poached egg, polenta

Well, isn't this precious. I inhaled this ridiculous thing is under twenty seconds. 

This makes a meal of leftover polenta -- fine! -- cornmeal grits made yesterday to adhere the salmon balls that approximated hushpuppies. Now that was amazing. I'm going to do it again, except I'll keep the insides pink next time because as I gazed upon the corn and salmon paste I stood there thinking, "Damn, you sure are purdy. The laydeez will really like this. " 

But don't ever do this poached egg on a polenta disc for any kind of gathering ↑. You'll make yourself the laughingstock of all your mates and you'll never live it down. It's extraordinarily pissy. 

But in case you just want to mess around in the privacy of your own home, secure from withering ridiculing japes of your compatriots, then go on and be sure to spray the cling film with vegetable oil before dropping in the egg or else it might not come out intact. 

Know what this reminds me of ↓?  Come on, guess. It reminds me of a raw egg in cling film sac, you perv. 

Here's the deal-io: egg white begins to denature, turn from opaque to white at 144℉ / 62℃. 

But it does not go }}}} zing {{{{  WHITE at that target temperature, rather it begins to turn white and proceeds slowly to completely turn when held at that precise temperature for, say, an hour until it finally fully turns. At higher temperature over time it becomes rubbery, and we don't like that. 

Egg yolk begins to set at 146℉ / 63℃ and changes very slowly only becoming noticeable at 149℉ / 66℃, and then fully set at 158℉ / 70℃, over time. 

If you were to hold an egg at 145℉ / 62.5℃ for an hour then, the white would set but the yolk would remain unset because it never gets to the temperature where the proteins denature. They remain in their natural state until you kick up the heat a notch. 

So, the ideal internal temperature for a perfectly cooked soft-boiled egg is 146℉ / 63℃. But who wants to wait around for an hour or more while an egg sits warming in a precisely modulated sous vide until the internal temperature of the egg finally reaches the ideal target temperature and held there long enough for the full chemical transformation to complete, with great care not to exceed the target temperature? Not me, that's for sure. Fuck that. 

This transformation is begun well below the temperature of boiling water. The temperature continues to drop off the heat, but it never drops below the temperature that denatures egg white. This is a completely unreasonable way to cook an egg for anyone other than a maniac or perhaps someone with a lot of extra time on their hands with no immediate demands, and perhaps not especially hungry. 

poached egg, seared bell pepper

The bed for the poached eggs is some kind of rice and bean with pork mixture that amounts to a form of chili. It's a little bit hot and it's very good. It was made previously and I'm glad there is still some left. 

Orange bell pepper that came in a package of three colors. I like those. They're purdy. Mushrooms with a nick off an onion. All seared together as a stir-fry in olive oil,  the capsicum first. Simple. 

Eggs warmed in a bowl of hot water for a few minutes, poached in a small shallow pan three quarters filled with acidulated brine. The egg retains a trace of the salt and the vinegar, and that's just fine with me. 

Seasoned hotdog bun from yesterday repurposed for toast. Oiled with the same seasoned oil that prepared the buns for baking yesterday, then fried in a pan while pressed with the weight of a small empty pot. 

chickpea polenta, white fish with sauce vierge, poached egg

New American Breakfast, nineteenth in a series, where unnecessary starches especially grain is foresworn and everything else is accepted.

Well, it's 5:00 PM and just about time for breakfast.

Yesterday was a late lunch and an even later dinner and more cocktails than I usually have in a month. Three.

I'm glad that my friend called me for dinner because it gave me a chance to deliver the card I made which cancelled the need to post it, and that erased the need to get up early to make it to the PO before things get busy. This is the first time I was present, no wait, the second time, I was present to gauge the reaction of the recipient which I can say was, eh.

Pois chiches polenta, poisson blanc avec sauce vierge, oeuf poché. Now that's how one would up jazz up what amounts to leftover fish.

Garbanzo beans, chickpeas, the dried kind that come in a bag or from the bulk bins. Also sold in cans all over the place. They're unavoidable. Used the world over, by friends and enemies alike. A powerhouse of a legume there. Apparently. We used to have a housekeeper who put them in everything. This turned my impressionable formative mind against them because to my thinking they had no business in my salad. But I have since matured and changed that childish opinion.

I would have liked to mill them into flour but they're too large for the slots of the Nutrimill. I thought of smashing them with a hammer and putting the broken bits into the feeder. Instead, I replaced the new coffee grinder that wore out from undisciplined abusive overuse with another new coffee grinder. They're so cheap on Amazon, we could go on like this forever. Now the New new grinder turned those hard garbanzos into dust in no time flat. No need at all to drag out the mill. This powder was intended for crackers, but there it sat, urging me, daring me, challenging me to use it like cornmeal or grits. Polenta. Behold: I have invented chickpea polenta, and for this I will be awarded the highest honors, and acknowledged as the guy who completely challenged culinary convention. Unless, of course, somebody else beat me to all that. In that case, never mind.

