Sous-vide truffled veal chop with radicchio "pesto" pasta

Recently a friend of mine sent me a link for cooking sous-vide style in a standard issue beer cooler. Fascinated by the concept, I immediately piloted the technique with a chicken breast, and the results were stunningly good. This technique has found its way into my culinary arsenal ever since.

Sous-vide cooking has two main advantages: first, the meat is cooked perfectly while incredibly tender and juicy every time, and second, that you can really infuse flavor into the meat during the lengthy cooking process. The second was more important to me last night, as I wanted to infuse as much of the valuable truffle flavor as I could into the meat.



Meat recipe as follows:

2 veal chops
1 tsp truffle oil
1 tsp truffle salt

Rub chops with oil and salt on both sides and place them into ziploc plastic bags, individually. Seal as tight as you can, removing as much air as possible (rubbing the chops inside the bags reduces waste, btw). Add water to a thermal cooler until the interior of the cooler is 140 degrees. Add the meat, seal, and wrap tightly to insulate (or, put it in a warm oven, but don't leave the oven on). I used a drink cooler which fit perfectly in the oven, and twice during the two our period I turned the oven on until the temperature was almost 170, and then turned it immediately off. The better your cooler is, and the more water you're able to use, the easier this will be. After at least an hour and up to, well, whatever you want, remove the meat from the baggies and sear for 1 minute per side in a blazing hot dry pan. Deglaze with a touch of water if you like to make a scant sauce, but really you don't need to do this - a light pepper dusting is all you really need.

The meat turns out phenomenal if you do it this way. It is unbelievably tender, and the flavor of truffle permeates throughout it. Be forewarned - it may look raw when you cut into it. It isn't at all.

Pasta recipe:

3 cloves garlic
1/8 cup hazelnuts, about 10 or so
2 tsp olive oil
1 head radicchio, washed and quartered, center rib removed
1/4 cup stock
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp agave nectar
Parmesan cheese to taste
salt & pepper to taste

Roast the garlic in the pan, skin on, until soft. Remove skin and put into blender. Lightly toast the hazelnuts and add to the blender as well. Blend until chopped. Sear the radicchio quarters until lightly browned, and then toss in blender with olive oil and stock. Blend until smooth, and add vinegar, agave nectar, cheese, salt, and pepper to taste. Note it will be slightly bitter - that's what radicchio is. But the sauce does a nice job of highlighting a flavored pasta, and the slight bitter flavor contrasts well with the meat. I used a fresh olive pasta I got at a local farmer's market, and it was a delicious pairing.

Chicken with Avocado and Coconut Soba

Last night I was in the mood for pho, since I love making and eating pho. My wife, however, wanted something a little different. My challenge was to take all the great flavors of pho and put those into a dish that wasn't actually pho, and this was what I came up with.



The avocado was the perfect accomplice to pull this off. Essentially, I took all of the ingredients from my normal "pho" and condensed them into a creamy (yet healthy) sauce for the soba. The avocado added just the right texture to create the sauce out of what would normally be a soup, and the flavor balance and pairing was outstanding. Plus, avocados are healthy, so that was goodness as well.

Recipe is as follows:

2 servings whole wheat soba noodles (substitute linguine if unavailable)
2 1/2 pound boneless skinless chicken breasts

1 tbsp sesame oil (untoasted)

1/8 cup chopped green onion

2 tbsp minced ginger

1 large stalk lemongrass, minced fine
2 tbsp chopped kaffir lime leaves (optional)
1 cup light coconut milk (approx. half of a can)

1 tbsp garlic-chili paste (more if you want more heat in it, but I'd suggest serving it on the side and being cautious)

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp rice wine vinegar

1/2 tbsp agave nectar (substitute honey if you can't find)

1 large ripe avocado

juice of 1 lime
2 tbsp fresh thai or purple basil, roughly chopped
cashews - see note at bottom

Prepare the soba noodles per package instructions and drain. Try to time this so they are ready when the sauce is ready, and ideally you will be able to finish them for the last minute in the sauce.

In a separate pan, cook the chicken breasts in the sesame oil over high heat, turning once. The pan should have a surface area on the bottom sufficient to cook the chicken, and not much more, with higher sides in order to hold the sauce and noodles together. Once the breasts are cooked thoroughly, remove them from the pan and let them rest. Reduce the heat to medium-low, an add the onion, lemongrass, ginger, and kaffir lime leaves. Saute until soft, being careful not to let them burn. Add coconut milk, chili paste, vinegar, agave nectar, lime juice, and soy sauce. At this point you can blend the mixture with an immersion blender in order to get the lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves minced extremely fine to make them edible - this will be more difficult once the avocado is added. Alternately, you can add the mixture to a blender or food processor and carefully blend it (hot liquids in a blender don't tend to behave). Add the avocado and blend again until you have a smooth paste - you can add additional coconut milk or the water from the noodles to thin the sauce if it is too thick. Add the noodles, toss together, and plate. Serve the chicken breast sliced on top of the noodle mixture, and garnish with fresh basil and cashews, if desired.

