Food Lab: Throwback

Or, as Mad Kitchen Scientist termed it: Food Lab - Squashgiving! 

"Why 'throwback'?" you might ask. 

"Wasn't your very first lab about eggs?" 

(yes) 

"What does that have to do with squash?"

Not a damn thing. 

BUT! 

The *idea* for Food Lab came to Chef Spouse while he was working on cream of tomato soup.

Inspired by the season, we decided to take on winter squash soup, in part because all of us have found ourselves defaulting to curry spicing, which, while delicious, is also limited.

So Chef Spouse cleaned our favorite purveyor at the farmers' market out of butternut (most flesh bang for your squash buck) and we were off! 

We started with the same base for all:

Mirepoix (2 parts onion, 1 part celery, 1 part carrots, garlic)

2 parts Chef Spouse's homemade chicken stock

1 part peeled, cubed, and roasted butternut squash 

Salt & pepper 

Once done simmering, all were pressed through a chinois before moving to the all-important seasoning step, giving us four soup bases of just over one quart each.

Option 1: Spicy

2 Tbsp arborio rice
1 tsp harissa (plus more to garnish for those who wish)

Option 2: US Southwest 

Poblano (roasted) 4-5 little ones
1/2 tsp chipotle powder
1 tsp cumin
Sour cream & pepitas to garnish

Option 3: East Asian

1/2 c coconut milk
Ginger coins
4 kaffir lime leaves
1/2 tsp coriander
1 Tbsp red miso

Option 4: Pumpkin spice

1/2 c heavy cream
1 clove
1 star anise
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
Juice of 1 orange
Diced apple to garnish

They came out thusly

clockwise from top

East Asian - Spicy - US SW - Pumpkin spice

Now, I have never been a fan of sweet takes on squash soup, nor am I a PSL fan, so I was shocked to discover that my favorite take on the soups was in fact pumpkin (really, baking) spice, particularly with the addition of the crisp diced apple. It was delicious.

The US Southwest was my second favorite, and the thing that most surprised us all there was that the roasted poblanos REALLY thickened it up - you may not be able to tell from the photos, but it was the thickest soup, even without any type of cream added. 

The East Asian was lovely, but needed more umami and/or acid. I still have my leftover portion, and I plan to add fish sauce when I reheat it for lunch this weekend.

The spicy harrisa was a bit of a fail. We had the idea of adding the rice for body, but the problem was we didn't pre-cook it in any way, leaving the grains a little too al dente. In retrospect, we should've toasted then ground the rice, then added it to the soup base. 

For dessert? The Executive Committee had recently picked up New Native American Cuisine: Five-Star Recipes From The Chefs Of Arizona's Kai Restaurant, which included a recipe for butternut squash creme brûlée, which seemed like the obvious choice.

Mad Kitchen Scientist decided to guild the lily, 

so to speak, 

by torching some maple sugar on top

Now, we are talking an "n" of 1 here, but this is not a cookbook for inexperienced cooks, as the recipe instructions were lacking. In short, if you don't already know the technique to make creme brûlée, you will not be able to figure it out from these instructions. The flavors were excellent, but the squash base probably would've benefitting from being passed through a chinois or tamis - it was a little grainy. 

Chef Spouse also proposed trying techniques to roast winter squash to the point of crispness rather than softness. We all thought that would be a fail, seeing as squash contains so much water, and we were right (honestly not sure what he was thinking there). And we experimented with trying to make spaghetti squash palatable, and, sadly, confirming all my previous experience with spaghetti squash, that was also a fail. It's just so freakin' bland. Spaghetti squash? Just say "nah," no matter how much pesto and parm you have on hand.

Food Lab: Velouté

We're back!

Your intrepid Food Labbers have still been cooking, of course, both together and individually - gotta eat! - we just haven't been doing much labbing lately.

