and I wasn’t going to start. Life’s too short for that palaver.
I’ve described how to make hollandaise sauce elsewhere. It’s hard to go past a hollandaise sauce with steak and scallops. Rather than pour or spoon the sauce over the steak and scallops, I decided to serve it in a small bowl and use it as a dipping sauce. The dipping sauce approach was fantastic. As I loaded my fork with a little sweet broccolini, scallop, and steak, I dipped that meaty lollipop into the hollandaise sauce and got a good coating over everything the tines of my fork had penetrated.
Vacuum packed Salt and Pepper Eye fillet steak
The scallops were just seared in the skillet as I was caramelising the surface of the steak after it had finished cooking in the water bath (55 °C for 2 hours). The heat barely licked the scallops.
The broccolini was dead easy. After washing the broccolini in a large mixing bowl, I let the broccolini drain and then doused the green vegetables with some olive oil. I then added a squirt of golden syrup and ground over some iodised salt. With my hands, I massaged the sweet, salty, oiliness into the heads of the broccolini being gentle with the broccolini heads so as not to be too rough with the delicate end.
Precision cooker and water bath
I then arranged the broccolini on a lined baking sheet and put them into a hot oven for 15 minutes.
Plating up was dead easy, after allowing the steak to rest I cut off the bindings and then with a sharp knife (I used a cooking knife my middle daughter gave me as a father’s day gift last year) I sliced into the soft tender moist flesh to reveal blushing joy. There’s nothing like a nicely cooked piece of muscle meat, red, moist but not running with its juices.
Sous vide pepper steak
Sous vide pepper eye fillet steak with scallops and roe with broccolini and hollandaise sauce
I put the steak onto a dinner plate which I had warmed on top of the water bath and then arranged the scallops. I poured the freshly made hollandaise sauce into a small bowl and put it onto the plate. The last thing to be added was the oven-cooked broccolini. The heads looked limp rather than the tumescence they once had, but I knew those flowery heads would taste sweet and salty, and when coated with the creaminess of the hollandaise, the taste would be unique and so delicious.
Sous vide pepper eye fillet steak with scallops and roe with broccolini and hollandaise sauceSous vide pepper eye fillet steak with scallops and roe with broccolini and hollandaise sauce
New profile pic
Me in my Spam Hawaii shirt holding a tin of Bacon Spam with Acacia pycnantha (Wattle) in the background.
Sous vide salmon with spicy homemade hollandaise sauce and crispy kale sprouts
The last couple of weeks I’ve been buying two pieces of salmon with the skin on from Coles. I’ve been eating salmon on Sunday and Monday evenings and I’ve been cooking them under vacuum (sous vide).
As much as I like a quick cook on a cast-iron skillet and getting a really crispy skin, the texture of sous vide salmon is sublime. The flesh just flakes with the slightest pressure. The cooking time is relatively short and the temperature is very gentle. I usually set my precision cooker for 50 °C for 40 minutes.
Brining salmon. Salmon and iodised salt.
A feature of sous vide salmon is wet brining the salmon. This is an optional step but if you don’t brine, it will mean you will have a film of coagulated albumin over the surface of the salmon when it’s cooked.
Wet brining the salmon is dead easy. A few hours before cooking, put the pieces of salmon into a container. Add a handful of iodised salt and then add the iced water. Put the lid on the container and then refrigerate it for a few hours.
Brining salmon. Salmon and iodised salt with ice water.
After removing the salmon from the refrigerator and removing the lid you’ll see a wispy slimy film over the salmon. This needs to be washed off using tap water. Once the albumin has been removed, dry the salmon gently with a towel or kitchen paper.
Put the salmon into a vacuum bag or a ziplock bag. If you have a vacuum extractor use the vacuum bag. If you prefer the water displacement method, use the ziplock bag.
Salmon post-brining
Your salmon is now ready for cooking in the water bath. I always set up my water bath fresh for each cook so I fill it with cold tap water and attach the precision cooker. If you don’t know what a precision cooker is, it’s a water heater and circulator. It keeps the water at a set temperature and I know some people who will keep it running for many hours and in some situations, days depending on what they’re trying to cook.
