nickrey

Interesting, but I'm with a number of the people who commented. Cream in Risotto? Properly cooked risotto is more than creamy enough by itself. Adding cream can only be needed to cover up a fault in the preparation. Having tried many risottos in restaurants and inevitably being very disappointed, I always wonder what baseline people use for taste tests for this dish. I look forward to people trying this independently and seeing if it does produce a good version.

Nice trip down memory lane Blether. Looks scrumptious.

Here in Australia, we segment the porterhouse off the bone. Thought it was the same in the UK.

For a number of reasons, I wound up with both the electronic and the hard copy of this book. Went through both today and must say that there are enough recipes missing from the iBooks version for me to recommend that you get the hard copy.

Me too, thought it involved stains down front of shirt. I'd agree with that one.

Cooked up a Chicken Caesar salad last night, thought I'd share the sous vide cooked components with you. I was doing the chicken breast for a few hours at 61.3C. Decided to add two eggs into the cooker in their shells to pasteurise them for the sauce and also give an approximation to coddled eggs. Took the eggs out of the cooker, cracked them into a container (neither the whites nor the yolks had solidified so it was perfect). Added 120ml extra virgin olive oil, 3 tbsp red wine vinegar, 1 1/2 tsp dijon mustard, 1 garlic clove, and 3 anchovy fillets. Blitzed mixture with Bamix to make the dressing. Dressing was all it should be: creamy, tangy, smooth, and bitey all at the same time. Ddin't add salt because it had salt from the anchovies and was going to be added to bacon and parmesan, both of which are salty. Served with seared sous vide chicken, shredded cos lettuce, cooked and sliced bacon, toasted sourdough rye bread broken up into small croutons, and parmesan shaved with a vegetable slicer. Worked a treat.

Hi,i was planing of buying one Swid from Addelice too, i met them at the SIRHA fair in Lyon, my biggest concern is there is no telephone number to contact them and after sending a few mail with questions i finally got my answers then i stumbled on this youtube video...and now you complaining...this is not good, i think ill quit my order! http://youtu.be/w-zq8qrfT9Q Looking at that clip, it seems to be the same problem that we had when my brother brought his SWID around to my place for the first time (which was the first time he has used it as well). We had not filled the water level to a sufficient height and it did all sorts of strange things. Once the water was filled appropriately it worked just fine. That video could represent an operator error rather than a valid complaint.

A more simple first pilot would be to cook two identical cuts, one as you first proposed and the second for the same total time at 59C for the whole 15 hours. This would allow a fairly pure test of the second, higher temperature, cooking.

Um, Pedro, could you say that in English? Seriously, an example with times and temps to try would be great! If I may. PedroG is saying that cooking could potentially be done in two separate stages. The first burst would be below 60C to ensure that everything except tough collagens and fibrous tissues are cooked as we have become accustomed to with sous vide such that they are tender and their juices are retained. He is then proposing a second cooking at a higher temperature to deal with the other more gristly bits. Presumably the earlier cooking will stop the more temperature sensitive pieces from shedding much of their juices as they would if you put them immediately into the higher temperature water bath. Look forward to hearing the results of your experiments on this PedroG.

I cook, chill, and freeze meat portions. I defrost the package in the sink keeping the temp above 57C while preparing accompaniments.. Then I sear and serve with my heated up prepared sauce that is pre-made using sous vide meat juices. Fabulous beef that is as tender as the most expensive cuts but has the flavour of the hard working cuts and final preparation within ten minutes.. This can be done at home using sous vide but not anywhere near as effecitvely using any other cooking technique. I also pre-prepare food for an infirm relative. For example, make a cacciatore sauce, seal some in a pouch with some chicken breast and cook sous vide, chill, and freeze. Teach them to reheat without overcooking. Perfect home-cooked meals in no time. All it takes for any technique to be useful is knowledge of how it works, a willingness to experiment, and imagination.

Just purchased the ibooks version of this new book. It contains the recipes from the book plus a number of instructional videos on how to prepare some of the dishes. Looking at the book, it is good to see sous vide entering the mainstream as just another cooking technique rather than some technological marvel. Neil Perry tells how they prepare the dishes in the restaurant, which is often sous vide, with times and temperatures. He then provides instruction on how to cook the dishes if you don't have the equipment. This is a steak house book written by a chef whose original flagship restaurant, Rockpool, has been in the San Pellegrino World's top 50 Restaurants. I'd totally recommend it either in paper or electronic form. ps. for our US friends, the measurements come in metric, imperial, and cups.

When I use a maker, I always wind up with ink splotches on my hands when retrieving the packages from the freezer. Frustrated, and marked (permanently in some cases), I now use a tape labeller on my foodsaver packages, which works like a dream.

