I finally posted pictures from my trip to Turkey and Israel(from 2007) and also posted photos of my trip to Mexico in the spring. Check them out in the photo section --->

As some of you know, I have a fondness for the breakfast cereal Shreddies, which for reasons unknown is not available in the United States. Over the years since I've lived in the US I've imported a few boxes every time I've gone back to the mother country, and my good friends Andrew, Andrew, Debra and Chris have facilitated my need for the good, good whole wheat Shreddies.

Today my problems are over, at least for the near future. My loving mother sent me a case of 24 725g boxes today. Check out the pictures:




I now have a Shreddies closet:


My life just got 18% better.

My mother is selling her palapa in Mexico. A palapa by definition is just a sun shelter on the beach. Her's has some upgrades:

• 20 X 40 ft Palapa
• Built in 2003, excellent condition
• Located on a pristine beach on the Sea of Cortez
• The water is less than 15 feet from front door
• Sleeps 4 comfortably

Check it out.

Tonight I tried to reproduce a recipe detailed here: http://www.alcoholian.com/?p=2300. I figure, any sight called alcoholian.com must be good.

I started out with a 1.68 lbs pound lobster I purchased today at Fairway in Brooklyn.


I dispatched this poor fellow by inserting my chef's knife in through his back, and chopping down through his head, cutting his head in half.* Threw him in a pot of boiling water for 2 minutes, then put him in an ice bath to stop the cooking.


This initial cooking was to make it easier to separate the meat from the shell. It didn't really cook the interior of the meat at all. I separated the meat from the shell, reserving the shells for a sauce. I'm really not too skilled at this, and I got covered in lobster bits here. I did manage to keep the claw meat intact when extracting it.




I sealed the meat in a plastic bag with about 3/4 of a stick of butter.


I cooked the meat at 140 degrees Fahrenheit for about 45 minutes. During this time I made a sauce from the shells, some onions, wine, cream, tomato paste (see the link above to the alcoholian for details, I didn't really photograph this).

I grilled some bread and drained the meat when I took it out of the bag.


I plated this by placing the lobster on the grilled bread, then topping that with the sauce and a sour cream/heavy cream/chive mixture (I didn't have time to make creme fraiche). I served this with some baby arugula tossed in olive oil and lemon juice.


The verdict: non-delicious. Firstly, there was way to much going on on this plate. I didn't need the bread and all the sauce and creme fraiche. Too busy. The lobster itself wasn't as delicate and perfectly cooked as I was hoping. Also, the flavour was a little too lobstery. I didn't have the rich flavour I was hoping for. All in all it was pretty ok, but not nearly as good as I was hoping.

* The actual killing of the lobster was a bit gruesome. I realized after the fact, that this was the largest animal that I had ever killed with my bare hands. After chopping the lobster's head in half the tail and little legs flailed around for about 30 seconds. I threw it in a pot of boiling water and it fought me a little bit even after being in the water for 30 seconds. I realized too that I've never really seen anything die up close. Maybe I didn't really kill it when I cut the head in half, or maybe this is just what things do when they die: the body continues fighting even after the brain is dead.

Today I tried another sous-vide recipe. Unlike last week's short ribs, which I read about on the internet, this one was fully my invention. My plan was to cook a duck breast in duck fat, using the sous-vide technique. Cooking duck in its own fat is known as confit.

I started with a Canadian muscovy duck breast. I scored the skin and fat, then seasoned it with salt and pepper.


In order to cook this breast in duck fat, I obviously need the fat. I was able to buy at tub of duck fat at the excellent Brooklyn Larder.


I vacuum sealed the breast in a plastic bag with the fat.


I cooked the meat and fat for 8 hours at 133 degrees F. This slow pouched the breast in the duck fat. The result was not terribly appetizing.


I browned the outside of the breast with my butane torch to produce a nice golden brown exterior.




The result was a nice medium rare duck breast, with a crispy exterior.


I separated the liquid that came out of the duck breast from the fat, and combined it with some garlic and red wine to make a sauce. I served this with some broccoli and rice pilaf.


The verdict: delicious, BUT I'm not sure it was anything special. I think I could have prepared the duck like this on my grill in 12 minutes. I didn't need to pouch it in fat for 8 hours. Still tasty, just not very unique.

I like to watch a lot of cooking shows. I noticed on some of the 'high-end' shows (shows that aren't trying to teach you anything, just show you really fancy food) that they often used a technique called 'sous-vide'. I looked into this a little bit and got interested. Sous-vide means vacuum in french. It involves vacuum sealing food in a plastic bag and then immersing the bag and food in a temperature controlled water bath. The idea is that the water temperature is controlled very precisely so you can then control how the food is cooked very precisely.

I got a vacuum sealer for Christmas (because I wanted to vacuum seal meat that I put in the freezer), so I decided to figure out how I could use the vacuum sealer for sous-vide at home. I did some research and found that in order to control the water bath's temperature professional chefs use an immersion circulator that retails for >$1000. I didn't want to spend that much, so I googled some more and found that some home chefs use a rice cooker to heat up water, coupled with a device that monitors the water temperature and turns the rice cooker on and off in order to keep the temperature constant.

So, I bought a commercial rice cooker (16 litres) and this device and I was set up with my own home sous-vide setup. (As an aside, literally the day after I ordered my equipment I saw an add for Sous-Vide Supreme on TV, which I didn't know existed despite considerable research.)

