Archive by Author

The Perfect Steak

11 Jan

I was just on BBC Radio 4′s Woman’s Hour discussing how to cook the perfect steak. It’s a complicated issue that’s difficult to cover in 10 minutes of airtime, but the basics are helpfully recapped on the Woman’s Hour website. I typed this up yesterday as a more in-depth summation of the whole process.

The Perfect Steak

serves 1

aged sirloin steak, 300-500g (3-5 cm thick)
smoked sea salt
black pepper
vegetable oil

The perfect steak has to start with really high-quality meat. It won’t be cheap, but then steak is not an everyday food. In general, you should look for breed known for complexity of flavor, such as Aberdeen Angus, Longhorn, or if you’re really feeling flush, Wagyu. But even among meat from the same breed, not all steaks are equal – different diets produce different results, and of course aged beef will taste different (many would say better) than beef from a freshly slaughtered cow. Look for meat that’s well-marbled; it should have little ripples of fat integrated with the muscle fibers. Whether or not to go with aged beef is a matter of personal preference, but there are certain benefits to beef that’s been hung for a few weeks. As the meat ages, it dries out slightly, which concentrates its flavor. As the cow’s cells break down, they release enzymes that start breaking down other molecules into smaller ones, producing new, intense flavors, and degrading proteins that cause toughness in the finished steak. Aged meat turns dark and dry along the exposed surface; this part of the beef can be chewy and can harbor harmful microbes, so your butcher should trim it off before portioning your steaks.

If you take a highly precise, scientific approach to cooking the steak, it becomes a prohibitively complicated endeavor. The food chemist Harold McGee dedicates no less than 17 pages to cooking meat in his encyclopedia of kitchen science, and his conclusion is still to use your intuition and senses when cooking a steak to perfection. “Cookbooks are full of formulas for obtaining a given doneness, but these are at best rough approximations. The best instruments for monitoring the doneness of meat,” he writes, “remain the cook’s eye and finger.” There are so many variables in cooking steak – pan temperature, thickness, cut, fat content, age, etc. – and trying to monitor and account for all of them is practically impossible. It is best to stick to a few rules of thumb, but always bear in mind that they may not always yield exactly the same results. You have to trust your instincts, and remember: if meat is undercooked, you can always cook it longer, but overcooking is irrevocable. Always err on the side of rare.

Start with a frying pan with a good, solid base that distributes heat evenly. Blast it with heat on your strongest burner; let it sit on the heat for at least 5 minutes to get really screaming hot. The high heat will ensure the steak develops a gloriously flavorful, toothsome brown crust. You should start with a steak at room temperature, but if you’ve forgotten to take it out of the fridge ahead of time, don’t worry. Just remember that it will take a little bit longer for it to cook through. Rub the steak all over with generous amounts of smoked sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, and a neutral vegetable oil (I use rapeseed). The smoked sea salt is optional, but I find it lends a pleasant barbecue-ish flavor. Now it is time to cook.

For a sirloin, start the cooking by laying it in the pan on the edge with the thick band of fat. Fat does not conduct heat as well as meat, so the meat along this band will take a little longer to cook. Cooking the fat first also renders off dripping, which will help lubricate and flavor the rest of the steak. After the fatty edge has cooked for 1 minute, turn it onto its side. In general, for a medium rare steak, cook for 1 minute plus 1 minute per centimeter of thickness per side. So if your steak is 3 cm thick, it will be in the pan for 7 minutes; if it’s 5 cm thick, 11 minutes. For medium, add a minute; for medium well, another minute, and so on. Turn the steak frequently; if you leave the steak for too long on each side, the intense heat will cause it to overcook along the edge, so instead of a consistently medium rare steak you get a steak that’s medium rare in the middle but well-done on the outside. I turn my steaks every 30 seconds, although some chefs turn every 15 seconds. If you’ve got a really thick steak, it’s best to cook it in the oven and then just finish it in the pan to develop a crust.

