Since I've lost my financial independence, I only cook something nice when my brother decides that he wants it. This week, he wanted shrimp. It's been years since I've last cooked shrimp. Luckily, it came out so well that I decided to write the recipe down. I thought the tangy sauce went well with the buttery garlic shrimp.

Ingredients

• 1.5 lb shrimp, peeled, and deveined
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 12 tablespoons of salted butter
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 lemon
• 1/2 cup chicken stock, I usually make my own but store-bought stock is fine
• Parsley, preferably fresh
• 1 lb linguine, cook according the directions on the package, add 4 tablespoons of butter

Directions

1. First, pat the shrimp dry and season with the salt and pepper. Set aside.
2. Zest the lemon, and set aside. Squeeze the lemon juice into the chicken stock. Set aside chicken stock and lemon juice mixture.
3. Mince garlic, and set aside.
4. Chop parsley (about a handful), and set aside with the lemon zest.
5. Heat skillet to medium, add 4 tablespoons of butter, and spread shrimp in one layer on the skillet. Let sit for 1.5 minutes.
6. Add the minced garlic into the skillet, and wait another 1.5 minutes.
7. Flip the shrimp, and wait another 3 minutes. If the shrimp is done, set aside. Otherwise, just stir until the shrimp is fully cooked.
8. Now, remove the shrimp from skillet and store in a bowl. Pour the chicken stock and lemon juice mixture, add 4 tablespoons of butter, and stir vigorously, scraping the bottom with a spoon, until the butter melts.
9. To finish the sauce, remove it from skillet, and mix in the lemon zest and parsley. Add salt and pepper to taste.
10. Serve over the linguine. You should have 3-4 servings.

Here's my brother's extra butter version:

My good roommate Masato made donuts and left behind a bunch of dough (recipe). Clearly, I decided to turn the dough into cinnamon rolls!

It's pretty easy. Just roll out the dough and cover it with a cinnamon sugar-butter paste. The recipe for my paste is:

• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 heaping teaspoon of nutmeg
• 1/2 heaping teaspoon of cloves
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) of unsalted butter

Just cream the butter and sugar together. Roll the dough so it's about 9 inches in height and 18 inches in width. Cover the dough with the paste. Cut into 2 inch vertical strips to give you 9 rolls. Roll them up and dip them in the remaining paste. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 20 minutes. Serve with icing. I used this Ermine Icing. Yay!

In other news, life is okay. I just got back from visiting Duke, where I interviewed for the their Statistics PhD program. I thought it went well, but I'm often wrong about these things. In any case, it was great catching up with some old Duke friends. It was a particularly nice surprise to run into a friend from Boston.

The fact that I've been rejected at 2 schools so far gives me some anxiety, but I trust that things will turn all right no matter what happens.

When stuck inside because of the snow, what else is there to do but bake and code? I made these brownies here. They are amazingly moist, but I'll probably cut down on the sugar next time I make them.

On the algorithms side, I finally got to the Platinum Division on the USA Computing Olympiad. It's primarily for high school students, but I find it fun to participate anyway.

One of the competition's problems employs clever usage of binary search that I want to write about. Basically, there are times when the solution is very hard to compute, but it is not too costly to verify. If the solution is numerical and bounded, we can guess solutions with binary search. I've actually been quite familiar with this strategy for a year now, but somehow I missed it in this particular problem. Here, we use a two-dimensional binary search. Thankfully, I got enough points to get promoted to the next division anyway, anyway.

