Sous Vide for Home Cooks

This method has become increasingly popular over the years for both restaurants and now home cooks. This fall, the first device ever, designed for the home kitchen was introduced for cooking sous vide. It is called Sous Vide Supreme and retails for around $500.

I mentioned this to a sous chef. His response was a little confused - "why would you need that, why not just put a pot of water on the stove?" While this may seem laughable to and primitive - it is the most practical and simple method of cooking sous vide, which we employ at the restaurant where I work. It is accessible to the home cook with nothing but a kitchen, a stockpot and a clean water supply. I cooked this way for years before even upgrading to a vacuum seal setup. Still, the comment raises an interesting question - why would a home cook want/need something like this? For me, this has been a gradual process of upgrading.

The one greatest disadvantages, is most the sensual gratification of the cooking process is removed. The sounds of meat searing, or pasta simmering, the smell of a chicken roasting and filling the house with the warm oven air are all lost, traded for precision and control. While this is beneficial for restaurants and commercial operations that need to produce large amounts of food consistently, the sociological value of home-cooking and family-togetherness are removed. The process is very sterile and unrewarding up until the point that food is eaten, which on top of that, add potentially hazardous.

However, there a number of great advantages. Cleanup is much easier in general because the plastic bag is later discarded. The only leftover dishes are the ones used for serving and eating. You can heat up a spaghetti sauce in the same water you used to cook the pasta. It won't burn or splatter as in a microwave or require stirring and attention.

The heat levels are relatively low. If you live in a hot climate, or if your home is not air conditioned this can be a great advantage. It does not heat up the house. It requires no attention. You can leave, go to sleep, do your taxes, watch youtube, etc. There is no safety risk in leaving the appliance unattended.

Safety: Sous vide cooking requires more knowledge and care than conventional methods. An unskilled cook could easily create health hazards with perfectly functioning equipment. There is a great deal of controversy surrounding this technique and requires a rigorous bureaucratic process before food prepared in this way can be sold to the public.

That said, this is an examination of the benefits and drawbacks of various methods of preparing food sous vide. The focus is only on the device used to cook and not the sealing method.

First a quick definition. This is not a new method of cooking, but a refinement. The product is sealed under vacuum in a plastic bag and poached in water at a precisely controlled temperature for a specific length of time.

More Pheasant Sausage

1520g pheasant breast
1844g pork belly
1356g pheasant legs, skin removed
840g smoked bacon
120g jack daniels whiskey
120g sauvignon blanc
200g dark raisins
20g sage leaves
15g thyme leaves
4ea cloves garlic
50g apple cider molasses
12g ground black pepper
45g kosher salt

I strive for transparency as much as possible because I believe it leads to progress. So I am disclosing a few of our recipes from the current tasting. Also, its easier to look it up here than sorting through hundreds of pages of notes, prep lists, orders etc.

A recipe from a great chef is like discovering the holy grail. The guinea hen terrine recipe from Jean-Francois Bruel at Daniel Restaurant was one of my first great treasures. The pheasant sausage recipe was based on the ratios for the guinea hen terrine. We changed it further for the Lagunitas event. Since we had no use for 20# of chicken/pheasant livers, we omitted 200g from the recipe. The foie gras went as well for a number of reasons. Sel rose was omitted because we were afraid the pinkish color of a poultry based sausage might be perceived negatively. We cook small test batches of the sausage to fine tune the seasoning, so salt levels vary. This is what we did.

Tiny Lounge does not have a proper meat grinder. We used the attachment for the small kitchenaid stand mixer. In an effort to create a sausage without using it, we first robot couped the meat, all separately. The pork belly we chopped finer and we left the pheasant breast fairly course. The result was a texture more like a burger than a sausage. When we tried to stuff it into casings using the machine, it didn't go through. We ended up having to grind it all anyway which created an incredible texture. This recipe makes about 40 links in the standard size of a bratwurst or italian sausage you would buy in a store.

The cure for the pork belly we cured with a simple 1:1 ratio of salt and sugar for three days. The mixture contains 5% robot couped spices. We don't use a circulator or controlled bath to cook it - its not that necessary or delicate. We keep the pot of water on the stove just under a simmer for 4 hours.

