The Rodrigo Gracie seminar was a blast yesterday!

I can't wait for NAGA next weekend and the Pan Ams next month! I'm going to kick some ass :)

** Pictures to come shortly...

Me about to get my thing on:



I'll post video soon...

I'll have to say that one of my biggest mistakes over the last year was not joining a BJJ gym as soon as I moved to the DC area. I didn't because I hate joining new gyms without knowing anyone there, only to find out 2 weeks later that everyone there is a dick or something.

So yeah, my friend moved out here a few months back and I'm there 6 days a week now doing BJJ and CrossFit. I look at how busy and fun my life is now, not to mention all the cool new people I've met and heading out to watch people you know fight... I look at all of this and compare it to a year ago, and it's amazing how much more fun life is.

47 Keebler elves died today when a light plane plunged into their tree. E. L. Fudge remains in critical condition.

Yesterday was my first CrossFit class. I'm fairly certain I won't ever forget it. I was really too naive to be worried or nervous beforehand, and even after looking at the workout list, I couldn't truly guess as to how I'd feel an hour afterwards.

Class workout for the day: "The Angie"
100 Pull-ups
100 Push-ups
100 Sit-ups
100 Squats

I think my mistake was basically looking at those last three and going “well, heck.. when I was boxing i'd do a lot more than 100 push-ups and sit-ups a day and I'd do 100 squats on a routine basis when I was playing hockey.” Maybe it was because I can only do 4-5 pull-ups, or some other reason, but I kind of "ignored" the fact that I'd have to do an ungodly number of pull-ups. I may add, those 100 pull-ups completely destroy you.. and only after you're destroyed do you move on and work that muscle again.

“100 pull-ups? That's impossible!” 1 guy in our class (who looks like he's been coming here for years) was able to do all 100 unassisted. For people like me (someone who all they've done in the last 2 years is run, run, run) they have these giant rubber bands that provide **some** assistance. The only thing I was really able to knock out with any speed (as you're supposed to do the entire thing as quickly as possible to compare times for the next time you do the route - from what I hear, it's not very often you repeat the same routines though) was the squats. For the pull-ups, and the push-ups.. and even the sit-ups, I found myself only able to do 2-3 at a time when I got to the 30-40 number.

Now for the real reason I won't ever forget this. The only time I've ever come close to puking during a workout routine was during brazilian jiujtisu sparring a few years back (which I actually started up with again this week... and I'm debating whether or not my muscles are in any condition to go back today) It was my first 6, 10 minute round routines and I would always get paired up with someone who was 100 pounds heavier than I and would always find myself on the bottom). I only realized what I was getting myself into after the instructor showed me the “puke bucket” before we started. I managed to make it through the class... but I was feeling so horrible after I got home that I thought (and rightfully so) that maybe I would feel better if I stopped trying to hold it back.

In all honesty though, I love it. The current class schedule is: BJJ tues/thurs/sat while doing CrossFit mon/wed/fri. These next 3 weeks are really going to suck, but I'm excited for the future.

On Monday, the instructor says he has a "surprise" for us... and I'm really scared which routine that may be :(

I switched to a new bjj gym last night. What makes it so great is the amount of mat space. Over in Europe and Seoul there was about 400-500 sq.ft. of mat space which was absolutely horrible. The class last night was unusually large, but even then, only half of the mat space was used.

I also started crossfit training as well, so hopefully I get into really good shape!

I'm really liking life right now. One of my friends from Europe finally moved to DC and now I kind of have a reason to go out and be active again - hard to explain.

I've been fooling around with an aerated white chocolate and caviar dish as well - coming along well, but still not perfected.

I'm also fucking around with a Banana Tuiles-eque dish that's paired with either cloves, parsley or tarragon and sort of a "plantain chip" ... also coming along quite well.

When you mention treacle tart to someone in America, one of two things happen. They'll either look at you with a blank stare, or will comment that they have family living in England and when they were there, they had it, but it was too sweet and generally bad.

