Sous vide

Steak, prawns and salad

Posted by Gary

Dear Reader,

It feels like it’s been ages since I’ve cooked steak for dinner. The last six months have seen me working out my pressure cooker “muscles”.

I was sharing text messages with a dear friend last night about simple pleasures. You know, looking out on a pleasantly warm evening, snacking and chatting, and then enjoying a steak and salad dinner.

It got me thinking; I want to get my lips around a nice juicy steak.

How have you been feeling lately with the news of the Omicron Variant? The case number predictions have kept me on the edge of my seat. At present, we’re seeing doubling rates of 2 days and intracellular viral replication rates an order of magnitude higher than other lineages. 

It’s a great time to be alive if you’re a microbiologist. I wish, however, this was just a laboratory experiment and not real life. Please stay safe. Stay home if you feel unwell. Keep yourself distant from others by at least 1.5 metres. Wash your hands with soap and water as often as you need to. If soap and water are not available, carry and use an alcohol-based hand rub. Observe respiratory hygiene and if you feel comfortable, wear a face covering, preferably a surgical mask. Get immunised. It looks like everyone will need a booster for any real protection against severe disease caused by infection with SARS-COV-2 Omicron Variant.

Sous vide eye fillet pepper steak, prawns and green peppercorn gravy
Sous vide eye fillet pepper steak, prawns and green peppercorn gravy

Ingredients

  • Eye fillet steak
  • Raw prawn meat
  • Cherry tomatoes
  • Baby cucumbers
  • Capsicum
  • Iodised salt
  • Black pepper (coarsely ground)
  • Green peppercorns
  • Horseradish cream
  • Beef stock
  • Butter
  • Plain flour

Instructions

Steak

  1. Buy some steak from the supermarket or the butcher.
  2. Unwrap the steak and dry the surface with kitchen paper.
  3. Place the steak on a wire rack over a tray.
  4. Season the steak with generous amounts of salt.
  5. Truss the eye fillet with cooking twine, so your meat keeps its shape and doesn’t fall apart.
  6. Place the steak into the refrigerator overnight to dry brine.
  7. When you’re ready to cook the steak, put them into a vacuum bag and vacuum seal the bag.
  8. Set up a water bath and raise the temperature to 54 °C.
  9. Cook the steak at this temperature for 2 hours and 10 minutes.
  10. Remove the steak from the bag and dry the surface of the steak with kitchen paper.
  11. Coat the surface of the steak with horseradish cream.
  12. Pound some whole black peppercorns with your pestle in a mortar and clad the exterior of your creamed meat with the pepper.
  13. To avoid burning the pepper and creating an acrid mess, heat a generous amount of butter into a cast-iron skillet and sear the surface of the pepper-crusted steak quickly.
  14. Allow the eye fillet to rest. You may wonder, why does steak cooked in a water bath (sous vide) need to rest? It doesn’t; however, it does give the person cooking dinner sufficient time to attend to other things. I mean, if I drank wine, I’d probably have a sip or two. The same would apply if I drank beer 😉
  15. Toss in the prawn meat and cook quickly. Avoid overcooking.

Gravy

  1. When you open the vacuum bag, retain the juices from your meat in a small jug.
  2. To your juices, add some beef stock.
  3. Make a roux with some butter and flour.
  4. Once the roux is ready, add the meat-juice augmented stock.
  5. If you want a little more kick, add some green peppercorns.
  6. Make the gravy to the consistency you desire.
  7. Transfer the sauce to a jug or, if you’re fancy, a gravy boat.

Salad

  1. Do I need to explain how to make a salad?
  2. I cut some vegetables and put them in a bowl.
  3. I drizzled over some extra virgin olive oil and seasoned it with freshly ground iodised salt.

Plating up

  1. If I had guests (note no one has ever visited where I live), I would heat the dinner plate.
  2. Place the steak on the dinner plate, add a pat of butter on the steak, and then top the eye fillet with the prawns.
  3. Add some salad next to the steak.
  4. Spoon some gravy over the prawns and steak.
  5. Give thanks to God for, amongst other things, great friends, wages to buy food, and the skills to prepare and cook food. Plead with Him to use the food to nourish your body and mind and seek His assistance to be a better person.
  6. While the steak is tender enough to cut with a blunt spoon, use a steak knife to cut your meat. 

Last post for the year

I think this will be the last post for the year. Next weekend is Christmas Day and Boxing Day. I plan to be elsewhere.

If you’re a regular reader, I want to thank you for taking the time most weeks to read my food musings. I’m grateful for the friends I’ve made in the blogging world, especially those who regularly comment on my posts.

