Replication

Replication is a common thing that happens in IT. Always copying data from one place to another. Fortunately in cooking, missing data doesn't always mean failure, as a matter of fact, extra ingredients may even enhance a dish!

I had a dish during an outing with my team and it was really simple yet tasted great. It was just minced meat in a thick sauce laid over some noodles and covered in chives. I thought I'd give it a try.

I'm very lazy when it comes to prepping, I figured I can chop things up pretty fast so sometimes I do it while things are cooking. I decided I wanted a bit more color than just brown and green so I added some sweet yellow peppers into my variation. Prep work for this dish is easy; chop up some chives and yellow peppers. Make about a cup of slurry consisting of some soy sauce, water, salt, sesame oil, osyter sauce, diced garlic, honey, and about a teaspoon of cornstarch.

Then heat up two frying pans. One frying pan I use is stick and the other non-stick. I like using a stick pan for browning of meats and for sauté. In the stick pan, I sear and brown the minced pork to develop the flavor. Meanwhile in the non-stick pan I pour some oil and fry the Yakisoba noodles. When the meat is ready, I pour the slurry right over the meat in the same pan and turn off the heat. My pan instantly releases the meat that had stuck on when the slurry is poured in (Calphalon Infused, thank-you!) Then I let it reduce and sit for a little while. Noodles should be ready at this point, I then put them on a plate. I transfer the meat to non-stick pan so I can use the stick-pan for sauté. I quickly clean the stick pan and then I put a little bit of oil into the stand sauté the vegetables. Finally I pour meat over the noodles and the sautéed vegetables on top.

Takes about 10-12 minutes of prep+cooking time. Tastes yummy.

Chicken Tikka Masala

My favorite Indian dish is Chicken Tikka Masala. From my research, I understand that it's also Britain's favorite curry dish, so much so that the British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has hailed chicken tikka masala "Britain's true national dish".

There's no "official" recipe for this dish, there's so much variation that the name of this dish has become a kind of "catch-all" for any curry that merely contains chicken. Some characteristics I found common are:

• the dish contains chicken, usually dark meat marinade
  
• the chicken is served with some a reddish/orange colored curry
• curry is usually somewhat sweet
  

Typically I found that chicken tikka masala works best if the curry is made up of some combination of the following ingredients:

• yogurt/creme/milk
• tomatoes
• brown sugar
• thickening agent
• lemon juice
• random curry mix that contains some tumeric (most do)
  

I usually eat my curry with rice. Basmanti rice is wonderful if you can get it, I don't always have some around. Thai Jasmine rice works well too. I aim for rice that separates instead of holds all together (I feel that a lot of people over hydrate their rice). I aim for a 1-1 ratio of rice-to-water, with maybe just an extra dash of water. Use a rice cooker or cook it over the stovetop at low-low heat (2 at most otherwise it will stick). I do this first since rice is the long pull in terms of cooking time, but once you start it you can forget about it until the end.

Next, I take a leg and thigh of a chicken, take a de-boning knife with a pinch grip and remove the skin, de-bone it, and cut off all the fat. I also score the chicken lightly so that the marinade will have an easier time penetrating the meat. Then I wash the chicken under the sink under lukewarm water for about 10-15 seconds to take the chill off the chicken, removing any non-fragrant smells, and to make the chicken a little more willing to absorb spices and the marinade. I drain the chicken of any excess water, then place it in a bowl. I pour about one tablespoon of lemon juice, followed by some curry powder, add some diced garlic and mix it around. I also find if you have some yogurt it doesn't hurt to throw a spoonful of it in as well. Let this sit on the counter while you do the other stuff.

Now do some prep work, this usually consist of chopping up some garlic, blending up some tomatoes to make a marinara (you can also use tomato paste or canned sauce for the less DIY folks), and dicing some carrots and green onion for garnishing later on.

In a small sauce pan 2-3 quart size, take a whallop (about 2 tablespoons) of some refrigerated white sauce (I always keep some of this around, it's a great thickening agent for sauces). I wait for it to heat up (heat at medium 3-4) and add some milk or coconut milk. Coconut milk will turn the sauce from average to godly. If you have any yogurt, a spoonful now doesn't hurt either. Then I add in the tomato marinara, you should have made about a cup of it. The color should of the sauce should turn lightly pink/reddish at this point. Work on the texture adding milk or water to thin it if necessary. If the sauce is too thin, don't worry, while on the stove it will reduce.

