Jan Stoel

OK, this is a very old topic, but I need some advise. I made the pommes puree with ratte potatoes and used a lot of butter and passed it twice trough a fine tamis (no blender!). The puree was very sticky and thick in the beginning and still has a slightly odd consistency even though I diluted it with milk. Is this just due to the ratte potatoes or could there be another cause. I never made or tasted pommes puree made in a blender, so am not familiar with 'potato glue'. I'm thinking of making it tomorrow, to compare it to my pommes. Anyone else made the puree with ratte potatoes and thoughts on the consistency?

What is the deal with floating. Even when vacuum packed at full pressure my bags often float to the surface as if gasping for air. Anyway, the next time I'll watch the vacuum level and bring down the temperature a bit.

Maybe lower is better. It is strange, because after about ten minutes I noticed something was wrong and the flesh had lost its shape. It was nowhere near the desired core temperature, so I think it has nothing to do with the temperature or time. I've also 'kept' one piece (the rest made in a terrine) and after it is chilled you can give it its original shape, but if you would reheat it you could never serve it as a poached piece of foie gras. A terrine is almost the only way to go. Nickrey, will using frozen foie gras not have a negative benefit on a possible cause for disintegration: longer time in a water bath. Also once defrosted is the pressure not the same as if you would vacuum pack it while properly chilled? Thanks. Foie + sous vide = nightmare. Please let me just go back to seared.

He, I have problems cooking foie gras sous vide. I followed the recipe from the Fat Duck cookbook, cooking at 60C/140F to the same internal temperature, but the liver almost completely broke down. I used fresh liver. It has to be vacuum packed at full pressure. Could that be the problem (breaking down the cell walls)? Other thoughts? http://bit.ly/bYNUXi

I like snails. However, I think I always had canned snails and never the fresh (live) ones. I found some farms selling live escargots, but I read they are now in their hibernation. Anyone any ideas if they taste worse at this particular moment, because I presume they live on their fat reserves, making them less good.

Pate de fruits with this type of pectin require sugar and acid to set or am I wrong? If you would leave the tartaric out, is what I read, it would not set.

I've made two pate de fruits recipes and had trouble with the setting of the gel. It was not that they didn't set, it was that they hardened almost immediately after adding (tartaric) acid. The recipes (Fat Duck) call for yellow pectin, so I use this one 'Genu® Pectin Yellow Type D Slow Set-Z', which should be a slow setter. The problem is that I have a 2 to 3 second window to pour the stuff after I remove it from the heat, it sets extremely fast. I cook the mix to 107C (don't have a Refractometer). Any ideas why this happens? The funny thing is the texture is good. It is set, but soft. So it is not that I end up with pate de fruits bricks, which could explain the fast setting.

Not so long ago I was flipping through the book and started wondering about the pressure guidelines. Everything is described with the words 'low', 'medium' or 'high'. A lot of vacuum machines do not have these settings, having a simple meter, a digital barometer (mbar) or one where pressure is expressed in percentages, so how can you convert these guidelines. For example: Low = 250mbar or 75%. Medium = xmbar or x%.

Is this something the authors of Under Pressure don't know or don't care about? However you look at it they present it as an authoritative book on sous vide and if there is a backway to cooking green vegetables they should have mentioned it. Slkinsey, I have not tested it extensively so my only answer is it's the same advantage as the other vegetables cooked sous vide instead of regular blanching.

In the book it is explained why they do it. I'm too lazy to look it up, but they explain it in these lines. They cooked the lobster in a bag with some butter, but due to safety regulations the low temperature for shellfish was deemed unsafe and they were told to leave the poor lobsters out of the bags. They reverted to the classical butter-poached method without an immersion circulator and felt such excitement at actually monitoring the 'doneness' of the lobsters (I'm just paraphrasing a romanticist story in the book), that from then on a big bucket of butter was used for the sake of tradition (note that the circulator was again introduced, just not the plastic bag), although the regulations were lifted. So there you go.

I was also struck by the high temperatures in this book. Often the advice is to cook on higher heat for a shorter amount of time instead of lower temperature for a longer amount of time. I must say I have not tested this extensively, but (for now) I disagree with the statement green vegetables can't be cooked under vacuum. It is true that cooking at 85C will make green vegetables dull, but what I have tried is blanch green vegetables in boiling water, cool them, vacumm pack them and instead of cooking them below boiling point I took the 'big-pot blanching'road, i.e. boil the bag in lots of boiling water. The vegetables came out nice and green. So you don't have the gentle heat, but you do have vegetables cooking in their own liquid. Any thoughts?

I think that is one of the most important questions of your life. If one can realise that one sucks and act accordingly you'll help yourself enormously.

I've watched the entire season and must also say the final had a strange feel, however I think some of the reactions are a bit harsh. Should the elements of the entire season, chance, low on time, cooking out of your comfort zone/known ingredients, surprises, and more not have been part of the finale? If you purely look at the cooking of the day, and not the entire season, Kevin and Bryan seemed to deliver subpar, although, as a viewer, you have to go on the reactions of the judges.