Not a regular reader? Thanks for reading this post. Please feel free to leave a comment. 

If I know you in real life, thanks for reading and getting to know me better, I’m grateful for your time.

Final thoughts

  1. When was the last time you cooked a steak?
  2. Do you prefer a salad, hot chips, or potato mash with your steak?
  3. How do you like your steak cooked in terms of doneness?
  • Dry brined eye fillet in bondage
    Dry brined eye fillet in bondage
  • Dry brined eye fillet in bondage
    Dry brined eye fillet in bondage
  • Pepper Steak ready to be seared
    Pepper Steak ready to be seared
  • Sous vide eye fillet pepper steak, prawns and salad with peppercorn gravy
    Sous vide eye fillet pepper steak, prawns and salad with peppercorn gravy
  • Sous vide eye fillet pepper steak, prawns and salad with peppercorn gravy
    Sous vide eye fillet pepper steak, prawns and salad with peppercorn gravy
  • Sous vide eye fillet pepper steak, prawns and salad with peppercorn gravy
    Sous vide eye fillet pepper steak, prawns and salad with peppercorn gravy
  • Sous vide eye fillet pepper steak, prawns and salad with peppercorn gravy
    Sous vide eye fillet pepper steak, prawns and salad with peppercorn gravy
  • Sous vide eye fillet pepper steak, prawns and green peppercorn gravy
    Sous vide eye fillet pepper steak, prawns and green peppercorn gravy

Sous vide duck breast with lentils, broccolini, and potato mash

Posted by Gary

Sous vide duck breast with lentils, broccolini, and potato mash.

Sous vide duck breast with lentils, broccolini, and potato mash

I was invited to dinner tonight at a friend’s place. Unfortunately, her son has developed an infection, so we’ve rescheduled it to another time.

Fortunately, I had some duck breasts in the refrigerator and frozen potato mash, so the decision for dinner was easy.

Ingredients

  • Duck breast
  • Iodised salt
  • Black peppercorns
  • Potato mash (frozen, packet for microwave radiation)
  • Broccolini
  • Lentils (tinned)
  • Butter (salted)

Instructions

Sous vide duck breast.

  1. Season the duck breast with a liberal amount of iodised salt.
  2. Put the duck breast into a plastic bag and vacuum seal the bag.
  3. Heat a water bath to 55 °C and cook the duck breast for 1 hour.
  4. Remove the duck breast from the vacuum bag.
  5. Dry the duck breast with absorbent kitchen paper.
  6. Heat a cast-iron skillet and rub a little high vapour oil on the hot surface of the skillet.
  7. Score the skin of the duck and sear the skin until it reaches a pleasing colour. What is a pleasant shade, you may ask? As for me, I like a deep golden brown. Some people will go for lighter, and others will prefer darker.
  8. After searing the duck breast’s skin, set aside the duck breast and let it rest for about 10 minutes.
  9. With a freshly honed knife, slice the duck breast into slices a few millimetres thick (or thicker if you prefer your meat to be firm and thick).

Potato mash

  1. Follow the instructions on the packet.

Broccolini and lentils

  1. Trim the stalks of the broccolini with a paring knife.
  2. Empty the tin of lentils, rinse under cold water, and then drain with a sieve.
  3. Wash the broccolini under running water.
  4. After the duck breast has finished searing in the skillet, add a nudge of salted butter to the skillet and then add the broccolini and lentils.
  5. Cook the broccolini and lentils with a lid on the skillet. 
  6. Cook the broccolini to your preference.

Plating up

  1. Spoon the potato mash onto a warm dinner plate.
  2. Lay the slices of rested duck breast on the potato mash so the mash can absorb the meat juices, which will continue to ooze out of the meat. You don’t want to waste a drop of the tasty savoury juices.
  3. Place the broccolini next to the potato mash and then spoon the lentils next to the potato mash.
  4. Spoon the burnt butter by dribbling it over the duck breast, and it too will be soaked up by the potato mash.
  • Vacuum packed duck breasts
  • Dick Boning knife and Dick Butchers knife
  • Sous vide duck breast with lentils, broccolini, and potato mash
  • Sous vide duck breast with lentils, broccolini, and potato mash

Final thoughts

It’s always worth having something in the refrigerator in case of plans falling through.

I hope my friend’s son feels better soon.

Filet mignon and crunchy chickpea salad

Posted by Gary

Filet mignon and crunchy chickpea salad

Sous vide black pepper filet mignon
Ground black peppercorns Filet mignon and crunchy chickpea salad

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve cooked a steak. I picked up some eye filet steak this morning, thinking that I would cook it sous vide and have enough beef leftover for lunch meat during the week.