About the cashews....

There are two ways to go with this garnish, both of which are excellent. Most people will pick the "normal" way, which is to chop them finely and sprinkle them on top. This will add a nice nutty flavor and a pleasant crunch. When I prepared it, I went the "abnormal" way and had some fun with molecular gastronomy and created a light cashew powder. There were three reasons for this: 1) I'm a huge dork and loved the science of it, 2) the cashew powder is very light, almost disappearing when you eat it, and with it you can really fine-tune the amount of cashew flavor on the dish, and perhaps most importantly 3) I didn't have whole cashews, but I did have cashew butter and tapioca maltodextrin. So if you're like me, and God help you if you are, and want to do it this way, here's how you make the cashew powder:

1 tbsp cashew butter
2 tbsp tapioca maltodextrin

Mix together by hand making sure to crumble it as you mix in order to create a powder. Sure, you could dirty the food processor, but why bother. And yes, of course you can substitute peanuts for cashews (or peanut butter for cashew butter).

I'm baaaaack

I've been away from the blog for a while, focusing on the new job which has put me on the road some. It has also changed my focus, diverting the mania I'd had for exercise and diet into the job. And since the remaining free time was spent with the family, I didn't have time for the blog.

In reality, not much interesting has been happening regarding the diet and fitness regiment. I'm maintaining at 213-215, been there for a couple of weeks, but my exercise routines have been more limited. Gone are the days of hours at the gym, now I'm lucky to get half an hour of tabada in.

Don't get me wrong - I still make the effort to exercise, and I've really only missed a few days since I last blogged. I got a nasty cold that laid me up for a while, but other than that I've been able to get some sort of exercise in, even when traveling. I've been pleased with some of the results too - I ran my 5 mile course at an 8:45 pace once, and I swam a mile in 34 minutes the other day. I can definitely feel my overall fitness level is finally where I consider it to be "good", and begin at my goal weight and proving I can maintain it is a huge plus for me.

With that, I'm likely going to change the format of the blog. I'll focus on cooking, posting interesting recipes that I create, with the occasional anecdote about some sort of fitness thing if it is interesting or amusing. I think the other format of detailing my life was getting stale, and not needing to hold myself accountable anymore, past its useful time.

So hopefully you'll like the new format, and find some tidbts that are useful in it. My focus will still be on healthy meals, by the way, and even though I won't be posting caloric information, I feel confident that most of the recipes will be in the 600-700 calorie target range, and balance proteins, fats, and carbs.

Different strokes for different folks

I had lunch with a good friend yesterday over at Rudy's BBQ, which is phenomenal. Apparently he has lost 30 pounds this year doing a diet called SNAPP - Smoothies, Nuts, Apples, Protein, Produce. The theory behind this diet is that you only change your intake every other day. Eating "normally" every other day will keep your body from thinking you are starving and maintain your metabolic rate. On the alternate days eating the SNAPP categories keeps your calories low and burns the fat. Very interesting diet to be sure, and it has worked great for him.

It amazes me how many different diet plans there are out there, most of which actually work effectively. I'm pretty sure everything boils down to simple consciousness about what you're actually eating, and most plans just trick you into consuming less. Still, there is genius and logic in each interpretation to be sure.

Before lunch yesterday I did a speed workout for 33 minutes, running 3.5 miles in under a 9 minute mile pace when all was said and done. I planned on working out, but felt drained, and later that day I became a little ill. So I took today off to recover. It is pretty incredible that my midsection is still sore from golfing as well.

Yesterday for dinner we had a nice seared tuna loin. Put it in a pan with a drop of oil and coated it with jerk seasoning, until it was just brown on each side. The sauce was a banana cilantro sauce, with caramelized onion, seranno pepper, banana, and guava cooked in a saucepan until mushy, with a touch of lime juice, rice wine vinegar, and a big pinch of cilantro to finish. On the side I made brown basmati rice with cilantro-serrano-onion in veggie stock (it was delicious) and simple green beans in soy sauce. About 600 calories for the whole meal.

On the road

I've been away from the blog for a while with travels and a generally crazy existence. I've also been off the diet wagon during that time, well, as off the wagon as I'll let myself be.

Early morning flights on Thursday, 6 AM to midnight meetings Friday, up at 3:30 AM for a plane Saturday, then a day chasing kids around, and then another similar day Sunday, and it is four straight days without exercise. I did sneak in a little exercise when I could, like running up stairs, running to the car instead of taking the bus, bjorning the baby while watching soccer, and a little Tabada even. Oh, and I can't discount a couple of hours making a complete fool of myself in a bouncy house for a kids' birthday party. But no serious workouts to be sure.