The cider gel recipe was a stroke of luck - we nailed it on the first try. It would otherwise not have appeared on the plate as we had no time to develop a recipe. We used the apple cider at whole foods. The texture is creamy without being too elastic.

500g apple cider
60g sugar
5.5g malic acid
2g agar agar
1.6g gellan gum LT-100

Combine everything is the pot. Rain the agar and lt100 over the top and let them bloom for 5 minutes. Stick blend 30 seconds. Bring to a simmer over high heat. Simmer for about 10 seconds and strain through chinois into prepared container.

We were not as successful when it came to the whiskey glass. The recipe did not retain the whiskey flavor through the process and kept overdrying. Pure-Cote is not an ingredient I particularly like. Tara wanted to make glass so we did. The recipe was:

200g water
300g whiskey, alcohol burned off
77g pure-cote B790
50g sugar

We blended the water sugar and pure-cote in a blender for 10 minutes until it had dissovled by boiling. We stirred in the flamed whiskey later to preserve the flavor without cooking it.

This was a very ambitious menu considering the facility, budget and time frame. One dish that was admittedly unsuccessful was the scallop with white chocolate and chicory. The idea was to highlight the sweetness of the scallop with a rich scallop jus with white chocolate and contrast it with a lean, bitter sorbet made from chicory. The chicory we were using had a bad flavor when infused into the sorbet base. It was not bitter either. Also, the ice cream maker malfunctioned. This was 11PM the night before and we were not about to buy a new machine the next day. We ran to store and picked up a few bunches of young watercress, great peppery bitter flavor. We heated heavy cream over the stove until boiling and added it to a blender for 5 minutes, until it was boiling inside the carafe. We added the raw watercress to puree and blanch simultaneously. We then strain it directly into an icebath. The color was great but somehow most of the bitterness had dissapeared. The next day we whipped the cream and served it over the scallop tartare. Perhaps another herb would have shown through the cream.

The halibut course was neutral. Well conceived and executed but nothing spectacular. We portioned the fish to 60g pieces and lined them a few inches apart in the 2 inch hotel pan. about 45 minutes before serving we poured hot beurre monte over the fish and covered it in plastic wrap. We set the pans in a warm spot over the stove to poach the fish. We made an orange beurre blanc by reducing fresh orange juice and white wine with a little zest. After we mounted it, we spiked it a little gran mariner. The fish was served resting on a creamy endive fondue and garnished with candied orange zest, partially dehydrated orange supreme, fresh orange supreme, mint, cilantro and crispy parsley.

Lagunitas Tasting

We realized during our last tasting - while trying to break down and isolate flavors and aromas in each beer - that we completely overlooked the basic foods that go great with beer, tacos, chili, spicy foods...sausage. The idea of pheasant
"choucroute garni" has been in my head for awhile.

For the sauerkraut, we cured the cabbage with 1% salt for 5 weeks in the wine room. The result was all we could have hoped for. We cooked the fermented cabbage in butter with onions, ham hock jus and spices until tender.

The pheasant sausage recipe was derived from a guinea hen terrine from a former chef. It contains pheasant breast and leg meat, pork belly, smoked bacon, thyme, raisins and sage. We grilled it for service.

The garnishes made the dish a logistical challenge from the small, ill-equiped kitchen. From left to right apple cider gel with sage tip, celeriac braised in butter with celery leaf, apple cube braised in butter with apple slice, pheasant breast with cracklin', pork belly with whole grain mustard.

The apple cider gel is set with agar and gellan gum and heated for service. The pheasant breast was cooked at 58C for 1.5 hours. We fried the skin, dehydrated it overnight and then robot couped it. The pork belly was cured for three days with the choucroute spices and cooked sous vide at 85C for 4 hours. We seared it for service.

Fundamental Chili

This is not something that I am drawn to particularly, however much I have been so in the past. I make it for the comfort and satisfaction of those around me and on request. Each element, I am drawn to singularly, though none of them as a whole.

Southwest chili is a culinary cliche - it describes a convention of preparation and flavor profile to which we are accustomed.

As of this week, I am in a new apartment which despite my efforts, has no gas. Meaning, I have no heat, no cooking ability other than that which I can supply electrically.