I wanted something crunchy like croutons for the salad, but rather than fried or toasted bread; I went with a crunchy chickpea salad. I got the idea from Bon Appétit.

Ingredients

  • Eye filet steak
  • Iodised salt
  • Black peppercorns
  • Chickpeas (tinned) for crunchy chickpeas
  • Olive oil
  • Lettuce
  • Fennel
  • Red onion
  • Cucumber
  • Cherry tomatoes
  • Cracker Barrell Maple-infused cheddar cheese with toffee bites

Instructions

Steak

  1. Unwrap the steaks and tie them with cooking string to create steak rounds. Tieing the meat isn’t necessary, but it keeps the muscle bundle together and helps when searing the steak at the end.
  2. Season the steak rounds with a liberal amount of iodised salt.
  3. Vacuum pack the steaks and refrigerate for a few hours to permit the salt to penetrate the muscle.
  4. Heat the water in the water bath to 55 °C and then cook the meat at that temperature for two hours.
  5. At the end of the cooking time, remove the steak from the plastic bag and pat it dry with kitchen paper.
  6. Grind some pepper and salt in a mortar with a pestle. Grind enough so you can make a thick coating of pepper on the steak.
  7. Heat a cast-iron skillet to smoking hot.
  8. Add some high vapour point oil to the skillet and allow the oil to spread across the hot surface.
  9. Sear the steak using tongs to ensure all surfaces form a nice crust.
  10. While searing the steak, add in some butter and spoon melted butter over the steak.
  11. Allow the steak to rest for about 10 minutes before slicing it open with a sharp knife.

Crunchy Chickpea Salad

  1. Heat some olive oil over low heat in a non-stick skillet.
  2. Toss in some drained and rinsed chickpeas and sautée until the chickpeas become crunchy.
  3. Allow the crunchy chickpeas to cool on kitchen paper which will absorb the excess oil.
  4. Cut the vegetables for the salad and the cheese, and put them into a salad bowl.
  5. Season with some salt.
  6. Add in a good glug of extra virgin olive oil.
  7. Add in the crunchy chickpeas, which are now like croutons and toss your salad. Do not look up “tossed salad” in the urban dictionary.

Plating up

  1. Plate the salad onto the dinner plate.
  2. Dissect the steak round by cutting it in half to create two semi-circles of meat.
  3. Slice one half into thin slices and lay them out on the plate.
  4. Spoon the burnt butter from the cast-iron skillet over the cut surface of the steak.
  • Ground black peppercorns
  • Sous vide black pepper filet mignon
    Ground black peppercorns Filet mignon
  • Sous vide black pepper filet mignon
    Ground black peppercorns Filet mignon and crunchy chickpea salad
  • Sous vide black pepper filet mignon
    Ground black peppercorns Filet mignon and crunchy chickpea salad

Final thoughts

This dish was a nice simple steak meal with a heap of good mouthfeel.

  • Do you like steak and salad?
  • Do you like crunchy chickpeas?

Roast pumpkin, spiced pecans and duck breast

Posted by Gary

Introduction

During the week, I was reading Karen’s Back Road Journal, and she had a post about a harvest salad with roasted butternut squash and red onion.

Part of the recipe included spiced pecans. This post piqued my interest because I like the idea of spiced pecans with pumpkin.

Last week I made a roast pumpkin and caramelised onion dish courtesy of Not Quite Nigella (Lorraine Elliott). That recipe used toasted pecans. I thought spiced pecans might add a bit of extra oomph to the recipe.

Back Road Journal

I think Karen was one of the first bloggers I followed when I started blogging a little over ten years ago.

Karen and her husband live in the USA and travel extensively, especially throughout Europe with an emphasis on Italy judging by the number of posts about that beautiful country.

If you like to travel and eat good food, I recommend following Karen and the adventures she and her husband enjoy.

Roast pumpkin, spiced pecans and duck breast

Recipe

Ingredients

Spiced pecans

  • 50 g butter
  • 25 g dark brown sugar
  • 5 mL of water
  • 5 g five-spice powder
  • 1 g cumin
  • 1 g white pepper
  • 1 g cayenne pepper
  • ½ cup pecan halves
  • salt to taste
Butter, pecan nuts, brown sugar, and spices

Roast pumpkin and caramelised onion

  • Butternut pumpkin diced
  • Brown onion sliced
  • Brown sugar
  • Olive oil
  • Five-spice powder
  • Baby rocket

