On KitchenAid-ed Pasta

This is just to say, after many, many times of screwing up the extruding process in KitchenAid-aided pasta making, I finally realized the key to making the best fresh noodles (with a pasta maker tool attachment):

The best thing you can do not to screw up noodles is read the instructions — this is an endemic problem, I realize, being someone who often does not read instructions, or more accurately all the instructions. The best thing I learned from reading the instructions were the recommended length of the noodles once they’re being extruded which is only 24 centimeters long (after Googling that appears to be 9.448818898 inches). With a pasta maker, although it’s hard to stop at nine inches, you should stop then — which brings us to the second thing to do: turn off the machine. I was feeling silly that I’d never thought to turn off the machine. Duh.

The third thing I finally realized — and this really was a “duh!” moment — was that by leaving the noodles hanging on the machine before trying to separate the sticky fresh noodles, it made it much easier to actually separate the noodles. I’d always just grabbed a bunch, which kind of mashed them together and made them impossible to separate. So yes, very useful — it’s too bad we’ve been trying to eat less white flour and pasta.

London Fucking Broil!

Beef, in case you’ve missed it, is really fucking expensive now. I wanted to make steak and the rib-eye at the grocery store and the butcher shop was $10.99 a pound, making that like a $40 meal. So the second choice was this cut of beef I got when I asked the butcher for something cheap to stir fry with (here; look for “some beef that isn’t ridiculously expensive for a stir fry”). He didn’t tell me what cut of beef it was he gave me, but it was perfect — and cheap(er), too. So this time I asked him: it was the shoulder, or top round: “You know, London Broil.” OK, I nodded.

So now I’m looking it up: it’s the top round (which is what it looked like). It’s certainly not buttery and flaccid like a goddamn tenderloin but it’s also not too chewy and cheap tasting either. It is perfect for stir fry, by the way.

But tonight I was thinking we should try to sous vide it, reasoning that the exactness of the cooking might benefit from a precise temperature. I googled what folks cook it at and saw, basically, between 131 and 140. The 140 was reported to be a little too cooked. I did 131. It passed the kiddo test, in that a real life kiddo ate it, but I think it could have gone up a few more degrees. Oh, and I marinated it overnight in a mixture of miso, sake, soy sauce, spicy pepper, garlic and sesame oil; basically a preparation I found in Tadashi Ono & Harris Salat’s The Japanese Grill: From Classic Yakitori to Steak, Seafood, and Vegetables for either skirt steak or flank steak, I forget which. Miso, incidentally, is so versatile and great for enzyming protein and salty flavor. (Also, that book includes a traditional home cooking recipe for spinach with ground sesame seeds which I will get to some other time and which is so unassailably airtight that you’ll want it all the time.)

And while we’re at it, ladies and gentlemen, let’s give it up for mushrooms sauteed in the schmaltzy chicken fat rising to the top of chicken soup. Yum!

Sous Vide Carrots, Too

Memory is a funny thing. I’ve been convinced until about 45 seconds ago that the sous vide carrot recipe I love using is this López-Alt one, except it’s kind of not. Where that one uses parsley, I’ve been using dill, mostly because I was convinced that was what the recipe called for (in fact, that’s what I reported, even after linking to the recipe before; Christ). Also, I don’t add sugar — not that I’m opposed to it, just because I didn’t realize it called for it (and I probably assumed it didn’t need it [I can’t believe it does]).

So anyway, that happened. But what I really wanted to say is that I used ghee this time instead of butter and it’s even better. I used ghee last time but that was in a ziploc full of mushrooms and mushrooms have so much water that I think the ghee got lost.

So, like I said: ghee.

You Screw Things Up Enough, It’s Bound To Go Right

I had been thinking about the almost baked pate-kebabs from lamb we made the other day so when we were at the store the other day I picked up a pack of meatloaf mix (pork, veal, beef), which obviously isn’t lamb but which I figured might work anyway. Conceptually, it was something along the lines of “South Asian Meatloaf Ke-balls.”

So today I pull out the copy of At Home With Madhur Jaffrey and opened it to what I thought was the recipe I mangled and after I prepped the paste that the meat gets mixed into I realized that I was using the wrong recipe. I had the book open to the Lamb Kebabs with Mint recipe (page 116) and had dutifully measured out all the requisite cumin, coriander, cayenne and ginger and was going to mix it into the ground meat when I noticed it said “Mix well and prob the lamb cubes with a fork.” Hrm. It took me a while to figure out what the original recipe was, and only after referring back to this post was I able to reconstruct what happened — which is why I want to get this down in the first place.

One thing I changed was switching out plain yogurt for ricotta cheese, which we always have around. So: Ricotta cheese, lemon juice, salt cayenne pepper, ground cumin, ground coriander, two scallions (in place of an onion), ginger, the meat, and skip the mint but add the butcher parsley they always include in the meatloaf. Who eats that stuff? you might ask. We did. Tonight. It actually came in handy.

And then I turned the page to the actual recipe I mangled before which was when everything collapsed into itself. The only remaining issue was how long to cook the balls. The answer, I now Googled my way into, was 400 degrees for about 30-35 minutes.

The second part of the meal were the sous vide carrots (you know, those things), except this time I experimented with adding mushrooms. That part worked, too. Also, we used ghee instead of butter.

You Need A Chicken Salad Recipe

Because what else are you going to do with shitty chicken? I am very susceptible to top Google rankings, and especially Alton Brown, and I’m pleased to report that this Food Network recipe worked well. Of course the recipe wasn’t “poached” chicken, because that would defeat the purpose of reusing “old” chicken, and this time of year precludes fresh herbs, not that we were successful last year with dill anyway. Also, “homemade mayonnaise”? Seriously? What’s wrong with Duke’s?

Asparagus side dish from the other Internet behemoth. I’m sure those eggs and chives would have been great, but unfortunately I succumb to what I believe may be a hardwired repulsion to combining a chicken and its eggs in a single meal. I will be happy to overlook mayo on a chicken sandwich, obviously. So what do you want?