"I will make you chili," I tell a loved one. Immediately after stating this I wonder as to how - without a stove to cook on - an oven to braise in - that this can be accomplished. I turn to my sous vide cooking setup.

I considered this an exercise in improvisation. I had to determine the elements that made up a chili and execute it without the use of coventional cookery.

At this point I have not tasted the result of my experiment, it is still heating at 60C in its waterbath.

Because I consider the fundamental elements of chili to be tomato, cumin, ground dried chili peppers and slow cooked meat - I chose to focus on these three things individually.

I took a slice of beef chuck - roughly a pound - cut it into small cubes. I could not sear it and I simply seasoned it with salt and set it aside.

I took 1 onion, 3 cloves garlic, 2 small cans tomato paste and pureed them in a blender, all raw with copious spices, cumin, coriander, chili powder, black pepper, salt. It might be interesting to marinate these together overnight and then drop them in the waterbath.

I use the tomato paste because it is the puree of tomato with the water removed. As the beef cooks, the proteins coagulate and expel water which rehydrate the sauce with more flavor. Whenever I prepare a dish like this sous vide, whether chili, mole, curry or other, I use a dense paste a sauce base, relying on the meat to revive it with its own juices.

Will it turn out? I don't know. Maybe I am writing about longing, or unfulfilled wishes. In which case these questions will never be answered. Maybe "chili" is my own journey without an end. Like the tragic hero in a Kafka story I search for the perfect recipe to no avail.

New Tasting Dinner

Our early fall Goose island dinner had a favorable turnout. Based on this Tiny owners were able to market another similar event with the Lagunitas company. As we sat down to taste during the initial menu planning, we found them uncomplex and all very similar with no noteworthy flavors other than their characteristic intense hoppiness.

We put together a brief list of common bitter ingredients:

citrus peel
burnt
chocolate
coffee
greens
mustard seeds
nuts
pepper skins
broccoli rabe
tonic/quinine
watercress
grapefruit
endive/radicchio
dark celery
bitter melon
dandelion
chicory

Whether or not we liked the goose island beers, we found unique characteristics with each of them that allowed us to tailor each dish to the qualities of the beer. While there is nothing wrong with the lagunitas - a great after-work type of beer - the inspiration did not come as easily. We identified the single unifying quality that made these beers stand out as bitterness. From there we decided to plan our menu.

Conceptually the menu is based around the profile of bitter taste. Because its something we all work with constantly but know very little about, we took this as an opportunity to learn about bitter taste. In Herve This' Molecular Gastronomy, he states that the palate can distinguish between 5 or more bitter compounds - meaning we are able to taste 5 different types of bitterness. It plays such an important role, but is never fully appreciated.

As I start to do research on this concept, I realize how little I understand about what makes bitter food satisfying as well as unpleasant. Even more, I don't have answers to these questions regarding the other tastes.

We put together the following menu:

Scallop Ceviche, chicory, white chocolate
Pils

Halibut poached in orange butter, endive fondue, honey
pale ale dogtown

Choucroute Garni of Pheasant
IPA

palate cleanser poached quince, pumpkin spice sorbet

Leonora cheese, rye, red pepper
censored

Coffee, raisin, malt, brown sugar
maximus

On-Camera Flash Photography

I bought a speedlite 430EXII several weeks ago, but this is the first chance I've had to read about it. It marks my first piece of "professional" lighting equipment. Since most of what I do is studio oriented, I favor a strobe. I thought a speedlite with its portability and self-contained power source might allow me to move between the kitchen and studio. It definitely has its perks but I'm not in love.



I'm testing it here with on Sophie, my very unamused dog. These images are untouched other than resizing for web -straight from the camera. Since the 430 doesn't have a pc input, I don't have pocket wizards, and the rebel xti doesn't have a remote trigger feature - if I want to use it, I have to mount it to the camera hot-shoe. Both flash and camera are on full manual. I'm not using any fill in these shots - just the single light source bounced off a white wall or ceiling. I don't use a meter, just the image preview on the back of the camera which results in a lot of test exposures and adjustments.