We have, however, been planning our three-years-delayed (Thanks a lot, coronavirus!) Ten (now 13) Years of Food Lab trip to....France! No, we're not there yet, but we're headed there this fall. It will be a third return for Chef Spouse and me, but Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee have never been, so we're looking forward to sharing some of our favorite sights in Paris with them and then heading to a lovely villa in Provence for a week of farmers markets, bakeries, vineyards, cooking, eating, and drinking together with some additional friends. 

Our pending trip to France and Chef Spouse's shiny new account with ProFish (acquired in support of the Summer of Poke, which is a story for another time) did inspire our most recent Lab though: velouté.

Velouté, for those who don't know, is one of Escoffier's "mother" sauces and is a simple combination of a blond roux and a light stock, generally chicken or fish, that is then served over poached chicken or fish (or as a base for a sauce for veg or pasta).

The ratio we were using was 1 Tbsp each flour and butter to 1 cup of stock, finish with salt and WHITE pepper to taste (no black pepper spots in your pristine velouté, s'il vous plaît!)

We set our plan over oysters and bubbly: 

Test one would be: Should you start with fish stock or with water, wine and aromatics?

Test two would be: If you wish to enhance your velouté, should you use cream or an egg yolk?

Chef Spouse had procured snapper for the poaching that would give us the stock in the first place and branzino filets for the actual poached fish over which to serve the finished sauce. We also had some adorable little cabbages from our CSA that we poached and then seared on the Green Egg (which was at the ready because Mad Kitchen Scientist was also smoking some salmon, aka "Bacon of the Sea") because we figured, correctly, that we were going to have more velouté as a result of our tests than needed to sauce branzino filets for four. (That Bacon of the Sea got turned into snackies for hungry cooks spread on individual endive leaves with cream cheese enhanced with The Executive Committee's fresh-snipped chives.)

That is some good-looking fish.

Seriously, that is some GOOD-LOOKING fish.

Fortunately, Mad Kitchen Scientist had fish stock already waiting, so we pulled together a pot with water, white wine, fennel, carrot, celery, green onion, and thyme, cut the snapper in two, and poached.

The water/wine/aromatics combo was the CLEAR winner, both as a base for the sauce and as a cooking liquid for the snapper. Starting with a fish stock and then adding MORE fish, even as mild a fish as snapper, was...too fishy. (Although we did eat ALL the snapper regardless.) 

So that was easy, and we had our sauce for our poached branzino at the ready.

But what about an enhancement? To cut to the chase: Save the cream for something else, use an egg yolk, and, per Food Lab tradition, make cocktails (or something else) with the white. Even after reducing the sauce, the cream still left it thin and didn't add much by way of richness or mouthfeel. The egg yolk, on the other hand, turned what is a mildly flavored sauce into something with the richness to stand up to our wee cabbages. 

Did you notice I said "cocktails or something else" with the egg white? Turns out, The Executive Committee had gotten a soufflé mould for her birthday that had, as yet, not been christened. She decided she would very much like a late birthday / early July 4th soufflé for dessert, so while the boys were playing with the fish, I followed Julia's recipe for orange soufflé from Mastering. 

A few notes:

• Definitely bother with the "rub two sugar cubes over the surface of the orange before zesting" thing - it sounds silly, but it adds depth.
• If you don't have Grand Marnier handy, Cointreau makes a perfectly acceptable substitute (I wouldn't do a regular triple sec though - I suspect the sugar content is too low).
• You can prep the entire thing up to the point of whipping the egg whites and incorporating them! This is clearly how restaurants manage soufflé for service with only a LITTLE extra time required to prepare it, rather than diners having to sit there for an extra hour to wait for their dessert.
• It's better to slightly *under* do the folding in of the whipped whites than to overdo.

How did it turn out?

Also, the kitchen smelled DIVINE, and I can report that there was not a CRUMB left over.

Yes, I *will* be making more of these when we're in France this fall. Although since we'll be eight, I will probably need to make TWO at a time. 

