paulpegg

Yes, I did. I have about 1/3 left over (after a few taste tests) since I only put three 1" squares on each serving. I felt that the strong taste of the gratin might overpower the rest of the dish. I got a 1/2" layer in a 5"x6" mold. At first I thought that some of the components would make much more than needed for four servings. in the final analysis, There was enough custard to make 5-1/2 servings, gratin for 8, sable for 10 and arlette for 10 - 14. The arlete is certainly impossible to make just 4 since you make 1/16" slices. I made a 4" long section and sliced off about 1/4" before I got a clean cut and have 3-1/2" left over plus enough onion sugar for another large piece. The flavors in this dish don't come together until the final assembly is done. Each component on it's own does not reveal the true flavor until they all come together. It was a lot of work but the comments of my guests made it worth it.

ONION TART Chris, i took a swag at the onion tart this week and here is the result. It is not as pretty as yours but not bad for a 75 year old amateur. I put the custard on the bottom, then the sable and then three 1" squares of the gratin. It was delicious. you are correct, the lime zest is the key flavor that pulls this thing together. Thanks for your thoughts on this dish. It is clearly a daunting taks and many hours of attention to detail. Paul Les Marmitons of NJ

Chris, Did you use the onions from the butter anyplace? It looks like they could be used in the gratin, especially if I need to significantly increase the quantity of the gratin. I did some shopping today and will make a trial run at this one later in the week.

Chris, Beautiful job. I can taste it just looking at it. Your tip on chopping the onions for the gratin makes a lot of sense.

Chris, Thank you very much for this fantastic blog. We discussed this dish on the Sous Vide forum earlier in the week and I am still grappling with the quantities for each component. I am planning on having my men's cooking club prepare this dish as part of a tapas style dinner we will be doing in two weeks (32 half servings). We will certainly be doing a lot of pre-prep on this one. I am particularly interested in the quantities of each component vis a vis the quantities spelled out for four servings on page 5-261. For example, 561 specifies that you need 80 grams of the custard to make four servings yet the recipe on page 264 shows that the yield is 670 grams, which would be 8 times more than required. How did you handle this problem? Did you follow the detailed recipe as shown or did you cut it down to make 80 grams. Also, did you serve 20 grams per person? or did you make the whole 675 grams and split it up equally among four plates? This same problem arises with the Onion Gratin since 60 grams is in 261 and the recipe on 265 makes 250 grams. These issues may not be a problem when making four servings but could be a disaster when making 32 servings. Thanks again, Paul

Chris, I looked at the picture on page 264 again and realized that the very bottom of the stack is the custard. It is almost the same color as the paper and goes right off the bottom of the page. A darker background or showing it on a plate would have made this shot easier to understand.

Absolutely correct. Post a picture when you make it. Good luck.

Neither picture depicts the assembly instructions on the bottom of page 261, so I guess the pictures are just to illustrate a few other possibilities.

Chris, After reading the various recipes and introduction carefully it looks to me that on page 264 the stack from the bottom is gratin, sable, onions and arlette. On page 265 they are sable, custard, gratin and onions. I can't tell where the buttery looking topping on the custard comes from in that stack.

Did you retain the pistachio oil or use a different one? FWIW, I made a gallon of the pistachio gelato using pistachio butter that I ordered from Fastachi in Watertown, MA. (The recommended source in MC is not available to me). I had several complaints about the first shipment and the second was improved but still not what I expected. They sell roasted pistachio butter and the first one was quite brown and tasted like it was roasted too much. The second batch was better. They did not grind to a fine paste so the product had small bits of nut that I had to strain out after the mix was cooked. The gelato from the second batch was very good. I used Roland's pistachio oil which is readily available. I used in an a "Deconstructed Baked Alaska" that I prepared for Valentine's Dinner for 40 people.

