Grilling with Airfryer

We've had an airfryer for a little while now. Like most of the people, we've started with fries and nuggets, but the more we used the device, the more adventurous / brave we've become. After roughly a year, we now cook dishes a bit more complicated like cakes, fishes or eggs. One of the challenge has been to master the beef cooking. While it doesn't replace the real grill / barbecue - mainly for that smoky charcoal flavor - it adds a different way of cooking. The one bonus we have with our airfryer model when it comes to cook meat, is that it's equiped with a meat thermometer and a phone app with lots of options for a precise cooking.

Here we have a piece of roughly 1,5 - 2kg of Atria's premium marbled beef, who apparently was voted World's Best Steak in 2019. Truth to be told, this cut is among the very best money can buy outside the 3 beef heavyweights that are Kobe & Wagyu (Japan), and Txogixtu (Spain). Incredibly soft and tender, almost like having a piece of grilled butter in the mouth

The bottle of Ribera del Duero has been bought online in a Spanish webshop, like most of our spanish wines.

This piece of beef of approx. 800gr. is wrapped with bacon to prevent the extremities to dry up. The bacon slices keep the meat moist and juicy during the cooking.

A probe is inserted in the meat. As we want our beef rare, the target to reach is 54° at the heart of the piece. The cooking duration is roughly 35-40min.

After the cooking is done, the beef is rested for 10min. before carving.

The result is a beef beautifully cooked, red and juicy. It is served with a creamy blue iberico cheese sauce, and a courgettes fricassee.

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EDIT 9.5

Now with a 500gr piece of Iberico pork Pluma cooked 26min. until it reaches 61°, for a pink meat. Works a treat, but the real charcoal grill wins hands down. Unfortunately, for all the airfryer qualities, the real grill is a must for Iberico pork.

Ole in Tampere

If by any chance you're in, or soon to be in Tampere, and you like spanish food, go to Tampereen Kauppahalli (Tampere Market Hall). There's a small stall managed by a spanish guy from the Castilla y Léon region, dealing all sort of tapas. The guy is truly passionate about food and wines, and imports all his products directly from Spain (including the wines). If Jamon Iberico de Bellota with a glass of red wine from the Ribera del Duero is you thing, then, this is the place. Highly recommanded. (not sure if he speaks finnish as we only spoke spanish-ish with him).

A la normande

Yesterday was grey and a bit rainy - and incidently the french national day, or the "Bastille Day" as refered to by the anglo-saxons. The perfect setting for something more filling than a summer salad. Something like a proper sunday roast the french way (if there is one). More precisely "à la normande" or the Normandy way. On a side note, when there's cream in a recipe it becomes "à la normande". Go figure...

So, you take a 1.5kg piece of premium pork rack like the one above in the pic, remove the rib bones and place them in an oven dish alongside the roast (the meat is tied with butcher's strings to keep it's shape and make it cook more evenly). Add the holy trinity (chopped onions/carrots/cellery), some garlic cloves, an entire 1L bottle of french dry cider (Brittany or Normandy depending of your taste), a large cup of veggie stoke, salt and black pepper. Wrap the dish with foil and to the oven for 1.5h @ 175. When the time is elapsed, remove the foil and back to the oven for 1/2h, the time for the juice to reduce, and the meat's skin to roast properly. Then, it's time to remove the juice/stoke and filter it. In a deep pan, mix butter and flour, and add the roast juice little by little, just like a bechamel or a brown sauce. Then to finish things up, add a bit of cream and a generous spoon of calvados. Carve the roast in thick slices and serve them with the hot creamy sauce. The side can be a mash, or some pan fried apple slices in butter, or in our case, a whole baked apple. Serve it with a light red wine from the Loire or the Beaujolais... or you can go full cider. Truly delish.

Antipasto

Found these italian black truffle sausages in k-citymarket Sello, which gave us the occasion to do a great italian antipasto: "Salsiccia e mozarella al forno". Dead easy to do and super quick to cook.

The sausages have been gently roasted in a deep pan with a bit of sun flower oil, lid on for 10min. Once cooked, they've been butterflied (split open), and placed in small oven plates. The filtered juice has been poured on the sausages (you can eventually add some crushed tomatoes or a few spoons of Marsala in it) as well as generous pieces of fresh mozarella di buffalo on top. A bit of black pepper and cayenne and to the oven under the hot grill for a few min. until the cheese melted.

Best enjoyed on its own with a good country bread and a glass of italian red or white. Yummi.

Du pain, du vin, du Boursin*

"Boursin" is a national institution. A monument in the french gastro folklore.