Duck breast

  • Duck breast
  • Iodised salt
  • Black pepper
  • Queensland nut oil

Instructions

Spiced pecans

  1. Heat the oven to 200 °C.
  2. Melt the butter in a small pan.
  3. Add the brown sugar and water and mix in with the melted butter.
  4. Add in the spices and mix through as the butter and sugar bubble.
  5. Thoroughly coat the pecans in the sweet, spicy, sticky, gooey and hot buttery goodness.
  6. Make sure each piece is covered.
  7. Spread the coated pecan pieces onto a lined baking tray.
  8. Toast for five minutes.
  9. Allow the spiced pecans to cool.
Spiced pecans before the oven
Spiced pecans ready for the oven
Spiced pecans out of the oven

Roast pumpkin and caramelised onion

  1. Heat the oven to 200 °C.
  2. Dice the pumpkin and slice the onion.
  3. Put the pumpkin and onion in a mixing bowl and rub with the brown sugar and olive oil.
  4. Layout the pumpkin and onion onto a lined baking tray and sprinkle over some five-spice powder.
  5. Cook the pumpkin and onion for at least 35 minutes or until the onion and pumpkin have taken on good caramelisation. Some people may suggest the black bits represent burnt food. I beg to differ unless it tastes acrid, it’s all good.
  6. Remove the cooked pumpkin and onion from the oven and place the baking tray on a bench so the pumpkin and onion can cool.
  7. When the pumpkin and onion are tepid, put them into a mixing bowl and toss in some rocket leaves and toss the salad.
  8. Just before serving the meal, add in the spiced pecans and toss the salad.

Duck breast

  1. Season the duck breast with iodised salt and black pepper.
  2. Seal the breast in a vacuum bag.
  3. Cook for 1 hour at 55 °C in a water bath.
  4. After the hour, remove the bag and place it on a plate and refrigerate for about 15 minutes. This step ensures the temperature of the breast meat dips below 55 °C so you can sear the skin in a hot skillet until it is golden brown.
  5. Remove the duck breast from the refrigerator and open the bag.
  6. Pat the breast dry with kitchen paper and with a sharp knife, score the skin.
  7. Heat a cast-iron skillet until it is smoking hot.
  8. Rub some Queensland nut oil on the surface of the duck breast and sear the skin hard like there’s no tomorrow!
  9. Allow the breast to relax and rest for a few minutes before slicing.
Roast pumpkin, spiced pecans and duck breast

Plating options

You could add the sliced breast to the pumpkin and onion salad and make a big bowl of goodness which only needs a fork for eating.

The alternative is to serve the duck next to the pumpkin and onion salad.

Roast pumpkin, spiced pecans and duck breast

How did the spiced pecans taste in the meal?

I was pretty impressed. Pecans added a nice kick of flavour. I think next time I’d use more cayenne pepper and maybe more five-spice. I was surprised the pecans weren’t too sweet and not too sticky.

What else has been happening?

Blogging

I haven’t been feeling the need to blog as much lately. I haven’t written in my diary blog for months, and I think I might retire it. I’ll probably focus blogging here at Yummy Lummy.

I still read a few blogs every day, and I pretty much always photograph my meals and share the images.

We’ll see how I go for now.

Life is pretty good at the moment. My days are busy, and I’ve been spending time contemplating some changes.

It’s been a harrowing year for so many people, yet for me, I’ve enjoyed working. Praise God; I’ve been blessed this year in so many ways. I’ve made new friends, got to know myself better, and I’ve worked with brilliant people. I think we all see on TV the big named people, but I’m thinking of the quiet achievers behind the scenes. The public servants whose thoughtful and intelligent advice has ensured we have the policy settings to respond with vigorously and with agility. These are the people who have assured Australia is in a good place right now.

Bodyweight maintenance

I’m pretty keen to avoid getting too heavy again. I don’t want to deprive myself of good food, but I’m conscious that to reach a so-called normal BMI, I need to get down below 72 kilograms. But, that’s the upper limit of normal. It means I need to aim for about 70 kilograms. I don’t know if I can do that.

You’ll see in this year’s weight chart; I recently had a sudden dip. I had a few days of feeling out of sorts and didn’t have much appetite. Since then, I’ve reduced my portion sizes a little without feeling deprived.

2020-11-21 Weight chart

We’ll see how this goes. With Christmas coming up, it’ll be a little more challenging to keep losing weight so mentally I’m not going to get too focussed on numbers.

What’s next?

See you when I see you next.

Sous vide pepper steak and scallops with hollandaise sauce

Posted by Gary

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 sauce
Sous 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
Me in my Spam Hawaii shirt holding a tin of Bacon Spam with Acacia pycnantha (Wattle) in the background.