Welcome to eGullet. This should lead to some spirited debate. I'm not sure what's complicated and time consuming about vacuum packing twenty steaks, cooking them at 55C for 3 hours then searing them off for service in a restaurant. My suspicion is that you have eaten much more in the way of sous vide cooked elements of meals in restaurants than you have realized. Many use it as a matter of course without putting it on the menu. Sous vide is a cooking method. Slow cooking is a cooking method. Grilling is a cooking method. The best chefs use these to their advantage to transform raw ingredients into a finished product. In a restaurant context sous vide makes everything replicable so no matter who cooks your meal it will come out the same. This is the aim of better restaurants: who can blame them for using something to help the process along. My own experience is that not all things need to or indeed should be cooked sous vide. Other ingredients transform into something that cannot easily be achieved in any other way. What happens is dependent on the skill of the chef who sets up the way ingredients are treated and how long and at what temperature they are cooked. Sous vide uses constant temperature to cook things using water as a medium. It is not complicated. Equipment specifically designed for the home cook is getting cheaper. My suspicion is that we are starting to move beyond the early adopter stage with the technology. Many people enjoy the product of the cooking. If you don't, don't order it. Although given what I said above you may be destined to eating in grill restaurants if you want to avoid it.

I'm left wondering if Oliver Schwaner-Albright ensured his pork racks were from the same animal ? (I'm guessing he wouldn't have ensured his roast chickens were. Are you on eG, Oliver ?). My own long-pre-salted roast loin of pork is exquisitely juicy cooked to 63C internal at 170C; nastily dry to the same at 180C. So I'm not swayed at all by the "pork for roasting = salt late or it'll be dry" argument at all. People's opinions vary because they've had different experience, don't they ? As well as because, well, they're different people. As for this article at least, the scientific method has a lot of value but experimental results won't lead to valuable conclusions without due thoroughness. you left out this bit when quoting me: The author tested the salt well before and salt just before methods with some friends as tasters. It is not a definitive study as it did not use double blind testing (where neither the experimenter nor the tasters know which sample is which) but did indicate that some meats benefit from salting well before while others were deemed to taste better when salted immediately before cooking. It was an important part of my comment. The word 'indicate' does not mean 'prove.' Let's add your criticisms of the method to mine. Perhaps someone will do a study that controls all the variables. Even then I'm sure we'll find something to quibble about. The point was that "salt before" or "salt after" is meaningless as a blanket statement without exploration of other factors, including the type of meat and method of preparation. I suspect we agree on this.

My suspicion is that the colour difference is partly a result of residual bubbles. It seems to rectify itself if you let it sit for a while.

I'd agree with TheCulinaryLibrary. Have tried a few recipes and they always lacked depth and complexity of flavour. I suspect the same could be said of the other two cooks you mentioned, perhaps more so. As TCL and I are both based in Australia, we may have seen similar recipes previously and found Donna Hay's recipes more commonplace and less interesting in their own right than you may have. I could look at her pictures all day though. Her food styling work with marie claire has had a major influence around the world. I was looking at Delores Custer's (2010) Food Styling book recently and she credited much of what happened in food styling in the 2000s to the work of Australian food stylists and particularly to the work of Donna Hay.

Looks like it may be a rebadged Gee Espresso. Link here. Some comments have been made about the build quality of the Gee that make my earlier statement on longevity pertinent to making a decision between the two.

That looks really nice. It is a very new machine though. The features are attractive, but is it made to last? The Rancilio Silvia is very industrial and built like a tank which makes it so much more robust that most other comparable machines on the market. I've attached a pid to mine and absolutely love its reliability.

As far as I've observed "correct" or its sister "authentic" comprises how my grandmother/yaya/oma/nonna/etc cooked it. Masterchef Australia has been wrong on so many levels when they've gone down the "authentic" route, it's almost as bad as their "pronounciation" (sic).

Try cooking at 59C for three hours. To serve, score and sear over high heat.

I would be honoured if you chose to use it for one of your spectacular dinners.

Posted this over in the dinner thread with picture. Chorizo stuffed calamari. Cooked three hours at 59C. Chilled and refrigerated. Reheat and seared in very hot pan. Worked like a dream.

I finally got around to trying my Chorizo stuffed calamari again. This time I used a bought chorizo (last time I didn't add enough fat and it was dry). Cooked sous vide for three hours at 59C. Chilled in ice bath. Reheated following day and then seared on all sides in a hot frypan. This time it worked like a dream. This is going into my cooking repertoire.

Rather than putting together my SVM setup which I store after every use, I thaw and reheat my cooked products in the kitchen sink. To do so, I use a thermometer to check that the temperature never goes below around 57C and top the sink up occasionally with hot water to make sure that it doesn't. The sink holds a larger volume of water than my rice cooker so it has less of a temperature dip when adding frozen food.

Once you grind beans, they start losing their aroma and flavour components. There is so much difference between already ground and freshly ground beans that you cannot get "best" coffee from pre-ground, period.