I have some edible, pure essential oils. Maybe this is a silly question, but I have to ask. I have mandarin, black pepper and rose and they smell like their 'normal' counterpoints. I also have lime, ginger and basil and they smell/taste far from what I think the flavour should be. The lime smells/tastes more like candy than a delicious citrus lime flavour. Is this due to quality differences in essential oils or do some of them develop a different flavour when the products are concentrated into an oil?

He, if anybody is interested check my blog about cooking the recipes from the book. http://thebigfatundertaking.wordpress.com/ Greetings

I've cooked the cauliflower risotto and it's more work than you think. I'm going to cook a lot more stuff and possibly write about it. I've got a question however about the chocolate jellies. They are a mix of deionised water, trimolene, cacao, salt, gellan F and sodium citrate (BTW, I've used Citas and Gellan from Texturas as sodium citrate and gellan F, is that okay?). I put all the stuff in a Thermomix, boiled it while mixing and let it cool down. The thing is the texture is not really pleasant, it's not smooth, it's sort of (off course very soft) crumbly. Has anyone eaten the stuff at the Fat Duck and knows how the texture should be. I also tried it with only deionised water, gellan F and cacao, but the texture was almost identical.

I make mine in a low heated oven (about 100C/210F) in a water bath (warm milk/cream/vanilla --> temper egg yolks --> bake --> cool etc). I do have a question. When you bake the brulees at the end the vanilla always ends up on the bottom and the brulee is topped by a thin yellow line. Is there a way for the vanilla seeds to be evenly distributed and not get the yellow top with the oven method, so not the stovetop method? The only thing I can think of is making a creme anglaise and bake that in the oven to make a creme brulee, but that is more labour intensive. Thanks. See picture below for my brulee. As for the top sugar layer. I always caramelise sugar, let it cool down, cut it up in a food processor, sprinkle it on top and 'melt it together' with a blow torch. Works like a charm.

Hi I've got the TM21 model second hand, but the blades are a bit blunt. Is there anyway to sharpen the blades, they are supposed to be 'self-sharpening', but to get them sharp from the current condition seems impossible. Or do I have to buy blades?

PedroG, I have sous vide equipment (Magic + rice cooker), see previous postst. My thought was there was maybe a golgen temperature for traditional braising with sous vide. There is a big difference between 55-62C/131-143F, so I thought maybe there are some rules for the range 65-100C. I thought there maybe is a temperature which doesn't give a medium rare finish, but is just above it giving a tradtional braising finish, without having to monitor the temperature like crazy to get the right temeperature via an oven or stovetop. This is because I like the broken down, fibre texture of a traditional braise and maybe sous vide could give a result which is impossible via other routes.

Thanks for the informative reply. I have a crappy oven with a minumum temperature of 125C/257F, and keeping a low temperature is a pain in the ass. Also keeping a consistent low temperature in pan on the stove is also tricky, so traditional (controlled slow) braising is complex with my equipment. I'll try higher temperature. I was looking for a marriage of sous vide and traditional braising, in which I'm not after a medium rare texture. After I shred the meat (veal cheek) I put it on cling film, leaving room on the sides, and roll it. Then I twist the ends in opposite directions and you have a log. When you put it in the fridge it hardens (with the shredding I leave a small amount of fat and gelatin, which helps flavour and keeping the round shape). Take it out the fridge, slice it into discs, fry in oil until crisp and warm through in the oven.

I have only done pieces of meat for 24 hours, not 48 hours (have to learn to be patient!). With 24 hours LT/LT the meat is soft, but I don't always appreciate the texture. Is there a big difference between 24 and 48 hours in terms of texture; after 24 hours the meat I cooked is mostly 'intact', but soft. I read on this forum that 48 hours LT/LT breaks down collagen and the meat still has a 'medium rare texture'. Are you able to shred (pick fibres) this meat after 48 hours or is it still 'intact'? I'm after a texture in which you can pick the meat and remove fat and collagen, and then shape the remaing meat into a log.

Something on sous vide isn't clear to me. Tough cuts can be cooked like steak at about 58C/135F for a long time in which they become tender and become pink, but not overcook. What if I want to achieve a result which is more in line with traditional braising. For instance, I like the dark colour and texture of braised veal cheeks (5-6 hours) in an oven of 120C/250F. In this way you can shred the meat and it has a different feel to it than cooked sous-vide. At what temperature and time should you cook sous vide when you don't want that "medium rare" result, but a more 'traditional' braising result, not minding a bit of water loss of the meat?

I thought some weight on top should help, but haven't tried it yet. To be more specific with my question it is in regards to thin (long) strips of fruit and veg. I tried some slim slices of beetroot and apple, but they shrivelled. I had a strip of dried rhubarb in a restaurant once and it was completely flat and straight, it looked awesome. I can't seem to get the same result.

I have been drying food for some time now and have a question. When I dry fruit or vegetable slices they always tend to wrinkle and not stay perfectly flat. First I used an oven for drying (thought the oven was the cause of the wrinkling) and now an Excalibur dehydrator, but I still can't get them entirely flat. Any suggestions?

National Starch has two other maltodextrines besides the N-Zorbit one. One is a tapioca maltodextrin called INSTANT N-OIL® II. Instead of taking up fat it acts as a fat enhancer. The other is a maltodextrin called N-LITE® D. Does anybody have any knowledge (first hand experience) on these items?