Category Archives: Food

A question of taste

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I asked this question over on Facebook, and thought I would repeat it here as well. It’s simple.

Costco has the greatest bargain vodka. There’s an American distilled vodka for $12.99 for the 1.75 liter bottle, and a French vodka for $19.99 (at least I think those are the prices). Both under the Kirkland label. Both are inexpensive. The American product is ridiculously inexpensive. But which is the better vodka? And which is the superior bargain? Any opinions out there? What do you think?

Thanks in advance for sharing any opinions.

A simple night at home on New Year’s Eve

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So what did you make for dinner on New Year’s Eve?

I was back in sous vide land, this time with a large pork tenderloin. We had bought it on a 2-for-1 sale at Safeway several months ago, and it’s been sitting in the freezer. I’ve shied away from making it for guests because it’s hard to cook a tenderloin “just right.”

But after the previous night’s relative success with a piece of halibut, I decided to try the pork cooked sous vide. I set it at 138 degrees (F) for 2 hours and 20 minutes.

When the time was almost up, I washed and sliced some mushrooms, dropped them into a pan with a bit of olive oil, garlic, and a sprinkle of granulated air-dried shallots from Penzey’s, the spice store. Oh, I also added a bit of anchovy, along with the juice of a good-size lemon. Then in went a half cup of white wine and a similar amount of low sodium chicken broth, and it all simmered until the liquid was reduced by at least half.

At that point the pork was done. I removed it from the water, patted it dry with a paper towel. I took the liquid from the bag it was cooked in and added it to the mushroom mixture.
The last step was to heat a hot cast iron pan with some oil, then brown the pork for two minutes, turning to get it browned on all sides.

Finally, I sliced several almost perfectly cooked pork medallions for each plate, and topped them with the mushroom mix.

As you can see, Meda prepared a plate of deviled eggs with olives and tomatoes. A bit of chutney, some hot sauce, and a bottle of wine topped off the meal.

And then we waited for the year to end.

Now that the new year has started, I’ll serve leftovers tonight, this time with a garlic-balsamic reduction sauce.

Coasting toward the new year

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Monday was December 30. New Years Eve Eve, I suppose you could say.

Monday afternoon, I decided to dig into our freezer for dinner, and came up with a piece of frozen halibut that was given to us by a friend on her return from an Alaskan fishing trip at the end of the summer. Time to get it out of the freezer and do something with it.

After a little thought about different recipes, I decided to cook it sous vide.

If you’re not familiar with sous vide, it’s a cooking technique in which you place food in a plastic bag, and then put it into a container of water heated and held at your desired final temperature. The food then cooks to that temperature, and in most cases can be held in the heated water for a longer period without being overcooked. In that sense, it is very forgiving.

I bought myself a Joule sous vide tool a year and a half ago, and am still learning. It is supposed to be a very good way to cook fish and other delicate items. I’ve never cooked halibut, but it looked perfect for the sous vide treatment, which also meant that it didn’t have to thaw before cooking.

The initial problem I ran into is that recipes differed on the ideal target temperature. Recommendations ranged from 122 degrees to 130 or higher. And after choosing a basic temperature, it’s necessary to make adjustments for the thickness of the fish and whether it’s frozen or fresh.

This piece of halibut was quite thick in some places, perhaps 1-1/2 inches, maybe slightly more. Other parts were maybe an inch thick. And it was frozen. I put it in a large zip lock bag, sprinkled with salt and pepper, and added some chopped garlic and slices of lemon. Later, I read another recipe that added butter at this stage, but by then it was too late for this time around.

I decided to aim for what I thought would be something in the middle of time and temperature. I set the water for 126 degrees (Fahrenheit), and a cooking time of about 80 minutes. With those decisions made, it was time for a glass of wine while Meda prepared a plate of heirloom tomatoes. Meanwhile, the day’s splurge, a beautiful but expensive artichoke from Whole Foods, went into a pot to simmer for an hour.

I’ll just jump ahead to the conclusion. When it was finished cooking, I dried off the fish while a fry pan with a bit of butter and olive oil heated. Then the fish went in for just a couple of minutes to brown as I basted it with the oil-butter mix.

The fish came out moist, flavorful, and flakey. Too flakey, truth be told. It tended to fall apart while serving, but that was cosmetic. The taste and texture were very good.

I consider the experiment a qualified success, definitely one I will repeat. Next time, perhaps, salmon steaks.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a photo of the meal after it was plated. We just dug in and feasted!

Bio-engineered “meat” and the end of the livestock industry

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That’s the thesis the independent research group, RethinkX in a new report, “Rethinking Food and Agriculture 2020-2030.”

Subtitled: “The Second Domestication of Plants and Animals, the Disruption of the Cow, and the Collapse of Industrial Livestock Farming.”

I was introduced to this thought provoking report by an item that floated past on Facebook, an article about the report from BigThink.com.

From their summary:

From 2012 to 2023, the costs of protein in the U.S. from cows vs. precision-biology food technology will reach parity, says independent think tank RethinkX. It will be a tipping point after which acceptance of modern foods will accelerate quickly, leaving the cattle industry effectively bankrupt by 2030 and five years later down to 10 percent of its current size.

This “protein disruption” will be followed by the collapse of a wide range of related and supporting industries by 2035, it will be, according to the researchers, “the deepest, fastest, most consequential disruption in food and agricultural production since the first domestication of plants and animals ten thousand years ago.”

RethinkX’s startling predictions are published in a report released September 16 titled “Rethinking Food and Agriculture 2020-2030 — The Second Domestication of Plants and Animals, the Disruption of the Cow, and the Collapse of Industrial Livestock Farming.” The ramifications, the group says, will be profound, far-reaching, and overwhelmingly positive, affecting people everywhere. In sum, things are about to change. Big time.

The meat of the report, so to speak, is in sections that project the impact of new food technologies on the agriculture and livestock industries, associated economic sectors (transportation, etc), land use and values, and broader environmental, social, and economic impacts.

It’s a lot to digest, especially since at present there are only a couple of companies producing commercial quantities of engineered “meat.”

Together with the issue of a world heated by climate change, this is definitely pushing us to think outside of our typical limited range.