Food Lab: Under Pressure

In at least one way, Chef Spouse and I have had an unusual pandemic experience: We haven't bought much stuff for the house. We already both worked from home full time prior to the pandemic, so we didn't need any office set up items, and we had the athleisure wardrobe thing covered. We redid our yard a few years ago - new porch, new patio, nice yard furniture, landscaping - and it's too small to ensure six foot spacing between groups, so we weren't part of the run on outdoor heaters and electric lap blankets in the fall.

We've been doing our damndest to keep a few small vineyards we love in business, buying every time an allocation is released (SO MANY BOXES OF WINE IN THE BASEMENT right now), but other than that, there just really wasn't anything much we needed to comfortably hibernate. 

Well, almost. 

One of our ongoing Food Lab jokes is "no uni-taskers!" (with much love to Alton Brown)

We have exceptions, of course, and we give each other unending shit about them (Mad Kitchen Scientist's rice cooker, Chef Spouse's asparagus pot, etc.). 

It's all part of the fun, along with jokes about ramekins, exploding shrubs, flying chocolate, cleaning lobster off the ceiling, Mad Kitchen Scientist and me not being allowed to shop unsupervised, and me laying on the floor with Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee's dog after our second Food Lab moaning: "ATE. TOO. MUCH. STEAK."

At Christmas 2018, Mad Kitchen Scientist turned in his rice cooker in favor of an Instant Pot. Out: one uni-tasker. In: one Instant Pot convert.

Chef Spouse, who never met a decision he couldn't research to the nth degree, has been pondering getting one ever since. Yes, that means he's spent more than two years dithering over a device that costs about $75. 

So we finally decided to test it out.

There are many potential uses of an Instant Pot, but it's really best suited to pressure cooker or steamer type applications. Mad Kitchen Scientist has mostly used it for beans and grains (rice, oatmeal), and making homemade yogurt.

We decided to test it with beans, kidney beans to be precise.

One batch, we prepared the traditional way: Soak overnight, stovetop cook.

The other batch went into the Instant Pot, no prior prep required.

One of the advantages touted for the Instant Pot is that it's faster. In this case, it wasn't - the stovetop beans were ready first. Then again, we had done a FULL 12 hour soak, and stovetop didn't beat the Pot by much.

But the real question is: Which were better?

There, it was the Pot, by a nose. Slightly creamier, and definitely much more consistent texture. Which you can see in the photo below - the stovetop beans are on the right, the Pot beans are on the left.

The other thing, of course, is that we ALL do the thing of planning to have a bean dish for dinner, forgetting to start soaking the beans the night before, and then either bagging it in favor of carry out or eating at 10 pm because it took that long for the beans to soften in whatever the planned dish was. In that, the Instant Pot is the CLEAR winner.

Now that we had all these beans, what were we going to do with them? Red beans & rice of course! 

We cooked the rice in the Instant Pot, with no stovetop comparison.

Per Mad Kitchen Scientist, the big rice cookery advantage of the Pot is seen in brown rice that takes half a lifetime on the stovetop and about 30 minutes in the Pot (including time to come up to and off pressure). The other big advantage is that, like a rice cooker, it can hold cooked rice at temperature without getting gluey for an extended period of time. 

We also made some mango sticky rice for dessert.

That is traditional sweet rice - the reason it's light brown is that we cooked it in coconut milk with a little palm sugar (rather than white sugar).

We had talked about Labbing stock making, stovetop versus traditional pressure cooker versus Instant Pot, but we quickly realized that was pointless: Why would one ever make only 3-4 quarts of stock? That's just silly.

Verdict? Pretty sure Chef Spouse is going to be getting an Instant Pot, as soon as he decides whether he's OK with a "regular" Instant Pot or if he wants to pay extra for this bad boy:

What about drinks? I had ordered something special for Chef Spouse a while ago that took some time to come in, but arrived just prior to our Lab and inspired our libations.

Let me preface this by saying there are a few kitchen tools I've been leery of getting. A mandoline and a kitchen torch top the list. Chef Spouse has had a mandoline for some time, and had cut himself, badly, on it. Never using it - always setting it up or cleaning it. Still, my caution was justified, and I'd sworn he was not getting a kitchen torch because I was afraid he'd burn the house down.

