Xesla Research Organisation

As far as I’m concerned the best bits of a pig to make terrine is the face and feet. Full of muscles, tendons, bones and other mushy things that make for gelatinous textures when cooked down. I’ve had an idea for doing a terrine based around the flavours of Pea & Ham soup for a while and had been thinking about the recipe.

A few weeks ago with the Sous Vide summit coming up ( now since past of course … see the blog post ) I decided it would be a great dish to make given that I could prepare it a few days in advance and reduce the amount of things I’d need to prepare on the actual day of the event.

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Tags: Ham, Peas, Stock, terrine

On the weekend I was lucky enough to attend a Sous Vide party at Jack’s ( from Eating In a Box ) house. The place was filled with food/tech geeks, notably Ryan ( Nose To Tail @ Home ), Michael ( CookingForEngineers ) and Kent. Addie Broyles also attended ( Relish Austin ) along with wives and girlfriends.

It was a great way for us all to get in some practice with our equipment, which for most of us is still relatively new. and try some things that we wouldn’t ordinarily try. Highlights of the night were the blind taste testing of different grades of the same cuts of meat.

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Tags: Beef, Ice Cream, pork, Sous Vide

There’s a reasonably new supermarket chain nearby called Sprouts Farmer’s Markets. It’s nice and close to our house and has some nice fresh produce and importantly cheap wine that doesn’t suck ( $10 for 3 bottles! ).

In the Meat section I saw that they had some Grass Fed Beef steaks. I grabbed a couple and as I was putting them in the basket saw ‘Product of Australia’ on the sticker. Looking through the shelves I also found some Organic Grass Fed Beef from Uruguay. I find it mind boggling that they could import quality grass fed Australian beef for cheaper than they can produce beef here even when force fed subsidized corn and tallow in factory farms. I also thoroughly enjoyed the Irony of buying imported meat from a store with ‘Farmer’s Market’ in its name.

Tags: Beef, Organic

A quick post. I’ve been working on my pizza dough. I now have two pizza doughs that both give great results. One I can go through the whole process from flour to cooked pizza in about two hours, The other takes two or more days just to prepare the dough.

This particular pizza I made the long way. I mixed together 500g flour, 400g water, 8g salt, and about a 1/4 tsp of yeast in a glass bowl until they were well combined, but definately not what I’d call kneaded. This went into the fridge.

Every twelve hours for 3 days I took out the dough and folded it over itself a few times to help build the gluten and push out the air. On the third day the dough came out of the fridge at about midday and left to be brought up to room temperature and have it’s final rest.

I tipped the dough out onto a well floured silpat and cut it into quarters. Each quarter was folded under itself to form a ball and left while I prepared the toppings. I also put a pizza stone under the broiler at full temperature.

Once the toppings were prepared I pushed out the bases with my hands ( no rolling pin ) and then topped them. Using my pizza peel I slid a pizza onto the stone under the broiler for about 5 minutes and it was done.

This dough is also excellent for making Ciabatta with as it’s very wet, and holds large bubbles to form a nice open crumb.

Tags: Dough, pizza

Recently I’ve had a hankering for some Split Pea Soup, usually something I associate with cold winters days … yet it’s the middle of summer. A few things led me to this urge.

I had some ham bones from a ham I’d cured and smoked some time ago in the freezer ( My mother used to save ham bones for pea soup ). I also saw a restaurant that cooks just split pea soup on some random TV show.

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Tags: Bacon, bread, Peas, soup, sourdough

I was having some friends over for dinner and wanted to be very french, and just happened to have a lot of stuff stashed in my freezer that was perfect for it … Freshly cured pork belly, a bone from a home cured ham, duck legs, confit pork belly, and slow cooked beef ribs.

I decided to make a stock with the ham bone and use this for some French Onion Soup, Use the duck in a Cassoulet, and the belly and ribs for an appetizer plate.

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Tags: cassoulet, confit, duck, french, french onion soup, lamb, Onion, pork, soup, Sous Vide

I’ve been looking for a decent quality pork belly for a while now to make a good slab of bacon ( well not really bacon because it’s not smoked, but cured and dry hung ). I was about to hunt down some from a local farm when I found a secret stash down at wholefoods.

The process is extremely simple, just make up your cure following Ruhlman’s recipe in Charcuterie. I added some bay leaves, some juniper berries and pepper. I drenched the belly in the cure and then bagged and sealed it under vacuum. I refrigerated it for two weeks, agitating the bag frequently to ensure it was evenly cured.

After two weeks I took it out of the fridge, washed it down and hung it in my coat closet for another two weeks. I then sliced it into managable chunks and it was ready to store. Some in the fridge and some in the freezer for longer term storage.

Since making this I’ve eaten it thinly sliced on sourdough, I’ve used it in braise, and I made a killer pizza topped with thin slices of it.

Tags: Bacon, belly, charcuterie, cure, pork, rhulman

I’ve been cooking Ghetto Sous Vide for quite some time now, using a thermometer and various cooking vessels turned down low. This was fine for cooking stuff for a few hours, but I have been yearning to get a bit more serious with the Sous Vide. I checked out the Sous Vide Supreme but with a $450 price tag decided it was a bit much for a one use kitchen gadget.

I googled on and found some cool hardware in the form of the Auber Instruments Sous Vide Controllerand paired it up with a crazy big 36 cup rice cooker. The idea is that the Controller reads the water temp of the rice cooker and turns it on and off to keep the temperature constant at your chosen temperature.

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Tags: Beef, beetroot, carrot, potato, sauce, Sous Vide, tomato

I’ve been watching Master Chef Australia whenever I can get hold of an episode and in a recent episode they were making a bunch of Duck dishes and it reminded me that it’s been a while since I cooked Duck. I decided there and then that I needed to remedy the situation as duck is one of my favourite meats.

I grabbed a whole duck from Central Market and some vegetables to make an Asparagus and Bacon Hash.

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Tags: Asparagus, Bacon, duck, Hash, potato

One of the issues with keeping a sourdough starter is that you can in a very short period of time end up with a large amount of starter. Every time you feed it you double its size. Unless you take half away each time you end up with enough dough to fill a swimming pool in a few short weeks.

So every feeding you either throw out some starter, or you do something with it. A great use for Sourdough stater is Sourdough Pancakes. Pour on some good quality maple syrup and they make for an excellent breakfast.

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Tags: pancakes, sourdough