Next add the spices and garlic and stir. The color should be a light orange. The tumeric is yellow and will make the pink/reddish sauce turn orange. Darken the sauce by throwing in a tablespoon of brown sugar, followed by a bit of balsamic vinegar. That will make the sauce a dark rich orange color. I usually then add some butter or sesame oil for flavoring and use salt to adjust the seasoning. If your sauce is too watery, leave the heat on to reduce its volume, otherwise turn off the heat.

Now its time for the chicken. Drain out any water/lemon juice from the chicken. While making the sauce it's probably a good idea to preheat your frying pan to save on time. At this point, put some butter or oil into the skillet. If using butter, it should bubble and start to brown. Take the piece of chicken and lay it on the skillet. Wait for about 4 minutes before flipping it over. I don't use non-stick cookwear but it doesn't stick if you wait and the chicken will brown beautifully. I usually judge the readiness of the chicken by nudging it on the sides, but don't even bother doing this before 3 minutes, it isn't ready yet and any premature nudging leads to food stuck on pans or a bad browning of the meat. If you're cooking it for more than 5 minutes on the first side, you're also probably doing something wrong either didn't drain out any excess liquid or didn't preheat the skillet like I advised.

After the chicken is cooked, you may cut it into strips (sometimes I do this before throwing the chicken in the skillet). Put the chicken into a small dish and pour the curry over it. I usually strain the curry through a mash to remove the garlic. Then I add chopped parsley, carrots, and/or green onions for garnish.

I usually then mix the rice with some carrots and green onions and serve :) Yummy!

Oatmeal

I was never huge on breakfast. I know its the "most important meal of the day" but I wasn't crazy about it. Then I started eating Oatmeal.

As I got older I liked veggies and fiber more and more. One problem though is that being single, I have a hard time eating all the veggies before they go bad. In my attempt to figure out how to improve my bowel movement I started eating a lot of lettuce. Usually I binge on it, for a week or two I barely had any lettuce, and then for a week or two I would have half a head of lettuce for each meal. I like romaine lettuce. But I found that after a week or two, I wasn't getting that feeling of ease on the ceramic seat as I was when I started loading up on the lettuce. And the flatulence from all the ranch salad dressing wasn't very aromatic.

Then I did some research on wikipedia concerning dietary fiber. Turns out there's 1.6g of dietary fiber per 100g of celery. Romaine Lettuce only has 2.1g of dietary fiber per 100g. But the champ turns out to be Oats! 100g of Oats has 11g of dietary fiber! That was my problem, vegetables don't have enough dietary fiber. So that's when I turned to Oatmeal.

I started eating Oatmeal for breakfast. Oatmeal is great, it lowers cholesterol and it results in simply awesome bowel movement. Unfortunately, it tastes god awful without some type of additive. I've tried using a dallop of butter (but that doesn't sound too healthy), soy sauce (its a bad idea), chili powder (too hot for breakfast), and I also tried salt, but I was worried that would raise my blood pressure (counteracting any benefit of lowered cholesterol). I even tried going gourmet, I would make Oatmeal with leeks, chives, oninons, etc. But the preparation time was too much. Tasted great, but was too much work for breakfast. I even tried poaching an egg in my Oatmeal, too messy.

Now I figured out the best additive... it's strawberry jam! And I figured out the best way to make oatmeal so that it's non-intrusive and consumes as little time as possible. The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is I boil some water. Then I throw three handfuls of oatmeal into a bowl and pour the boiling water over the oatmeal. After one or two meals, you don't even need to measure the water anymore, you can pretty much eyeball it. Then I jump into the shower, sing a song, dry up, and get dressed. By that time, the oatmeal is perfect. As Goldilocks would say, "not too hot, not too cold, but juuuuust right!". Then I add some strawberry jam. About one tablespoon, stir it around in the oatmeal and eat away while I read the news.

The White Sauce

I'll never forget this one time I went to Il Terrazzo Carmine, an Italian restaurant, in Seattle with Pierre and Stephane. This waiter came to our table, spewed off some of the specials for the evening in what sounded like English. We turned to each other and all admitted, we had no idea what he said to us, and we doubted whether even he knew what he just said to us.