Call it pandemic insanity, but I broke my rule to buy him a drink smoker that was recommended by a friend of mine who's a licensed bartender and swears by this particular brand.  

I gotta say: a smoked whiskey drink is truly special - and delicious - and, as of yet, Chef Spouse has NOT burned down the house. Fingers crossed. 

Food Lab 47: Indian Breads

Your Food Labbers enjoyed a fantastic first pod/bubble meal together on Thanksgiving (cream of chestnut soup, Brussels sprouts salad with warm bacon hazelnut dressing, turkey with wild rice stuffing and gravy, Chef Spouse's decadent mashed potatoes, cranberry chutney, steamed green beans, sour cream dinner rolls, FOUR kinds of pie), and then gathered this past weekend for OUR FIRST FOOD LAB SINCE 2019.

Chef Spouse and I have been enjoying a fair amount of Indian cuisine during the pandemic, both due to cooking our way through the several Madhur Jaffrey cookbooks we have and due to the many excellent Indian carry out places walking distance from our house (one of which makes vindaloo so I hot I can't eat it all in one go - and that's saying something - and the other offering so many delicious vegetarian options, ordering without ordering WAY TOO MUCH is nearly impossible). And when we get take away, we always get bread - naan, roti, stuffed paratha - but when we cook at home? Not so much.

Well, that just cannot stand any longer.

We decided to tackle the three classics: roti, paratha, and naan. 

Roti and paratha are both unleavened breads that start with the same base - flour, water, a little salt (very similar to tortillas). The difference comes from the cooking method.

Naan is a leavened bread that generally also includes some animal fat/protein.

Seeing as the naan was going to have to rise, we started there. I had found various recipes that included egg, milk, or yogurt. However, Madhur Jaffrey's naan recipe included ALL THREE. Winner. 

Kneading the naan

The first challenge I ran into is that the dough was pretty dry. Jaffrey says to knead for ~10 minutes until smooth & satiny. I added about 1/4 c. additional milk as I went, but my dough never got "smooth & satiny" and by ten minutes in, it was developing a pretty firm gluten structure, so I figured I better stop and set it to rise and see what happened.

In the meantime, I moved onto mixing up my roti/paratha dough. Couldn't be more simple: two parts flour to one part water. Jaffrey did NOT have you include any salt, which we all felt might be a mistake (we were correct). 

Ah, but WHAT KIND of flour? 

Traditionally, folks use atta flour. We did not have atta flour, but the thing that makes it unique is that it has a high gluten content. King Arthur to the rescue! We decided to lab regular King Arthur whole wheat against King Arthur whole wheat pastry flour. Pasty flour, of course, is *pastry* flour because it has less gluten, so it stays soft and flaky rather than forming a firm structure. Yes, that's sort of counter to what you're ostensibly looking for in trying to make an unleavened bread, but we figured it would be an interesting test.

Anyway, you mix it up, knead it a bit, and then then it sit, covered with a damp towel, for ~30 minutes.

Roti/paratha dough in process

While that was resting, it was time to get ready to cook the naan. It's cooked a lot like pizza - set your rack about 6 inches from your broiler, pop your stones onto it, and then heat them as hot as your oven will go for a good 45+ minutes before baking.

Meanwhile, even though it never got smooth & satiny, the naan had doubled in size, so it was time to portion it, roll it out, and bake it. Three minutes on your HOT-HOT-HOT stones in your HOT-HOT-HOT oven so it puffs up, then turn on the broiler for ~30 seconds to brown it on top.

Patting out the naan dough

Portioning the naan dough

Rolling out the naan dough

Into the oven

Out of the oven

Easy-peasy, and it was DELICIOUS. It also held up the best the next day.