Most children are introduced to the world of cheeses through Boursin - along with 2 other classics "Babybel" and "La vache qui rit". Since its creation in the 60s, generations of french have enjoyed this garlic & parsley flavored fresh cheese, and I could bet my life that there isn't a single french who doesn't know about it. There are many ways to eat it: spread on bread or in sandwiches, with eggs, mixed in sauces, or like us on a baked potato. While slowly melting on the hot potato, the Boursin releases its engaging garlicky scents that makes you really hungry. And it's super yummi.

Can be found - sometimes - in Prisma or K-City market.

* "bread, wine, Boursin" refers to the commercial slogan used for over 20 years on tv.

With the Boursin baked potato, a few pieces of grilled pork tenderloin and a salad (as well as strong Dijon mustard). A few glasses of a light Saint-Nicolas de Bourgueil bought in France complete the dinner. 

And the Iberico goes on

We have been in love with Iberico pork ever since our first stay in Spain, years ago. 

For the spanish people, pork is more than a culinary tradition. It's a quasi religious devotion. No wonder the Iberico pork, mainly "pata negra" has no equivalent in the world. It is simply the best meat money can buy. And since a few years now, one can find this highly sought-after pork in Helsinki. We did grill last year different cuts like the "Secreto" and the "Pluma". Now we have found a new cut: the "Presa". This cut is located  slightly below the tenderloin, in the shoulder area. Because it is well marbled, this pork cut is incredibly tender and melt in the mouth. The meat itself is presented thinly sliced, almost like korean bbq style.

Because the slices only need seconds to cook, we opted against the the coal grill in part due to laziness, but also because of the weather outside, the meat would have been cold in a matter of seconds. Instead, we used our multi-functions Lagrange waffler that can can be fitted with grilling plates, and thus becoming a "parilla".

The slices need roughly 15 to 20sec. to cook, as the meat should be pinky and moist inside.

Once cooked, the meat is brushed with a mixture of organic spanish olive oil and "Pimentón de la Vera" powder

To go along are the usual suspects, roasted Pimientos de Padron & baby peppers, as well as garlic potatoes

To stick to the evening theme, we did have pieces of Iberico sheep cheeses, one being with black truffles.

A bottle of "Hacienda Monasterio Reserva Especial 2013" completes the dinner.

(bought in a spanish webshop)

Charcuterie

If you go to Stockmann food market (city center), you can now buy this "Pâté en Croûte Richelieu" - or pâté in a pastry crust "Richelieu". This is the exact same pâté on sale in most french food markets at roughly the same price (30€/kg). As a french, I can eat kilos of this stuff, as it is one of my all-time favorite. If you haven't tried it yet buy some, and like me, you'll be soon addicted. As far as I know and unlike in France, it's only on sale at around the end of the year for Christmas.

We served the pâté at dinner with a bit of italian cold cuts...

... with some more french pâtés (chilli & mushrooms), olives and baby gherkins.

Bottles of Amore della Valpolicella Zenato Classico 2017 complete the dinner.

 

from Toulouse with sausage

The "saucisse de Toulouse" takes its name from the south-west city where she was first created. There are many ways to cook it: gill. pan, oven, in stew or with the french classic "cassoulet". Its taste is very characteristic and can't be mistaken for another sausage. When in France, it's usually bought fresh from the butcher shop. Of course here in Finland, since there's no french butchers - at least not in Helsinki - it can only be found packed (Stockmann Food Market - Aleksanterinkatu), but it's already good to have that.

The unpacked sausage.

First, the sausage is pan fried for a few min. in sunflower oil. It's not a good idea to use olive oil in this case, because it becomes too hot too quickly, and the sausage would grill too much or being burned.

Then chopped garlic is added, a glass or two of dry white or red wine, a few cherry tomatoes, a bit of "Pasta Rossa" spice mix (found in most supermarkets), salt & black pepper. The dish is cooked for 20min. lid on. When ready, chopped parsley and a few table spoons of extra virgin olive oil are added, and it's ready to serve. Can be eaten by itself with a good bread, or with a creamy mash or polenta, or in our case with sauté potatoes. Not very expensive, super easy to do, and truly yammi.

When the sun's out, so do the plates

 

... a few roasted veggies, some organic greek feta, a bit of dry oregano, a few drops of spanish organic olive oil Ybarra, all mixed into a summer salad. Add some cold cuts, a good country bread, a few glasses of Chassagne-Montrachet, and simplicity leads to happiness.

Now we can call it a Sunday Roast

 

So, the 2nd half of yesterday's pork roast is now a proper sunday roast, albeit in a different form. The sauce is made with 2 bags of "Knorr's Green Pepper" mixed with the rest of the roast juice kept in the fridge, and a small glass of Cognac. The sliced cold pork is put to warm up in the sauce, while defrosted french fries meet the fryer for a few min. Now we have it: sunday roast. Or have we?