Now, for something to be as popular and iconic as treacle tart, it had to be good at some point. Somewhere over the years, stores (in an effort to cut down on prices) dumbed it down to what we have today. However, if done correctly, treacle tart can be one of the most amazing dishes imaginable. Today, I'm going to talk about the golden syrup portion of the recipe in particular. In the next couple of days, I'll go over the other portions of the recipe and explain some of the science behind it all. I hope everyone will try this recipe at least once. One of the individuals (from my office) fell into the category of "tried it in England - hated it" and was amazed with how good treacle tart can actually taste.



I tried attempted making my own variations of treacle to see if I could use something other (and create something better) than Lyle's golden syrup. With sugar coming from various places, to include sucrose, glucose, fructose, maltose and lactose, I figured that sucrose would be the best starting point as it serves as the starting point for golden syrup. One of the greatest difficulties I had in breaking down the crystalline structure was that the acid notes needed to invert the sugar was too strong, and in order to tone it down into a flavorful treacle, I would need to recommend ingredients not commonly found – and even then, the flavor failed in comparison to Lyle's golden syrup.



There is one thing you can do to enhance the flavor of lyle's golden syrup, and that's aging the treacle. Now, in a perfect world, I would just recommend to everyone that they pull out their thermal immersion circulator and keep the jars in a 165 degree water bath for 96 hours. I realize that not everyone has $2k to throw away at a thermal immersion circulator (even though they're well worth every penny!) so I needed to figure a way to keep something at 165 degrees for the “every home” cook who didn't own a thermal immersion circulator or an oven that went to these levels.


The answer comes with proportional-integral-derivative controllers. These devices operate a control loop feedback with another device (sort of a master/slave type role). How does this come into play? If you use a PID controller in conjunction with a giant rice cooker, in theory you'd be able to replicate the thermal immersion circulator's process. I decided to test these devices along side the thermal immersion circulator to see how accurate they were. The results were actually quite stunning! The slow cooker (often recommended for use with the PID controller) fell up dangerously short. With the heat source coming from one particular area, cold spots were created, that, when cooking meats and fishes, could result in an uneven, dangerous water temperature. Rice cookers on the other had (as long as an item was cooking for 40 minutes) had the same temperature throughout due to the heat source coming from the entire lower portion of the cooker. The accuracy was within +/- 1 degree, which was an acceptable level for this; however, for cooking meats at a longer time, it would be recommended to cook at 141 instead of 140 (again, this is for any cooking over 3 hours) degrees.



So where to get the PID-controller? www.freshmealssolutions.com is where I picked up my test ones at, you can also by a commercial cooker there if you do not have one. The total price would come in at $250 vice the $2,000 you'd pay for the thermal immersion circulator.

Now, “aging” the golden syrup in the water bath at 165 for 96 hours improves the depth and the complexity of the syrup significantly – it is absolutely essential that you do this for your treacle tart. Cooking at over 165 degrees will ruin your treacle as well, as the cellular structure will begin to damage at this temperature.

I just realized I never posted a picture of the chips from last night:

"Bar Food" is something that never gets any respect in the culinary word and even to known foodies, it's often difficult to get excited about such dishes as "fish and chips." I was speaking to a friend earlier today telling him that this was what I would be cooking up today, and the idea was scoffed at. "From duck confit to fish and chips? Isn't that a step backwards?"

That's why I wanted to try this. You can turn some "simple" classics into truly something special, and this evening I have done just that. With some time, patience and attention to detail, you can turn a dish, which usually receives comments of "I'm so stuffed" after eating into comments along the lines of "I love life so much right now."




Heston Blumenthal is again the inspiration of this dish (there seems to be a little Heston in all of my dishes) so credit where credit is due. Below is what you'll need to re-create my perfect fish and chips meal. For some reason, I grabbed the grapeseed oil for the picture (I used [and so should you] peanut oil) - also of note, the strongbow isn't in the recipe, but is my beverage of choice for anything British.

