[Nocturnal310]

how many of you are full time chefs?

 

[FallenAngel]

how many of you are full time chefs?

"Chef" is a title earned, not something assigned lightly. Cooks are professionals in the kitchen. A chef is a leader of cooks. It's like calling a software developer a team lead or head developer. You get there by proving yourself. You could be a great cook at home or in the business, but to be a chef, you climb the ladder and take control.
I'm a home cook and I'm sure some chefs will enjoy my good but I can't call myself a chef. I'm a leader of a software department because 12 years has given me that right. I can run a company's dev team. I can't say that to a kitchen.

 

[FallenAngel]

Left overs from last night.
Beef liver, potatoes, onions, and mushrooms.

Hearty and delicious.

 

[PalJoey]

Kangaroo steak tonight, served with Moroccan-spiced coucous salad.
 
I have some venison marinading overnight, which will go into the slow cooker/crock pot tomorrow.
 
Other food-related news - among my Christmas and birthday presents was a whole Spanish ham and a Sachertorte. I'm working my way through both. I also bought a load of tasty stuff with my Lewis & Cooper* gift vouchers (another present), including Patum Peperium, crispy duck peanuts, various patés, charcoal cheese, Sam Smith's oatmeal stout and morel-flavoured crisps.
 
*possibly my favourite shop in the world: http://www.lewisandcooper.co.uk/store/home.asp

 

[odevans]

Kangaroo steak tonight, served with Moroccan-spiced coucous salad.


 


I have some venison marinading overnight, which will go into the slow cooker/crock pot tomorrow.


 


Other food-related news - among my Christmas and birthday presents was a whole Spanish ham and a Sachertorte. I'm working my way through both. I also bought a load of tasty stuff with my Lewis & Cooper* gift vouchers (another present), including Patum Peperium, crispy duck peanuts, various patés, charcoal cheese, Sam Smith's oatmeal stout and morel-flavoured crisps.


 


*possibly my favourite shop in the world: http://www.lewisandcooper.co.uk/store/home.asp

 


If you're into 'exotic' meats, give ostrich a shot. If you're living in London, there's a great place in the borough market (there's also Monmouth coffee near by!)... Sadly I forget its name, but its not a huge place and always worth a walk/eat around.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  If you're into 'exotic' meats, give ostrich a shot. If you're living in London, there's a great place in the borough market (there's also Monmouth coffee near by!)... Sadly I forget its name, but its not a huge place and always worth a walk/eat around.

 

Here's an ostrich steak from this cafe called Pia Y Damaso in the central business district of Metro Manila. Traditional Filipino steak is actually buffalo skirt (which you might recognize to be more suited for jerky or stew) cooked in a way that seems like Steak Diane but with soy sauce and onions. Over the decades that reverted to more tender cuts from cows, which rendered the slower cooking process obsolete, but the flavors of the onions and soy sauce still need to seep through so a marinade is used.

 

Marinades however create a problem for searing, so when I do this with beef filet, what I do is marinade in soy sauce (use tamari), milk, and onion for three days, then set them out on a rack for at least two hours prior to searing to get the surface dry. Just before I heat up the pan and just before searing, I pat them dry with kitchen towels, apply some palm oil, then sear one side. After flipping, I reduce the heat after just one minute, then add butter and then drop onions around the meat, stir-frying them with the meat in the middle, then the soy sauce, spooning the liquid over the meat as you cook it through to medium-rare on lower-med heat. For presentation purposes you really need to choose which side gets seared first as that will be the side you present on the plate, and you won't get a crust on the opposite side.

 

[PalJoey]

 

If you're into 'exotic' meats, give ostrich a shot. If you're living in London, there's a great place in the borough market (there's also Monmouth coffee near by!)... Sadly I forget its name, but its not a huge place and always worth a walk/eat around.

You can get ostrich steaks in my local Lidl (where I also bought the kangaroo and venison).
 
I have also, occasionally, bought meat from this place: https://www.osgrow.com/products_results.php?Search=0 

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Made ramen the other weekend: pork and chicken collagen broth (cooked some meatier bits without spices first to make cat food) with lots of garlic and ginger, plus gochujang (which is partly why my broth isn't white) and bird's eye chili as preservatives since this takes a lot of time to cook properly, I make large batches and then freeze/chill most of it.
 
Apparently a 30sec exposure makes boiling water look calm, unlike the drama of flowing water in long exposures

 
I then cooked the char siu sous vide, then just poured it out onto a cast iron sauce pan with more ginger and garlic to make the tare
 
Mental note: 4hours, 78deg is enough because 6hrs makes it fall apart easily.

 
And I just had a bowl for a midnight snack.
 
Had to use less broth for the photo op otherwise everything sinks as I only have the bowls for Chinese soup.

 

[ericr]

Grilled asparagus!




Crushed 4 large garlic cloves into some olive oil and let it sit. Then brushed the asparagus with the olive oil, sprinkled with Himalayan pink salt. Grilled with some applewood chunks to impart a bit more flavor. Yum!

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Finishing off the rest of the tonkotsu broth I made, down to my last litre that was in the freezer. After this I'm going to just make chicken and pork broth but use it for miso ramen, so no need to squeeze out the collagen that takes eight hours to make. Also used the chicken skin from the broth, deep fried, for topping along with the sous vide chashu and my messed up eggs.
 


 
 
Last night's dinner - double-fried, chili-garlic oil glazed fried chicken with skin-on fries served over buttered toast.

 
 
 
 
Others dinners from earlier this week:

Stir fried noodles with tritip strips, bell peppers, onions, kimchi, and spring onions, in a tamari-sriracha-brown sugar-sesame oil-chili garlic oil sauce

Kimchijeon, or kimchi pancake

 

Grilled asparagus!

Crushed 4 large garlic cloves into some olive oil and let it sit. Then brushed the asparagus with the olive oil, sprinkled with Himalayan pink salt. Grilled with some applewood chunks to impart a bit more flavor. Yum!

You can also infuse the oil with garlic and get more of the garlic flavor mixed into it (although of course you'd still need to marinade whatever you're cooking). Just heat up the oil but only about halfway to the smoke point (I do this with both olive and palm oil), drop in a lot of crushed garlic cloves, then switch off the heat. Maybe drop in some thyme and rosemary. After this transfer this to a container. If you want the flavor to be really intense, include the garlic and herbs in the container/s. 

This is basically the same procedure for chili garlic oil, but  that one needs to toast the chili and garlic bits and requires maintaining over the heat longer.

 

[PalJoey]

Ribs yesterday.
 
Keeping it simple today, with potato salad and crispy bacon in toasted pitta pockets.

 

[Tomsonn]

I know how to make Noodles, Egg fry and Rice.

 

[PalJoey]

Shanghai-style braised pork - based loosely on this recipe: http://thewoksoflife.com/2014/04/shanghai-style-braised-pork-belly/
 
To the ingredients listed in that recipe, I added a piece of cassia bark and half a star anise.

 

[shaisalem15]

I'm proud to say I am

 

[ProtegeManiac]

 

My Masochist's Miso and Sisig Ramen. Designed to punish with a tripartite of pain: mouth-searing capsaicin and boiling broth when served, chest-grabbing/back of neck rubbing pork fat, and foot-swelling uric acid from the miso and gochujang (exacerbated by all the fat; broth also spiked with soy milk). There's some sweet corn in there somewhere too.