Garlic, garlic, garlic!

Hello! I've mostly been doing old favorites this summer like tuna & white bean salad, or having cold meals like a sandwiches, or a hummus plate with olives and cucumbers. 

I was craving steak and found myself cruising Just One Cookbook. I had to do some extra shopping for this recipe, but it's totally worth it. 

I scaled the recipe down for one, but I will be making it again at full volume. It's too good not to share!

I will note there are a lot of steps, but none of them take a particularly long time. The whole recipe comes together in less than hour once your rice is at the right temperature. It tastes like it took much longer.

I lifted a sauce

Something I've learned from Just One Cookbook is that a grated onion can add a lot to a recipe. This recipe is no exception. 

This is a case where I stole the flavors, but not the method. I do not have the knife skills to get pork cut to 1/8 of an inch (3.175 millimeters), and since I had a pork loin in the freezer, I didn't want to spend the $ on a special cut. 

So, a little adaptation. I started with the sauce:

• 1 knob ginger (2 inches, 5 cm for 2 servings; remember to keep half of the ginger juice for marinating the pork)
• ½ onion (remember to use the leftover onion for slicing and stir-frying) 
• 2 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp mirin
• 2 Tbsp sake
• 1 tsp sugar

The onion I used was labeled Jumbo Sweet Onion at the store. I happen to love onions. If you like them as enhancers more than you do as a strong flavor, start with one of the ones you get in those red net bags. You can always add more.

If you don't own a ginger grater, I strongly recommend you grab one. They're also good for garlic. I put everything in a small saucepan on low for about fifteen minutes. This was just enough time to  let the alcohol in the sake burn off and the sugar to dissolve. Then I took it off the heat and set up the water bath, with the immersion circulator set to 135 F (57.2 C,  330.4 K). While the water was coming to temperature, I sliced the other half of the onion, and sliced some cabbage as thin as I could get it and set it aside. 

By the time the sauce cooled to room temperature, the water was ready. I salted a pork loin, stabbed it multiple times with a fork. (There was about an inch between stabs), put it in a vacuum bag with 3 Tablespoons of sauce, sealed it, and put it in the water bath. 

Once that was set, I made the sesame dressing to have on the side and stashed it in the fridge. From there, I started the rice, which would take 50 minutes. I watched most of an episode of The Brokenwood Mysteries, and then started cooking the sliced onions in a bit of safflower oil and a bit of the sauce. When the onions were brown on about half the edges, I turned the heat down to low and added the rest of the sauce to the frying pan. 

When the pork had been cooking for 90 minutes, I put some safflower oil in a pan on medium high to prep for searing. I took the meat out of the water bath, added the liquid in the bag to the sauce and patted the loin dry with paper towels. When the oil began to give off smoke, I seared the pork for 30 seconds on each side, then let it rest for five minutes while I added the rice and the cabbage to a bowl and set the table. After the resting, I sliced the pork, added it to the bowl and spooned some sauce over it.

My pork wasn't the crispy delight in the recipe, but I did have fabulous flavors and a great mix of textures.  This is definitely being made again!

Adapted for Sous Vide: Butter Shoyu Chicken

When I want to make something, but I'm not sure what, I often find myself back at Just One Cookbook. I find Namiko Hirasawa Chen (aka Nami)'s writing style to be friendly and laid back, and I find the recipes easy to follow and they don't tend towards needing special equipment (Yes, I know, this entry is full of special equipment. the irony is not lost on me).

Butter-Shoyu Chicken caught my eye because I don't tend to think about butter or much dairy at all when it comes to Japanese foods and the taste combination intrigued me. Another factor: I had everything in the fridge, freezer, or pantry.

Well, almost. I had two boneless chicken breasts and no thighs, and they were skinless to boot, so I was not going to get the rich deep poultry flavors I wanted from the recipe as written. However...

I've been playing with the immersion circulator long enough that I was comfortable enough to try adapting so I could. Same ingredients for the sauce went into a glass measuring cup (a bowl works too if that's what you'd rather. Or a small jar for that matter where you can cap it and shake. Whatever's easiest for you in your kitchen):

• 2.5 Tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 Tablespoons sake
• 1 Tablespoon mirin
• 1 Tablespoon sugar

I stirred it well, using a swizzle stick a friend had given me for my bar. (thanks Gina!), put it aside and looked at the recipe again. 

I didn't need the oil for sous vide, so that could be eliminated. So could the additional Tablespoons of sake because I wasn't steaming the chicken with it. I made my bags with my vacuum sealer (Note: if this is too fiddly for you, there are other options I'll talk about below), stirred the sauce again and opened the chicken.

When I work with raw chicken, I touch it as little as possible, using tongs (links to different types here on The Accessible Chef). The chicken will start out either on a plate, in one of those handy not-quite-Tupperware containers you can get at the grocery store for your leftovers, or a decent-sized bowl. I sprinkled each side of the chicken with kosher salt and ground black pepper and put a breast in each bag, stopping occasionally to stir the sauce again to get that sugar dissolved.  

To each bag I added .5 Tablespoon of butter, which I cut in half and put one on each side of the bagged breast, and then 2 Tablespoons of salt. From there, I sealed the bags and put in the ridge, then started up the rice cooker. I was going for brown rice, which my Toshiba says takes an hour and twenty minutes.

I filled the sous vide container with water and heated it up to 147 F, which is 63.88 C (and 337 K, if you care 😃). Once things were set to cook, I had I did some minor cleanup and watched an episode of Death in Paradise on Britbox. It has been remarked upon that I might be addicted to crime shows, especially British ones.

One murder later, I put the rest of the sauce in a small pan on the stove, and set the heat to medium. I also filled a small pot with water, set that burner to high, and washed some snow peas. Those would get tossed into the water once it boiled, just long enough for them to turn bright green.

While waiting for the water to boil, I opened the sous vide bags and drained the juices into the pan with the sauce and turned the heat up to medium-high until I started seeing small bubbles. then I reduced it down to low, giving it a bit of time to reduce. 

If I'd been having company, I likely would have seared the chicken in a grill pan to have those nice marks on it, plated it over the rice, and scattered the snow peas in an artful circule. That wasn't quite what happened. I put the rice in my favorite bowl, pre-cut the chicken so it would be easy to grab with chopsticks, added the chicken, the snow peas, and spooned the sauce over the chicken and threw a few green onions on top. Absolutely delicious.  

I forgot to get a picture, to my embarrassment. I was pretty hungry by that poin.

Regarding sous vide bags. They can be a big pain in the ass to make. While vacuum sealers aren't hard to use, they can be heavy and awkward, and they take up a lot of storage space. I haven't tried this, but some people swear by this water displacement method, with a standard zipper bag. A few vendors out there also make silicone re-useable bags. I have a few of these, but haven't tried yet. I do find them easier to close than standard zipper bags because the seal mechanism is larger.  I have plenty of leftovers, so I may try reheating the chicken sous vide with one of them. It's about time I tested that out.