Mosaic Posting

I haven't posted much to the Sandwich Cult lately. Much time has been spent at the restaurant where I work. We are trying to revive the mosaic. I've begun posting daily.

http://alineamosaic.com/forum/index.php?showforum=18

Glimpse Into Fall

We have some interesting things coming up this fall. We just finished curing two hams that we will smoke today.

Last night we started a traditional batch of sauerkraut for an up and coming version of 'choucroute garni.'

We have a 5 course dinner to be paired with Lagunitas beers. Conceptually we are working around the taste of bitter, how to complement it, contrast it, and just work with it in general. I will be writing more on this to elaborate in the near future.

There is also a wine pairing dinner during the holiday season.

Goose Island Dinner

Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with so there are no pictures of the food. The actual dish changed slightly from what appeared on the menu.

The tomato dish was 70% there. Still needs tweaking. It was a chilled parfait with a simple raw strawberry puree at the bottom, dotted with a nicoise olive-white anchovy puree. We spread the rest of the olive puree thinly over a silpat and dried it until crispy. A very light tomato-water-gel over the top. We seasoned it with salt, sugar and sherry vinegar and added just enough gelatin so it would hold up the peeled and marinated baby tomatoes and tiny strawberry balls that went over the top. It got a little drizzle of the marinating oil (garlic, thyme). The tobacco foam went on right before serving with a few sprigs of thyme and the anchovy-olive chip.

We cured the lamb loin in coriander seeds, black sesame seeds, chili flake and orange peel for 2 1/2 hours. The warm parsnip puree was made without cream because we didn't want to overpower the lightness of the dish. Simply sweated thinly sliced parnsips in a little butter, adding milk periodically to prevent burning. Eventually the whole thing falls apart into mush. We fold in the peeled raw pears at this point and puree the whole thing. The carpaccio was seasoned with an orange-infused olive oil, garnished with citrus confit, mint sprigs, coriander leaf and seasoned with a coriander infused flake sea salt.

We juiced all the corn for the cobia dish and set it aside. We made a stock from the cobs and reduced it to a thick syrup. We dried out the husks overnight. For service, we heated the corn juice with cream, salt, sugar and cayenne pepper until it thickened. Then we thickened it just a little further with corn starch slurry (right?). We sliced fresh lobster mushrooms thinly and sweated them in butter. The cobia was smoked with the dried corn husks. We brushed the fish with the glaze made from the reduced corn stock, a little honey, reduced wheat beer and fresh beer. Garnished with puffed barley and wild rice and tarragon leaves.

I was not allowed to touch the ravioli, that was Tara's dish. Although I made the sherry foam. We found a dry oloroso sherry which is perfect because we could control the sweetness. We made it pretty sweet anyway. Salt, sugar and soy lecithin. You have to flame off the alcohol or it won't foam for whatever reason.

New Toys

We just picked up our very first Isi. Lots of fun. Working on a recipe for tobacco foam for a tomato dish coming up with a pairing dinner.

1000g water
150g sugar
10g cigar wrapper
7g salt
1g sassparilla root
2 coffee beans
7 sheets gelatin

Bloom the gelatin in cold water and squeeze out excess. Combine with sassparilla, coffee bean and cigar wrapper in medium container. Bring the water, sugar and salt to a boil and pour over the cigar wrapper. Cover and steep 2 hours. Strain. Load 500g liquid into the isi canister while warm. 2 charges. Shock in ice water immediately and shake every 5 minutes, until gelatin has set. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Late Summer Tomatoes
strawberry, tobacco, nicoise olive


Also made a great mousse:

100g dark chocolate
50g milk
30g sugar
3.5 salt

Warm everything and load. 2 charges. Keep warm.

More Photography

Alinea

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

This is the first time I've taken pictures of food so detailed. Also the first time one of my photos was featured in a prestigious publication. I feel equipment was (and is) my biggest setback when it comes to photos. It might be time for a new lens and flash.

Read the article here.

Maillard

My friend told me this cool trick. You take the can of sweetened condensed milk. You put it unopened in a pot of boiling water for 3 or 4 hours. When you open it up - Magic. Caramel Sauce.

Anyone who has actually done this knows how wonderful the result it. Its something we all learn in culinary school, the easy way to make ducle de leche. But what is actually happening here? How can milk caramelize so low below the boiling point?