Salmon is delicate, so as I wrote in a preceding paragraph, I set the precision cooker for 50 °C for 40 minutes.
Salmon vacuum packed
Once the salmon is cooked, I will put one piece in the refrigerator for tomorrow night and I’ll keep the other piece warm sitting on the water bath while I go about finishing off the other elements of the meal.
At this point, I remove the salmon from the vacuum bag and carefully dry the skin. I then peel the skin off and put it on a lined baking tray. I cover the salmon flesh with aluminium foil and put the plate on top of the water bath to keep it warm. The aluminium foil is to keep the flesh moist and preventing it from drying out. No one likes dry fish flesh.
Sous vide salmon with spicy homemade hollandaise sauce and crispy kale sprouts
At about this time I toss some kale sprouts into a large mixing bowl and squirt in some Queensland nut oil plus some freshly ground iodised salt and black whole peppercorns (I do this in a mortar with a pestle). With my hands, I toss the kale sprouts in the bowl and try to get good coverage of the leaves with the oil, salt, and pepper.
I then spread the seasoned and oiled kale sprouts onto a lined baking sheet (next to the salmon skin) and put the tray into a hot oven which has been set to about 180 °C for about 15 minutes. The aim is to get the leaves of the kale sprouts crispy like chips without burning.
While the kale sprouts are in the oven I get out of the refrigerator three eggs, some butter, and some dijon mustard and hot sauce. I also get a lime and some hot sauce plus a red onion and a fennel bulb.
With a mandolin, I shred into fine pieces the red onion and fennel. These raw aromatic vegetables will give the hollandaise some added bite and kick.
Safety glove for mandolin use
I melt the butter, about 125 grams will do, using microwave radiation. I then separate the yolks of three eggs and out them into the bottom of a tall plastic cup. After squeezing the juice from the lime I mix it with a teaspoon of the dijon mustard plus a teaspoon of hot sauce.
It’s now a matter of getting everything together because making hollandaise sauce requires some focus and dexterity. I use a stick blender because I have spindly arms and thin wrists with poor muscle power for a whisk. Begin blending the egg yolks and then add the mixture of dijon mustard, lime juice, and hot sauce. While still blending, slowly pour in the melted heavenly goodness which is melted butter. As you pour in the butter which has been enhanced with microwave radiation, marvel at how it forms a thick unctuous sauce.
Once the hollandaise sauce is made, add in the bits of red onion and fennel. At this stage, you could wonder why you didn’t crispy up some streaky bacon bits and add them too. Stir through the red onion and fennel knowing the flavours and mouthfeel will be amazing with the salmon.
By now the kale sprouts and salmon skin should be done and it’s time to make a plate of food.
Uncover the moist and tender salmon flesh and gently transfer it to a dinner plate. You need to be careful because it will easily flake and fall apart. If it does, then one option would be to create rough flakes with a fork and mix the flakes into the hollandaise sauce you’ve made.
If you can keep the salmon altogether, put it on the dinner plate and then spoon over the hollandaise sauce with the bitey red onion and fennel in it.
If the salmon skin hasn’t burnt to a crisp, place it atop the salmon in some artistic fashion.
Place the kale sprouts next to the salmon and then with a teaspoon you might like to dribble a little hollandaise sauce on the kale sprouts.
Alternatively, put the remaining hollandaise sauce in a ramekin and use it as a dipping sauce for the crispy kale sprouts.
This meal is indulgent and decadent. You will have consumed more butter than you should. You’ll be impressed with the texture and mouthfeel of the sous vide salmon. You’ll love the crispy kale sprouts. Most of all, the tangy spicy hollandaise sauce will draw everything together.
I hope you enjoyed this. If you decide to make this for yourself, I’d love to hear from you and hear how it went.
Sous vide salmon with spicy homemade hollandaise sauce and crispy kale sprouts
Have a good week and stay safe from COVID-19. If you’re one of those conspiracy people who don’t believe SARS-COV-2 exists, then out of respect for others, please keep your views to yourself and don’t go out in public and please don’t share your nonsense on-line. That’s just as annoying as the way I’ve prattled on about this recipe.
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here:
Cookie Policy
