Onsen egg sous vide

I wish I had a picture that could capture the flavor. A perfect custardy egg in a dashi-mirin-soy sauce. Made at home, consistently. What else can one desire?

A sous vide circulator is in my opinion a perfect device for two things. One is slow cooking meat at low temperature for a long time. Short ribs, pork belly, shanks, any meat cut where gelatine comes in play. A pressure cooker does an amazing job in a fraction of time, but if one has the time and can plan ahead, nothing beats sous vide. The second amazing application is cooking eggs as described in the amazing record of an egg-cooking experiment done by the one and only J. Kenji López-Alt. I shamelessly use that article as my definite reference when it comes to eggs and sous-vide, and overall, his sous-vide explorations are a source of inspiration. If you have an Instant Pot with a sous vide setting, you can have onsen eggs for breakfast - set it up in the evening, on a timer, and enjoy in the morning. 

Ingredients:

• Eggs
• For kaeshi sauce:
• 4 parts of Soy sauce
• 1 part Mirin
• 1 part Sugar
• Dashi - remember a simple way to make dashi in a fridge
• Use between 10 to 3 parts of dashi per 1 part of kaeshi

Method:

• Cook eggs in a 145F degree water bath for 1.5 hours.
• Note: Use a mesh basket or a bowl to hold eggs in place. They may crack if they are pushed around by the flow of water. You can put eggs in the water immediately as you fill the pot, no need to wait for the water to come to temperature. You can also cook them for longer than 1.5h, I've definitely gone beyond 2h and it was OK.
• In a pot, mix mirin and soy sauce at the ratio of 4 parts of soy sauce to 1 part of mirin. Set aside one part of sugar.
• Note: Find a good soy sauce. It makes a big difference.
• Also measure dashi, you will need 10 parts of dashi to 1 part of soy-mirin mixture.
• Note, you can vary greatly how much dashi to use. It really depends on your mood an preferences. Serving eggs cold calls for a saltier mixture, I have heard of even 3:1 ration of dashi to kaeshi sauce, but that is too salty for me.
• Bring soy-mirin mixture to a boil to let alcohol evaporate.
• Dissolve sugar into soy-mirin mixture. You just made kaeshi sauce.
• Add dashi and warm up.
• One can debate whether you should boil the mixture. I sense no major difference in taste if I do, but purists or people with more sensitive palate may disagree.
• Crack an egg into a small helper bowl.
• Gently remove the egg with a spoon, leaving the non-solidified whites behind.
• Put the egg into a serving bowl, and carefully pour some sauce around the egg.
• Serve, eat, and be amazed.

These eggs are very versatile and don't have to be just served in dashi-soy sauce. One can use them in place of poached eggs, or for example in a shakshuka to avoid overcooking that can happen so easily.

Shakshuka with leafy greens, somewhat deconstructed

Shakshuka is an amazingly easy, tasty, and typically a healthy dish. It really is eggs poached in tomato sauce, spiced up with paprika, cumin, and chili peppers. 

When we started to make shakshuka, I found a recipe that included spinach, and we quickly expanded that to kale and later to beet greens, which is at the moment our favorite. We realized that it could be somewhat challenging to control cooking of the eggs as we often overcooked them. We still loved the sauce, so now we usually cook an egg separately - hence a somewhat deconstructed version of the dish. It remains one of our favorite breakfasts.

One can, of course cook eggs in the tomato sauce, which is the traditional approach. About 3 minutes tends to do the trick.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 onion, diced
• 1 TBS ground cumin
• 1 TBS smoked paprika
• 1 bunch leafy greens, washed and chopped: kale,  collard greens. chard, beet greens, spinach all work well
• 1/2 cup broth or water if using kale, collards, or beet greens
• 1 cup top quality tomato sauce
• 1/2-1 TBS harissa
• 1/2 TBS miso, optionally
• eggs - we find one per person suffices

Procedure:

