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.

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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

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.

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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.

Sorry about the knife skills. My steak was way too tender and I struggled to make a clean cut without letting it fall apart. Maybe my knife needs to be sharped.

Check out the middle. It is uniformly pink.

FINAL PRODUCT

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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.

For me, cooking is a hobby that serves many purposes. It's a way to relax, and it can be pure fun to make something new. I also use it show my love for others, for I've never been good with words. Lately, I've been cooking as a way to challenge myself: I like to attempt to make people's favorite foods. Perhaps, there's a people-pleaser part of me, too, that seeks approval.

In any case, since Philadelphia still remains a relatively new city for me, I don't have many people to cook for except my brother, Christopher Pham. For those of you that know him, he eats simple foods that you would expect a 7-year-old child to enjoy. That leaves me cooking decidedly non-Paleo fare. A couple of weeks ago, I made orange sherbet for instance.

One of his favorite foods is macaroni and cheese. This particular version is extremely creamy featuring lots of butter, evaporated milk, and a mix of chedder and gruyère cheese. To add some crispyness, I topped it with toasted bread crumbs. Thankfully, he thought it was pretty good, perhaps, slightly better than his usual Kraft variety.

After some more iterations, I've settled on this recipe, The Best Macaroni and Cheese. It's not quite the best when followed literally, though. First, I use a blend of 1/2 cheddar and 1/2 Monterey Jack cheese. Also, the baking time needs to be modified. Proceed with the first 5 minutes according to the recipe. After the second 5 minutes, add the remaining milk and cheese. It's done after another 5 minutes. All in all, the baking time is cut in half.