So why didn't the dough ever get "smooth & satiny"? I have a theory: Jaffrey calls for yogurt. I used the yogurt I normally have around - plain, whole milk Greek yogurt. Did you spot the problem? Greek yogurt is just regular yogurt....that's been strained again TO REMOVE EXTRA LIQUID. That straining that makes it so delightfully thick and creamy? Yeah, I think I maybe needed some of that to give the dough the right consistency. Next time, I'll start with more like 1 c. of milk to compensate, because once I was at the kneading stage, I was anxious about trying to add too much milk because I was afraid it wouldn't incorporate properly.

Onto roti and paratha! 

As I mentioned, the base is the same - the difference comes from how you cook it. 

Roti is just portioned out, rolled out, cooked on a hot comal or cast iron skillet, and then finished directly on the flame (gas stove or grill) to make it puff up. 

Roti puff from the whole wheat pastry flour

Roti puff from the plain whole wheat flour - now THAT's a puff!

Everyone else preferred the flavor of the pastry flour, but I like the regular whole wheat best - it was deliciously nutty, and you can't argue with that puff. Sadly, neither really held up the next day - the leftovers got fairly tough. Then again, it mixes up so fast and you can store the mixed up dough in the fridge (no worries about it over-rising because no leavening), so just cook what you're planning to eat right then. 

Paratha, on the other hand, is laminated first. Yes, like croissants. Only for paratha, you use ghee rather than cold (or even frozen) sheets of butter.

We found two methods of laminating. Jaffrey's was quite simple - roll out a disk, laminate with ghee, fold in half, laminate again, fold in half again (to give you a quarter), roll *lightly* one final time.

First lamination

Folding the dough

Second lamination

Folding the dough again and dusting with flour to roll out

Rolling out the dough 

Jaffrey's paratha then gets cooked immediately, in a cast iron skillet that's been brushed with ghee.

Cooking the paratha

Of course, while you're doing all that laminating is when you can slip in herbs or spices - the Indian carry out near us with all the amazing veg options does a masala spice paratha that is to die. We didn't mess around with flavors, but I plan to this coming weekend, when Chef Spouse and I will be making paratha again.

Serious Eats offered a more complex laminating method. You start with a much larger disk (basically two portions of your dough rather than just the one), roll it out thin again and laminate, but then roll it up like a carpet, stretch it, and roll the ends in like a palmier cookie. 

Rolling the laminated paratha up, carpet-style

Stretching the paratha

Aw - isn't that cute?

Then you rest ~45 minutes, roll out again, and cook, first dry frying on your comal and then finishing with a quick fry in ghee in your cast iron. 

Now remember, we had TWO versions of the dough: one with regular whole wheat flour and one with pastry flour.

I suspected we might be in trouble with the pastry flour when I couldn't stretch it and had to do a single coil as a result, and I was right. Pastry flour lacks the gluten structure to be able to sit at room temperature all buttered up and still be able to work.

The rolled out regular flour paratha cooking 

(and yes, it's OK to giggle - it 100% looks like a butt)

Pastry flour = Food Lab FAIL 

YAY!

Once we had all that bread, we needed something to eat it with, so Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee whipped up some butter tofu and palak paneer for us, while Chef Spouse kept us occupied throughout the afternoon with various tamarind-based cocktails: a tequila version, a rum version, and a tiki-style drink that used the extra coconut milk from the butter tofu. No coconut milk left behind! 

They were all quite tasty, although Mad Kitchen Scientist observed, accurately, that they would be better served in opaque glasses, since the color was a little...odd. So we went with G&Ts for the meal. 

Your Food Labbers enjoying a yummy Indian feast

In conclusion, there is no reason not to make your own bread when you're making your own paneer or pindi or makhani. Naan requires a little thinking ahead - that rise takes about 60-90 minutes, so the whole thing start to finish is about 2-2.5 hours - but with roti or paratha, you could start the dough when you start work on the rest of the meal and have hot bread ready to go just as your main dish is finishing up. Chef Spouse and I will, in fact, be testing that theory this weekend.

Or, even shorter, homemade Indian meals will, henceforth, feature delicious Indian bread, too.

Food Lab 46: Onions (plus a guest star)

In spring, a young man's fancy may turn to thoughts of love, but your Food Labbers got thinking about onions. 