• In a pan, saute onions until they are soft and translucent. Use a scant pinch of salt to speed up the process
• Add cumin and paprika, and fry them for up to a minute on medium heat. Add a bit of oil if necessary.
• Add leafy greens.
• If cooking spinach, sautee until the spinach wilts
• If cooking tougher greens, add 1/2 cup broth or water, cover the pan and cook for a couple of minutes so that the vegetables soften
• Add tomato sauce, harissa, and optionally miso. Mix well and bring to boil.
• Adjust usage of salt if using miso as it is quite salty on its own.
• Cover the pan, set heat to medium-low, and cook for up to 5 minutes.
• If you want to cook eggs in the sauce, then crack each egg separately in a small bowl, make an indentation in the sauce to hold the egg, put each egg in its own indentation, and optionally, add a touch of salt to the egg.
• While the sauce is cooking, add more liquid if the sauce feels dry. The sauce should not be watery either.
• If you did not cook eggs in the shakshuka, then fry or poach them separately.

Serve with savory grain porridge - quinoa, teff, oat, millet, etc., or brown rice, and an egg.

Variation

One can steer this recipe in various directions - I don't think the result would be still called shakshuka, but that question is not something I'd prefer to spend my time on. A simple variation that we almost always do is to add some beans - we usually add cooked beans to the plate and cover them with piping hot shakshuka. One can, of course add cooked beans to the pan with shakshuka and meld the flavors some more. Red lentils are another option - add them and enough water to the onion and spices mixture and cook the lentils with the spices and tomatoes or tomato sauce.

A more radical variation involves meat. One can add ground beef (or pork or lamb or a combination) to the onions and spices, brown the beef and then continue with the recipe - one can add some more salt and spices to season the beef properly. The result becomes surprisingly similar to chili - especially if one also adds some beans and skips the green vegetables. But I do prefer the vegetables, this dish is my go-to approach to use tougher greens such as beet greens. Of course, one can always replace beef with tofu...

Instant pot cooking times

These are my notes - the pressure cooker, especially for beans, grains, and vegetables, has been changing how we cook at eat. All the times are for high pressure unless noted otherwise.

We make grains with bowl-in-pot method, where one adds liquid and grains to a bowl, and that bowl goes on a trivet or in a steaming insert in the pressure cooker. One cup water still goes into the pressure-cooker pot. The water in the big pot  creates the steam that heats up the water and grain in the inner bowl, and provides moisture that limits evaporation of the liquid from the inner bowl. 

Cleanup is much easier with the bowl-in-pot method. The food is already in a serving bowl, and is also already in a container that can go in the fridge. We mostly use glass food-storage bowls, and occasionally we use a stainless steel-bowl. This way one can also cook a small amount of food - there is no need for a full cup of liquid in the inner bowl as the water in the pressure cooker pot is used to generate steam., An added benefit is that the food never burns, and that the keep-hot functionality does not dry the food out. Bowl-in-pot cooking time is about 2 minutes more than when one cooks food directly in the pressure-cooker pot.

Buckwheat steamed with bowl-in-pot method

Vegetables - steam

• Beets: 12 minutes, quick release, chunk them up into 1-inch-sized pieces
  
• Broccoli: 0-1 mins on low pressure, quick release
• Large floretes: 1 min on low pressure, quick release
• Butternut squash small cubes: 3 min, quick release
• Butternut squash large pieces: 8 min, quick release
• Delicata squash halves: 8 min, quick release
• Cauliflower: 1 min, low pressure, quick release
• Celeriac cubes: 3-4 min, quick release
• Savoy cabbage: add a pinch of salt, 1-2 mins, quick release
• Corn on the cob: 4 mins, quick release
• Brussels sprouts: 3-4 mins, quick release
• Cabbage, sliced: 2 mins, quick release (add to sauteed onion, garlic, and chili flakes)
• Green beans: 3 minutes, quick release
• Fresh green peas, 1 minute, low pressure, quick release

Starch - steam

• Potatoes: 2cm - 3/4 inch pieces, peeled, slightly salted: 4 mins, quick release
• Whole mid-sized russet potatoes: 10 mins, natural erlease.
• Sweet potato, whole: poke holes, steam small potatoes for 10 minutes, large for 18 mins, release steam after about 10 minutes

Pasta

• Use 1 cup water for 4 oz pasta. You can double the amount of water if you like your pasta very cooked - some would say overcooked.
• Cooking time is (time on the packet) divided by 2. If you like more al-dente pasta, subtract additional 2 minutes.
• Important: Let the pressure fall naturally for 5 minutes and then release the steam manually. If you let the pasta sit in the liquid for longer, it will be overcooked - which some people like.
• Cook pasta in plain water and salt or miso, or cook it in tomato sauce, or any other sauce that contains enough water. If using sauce, use a little more sauce than just plain water to offset the dry ingredients in the sauce. 