Angry Cows

Here's the problem statement:

Bessie the cow has designed what she thinks will be the next big hit video game: "Angry Cows". The premise, which she believes is completely original, is that the player shoots a cow with a slingshot into a one-dimensional scene consisting of a set of hay bales located at various points on a number line; the cow lands with sufficient force to detonate the hay bales in close proximity to her landing site, which in turn might set of a chain reaction that causes additional hay bales to explode. The goal is to use a single cow to start a chain reaction that detonates all the hay bales. There are $N$ hay bales located at distinct integer positions $x_1,x_2,\ldots,x_N$ on the number line. If a cow is launched with power $R$ landing at position $x$, this will causes a blast of "radius $R$", engulfing all hay bales within the range $x−R \ldots x+R$. These hay bales then themselves explode (all simultaneously), each with a blast radius of $R−1$. Any not-yet-exploded bales caught in these blasts then all explode (all simultaneously) with blast radius $R−2$, and so on.

Please determine the minimum amount of power $R$ with which a single cow may be launched so that, if it lands at an appropriate location, it will cause subsequent detonation of every single hay bale in the scene.

INPUT FORMAT (file angry.in):

The first line of input contains $R$ ($2 \leq N \leq 50,000$). The remaining $N$ lines all contain integers $x_1 \ldots x_N$ (each in the range $0 \ldots 1,000,000,000$).

OUTPUT FORMAT (file angry.out):

Please output the minimum power $R$ with which a cow must be launched in order to detonate all the hay bales. Answers should be rounded and printed to exactly $1$ decimal point.

So, if we assume the hay bales are sorted $x_1 \leq \cdots \leq x_N$. The minimum blast radius must be at most $(x_N - x_1)/2$ since we can just launch such a cow at the midpoint and destroy all the hay bales without the chain reaction. It's also worth noting that if the optimal blast radius is $R^*,$ then $2R^* \in \mathbb{Z}$, that is, twice the optimal blast radius is an integer. Since all the hay bales are located at integer coordinates, adding less than $0.5$ to the radius will never encompass another hay bale. Finally, the last observation is that we should fire the cow so that the very left of the blast lines up exactly with a hay bale since we would not gain anything by having the hay bale strictly inside the blast radius.

Let $L$ be the index of the leftmost hay bale hit by the initial blast. Thus, we could brute force by trying all $2R^* \in \{0,1,\ldots,x_N-x_1\}$ and $L \in \{1,2,\ldots,N\}$. To check if such values work, we can simulate the chain reaction which takes $O(N)$ time. Thus, brute force would take $O\left(N^2(x_N - x_1)\right)$ time. This is where binary search comes in.

During the contest, it was obvious to me that we should do a binary search to find $2R^*$ considering that $x_N - x_1$ could be as large as $10^9$. However, this is not fast enough, as that only gets us $O\left(N^2\log(x_N-x_1)\right)$ time, and $N^2$ can be as large as $2.5 \times 10^9$. After sleeping on it, I made the key insight that we can binary search on the index of the leftmost hay bale, too, so now we have $O\left(N\log(N)\log(x_N-x_1)\right)$ time, which is adequate.

To make this explicit, here's the code:

import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;

public class angry {

    /* check that all the hay bales to the left of idx explode 
     * if we throw cow of power T/2 at hayBales[idx] + T/2
     */
    public static boolean leftExplodes(int idx, int T, int[] hayBales) {
        double currentFloor = hayBales[idx];
        double currentR = T/2.0;
        int left; // leftmost exploded bale
        for (left = idx; left >= 0 && hayBales[left] >= currentFloor; --left) {
            if (left == 0 || hayBales[left - 1] >= currentFloor) continue;
            currentR -= 1.0;
            currentFloor = hayBales[left] - currentR;
        }
        return left == -1;
    }

    public static boolean isDiameterPossible(int T, int[] hayBales) {
        int N = hayBales.length;
        int leftMin = 0; // inclusive
        int leftMax = N; // exclusive         
        int leftIdx = leftMin + (leftMax - leftMin)/2;
        while (leftMin < leftMax) { // find smallest left such that this doesn't work
            if (leftExplodes(leftIdx, T, hayBales)) {
                leftMin = leftIdx + 1;
            } else {
                leftMax = leftIdx;
            }
            leftIdx = leftMin + (leftMax - leftMin)/2;            
        }        
        --leftIdx; // this works
        // now check that the right explodes
        double currentCeiling = hayBales[leftIdx] + T;
        double currentR = T/2.0;
        int right;
        for (right = leftIdx; right < N && hayBales[right] <= currentCeiling; ++right) {
            if (right == N - 1 || hayBales[right + 1] <= currentCeiling)  continue;
            currentR -= 1.0;
            currentCeiling = hayBales[right] + currentR;
        }        
        return right == N;        
    }        

