The Sect of Rama

Tonight a friend took me to Kaygetsu for their Kaiseki menu. For those who don't know the place, its only the 2nd restaurant in the bay area to get a Zagat score of 28 or higher for their food (the other being the French Laundry-- if you consider that the bay area.) It was delicious. Although the sushi was outstanding, my favorite dishes were the last two-- gohan mono (rice topped with snow crab and yuba thickened fish broth, and the house made desert. The desert was listed as "sesame square, thickened with kudzu gelatin servered with japanese molasses and figs". But I thought for sure the server called it tofu. I never had tofu that tasted this good, so when one of the staff came to see how we liked the meal, I recognized her as the owner from an SF Gate photo I saw earlier in the week, and was sure to inquire about it. At first, she was coy- saying it was a secret-- but eventually divulged it was really made with milk (probably heavy cream), and I'm guessing sesame oil and kudzu to thicken it. It sat in a thin caramel-ish sauce, and had some cut figs on the side. I'll definitely be trying to reproduce that dish...

For you sake geeks (ahem, Matthew)- you'd be pleased to hear I pitched in and got the sake tasting menu for us. I took a photo of the menu, along with the sake tasting menu. (those crazy chopsticks were a gift-- when I was prying the "tofu" recipe from the owner, she inquired if we were there for a special occasion, and we mentioned it was for my birthday. She then returned with the chopsticks! Very thoughtful.) Although Matthew turned me into a big Dewazakura fan, I think my favorite was the Ohyama Nama sake. I thought I'd have to make a trip to True Sake in the city to score some more, but it seems Beltramo's on the peninsula has it-- and its only $25. Score!

It was a spendy meal (mostly for my friend picking up the kaiseki side of the bill), but I thought it was worth it-- especially after some recent bad experiences at some supposedly nice places. Check it out, if you're feeling fancy.

This is the remainder of the 2007 tomato harvest. The collapsing trellis I mentioned earlier caused a large amount of fruit loss to bugs and rot, as they sat on the ground while ripening. Doh. Thats a simple tomato sauce simmering in the background- probably another 50 oz of tomatoes. And yes, I absolutely hate my stove top. A gas replacement is on the todo list.

It seems I've got a lot of lurking readers who were intrigued by my recent food related postings. As I've got time to kill while the iPod tediously resyncs several gigs of music, I thought I'd log today's gastronomic activity:

• Breakfast: Cappuccino made with whole milk and Sweet Maria's liquid amber espresso blend; parmigiano reggiano french toast.
  
• Lunch: halibut with a balsamic reduction. This made me remember how much I love balsamic vinegar, so dessert was strawberries with a small glass of balsamic on the side. (Mrs R was not so into this, so more for me!)
  
• Dinner: Grilled dark meat turkey burgers on sourdough and a homebrewed wheat beer.
  

On tomorrow's menu, we've got 2 Cornish game hens (I'm toying with the idea of fashioning some sort of powered rotisserie for the BBQ- but will probably get lazy and just bake them) and a 1/2 gallon of unpasteurized and unhomogenized (aka "raw") milk. Not really sure what I'll do with the later yet- and its only good for a few days- but I couldn't pass it up when I saw it. I didn't even realize it was legal to sell in the US.

Yesterday it was homemade mozzarella cheese (Horizon brand sells a *non* Ultra High Pasteurized milk that is key to forming a curd) for the homegrown tomatoes, and later for the grilled pizzas. Today, its an apple crisp in the oven and pulled pork in the backyard. The smells are enough to make your eyes roll back in your head!

I mentioned in passing to Jed and Igor yesterday that I unsuccessfully researched whether it was legal to raise chickens and/or have bee hives in my city. This morning, Igor shares this article: Man's new best friend lays eggs. Ha! I had no idea I was not alone in this thinking. Or that there were such funky chicken breeds out there, such as the Silkie Bantam.

Anyone raise chickens (or bees) within city limits? I'm talking small backyards, you guys in Colorado don't count. :) I'd prefer not to have a hideous coop, but my neighborhood (like the rest of the bay area) has raccoon problems.

I've been delinquent on providing an update on the tomato garden, so here it it at the end of July. I'm just starting to harvest some of the tomatoes. The bamboo teepee's I was so proud of have started to collapse under the weight- thats the last time I try that. Next year, I'll definitely clone Joe's tomato trellis design and stop fooling around.

My one token cabernet vine is undergoing veraison now also. If throwing then on cheese platters gets old, I'll try my hand at a pyment.

Ruhlman's blog entry was just one of a few on making butter I coincidently stumbled across all at the same time last week. It sounded tasty, but not worth the effort, until I saw this comment and link to proper instructions for homemade cultured butter. I was convinced it was worth a shot, if for nothing else but the real buttermilk byproduct I could use to make some tasty biscuits.

I started with a quart of heavy whipping cream and a half pint of buttermilk to act as the culture. Although Holly's instructions called for sanitizing all the instruments prior to inoculation, I skipped it even though I've got both iodophor and StarSan readily available from my beer and wine making (don't use bleach unless you really rinse it out well. On second thought, don't use it at all- it wouldn't take much to leave an off-flavor in your butter, and whatever wild bugs were able to digest milk would probably just add to the flavor :)) I just combined the cream and buttermilk in my stand mixer bowl and put it in a hot water bath to bring it to ~85F, covered, and came back 10 hours later, expecting to find something gelatinous, or at least more viscous- but it didn't appear to have changed at all. Maybe the cultured buttermilk is pasteurized after the culturing?