Alliums, and onions in particular, are one of the most common ingredients in savory foods of all kinds. Both Mad Kitchen Scientist and Chef Spouse have cutting boards dedicated just to alliums (because the last thing you want to do is cut up strawberries on a board that retains essence of garlic no matter how many times you wash it). Even if you're not sure what you're making for dinner, starting by mincing some garlic, dicing a shallot, or chopping up an onion is rarely going to be a waste of your time.

The thing is, we rarely pay much attention to our alliums. And there are so many varieties! Chives, garlic, scallions, spring onions, shallots, leeks, pearl onions, cipollini onions, white/yellow/red onions, sweet onions, Spanish onions, Vidalia onions, and of course, that elusive, delicious signifier of the season (and our special guest on Sunday) - ramps. 

Check out the tissues - we came prepared.

Sure, there are some rough associations: scallions as a finishing element, raw - shallots for French techniques and pan sauces - garlic that features prominently in Italian and Chinese cookery. But most of us just grab a string bag of onions and a bulb of garlic in our weekly run to the grocery store and figure we're good to go for another week's worth of dinners.

So we started with testing taste: Do they taste different? Yes, that meant tasting them all raw.

That's a LOT of raw onions, son. 

Short answer: they definitely all taste different, and the Food Lab crew highly recommends you do your own taste-off, preferably with a group that's also tasting with you, so you're not the only one with dragon breath at the end.

A few tasting notes:

Ramp tops are amazing - mildly peppery like really young arugula, but more more tender, and with a freshness that screams "SPRING!" If you get your hands on ramps in the spring, the temptation is to toss them with good olive oil, salt, and pepper and lightly grill them, and I won't judge you if you do. But you might want to consider - just consider - chopping the tops into a salad and then pickling the bulbs. 

Scallions really should never be cooked.

Cipollini onions are supposed to be sweeter than regular onions. That's a lie - at least with the ones we had. The zing on the palate was wasabi-level WHOA. I believe The Executive Committee may actually have been crying for a moment. 

If you're going for raw applications, you REALLY want to look for Vidalia or sweet onions. If you can't find them, red onions will work, but the Vidalia and sweet were definitely more mild and sweet, delightfully crunchy, and almost a bit creamy.

There wasn't as much difference in taste between pearl white, yellow, and red and regular sized white, yellow, and red as I would've imagined.

We then caramelized all the main varieties separately to see if they maintained their taste differences. 

Caramelization is about slowly cooking off all the water in the onions until they're a sweet and savory brown mass of umami goodness while also avoiding generating a Maillard Reaction. So low and slow, use cast iron, and salt early (remember, you're trying to cook all the water off). Also, set aside 45 minutes - one hour. No rushing! 

You cannot IMAGINE how good the kitchen smelled

One of the surprising differences was how much water the varieties contained. We started with precisely 565 g of each type, cooked in 2 TBSP butter, and identical amounts of salt. Most varieties, when the water was cooked off, ended up around 150 g. Not the Vidalia and the red onions though - they both ended up more like 250 g. Less water in the onion --> higher yield after caramelization. 

The sweet and Vidalia onions retained their distinctive creaminess and were more mild and subtle in flavor overall after caramelization. The rest of the varieties tasted pretty similar, other than the red onions, which were both strong and sweet and retained a little more structural integrity than the other varieties - see above, RE: less water. 

So once we had an absurdity of caramelized onions, then what? 

Caramelized onions freeze really well, in your handy-dandy ice cube trays, and we did plenty of that, for later use in any and all egg applications and grilled cheese and pan sauces and finishing soups. But we needed to make something we could eat - Food Labbers cannot live by raw onions alone (for which everyone else who knows or encounters us is deeply grateful).

We opted for galettes, which are basically pizzas that you make on pastry dough, or very rustic tarts. One variety was caramelized onions, Gruyere, green garlic and ramp leaves. The other was fig spread, caramelized onions, leeks, and blue cheese.

