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.