Catastrophysicist

Hell Yeah!

Catastrophysicist — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 22:19:28 +0000

Eleven Madison Park Beets

Catastrophysicist — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 19:00:38 +0000

Recipe copy and pasted from http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/10/four-star-vegetarian-dishes-from-eleven-madison-park/

Notes on prep: The beets alone weren’t all that better to me than if you were to just roast them in tin foil with olive oil, salt and pepper; The goat cheese mouse was good, but I found it to be more satisfying after letting the mixture separate from the whey in the container over night. It becomes super thick and much richer than when you pump it full of nitrous imo; The caraway tuiles are a complete waste time–virtually flavorless when combined with the rest of the components and a complete pain in the ass to make; I didn’t even end up using the rye crumble b/c I thought it was gross; The beet vinaigrette is amazing! Just make this and some roasted beets and strategically crumble some decent goat cheese around the plate, and save yourself the trouble of 40 some-odd steps.

Beet Salad With Chevre Frais and Caraway

Roasted Beets
1 1/2 to 2 pounds large red beets
1 1/2 to 2 pounds large Chioggia beets
1 1/2 to 2 pounds large golden beets
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup salt
4 tablespoons sugar
3 cups red wine vinegar

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. Wash the beets thoroughly under running water. Trim off the top and bottom of each beet. Toss in the olive oil, salt and sugar, coating evenly.

3. Separate the beets by color, and place them in 3 individual roasting pans. Pour 1 cup red wine vinegar and 1 cup water in each pan. Cover the pans with aluminum foil and roast for 30 minutes.

4. Remove the beets from the oven, uncover and, using tongs, turn them over in their liquid. Cover them again and continue roasting for another 30 minutes, or until the beets are tender when pierced with a knife.

5. Once the beets are done, uncover them, and cool them in their cooking liquid. Peel the beets, cut them crosswise into 1/2- inch slices, and punch the slices with ring cutters of varying sizes.

Goat Cheese Mousse:
1 1/2 cups skim milk
1 cup chèvre
3/4 cup cream
2/3 cup sheep’s milk yogurt
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 tablespoons salt
1 N2O charger

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the milk, chèvre, cream and yogurt. Season with lime juice and salt and continue to whisk until thoroughly combined.

2. Transfer the mousse to a whipped-cream canister and charge with the N2O cartridge.

Caraway Tuiles:
2 tablespoons caraway seeds
2/3 cup rye flour
1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup butter, melted
3/4 cup glucose syrup
4 egg whites

1. In a small sauté pan over medium heat, toast the caraway seeds for 1 minute, until fragrant. Allow to cool before grinding in a spice grinder.

2. Sift together the rye flour, flour, caraway seeds and baking soda. Place in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. With the mixer running on medium speed, slowly add the butter.

3. In a small saucepan over low heat, heat the glucose syrup so that it is runny and add it to the mixer ingredients.

4. Once the butter and glucose are thoroughly incorporated, pour in the egg whites. Whip until the batter becomes slightly puffy.

5. Pass the batter through a fine-mesh tamis and refrigerate for 1 hour.

6. Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Line an 18-by-26-inch baking sheet with a silicone baking mat. Spread the tuile batter evenly and thinly, using 3 different round stencils, measuring 1 1/4 inches, 1 1/2 inches and 2 inches in diameter, to create 10 tuiles of each size. You can create your own stencils from thin sheets of acetate. Bake for 10 minutes.

7. Allow the tuiles to cool completely at room temperature, and gently remove them with an offset spatula. Store in an airtight container.

Rye Crumble:
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup rye flour
1 cup bread flour
2 tablespoons caraway seeds
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon milk

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar together until smooth. Slowly incorporate the rye flour, bread flour, caraway seeds and salt. Add the milk and continue to mix until small clusters of dough begin to form.

3. Flatten out the dough to 1/2 inch thick on the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes, until golden brown. Cool to room temperature. Grind to a powder in a spice grinder. Makes 4 cups.