* 3/4 cup water
* 3/4 cup chicken broth
* [into that, the herbs that I have that seemed good to use. Fresh tarragon, bay, and sage leaves. They were added to the liquid, boiled for awhile, when they filled the kitchen with their scent, they were removed and discarded. It would have made a fine if thin soup right there. ]
* 3/4 cup chickpea flour
* 2 tablespoons olive oil
* 1 tablespoon tahini
* 1 tablespoon honey
* 1 smashed/diced garlic clove
* 1/50th teaspoon s/p/c house mix, where c=cayenne. Possibly 1/20th, it's hard to tell.

Boil the liquid. Add everything. Stand back because it quickly becomes volcanic. Hardly no cooking required at all, actually.

It totally works. This was fun to watch come together. It's easy to imagine it flavored otherwise.

Smeared in a thin layer all over a plate.

* fish and vierge sauce held over from yesterday's lunch
* egg poached in acidified salted water, the extra giggly albumen trimmed around the edges of a slotted spoon.

But I'm not positive about this qualifying for the NAB series. Chickpeas are not grains but they are seeds and grains are seeds too. Here's how I see it.

So no, chickpeas are not grain. Or are they? You know these botanical classifications are entirely arbitrary anyway -- divisions made in accordance to somebody else's thinking, and that change as the thinking changes, with no concern at all to my own thoughts and efforts about developing grain-less New American Breakfasts, so ordered to help counter the problem of overweightedness which is broadly acknowledged as a national pandemic. Pandemic. How's that for hyperbole? Obesity is not even an actual illness. Still, anyone whose been to a public pool, or a VFW picnic, or a bingo parlor, or a fourth of July BBQ, or even a gay bathhouse where one could see more fat flabby gelatinous asses than on BBW bathing suit runway and where one could reasonably expect at the very least a modicum of vanity, let's just say anywhere and everywhere, could confirm that it's a problem that needs addressing.

Okay, so I might have exaggerated there a little bit again. The point I'm getting at is maybe we should leave off the chickpeas, I don't know. I think they're actually healthy.

gyros breakfast

Well, here we have it, four present obsessions at once. New American breakfast featuring an absence of grain, nineteenth in a series; thin slices of meatloaf with pretensions of being gyros and doing a darn good job of it too; Hollandaise sauce just for fun of it and in imitation of eggs Benedict instead of the expected tzatziki, and made with a portion of coconut oil in place butter and with a touch of Worcestershire aaaand properly capitalized in due respect to Holland, pfffft; with a poached egg on top. POW! A party right there.

Poached eggs take a bit of technique. I am now sufficiently confident to show it.

I think the trick is both vinegar and salt. I've found vinegar itself doesn't hold the white together, neither does salt by itself. but both together, BAM ! Dayidiz: albumen cohesion. Oddly, I have only expensive vinegars. Using a tiny shallow pan conserves vinegar. I'm cheap that way.

Man, oh man, sometimes my camera acts up and refuses to do anything. It always freaks me out because there's no clear reason for it and no reliable fix. I noticed something too: it always happens right at the worst possible moment -- right when I'm trying to take a picture.

Butter mixed with coconut oil and heated to melting. Slowly drizzled into egg yolk plus flavorings while whisking. Poured too fast. Failed to thicken. Doesn't really matter because it's to be heated to 145℉ / 65℃ whereupon it thickens like ... thickens like ... pudding! Tangy, eggy, Worcestershire-y pudding.

I really ought to take the bite off these raw onions. I don't know what's wrong with me. All I have to do is rinse them or zap them a few seconds in the microwave, but I never do. Now I have the most obnoxious onion breath. Hang on.

* brushes teeth *

There. Better.

rice, gyros meatloaf, poached egg

This is my latest obsession; poached egg on everything. Poached egg on my bread, poached egg on handmade pasta, poached egg on popcorn kernel polenta, poached egg on meatloaf, poached egg on rice. Poached egg here, poached there, poached egg every dadgum where. Today's poached egg was particularly well-behaved.

Simmering water covering a few inches of a low fry pan. A few tablespoons vinegar into the water. An egg cracked into a ramekin. The egg gently dumped at once into the center of the pan. It held together so beautifully today, and that's not always the case.

Did I ever tell you the story of one of my Magnalite pans? True story: Magnalite went out of business through honoring their 100 year warranty without contention. People turned in pans for every little thing even when the problem was their own fault. Like mine. I left the pan on the burner on HIGH then became distracted. The thing was red hot when I realized I nearly burned down the whole building. Warped the bottom of the pan. Now there's a little bowl shape on the bottom of the exceedingly heavy near cast-iron pan. The pan no longer fits flatly on a burner, but that indentation does come in handy for things like poached egg.

This lamb/pork/beef mixture is too much like meatloaf. The last batch was too dry and insufficiently adhesive. It's a texture thing. The flavor is spot on but the texture is wrong. My next attempt will be different. I intend to process the meats with a slicer and use meatloaf adhesion techniques, except with thinly sliced meat. If that appears to not work, then I'll process further using the bottom chopping blade, but careful not to over process. Then compress. No stacked slices, no grinding. Then see what happens.

