So I was requested by thranos to post about my duck confit creation.
For those of you who haven't heard me rave about cooking things sous vide, a quick explanation.
Vacuum-sealed foods, temperature controlled bath (sub boiling temperatures), cooking time til pasteurization, sear Results: tender, intensely flavorful foods that retain a lot of interesting textures not destroyed by higher heat. Duck confit is a classical way of preserving meats by cooking meat in its own fat. The fat acts a barrier to bad stuff and preserves food. Classically used in a dish like cassoulet, they usually cost about 8 bux a leg from D'artagnan. Now it usually takes a lot of duck fat for each leg (think 8 cups for 6 legs) and at 4 bux per 7oz of duck fat, it ain't cheap So after purchasing 2 dollar frozen duck legs from the chinese supermarket (L&L on Northern blvd), brine them in salt, sage, garlic and bay leaf....remove, pat dry, season with salt and pepper and 2 tbls duck fat, vacuum seal and get ready to cook! (basically the cost of each leg is about 3 bux of consummables) First: the temperature controller: Ranco ETC-111-000-000 Prewired At first when I ordered, they sent me a non-prewired one, quickly emailed them and they sent me the right one and a prepaid postage to mail it back. Excellent customer service. You plug your cooking thingy into the controller which has a temperature probe and will turn on and off to keep the temperature you tell it to (heating or cooling)
Recommended temp for duck confit is 176F for 12 hours
 My trusty rice cooker at work! What's good about the rice cooker is that it's a pretty fast and even heating thingy, so i don't have to get a circulator (but it would be nice) to guarantee evenness in temperature. Other sous vide home enthusiasts buy two aquarium bubblers meant for fishies to do the job.
 just taking its sweet time in the water, btw i use the cheap reynolds handi-vac system, while not as strong as the slick foodsaver vac, it's much cheaper and i can open and close the bags as i please (e.g. vac sealing and freezing unused coffee beans/ground coffee) 
So after sous vide-ing the meat comes out tender, but food is always better with a little crust secondary to the trusty Maillard reaction. The theory is though, if you pan sear you could end up cooking the meat too much and thus ruin the whole point of sous vide. So you want a heat source that will quickly heat the outside without cooking the inside. Hence the blowtorch! Some ppl think propane gives off odors, so butane is preferred. This torch just screws on to the cans of butane you get at chinese supermarkets for hot pot.
 it's scary how the flame licks around the food, and tachieving even brownness is quite difficult blowtorchin' aint easy (one hand camera, one hand blow torch....hahahaha)
 The other great advantage (and one used extensively by restaurants) is that you can ice-shock it and freeze it. The whole purpose is to rapidly cool the meat to prevent botulism spores from cultivating. Once frozen or refrigerated below temperature, food is readily available to reheat (in the water bath) and finished in a manner of minutes. Yes most meals you eat at nice restaurants are prepared this way...woohoo! one for later!
 And on another note One of the things I've really come to appreciate while being in NYC, are good italian ingredients (btw I still think Boston italian food is better...although that may change when I finally hit up Arthur Ave in the Bronx) One of the things italians do best is Salumi aka Charcuterie aka preserved meat goodness One of my favorite discoveries is guanciale! Salt cured fatty pork cheeks used in the classic dish of bucatini amatriciana. It's a great bacon substitute, and now i will never go back. When trying it out, it was definitely saltier, but porkier, sweeter, buttery (as Dot described it "it tastes like toast")...and yeah just amazing.
 and as some of you may know....i love pizza....but i can only make it with certain ingredients: mozzarella di bufala, san marzano DOP sauce, parmiggianno or grana padano, good olive oil, and of course lots of fresh basil)
 and the finished product: guanciale and porcini pizza neapolitan style (buffalo mozz is so creamy and delicate...it's a def must)
 as you know I love Frank pepe's white clam pie, but until they open their location in yonkers, i have to figure out a substitute....so my own rendition with precooked clams, guanciale, prechopped garlic oregano and parm, olive oil
ultimately needed more clam flavor and moisture.....will still need to get pepe's in the future 
and a twist on a classic French salad, salad lyonnaise which is essentially is frisee salad tossed with dijon vinagrette and topped with poached egg and bacon....here's my rendition with guanciale (ok my poaching skills still suck...i think i'll just poach in shell sous vide from now on)
 Another meat that I love that was introduced to me by Danny is Porchetta! Now porchetta is an deboned, herbed, rolled pork roast that is served on the streets, made fresh, sliced to order and made in to sandwiches. Fairway (as well as other places) has this one in the deli section made from insanely delicious pork from kentucky (some berkshire hybrid pigs) for 24 bux a pound....absolutely amazing....but rather than constantly shell out all that money, i decided to make my own: just imagine roasting a whole pig like this.......wow 
yeah i pretty much went to town on all the spices......good stuff....
 another interesting meat is Speck, which is pretty similar to prosciutto but it has Austrian influences and covered with juniper berries on the outside of the meat making it not only porky/tender/fatty/silky/salty goodness but another edge of spice with pine
 Finally when i was at wellesley awhile back, i spotted this moka pot in meagan's room and grew instant appliance envy. The moka pot is essentially a stovetop percolator that takes a boiling water chamber, shoots it through espresso ground coffee and up a long tube into the collecting chamber. It creates an espresso strength brew..aka stovetop espresso....not quite like espresso, no 9 bars of pressure, no crema, not fincky with roast/grind quality....a pretty simple cup to brew.....so i ended up trekking to ikea, getting the stainless steel 6 cup and the 2 dollar battery powered milk frother. Now the original design was by Bialetti, and they also came up with the "Brikka" which apparently adds a pressure valve to the top of the stem, increasing pressure and creating more of a "crema" which still isn't quite the same...but supposedly is nonetheless a more complex and satisfying cup (the 4 cup maker costs 50 bux....this 6 cup costs 20....)....here's my attempt at trying to get crema (the foamy thing that floats on top that espresso lovers enjoy so much) 
and yes cappucinos and lattes usually require steaming milk to create froth/microbubbles which are insanely delicious....the 2 dollar wand just whips up the stuff to give a runnier but close enough equivalent no latte art skills....but nonetheless 22 bux for this rig is much cheaper than the minimum 200 dollar espresso machine....and about 5 trips to abp/starbucks
 more pictures to come! | 