Of course, we grilled some ramps, and The Executive Committee made a lovely spring salad of radishes, snow peas, ramp tops, and ricotta salata (she is, after all, the one who makes sure we eat our veggies).

All this is pretty standard order. You know Mad Kitchen Scientist and I couldn't leave it at that. 

What's missing? 

Dessert. 

Oh yes we did make caramelized onion ice cream - vanilla custard base, the Vidalias, and toasted pecans. It was un-fucking-believable. So very, very good. This should definitely become a food trend, and if it does, make sure you point out that we discovered it first. 

Onion ice cream. It's a thing (or should be).

What did we drink? Gin, of course, first blind-tasting Bombay Sapphire, Hendricks, The Botanist, and the FEW barrel aged gins against each other in gibsons with home-pickled pearl onions (my favorite, and still the reigning champ, is Hendricks), then Chef Spouse used some saffron gin he'd picked up for me on a whim that has turned out to be VERY difficult to mix in a light cocktail featuring Cointreau, blanco vermouth, and orange bitters.

Our gin game is strong.

We did one other test, caramelizing onions in the Dutch oven on the Green Egg. As of 8 pm, when Chef Spouse and I had to get home to feed all our beasties, they were nowhere near done. I assume they finished in time for Mad Kitchen Scientist to go to work Monday, but I haven't confirmed yet. For all I know, he's still sitting there by the Green Egg watching the onions cook down and contemplating the universe. At least the weather's been delightful the past three days. 

Food Lab 41: Dim Sum

As you might have guessed from my previous Lab post, the Chinese Banquet lab was a bit of a blur. The Pathological Entertainer had the full picture of where we were, where we were going, and how we were going to get there in her head, but the rest of us were merely the sous, following her instructions as we moved from task to task. And we brought it off - 8 courses totaling 15 different dishes, all prepared in about 6 hours, and none of us too exhausted to enjoy eating the meal.

We figured we better hit some of these again pretty soon to solidify our techniques. And it turned out to be a good thing we did, because we still need some work on a few.

Our Dim Sum menu consisted of:

• Red stewed eggs
• Roast pork loin (which Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee prepared in advance)
• Sichuan eggplant
• Momofuku-style pork buns (with two different pork belly preparations to fill them)
• Salt and pepper squid (that ended up being salt and pepper octopus, because I bought the wrong cephalopods at the fish market)
• Potstickers (shrimp, veg, and pork)
• Shao mai (shrimp, veg, and pork)
• Rambutan for dessert 

I think the rambutan look kind of like sea urchins.

Following The Pathological Entertainer's lead, we did this in three major courses: eggs, pork loin, and eggplant; buns and octopus; dumplings.

As I mentioned, the pork loin arrived ready to eat, so our first course prep was fairly simple: red stewed eggs and the eggplant (provided by a volunteer plant in The Executive Committee's garden).

Red stewing is a simple technique. For eggs, you hard boil them, peel them, and them simmer them in enough liquid to cover in roughly the following proportions

1/3 c. soy sauce
1 1/2 c. water
1 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp. dry sherry (or, in our case, shaoxing wine)
Seasonings (in our case, a little sugar, star anise, pink and white pepper corns, quite a bit of sliced ginger)

How long? A while. Once the eggs color up, take one out to taste. If you like it, you're done. If not, let them simmer a while longer. (Oh - and save the liquid when you take the eggs out, because you can use it again.)

Red stewed eggs, stewing

For the Sichuan eggplant, Mad Kitchen Scientist sauted the chopped eggplant with appropriate seasonings (garlic, ginger, jalapeños), then sauted ground pork, them combined them with a "combo of Chinese flavors" sauce (I know soy and vinegar went into it, but I'm not sure what else he grabbed - hot bean paste is traditional, sherry or shaoxing wine can go in, chili sauce works, too, as does sesame oil - it's up to you how you like it flavored and how spicy you want it), then cooked it down and topped it with a blizzard of chopped scallions before serving.

