cooking

Gravlax

Back in Christmas time, I went to visit my Godparents and had dinner at their house. My Godmother had made some Gravlax which was amazing, and after talking with her a while, it seemed easy enough to make. A few weeks ago, I searched out a few recipes online and settled on a fairly simple one that called for Kosher salt, vanilla sugar, cracked peppercorns and some dill. I added chives and basil and then followed the rest of the recipe and it turned out fairly decent. So much so that when I gave about half of what I made to my parents, they finished it within a few days and asked me to make more. So here we are, a slight modification on the original recipe.

  • 2 cups of Kosher salt
  • 1/2 cup of vanilla sugar
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons Cracked peppercorns
  • 2 boxes of fresh baby dill
  • 1 box of fresh chives
  • 1 box of fresh basil
  • 1 lemon
  • 1 whole salmon

So here is another session of cooking with Clem.

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Weekend of Food and Pumpkin Carving

This past weekend was spent on nothing but eating and carving pumpkins. I’m gonna need the week to recover from all the food consumed while the carved pumpkins sitting in my living room slowly deteriorate. Friday night was originally planned for a simple gathering of friends to carve some pumpkins. Originally I figured we’d order pizza and do something simple. Unfortunately, as the week progress, those plans changed for the more elaborate. Food was consumed and pumpkins were carved. One of the guys made a Zaku pumpkin, so even tho there’s no models involved, Gundam is still a part of our everyday lives…

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Dry aging steaks at home

A little over a week ago, while in bed watching late night tv, I stumbled upon a good eats episode that focused on aging steaks at home using a porterhouse steak. I trust Alton Brown, and from his shows, I have yet to be pointed in the wrong direction, so I kept the idea in the back of my mind. Then, an opportunity presented itself, and off to the experimentation we go. So here we are with another installment of cooking with Clem. Below, I will explain how the steak in the pictures went from bright red to a very dark red in a span of about 9 days by dry aging the steak.

Coincidentally enough, a week prior to seeing the Good Eats episode, one of my friends had asked if it was possible to dry age steaks at home, and if I knew the process if one existed. I told him that I didn’t know, and that it would probably be difficult. Well, a few short weeks later, my opinions about the difficulty is completely changed, and now I know how to dry age my own steaks at home.

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Lasagna Part One: The Ragu & gtetra’s Gaplant

The previous day while at the supermarket, I decided to try my hand at making lasagna. Having just had a wonderful lasagna from Angelini Osteria, a quick search pulled up a “recipe”. It is as good a starting point as any, but I’m making my own little modifications to the basic recipe as I go along. Hsiang-Wei(gtetra) came over to work on his Gaplant for which he pretty much finished painting and only requires the clear coats and decals to finish up the sucker.

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