When the steak is finished, take it out of the pan and give it a squeeze with your fingers. There’s a test you can do which is not tremendously accurate, but it’s still one of the best ways to gauge doneness. Hold your hand out with the palm facing you and let it hang limp. Feel the inner heel of your thumb (the big fleshy bit inside your palm). This is approximately the same feeling you get from poking meat that’s raw or cooked blue. Now pinch your thumb and index finger together, but don’t squeeze. The heel of your thumb now feels like a rare steak. Thumb to middle finger is medium rare; thumb to ring finger is medium well; and thumb to pinky is well done. If your steak feels like this, abandon all hope. You’ve ruined dinner.

Finally, an important but often overlooked step: resting. The muscle fibers in meat constrict when they’re hot, forcing moisture out like a sponge being squeezed. If you cut the meat before the meat has cooled slightly, you’ll lose precious juice. Rest your steak for at least half the cooking time before serving.

And there you have it: the perfect steak. Serve it with whatever you like, but don’t obscure the beef’s flavors with overpowering sauces; you paid for it and no doubt fretted over it, so you’ll want to taste it! Some nice, buttery mash and maybe a little horseradish are all you’ll need.

Malaysia Kitchen: Keep on Truckin’

28 Dec

The right context, I have always argued, is an important element to any eating experience. So it would stand to reason that the best place to eat Malaysian street food is on a Malaysian street, and the best food to eat during a cold British winter are the old British classics… right? As I discovered through the Malaysia Kitchen Street Food tour, something close to the inverse may be true.

I love British food and the UK food scene in general, but I must say street food is something I’ve sorely missed since I moved here three years ago. Ever since my college days in Los Angeles, I’ve lived off street food. Back then it was tacos, burritos, and quesadillas sold out of trucks, on perfectly breezy nights both sober and less so. The issue of which taco truck was the best on the boulevard was debated with passion and jingoistic loyalty. We loved our trucks, so much so that we thought nothing of waiting nearly an hour to get our food and didn’t mind that snarky Beverly Hills types ignorantly referred to them as “roach coaches.”

When I moved to Japan, I lived in Fukuoka, which is on the island of Kyushu, Japan’s dirty south. Aside from murderous late summer humidity and the occasional typhoon, the weather on Kyushu is warmer and more conducive to outdoor eating than other parts of the country, and so I took many of my evening meals at yatai, the red-lanterned street stalls that lit up the backstreets and banksides of Fukuoka city. Hearty pork ramen and gyoza dumplings, or simply grilled meat on a stick were the perfect pick-me-ups before or after a big night out.

And of course, all my travels around east Asia were fuelled by street food. In South Korea, it was spicy rice cakes, blood sausage, and waffles; in Hong Kong, stinky tofu and tea-stained eggs; in Taiwan, beef noodles and dumplings; and in Burma, there was grilled squid, fried chicken, and samosas. If memory serves me correctly, on my first trip to Thailand I don’t think I had a single meal within four walls; everything I ate came from a stall, a cart, a truck, a bicycle, or just a basket balanced on someone’s head. And I ate well – very, very well. The only reason I deviated from the street food path on my second trip to Thailand was because I was a travel agent, and I was forced to evaluate hotel restaurants. Dreadfully boring, that.

In 6 years of travelling and eating, I’d developed a love and appreciation for the food of the street, so I was dismayed to discover that such a culture doesn’t really exist here in Britain. The basic units for casual, inexpensive eating in Britain are the pub, the cafe, and the home – all of which I love, but they don’t replace the experience of a hot meal enjoyed in the air of a cool night. But then that’s just the problem – British nights (and days) aren’t really cool, they’re downright cold, even in the summertime. Couple the weather issue with a beloved pub culture that dates back for centuries, and it’s not surprising that street food never really took off here.

That is, until now.

The recession, while in many ways tragic and dispiriting, has had in my opinion a positive impact on the way people dine out in the UK. Increasingly, people want value for money, so we’ve seen a thrilling boom of eateries that are unique and delicious, but still affordable, with the creativity and skill of fine dining applied to casual scenarios. In 2011 counter service trumped table service as the country devoured exciting and exotic food at prices that make eating out a day-to-day activity. And at the center of this activity was an exaltation of street food.