Beans, soaked for 24-48 hours 

We get beans at Rancho Gordo. We always soak the beans in the fridge for at least 24h, some benefit from even longer soaking. We like our beans well cooked, creamy, and find published cooking times by Rancho Gordo too short.

Most thin-skinned well-soaked beans cook nicely in 11-12 minutes under high pressure with natural release. We experimented with low pressure as well, and we like the results better - the gentler cooking leaves the beans shape more intact and it results in a creamier texture. Surprisingly, 35 minutes of cooking time seems to work great for any soaked bean, the results have been consistently great. This is our default approach now. 

If you did not cook the beans for long enough there is no worry.  Make sure there is enough liquid in the pot, seal it back, and cook for another few minutes under pressure, until the beans are cooked to your taste.

• Alubia Blanca: 9 mins, natural release
• Ayocote negro: 23 mins, natural release, or 35 minutes, low pressure, natural release
• Black eye pea: 11 mins, natural release
• Borlotto di Veneto: 11 mins, natural release 
• Cranberry: 8 minutes, natural release
• Christmas lima: 16 mins, natural release
• Domingo Rojo: 22 minutes, natural release
• Frijol Negro Santanero from Oaxaca, 36 mins, natural release (after soaking!)
• Garbanzo: 8 mins, natural release
• Marcella: 11 minutes, natural release
• Mayocoba: 11 minutes, natural release
• Midnight black: 23 mins, natural release, or 35 mins, low pressure, natural release
• Moro: 15 minutes, natural release
• Pinto: 10 mins, natural release
• Royal corona: soak for 2 days, 25 mins, natural release, or 35 mins at low pressure, natural release
• San Franciscano: 13 minutes, natural release
• Santa Maria Pinquito: 22 minutes, natural release
• Scarlet Runner: 22 minutes, natural release
• Vaquero: 11 minutes, natural release
• Yellow eye: 10 minutes, natural release
• Yellow Indian Woman: 12 mins, natural release

Lentils

We mostly get lentils from Rancho Gordo, along with the beans. Just like the Rancho Gordo beans are consistently of a superior quality, we find the same for their lentils. 

The general pattern for cooking lentils is 1 part lentil to 1 3/4 parts of liquid, cooked for 6-12 minutes with natural release, with the exception of red lentils that can take as little as 3 minutes to cook. Seasoning just with salt is enough, adding some fried onions and garlic, and other spices adds to the flavor. I prefer to fry the onions on the stove and then transfer them to Instant Pot. While this defeats the purpose of a universal cooking apparatus, I feel I have a better temperature control when saute-ing on a stove, so I don't mind cleaning an extra pan for superior results.

• Beluga lentils: 1 cup lentils + 1 3/4 cup water + spices, 10 minutes (6-12), natural release
• Green lentils: 1 cup lentils + 1 3/4 cup water + spices, 8 minutes (6-10), natural release
• French green lentils: 1 cup lentils + 1 3/4 cup water + spices, 10 minutes (6-12), natural release
• Red lentils: 1 cup lentils + 1 3/4 cup water + spices, 3-10 minutes, natural release (10 mins for complete mush, which is what one sometimes wants with red lentils)
• Split pea soup: use at least 4:1 water to lentils. 10 mins after sautéing vegetables. Natural release.