Then it was on to the buns. Momofuku-style pork buns are like little steamed bun tacos, rather than being a solid bun with the pork completely encased inside, so the buns and the pork are cooked separately and then combined before eating.

The buns are a yeast dough that has multiple types of leavening (yeast, baking soda, and baking powder), and quite a bit of fat (milk powder or, as we did it, milk and rendered bacon fat), so it's lovely to work with.

We pretty much followed the bun recipe as written, other than when it came time to roll the buns out, rather than painting the middle with plain vegetable oil, I used sesame oil for more flavor. Warning: it makes A LOT. We had 50 total before one of our cats got bored waiting for her dinner and swatted a few off the tray where they were rising to play with/attract our attention (she is DEFINITELY the cat who is willing to be naughty to get attention).

Rising

Into the steamer

Out of the steamer

For the pork belly, we tried two options: the simpler Food 52 preparation and the more complex Woks of Life preparation. Chef Spouse was not fully pleased with either one. The Food 52 texture was better, although we quickly discovered that starting it at 450 degrees was much too hot. The Woks of Life flavor was better (not surprising, considering it calls for adding more flavors to the meat). But neither developed nice cracklings. On both, the skin ended up so hard as to be totally inedible and mostly even uncuttable. So that was disappointing, because pork cracklings are DELICIOUS.

Woks of Life pork belly (sorry about the steamy-ness)

Food 52 pork belly (as I said, starting it at 450 was too hot)

We then stuffed the buns and added hoisin sauce and homemade pickles. The buns were tasty, no doubt, but I think we could up our pork belly game with a little more experimentation.

Salt and pepper squid is a favorite dim sum dish of mine. Actually, I pretty much love anything with tentacles. Unfortunately, at the fish market, I wasn't paying close enough attention, and got small octopus rather than squid. They tasted just fine, and we were able to use the same prep method, but they were a little less tender than the squid would have been.

It's a pretty simple technique: rinse, drain, chop, and marinate your tentacles (we used a combo of sesame oil and more shaoxing wine). Dredge in a combo of regular wheat flour, semolina flour, corn meal, salt, and white pepper. Deep fry. Drain. Sprinkle while hot with more salt and pepper. Stir fry with garlic, ginger, and jalapeños. YUM.

TENTACLES!

Then it was on to the dumplings. We'd prepared three fillings: shrimp, ground pork, and veg (well, really mushroom) to use with two techniques (shao mai and potsticker). The fillings were pretty simple: the main ingredient chopped fine, plus ginger, garlic, napa cabbage, green onion and some soy and sesame oil.

For potstickers, you fill your wrappers (not too full), seal them, sear them in as little oil as possible, then finish them with a short steam. In the first round - the shrimp - we added a little too much water to pan for the final steam, and they sort of fell apart on us. The pork and mushroom were more successful. But we did notice that the wrappers we had purchased seemed to be on the thin side.

Shrimp - see how the ones at the bottom are kind of falling apart?

Mushroom - more successful

Pork - also more successful

Yeah, that thing with the thin wrappers totally bit us in the ass for the shao mai. For shao mai, you fill your wrappers more full and gather up the sides into a little bag, leaving the top open, pack them into a single layer, and steam.

Looks good, but don't be deceived

Simple, right? Looks pretty, right?

Yeah, those thin wrappers completely stuck to each other. We ended up with a solid mass shao mai cake. A shao make, if you will.

Oops. 

Clearly, dumplings are going to require further investigation. And probably using a different brand of won ton wrappers.

To drink, Chef Spouse made us Mai Tais with his latest bar ingredient addition: velvet falernum. We also made a round of ponzu-based drinks: gimlets and last words, where we replaced half the fresh lime juice with ponzu. The last words were good, but the gimlets were outstanding. I think the green chartreuse kind of muted the ponzu, where it really shone in the simpler drink.

As Mad Kitchen Scientist pointed out, this is the second time we've been defeated by Asian cuisine (remember our disastrous attempt to make our own rice paper?), which clearly means another lab is in order.