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new FileReader("angry.in"));
        PrintWriter out = new PrintWriter(new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter("angry.out")));
        int N = Integer.parseInt(in.readLine());
        int[] hayBales = new int[N];
        for (int n = 0; n < N; ++n) hayBales[n] = Integer.parseInt(in.readLine());
        Arrays.sort(hayBales);

        // search for T = 2R
        int minT = 0; int maxT = hayBales[N - 1] - hayBales[0];
        int T = minT + (maxT - minT)/2;       
        while (minT < maxT) { // find smallest T that works
            if (isDiameterPossible(T, hayBales)) {
                maxT = T;
            } else {
                minT = T + 1;
            }
            T = minT + (maxT - minT)/2;
        }
        out.printf("%.1f\n", T/2.0);
        in.close();
        out.close();
    }

}

Yesterday, I made a leg of lamb. I rather liked how it turned out, so I'll write some notes here for posterity.

Ingredients

• 3 lbs leg of lamb, preferably with the bone
• Spices
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 lime/lemon
  • 3-4 sprigs of fresh rosemary
  • 1 teaspoon thyme
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • 1 teaspoon onion granules
• 2 cups chicken stock

Directions

1. Zest the lime and squeeze out the juice. Combine with all the spices. Make slits in the lamb and rub in the spice olive oil mixture. It looks like this.
2. Sear the leg of lamb in a dutch oven with lard. This takes about 3 minutes per side on medium-high heat. Add chicken stock to the dutch oven.
3. Braise it for about 45 minutes in the dutch oven with lid on at 325 degrees Farenheit. Remove the lid for and cook it another 30 minutes at 350 degrees. When done, it will look like this.
4. Slice and serve with reduced chicken stock. The bone marrow is an especially nice treat.

One of my favorite ways to bring people together, fellowship, and share a little bit about my culture is to cook a huge pot of phở (Vietnamese beef noodle soup for the uninitiated). It's fairly easy to make, and it's a novel experience for most people, who are accustomed to restaurant phở. I especially recommend making some during the cold winter months. After making it a few times I've come up with my own recipe. You'll need a stock pot that holds at least 16 quarts to proceed.

Ingredients

• Beef
  • 2-3 lbs leg bones
  • 2-3 lbs neck bones
  • 2-3 lbs oxtail
  • 5-7 lbs eye round roast, freeze and thinly slice, let it come to room temperature before serving
• Spices (you can opt to toast the spices over medium heat)
  • 5-10 whole star anise
  • 2 cardamom pods
  • 1 tablespoon whole coriander seeds
  • 1 tablespoon whole fennel seeds
  • 1 scant teaspon whole cloves
  • 2 sticks of cinnamon
• 2-4 nubs of ginger
• 2 medium-sized onions
• 1 dozen green onions also known as scallions
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1/4-1/3 cups of a sweetener, sugar or syrup works
• 1 cup fish sauce, I recommend the Red Boat brand
• 6 lbs of fresh noodles, bánh phở tươi
• Condiments
  • Siracha
  • Hoison sauce
  • Thai chili peppers
  • Cilantro
  • Thai basil
  • Mung bean sprouts
  • Limes
  • Green onions