This has been killing me because the day before my trip I got a new pair of running shoes. I finally decided to throw out the old ones, mainly because they felt line I was wearing Earth Shoes while running. Straight to the trash after the run, where they should have been 9 years ago. Apparently you're only supposed to run 300 miles or 6 months in a pair of shoes. Not sure the math is correct there, but I am quite sure the abuse I put on my shoes far exceed the correct number. But alas I have yet to run in them, save the jaunt from the terminal to my car in Austin just because I was going crazy from hours on a plane.

Today I snuck in a round of golf for my exercise, which was awesome. Hadn't played in months, and I was hitting the ball far, if not accurately. Great to be in the sun for that amount of time in a perfect day.

As for food, I think I held up well to the perils and temptations of travel. I kept my intake reasonable in the face of pressure to do otherwise. Went to Benihana one night, which is delicious and fun, but seeing them cook your food is really eye-opening if you watch carefully. Every dish had a giant glob of butter tossed into it at the end, which is completely unnecessary, and the rice portions were gigantic. Definitely a chore to keep everything in check.

Hopefully things will get back to normal here. I should be back in the gym tomorrow for an abusive workout. I look forward to it.

Bad run good dinner

Despite working my legs a little yesterday, I still decided to go on a run. Given my competitive nature and the speed training I've been doing, I wanted to run a good time. The confluence of these bad decisions, naturally, was a predictable result.

I had a new app on my Android phone that I downloaded to track the run. It was worth exactly what I paid for it. It overestimated the course by half a mile, and I couldn't drill down into the run to see the mistakes I made that led to the wheels completely falling off the bus. It did show me starting off near an 8 minute pace, which isn't a good thing for me on worn legs. And it did show me hitting the wall at the 4 mile mark when I absolutely had no legs left, and me walking home from there.

One of the best aspects of the run was that I downloaded Pandora and was able to have my custom music mix stream to me as I ran. Pandora does a great job of creating a custom mix especially for me, with songs not otherwise in my iTunes library. So I could get my horrible musical taste served with different songs than I'm used to. Woot!

Tonight for dinner I dipped once again into molecular gastronomy for the feature pairing of mango and rosemary. I made a "salsa" consisting of diced mango, tomato, finely minced rosemary, balsamic vinegar, lime juice, salt, and a touch of red onion (a very delicate touch) that I served over broiled halibut. Side dishes were great northern beans with a caramelized red onion-rosemary-tomato essence, and roasted artichokes. The thing about the rosemary-mango pairing is that it makes you think about the individual flavors of both ingredients, and taste them differently, as they do have chemical similarities. I'm beginning to enjoy these new taste experiences a lot, and I've been scheming new madness as I get deeper into the science of food.

Easter brunch and roasted beets

Yesterday for Easter we did a family brunch in the middle of the day. I'm beginning to be a little afraid of restaurants, because you really don't have any control over what you're eating. Of course, you can read the menu, and try to figure out the caloric content, but most restaurants that want to do such things as "stay in business" and "make money" focus almost exclusively on delivering food that tastes great, and will sneak a calorie or two in there to make that happen.

As I've said before, I'm not going to be "that guy" that complains and gets special treatments and preparations on his food. My weight is good now, and I want to appreciate the genius of the chef in the restaurant I visit, not insult him or her by forcing them to cook something my way. Plus, going off diet every now and then is perfectly okay. So I enjoyed my brunch with the family. I did resist the temptation to eat the delicious muffin that came with my meal though. Muffins, cupcakes.... anything you bake in those little cups is kryptonite to me. Delicious kryptonite.

Brunch sets you in a weird place when dinner comes. Do you eat a full meal? Do you eat late? Light snack then another snack? I decided to make a light quick dinner with pan seared chicken breasts topped with a caramelized onion-caper-marsala sauce, served with green beans in a sun dried tomato and caramelized onion sauce with oven roasted yellow beets. The beets were incredible - I tossed them in a touch of oil, salt, and pepper, and roasted them at 400 until they started to brown lightly and got nice and soft. Absolutely delicious, and surprisingly low in calories - about 35 calories per beet. Overall, the less than 500 calorie meal seemed to do the trick.

Today I went to the gym and did weights at lunch. This is a slight deviation from my normal routine, but I've decided I am going to add more weights to the routine in order to maintain the weight and improve tone. One of the most painful things I did was a Tabada routine of jumping up on a block that is about 2 feet high, 7-10 times per 20 second jump. I had to sit on the block for a minute or two after to catch my breath from that one.

Dinner was with the kids - simple pasta with red sauce. I made my standard meat sauce with lean turkey breast inspired by Mario Batali's basic red sauce of onion, thyme, and tomato (I added carrots to it for additional sweetness). One serving of pasta with meat sauce is about 500 calories if the lean turkey is used, and a side salad with balsamic vinaigrette rounded out the meal.