Gravy whipped out in a separate pan, at this point rather boring.

* butter brought to nutty brown.

* equal part A/P flour cooked in the butter until browned

* S/P + garlic powder + prepared Vindaloo curry + cayenne pepper all in scant amount

* chicken broth whisked in and added in continuous stream until desired viscosity attained with corrections as it boils. I should have added wine, or at least saki or something, beer, anything, I mean, it's always right there.

poached egg with pasta

This is unbelievably delicious but I have to work on it a little bit more before it goes on the menu. I'm visualizing serving it as a separate course following a salad. The idea is to enlist a guest or possibly two and produce the pasta right there, engaging the guests, you see. It's fun! Attach the motor to the pasta machine just to make it even more fun. While that's going on, poach enough eggs to perfection with a few extra and keep them warmed until the pasta and sauce is ready. Homemade fettucini, white sauce with Parmigiano Reggiano and pancetta or bacon and basil, poached egg coated with parsley, and probably a few chunks of fresh tomato on top.

I'm seeing this happening all at once and coming together at a precise moment. I practice it in my mind: Pasta being mixed, rolled out, cut cooked and drained; thin white sauce prepared, grated cheese, fried pork of some kind; basil and parsley torn and chopped and ready to go; nearly a dozen eggs poached. Onto pre-warmed plates, pasta coated with sauce, sprinkled with pork bits Parmigiano and basil, topped with poached egg covered with parsley and decorated with bright tomato. Served in disappointingly small amounts on salad plates following a salad as a second course leaving diners wanting for MOAR !!!!11!1!11.

Then give it to them, later, the extra. If they want it, to take home.

The alternative to this is carbonara, but that's closer to a raw egg and wouldn't reheat very well.

[note to self: make sure you have enough disposable containers.]

Pasta made quickly, the usual way. This time, cut by hand. Shown here already a number of times. Surely you'd be annoyed to be shown it again. Use search up there for "pasta" or "atlas." I detached the Atlas from the work surface because I'm having more fun rolling out the pasta and cutting it by hand. I can do it now quite expertly.

Here I used thyme because I have it on hand and I haven't any basil. Thyme is not that great of an herb for this. Basil is the herb to use.

poached, curried cubed chicken

Breakfast for dinner. But then I didn't eat it this for dinner, went out instead to a very nice French restaurant where they were offering lobster, half a lobster as it turned out, which wasn't anything like you'd expect on the east coast of America where a lobster is a LOBSTER, but I'm not complaining, oh no, not me, the wine and the mussels and the fantastic bread made sure of that. So I covered these eggs and curried chicken with plasticine and saved it for a few hours and so it turned out to be breakfast after all. Strange how things turn out sometimes, in'nit?

The eggs are poached in silly little cups intended for Jello. They impress a fruit design and they're wholly inappropriate for eggs but I used them anyway because they're the right size, and besides, the fruit design would be on the bottom where their absurdity is not noticed (except for the crenulated edges still show) Sprayed with oil.

The chicken breast is cubed, floured and fried in butter. Added to a sauce of roux flavored with Madras, chipotle, garlic, S/P. Thinned with organic boxed chicken broth. The flour from the browned chicken contributes to the density of the broth when they're combined.

Polenta poured out and cut into squares previously and chilled. Reheated in microwave for 40 seconds.

A very attractive heirloom tomato variegated with red and orange stripes sliced crosshatched then placed tenderly with great care onto the plate.

The red dots on the poached egg are dehydrated tomato slices processed to powder. It's very concentrated flavor and bright with roasted tomato impact.

Even though I didn't make it, I suppose it's only fair to show the interference meal that shunted the above breakfast-dinner to a holdover status pre-prepared (← redundant?) breakfast-breakfast (← redundant?). At any rate, La Central is one of my favorite neighborhood restaurants, and you can see why it pays to be always flexible. The staff there usually relegates us to a back room, possibly upon noticing my camera. Ha ha ha. But I don't care, mon frere, le flash est extraordinaire and easily overcomes the darkness to which we're consigned illuminated only by faintly flickering votives and the glow of the monitor at the waiter's station, then BANG! the flash that constricts everybody's pupils. I do enjoy stepping out with friends as long as it's good and when it's not, and that does happen only very rarely and certainly not now, I just enjoy the great companionship, nibble a little, and maintain the thought that I can fix the alimentary shortcoming when I get home. Such are the trials of us gastronomes. How we do suffer to uphold standards, excepting, of course, when we don't. Now I ask you, is that a lobster or is that half a lobster? Don't you think a thing like that would be specified? Maybe it was and I didn't notice. I didn't actually read the menu, after all. But had I known this I would have ordered two. Pfffft. Apart from the nouvelle cuisine-inspired proportions of our pauvre petit homard here, everything else was fine.