But what of the weather? The British have always been admirably defiant in the face of terrible weather, almost going so far as to celebrate it. And while a cold and damp climate may not seem suitable for dining out doors, there may be no better context for enjoying something hot, spicy, and aromatic. Malaysian food fits the bill perfectly – when we took to the streets with the Malaysia Kitchen Street Food Tour truck in late November, it was a joy to see how our nasi goreng, chicken satay, and char kway teow brought visible warmth to the cheeks of all who tried them.

London, Nottingham, and Manchester are a world away from Kuala Lumpur, Melaka, and Sandakan, but that may be precisely why our Malaysian street food went down such a treat. Who couldn’t use a little exotic escapism during these bitter winter months? With its lively aromats, sweet sauces, and fiery chillies, Malaysian cooking can transport you, if only for an instant, to a more equatorial state of mind. Yes, we had the occasional confused shopper trying to order burgers. But after one bite of our food, their faces lit up – the thought of burgers vanished, and all they wanted was more Malaysian food.

Luckily, you don’t have to wait for the Malaysia Kitchen truck to roll into your town to get your spicy street food fix, because these days there are more Malaysian restaurants in the UK than you may realize. To find the Malaysian restaurant nearest to you, visit the Restaurant Finder at MalaysiaKitchen.co.uk. And if there isn’t a restaurant nearby, don’t forget that Malaysian food is easy to cook at home, and the right ingredients are readily available on the internet!

Malaysia Kitchen: Every Night is Malaysia Night

20 Dec

It’s all too easy to get stuck in a rut. I’ve always been the kind of person who bores easily, so I’m constantly trying new things, pushing myself to have new experiences and encounter new flavors. Even so, I find myself too readily falling back on what I already know: going to the same pubs and restaurants, watching the same TV shows, cooking with the same ingredients. When you’re busy you don’t have time to mess around. You slip into a mindless complacency and forget that the world is yours to explore, and it’s far too big and diverse to get bored in.

What do you do on a Friday night? Maybe you relax at home with a takeaway (there’s no shame in that), watch a movie and generally zonk out. Or maybe you hit the pub, the one roughly halfway between your office and the train station, and stay there for a few hours until somebody suggests you all go to Pizza Express or something. Or maybe you go to the cinema, which can so often be a surprisingly stressful ordeal, what with all the monstrously overpriced snacks, 20 minutes of advertising, and the inevitable person who persists in talking throughout the film. (Or maybe you are that person, in which case: shame on you!)

We go out on Friday night to relax and have fun, and yet so regularly we end up doing things that are neither relaxing nor particularly fun. One of the best Friday nights I’ve had in recent memory was Malaysia Night, a massive takeover of Trafalgar Square in celebration of all things Malaysian. To my knowledge, there’s nothing quite like it in London, and it was amazing to walk around the square and experience the palpable happiness and pride exuded by the exhibitors, vendors, and visitors alike. Traditional dance, arts and crafts, and travel info were all on colorful, enthusiastic display, but of course, I came for the food.

And what food it was. More than 20 Malaysian restaurants had set up shop, which was great to see, because in honesty I didn’t even know there were that many Malaysian restaurants in London! It opened my eyes to a whole new food culture on my doorstep that I hardly knew existed. I am not ashamed to say I stuffed my face, which I have a tendency to do when surrounded by delicious food. First up was rendang with roti canai from Pelangi – incredibly tender beef, braised for hours in a sauce of coconut, lemongrass, and ginger, served with traditional flatbread. Succulent and aromatic, it’s no wonder this is considered one of Malaysia’s national dishes.

Next, I sampled some specialities of the Terengganu region, keropok, a delicious sort of fish sausage, and some fish crackers which were absolutely amazing. Imagine prawn crackers made with mackerel and less grease; they’re exceptionally moreish and make a great snack or accompaniment to a variety of other dishes. I then moved on to the Tukdin stall, where I devoured a few of their delectable curry puffs: flaky pastries concealing a lush, satisfying potato curry, like a sort of refined Malaysian pasty. The kind of food I could happily eat several times a week, simple yet undeniably tasty.

As my internal fuel gage approached full, I settled on a final dish, sambal sotong from Delima: tender chunks of cuttlefish smothered in a brick-red, fiery hot sauce. It was so good I greedily snarfed the entire plate, even though I was full to the point of discomfort.

