Physical! (the aftermath)

So, on Wednesday I finally went in for the physical I've been putting off for three years. Pending my bloodwork coming back next week, all seemed good on the once over. Sure there was the usual, "get more exercise" but I knew that, I think everyone knew that (I wonder if a doctor has ever gotten a "no, everything is peachy" answer to when they ask "are you under any stress?" It's a pointless question and should just be assumed much like giving wheel of fortune contestants the RLSNTE for free on the final puzzle). Also there is a chance my blood pressure is lower than they think as the student nurse who took it was the cutest damn thing to ever ask me to put my hand on her shoulder. 

My doctor is a wonderful old man. When we talked about my eating habits, I told him about the cooking for myself now, the organic eating and though I contemplated not mentioning the chest of red meat in my kitchen, I broke down (more from pride over a chest of red meat in my kitchen rather than open full disclosure to the man who needs to know about it). All he really had to say about it when I mentioned it was, "Awesome." So long as I'm not putting meat into a blender and injecting it directly into the chest, he seemed to love the idea (1 out of 2 isn't bad, but more on that in a minute).

To cap off finally getting around to this, I wanted to do something special and horrible before I'm told to knock it off. It's one thing when family and friends are concerned about you and want you to eat better, you can fairly safely assume they have some sort of interest in your well being. But when a near stranger (as much as you can consider someone who pokes and prods you inappropriately a stranger) tells you, perhaps you should take certain warnings to heart. 

It only seemed fair that I finally do the Julia Burger. Since I was over on that side of town anyhow, I went to Ken's Artisan Bakery for a focaccia roll to book end it. I did this, after having fasted for then 15 hours and a massive amount of blood taken from me for analysis. It was only later that evening I realized maybe that's why the girl at the counter was having trouble understanding what it was I wanted. I'll also attribute the loss of blood for why I just ate scraps and didn't end up cooking at all that day. The burger would have to wait till Thursday. 

Thursday

The Chips

As you may recall I had quite the stock pile of 1/8 inch slices of red potato left over from the simultaneously failed and successful Robinson Ranch Potatoes. And lo and behold they still seemed to be in good shape refrigerated in an air tight container. Seemed to be anyway. The chip recipe was short and simple and I thought couldn't be too bad. 

I would love to tell you the chips were flawless crispy discs of vibrant pleasure. That the brown edging on a lot of them was the best part and not bitter at all. That the old five dollar mandolin I used had cut them as perfectly as they appeared to be.

So I will. 

(pieces of the paragraph that follows may, in fact, be bold faced lies)

You don't need a fancy slicer to make good even chips. The cheap one you have won't at all slice in a manner which leaves anywhere from a quarter to half the chip tapering remarkably thinner than the rest of it. And even if it did, this would pose no problems in trying to evenly bake chips to a golden brown. If a chip does brown too much, it tastes not bitter, but somehow of fine sweet mountain honey and silky butter churned by bavarian virgins. You can also ignore any suggestions about how many baths to run the uncooked chips through and trust the one that says, "rinse till the water runs clear". And a chip half soggy raw and half dark brown are a delightful tease on the palate.

But there were about five of them that miraculously made it through the process effectively. The rest I cooked some more and though parts got overdone, they became at least edible enough without leaving me looking around for a tin can of hot water to make bread line soup.

There is a great number of combinations in the things that could have gone awry with them, I just have to practice and experiment with them some more before I make them for an actual meal again. One thing I believe I did get right, was clarifying the butter. I've heard this term before and finally got to do it. Still lacking a very small sauce pot to clarify a tablespoon of butter in, I turned once again to the trusty muffin pan. I just added the butter to a section of the pan on a burner, and while probably entirely unsafe, seemed to do the trick.

The "Julia" Burger

While I could just as easily do my own take on "Carol cooks Keller" using the Cree LeFavour book I've been keen on lately as my source, I promise this will be the last recipe out of this particular book (for a little while at least). She keeps wanting me to use peanut oil and I miss olive oil. The Julia Burger is her take on a burger inspired by a rerun of Jacques and Julia. She attributes it to "the Julia Child ethos - a fearless embrace of all things fatty and an unwavering devotion to pleasure." How could this not be my post physical meal? However I with I tried out the crispy onion rings she places with it rather than the above mentioned "chips".

