cooking – Eric Thomson's Starship Stories

Last month, our scuba diving expedition saw us travel on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so we never actually had a proper Christmas meal, surviving on bar food and airport snacks instead. But I’m about to make up for that tonight. On the menu will be a beautiful turkey breast prepared sous-vide, with all the trimmings (except for cranberry sauce – too much sugar). The significant advantage of this cooking method is the near impossibility of ending up with dry turkey meat. The breast will be cooked to the same juicy consistency all the way through. The softly falling snow outside will help give the right ambiance as well.

In my last blog post, I spoke about the fickleness of inspiration. Right now, I’m unfortunately besieged by the inertia of procrastination. Progress on Victory’s Bright Dawn over the last week has been excellent. I’m just about at the 20% completion point, writing approximately one chapter per day. And yet today, I’m doing everything except writing, but not because I’m blocked. I know exactly what happens in the next chapter. However, I’ve been spending more time staring at dancing snowflakes outside than at the blank page of the manuscript, when I’m not planning out the evening meal, which will take three to three and a half hours of cooking time on top of everything else. Oh well. I’m sure that I’ll still manage to get my daily quota done at some point. Perhaps when the new keyboard I ordered from Amazon shows up this afternoon, I’ll find the mental fortitude to overcome my laziness. There’s nothing like a new toy to generate a burst of enthusiasm and energy, and since it’s a mechanical keyboard, it’ll feel better to an old school touch typist such as myself than the ergonomic one I currently use. Besides, muscle memory being what it is, I never did get used to the non-standard way in which some of the keys are placed, even after a year of daily use, and over time, the little mistakes caused by not finding the right key in the right spot add up.

When will I be done with Victory’s Bright Dawn? At this point, I’m not committing myself to an estimate. The one thing that’s sure is the snow will be gone by the time it shows up on the bookshelves. Beyond that, it depends mostly on my daily struggle with inspiration and procrastination. My hour at the gym every morning takes care of the perspiration.

Among the many other non-writing talents I hone regularly (demolition man, do it yourselfer, photographer, scuba diver, husband, etc) I also cook. All the time. And I like to try new techniques because I can get bored by my own cooking rather quickly, even though Mrs Thomson, the beneficiary of my culinary efforts, never seems to get bored. I suppose not having to do the work yourself makes one more appreciative. Over the non-snowy seasons, I tend to use my gas grill and charcoal smoker/cooker rather frequently, but even with the best of intentions and slow cooking techniques, one can only get so far in producing cuts of meat that are suitably charred on the outside and juicily tender on the inside.

Enter sous-vide cooking.

I recently acquired the means to carry-out sous-vide cooking by purchasing an immersion circulator. It wasn’t exactly inexpensive, but then, I do tend to take my food seriously enough that my doctor noticed (that means I need to lose some weight!). The technique is simple. Season the meat, seal it in bag with all the air removed and immerse it in water at a given temperature for ‘x’ amount of time. Once that’s done, sear it briefly with an open flame (grill, bbq or propane torch) and serve. So far, I’ve tried it with steak, pork chops, chicken breast, salmon and haddock. The steaks turned out medium rare from edge to edge, superbly tender with the tough parts mostly dissolved, the fish buttery and moist to the point of almost dissolving on the tongue and the pork chops moister than I’ve ever achieved. Only the chicken didn’t profit as much from sous-vide, but that stands to reason. Chicken breast is lean and tender to begin with. Tonight I’ll try lamb loin chops and tomorrow, wild boar medallions.

Eventually, I’ll tackle the more difficult cuts of meat, such as beef back ribs, which need to spend two days (yes 48 hours!) in the sous-vide bath to dissolve the tough connecting tissues and turn into something closer to fall off the bone tender. Pork ribs are on the horizon as well, although I’ve pretty much perfected my technique to slow cook those in the oven or smoke them on the Big Green Egg. One of the techniques I’ve read about was to smoke the ribs for an hour or so to get the flavor going and then place them in the sous-vide immersion. Things to try.

My editor has promised me that I’ll see her comments on Like Stars in Heaven by the end of the long weekend, i.e. in the next 48 hours or so. In the meantime, the first draft of Howling Stars stands at more than 40% completed and will possibly hit the 50% mark by Monday.

If all goes well, Siobhan Dunmoore’s third adventure will be published in August and the fourth Zack Decker sometime mid-autumn, say October. Three books in 2016! Not bad for my first year as full-time scribbler.

Instant Update: the sous-vide lamb loin chops were, hands down, the best I’ve ever eaten. Moist, tender, evenly cooked, flavourful. Delightful!