Steps

1. Ahead of time, freeze your eye round roasts and thinly slice them. This is easily the most labor-intensive part. Set aside and refrigerate. Let the slices sit for 2-3 hours at room temperature before serving.
2. Parboil the bones and oxtail for a cleaner broth. Bring water to a boil. Put the bones and oxtail in the water. Let the water return to a boil. After 5-10 minutes, dump the water, and wash the bones and oxtail. Return the bones and oxtail to the pot, fill it with water, and simmer.
3. Char the onions and ginger under the broiler. This usually takes about 10 minutes. Add the onions and ginger to the pot. Also, add the white part of the green onions.
4. Toast the spices and put them in a spice bag or tea infuser. Add the bag of spices or tea infuser to the pot.
5. Add fish sauce, salt, and sweetener. Back when I followed Paleo more strictly, I refused to use sugar, so I used maple syrup. In reality, sugar works just as well.
6. Now let the broth simmer. I find 8 hours is enough. You can go longer for a more intense flavor. If you serve it after just 8 hours, you can just add more water to make more broth. It's a little bit like making a second brew of tea.
7. Add more fish sauce, salt, or sugar to taste.

Serving

1. Bring the thinly sliced eye round roast out. Wash the vegetables. Remove the thick stems from cilantro. Cut the limes into eighths. Cut the Thai chili peppers and the green part of the scallions.
2. Filter out broth into a smaller pot. Skim excess fat. Don't skim all of it, though. The fat makes the broth more savory. Bring the smaller pot to a boil.
3. To cook the noodles, bring another pot of water to a boil. Add the noodles and stir them around for about 20 seconds. Drain with a colander.
4. Put the noodles in a bowl and add the raw meat to the bowl. Pour the boiling broth over the raw meat to cook the meat.
5. For your VIP guests, dig out some oxtail from the larger stock pot. The braised, fatty meat melts in your mouth.
6. Add condiments and enjoy!

After making a few bowls, I usually let guests make their own. This recipe may not be the most authentic, but it tastes pretty good in my opinion. Notice that most times and ingredients are given in ranges and are not exact. The recipe is pretty forgiving, and you can modify it according to your preference.

Over Halloween weekend, my roommate Masato and I decided to have another one of our cook offs and made donuts together. He made these Fluffy Yeasted Donuts, and I made these Apple Cider Doughnuts. I thought mine came out pretty well, but it was pretty much universally agreed upon that Masato's came out better.

I usually eat mostly Paleo, so working with flour and dough was a very novel experience. In this particular recipe, the dough was very sticky, so it required sprinkling a lot of extra flour when rolling and cutting the dough (thanks Masato for the pro tip!). In the end, I thought that the flavor was great, but the donuts were pretty dense. I really enjoyed the fluffiness of Masato's donuts more. Some future diabetics said that it could be sweeter, but that's just their opinion.

As for life, things are going pretty well. I'm finally no longer sick, so I've gotten some good workouts in. Sprinting this morning with Michael Vo was death. I lost every set except the first, and I only won probably because he got confused. Reapplying to graduate school is definitely stressful, but I'm learning to cope. Lately, I haven't had time to code too much, but hopefully I'll get back into that soon.

On a suggestion, I decided to procrastinate and make fried macaroni and cheese balls. There'e pretty easy to make. Make some macaroni and cheese. Refrigerate it. Pack them into balls, triple bread them, and then, fry them in a wok. Serve with marinara sauce.

Some suggestions from my brother:

• Make the cheese more liquid so it oozes cheese
• Use more seasoning in the breading

As for life, I'm currently a little sick and getting lots of nose bleeds. I probably don't sleep enough and don't wear enough clothing for this cold October weather. Other than these physical ailments, I'm learning to enjoy life despite the anxiety of not having the faintest idea of where I will be next year. I find my classes pretty interesting for one. I'm either becoming more apathetic or learning to let things happen.

One of my favorite characters in literature is Sydney Carton from Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities because his self-sacrificing, unselfish love for Lucie indulges my romantic and idealistic nature. There's always the danger of become too like him, though. This quote best describes his predicament:

Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.

I love pork. And that, artlessly bold three word sentence, is an understatement. I love cooking pork more than any other meat in the market. It is simple yet challenging because it will dry up if not done right. I personally find it satisfying when I cook pork in perfection.

