Dateline: January 9, 2021 PICANHA!

Servet came over and I cooked the picanha via sous vide, then torched the outside fat side to perfection with my NEW toy, S.A.F.E flamethrower.  I have been trolling Kickstarter, and have found many interesting projects to invest in, the ROTOQ, this torch, etc.  The torch acronym stands for Sears All Foods Equally.  It is a beauty, and does a much better job than the other torch I have been using.

Perfectly rare

Beautifully torched exterior

We rounded out the meal with grilled asparagus, baked potatoes, and this lovely layer cake that I made.

I bought this little layer pan kit from Michael's and decided I had to try it out last night.  I am not an accomplished baker, so every time I make something, I learn where I made my mistakes!  I have always thought that bakers were too fussy, trimming edges, brushing crumbs, evening layers, etc.....well, I learned the hard way that these "idiosyncrasies" a valuable tools of the trade.  The layers I baked had domed a bit, so with a serrated knife, I trimmed the tops down, but did not trim the edges.  One choice for the filling between the layers was a poor one.  I had 2 jars of toppings, one salted caramel, the other a chocolate salted caramel.  The plain salted caramel was a poor choice.  It tended to spill over the edge, and threatened to allow the layers to slide.  The other sauce, was like concrete, it held the layers together like glue.  The next learning bit was in icing the cake.  Because I did not trim enough of the dome off, there were large gaps between layer edges which had to be filled with frosting, chocolate buttercream from Nigella Lawson.  Here is where the second issue with the salted caramel came into play, because it was running down the side of the cake, the frosting was not adhering to it.  So I had to constantly back fill the holes and hope that I had enough frosting to cover the top and sides!  Live and learn!  The cake was a little 6 inches in diameter and 5 layers tall.  A cute cake, and I hope I can master it going forward.

Dateline: December 31, 2020 Let's Kick 2020 to the Curb. HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYBODY

Since we are not able to party with friends, I wanted to cook something fun and special.  So we are having picanha steak.  This is a South American cut of steak, the sirloin cap, with fat cap.  

If you have been to a Brazilian steak house, you have seen the skewers of beef that is put on the skewer in the shape of the letter C.  That is picanha.  It has a generous fat cap and well marbled beef.  I bought mine from Grand Western Steak in Florida.  I found this outfit through my favorite sous vide YouTube channel, Sous Vide Everything.  This hosts are 2 South American men and a Cuban.  They are absolutely hilarious and have great tips and directions for learning how to sous vide food and how to finish it.

Back to dinner plans.  I ordered some lumpfish caviar and shrimp for a bit of caviar on idli (instead of blinis), shrimp cocktail, then steak and veggies.  

The sous vide of the steaks will take about an hour +, idli will be done shortly before that and the shrimp cocktail will be ready by then as well.  Maybe bubbly, but not sure yet.  Bill is not a fan, and I must say, I prefer cava.

I made the idli, which are steamed rice cakes.  I really love them, they are Indian breakfast food eaten with soup and curries.  I made a pretty platter and put the jar of caviar in the center.  Another two dishes  had chopped scallions and some sour cream.

This is the batter.  I used a packaged dry mix and added water and sour cream.  I read the instructions and they said to add sour curd.  I know in most Indian recipes when they write curd, they mean yogurt, so I assumed sour curd was not yogurt but sour cream.  

Found out this morning that sour curd is still yogurt!

 

Here we have the steaming little rice cakes.  They are steamed in these special idli trays that you can make out the little black plastic knob which unscrews and the trays separate from each other.  I also decided to add a little bit of scallion to some of the rice cakes.  

 

The steamed rice cakes are resting on some paper toweling to remove any moisture.  You can see the little bubbles on the edges of the cakes.  They are sooooooo tasty.  Light and fluffy little delivery bases for anything you can think of.

TADAH!

Now on to the shrimp cocktail.  I did buy a ring of shrimp from Fresh Direct that came frozen.  I defrosted it and then after tasting the cocktail sauce that came with it.  Decided I could do a lot better in that department.  I had some cocktail sauce in fridge, along with horseradish, ketchup, and lemons.  After tasting and adding, I finished up with a pretty good version.

I re-plated the shrimp, and this was the second course!

 

We washed down everything with this delightful Cremant from Alsace, Ginglinger.  It was really tasty!

We were so full that we never ate the picanha steaks!  Don't they look lovely all crisped up and glistening!  We did finish the salad, though!