beef soup, vegetables and miso

Top round sliced thinly and fried in a pan. Vegetables added stir-fry style according to their density and approximated cook times. Finished by steaming with plain water (1/4 cup water tossed into the pan)

If I had beef stock I would have used it. Instead, I had my own homemade chicken broth so I used that. Chicken stock + beef bits, probably not the best combination, but I don't care. Ha ha ha ha that's just the way I roll. Ya'know, it's probably worth it to pick up a few cans or cartons just to have around. I intend to do a proper sukiyaki the way I like it so I might as well have it on hand. That does it. My mind is made up.

My original intent was to do a pseudo-sukiyaki broth using chicken broth + soy sauce +mirin but along the way I got sidetracked and added miso instead. This soup was delicious and proves once again it's hard to go wrong as long as you stick to principles.

* top round cut thinly, fried in olive oil

* onion sliced

* broccoli cut into thin strips, stem and all

* mushroom, couple of them sliced

* collard green, one leaf stripped of stem and julienned

* 1/4 cup water, to stop the frying and start the steaming, finishing the vegetables to doneness

* chicken broth (beef would be better) 1.5 cups

* miso one tablespoon mixed with water in a cup then added at the end and not boiled.

* tomato, diced, added at the end directly into the bowl, not cooked at all.

Ta daaaaaa.

[Stop me if you heard this already. My dear ol' Dad, bless 'im, would make soup by boiling the life out of a bag of root vegetables marketed for that purpose. He'd end up with gallons of root-vegetable liquid that you couldn't possibly add enough salt to provoke some semblance of flavor. It was hopeless. At length, after suffering with the result of this effort for years, I asked him why he didn't roast the vegetables or use a stock. He asked, "What's stock?"]

miso and vegetables in chicken broth

NAB, fourteenth in a series. Inspiration from Japan which is an archipelago nation on the other side of the Pacific from Canada and a little bit smaller than California, just as much fun but not nearly as diverse and with a heck of a lot more coastal area due to consisting of some 6,850 islands, four being rather large. I am so happy to have lived there during my culinary formative years and being forced to eat exposed to Japanese cuisine. The experience was enriching and we all came back changed from how we would have grown otherwise and with our favorite uniquely Japanese dishes and methods of preparation.

* mixed vegetables including onion and garlic, broccoli, mushroom, green beans, and spinach. I seem to have forgotten asparagus.

* chicken and turkey bits

* chicken and turkey broth

* egg cooked in a ramekin sitting in the broth

* wine

* brown rice light miso

I wish I hadn't used red wine. It discolored everything with an unattractive grayness.

[note to self: don't use red wine to steam vegetables]

I kept poking the egg white with a thermometer point to observe how it cooks in relation to the surrounding liquid and to reassure the white really does cook at 180℉ / 82℃. It does. I guess I got a little careless checking close to the yolk because I apparently poked it. I guess I just have to accept the accumulating evidence that I'm a klutz.

Too salty. I added a scant 1/16 aprox. kosher salt to sweating vegetables but I didn't realize the salt already in the miso would compound it so intensely.

Shirred eggs with vegetables.

Baked eggs, if you prefer.

NAB, 10th in a series, where old is new again and a refreshed appreciation for slow green vegetable carbohydrates is embraced by a whole new generation for their morning meal, in my mind.

The vegetables, mixed, your favorite, are prepared in advance with olive oil, butter, whatever fat suits you, steamed with wine to finish. Pressed into a ramekin or muffin tin to form a warm little nest along with cubed cheese. Room temperature eggs (warm them in water if they're cold) gently, tenderly, lovingly, plopped into the center of the nest. Covered with warm cream, heated for 12-15 minutes in 350℉ / 177℃ oven.

steamed seafood breakfast with vegetables

Since you have already proven you can fry bacon to perfect crispiness along with two eggs without breaking them over easy so that the whites are cooked perfectly, neither runny nor rubbery, while keeping the yolk penetrable by a toast corner, and do that while coordinating in other devices toast with butter and jam along with a pot of coffee and all that goes with coffee if it isn't plain black, like sugar and cream and vanilla or almond, cinnamon, what have you, and include with all that a huge pile of hash browned potatoes that dwarfs the plate or a bowl of grits or a side of polenta, mush, whatever, then you've already demonstrated technique superior to the technique needed here to steam up some seafood bits for a few minutes along with some vegetables and to use the steaming liquid to create a memorable sauce.

What? You don't do those things? Well, never mind then. Carry on.

It amounts to a slight difference in technique not mastery, an easing of technique, in fact, and an adjustment on attitude toward breakfast. And by breakfast, I mean that first meal whenever it occurs, in this case noon. Ha ha ha ha ha. Hey, it's Saturday.

Oh damnit. I forgot the saffron and the diced tomato I intended. Oh well, some other time.

I live in the center of the country with nary a seashore within 1,000 miles so all my seafood is frozen, or at least very cold. I used what I had which turns out to be my favorite things -- because what? -- would I buy things I don't like?

My steaming liquid included remnant white wine, onion, garlic, butter, and the shells and tails of the shrimp. There's a lot of flavor locked up in those carapace covers and it's a shame when it's wasted.

A mayonnaise was made just for this. That was the fun part. Three egg yolks into a jar along with the juice of one lime and a tablespoon of Dijon. Just for fun, I included a tablespoon of horseradish that I processed myself from a root a long time ago along with powdered ginger and powdered garlic, then used the immersion blender to incorporate 3/4 cup vegetable oil, slowly at first then more quickly as it went along. Salt and pepper.

For some strange reason unknown to modern science olive oil turns bitter when it's whipped. It can be worked in later, but it must be accompanied by a milder oil to prevent that from happening, or even butter could be used, clarified or not, but then you've set off into a whole 'nuther realm of other sauces beyond mayonnaise with their own official names. But it shows you pretty much anything goes.

Like a stir fry, except this is steamed, one small red diced potato first into the steaming pot, then carrot cut into discs, then finally the seafood. I had:

* salmon
* catfish chunks
* shrimp
* scallops
* oysters that were not frozen, the kind that come in a jar. A tub really, with a metal pull top. They're sort of gross, actually, without their shells.

All of that released more liquid than I was expecting which foamed up through the steamer and caused the items to boil as much as to steam. [Note to self: don't let that happen again.]

After all that stuff steamed, approximately 5 minutes:

Six tablespoons of the flavored mayonnaise was put into separate bowl. 3/4 cup of the steaming liquid was strained and whisked into the mayonnaise and then returned to the pot and whisked over moderate heat checking the temperature carefully not to exceed 180℉ / 82℃ and careful the whisk reached into the edges of the pot and careful to prevent the egg from setting. It thickened visibly while whisking. I kept lifting the pot off the heat to avoid scorching and boiling and checked the temperature throughout with an instant-read thermometer, a good one too, not one of those crap pocket thermometers. (at one time I had 5 pocket thermometers that all gave different readings.) All that took about 2.5 -- 3 minutes.

These pictures were taken in the moments between that up there ↑ going on.