Grains - bowl-in-pot

• Amarath: 2-2.5X liquid, 6-8 mins + natural release
• Buckwheat: 2X liquid, 3 mins + natural release
• In a bowl on a trivet, 2 parts liquid to 1 part buckwheat, 4 to 5 mins + natural release
• Millet: 2.5X liquid, 9 mins + natural release
• 2X liquid if you like millet a bit more dry
• Miso and coconut oil add amazing flavor
• Quinoa: rice program, 2X liquid, or 1 min + natural release
• In a bowl on a trivet: 2X liquid, 4-6 mins + natural release.
• Teff: Rice program, 3.5-4X liquid, or 1 min + natural release
• Wild rice: 2.5X liquid, 35 mins + natural release
• White sticky / glutinous rice: In a bowl on a trivet, 1 cup rice + 3/4 cups liquid, 10 mins + natural release
• Brown sticky / glutinous rice: In a bowl on a trivet, 1 cup rice + 3/4 cups liquid, 20 mins + natural release
• Black rice: In a bowl on a trivet, 1 cup rice + 1 cups liquid, 20 mins + natural release
• Oats, rolled: 3 parts of liquid to 1-2 parts of oats, 3-4 mins + natural release
• Steel cut oats, regular: In a bowl on a trivet, 3 parts liquid to 1 part oats, 18 mins + natural release
• Sorghum: In a bowl on a trivet, 2 parts liquid to 1 part sorghum, 25 mins + natural release

Tofu and meat:

• Tofu sticks: season slightly, steam for 5 mins, quick release
• Chicken: 25 mins, natural release
• Lamb shanks: 35 mins, natural release
• Short ribs: 48 mins, natural release
• Pork belly: 45 mins, natural release
• Stewing beef: 25 mins, natural release

Beef broth:

• 3 hours: water + soup bones + salt
• remove soup bones
• 45 mins: bone broth, beef shank, carrot, onion, celery, shiitake stems
• Cool over night in a fridge, remove the hardened fat before consuming or freezing

Mushroom broth:

• 2 hours at high pressure: water or vegetarian dashi, and a few handfuls of dry mushrooms
• salt to taste

References:

• Rancho Gordo table with cooking times for Instant Pot- we typically find those to be too short.
• Cooking vegetables in Instant Pot.
• Cooking grains in Instant Pot
• Cooking rice in Instant Pot.
• Cooking lentils in Instant Pot.

Coconut turmeric milk

This is a soothing evening beverage that seems to improve sleep, and also helps with inflammation. Most of all, it is super tasty! We started making it on doctor's suggestion, and we liked it so much that we continue making it. Recording it here so that we don't forget!

Ingredients for 2 cups:

• 1 cup low-fat coconut milk
• 1 cup water
• 1 inch ginger root, slicet thinly
• 1-2 sticks cinnamon
• 1 star anise
• 5 cloves
• 1 TBS turmeric
• a good grinding of black pepper - boosts for turmeric absorbtion
• 2 TBS honey

Preparation:

• Bring all ingredients to boil
• Simmer for 8 minutes
• Strain, cool
• Add some more pepper if needed
• Drink while it is still hot

Millet porridge with peaches

Few things beat a good porridge. Oats are, of course, the default in the West, and rice porridge rules in the East. The chicken rice porridge I had on Singapore Airlines of all places opened a whole new perspective for me. I am yet to recreate that goodness.

Millet porridge, however, is quite common in Slovenia. In the US, we have no cooked it so much because it cooks forever in comparison to millet in Slovenia. We mill it quite a bit for baking, for example for super tasty gluten-free muffins, or for adding amazing texture to clafoutis. Porridge, however, has remained under utilized.

No more. The change came from a simple test when we soaked millet in water for a day or two before cooking, and it was suddenly done in no time. The next breakthrough was when Jasna found a recipe where they suggested cooking sliced peaches with the millet - it adds flavor, and no sugar is needed. Finally, I found a suggestion to use some coconut milk, and Jasna asked me to add some cardamom. The result was a porridge worthy of any table.

Ingredients for 4 people:

• 3/4 cup millet, soaked for 24h or more
• 1/2 cup coconut milk
• 1 cup water
• Alternatively: 1.5 cups water and 1TBS coconut oil
• 1-2 peaches, cut into 3/4 inch chunks, approximately
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• seeds from 2 cardamom pods, ground with mortar and pestle
• pinch of salt

Procedure:

• Soak millet in water in the fridge for at least a day, two days works even better.
• Add all the ingredients to a pot, bring to boil and simmer until millet is cooked. It will take approximately 10 minutes. Add more water and cook some more if millet is too crunchy for your taste.
• Top with almond butter and shredded coconut, or with whatever tickles your imagination.

Master recipe for gluten-free muffins: millet, buckwheat, quinoa, sorghum, amarath

Our friend Rok offered a solution when we were looking for gluten-free bread-like recipes. It was his mom's buckwheat muffins. We tried them, and they were delicious!