Beet Vinaigrette:
2 cups red beet juice
1/2 cup white balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon caraway seeds
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 cup raspberries
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum (0.6 grams)
2 tablespoons olive oil

1. In a small saucepan over low heat, reduce the beet juice to 1 1/3 cups.

2. In another small saucepan, bring the vinegar to a boil, remove from heat and add the caraway seeds and black peppercorns. Steep in the vinegar for 20 minutes and strain.

3. Add the raspberries to the reduced beet juice, and muddle them with the back of a spoon. Steep for 10 minutes and strain.

4. Whisk together the vinegar mixture, reduced beet juice, salt and xanthan gum, whisking until the xanthan gum is completely dissolved. Refrigerate until ready to use.

5. Add the olive oil before serving to break the vinaigrette. Makes 2 cups.

To finish the salad:
Roasted Beets
2 tablespoons olive oil
Fleur de sel
Caraway Tuiles
Goat Cheese Mousse
3 tablespoons Beet Vinaigrette
3 teaspoons Rye Crumble
32 dill blossoms

1. Brush the roasted beet slices with olive oil and sprinkle with fleur de sel. Place 5 slices of varying colors and sizes on each plate.

2. Rest 1 of each size tuile on the beets. Expel 3 tablespoon-size dollops of Goat Cheese Mousse in between the beets.

3. Spoon the beet vinaigrette around, and finish with the Rye Crumble and dill blossoms. Repeat with the remaining ingredients.

On We Went

Catastrophysicist — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 00:39:01 +0000

It’s not often that I play a song so relentlessly on repeat. I’m starting to get ridiculed by the wifey about it, so I’m going to pass it on and retire it for at least a day.

SLOSS FURNACES Redux

Catastrophysicist — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 23:20:16 +0000

I decided to go back and take advantage of a few new photoshop tools and re-edit a bunch of pictures from a few years ago. These are all from the Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, Alabama, one of the most amazing places that we visited while on our bicycle tour in 2008/2009. If you like you can go back and read about the site HERE, along with a decidedly less, perhaps, over-processed set of photos. The main reason I’m posting them is that I am thinking about having a few ‘Archival Prints’ done of some of these (which is kinda expensive) and I just want to have them in an easily accessible place so that I can continue to hem and haw about the prospect of doing so without having to open them all individually. In any case, if you are ever anywhere near this place you should make it your mission to visit. I wish that I could go again tomorrow!

Mozza’s Fennel Sausage, Panna, Scallions and Red Onion Pizza

Catastrophysicist — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 02:56:13 +0000

I swore off making my own pizza dough for years because the results always sucked. Store bought dough was never much better but at least you didn’t have to go through the pain in the ass that is making pizza dough before you topped and baked it and turned out a lame pizza. So, it had that advantage. But, now that I am older and wiser in the kitchen, I had been thinking that it’s time to give it another go. A few weeks (months? one never knows. . .) ago I put the Mozza cookbook on my library holds list for some reason–I think it was when Mario Batali was on Real Time with Bill Maher, and Bill was lavishing the Big B with praise as he is a co-owner. So the plug worked on me to some degree, I guess. Can I just say that I find Mario Batali obnoxiously grating, and yet the man can cook. I have made some excellent recipes from his books. I have a love/hate relationship with that guy. I kinda wish he would stick to the restauranteuring and pipe down a smidge.

Nancy Silverton is the chef at Mozza, and within the cookbook is an entire chapter devoted to the pizzas they make at the Osteria, and the Pizzeria. Basically, they looked hella bomb, and I went all in on giving one of these pizzas a try. So I went out this past saturday and picked up all of the extraneous items that i would need including wheat germ, something that I don’t think I would have ever purchased without being prompted to. I couldn’t find barley malt, but then I didn’t try too hard since it stipulates that you can sub honey. Then I got back home and went at it. This dough turned out to be, unsurprisingly, an all day affair with 1 hour here, 45 minutes there type steps that ends up eating your whole day. Luckily, I have a 1 yr old who won’t bacdafucup with the her Little Red Hen book to keep me busy in the interim. To be fair, she did help me make the dough, to the extent that she was able to. (She helped me hold down my Kitchen-Aid mixture as it rocked this big ball of dough all around the bowl, for instance. Seriously, don’t walk away from it. It’s a canned earthquake.) Somehow, it was still an exciting endeavor, and my hopes remained extremely high through out the process.

