Inspired by this article from Serious Eats, I decided to butter baste a steak. I marched down to Tucker Meats and picked up a nice, thick ribeye. Then I got to work.
The technique is pretty much as it sounds: keep spooning butter over the steak as it cooks, flipping it several times in the process. The goal is not to make the steak taste like butter, although it does pick up a nice buttery flavor. The hot butter helps to cook the steak on both sides at once. Flipping also helps to even out the heat. As a side effect, the butter helps to give some nice crunchy bits on the steak's outside.
I also made some home fries. While the steak rested, I drizzled the leftover steak butter on top. The result was deliciously crispy potato and superbly crispy potato skin. This was a very satisfying meal.
I made candied ginger a few years ago. It's not something I would do every day but I had a lot of fun doing it. I recently acquired a pressure cooker and it inspired an interesting idea to me: why not make candied ginger in the pressure cooker? It should be very soft and flavorful. Here is the result. I peeled two large ginger roots, cut them into small cubes, and put them in the pressure cooker with heavily sugared water. The traditional method first boils the ginger in plain water to soften it and then again in sugar water to candy it. The resulting candy was very tender but still with the characteristic ginger texture. It was also sweet without being overpowering. The traditional method leaves a lot of sugar crystallized around the ginger. The pressure cooker gives a much more subtle result. The ginger stays moist even after it cools but you can dry it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. That inspired me to dip it in chocolate. While I was in the b...


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