AROMA RICE COOKER FOOD STEAMER

Tagged! by so many of my Flickr friends I lost track of them all!

Name: Mike
Gender: Male
Age: Do you really need to know? Not old enough to be collected as antique, but old enough to be in the rubbish bin!
Where you're from: Fort Worth, Texas
Eye color: Right eye = Brown. Left eye after the accident = sort of a mess.
Hair color: black, whatever I got left.
Favorite sport: Shooting.
Does sleep count as a sport? If so, I am very good at that!
Favorite colours: Black, gray and green.
Favorite band: Tom Waits. He is not a band, but he is my favorite contemporary musician.
Siblings: One younger sister.
Tattoos: none
Piercings: none, one possibly through my brain.
Hobbies: Cooking, sculpting, drawing, model building, reading, shooting, collecting old firearms.

1. If you could meet one person, dead or alive, who would it be and why?

Richard Feynman.

2. What did you wanna be when you grew up?

A dentist, a historian, a good cook and I want to look like Captain Jack Harkeness.

3. What's your biggest asset?

Ability to make friend, talking to people, and ability to sleep.

4. What's your favorite late night snack?

Left over pizzas or steaks...fried chickens are good too!

5. If money were no object, what would you like to do?

Collect weird and old militarias. Volunteer for archeological digs. Travel and eat my way through the world like Anthony Bourdain.

6. Name one talent you wish you had.

Photographic memory and ability to write well.

7. If you knew then, what you know now.

I would have kept my mouth shut and my head down, fly under the radar.

8. Would you rather take a dip in a lake or in the ocean?

Lake, cause I don't like dry salt on my skin, nasty and sticky. But I rather drown in an ocean, much more interesting place to deposit my bones.

9. What are your 2 favorite movies?

This is a hard one. I got so many! Amelie and Groundhog Day for now. I change my mind on daily bases; depends on how I feel.

10. List 3 things you'd like to achieve in 2011.

1. To do well in school, get to my ultimate goal in the end.
2. To be in better physical shape
3. Not to be alone.


This picture of me as some a tin-pot country's guerrilla leader!

So I wanted to try this new fangled sous vide low-temperature cooking. Bought a not-so-special T-Bone / Porterhouse and vacuumed it with a bit of steak pepper and herb salt. Got my styrofoam cooler and added a hole in the top for a little silicone tube, and some drainage holes. Hot water collects in the funnel, flows through tube to the bottom of the cooler and drains just under the lid. Thermometer pierced through lid to do whatever it is that thermometers do. Just over 7 hours at 55°C. Searing in hot pan produces lots of smoke, little else. The meat is tender throughout, but I miss the range of textures you get from a "traditional" steak: crispy on the outside, with a juicy pink centre and melt-in-your-mouth fat... This steak was greasy and tallowy, with a hint of fishiness, though (to be fair, I don't know how far the method is to blame for the Flavour Fail).

I will definitely not try this again for steak. I may give it another try for some other cut of meat.