I had all of my ingredients prepared and ready to go, my six balls of dough proofed as a motherfucker, the oven mad hot, ready to go. I get to kneeding my first crust out, and all kinds of holes start popping off in it. Naturally, I started to get heated, but I calmed down a bit, and went at the next one with a bit more tenderness. This dough is SUPER WET, and moves like crazy. It stretched out way faster than I was ready for, and was really sticky, but I worked it out. The top picture is the second pizza I made. It turned out damn good. The craziest thing about this pizza is that the ‘sauce’ is just whipped cream––the panna. I had my doubts when I was reading the recipe, but it turned out to be an amazing base. The crust was extremely light and airy and had a wonderful yeasty flavor that I can’t say I’ve ever truly experienced so intensely in a pizza’s flavor profile. It was a great crust, and all the more so since it came out of my janky electric oven. I might even go so far as to say it’s in my top five pizzas ever from anywhere. There is only one or two in the whole of Portland that can even hang with this as far as I’m concerned.

The second pizza pic is from some dough we froze and held over for a few days, and then defrosted. As you can see, the two pizzas are nearly identical, however, the dough lost a good deal of its complexity by not being used immediately. It was still a high quality pizza, though. Below is the upskirt photo, which is important to some people, thus it is included. I’m like, eh, it’s the bottom of a pizza, what about it?

The recipe for the dough can be found here: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/10/nancy-silvertons-pizza-dough-recipe.html

Many of the steps listed are superfluous, so don’t be daunted by the high step-count.

The toppings are as follows, listed in the order they should be applied:
–olive oil, brushed along the edge
–kosher salt, sprinkled all over the dough
–whipped cream, spread around the dough, leaving a 1″ border
–fennel sausage, 2oz per pizza par-cooked, broken into small pieces
–scallions, sliced extremely thin on an exaggerated bias
–red onion, sliced extremely thin
–low moisture mozzarella, cut into 1/2″ cubes, approx. 8 cubes per pizza

Gucci Mane

Catastrophysicist — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 01:56:58 +0000

My daughter loves lions, and so I decided to make her one. We decided to name him after one of her favorite rappers because, unfortunately, he won’t be making too many more appearances on the hi-fi in the foreseeable future. Gabrielle made the mistake of looking up his profile on the wikipedia, the morning after we gave him to Lucia, but it was too late. This pink ass lion was already Gucci Mane.

Catastrophysicist — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 05:32:49 +0000

One of my favorites meals as a child was the Smurf Sandwich. I guess I have always empathized with Gargamel and his mangy cat Azreal, even in the tender toddler years. I hadn’t thought about it in years, but my daughter has developed a fascination with these little figurines, and thus it came back to me in a flood of nostalgia. The 80′s were something else, despite the hair bands. Even though I basically can’t stand the Smurfs TV show any more, there’s just something about these blue little guys that brings up all kinds of warm feelings. So, I thought I’d go ahead and fix myself a Smurf Sandwich for old-times sake.

The above photo is a cross-section of Brainy Smurf’s right thigh (a very satisfying smurf!) Smurfs are magical creatures so their meat is laced with all of this preternatural marbleization, but they are also forest dwellers, and lean, so they are kind of gamey. The likelihood of capturing enough of them to make a luxurious stew or braise being pretty slim, it proves necessary to create a spread from the meat of as many Smurfs as you are able to get your hands on. The Smurfs need to cook long and slow in order to adequately tenderize the meat. Cooking them with some aromatics, such as their mushroom houses (yes! cook them with their homes) is recommended. The distinct flavor of the Smurf pairs well with peanut butter. It’s really strong, in the same way a truffle is–it’s almost overwhelming. The way we would do it when I was a kid was to really break the meat up into almost a paste really, and then whip it into some fluff. Then, you would just make yourself a Fluffernutter with the essence of Smurf up in it. If you are in the mood for something a bit more toothsome, and have a few Smurfs to spare, then go ahead and throw a few on whole.