Like I usually do at good food festivals, I was disappointed with myself for getting too full to carry on eating, because there was so much more I wanted to try. But I left with an understanding of the British Malaysian food scene that I didn’t have before; the sheer amount of restaurants there excited me, and the the food was revelatory. With so much good food available, there’s no need (and no excuse) to settle for bland, boring, and safe! I am determined to shake up my Friday night routine every now and then with a visit to my local Malaysian. Malaysia Night comes just once a year, but with so many great Malaysian restaurants around, there’s no reason every night can’t be Malaysia Night.

Fancy a Malaysia night in? Don’t forget that Malaysian food is cheap and easy to make at home! See my first Malaysia Kitchen blog for more info.

Malaysia Kitchen: The Malaysian Larder

26 Sep

20110926-141630.jpg

Whenever I travel to a new country, I make a point to visit at least one grocery store while I’m there. They’re like living museums; collections of objects that comprise and nourish a culture. I generally find them more interesting and exciting than the arts and antiquities found in actual museums, which belong to distant epochs and echelons, and may be fascinating in some abstract sense, but don’t give me any immediate understanding of the people around me. Plus, in grocery stores you can buy, cook, and eat the exhibits – how awesome is that?

One of the great things about living in London is that this experience is just a quick train ride away. To paraphrase Dr. Johnson’s famous words, when you’re tired of London, you’re tired of food, for there seems to be no limit to the sheer variety of food and food shops to be found here. But I’ve done my time walking the beaten paths down the aisles of Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Bangladeshi, Scandinavian, and Polish supermarkets. It was time for something new, something different: Malaysian food.

Unfortunately there is no dedicated Malaysian grocer in London, but Five Crops in Charlton is the next best thing. An emporium of east and southeast Asian ingredients, they have a large section of Malaysian larder staples. I was charitably shown around by Ben, a veteran manager who clearly knew the fundamentals of Malaysian cooking. I had a shopping list of things I thought I’d need to make some killer Malaysian food of my own, but for the most part I just followed his expert advice. The first items into my basket were:
– kicap lemak manis: thick, sweet soy sauce
– kicap lemak masin: light, salty soy sauce
– sambal: a paste made from chilli, onions, garlic, fish, prawns, and tamarind
– belacan: a crumbly brick of dried, salted shrimp

Together, these four ingredients will form the foundation to a wide variety of Malaysian dishes; in concert they add sweetness, saltiness, heat, and savoury depth, and their applications go beyond traditional Malaysian preparations. I am particularly enamoured with sambal and belacan, the former for its intensity and complex sweet, sour, and spicy character and the latter for its pungent, fishy aroma and concentrated flavour. You only need a teaspoonful to season an entire pan full of food, and it works wonders for stocks in need of a little extra something. I think of it, in a way, as the prawn equivalent of Bovril (though I’m not sure how it would taste stirred into hot milk).

I had my foundation. Now it was time to start building. I stocked up on both white jasmine rice and black glutinous rice, as these provide the bulk of so many Malaysian dishes, both savoury and sweet. I got a packet of ikan bilis, adorable little dried fish that provide flavour and crunch to the national rice dish, nasi lemak. I also bought Malaysian sweet chilli paste, which is smoother and tangier than the versions from nearby countries, as well as tamarind paste. Preparing fresh tamarind is an arduous process, Ben explained, involving much washing, boiling, peeling, grinding, and straining, so the pre-made paste is what most people keep in their homes. It has a sourness unlike citrus or vinegar, somewhat like green apples but richer, with a slight brown sugar-like sweetness to it. And because it’s a paste and not a liquid, it can help thicken sauces and glazes. Another awesome ingredient to have on hand, even if you’re not making Malaysian food.

Finally I filled my basket with various aromats: curry powders for fish and meat, a packet of spices used in the Malaysian pork hotpot bak kut teh, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, galangal, and ginger. I was well on my way to making my own terrifically fresh and delicious Malaysian meals.

