Dinner party

Last night we had a handful of people over for dinner (8 including myself) and the menu included:

• Sous vide filet with a blue cheese crumble
• Bacon wrapped asparagus
• Russet potatoes oven roasted in duck fat and thyme with thinly sliced shallot rings.

I'm really happy we didn't have any vegetarians over because I totally didn't realize that the meal was completely vegetarian unfriendly. Oops.

The filet was cooked at 131 for an 1.75 hours and seared with my blowtorch aka my attempt to make sous vide cooking manly.

The asparagus were wrapped in thinly sliced bacon and set in the oven for ... I seriously have no idea how long. Until they looked done? I'm really particular about my bacon and just watch it like a hawk until it's awesome. Because of the potatoes they were in the oven at 500 degrees for a time, then 400 degrees.

I pretty much had nothing to do with the potatoes other than finding the recipe and lending a small helping hand here and there because I had my friend Josh over to help (thanks Josh!). We followed serious eats recipe for ultra crispy potatoes. They were delicious but not as crispy as we hoped, I think that we left them in the boiling water too long.

Oh, and the wine didn't suck at all. 1998 Penfolds Bin 389 and a 2010 Colline Novaresi Barbera (which makes me realize how much more I need/want to learn about Italian wine).

Brown butter banana bread

I love browned butter; everything about it is amazing. I took my family's banana bread recipe (which yields the best banana bread I've ever had) and browned the butter. Side note - when you brown butter it becomes dehydrated... you can counteract this by adding an ice cube. Additionally the ice helps cool the butter to usable temperatures faster.

1 stick of butter - browned
1 1/4 c sugar
2 eggs
1/4 c sour croup
1 tsp vanilla
2-3 ripe bananas - mashed
1 1/2 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Cream the sugar and butter until smooth. Add eggs, vanilla, sour cream, and bananas one at a time, blending thoroughly after each addition.

In a separate container, mix together dry ingredients. Add in small batches to the batter, mixing well with each addition.

Pour into greased 9x5x3 loaf pan. Bake at 350 for 1 hour or until a toothpick is dry when inserted in and removed. I find that this happens at ~55 minutes.

MOAR COOKIES!

I've continued to hone my cookie recipe and have come to the last stage of development: chocolate. I'll be doing a 4 more batches:

• Trader Joe's chocolate chips
• Barry Callebaut chocolate chips
• Scharffen Berger chocolate chips
• El Ray Bucare chocolate block (hand chopped)

We'll see how they stack up, but for now here's where I've landed in my chocolate chip recipe (oh, and I'm also going to try heating the dough to 80 degrees before incorporating the chocolate, the little chocolate bits should melt into the dough which should look awesome... we'll see):

Ingredients:
7.6 oz semi-sweet chocolate
.6 oz dark chocolate, ground in food processor
2 sticks of butter
10 oz flour
5 oz granulated sugar
5 oz dark brown sugar
2 eggs
3/4 tsp baking soda
1.5 tbsp kosher salt
2 ice cubes
2 tsp vanilla extract
Sea salt for garnish

Steps:
Brown the butter. Once browned, transfer to a separate metal bowl and whisk in first ice cube until melted. Put in the fridge and allow to cool further

Mix together the flour, salt and baking soda. Don't over mix.

In a stand mixer with the whisk attached mix 1/2 the sugar, vanilla extract, and the two eggs until well beaten, 5 minutes on medium speed. Egg/sugar mixture should come off of the whisk in ribbons.

While that's happening grind the dark chocolate in the stand mixer. The visual effect of having chocolate flakes in the cookie is awesome.

Check in on the browned butter. Depending on how long you took to do the previous steps it could be anywhere from near solid to piping hot. If anything warmer than room temp + a few degrees whisk in the second ice cube until the butter is little warmer than room temp.

Switch the whisk attachment for the paddle and add in the rest of the granulated sugar, browned butter, brown sugar, and flour mixture. Mix until combined with some dry flour still visible, about 15 seconds on low speed. In my stand mixer the bottom tends to not mix as well so every 5 seconds I will stop the mixing and do one or two manual turns of the forming dough so that the stuff on the bottom comes to the top.

Add in the chocolate and mix on low speed for 15 seconds. Again, I will stop it every 5 seconds or so and manually turn the dough.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap, put it in an air tight container and let sit 1-2 days in the fridge. Aging the dough yields excellent results.