Food

Interesting and much more in keeping with the OP.

yeah unnecessary but fun

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Induction?! >>>>>

Induction is ace?

These are very tasty, picked up in the Japanese Centre in Westfield Stratford.

2000 Calories though, bad translation skills?

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It's what my house came with. It's ace but I do prefer gas... least its not electric heating elements.

Hmm. Communication may not be my strongest suit, as I don't intend on presenting myself as one. Just giving my opinion on processing garlic.

OT: Gonna try some very imprecise sous-vide chicken breasts in a zipper bag in a pot of warm water on the stove. Big pot, smallest burner on lowest heat and no thermometer. Gonna leave it for about an hour and then either chill in cold water bath or give it a crust in a hot cast iron skillet. I have two breasts so maybe I'll try both. Curious to see the results.

Do one normally, pan fry or whatever - the control.
Compare to your sous-vide.
I'm hoping there is little difference, as breast is dry and low in fat so the sous-vide would be a waste of time and money. But I could be wrong. Keen to hear about results.

Anyone willing to take a leap of faith and buy a different cheddar to what they might normally could do a lot worse than Keens Chedder, a bit waxier and less sharp than others, fookin moorish.

Edit: weird coincidental repetition of 'keen'

Afraid I already had them hanging in the pot when I posted that, but we know what a traditionally prepared chicken breast is like anyway.

I'm hoping there is more difference than you are hoping. Chicken breast really isn't that dry. Preparing it conventionally makes it dry. In order to cook the breast all the way through to the centre, we cook it on a high temperature until the centre has reached the temperature for it to be done. Meanwhile the outer parts of the breast has reached temperatures way above that, resulting in overcooked, dry meat. By cooking sous-vide at a low temperature I'm hoping to cook the centre and outside of the breast as evenly as possible without the outside having to reach very high temperatures. It's just an idea and I think it probably requires much more precise temperature control, but I couldn't resist trying.

The water got quite hot even on lowest heat, so I turned it off before walking to the shop to buy some chickpeas as I was craving hummus. Just got back and turned it back on again. Chicken looks done on the outside and at first glance it doesn't look like it's lost a lot of moisture, but that may change when I take the bag out and open. For now I think I'll leave it in for another half hour just to be sure.

This sounds like a recipe for food poisoning.

sous vide.

I'd be very wary about this. Sous Vide means bringing the water to a set temperature and having it stay exactly there for a few hours.

There are ways to do it without a machine. However stove top is too imprecise to guarantee it's cooked properly.

I bought mine from Robert Dyas (Giles & Posner Sous Vide and vacuum packer for £100) but they don't appear to be doing that deal at the moment.

Thanks for the tip, but I'm not in the UK and actually waiting for the EU version of the Anova Precision Cooker WiFi to come out somewhere next month.

Youre right about having to be wary. One of my chicken breasts was slightly undercooked. Will post pics later.

Anova Precision Cooker WiFi

Ohhh.... Nice tech!

Am looking at the instant pot...

Have found that the crappy presses clog but a good press, and we are not talking about the one that peel the garlic. Or the little hole ones that make a mess of garlic.

Not food but drink. A beverage I really like is the 'red date logan lotus' tea that you used to get at most of the Asian vegan all you can eat buffet places, most of which have closed down (except Dou Dou in Camden). Is this a 'tea'/infusion made with red dates, logan(berries?), and lotus-whatever, or something else altogether? I'd quite like to have it in the house at all times but I can't seem to find good info on where to buy it. Is there a different Chinese name for it that might be more useful?

red date logan lotus' tea

Google tells me...

So there was noticeable difference. (Sry for shit pics)
Like I said I had two chicken breasts in one zipper bag, submerged in water. Both were seasoned a bit with salt, pepper, chilli and curry powder. I let them sit in the water bath for about 1h30m, then I took one out of the bag and let it rest on some kitchen towel towel. The other I left in the bag and chilled it in a cold water bath. The image below shows the chilled breast on the left. You can see the moisture loss in the bag, it's almost non-existent.

Here I carved the chilled breast. It wasn't quite as cooked as I had expected it to be. It was tender, quite juicy and not at all very stringy. However the intense pink colour (which can't really be seen on this photo) and the still kinda slippery texture revealed that it was undercooked.

I still had to eat. I had prepared a salad with which I was going to eat the chicken, so I heated up a cast iron pan for about 10 minutes, added some oil and seared the non-chilled chicken breast to coat it with a bit of a crust. It was skinless breast so it wasn't that special a crust, but still worth putting on there.

Just look at that. Perfectly cooked all the way through (once again, the photo fails to demonstrate this). Nice and slightly crisp exterior with an extremely moist and tender interior. Not stringy at all, but still enough texture to make it feel like eating chicken. It was very good and definitely worth the wait. I guess because I didn't chill this breast it still had some time to keep cooking after I had pulled it out of the water bath. I don't think the hot pan sear did much in terms of done-ness.

Top marks for effort.
And, you're feeling ok now....?

Important to remember raw chicken won't hurt you, only contaminated raw chicken.

One of the most challenging things I've ever eaten, purely in terms of preconceptions, was chicken sashimi *. Lovely, but took me a minute to accept that I could.

* In Japan, in a restaurant. Don't try this at home, kids.

Yeah and I even had a strip of that undercooked chicken.