Dry-Aged Rib-Eye

Catastrophysicist — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 23:07:35 +0000

We almost picked up a pizza for dinner last night, but at the last minute decided to buy a premium 28 day dry-aged rib-eye instead. Needless to say, this is one of the better things that life has on offer, at least in terms of food. We don’t eat red meat very often in our house, and it is even less often that we splurge on insanely expensive cuts like this one. We usually buy bavette or one of the other miscellaneous ‘flap’ meats. Fortunately, we were parked right outside a specialty market, so we didn’t have time to reconsider.

I’ve taken this post as an opportunity to jump right into doing some of these sort-of augmentation design pieces I alluded to in my previous post. There isn’t much to work with around here, but I made due with a section of the Sunday NYTimes, and paper shopping bag. I like the first, the second was is just OK to me, and the third one is really just a cop-out I did real quick just to wrap it up. I have to spend some time playing with my baby today, after all!

This is billed as a Momofuku recipe, but the reality is that this is just the way it is done, at least on the stove. Grilling is a whole different story. The ribeye featured in this post is half the size of the one the recipe calls for.

Instructions for Cooking a Ribeye per David Chang of Momofuku

Ingredients

2 to 2.5 pound bone-in rib-eye steak, preferably dry-aged
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
4 tbsp unsalted butter
Few sprigs of thyme
3 garlic cloves
1 medium or 2 small shallots
Maldon salt or use any large grain sea salt you have.

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F

2. Heat a medium to large (10-12 inch) cast-iron pan over high heat.

3. While the pan is heating, season both sides of the steak liberally with Kosher salt. I would say more like how you’d sprinkle a bed with rose petals, rather than how you’d salt a sidewalk in New York in the winter. Then season with pepper.

4. When the pan is ready (really, really hot), place one side of the steak down and do NOT touch it. The steak should sizzle aggressively. After 2 minutes, using tongs, flip the steak onto its other side. The seared side should be on the golden side of browned. Sear the other side for another 2 minutes. Then, stand the steak up on its fatty edge (opposite the bone) and sear that for 30 seconds. Afterwards, turn it back down on the first side that was seared.

5. Place the steak in the oven and leave it alone for 8 minutes.

6.Protect your hands and remove the steak from the pan, then place it back on the stove over low heat. Add the butter, thyme, garlic and shallots to the pan. As soon as the butter melts, start basting! Use one hand to tilt the pan at a 45 degree angle so that the butter pools at the bottom. Then with the other hand, scoop the liquid butter up with a large spoon and bathe the steak. Baste constantly for 2 minutes. After 2 minutes or so, the steak will be rather rare. If you like it that way, stop now and move to step 6. If you like medium rare (which is your next and last option), keep basting for another minute or two. Move it to a plate and let it rest. Make sure to leave the remaining fat/butter in the pan and reheat it once the steak is ready to eat.

7. Lastly, slice the steak. Cut the steak off of the bones and slice against the grain (perpendicular to the bone) into half-inch thick slabs. Sprinkle on some Maldon salt and drizzle the remaining fat/butter over the pieces. Serve with potatoes and drippings.

Iso-Color

Catastrophysicist — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 05:00:27 +0000

Once I decided to give up my social networking page, I came to discover that there is a lot of other things going on around the interweb. I’ve been looking at A LOT of design/styling pages lately, and I have to admit that some of the work out there is mildly intimidating. I suffer from a severe lack of style. My desk is all tangled cords & wires, some papers, and a beer can. While I have to admit that I can make individual things look beautiful or delicious from time to time, I also have to admit that I have virtually no skill for capturing or creating a beautiful setting or scene. Sometimes, I get lucky, but I would like to learn to be able to design and coordinate something so simple as a truly striking plate setting. The unfortunate side-effect of this desire is presumably another box (or many boxes *ugh*) of stuff. Maybe weird stuff that I would never otherwise use. This may be a mild artistic crisis. In the meantime, I figured out how to isolate a single color and make the rest of it black and white in photoshop today. It works for other colors besides red. Luckily, I didn’t have any photos of roses or red coats to experiment on. I think it’s great for greens. I might start leaning on this a bit too heavily in the future.

