Blender and Sous Vide

在最近入了Vitamix的blender和Sansaire的sous vide之后,做饭风格又一次发生了变化。。

回想一下在来了美国之后我们的烹饪方式大概经历了几个阶段。最开始还是炒菜炖汤为主,比较中式,弄一顿饭有一堆东西要洗,没有抽油烟机于是炒菜的话会满屋子烟。由于xw始终坚持不买电饭煲以及我开始发现烤箱的方便之处,慢慢转换成烤肉烤鱼烤蔬菜为主。美国超市很容易买到适合烤的肉,尺寸和部位合适,价格便宜,新鲜干净。我们经常买来在烤箱里面烤的是羊肉和三文鱼,偶尔也买牛肉和猪肋排。烤肉用的是一次性的锡纸盘,放到烤箱定时拿出来烤盘一扔就好,操作简单,需要洗的东西少。

不过总的来说主要还是在外面吃或者叫外卖,一周一般也就做个一两次饭。。

Blender简单的说就是用来做smoothie的东西,类似冰沙和奶昔,但也可以不那么冰或者不那么奶。用低转速的话也可以用来做一些西式的冷汤比如gazpacho。我们一般往blender里丢绿叶蔬菜,各种水果,芹菜胡萝卜之类的,加上水和冰打个smoothie一分钟就好。各类东西的配比一开始基本还是得照着配方来,熟悉了之后可以自由发挥一点冰箱里什么看着顺眼就丢什么。这边超市里面有卖各种蔬菜水果的切碎冰冻版,基本就是用来做smoothie的。

Sous Vide似乎没有什么流行的中文译名,大意就是低温烹调法。用某些设备把一锅水加热保持在某个特定的温度,一般在六七十度之间。把要煮的东西用真空塑料袋(ziploc)封好放进去,煮个一小时左右,然后肉类一般可以拿出来再两面煎个几十秒,据说比较fancy的方法是用喷枪,我现在还是在用一个grill pan。Sous Vide最主要的目的就是让肉的熟度从里到外一致,并且通过精确的控制温度可以精确控制肉的熟度。换句话说,这几乎就是一个为了做牛排发明的东西……比较厚的好牛排自己用烤箱或者锅是很难搞出medium rare的,一般都是外面熟过头里面还太多血,为了把瘦的部分弄熟结果要牺牲脂肪部分的口感。用了这个就省心了,57.5度一小时就是我要的medium rare,产出及其稳定。于是现在我每周去Trader Joe’s买两块肋眼回来想吃肉了就做一个。

Sous Vide除了做牛排之外当然还可以用来做别的。最简单的是鸡蛋因为鸡蛋不需要密封,直接连壳丢水里就行了。。顺带提一句用塑料袋密封牛肉其实也不是很麻烦,只要把装着肉的袋子浸到水里靠水压把气排掉就可以。鸡蛋的蛋白比蛋黄凝结温度低一点,用Sous Vide可以精确的搞出各种效果的煮蛋,具体可以看一些文章比如这篇。需要注意的是很多文章推荐的65度蛋做出来会是很流体的状态,要想做中国人比较习惯的hard-boiled egg大约要用73度,可以做出刚刚熟但很嫩的质感。

Sous Vide菜谱上还有一个经常提到的是三文鱼,但我试了一次之后觉得跟烤箱直接烤出来的没有明显优势。羊肉没试但我觉得这些基本会做到全熟的东西都同理。于是现在就基本只用Sous Vide来做牛排了,偶尔煮个蛋。但我觉得这么一个200$的东西只用来做牛排就很值了。

于是我们现在的一顿典型的在家做的饭就是做一块牛排,打两杯smoothie。。开火时间一分钟,需要洗的东西是一个烤架两个盘子两套餐具两个杯子,统统扔洗碗机。科技改变生活。。

Unbroken

In Portland I went to watch the movie “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” with my cousin and saw the trailer of “Unbroken”. I was intrigued by the trailer and My cousin recommended the book to me, said it was a bestseller and pretty fun to read. I bought it right after.

It took me a few weeks to read the book, mostly on subway. From the movie trailer I thought this book would be full of cruel tortures done by Japanese, which can be quite out of imagination and usually attract readers. But actually there is much more than that. The book is a biography of Louie Zamperini, from his childhood to his short but shining athlete career, then his legendaries in the army and as a POW. The days he drifted in the ocean were like a “Life of Pi” story but more real. And there is indeed a large part of the book dedicated to his POW experience. There is even a pretty large part at the end to cover Louie’s post-war life.

I like the book a lot. It’s a truly amazing story that drives readers asking what is going to happen next. A better part of credits should go to Louie. His real life story makes most fictions look mundane. The author also did a great job of collecting story pieces and weaving them together wonderfully.

Believe it or not, the sadistic anecdotes in Japanese POW camps somehow resonate with my middle school life. The book said in a POW camp “he wasn’t permitted to speak, whistle, sing, tap, read or look out his window”, and there are camp guards inspecting outside and look inside windows, who may jump through windows and catch someone. The rules and the scenario are almost exactly the same as the evening self-study sessions in my middle school. Also the POWs were forced to kill flies and have a “competition”, that also happened in my middle school..

I read the book on Kindle and it made me realize one shortcoming of Kindle e-book compared to paper book: it’s not as convenient to flip to the later part of a book and take a peek. When I read Louie was freed from Japanese, Kindle showed it as 60% of the book. So I kept wondering what the hell was the remaining 40% about… But it would take quite a few clicks and flips to find it out quickly on Kindle, so I chose to hold my curiosity and keep reading page by page, until I found the book actually ended when the progress showed 70%! The last 30% is acknowledgement, references and a preview of the author’s other book…