The answer is in possibly the most prized of all chemical reactions to which a chef can lay claim - the maillard reaction. It has to do with protein, sugar and heat. It produces some of the most amazing and complex flavors. Its the savory quality of a baked bread or those gems of exposed meat on the outside of the lasagna pan.

We can "carmelize" milk so low below boiling temperature because its not actually being carmelized. Its a result of the maillard reaction. Its a result of a large proportion of protein and sugar to water in the sweetened condensed milk.

So if maillard reaction produces such a delicious result, and we can create this with something other than meat - what else can we do with it? How can we apply that deliciousness we equate with roasted and sauteed meats to vegetables? All it takes is protein and sugar. Plants have protein. What about soy beans? Soy bean "dulce de leche" as we do with the condensed milk? What if we sous vide cooked vegetables with whey protein or evaporated milk powder? will their natural sugars react with the protein?

This idea is long in the making and constantly evolving. I do not often think of a vegetable as being of a lower order of deliciouness than meat but the savory qualities are undeniably less. How can we elevate the vegetable to the level of meat in relation to that enigmatic fifth sense; umamai?

Bar Food

Get the flash player here: http://www.adobe.com/flashplayer

Weekend photoshoot.

Tiny Lounge
4352 N Leavitt
Chicago, IL

Flickr

Beans and Legumes

Those who know me, know that I find these fundamental to great food. They will also note that I am always looking to 'close the book' on cooking temperatures of various foods.

Lately I've had great results cooking chickpeas between 79-85C. Lentils are also well cooked this temperature. Both the research and practice check out. Until I find otherwise, I'm going to venture out and say all manner of dried beans and peas are optimally cooked at these temperatures.

Rice, grains and potatoes are the next vegetable hurdle.

Green Curry Sauce

150g shallots
35g ginger
5g coriander seed
1-2 thai bird chilis (to taste)
15g shrimp paste
1 kaffir lime leaf
500g young coconut water

cook the shallots, ginger, coriander seed and shrimp paste over high heat in peanut oil until shallots begin to brown slightly. Add the young coconut water and kaffir lime leaf. Remove from heat and steep covered 15 minutes. Strain.

To finish, fold the herb puree into the hot sauce base just before serving. Season with coconut butter, fish sauce, sugar, lime juice.

For the herb puree:
40g thai basil
40g coriander leaf
14g mint leaf
150g young coconut water
35g lemongrass, crushed and chopped
3g coriander seed
1ea. star anise
flesh of 1 young coconut


Add coriander seed, 150g young coconut water, lemongrass, young coconut flesh and star anise to a blender and puree on the highest setting. Continue to blend on high speed until the liquid starts to boil - about 10 minutes. Once the liquid is boiling add the fresh herbs and puree another 1-2 minutes. Strain over an ice bath and keep very cold until ready to use.

Mystery Meat

It seems a general consensus among most senior cooks that meat cookery is the easiest. It is a simple matter of heat transfer, nothing more. An experienced cook will - through years of experience - be able to easily intuit the doneness of a piece of meat.

We've come to the point technologically where we are able to affordably and precisely control our cooking temperatures to an exact degree. Intuition is traded for cognition. Thus the question: what is the optimal temperature at which we cook beef? what is the optimal temperature at which to cook an egg? pork shoulder? a potato? lentils? lambs tongue? chicken thighs?

Stephen Baldwin's comprehensive guide to sous vide cooking contains great recipes, temperatures and times. However, they are contradictory with personal experience and other reearch.

I'm finding myself in my kitchen about to make a braise sous vide and not knowing what temperature to cook it at. Should we go 55C for 48 hours? 60C for 24 hours? 80C for 8 hours? Every source calls for different times and temperatures. Since the method of sous vide cooking is relatively new and not widely used outside professional kitchens, recipes can be difficult to come by. While I can braise a short rib to amazing succulence using a traditional method, I can't honestly tell you what to set the dial to before dropping the bag in the water.

Preliminary Research:

I use short rib as an example because it is very popular tough cut of beef. I've seen recipes that range from 4-36 hours at 55-90C. Short rib is likely optimally cooked to a range of a few degrees. Why, if we can control temperature to the exact degree, is there a 35 degree discrepency?

