Meatball soup


It's like matzo ball soup, except it's a meatball.



It's like wine in a wine glass, except it's ale.

Meatball, fried egg, toast



Double yolk surprised me again because the egg is not huge nor heavy. I like to stab the white right next to the yolk while it is cooking to create a little hole there, or two, or three, to speed up the cooking of the thicker type albumen. There are two types of white, one cooks faster than the other. The hole that is made self-heals as it cooks, and it does speed it up and even things out while protecting the yolk. Except this time I poked too close and stabbed the yolk and it drained a bit into the white. Bummer. I wrecked my own picture.

Pine nuts in the meatball showing through, and so are streaks of red chile sauce incompletely mixed.

Spaghetti monster meatball


Ambiguity. It is monster meatball, not spaghetti monster. 


Half beef and half pork sausage. Their brands are always mild. 






The double egg yolk faked me out. The egg was actually smaller and lighter than the other two. I guessed the large one would be double so I guessed wrong twice. 


Pine nuts.



No catsup, no salsa, no tomato, although any of those will work.  This is red chile sauce prepared earlier here.


Masa harina to adjust stiffness. Could have used more.


Sliced steak and mashed potato







Terrible fate for a good steak, it would have been excellent by itself as a steak, but this one is flavored and tenderized. I'm in a shredded steak phase right now. 

A bowl with generous butter and milk and s/p is heated along with the potato. The potato stabbed about 50 times so that moisture leaves it while it is cooking. Then the starch is dry and absorbs more flavorful liquid.  


Apple turnover, cherry ice cream





I've done better. 

The dough is sealed and coated with beaten egg. This is a jumbo egg so in order to avoid waste, and because I am starving the extra egg is put to use otherwise. This egg roll is separate and has nothing to do with the turnovers.

Bonus snack egg roll! Clicken for embiggen, if you care to.








Ice cream from here. 

Sliced steak and rice




Shaved steak, not sliced. Mostly frozen steak run through the Cuisinart with no pressure at all, just the weight of feed tube apparatus itself so that the blade passes more times. Otherwise the slices would be too thick.

The idea comes from Taste of Philly next door. Their steak is shaved too. 

I tried frying the shavings, and this time frying and pressure cooking to tenderize more. I do not know what they are doing over there, I assume shaving beef, marinating it and grilling, so far theirs is consistently better than mine. They use a lot of beef too. I can tell by amount of shaving that come off a chunk and what that amount of shaving cooks down to.

I'm in a shaved steak phase right now. I'll figure this out. 

I could ask them at Philly's what they do, and they will answer, but from having already spoken with them I cannot expect much clarification. Like, if I were to ask, "What kind of steak do you use?" and "How is it processed before it gets here?" and "How long and in what kind of marinade?" and "Do you slice beef here or does it arrive already measured or what?" They will not be able to provide clarification. I imagine as much is already prepared as possible so that kids with no experience can pull it off consistently throughout their outlets throughout various states. 

Escalloped potato, cream and cheese, crumbled top









Ice cream, cherries, chocolate, pecans





Chocolate from here.



Some of liquids were not so cold so this is as stiff as the machine could bring the liquids.  The whole bowl is returned to the freezer. Within 20 minutes it solidifies enough to remove as these two clumps. 

Twist the ring and the whole thing lifts right out. 




This is the ice cream I'm copying. Thank you Ben and Jerry's! Thank you Jerry Garcia!

I never made ice cream like this. It was so easy I kept thinking I must be cheating, something left out, something must be wrong. It was almost like having a class at Wisconsin School of Dairy Experiments. It felt like that, doing things differently. 

* No eggs, so it is not a frozen custard, and also no tempering or any of that nonsense
* Plain sugar syrup, that is how sugar is put in, instead of heating cream. Supersaturation, here, 1/2 cup water 1 cup sugar, boiled down somewhat. Very thick at room temperature. Corn syrup would work fine, but I do not have that around. This felt very strange because of the water. The sugar this way controls the crystal formation, keeping it small as possible, assuring the product is smooth, somewhat gummy, and not so seriously ice hard.
* Tiny pinch salt
* 1 Pint liquid the aim. 1 cup heavy cream, 1/2 cup milk, 1/2 cup sugar syrup
* Vanilla extract rather than vanilla bean. What would be the point? With all this extra stuff.
* Lecithin. I never used that in ice cream before, except by eggs. 
* Liquids poured directly into moving machine. This is what felt so odd, and this is what made it so easy. No extra pots, (if corn syrup is used) no extra bowls. Child's play. This is a thing that children would really dig. The only thing that would be a problem is waiting for it to harden. To eat it directly, then have the mixture frozen as possible before pouring the liquids into the machine. Start everything cold. Machine parts too, as much as possible. That way the kids can dig right in. 

Blog Archive