Here's a picture of my Auber-WS sous-vide controller. I just punch in the temperature and drop its probe in the rice cooker, which plugs into the Auber-WS:





This weekend I attempted my first real recipe with all of this equipment, to great success. I cooked some beef short ribs.

I started with some USDA prime short ribs:


I seasoned the short ribs with salt, pepper and garlic salt then vacuum sealed this in plastic bags using my Food Saver vacuum sealer:


I set the temperature to 133°F and dropped the seal ribs in the rice cooker for 24 hours.


I walked away for a day, and came back at dinner time looking forward to my ribs. I pulled them out and saved the liquid that accumulated in the bag:


At this point the ribs were essentially pouched, but also a perfect medium rare throughout. In order to give the surface some flavour, that is, in order to get the Maillard reaction to occur on the surface I used a butane torch to brown the exterior. The idea here is that that brown taste on the surface makes things taste good, but you don't want to over cook the ribs that are cooked exactly as you want them. The torch's flame is about 2700°F, so it browns the surface without the heat penetrating the surface.


I made a sauce from the liquid from the bags the ribs were cooked in, some beef stock, some red wine and some carmalized oninons.



I plated the ribs up with some roasted red potatoes and some grilled asparagus.


The verdict: delicious. Normally if you cook a touch piece of meat like short ribs you have to braise them to tenderize them. That leaves them with a shreadable, very wet consistency. With the sous-vide preparation the consistency was much more like prime rib. Moist, but not wet, pink and tender. Really very nice, and I don't think you could have done this any other way:

Hey blog fans.

Andrew and I are in the resort town of Dahab, on the Gulf of Aqaba, on the Red Sea. Since the last update we did some more sight seeing in Luxor, rented a Felucca (sail boat) on the Nile for a few hours, and then flew to the Sinai. We are staying in a fancy-ish resort, but we made friends with a British guy that runs the dive shop at the resort. He took us to a Bedouin village last night. We drove for about 20 minutes, then rode camels for a little over an hour to the village.

The village was on the beach, right next to a coral reef. We chilled out for a bit with a few beers (and had a few on the camel ride too) ate some local cuisine including some tasty kebabs and then went for a night snorkel. We slept on the beach and woke up to the sunrise over Saudia Arabia, which was about 20 km away.

We relaxed on the beach for most of the morning, when snorkeling some more, and made it back to the resort by 2. Good day.

One more day at the resort, then one more in Cairo, then home. Good trip.

Andrew and I are in Cairo. We arrived yesterday afternoon, spent the afternoon/evening wandering around yesterday, did the pyramids this morning and are going to do some more sights this afternoon.

I'm sure that if I gave it a bit more of a chance I would find things I like about Cairo, I usually do about most cities, but right now it seems like a bit of a dump. It's incredibly dusty and polluted, which is not really unexpected. The people are really the disappointment. It feels like every transaction is a scam. We got the old short change scam when coming back from the airport. When going to the pyramids the driver took us to the 'Pyramiso' hotel, and then demanded more when we wanted to go the real Pyramids (we didn't pay). The pyramids were full of people claiming to be official who obviously weren't. I've been to lots of places with touts and so forth, and often they have something of a sense of humour about the whole thing. Here it seems a little more mean spirited.

Anyway, we are headed to Luxor tomorrow and then the Sinai Tuesday night, pick up some more commandments.

Hey blog fans. I thought I'd mention a few up coming events. I'm going to Egypt next Friday with Andrew, so I'll be updating my blog while I'm away. We go for 9 days, leaving Friday night. Right now we don't have much of an itinerary, other than we think we want to do Cairo/Giza, then Luxor and then either a Nile river cruise, or fly to the Sinai. But nothing is booked, other than our flight to Cairo.

Also, I'm going to be doing another triathlon on Sept. 27. Since I don't use the blog for anything else, I thought I'd update between now and then with updates on training.

The triathlon is Olympic length, meaning that it's: 1500m swim, 40km bike, 10km run. I did another Olympic length tri in June, which went not to badly, but I was battling an ankle injury from January till the tri in June, and I think it really affected my training/race. I had the same injury for most of the summer, but I just bought a new pair of shoes, which seems to have helped my ankle a great deal. I think if I wasn't going to Egypt I would be in pretty good shape for the tri. Leaving for 9 days 3 weeks before the race is not very good for training: that's the time you should be working the hardest.

One last thing: I've added a recipe section to the website. These are recipes I have either created, or just like a lot and wanted access to when I wasn't home. Hopefully some of you will enjoy them too. I may add photos to them at some point, but that will probably have to wait for a cold winter day when I have nothing better to do.

Yesterday morning I competed in the triathlon. It went quite well. My goal was to finish in under two hours. I managed to complete it in 1:58:11.

I did the swim in the same pace it swam in the pool, which really surprised me because it was quite wavy. From trough to crest the waves were about 4 feet high. I think the wet suit and the salt water made me a little more buoyant, so maybe that helped me. My goggles fogged up, and I got way off track at one point. Given this I think my pace was really good in the swim portion.

The bike was ok. I averaged 16.4 MPH, which is about what I was doing in training. I was riding my hybrid and I think going much faster than about 17 MPH requires a lot of energy. This was my worst leg compared to the competition, but they all had road bikes.

The run felt terrible, but I ran an 8 minute 17 second mile, which is not bad for me when I'm fresh, and I think was great after an hour and a half of exercise.

I finished 92 of 260 men. I think that's not too bad for the first attempt. I think I'm going to try another one in the spring.