Of course, I immediately glanced at our grain mill and flashed a big smile. It was game time!What variations of the recipe can one produce? It turned out that many variations worked well. This is intended to be a master recipe that one can use to exercise their own imagination.

We love the concept of savory bread-like muffins. We freeze them in muffin cups, and we defrost them one at a time: 44 seconds on high in our microwave seems to be a perfect time to get a hot fresh muffin!

Ingredients for 12 muffins:

• 2 TBS chia seeds soaked in 500ml = 17oz warm water
• 500g = 18oz gluten-free flour. Here are a few of the options that I have tried
• 500g buckwheat flour
• 300g buckwheat, 100g millet, 100g quinoa
• 200g buckwheat, 200g millet, 100g quinoa
• 200g buckwheat, 200g millet, 100g amarath
• 225g sorghum, 175g millet, 100g amarath
• Note: amarath is easiest to mill in a coffee grinder, the grain is super small
• 2TBS ground flax seeds. Grind them in a coffee grinder, NOT in the grain mill.
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 TBS vinegar
• 1/2 cup approximately sunflower seeds
• 1/3 cup approximately hemp seeds

Procedure:

• Soak chia seeds in the warm water for at least 10 minutes until they swell. Stir or whisk a few times to avoid clumps
• While chia seeds are soaking, turn the oven to 400F.
• Put paper muffin cups in a muffin pan. This recipe yields 12 muffins.
• Mix the combination of flours you are using. I mill them fresh straight into a mixing bowl. First I weigh the grains in separate bowls, so that I can mill them one at a time. Milling one type of grain at a time is important because the mill may need a different setting for each type of grain.
• Add ground flax seed if you are using it.
• Sift baking powder and baking soda in the bowl with the flours, add the salt and mix thoroughly. 
• Add the seeds (or nuts if you choose to use them) and mix well.
• Add the liquids: soaked chia seeds with all the water, olive  oil, and vinegar.
• Mix well.
• Divide equally into the muffin cups.
• Bake at 400F for 35 minutes. Note - 30 mins may suffice in your oven, I suggest to experiment.
• Cool and eat.
• Freeze in a ziploc bag, defrost one at a time in a microwave. 44 seconds  on high in ours, yours will be different.

Note: 

We make a double recipe in a 24-muffin pan. The baking time in our oven is the same, 35 minutes. We freeze the muffins as soon as they cool down. 

Corn gazpacho

Recently we went to Napa to buy some beans at Rancho Gordo, and used that as an excuse for a mini trip. We were unlucky, Napa had some kind of a parade going on. It was packed, and parking was impossible to find. Our luck turned and we ended up having lunch in La Taberna, we walked in just as they were opening up. The choice of the restaurant was perfect, the melange of tapas we ordered was the best lunch we have had in a long time. Standing out was corn gazpatcho. Smooth, silky, sweet yet the flavors were balanced. It also looked really pretty, which makes it really unfortunate that I failed to take a picture.

I started looking for recipes for corn gazpacho and started to tinker. It didn't take too long before I had something that has been causing me to go to the farmers market to get fresh corn. Let me record the recipe so that I don't forget like I did with the tomato gazpacho I made a few years ago.

Ingredients:

• kernels from 3-4 ears of corn
• 2 medium size cucumbers washed and peeled if you want pure yellow color and less bitterness. 
• 1/2  sweet onion, chopped
• 1 large yellow pepper, chopped
• 1-2 cloves garlic
• 2 medium yellow tomatoes, peeled and chopped coarsely
• 1 tsp miso paste - not too much, just to add a hint of umami
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 tsp hot sauce, optional
• juice of 1/2 medium lemon
• 1-2 TBS rice vinger
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup water or kelp water

Preparation:

Blend all of the ingredients, and let stand in the fridge for a few hours or a day or two for the flavors to combine.

We prefer this gazpacho very smooth, so we blend it at the highest speed. At the same time, do not blend to long if you have a powerful blender like Vitamix so that the ingredients don't heat up too much. 

You can also leave gazpacho somewhat chunky. I prefer to introduce texture through garnish - some fresh corn kernels, green onion, pine nuts, diced ripe tomato, all of those have worked very nicely.