Homemade Veggie Stock, Cutting Food Waste

A couple weeks back I was processing some vegetables and cleaning the fridge. Typically I throw neglected vegetables away, ones that aren't rotten, but obviously not in serving condition and I have no plans for them or time. Let me add that this feels very wasteful all the time, so this time I threw in mustard, spinach and collared green stems, some old celery, bellpepper, onion, aging jalapenos and a few other things into a pot and boiled away. The stock came out really spicy, so I knew later I'd have to tone it down in halfsies portion.

This week is my first use of that veggie stock that cut my food waste down quite a bit. Pictured is a homemade cream of asparagus, with garlic and lemon juice puree, rare rib-eye, basmati rice pilaf with my jalapeno veggie stock and a parmesan cracker. Normally I don't make cream of asparagus and do just a puree of asparagus juice, which I wanted to try alginating, but I don't have all my tools yet. Here's to hoping you see that next time I post.

Back to cutting food waste... I have since started a repository bag for each week where I put

scraps that aren't edible. These then get collected into the freezer and in another week or two they'll be pulled out and made into a stock. Typically I freeze the stock in ice-trays and then bag it up, makes it easy to portion out what you need for specific meals. Here's an example picture

where I preserved some beer brat stock.

Now I just need a deep freeze.

Enjoy

Pea Soup with Carrot Caviar in a Bacon Ring

My first attempt and incorporating a sodium alginate gelled item into a real dinner has worked. The Split Pea Soup was more or less standard. I used the "leftovers broth" from last week with split peas, onions, ham and ground coriander.

The carrot caviar was pureed carrot with sugar, salt and a little water. The hand blender did a fantastic job of getting the alginate into the water without becoming a mess.

The bacon ring in the picture is V2.0. I first tried making the rings around my ring molds in the oven. That led to a crazy sticky mess of baked on bacon that wouldn't come off.
For the second attempt I used a paper towel roll, covered in parchment and cut off the size of the round of bacon secured with a toothpick. Three minutes in the microwave and voila, bacon rings!

Soft Boiled Egg

Eggs
Originally uploaded by Dash and Mrs. Dash

For my test run with the hacked up immersion circulator, I set a couple of eggs in and set the water to 146f. After an hour and a half, I crossed my fingers and cracked one open. Absolutely perfect. The white was just set and interestingly the yolk was a little more set, not runny but slightly gelled. I'd call experiment one a success.

Powdered...

Last night Zack and I checked out Bootsie's Cafe in Tomball, TX. We had read some reviews that it was quite the place to visit and indeed it was.

One of their chef's Chris Leung served up a few dishes which used a technique I do at home, powdered dehydrated meat. The powdered items he served to us in 3 of our 10 dishes were, powdered duck, powdered granny smith apples and last but not least, powdered bacon.

I've powdered bacon in the past so this morning I used my leftover bacon scraps to produce such again. I am not sure what technique they used at Bootsie's, but I can only imagine they probably have a real dehydrator. I on hand do not, so the way I do this is:

• Cook bacon on low-medium heat till fat is rendered out and it's on the cusp of crispiness
• Wrap bacon heavily in paper towels and put in the microwave
• Defrost bacon in 2-3 minute intervals, flipping it each time till really dry, try not to burn
• Put bacon in mortar and pestle and mash it up into a fine powder

The picture above is bacon powder mixed with a little salt, before it meets its final demise being added to some potato chips. The next step, I need to attempt to powder apples, bananas and pears.

Complete Failure

Wok
Originally uploaded by Dash and Mrs. Dash

You might have fresh ingredients, a great stove and a gigantic wok, but that's no insurance against complete and utter failure cooking dinner (or as I like to call it "kids, load it up, we're going to taco cabana." ).

Last night was one of those nights for me.
The dinner was supposed to be "refrigerator stir fry," all the good looking things from the fridge run through the wok. I made a quick sauce of hoisin, soy, mirin and citrus. It tasted good.
I wok fried pork, then the veggies.
So far so good.

Then the crucial mistake. I made a space at the bottom of the wok and through a couple of eggs in to scramble. Under normal circumstances (like pad thai) this wouldn't have been deal.

The killer here, in hind sight, was the cornstarch thickened sauce added to the cabbage added to the egg.
Individually, these are all fine. But all three together made one of the wonkiest slimy textures I've created in a while.

Flavor wise, dinner was ok (the cornstarch fried pork pieces were still good) but the gooky ooky mess of the veggies was too unpleasant to eat.... and I was starving.

So note for the next stir fry. Keep it light and crispy and un-slimey and then I won't end up with a Super Tex Mex Dinner.

Fried Tilapia and Shrimp, Quinoa and Bulgur, Cauliflower Gratin

Fried Tilapia and Shrimp, Quinoa and Bulgur, Cauliflower Gratin
Originally uploaded by Dash and Mrs. Dash

Dinner tonight:
Shrimp and Tilapia in "Slap Ya Mama" creole seasoning.
Cauliflower and Bacon Gratin
On top of Quinoa and Bulgur

Served with Wickles Tartar Sauce

Cutting Food Waste

After making southern style catfish last night I encountered a common issue that happens, leftover flour and breading. Do I throw this out, surely it was only a few cents of ingredients, but nah, refrigerate it, even if it touched raw-fish, we'll fry other stuff tomorrow.

The ingredients of my catfish breading are almost similar to my fried pickles recipe, just add a bit of panko and a few other things. So tonight we snacked on fried pickles after we had dinner.

Recipe:

3 bowls containing the following ingredients:
flour

1:1 buttermilk/milk (all buttermilk is too sticky, all milk is too wet)

1:1 panko/cornmeal, season it up to your liking with stuff, I use cayenne, chili onion and garlic powder

Cut pickles into serving size of your choice, dry them off well, then dredge them in flour first, after dredging them in flour, bathe them in the milk/buttermilk mixture, then batter up in the panko/cornmeal mixture and deep fry @ 375f

Sodium Alginate V 1.0

SodiumAlginate
Originally uploaded by Dash and Mrs. Dash

Tried it out tonight for the first time.
Used red dyed water first then apple juice.
1g / 200ml sodium alginate for the liquid balls to make.
2g /100ml calcium salt to water for the water bath.

The red water balls were perfect. The apple juice ones were mushy, but I blame my inaccurate scale right now. There's a chance that the ascorbic acid in the apple juice is messing with things... I'll have to try more to see if that's the case.

Spherification Chemicals

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Originally uploaded by Dash and Mrs. Dash

The spherification chemicals have arrived.
Slightly more than the 2g packets I had to play with to start off with.

Oxtail and Roasted Fennel

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Originally uploaded by Dash and Mrs. Dash

Beef short ribs from the slow cooker. Deep fried beet chips. Roasted Fennel and Turnip.