I was determined to figure out what all those crazy terms meant. That was when I started to study cuisine, not just Italian or French but all cuisine. Let me just say its taking a long time.

I realized that food isn't just about recipes. Food is about history and culture. Once I began to understand how some of this stuff came about and how one thing is a building block for another, things started to make a lot more sense (very engineering like, I'm often surprise there isn't a profession called Culinary Engineer). The first thing I've discovered is the importance of The White Sauce.

Of course there is a story here too. I was craving for some New England Clam Chowder one day, being from the East coast of North American and all... I had some clams and some milk so I thought sure why not give it a try? So I boiled up some milk, poured in the clams, and then I realized it was way too watery, so I thickened it by creating this slurry of cornstarch and water. Let's just say, this didn't turn out very good. After being forced to pour this down the drain, I decided I should probably do some research for next time.

Turns out New England Clam Chower is usually made from a roux. A what? Roux, it's French, and it is pronounced like "ru" in English. Roux is actually ridiculously easy to make. The ingredients for a roux is just fat + flour. People typically use butter as the fat. Oils are also fats. You can use unbleached or bleached flour. I usually use equal portions of butter to flour.
The fat acts as a way to enrich the flour, holding it together so that it can cook, and adding flavor to it.

In a small 5-8-inch sauce pot, melt the butter on low heat (about a 2 setting). Take the sauce pot off the burner then mix the flour in. Stir with a spoon. After about a minute or two you'll get a playdough like texture. Put it back on the heat, you want to cook this for a few minutes, keep stirring, but don't overcook it. Probably only for 2-3 minutes is usually sufficient. The goal here is to just make sure that the roux doesn't taste like raw flour. Boil up some milk. And slowly pour the milk in, using a whisk at the same time. Add milk depending on how thick you want the sauce.

After you're done, you now have a Béchamel sauce, it is one of the Mother sauces of French cuisine. A Mother sauce is the basis for hundreds of other sauces. If you add some parmesan cheese you have Mornay sauce (which can also be used on popular American dish Fettucine Alfredo). Those cream sauces aren't made with pounds and pounds of cream, although they feel like it in your mouth. The flour acts as a thickening agent and as it warms up it blends with the milk. It is important to use warm milk otherwise the heat difference will cause the flour to not merge with the milk as a result of the temperature change.

Storing the White Sauce is easy. I don't make it with too much milk, and usually I end up with just enough to fill one mason jar. I put this into the fridge. Then when I need the White Sauce to make another type of sauce, I take a spoon full of it, warm it up in a sauce pot and add more milk and whatever other ingredients are needed to make this new sauce. I find that I can keep the sauce in the fridge for up to two weeks and it makes about 5-7 meals worth of sauces.

This is an important sauce, from this sauce you can even make curries! yummy curry...

Cookware

I use cookware of varying types. I generally stick to two brands, Revere for stainless steel + copper base. And everything else I use Calphalon. The cost of an average frying pan is about the same as a good 16 oz steak. The cost of a top-of-the-line frying pan like the Calphalon One Infused Anodized 11-Inch Chef's Skillet can run about $200 (which I think is pretty expensive), I got mine for $75, so I don't feel too bad.

I like Revere because this stuff is amazing. I can use steal utensils and clean up is pretty easy, usually an overnight soak will take care of it and if it doesn't, I just leave it on a stove on high heat for 10 minutes and everything that didn't come off before burns off and turns to ashes. The own down side is that food adheres to too easily which makes it not ideal for skillet or sautéing.

For stir-frying I use a Simply Calphalon Hard-Anodized Nonstick 9-1/2-Inch Stir-Fry Pan. It's good for one person and has great non-stick. I'm Chinese and it allows good tossing which is important for a good fried rice. I'll write a blog on tossing in the future. The only downside is, you can't use this frying pan on high heat (I ruined one already by doing just that too many times), and you can't stick it in the dishwasher. Actually none of this Calphalon stuff that I own can go in the dishwasher which means I have to be diligent about cleaning up afterwards. When on the stove, keep it at 6-7 and no-higher, unless you want to ruin it.

For browning meats and sautéing I use the Calphalon One Infused Anodized 11-Inch Chef's Skillet. I honestly believe its the best piece of equipment out there. I'm sure I'll write about this Skillet a lot in the future, I've had such great results.