Considering its been sitting at fairly warm temperatures all day, I decided to churn it anyway, rather than waiting any longer and risk spoilage. Even with the stand mixer, it took a good 10 minutes at low speed- likely due to the lack of an established culture. For the first 9.5 minutes, it looked like it was just going to turn into whipped cream. But while I was out of the kitchen no longer than 90 seconds, it suddenly "broke" and turned into butter and buttermilk. W00t!

At this point you're almost done. First seperate the butter from the buttermilk, then rinse the butter with cold water until the water runs clear, add salt if you prefer, and remove any remaining water. I did this by using the whisk to cut the butter then draining any fluids, although next time I'll probably just make sure its good and cold and work it with my hands. Thats it- very simple stuff if you've got a stand or hand mixer.

How does it taste? Good! Very full buttery flavor, a bit sweet. I added salt to help preserve things, and because I mostly plan on just slathering it on bread. The salt definitely enhanced the flavor. What would I do differently? I've already ordered the creme fraiche and buttermilk cultures from cheesemaking.com for the next round. It would be great to find a local dairy farmer willing to sell cream by the gallon- anyone in the bay area with the moo juice hookup? Maybe I could mass produce it and take over the Rama butter market in the US.

Check out Harold McGee's recent write-up on why you shouldn't toss out the tomato goo: the average tomato contains 4 times more umami taste in the guts than the flesh. Liberally salting and draining the chopped whole tomatoes should help drain excess liquid, for salsas or the like, while preserving the tasty insides. Another tasty use for this byproduct could be turning it into "caviar" via molecular gastronomy!

I'm catching up on the MAKE blog entries from the previous week and saw this entry: Automatic temp controller data logger for a slow cooker, which links to an article by John Moyer dated May 2003. Really cool stuff, especially considering it predated my experience with the Stoker BBQ system by 3.5 years! I see the author went to Cal Berkeley, and Rock's BBQ is in Newark- could they be one and the same?

Via Tom, this video of the Asian carp invasion. Scary stuff, but I kept envisioning John Cleese on that boat in some sort of Monty Python skit.

Here's an update on how the tomato garden is progressing. The plant that was doing the best (3rd from the left) ended up stunted despite all efforts, so its being replaced with a plant that sprouted from the compost of last years tomato refuse. The squash plants in the foreground are all Halloween 2006 compost plants as well- I plan to harvest the first round of blossoms to fry, and let the 2nd round mature into this year's Halloween decorations.

I've made smoked babyback ribs several times in the past, but I've never been super happy with the results- they were either a bit too toothsome, or a bit overcooked. I mentioned this to Jed a while ago, he suggested spareribs (IIRC) for their higher fat content. So this past weekend, I picked up a couple of vacuum packed whole slabs at $2/lb to give it a shot.

The morning of preparation, I was looking forward to maxing out the capacity of my smoker with 3.11 and 3.53 lbs of ribs- but as I removed them from the packaging to apply the dry rub, I soon realized the packagers leave a ton of useless junk on the cut. As much as I hate waste, I just couldn't think of anything useful to do with the stuff (sausages maybe, but they'd have to be super tasty to justify the calories.) So after trimming down the excess fat and muscle, it went from 6.64 lbs total to about 4 lbs, or 66.6 ounces! Some sort of warning from the BBQ gods?

After 4 hours of smoking , I tucked in. They really were more tender. No more babybacks for me, the cheaper and tastier spareribs are the way to go for slow BBQ. Next time I think I'll ask the butcher to trim them first...

UPDATE: Jed has informed me that based on the trimming I did, I created St Louis style ribs.

We hosted the Easter brunch again this year, which meant picking up a Honeybaked ham. Tasty stuff, but if you're throwing it out after removing all the leftover bits suitable for sandwiches, you're tossing the best part. I finally got around to pulling from the freezer the leftover ham bone and making a split pea soup.

Very simple, but delicious. Simmer the bone for 2 hours in 3 quarts water, remove the ham and bone (pulling off the meat after it cools), tossing in 1# split peas and a bit of dried thyme. Meanwhile bring about 1# of mirepoix to a golden brown and dump it, the ham, and about 4 diced small potatoes back in to the stock. Simmer until the potatoes are tender and the peas have thickened the soup. Serve.

While doing a bit of research on what temperature collagen converts to gelatin (the key to tasty low-and-slow cooking), I found this in my well-worn copy of On Food and Cooking (page 111 in my copyright 1984):

... the collagen in connective tissue requires more extensive cooking in order to be converted into soft gelatin. This process is in some ways the reverse of protein coagulation in the muscle fibers: tightly wound fibers of pure collagen come apart into more vulnerable single molecules as they heat up. The "shrink temperature," the temperature at which the ordered structure of this protein collapses, is about 140F (60C) in meat (a mere 105F (41C) in fish), and it is only at temperatures higher than this that the individual molecules separate from one another into the loose association we call gelatin.

I'll admit it, I've got alpha cook syndrome. How did we address it? Each meal has a designated chef: you're either Alpha or not for that round. Sure, its a stop-gap, but its worked so far...