So here, this is a fool proof reciepe. It is "not that quick" but an easy meal to prepare for friends and family. Its origin is from momofuku roast pork shoulder.

I use this reciepe and made my BAD alterations to make this dish. It is such a versatile flavor, I can use it as the meat component for eggs benedict to asian style pork buns.

Ingredients

• 3 lbs of pork shoulder
• 3/4 cup of kosher salt
• 1/4 cup of coarse smoked salt
• 1 cup of granulated sugar
• 7 tbsp of brown sugar
• 2 tsp of ground cloves
• 2 tsp of mustard
• 1 tsp of dry rosemary
• 1 tsp of dry thyme
• Grade A maple syrup for basting

Procedure

1. Mix the salt, sugar and spice. Rub the mixture on the meat well. Cover it with plastic wrap and let it sit over night in the fridge.
2. Preheat the oven to 275 to 300 F, depending on how crunchy you want the skin. I did 300 F.
3. Dust off excessive salt/sugar, then throw it in the roasting pan. Roast it for 6 hours. Occasionally bast the meat with it's juice and maple syrup. By the way, it will smell like glory (reason why I used grade A is because the flavor more subtle than grade B)
4. Let it rest for about 30 minutes. Cover it with aluminum foil. Just incase you didn't read step 3, it will smell like glory.
5. Eat. Glory in the highest~
6. Eat more. Glory in the higest~
7. Don't stop eating. Glory in the highest~
8. I am singing to Christ, of course, not the meat. Puh lease.

Model shots

This is my first try. I forgot to dust off the salt thus the salt crustation

It is so juicey. This picture does not do justice

]

Breaking bread with my good friends

Focus is off

Fred the fish

When I was growing up, my mom was known for her homemade cream puffs. There was something special about them. My friends and I use to gather around in the kitchen, anxiously waiting for the choux to puff up in the oven. We counted how many we can each eat which subsequently lead into an argument who can have the last standing piece.

The choux was soft and lightly crispy on the outside, but that is nothing special. It was the cream inside that sealed the deal. I remember it being rich and lucsious; smooth and gentle to the palate. Just the right about of sweetness to satisfy my neverending sweettooth.

Few years later, I checked out my mom's personal cook book. The choux reciepe was standard from what I remembered, but cream was different. She made pudding instead of cream, which caught me off guard. I abhor pudding...It's consistency never look appealing to my palate. I have been unknowingly loving this atrocious lumpy paste my whole childhood.

When I made this reciepe, I kept my mom's secret charm to this delightful snack; pudding instead of good old crème pâtissière. By using pudding, the cream puff will taste more "full", due to the higher fat content, than by using crème pâtissière. There is no right way make cream puffs, it is merely a personal preference what you want in your choux.

Here, this is how I make my green tea and earl grey cream puffs.

Ingredients

Pudding

• 1/3 cup of granulated sugar
• 2 tbsp of corn starch
• 1/4 tsp of salt
• 1 and 1/4 cup of heavy cream
• 1 cup of whole milk
• 3 tsbp of Kerry Gold butter
• 3 large egg yolk
• 2 tsp of vanilla extract
• For green tea flavor: 1 tsp of matcha (green tea)
• For earl grey flavor: 3 tbsp of earl grey leaves. (not tea bags)

Choux

• 1 cup of water
• 1 cup of bread flour
• 1 tbsp of granulated sugar
• 8 tbsp of unsalted butter
• 1/4 tsp of salt
• 4 large eggs

Uhh sorry guys, I forgot to weight them out. I made this receipe before I started to weight each ingredients on a scale to be more precise.

Procedures

Disgusting pudding

1. Combine sugar, salt, cornstarch, and matcha (or earl grey) in a bowl and mix until they are incorporated.
2. Slowly add 1/4 cup of heavy cream and mix until you have a paste
3. Add the egg yolk and mix it throughly. You will get a consistency like this below.