Beef contains natural enzymes that weaken the connective tissue that makes it tough. These enzymes are most active between 50-55C where they become denatured (mcgee 152). However the protein mysosin coagulates at these temperatures which accounts for some of the firmness of underbraised short rib (mcgee 150). A traditional pot roast or braise will be cooked until the collagen dissolves into component proteins, gelatin which creates a succulent mouthfeel characteristic of braised meats even though the meat itself is somewhat dry. The temperature at which collagen dissolves, 60-70C, also causes muscle fibers to shrink and squeeze out most of the moisture (mcgee 150).

Cooking tough cuts of beef between 50-55C creates a curious product. The meat is medium in doneness and takes on a wonderfully tender texture like tenderloin. The surface acquires an extremely unnerving greenish color. Will people be thrown off by a tender pink short rib? Cooking it over 55C on the other hand will result in the denaturing of the tenderizing enzymes without necessarily dissolving the tough collagen. In theory one could braise short rib indefinitely between 55-60C and never have a tender product. I actually did this by mistake and was very confused why my 18 hour braise was tough as nails.

A possible solution might be to cook the short rib at 50-55C for several hours to allow for tenderization and then raise the temperature to 60-65 for a shorter time to denature the collagen.

This is all very interesting to learn the science behind cooking meat. However, when I'm in the kitchen I just want to know the temperature at which to set the device and could care less about myosin, collagen etc. I don't believe in a magic temperature, I do however intend to answer all these questions I ask above.

Elements of Chili

What's in chili you ask?

"Well, its a stew."

Go on.

"Its got lots of meat, beef, pork."

Yes.

"Its got lots of cumin, and spices."

Ok.

"You usually put beans of some kind in it too."

So lets cook the meat the best way we know how - under vacuum at a precise temperature so as to denature the collagen and increase tenderness without over coagulating protein causing the meat to "dry out."

Lets cook the beans the best way we know, soak them overnight and braise them slowly with lots of aromatics in a highly seasoned liquid.

Lets take the additional aromatics, spices, onions, garlic and tomatoes and cook them but keep them fresh so they contribute to the dish.

Then we can put it all back together. That's chili right? What's the big deal?

This is a dish I've probably made 100 times but never like this. Always a tomato based stew heavily spiced with cumin and chili powder. I've had a standard method - sweat the onions, garlic, add spices, tomato etc. Add the beans and meat and braise until tender. The book was essentially closed on chili.

I would never be so pretentious as to "deconstruct" something. Nor was it a premeditated disruption of method, just a curiosity, caprice and circumstance that led to a "composed braise." I'm finding this idea of isolating technique interesting but so completely unprofound the more I think about it. The oxymoronical notion of an "instant stew" is equally amusing.

A major initial concern is that it would eat disjointed, taste composed, but this was not the case. All the elements of a great chili were there they just came together at the end - the savory richness of the pork from both the meat and the cuisson, the heartiness of the beans and the sweetness and brightness from the vegetables and spices.

What was most exciting is it had a vibrance and a freshness difficult to impart on braises. I've folded in raw purees and used various acids to achieve the same effect without as much success.

For the meat:
1400g pork shoulder
7g salt
2g sugar
2g paprika
.5g cumin
.5g chili powder
.2g cinnamon

rub the meat with spices and seasonings. Cook sous vide until very tender. 80C 8-12 hours. 60C for 24-36 hours. Chill, freeze or use immediately.

For the Beans:
250g dried pinto beans
120g medium onion
4 cloves garlic
60g smoked bacon
1 chili brulee
1 sprig thyme

Soak the beans overnight. Take care to make sure the water is clean and changed at least twice through the process.

Combine all ingredients and add 750g water. Bring to a simmer. Make sure the liquid is well seasoned. Cook at 85C for 8-12 hours. Chill the beans in the cuisson until ready to use.

