Xesla Research Organisation

Dulce De Leche brings back fond memories of Miniature Caramel Tarts that my mother used to make by boiling a can of condensed milk and pouring it into gingernut cookies that had been softened and shaped into little bowls and then cooled to set.

It’s easy to make, just throw a tin of condensed milk into near boiling water for a few hours. If you really want to cause a stir do yourself a favour and whisk in 10% by weight of your favourite liquor and seal it into canning jars ( sterilize etc if you plan on keeping outside of the fridge. but seriously don’t bother it’s not going to remain uneaten for long ) I used a Japanese Whiskey, but you could use Bourbon, Rum, or an infused vodka ( I’m thinking of trying with Chipotle infused Vodka next time.). You can eat it hot, but I would recommend letting it cool down and set into a thick spread-like consistency.

Serve by spreading between two shortbread cookies and you have a version of alfajores, a treat found in a number of South American countries. Or just spoon it straight into your mouth from the jar.

Tags: Alchohol, Condensed Milk, dulce de leche, Whiskey

This is a really simple yet beautiful Ragu served atop Fettuccine. I’ve cooked it a few times now and am really happy with how it turns out. Unlike the Bolognese that you’ll see on most tables it’s surprisingly low on tomato and has no red wine.

Next time I make this I think I’m going to go more traditional and use oxtail and home cured pork belly instead of the ground meats, I think the gelatin extracted from the oxtail will give it some amazing body.

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Tags: Fettuccine, Mirepoix, pasta, Ragu

With winter fast approaching it was time to harvest the remaining tomatoes from the garden and thank them for their valiant efforts at producing food for a mostly ignorant gardener before they wilt and die from the cold. Most of the tomatoes were still green which is new to me, so I had to hunt down something interesting to do with them.

I have been wanting to start canning/preserving for a while and recently my interest in it had been reignited by eating preserved Olives and Sunchokes fresh from the jar at Hank Shaw’s home during my recent trip to Sacramento.

I checked Hank’s website hoping he’d had a recipe for canning green tomatoes and while I didn’t find anything there I followed a link from his page to Food In Jars which had a recipe for Green Tomato Chutney. Perfect I thought and went out shopping for some jars and ingredients.

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Tags: Canning, Celery, Chutney, Green Tomatoes, Tomatoes

When I cook chicken breast I usually buy them still on the crown and bone them so that I can use the bones for stock.     I almost always cook chicken sous vide now and will often cook vegetables to go with it sous vide as well.     I’ve developed this Stock in a Bag preparation to make the most out of the cooking heat that I’m already using and at the same time be a simple way to make small batch stock as I don’t have a huge amount of freezer space.

Usually I make a more traditional western style stock but last night I decided to make it with a Chinese influence by using  Shaoxing Wine, Light Soy and Sesame Oil. This stock can later be used to poach duck or pork belly and will improve each time you use it.

If you want to make a large batch of this, use the same process but in a bigger pan and then just fill your water bath with it ( assuming a ghetto style rice cooker sous vide … I’m sure the sous vide supreme people would get mad if you did this with one of their units ).

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Tags: chicken, Sous Vide, Stock

Cassoulet is a fairly epic dish that many home cooks shy away from because it requires a lot of time, some recipes call for 3 days of preperation/cooking. It’s a peasant dish and they were too busy working to be cooking for three days straight. I’ll guarantee they worked a lot harder for longer hours than you or I do.   You only really need two days, and the first day is just to put the beans in water.

When you get past all the fancy ingredients it’s actually a very simple dish. It’s beans and meat. It has two kinds of meat in it … Fresh ( cheap cuts, require long cooking to be tender ) and Cured ( Bacon, Pancetta, Duck Confit ). Don’t rush out and buy a bunch of expensive meats to make it, use cheap cuts of beef, pork, lamb, and sausage. Use home cured bacon, duck confit, and stock.

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Tags: Beef, cassoulet, confit, duck, french, Guanciale, lamb, pork, Stock

Guanciale is something I’ve been planning on making for quite some time. I had a pork jowl from Richardson Farms sitting in the freezer and a heavy weight of procrastination on my shoulders for quite some time before I finally decided to actually make it.

The obvious place to turn to for the recipe is my favourite Michael Ruhlman book Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing. With book in hand and cheek on the cutting board I was ready to go.

The recipe itself is very simple. Salt, Sugar, Spice, Herbs and Time.

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Tags: charcuterie, Cheek, cure, Guanciale, Jowl, pork

A few short weeks ago Hank Shaw over at Hunter Angler Gardener Cook announced his second annual duck cook off with Chef Michael Tuohy of Grange. As part of the announcement he held a competition to win dinner and a hotel for the night for two.

I quickly and enthusiastically entered a recipe for a Chorizo Stuffed Duck Leg and the with duck on the mind I made a Cold Smoked Confit that weekend and submitted that as well.

Amazingly enough Hank chose my recipe(s) as the winner and I found myself hurriedly booking flights and extra accomodation so that I could stay a few more days and check Sacramento out. I invited my friend Ryan from Nose to Tail @ Home to come with me and a few days ago we flew out of Austin to Start our adventure.

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Tags: Cooking, duck, Hank Shaw, Sacramento

I’ve been wanting to make Pastrami for quite some time, I used to make it by getting pre-brined packages of corned beef and smoking it but I’ve never made it from scratch before. Thankfully I have my copy of the Bible and a recipe was only a few page turns away.

I didn’t want to make it with a whole brisket for my first time so had a look around for some options. Some googling told me that I could make it with pretty much any cut of beef, but I wanted to try and keep to a similar cut. Something that’s similar to brisket, tough, stringy, sinewy and in need of long slow cooking. After some scouting at my local supermarket I decided on some ribs.

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Tags: Beef, charcuterie, pastrami, Ruhlman

I wasn’t going to blog this, hence no photos of making them, But I was so happy how well they turned out, I wanted to share. Using Ruhlman’s Ratio for Pate a Choux I made the dough. Originally I was planning to do Eclairs, but they kept collapsing on me, I know you read this blog Ruhlman (yeah right) … What’s the trick to stop them from collapsing?

I made a Pastry Cream ( Milk, Eggs, flour, sugar, vanilla ) and filled the cream puffs and then poured over a chocolate glaze ( bittersweet chocolate and cream ).

Tags: cream puff, dessert, pate a choux

Inspired by one of my favourite blogs Hunter Angler Gardener Cook asking for duck recipes to win a seating at his upcoming duck Duel, I was thinking about good duck dishes, of course everyone knows that duck confit is the ultimate in duck recipes ( well it’s more of a mother recipe as it spawns off rillets, cassoulet, and all sorts of Charcuterie applications ).

Duck Confit is one of those dishes that instantly says ‘the dude who cooked this is serious about food’… That being said everyone second person these days is ‘serious about food’ so it’s a harder distinction to find people that are really hardcore about food, and those that are in it for the trendiness of being a foodie.

I decided that I wanted to do something to make it my own … Living in texas and having just been to an amazing BBQ joint I’d been thinking about doing some BBQ this weekend so I thought why not cold smoke the duck before I confit it and then pull it.

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Tags: bbq, confit, duck, smoked