But there was one last thing. In my travels around southeast Asia I encountered one particularly controversial item, known to cause many first-time tasters to retch, but reverently dubbed “the king of fruits” by its many dedicated fans. Banned on Malaysian public transport for its unusual (okay, nauseating) smell but also adored for its rich, creamy flesh and complex flavour, durian is perhaps one of the weirdest foods on earth. When I first tried it five years ago, I didn’t like it. But knowing how much others do like it, I couldn’t escape from the thought that the problem is not with durian, it’s with me and my own tastes. I was determined to make a durian dish that wouldn’t disguise its flavour but harness it and perfume it and make it taste delicious to people who profess to hate it, like me.

At Five Crops they had a stack of big, beautiful durians, and Ben showed me how to choose one. (And how to handle them – their spikes can draw blood!) By pinching two adjacent spikes together, you can gauge a durian’s ripeness – no give and it is not quite ripe; if they bend slightly towards each other, ripe; and if you can touch their tips together, very ripe, and very stinky! Another way to test ripeness is to fiddle with the stem; if it’s flexible at the base, the durian is ready. I chose a very ripe one, and Ben then showed me how to open it. Holding it with gloves or a thick tea towel, find the natural seams where the spikes come together. They look like little valleys in mountainous terrain. Cut through the seams with a sharp knife, and pull the durian apart.

So there I had it. My very own durian, and a boxful of amazing new ingredients to play and experiment with. I could hardly wait to get home, get tasting, and get cooking – and that’s exactly what I did.

Visit Malaysia Kitchen for more info!

What I’m Up To

24 May

The second most frequently asked question coming my way these days (after “aren’t you that guy?”) is “now what are you up to?” Usually, I just give a bewilderingly vague and shamefully unsatisfying reply, like “cooking” or “this and that,” but I’m not trying to be flippant. The reason my answers are so unspecific is because to get into specifics would take an awful lot of time. There is so very much going on. I’m leaving the Euston Tap in a matter of days so I can finally take the time I need to sit down and sort through it all. But I’m sure you’ll still find me there, just on the other side of the bar from now on. It is London’s best pub, after all.

First and foremost: cooking. I will be working as a stagiaire in some of the country’s best restaurants, the names of which I cannot reveal, but rest assured they are led by some of my culinary idols. They are unpaid gigs, and I’m sure I will be on the very bottom rung of the kitchen ladder, but to have opportunities like these is a real dream come true and I am beside myself with excitement. I’m also scared out of my mind.

Additionally, I will be establishing myself as a caterer and consultant for private and corporate events. I’m doing a few parties and pop-ups in the near future, but the catering business won’t really get going until the end of the summer, when I’ve finished most of my stages and have more time to focus on setting it up properly. I intend for this to be my bread and butter for the next year, so I want to do it right.

Meanwhile, I am appearing in the MasterChef Experience at the Good Food Show in Birmingham, this June 15-19, along with my contemporaries Tom and Sara, as well as John, Gregg, Dhruv, Mat, and other MC alumni. Stop by to watch us cook and say hello!

At the end of June I’ll be heading up to Scotland to do something I’ve always wanted to do: brewing. And I’m going to go nuts with it. I’ll be spending three days with BrewDog producing one of the most insane lagers the world has ever seen, then cooking a beer dinner at their restaurant Musa in Aberdeen (details to follow). After that I’m trucking up to Black Isle Brewery to make another properly bonkers beer, and I have been discussing the possibility to brew with yet another respected Scottish brewery while I’m up there to make a neat little hat trick.

On top of all this, I plan to doing a bit of writing and recipe development for various companies, new digital media projects, a few appearances here and there, and I may also have a hand in curating an art exhibit and even making music. The people who I have met through my newfound notoriety have generally been lovely, and I’m thrilled about my upcoming collaborations.

Finally: the restaurant. There is a restaurant in the works, though it’s all quite nebulous right now. It would be disastrously foolish of me to think that I could immediately open up shop with virtually no experience, so while I am starting to meet with potential backers, I am going to take my time and build up my understanding of kitchen mechanics and restaurant management before I begin to solidify any plans. But the goal is to get the ball rolling early next year, for an opening late next year.

It’s all happening now. I am grateful for the continuing support I’ve had from my family, friends, and fans. It’s such a lovely feeling when people tell me they’d love to try my food, and I promise that soon enough, they can!

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 59 other followers