As for eggs, use a non-stick frying pan. Despite what Calphalon says, the Calphalon One Infused series just doesn't handle eggs well. Maybe the Calphalon One Infused Non-stick does it better but I love it when stuff does stick to that frying pan.

More about this stuff as time goes on.

Mad Knife Skills

Learning how to use a knife is as important in cooking as learning how to type is for a software engineer. In rare cases it is possible to excel without this basic skill, but it will make life far more difficult.

I found that learning to use a knife takes about 2 weeks. I had to unlearn some bad habits that took about 3 days. I found the fastest way to learn is to take everything that is in your fridge and cut it up. Eat all of it. And repeat. In general cutting is pretty straightforward, I use only about 4 different knives: 9 inch chef's knife, clever, small utility knife, and a bread knife. That's it. Once in a while I may use a de-boning knife but that's rare since most of the meat I buy nowadays is boneless.

Using a knife is something that they don't teach on learn on FoodTV. They assume everyone knows how to use a knife. But some of those chefs should really learn how to use a knife. Last I remember Nigella Lawson and Rachel Ray don't really know how to use knives (I don't watch TV anymore so I don't know where their skills are nowadays). Of course Martin Yan is a knife god, somehow he can do everything with a clever even if its the most inappropriate tool for the task.

I'm not going to teach how to hold a knife here, it's too complicated. Maybe someday I'll post a video or something (but that means I would need to get a webcam). I found the Knife Skills Illustrated: A User's Manual extremely helpful. I'm left-handed and its nice that the book includes both right and left handed versions. The only criticism I have for the book is that it's very repetitive. Seriously after you learn how to julienne (cut into strips) or dice the first circular object they're pretty much all the same. The knife skills from one fruit/vegetable are very transferable to another.

So why do I use a cleaver? To be honest, I could probably do everything with just a chef's knife and utility knife. Cleavers are good at flattening garlic. And because they are heavy, they good at cutting things fast. Take for example cutting a carrot into rounds. With a chef's knife, the idea would be to rock the knife while progressing across the carrot. I find it not bad in terms of efficiency but I can do this even faster with a clever, instead of the rocking motion I now use a chopping + feeding motion. I feed the carrot through to the knife and at it nears the end, I stop feeding and move with the knife.

On another note, get a good set of knives. I own this set of Henckels Professional "S" knives which I really love and would recommend. But seriously, you only really need the steel, chef's knife, and utility knife. I use the bread knife because I also bake frequently, most of the other knives see very little use.

The Cooking Engineer

I'm a software engineer. The vast majority of engineers (regardless of engineering discipline) cannot cook. They are not unwilling, they simple are terrible home chefs. Microwaving food is not cooking. Throwing everything in the fridge that is about to go bad into a frying pan and dousing it with soy sauce is also not cooking (its also disgusting).

I think the reason engineers don't know how to cook is the result of time constraints, I know when I was studying, I was so busy that I saw food as just a means of telling my body to stop making noises. I remember eating pizza everyday of the week for 3 weeks. The guys at the pizza place knew what kind of pizza I was going to order and started making it when they saw me walking down the street.

Another reason I think engineers don't know how to cook is because they are generally affluent, and eat out. But they don't eat out all the time, so you have to wonder what in the world are they feeding themselves when they're not eating a $40 meal?

I think engineers by nature are people who like to figure things out. Whether its by trial and error or by "best practices". I find it funny why is it that Engineers aren't also great home chefs. I have a hard time with cook books. They're generally very bad at explaining why they do the things they do. Its a shock that anyone knows how to prepare a decent meal. Sometimes when I read cookbooks they sound like a witch creating a magic potion: "a dash of this, a tail of that, stir thrice and it should turn green!", good riddance. There must be some secret these pros know that I don't, or maybe they don't know, but I want to know.

I didn't always know how to cook. I used to think I did. Even my house mates thought I knew how to cook when I was in college. I was a one trick wonder, I could make fry rice.

To be honest, I was an inconsistent cook. Once in a while something worked out but I couldn't reproduce it if my life depended on it. Which as an engineer is a very worrisome thing, reproducibility is very important to me. Trial and error is also important, but its important because that's when I figure out what works and what doesn't, its important to remember so that the same mistakes won't be repeated.

Alas, this blog. After eight months of cooking and baking I feel I am finally ready to start writing about my trials and tribulations so that others can learn how to cook not merely cooking food.