Not only did it look fantastic, but the first instruction involves putting meat in a blender (I may have told my doctor about the meat, but not about this blog, we're safe) which on its own sounded like a bunch of fun. After cutting a top sirloin (seemed to not have any fat to trim off it, so went with that cut) into four parts, I got to blend the meat back to raw elements. This was brief, but a lot of fun even if I felt a little twinge of guilt about treating a steak in such a manner. But if Julia liked the idea, I like the idea.

As always these recipes are for more than one, this one serves four, and I was supposed to start with 1 1/2 pounds of steak, do the blending with some salt and pepper and shape them into 1/3 pound patties. I don't have a kitchen scale, but I think I got it ok. I just had to shut my eyes real tight and try to drum up some of that weird "instinct" I felt a twinge of last Sunday. It's almost like discovering super powers. I have to see if I can hone them before I blow up a city block or something adapting. 

It was hard to resist packing the meat together tightly or patting it down while cooking it, but I guess "air is good". Seemed to be, and comparing this to things I've tried in the past at steakhouses, I have to say a steak made into a hamburger is better than a hamburger steak.

The other stuff on the bun (and the bun)

So if you look at that picture above and think "that looks nothing like a focaccia roll," you would be thinking correctly. Even putting it off for one day caused the already quite firm bakery roll to harden even more. This is already a large enough burger that trying it on an unyielding bun, I don't know if it would have fit. Lucky for me, I'm learning that when I question the outcome of something, try to have an easy back up (I now just have to learn to question more of my potential outcomes). This is why I had a poppy seed roll handy. This is also why, having never put meat in a blender, I also defrosted one of the burger patties, that I can see myself cooking in the same way after I'm done with this entry (you know, purely to compare the two. It's scientific). 

As with the last bun I had, I just used the 170 degree oven I rest the meat in to finish to warm them up. After that is was that agave ketchup on both top and bottom. The recipe calls for mayo, but no, I've never been a fan. 

On the burger it went, cheese, bacon, lettuce, tomato, onion. The new, good mandolin was a little narrow to give me nice, unbroken circles on the onion, but big deal. Rather than the butchers counter bacon I usually get, I tried some nice applewood smoked packaged bacon. This worked out ok, but took me by surprise how different even the cooking of it really was to fresh cut counter bacon. The Cheese. Well, here's the thing about the cheese.

Oregonians take their Tillamook cheese very seriously. I defy you to find a menu in this city with a dish containing cheese that doesn't say something along the lines of "Tillamook cheese platter" or "Steak and Tillamook cheese" or "something crusted with something else in a sauce of something and, oh yeah, Tillamook cheese". Well, I didn't want to buy packaged cheese slices. Not when cheese in a giant hunk is so much better. People of Oregon, I did try to find local cheese in a size less than a Lincoln Continental, I'm just one man. All the wrapped Tillamook being way too large for even me to reasonably think of something to do with, I found a good looking New Zealand white sharp cheddar and it was square and high enough that it looked like it would turn into maybe 6 slices. Dare I say without getting evicted, it was some damn good cheese. Once I figured out how to get it on the burger that is. 

I don't have a cheese knife, a cheese plane, or dedicated cheese slicer of any sort. My grater, the wide slots were very narrow. There was only one conceivable option under the gun of a sizzling burger. The Mandolin. 

Yesterday I learned that chips are harder than they look, that focaccia wants to be used pretty quick, and that brittle New Zealand sharp cheddar doesn't like a mandolin. There were enough salvageable scraps I was able to place together on top of the meat to almost look like it would melt into something resembling a slice of cheese. So thus far, Adam 1 - Cheese 0.

Note to future, employed, rich Adam:

Kitchen Scale

Cheese Plane

A wide fancy restaurant slicer

A Camera that can focus

for now I'm still chalking these up as luxury items