(served with a pint of cold organic "Lapin Kulta Pure" beer)

An almost sunday roast

More like a saturday roast... 

Because we were duped by the weather phone app into believing that the whole day would be cloudy and rainy, we decided to have some comfort food that is traditionally done in fall/winter. Well, it appears that it was sunny & warm all the way. But what the hell! 

So what we have here is a 1.5kg pork roast, complete with skin & fat, bought in Prisma Itis. Now let's make a pause. In this Prisma, unlike many others in town, one can buy entire racks of pork if you ask the butcher for it. The one thing to do is to ask to remove the bones if you can't do it by yourselves, and put them in the bag with the meat, as they're essential to make tasty juice/broth. Now, this roast is seated on a bed of bones plus the usual suspects: carrot, celery, onion, garlic, parsley salt & black pepper, and the skin is rubbed with oil and salt to make it golden & crispy - or as the english say, crackling(s). A pint of hot water is added and into the oven for about 2h/175° (if the liquid level drops too much during the cooking, hot water may need to be added from time to time). When the cooking is done, the pork is removed from the oven dish and back for a few min. on a tray in the oven, and under the grill for the skin to be really crispy. Meanwhile, the juice has been filtered with all the the veggies bits removed, and a brown sauce is made (butter & flour mixed in a pan, meat juice added little by little like a bechamel, cream added toward the end, as well as salt & pepper.)

The roasted pork is carved in thick slices, and served in a hot plate with a super creamy/buttery mash, and the brown sauce. And we did even have the odd lingonberries on the side (fresh from the freezer). Best enjoy with a glass of beer or a light red (like those from the Loire Valley, France). Delish.

A glass of this rather unusual pink port concludes the dinner.

 

Vappu Español

2 weeks ago during the Easter week-end, we did grill some Iberico pork - although it was Pluma. This time, it's the turn of its equally fatty cousin "Iberico Secreto" to have the honour of the grill. Even though connoisseurs say Pluma is the finest cut, we have to say both are great, and there's little difference in the taste, Secreto being probably a tad fattier. Some say that Pluma is best for grill, and Secreto for parilla, but it's just an expert's quarrel, and frankly who cares?

As the Pluma, the Secreto has been sprinkled with sea salt (oooops! forgot the black pepper) and char grilled for roughly 5/6min. each side, lid on. Beware if you have close neighbors: the fat layer, when grilling, produces a lot of smoke!

Before being carved, the grilled pork is rested a few min. for the juice to flow through the meat.

Iberico Secreto al grill con tapas de verduras.

(roasted peepers salad, spicy artickoke, stuffed pepper, grilled mushrooms and harb marinated olive. These and some others can be bought in Stockmann Itäkatu, but need to be "upgraded" at home).

As a rule, good meat needs good wine: "Pago de Carraovejas Tinto 2014 Reserva" (a special vintage from Pago - bought on a spanish webshop). Great match.

 

Iberico rules the piggy world

You're maybe familiar with spanish pork Iberico Secreto, which is a fine cut of meat. But do you know Iberico Pluma? Put simply, Pluma is the best spanish pork cut money can buy - at least here in Helsinki. Pluma is a special cut taken from the neck end of the Iberico pork loin. In Spanish, pluma translates to "feather", and is sourced from free-range Iberian Black Pigs. Pluma does have an abundance of fat that covers the lean meat underneath. And it is precisely the high amount of fat that makes pluma so tasty and succulent. It really needs to cook on a grill to reveal the true extend of its flavor, charred on the outside and medium rare in the middle. And once you've tasted it, there's no going back!

This 500gr Pluma cut needs 3 hours to defrost. Just the right amount time to open a bottle of Pago de Carraovejas 2019 (from the Ribera del Duero, bought on a Spanish site), and let it decant quietly.

But before that, we had a vey special tapas: a few slices of jamón Ibérico de Bellota - best ham in the world no less, with a few olives stuffed with super hot piri piri pepper, and a few glasses of "Can Sala Cava Brut 2008" (Alko). Usually, you eat the jamón with red wine or with a glass of dry Fino or Manzanilla. But we had that bottle in our wine cabinet, so...

The pork has ben liberally sprinkled with sea salt & black pepper, and has been put on a hot grill 6 min. on each face, lid on. The meat is well charred and juicy...

... then cut in stripes, and lightly brushed with a mixture of "Pimenton de la Vera" powder and extra virgin olive oil.

The meat is served with a few grilled Pimientos de Padron. With a glass of Pago red this is pure heaven. A dinner like this in a restaurant in Helsinki would cost BIG bucks. But tbh, I don't think of any restaurant serving this type of high end spanish food. Anyway, if you want to treat yourself or your guests, go for Iberico Pluma. Out of this world...