Weekend Evaluation - At least the Bills weren't the only thing that got smoked this Sunday.

This weekend the Buffalo Bills reminded me of how I started trying to cook more intricate foods.  When I first moved to New York, I used to go watch Bills games at a bar, or a friends house, but as the years of unwatchable, losing football dragged on, I started questioning why I was spending Sunday afternoons going out of my way to pay attention.

I finally decided I would just listen to games while I worked on some other projects; that turned into making dinner more and more labor intensive. This week the game was on TV here - but true to form, the Bills never showed up, so by the third quarter I was doing something else.

On a side note- why are Buffalo fans so outraged by this year's team - did they do anything to make you think they'd be any better than the past 10 years?

Went to the smoker two weeks in a row, it just worked out that way. 

Maple Thyme Ice Cream

Positive - Gretchen questioned my choice to add fresh thyme, clove, and half a cinnamon stick; but I think it helped make it taste more maple.

Negative - It might have been slightly icy due to the extra liquid from the maple syrup; but not too bad.  This was OK - but not the greatest.

Honey Whole Wheat Pancakes

 
Positive - Overcame my problems with the ratio of the pancake recipe finally and these came out fine.

Negative - Needed something extra - but pretty good.

Corn and Red Pepper Souffle

Positive - I think I made a souffle once before (pumpkin I think), but it has probably been a year.  People really think they're hard, but really they're not. They're right up there with pate a choux as things that aren't nearly as hard as they seem.

Negative - I pureed the corn and diced the red peppers for this thing,  It rose pretty well, but I'm not really comfortable with judging done-ness on souffles (since I've only made them twice) so I was really on the fence about taking them out of the oven and opened and closed the door- I'm pretty sure that whole wives tale about souffle's falling is a fallacy.  You just have to keep the thing full of hot air as long as possible.

Probably could have used some cheese in this thing.

64 Degree Egg

Positive - Finally used the water bath set up for it's best purpose - getting poached eggs perfect.  The yolk was how you expect on these things, not set, but not runny like a custard.


Negative - Not sure, but the white seemed like it may have been under.  Not sure why since it was in there for a while.  I know at lower temps the egg will appear uncooked, but really will be cooked - maybe I was seeing that.

I had this on a salad - probably could have used a runnier yolk.

Leek Tart
Bacon, Cheddar, Thyme

Positive - Not much good going on here.  The bacon tasted pretty good I guess

Negative - Where to start- I shouldn't probably be allowed to ever make a quiche again.

• crust was hard to roll out
• Got impatient and didn't blind bake it for long enough - so not flaky
• Cracked so there were custard leaks.
• Too much cheese 
• I hated this

Hickory Smoked Bacon

Put this in a cure with rosemary, thyme, clove, black pepper last week.

Positive - This came out pretty good.  I could have used maybe a little more smoke flavor, but it's definitely smokey.  The bacon has a good color, and didn't appear to be over cured.

Negative - I may not have waited long enough before slicing this, but it wasn't a big problem.

Multi-Grain Batard

Positive - This was actually a pretty big success.  After the past few weeks I was starting to think I wasn't ever going to able to make a decent bread.  The bread had the crumb I was looking for (fairly tight) and was still soft.

Negative - Started a soaker of rye and buckwheat flours Saturday morning, added some risen starter Saturday night, and then made the bread Sunday morning.  Maybe could have used a 12 more hours to really get more complex tasting; it was definitely acidic.  I did use less that a quarter teaspoon of commercial yeast because I wanted to speed up the rise a little bit, I needed the oven.
 

Smoked Short Rib Taco

w/ Corn 'crema', Grilled Salsa, parsley, lemon, cotija

Positive - The short rib had a good deal of smoke flavor - I had this in the smoker with the bacon all day.  You could see the smoke ring and got a lot of the aroma.

The grilled tomato salsa came out really good too - nice char on there.  Corn 'crema' was just pureed, strained through the chinois cooked down a little bit to thicken it.

Tortillas came out ok - Gretchen helped me out when I started to freak out about them

Negative - I really think the short rib could have cooked longer.  My digital themometer kept giving me a higher temp than my dial thermometer, and when you felt it you could tell it wasn't done yet.  I let it go as long as I could even though it was in tinfoil with all of the juices that were collected in the smoker at the end.  It wasn't horribly dry, but not as falling apart as I wanted.  I just checked on it too much - shit never gets done when you're constantly opening and closing the oven like an idiot.

I really wanted to make some really thin tempura onion with this for some texture, but just couldn't make myself do one more thing.

Creamed Spinach and smoked pepper Gratin

Positive - This continued the American steakhouse/BBQ meets Mexican theme.  I topped the gratin with some of the bacon and breadcrumbs; the bacon tasted good.  Overall this was okay, but should have been better.

Negative - I kept starting and stopping this because the short rib was taking too long; I just couldn't get the topping crisp.

Buttercup Squash and Poblano Salad

cotija, herbs and tomato salt

Positive -  Used the sousvide rig to cook the squash (with some thyme and dried chipotle).  The texture of the squash right out of the bag was really interesting, firm but cooked through.  The poblanos has a good smoked flavor.

Negative - I actually thought this was a little spicy, distractingly so.  I also don't think I needed a smoked component in every part of this dinner.

Timing was an issue here too - the squash was done and I put it back in the bag and vacuumed it - I think this made the texutre mushier than I wanted.

CSA

Colored Peppers

Plum Tomatoes

Red Tomatoes 

Leeks

Bok Choy
Spinach

Parsley
Sweet Dumpling Squash
Buttercup Squash

Apples

Pears