   Weeeeeeee

4. Add the remaining cream and milk into the sauce pan then heat it using medium heat. Stir constantly.

   Ok, I promise I will clean the stovetop later...

5. Stir until ribbons can form when drizzled. Remove from heat as soon as possible. *The liquid will thicken while stirring. As soon as you feel it thickening, do not take your eyes off it. Few seconds of over-cooking it will ruin this custard. (Sorry I couldn't get pictures or video for this step. I had to concentrate on this)
6. Add butter and vanilla extract and stir it in until homogeneous.
7. Strain it. This will make your pudding smooth.
8. Cover it up with a plastic wrap like this
   

   Green tea

   

   Earl grey

9. Keep in fridge

Choux

1. Melt butter in water in a saucepan
2. Mix sifted flour, sugar, and salt in a seperate bowl
3. After butter is melted (do not let it boil), add the flour mixture all at once. Turn off your heat.
4. Return the saucepan to heat and stir until dough forms

   Ok, I promise I will clean the stovetop later...

5. Transfer the dough into bowl and stir until lukewarm. Steam should stop coming out and it should be warm to the touch
6. Add the beaten egg slowly, little at a time. I divided it by 4.

   Weeee~ who else beats egg with a chopstick?

   

   It will look wet and slimy but do not sweat, keep on stirring

   

   Bam, told ya

7. Put the mixture in a piping bag or zip lock and pipette on the baking tray with parchment paper or silpat (if you have one). As you can see I am horrible at pipetting... Give me some slack, I am a pharmacist, not a chef.

   This is hard...

8. optional: Glaze the top of the choux with another beaten egg.
9. Bake for 25 minutes at 400 F
10. Open the oven door slightly to cool down for about 10 minutes and then close it. Leave it on there for 1 hour. (This is also optional however this will make the crust crispy

Garnish

I used melted sugar. It is simple. Melt granulated sugar on a frying pan and drizzle by using a fork on the pastry. The consistency of the sugar will be threadlike and it will continously drop in a straight line when scooped up. If it drips, the sugar is too hot. It takes about 5 minutes to cool down. When the sugar gets hard, simply heat it up and make it the right consistency.

I also tried making pai-chu(japanese pie crust) and put this on the choux. I was not fond of it thus I won't explain how I made it. I made it on the spur of the moment...

Modelshots

Model shot 1

Model shot 2

Model shot 2.5

The first taste tester, Kori Kim

Conclusion

You should make the choux the day you serve. Do not get diabetes type II. End of story.

Warning: I advise you NOT to read this blog post if you are hungry. I consider this post NSFH or not safe for hunger.

This is how Phil and I make steak at our house. We have two different ways: cast iron, and sous-vide. Therefore, you can choose between the two reciepes we have provided to impress your guests, your significant others, or someone in interest...Let me stop. I cannot gurantee that you will woo the person in interest. We tried. And we both failed. So best of luck...

Anyways, cut the talk and get to it, right? I like that. I am interested into you already.

theBADchef's Sous-vide Steak

Ingredients:

Steak Seasoning

• 1 Rib eye or NY strip
• 4 Spriggs of Rosemary
• 3 spriggs of thyme
• 3 spriggs of taragon
• 1 tsp of grinded peppercorn
• 1 tsp of kosher or smoked salt This is the smoked salt I use
• 4 cloves of garlic
• ~ 2 tsbp of olive oil
• 2 tsbp of butter

Poached Starwberry in red wine

• 50 g of sugar
• 105 g of strawberries cut in half
• 150 g of red wine (DO NOT USE RED COOKING WINE)
• 1/8 tsp of nutmet
• 1/4 tsp of cloves
• 1/4 tsp of all spice

Procedure:

1. Mince the herbs just like this picture
2. Grate garlic then add it to the herb mixture. Add salt, pepper, and olive oil to make a oily paste. I have probably put more than 2 tbsp. Add enough oil to make a paste-like consistency. You can add more salt for your desired taste.
3. Coat the meat with ground peppercorn and smoked salt on both sides
4. And then it will spontaneously combust... (I blow torched it. If you don't own a blow torch, you can heat up a cast iron until it is smoking hot and cook each side of the meat quickly)
   It will look like this afterwards
5. Coat the meat in the herbal paste
6. Put it in a zip lock bag along with melted butter
7. Take out the air from the bag: Keep the bag open, then slowly submerge the bag into the water. You will notice the bag will tightly wrap around the steak. However, do not submerge the whole bag. You do not want water in this, therefore submerge the bag all the way up to the bottom line of the ziplock, then close it. It will look like this below. (I am horrible at writing instructions)
8. Sous Vide at 52.5 C for 45 minutes
9. Make the poached strawberry. Put all the ingredient in a small saucepan and boil it in medium heat for about 10 minutes (I did not measure time) or until you get a saucy consistency. Sorry for the dirty stove top. Finished picture
10. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees
11. Carefully take out the steak from the zip lock bag. It is very tender and it will fall apart if done abruptly. Recoat the steak with the herbal mixture
12. I have a baking steel in my oven so I use that to cook my steak. I turn on the broiler to high and here check it out

Yeah, that's how I make my steak.

Steak model shot 1

Steak model shot 2

Check out the middle. It is uniformly pink.

Steak model shot 3

FINAL PRODUCT

Sous vide steak, potato fried in duck fat, poached strawberry in red wine

Phil's Steak

My steak is decidedly simpler than Masato's. No sous-vide machine is required—all you need is a cast-iron skillet. My goal is to give it that classic, smokey flavor without a grill. According to Amish, it's a manly steak. My method can be summed up as sear and blast.

Ingredients

• Required
  • Steak of choice. I prefer a New York strip or a ribeye.
  • Coarse salt, smoked is preferable
  • Black pepper
  • Garlic granules
  • Onion granules
  • Paprika, smoked if possible
  • Ground dried mustard
  • Olive oil
  • Cooking fat, I use lard
• Optional for red wine reduction
  • 2/3 cup red wine
  • 2 tablespoons of butter
  • Fresh parsley or cilantro

Steps

1. Ideally, you would have planned ahead, and let your steak sit at room temperature for a couple of hours. If not, that's fine.
2. To make sure that your skillet is hot and dry, put it in the oven. Then, set the oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. Now, we season the steak. First, pat the steak dry with some paper towels. Then, we rub in the spices. I usually just eyeball it. I start with salt and sweep over it with a shaker on both sides for each spice. After that, I pour a little bit of olive oil and rub in the spices and oil. It will look something like this.
4. Wait for your oven to hit 500, and wait a couple of minutes. It's time for the sear. Put your burner to high, and set your skillet on the burner. Put in about a tablespoon of cooking fat, and wait until it starts smoking. Throw that steak on the skillet.
5. I sear a total of 8 minutes flipping every 2 minutes, so each side gets 4 minutes, but it depends on how strong your burner is.
   

   You can sear the sides, too, if you want.

6. After searing, it's time to blast, so put the skillet and the steak in the oven. Every 2-3 minutes, take it out, flip it, and check its doneness. You can either use a thermometer or the poke test. Just poke the steak with your finger. Be quick, and I promise that you won't burn yourself. The steak is done when it feels like your cheek.
7. When it's done, set the steak aside, and let it rest under tin foil for about 5 minutes. Here it is fresh out of the oven.
8. If you're not making the red wine reduction, you're done. Otherwise, set a burner to medium-high, and put the same skillet without the steak on the burner. Pour the red wine in the skillet along with some of the butter.
9. Continually add more butter and stir, scraping the bottom of the skillet, with a spoon until about 2/3 of the red wine has evaporated.
10. Add some of the fresh parsley or cilantro, and pour as much as desired over the steak. Voilà.