Things you'll need that you may not have:
Firstly, the fish is the key ingredient here. Typically, fish and chips is made with either Cod or Haddock. It *should* be made with Turbot though. My fishmonger (god bless him) now manages to bring me Turbot from a place he won't tell me (Turbot doesn't farm well, so my guess is that it's shipped in from somewhere far away as his home is nowhere close to here). Why Turbot? It has an amazing texture and flavor and its juices are far thicker than that of the Cod. In addition to this, it has an amazing gelatin, that when broken down during frying, adds a whole new level of depth and flavor to the fish - it's truly amazing.
A sode siphon is something else you may not have on hand. Much of the work in preparing the batter needs to be fast paced as you want to retain as many bubbles from the lager and the bubbles created from the CO2/siphon discharge as possible. This is absolutely essential and will give you the cripiest batter imaginable.

Maris Piper potatoes: Maris piper potatoes are nearly impossible to find in this area and took me quite a long time to get my hands on. Alternatively, Arran Victory potatoes are supposed to work quite nicely; however, I haven't had a chance to get my hands on them yet. Russet potatoes are what you'll likely find in stores and while alright, are not nearly as good as you'll have with the maris piper. The key to the perfect chips is to eliminate as much of the moisture as possible in the potatoes. To do this, a three stage cooking process is used to cook the chips. The end result is an outside with a "glass-like" crisp outside and the most amazingly fluffy insides you can possibly imagine. Not allowing the chips to dry will result in a soggy exterior.

WTF? ingredients: The only "WTF?" ingredient in this recipe (i think) is the vodka. Why vodka? A water based batter takes a long time to go brown because you have to make the water evaporate before it will cook (which is a very slow process). Vodka is much more volatile and disappears much more quickly. It also has a side benefit of not developing the flour's gluten the way water does which will mean that you will get a crisper crust. The lager in the soda siphon enhance the crispness and crunchiness by introducing lots of bubbles to the batter and giving it a marvelous lightness.

Menu: Peking Duck Dinner Party

“Cedar salad” - A laitue gelée with cedar infused smoke served nouveau-Caesar style

Shredded cucumber and spring onion over duck consommé

Caramelized pears

Confit duck sautéed with shitake mushrooms and ginger

Duck, Peking style with steamed pancakes, served with pomegranate martinis

Jasmine infused green tea ice cream served with jasmine tea


Wine selection: red Rhone and Gewustraminer wine

Bleu d'auvergne truffles:




Things you’ll need that you might not have:
• Heating Pad
• Bleu d’auvergne or roquefort bleu cheese might be difficult to locate depending on your location
• Espresso maker
• Melon baller

Firstly, it’s important that you only use Bleu d’auvergne or roquefort. Bleu du vercors-sassenage is my favorite bleu cheese, but the grassy taste does not compliment the espresso and dark chocolate. This goes for *most* bleu cheeses.

*molecular gastronomy tip of the week*
Why bleu cheese and chocolate work? bleu cheese (and especially bleu d’auvergne) is a bit salty and chocolate is a bit salty as well. The combination of the two is what is called a diacetyle. The two flavors combine, enhance the nature chocolate flavoring and then it becomes what can only be described as a “euphoric” experience - literally. Honestly, it will make you shiver all over =)

To make the bleu d’auvergne ganache: Add ¼ C cracked coffee beans (bold)& a shot of espresso into ½ C heavy cream and bring the mixture to a boil and immediately take it off from heat. Add 1/3 C bleu d’auvergne and whisk until the bleu cheese is dissolved. Strain the mixture over a sieve onto your chopped chocolate (bittersweet) and butter and blend (remember, you are making TRUFFLES, so it’s very, very, very important not to subject the chocolate to a high temperature, this is why you pulled the mixture off the stove 5 minutes ago) until melted. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Use a melon baller to scoop the chocolate mixture onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and then refrigerate for another 30-60 minutes.

Place another 10 ounces of chocolate into a mixing bowl on top of a heating pad. Stir the mixture until it reaches 92 degrees F and then immediately remove. It must not reach 94 degrees, otherwise it needs to be thrown out (same with the inner mixture) – heating at 94 degrees or above will create a soft outside and you will not obtain the chocolate “crunch” that you are looking for with a truffle.

Take the mixture out of the refrigerator and take the balls and roll them around in the heated mixture to coat completely – after it is coated, rolled the truffle in the cocoa powder. Leave sit for 20 seconds, then repeat with the second, third, fourth, etc until complete. Store in an airtight container for 1 hour, then serve. ENJOY!! =)

This had me dying of laughter last night:

After weeks and weeks of research, I finally found a salon that I found comfortable enough with and a stylist who I thought would do a good job.