To finish:

100g onion small dice
50g smoked bacon, baton
5 cloves garlic, minced
30g tomato paste
40g brown sugar
230g red wine vinegar
90g tomato puree
3g paprika
1.5g cumin
1.5g chili powder
.2g cinnamon

Render the bacon in a little olive oil over low heat. Cook until crispy. Add the onion and sweat until very soft, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and continue to cook another 5 minutes. Add the spices and tomato paste cook 1-2 minutes until fragrant. Add the sugar and vinegar and reduce au sec. Add the tomatoes and cook until for about 10 minutes. add the liquid from the pork and a little of the bean cooking liquid. Add the beans and meat back in to finish.

Strawberries

1000g strawberries
150g sugar

full vacuum. Macerate at room temperature 1 hour. 90C for 15 minutes. Depending on the time frame and desired result you can simply refrigerate for a few days or freeze and thaw to extract the juice.

Were using this as a base for a jam.

Guerilla Food Photography

As I began to piece together my "studio" in chicago, I found myself greatly satisfied at how much one can accomplish at very little expense. The photos I post are prepared with skill and great care, however, I am not using a professional studio or thousands of dollars of specialized equipment.

The beauty of digital photography is the process is greatly simplified from the convultion that is film. The lab, the processing, the printing are all consolidated to a home computer. White balancing film is difficult and expensive. It requires special equipment, high temperature resin gels and filters. With digital you can manually white balance to literally any continous spectrum light source - especially shooting in .RAW. This makes it possible to use a $5 worklight from the hardware store for shooting. Tungsten studio lights, on the other hand, cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Are there drawbacks? of course.

My backdrop is a $.50 piece of white poster board supported by a cardboard box I got for free.



I used to spend a lot of time searching for nice photo plates. A high end restaurant will easily spend $40 or more on a single service piece. Most of the time I erase the plate anyway in post, for one reason or another. So instead, a 12x12 white square of plexiglass ($2) stands in for bernadaud china.

There is no way around the cost of a camera and adobe photoshop. I shoot on a canon rebel xsi. However - before switching to a digital slr, I used a canon powershot that cost approx. $300 for years. These were difficult shoots because of the limitations of the camera. My point is that it is possible to create a high quality image without a prosumer digital camera.

New Photos

It occurred to me at some point over the last few weeks of building the website that all of these images are at least a year old. The last time I had an actual shoot was last summer. I also realized how much I miss it. A new studio is already in the works - as impractical as it is in this tiny chicago apt. Hopefully I'll have some new material soon.

Website

DIY websites = time consuming, frustrating. Rewarding, however especially financially.

My New Website


Its a work in progress

Mid-level Sous Vide

In an earlier post I compared a professional setup for sous vide cooking with a minimal one. This option offers automatic and precise temperature control for less than half the cost of an immersion circulator. The Auber PID Controller will, coupled with a heat source, keep a water bath within 1 degree C. If the heat source comes from underneath the natural convection will maintain consistent temperature, making circulation unnecessary. This Winco 30 cup rice cooker comfortably holds 8 liters of water. It took about 20 minutes to stabalize within the degree. I also took this picture before I figured out how to display temperature in C.

I have lots of plans now with the ability to precisely control temperature over a prolonged perdiod of time.

New Additions

We have a new member of our family, Sophie. In addition we ordered an Auber PID controller, a food saver upgrade, and a commercial sized rice cooker for a slightly more sophisticated sous vide setup.

Studio Kitchen

I just want to mention how glad I am Studio Kitchen is once again accessible to the general public.

I love Shola's food. Master of technique. Its clean, thoughtful and authentic. He has the rare ability to create food interesting to me as a professional chef, but also something I really want to eat.

The new website is great.

Whole Pig

We brought in a whole pig - just for fun. 46# head-on. So far we have 2 hams curing 2 different ways, 1/2 belly curing for bacon, head-meat terrine, lots of shoulder meat and skin. More details to come.

Buttermilk Ice Cream

Just a test so far, however, the unfrozen base is delicious. I'm really excited to churn it. This needs to be churned immediately because of the active culture in the buttermilk.

500g buttermilk
10g milk powder
120g heavy cream
30g sweetened condensed milk
100g sugar
20g glucose powder
4.5g lactic acid
2g powdered gelatin
1g xanthan gum

Add the cream to a small pot and bloom the gelatin over the top 5 minutes. Add the sugar, glucose powder and sweetened condensed milk. Warm until sugar is melted do not bring to a boil. Chill thoroughly. Once the cream mixture is cold blend with remaining ingredients and pass through a fine sieve.

