Christmas Dinner

Been a while since I've posted.  I've been using my Nomiku often and loving it!  On Thanksgiving we did a sous vide turkey breast along with all the traditional fixings which all turned out excellent!  We've also been making chicken breasts, steaks and some vegetables sous vide.

For Christmas I decided to use a beef tenderloin that I vacuum sealed and froze last christmas, I've been trying to use some of the stuff that's been accumulating in our freezer.  To make it more "christmasy" I decided to butterfly the roast and fill it with sauteed garlic spinach.  The process was pretty simple, first I sauteed down some spinach by sweating a minced clove of garlic with some pepper, then adding fresh spinach and cooking it down.  Once done the spinach was dumped in to a colander and allowed to drain a bit while I  butterflied the tenderloin.  This portion of tenderloin was already a bit flat due to the vacuum sealing and freezing, so I just cut it about half way down stopping about an inch from the other side.  I opened it like a book, covered with plastic wrap and used a meat mallet to flatten to a uniform thickness.  Salt and pepper was sprinkled on the meat, then a layer of the garlic spinach.  The tenderloin was then rolled up and tied to keep the spinach inside, then I tried to stuff any stuffing that squished out back in the sides of the roast.  I seasoned the outside of the roast and vacuum sealed it along with a few tablespoons of butter.  This was cooked in a 56.7C bath for about 90 minutes, then allowed to cool in the bag for 10 minutes before being debagged and seared on all sides in a hot pan.

For sides we did potatoes dauphinoise, roasted brussels sprouts with smoked roasted red pepper and a salad.  Potatoes dauphinoise is one of the easiest dishes I know of that always gets raves.  It's just potatoes sliced on a mandolin and cooked in cream that's been seasoned with salt, white pepper and minced garlic.  For this time I added some minced onion and topped it with parmesan cheese.  I like to cook it in a shallow casserole to maximize browning.  For the first 30 minutes the potatoes are cooked in a 350F oven covered with foil, then the foil is removed and they cook until the top is nice and browned.  Sometimes I'll increase the oven temp to 400 to speed up the browning process.

The brussels sprouts are based on a recipe I saw on a cooking show earlier this year.  I cut off the stem end of the sprout and then cut it in half lengthwise, then they're put in a bowl of cold water to soak for a bit.  When I'm ready to cook I drain the soaking water, add salt, pepper and olive oil then toss to evenly distribute the seasoning.  The brussels sprouts halves and arranged on a baking sheet cut side down, covered in foil and then put on the top shelf of an oven preheated to 500F degrees for 10 minutes.  At that time the foil is removed and the sprouts are roasted for another 10 minutes until they start to brown.  To add a little christmas color I roasted a red bell pepper, allowed it to steam a bit in a covered bowl and then removed the skin.  The pepper was cut in to 1/2" by 3/4" pieces and placed back in the bowl, then covered with plastic wrap and smoked using my Polyscience Smoking Gun loaded with apple wood chips before being allowed to sit covered for 5 minutes to absorb the smoke flavor.  The smoked, roasted red pepper pieces then tossed with the roasted brussels sprouts.  My original intention was to try and mimic the taste of Brussels sprouts and bacon and this was a pretty good attempt, I'll be refining this recipe and pulling it out for cold weather dinners often.

Next time I'll try to get some pictures!

The Polyscience Smoking Gun

Last week I bought a new toy on Ebay that I've coveted for a while, a Polyscience Smoking Gun.  The Smoking Gun allows you add smoke to foods without adding any heat, so you can "smoke" delicate things that you don't want to cook like fruits and cheeses.  Obviously this isn't smoking in a traditional sense as there is no cooking and no penetration of the smoke in to the food, it just settles on the surface.  Two small cans of sawdust come with the Smoking Gun, hickory and apple wood, there are several other varieties available from Polyscience but they seem a bit expensive so I ordered this from Amazon which looks to be the correct grind for the gun.  Once I've had a chance to try them out I'll add the results to this post.  Other smoke sources people seem to be using are tobacco, tea and dried herbs, so many things to burn and so little time!  For my first foray in to cold smoking I used some hickory sawdust to smoke strawberries and sharp cheddar cheese...