Sous Vide Chicken Breasts

As I mentioned early, I just sous vide two chicken breasts at 145 for a little over an hour. I cooked them with just salt, pepper and rosemary, but I could've added a hunk of butter, which is what a lot of chefs do.

After cooking I chilled the chicken breasts in an ice bath then refrigerated them. When I wanted a quick and delicious lunch, I just pulled a bag out, opened it, and cooked it over high heat for a few minutes to warm the chicken through and crisp the skin.

The chicken was extremely delicious. The crisp skin gave way to extreme moistness and tenderness, clearly due to the sous vide cooking. What's more, it was extremely convenient. I just left the bag in the fridge until I wanted some chicken then crisped it up for a few minutes. That my kind of fast food. Speaking of fast food....... TBC!

Mother's Day

My mother's day present to my mom, was, well, the best present I can give, food. Not just any food however. I wasn't just gonna grill off a steak and call that my present. I made her chicken confit, oooooo, ahhhhhh.

(Mmmm Bacon Fat)

A few days before, I cured the legs with truffle-salt, pepper, rosemary and garlic overnight, then cooked them sous vide in bacon fat (that I had accumulated slowly after cooking much bacon) for eight hours at 176 degrees.


I really believe there is just nothing like confit. These legs were so much more succulent and flavorful than those of a roast chicken. The salting, and then slow cooking adds unmatched depth of flavor to otherwise ordinary legs. This chicken was extremely tender, almost too much so. Next time I will cook it at 180. I saved a leg for myself, and devoured it immediately, promising my belly that I would make it more often- and I really don't know why I don't. If I buy a whole chicken, I have two breasts for lunches, two legs for confit, and two wings and a body for stock.
I served the confit with a smooth potato puree and a kind of chunky avocado puree (saying mashed potatoes or guacamole just doesn't sound right in the context of the dish) because I really loved how the textures worked together. There are times for textural contrast, and there are times for textural uniformity. In this case, the uniformity really allowed the dish to meld. It was smooth and fluid to eat, and most importantly, Mom was happy.

Yogurt

I will post about the yogurt after I perform one more test.

Chicken, Pizza

I went to bed really happy and satisfied with myself last night. I had bought a whole free range chicken from whole foods, broken it down, and saved the body for stock. I sous vide the breasts at 145 for an hour, and I salted the legs which I would confit in bacon fat the next day. I also had pizza dough proofing overnight in the fridge. I frikin love cooking.

My First Try at Fried Chicken

Using Alton Brown's Buttermilk-soaked fried chicken recipe, with quite awful results. It was my fault though, not Alton's. The chicken was extremely bland due to underseasonig, though it was crispy.

Homemade Yogurt

Hot Sexy Food Porn!

Did that get your attention? Good. There's no food porn in this post, but just sit here for five minutes and read this if you will.

No matter how much you like this blog or how often you read it, I need it more than you do. I really didn't see it this way when I started, but it has become so much more than me typing some words on a website. I need this blog for myself. I connect with myself and let out my feelings with this blog. It's my therapist, and whatever I wanna say, it listens.

I recently talked to someone about the posts I like to write. I really find that my posting about something like salmon that I made, or a steak that I grilled, with lots of pictures involved, are pointless. I don't enjoy writing them. I do those to kind of "appease the crowd," because those are the posts that more people tend to like (ya know the ones with simple writing and plenty of eye candy).

The other day, the head chef at Lacroix came up to me, and asked me if I would be upset if Per Se closed (he had read this post about how I didn't approve of the new a la carte menu at per se). I responded "of course." He then went on to tell me how he's sure that Thomas Keller was strongly opposed to the idea, but in trying to put butts in seats he obliged.

Thankfully, I'm not financially invested in this blog, but if just wrote my wordy, longer posts, this blog would probably "close," so I spruce it up with the shorter ones. I love you readers, but I'm quite happy that I can write what I want, when I want. This blog has become as much for me as it is for you- maybe even more for me- and I hope you can accept that. Of course I will throw in some filler here in there, with oodles of pictures and the like, but give my longer, wordier posts a chance. When I wrote my "25 Random Things About Me" I said, "You don't get all of me with this blog. You only get 25%." If you read my wordy posts, that number's more like 50.