I was asked how I wanted my hair, and as planned, I asked him what he thought I should do and then let him do what he thought would go compliment me. Needless to say, when the one lady washed my hair and passed me off to him, he had no idea my hair was "spiky", so I no longer have spiky hair.

I feel good about it now, but the real test will be about a week from now when I've had time to sit back and determine whether I like it or not (plus as I get comments, both positive and negative). Regardless, it was a great experience, I asked him a million questions and learned a lot.

On a down note, it's 8pm and I'm only just now stepping into the house after leaving at 5am this morning.

On "the other site" I was finally begged into doing a weekly molecular gastronomy post so I figure I'd do a copy and paste over here.

My first post will be peking duck utilizing sous-vide. This has been my signature dish for about a year now, and is something I usually make for people who are new to my cooking (and who aren't brave enough to step into my world of xantham & guar gum, liquid nitrogen and activa)

Hopefully people will enjoy this weekend journal and it'll either get people excited about (yay) or create quite a bit of controversy again (yay - since it'll make my chuckle into the night).

Stay tuned...

*Note: My camera died yesterday so I had to use an older one - no idea why the pics came out so blurry (perhaps i need some photography lessons lol)

- Sorbet au pommes vertes - trou normand (green apple sorbet served calvados)
- Framboise des bois au vin rouge - wild berries in red wine
- Blueberry scone




This is created to be eaten as a breakfast meal or during the afternoon while relaxing outside. This meal is incredibly simple to prepare and deliciously refreshing on a hot summer's day.

Notes:
- I tried using liquid nitrogen for the sorbet and it came out less than desirable (unlike my ice creams). With that said, I'd recommend using your traditional ice cream maker (the second batch I made had a much better consistency and ice crystals weren't noticeable.
- Always pair berries with a light red wine (I always use Beaujolais, but that might be tricky to find in some places. My local wine vendor doesn't carry it, yet oddly enough, whole foods does?)
- If you can't obtain wild raspberries, use store bought ones. Only use wild strawberries for this dish as store bought ones are typically too big (this is a dish you eat with a spoon after all).

Tips: All three of these items are incredibly easy to make and you can do so with few ingredients & less than $30.
Berry dish: 1 pound berries, confectioners sugar (roughly 1 tbsp per glass), 1/4 juice of fresh orange per glass and then the red wine
Green apple sorbet: 5 granny smith apples, juice of 1 lemon (only used in order to keep its green colour), 1 1/3c sugar, 1 1/4 c water and calvados (if serving trou normand). Make as you would any Purée, then after dipping its temp down 40 degrees F, throw it in the ice cream maker. As with making iced dishes using any fruits, it's better to freeze the fruit over night, then thaw for an hour and immediately use; however, with apples this is very difficult: If you skin and dice the apple before time, it will brown and cellular dehydration will occur. If you leave the skin in tact, it will be impossible to peel once it thaws - for this reason, leave doing this for such fruits as bananas, melons and papaya.
scones: flour, baking powder, egg, blueberries, heavy cream, sugar, butter, salt - I didn't try anything fancy here as my baking skills are still rather intermediate (I can finally make great pie crust though ;))

Who would have thought that my latest food post would have created this much controversy. Who would have thought that pictures from my dinner party would somehow lead to how ugly I am and how bad of a photographer I am:

- I am a salad connoisseur and the idea of frozen lettuce is extremely unappealing.

- Ew.

- They both look pretty gross to me.

- http://cdn.okcimg.com/php/load_okc_image.php/images/19x14/383x378/0/2093391414103585126___150_500_150_600_08a9f2db_.jpg

what a douchebag

- http://cdn.okcimg.com/php/load_okc_image.php/images/19x14/383x378/0/2093

They both look pretty gross to me.

- People need to learn not to use a flash when taking pictures of food. Get the food under a bright but soft light and your pictures might not make everyone want to throw up.

- As for the images of yourself, I don't see an immediate solution.