Boke Bowl in SE Portland

Catastrophysicist — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:04:00 +0000

Having never made it to any of the Boke Bowl pop-up dinners hosted at various restaurants around town, my first impression when I visited their recently opened brick-and-mortar was that I had just entered an indoor playground. There were children in abundance. Perhaps even more children were present than adults. But who can blame the hapless parents? The guy at the end of my communal table isn’t walking into Biwa for a bowl of ramen with 5 kids in tow. Alternatively, he’s not going to drag them out to 82nd and convince them to gnaw through some beef tendon. He’s going to the place that has effortless counter service, those terrifying pterodactyl trainer chop sticks for them to muddle through their meal with, and homemade twinkies! The kids are welcome, and thus they permeate with abandon.

Boke Bowl offers up a safe bowl of soup featuring hand-cut ramen noodles. By safe I don’t mean to say that it’s not delicious, because everything that I’ve eaten here has been pretty damn good. What I mean is that everything is easily recognizable, and there are virtually no surprising elements such as coagulated pork blood you’d find in a bowl of bún bo huê. No bones. Hell, I haven’t even encountered a slice of fish cake. The point is that a bowl of ramen at Boke is a consensus spectrum of elements deemed universally palatable, if not downright delectable.

On my last visit I ordered a trio of sides: pickled cucumbers ($1), soy pickled shiitakes($1.5), and kimchi($1). The cukes are a standard quick-salt style pickle, just a bit of salt and sugar tossed in a bowl. They are what they are, a nice nosh, but nothing special. However, the soy pickled shiitakes were a different story. They packed quite a wallop! Like little plastic explosive pickle sponges, they detonated in an intensity of vinegar that knocked me back a bit. I’d read about these in the Momofuku cookbook (there appears to be a lot this restaurant has in common with Momofuku, actually,) but this was the first time I had eaten them. They are a deeply satisfying snack. Unfortunately, the kimchi seemed like an after-thought. Composed of Napa cabbage, julienned carrots, and scallions, it was lackluster with no true bite or pop in the mouth associated with more bold takes on kimchi. Most of the Korean places around town would throw this on the table for free, but Boke charges a buck. It’s a minor quibble.

Boke Bowl offers their ramen noodles in a selection of three base broths: pork and chicken, seafood miso, and caramelized fennel. On my first visit, I stuck with the basics, the pork and chicken broth($9), served with slow smoked pork shoulder, greens, bamboo, winter root vegetables , and roasted water chestnuts, standard. I added a slow-poached egg ($1) and pork belly ($1.5) as I am wont to do. For those keeping score at home, that’s an $11.50 bowl of soup, a hefty price to pay for lunch. I can’t front like it wasn’t good, though, because it was. One of the better bowls of soup I’ve eaten around town, actually. The broth was rich and luxurious, especially with the egg worked into it. The pork belly add-on was a substantial slice for the price, crispy yet tender. Despite all of its virtues, though, I still walked away hungry. I’m not a bird. I’m trying to be full for that kind of coin. They could be a little less stingy with the noodles and the broth.

Never-the-less, I returned. I went out on a limb and ordered the caramelized fennel broth($8.5). It proved to be worth the risk. While it is a vegan broth, I am decidedly not a vegan, so I added on some buttermilk fried chicken with ODS($3), and the de rigueur slow-poached egg. This bowl was stacked with japanese eggplant, edamame-ginger rice cake (a highlight,) trumpet mushrooms, and bean sprouts in addition to the extras in the last bowl. While I found the pork-chicken broth a sumptuous indulgence, there was something about this caramelized fennel broth that really appealed to my sensibilities. It tasted kind of like a . . . well, a savory cake batter! It had a certain depth that the pork-chicken broth lacked, despite its rich comfort. It didn’t hurt that the fried chicken add-on was tremendous. I had misgivings about throwing a fried piece of meat into a bowl of soup, but miraculously, it worked well. The ODS (orange dot sauce) and the chicken crust that I wasn’t able to devour with due expedience melted into the broth in such a fashion as to enhance the dregs, leaving me no choice but to tilt the bowl and scrape out the last bits of goodness.

1028 SE Water Avenue
Portland, OR 97214
503-719-5698

Lunch: 10 to 3 Monday to Saturday
Boke Bird: 5 – 9:30p Thursday (currently reservation only)

http://www.bokebowl.com