The recipe takes from laiskonis' post on ice cream. If my math is right, this recipe is approximately 29.5% dry matter and 6% fat, which falls slightly below bajard's ideal ratios.

Sous Vide At Home

If I could reasonably afford a polyscience thermal circulator I would buy it in a heartbeat. In fact, I've come close several times anyway. Until then, this is how I cook sous vide at home.

You may laugh and it is a little embarassing to advertise it the way I am now, but I've always had such great results. Fish, chicken, pork, various cuts of beef - they all benefit. I used to use ziploc bags but I finally bought one of those shitty food-saver vacuum pack machines. This is the only piece of equipment you would reasonably have to buy if you cook at home.

Here I'm cooking two pieces of pork belly cured in two different ways, attempting to maintain 70C.

Professional Sous Vide Set up:
Chamber Cryo-vac machine $1,500
PolyScience Circulator ~$1,000

Total: $2,500

Bags vary in price but are usually cheaper when purchased in large quantity.

Home Sous Vide Setup:
Food Saver vacuum machine $50-70
vacuum bags $10
12qt stainless steel pot $30
digital thermometer $15

Total: $105-$125

What do we lose from the cheaper setup? Mostly control and a good deal of consistency. Cooking a "roast beef" or something for an extended period of time that will be finished on a grill will not be made or broken by a 1-2 degree difference. Neither will a steak or piece of fish that only cooks for 8-15 minutes. They will, however, suffer if the water starts to boil without you noticing, which has happened to me several times. A thermal circulator will heat up to 7 gallons of liquid consistently to within .05C. It can run for days without care or attention, which is another problem: unless you are willing to stay at home for 12 or more hours at a time babysitting your food its not very practical. Most people aren't willing to leave home or go to sleep with the oven running. Solution: crockpot, If its big enough to hold what you're cooking and will keep food well below a simmer.

Getting down to business - pork belly.

Comparing notes from different cookbooks:

Under Pressure
Brine 24 hours. Sous Vide 82C 12 hours.

Big Fat Duck
Brine 48 hours. Sous Vide 60C 36 hours.

Alinea
Dry Cure 48 hours. Sous Vide 88C 4 hours.

Professional Charcuterie - Traditional Bacon
Dry Cure 10 days. Smoke 49C 10 hours.

Sweet Potato

I was looking for something completely unrelated in "On Food and Cooking" and I came across the section on sweet potatoes. Mcgee states that at 57C an enzyme in the potato is activated that converts the starch to a sugar called maltose. This process stops at 75C when the enzyme is denatured. This explains why sweet potatoes will ooze syrup and have a completely different quality when cooked slowly in an oven as opposed to moist cooking methods. According to the book some varieties convert up to 75% of their starch to maltose.

So lets cook a sweet potato around 62-65C for a long time and see what happens. Eventually in theory up to 75% of the starch will be converted to maltose syrup. The sweet potato will confit itself without any additional ingredients. Maybe we could collect the syrup and use it for another application. Whip it with versawhip, whipped sweet potato.

Musings: My Best Friend's Wedding

It was recently brought to my attention this movie takes place in Chicago, where Julia Roberts plays a food critic.

The first scene takes place at Charlie Trotter's where a much younger, thinner Charlie Trotter tells one of his chefs, "I will kill your whole family if you don't get this right."

Pheasant Sausage

380g breast meat scrap without skin
330g pork belly
208g Pheasant leg meat with skin
181g foie gras
105g salumeria pancetta
105g smoked bacon
81g pheasant or chicken livers
30g Jack daniels whiskey
30g sauvignon blanc
200g dark and golden raisins
15g cider molasses
26g sage leaves
1 clove garlic
1g thyme leaves

Chop the sage leaves very fine and set aside with the raisins.

Toss the remaining ingredients together with the seasoning and rest 1 hour. Grind everything together through a fine die. Fold the raisins and sage leaves into the ground meat. Stuff via normal procedure. Cook the sausages sous vide or poach at 60C.

Seasoning per KG:
12.5g salt
2g sel rose
2g pepper
1g quatre epice