I have used hundreds of the premium bags from Vacuum Sealers Unlimited. These are partially mesh for Foodsaver use and I have never had one fail. They also have less expensive full mesh bags for foodsaver. I purchased two of these pumps on ebay.about a year ago. One is a spare not yet required. The other has been in constant service in bath temperatures up to 85C with no problems. I regularly cook 72 hour short ribs and this pump just keeps on ticking. You will need a $5 12v power supply and a $2 plug type connector from Radio Shack to power it. I bought some high temperature silicon rubber tubing to connect it all together. You can see some of it in my previous post above on keeping the bags from floating.

Is that a toilet tank!? Ingenious! No, it is a plastic beer cooler. You can see how I built it at my Les Marmitons article. I have changed the pump since I build this thing in November 2010 and use it constantly. The pump I now use is an external centrifugal pump rated for 95C at 100 GPH and it works great under all circumstances. It sells for about $35 on ebay and comes from Hong Kong. I bought a spare but have never had to put it into service. This setup still cost me less than $200 and I have prepared food for up to 100 people in it with never a problem.

I have seen lots of posts here about how to keep the bags from floating and thought I would share my solution. I obtained a few feet of 1/2" diameter solid stainless steel rod and cut it into 6" pieces. I filed the cut edges smooth to prevent them from cutting the bags. One or two of these are sufficient to hold down anything that might float. If the cooking time is short I simply roll a bar or two up in the end of the bag, fold over the ends and clip them so the bars don't fall out. For longer cooking time I double bag the meat and put a few bars in the second bag. I adjust their position as close to the seal as possible to keep the meat from sitting on the bottom of the cooker. Here are four boneless legs of lamb in my beer cooler version that I started last night. They will cook for 24 hours at 55C and will be perfectly medium rare. I will take two out and cook the remaining two for another 6 hours at 60C for those who prefer their lamb a bit less rare. This is in preparation for our Valentine's party on Saturday. It is part of a seven course meal my men's cooking club is preparing.

The caution regarding garlic in Sous Vide relates to whole garlic cloves where direct contact of the whole clove against the meat can cause localized saturation of the flavor. Thomas Keller in Under Pressures advises to wrap the garlic and other whole herbs in plastic wrap, cut off the ends of the wrap and put them in the bag with the other ingredients. Your curry paste will not have enough large pieces of garlic to cause a problem and you will probably use less than if you prepared the dish in a skillet or wok.

I've done this several times (actually I think many of us on this forum have)... I haven't used the SVDash yet, but according to NathanM's reformatted beef table, 2.5" should not be a problem, assuming that you're cooking to medium-rare 55C.. it should come to temp in just under 3h50m. Also, unless your roast has been jaccarded (either by you or at the processor), the interior is considered sterile by the FDA and not typically a concern for most pathogens. Personally, for cooking beef this way, I like to do a propane torch pre-sear to kill any bacteria on the surface and develop some flavor... I"ll also take any of the fatty trimmings off, and brown/render in a pan and add the rendered fat and browned pieces to the bag. Then, season and sear (again) prior to service. I agree with Ken. I don't sear beforehand but do plunge large pieces of meat into a hot water bath for a minute to kill any pathogens on the surface. I prefer to sear at service and I know some people do it both before and after SV.

You made one half of the recipe but forgot that it calls for 635 grams of carrot juice from 1.4 kilos of carrots. You should easily have gotten 315 grams of juice from 700 grams of carrots. The ginger gel sounds okay but I like the infused tapioca pearls since they are easily picked up on the spoon and the "dosage" can be controlled quit easily. I guess you could use excess ginger gel in any sushi like preparation. I have made one for many years using a cored out cucumber stuffed with crab meat and a few slices of roasted red pepper, spinach and pickled ginger. Use the gel instead of the pickled ginger and slice in 3/4" rounds. Serve with a ponzu sauce or your favorite asian preparation.

The latest venison loin I used was wild also. One hour in a 58C bath produced the results you see in my post above. No need to overdo it.

I used the thickness gauge in a prior post (which is based on Doug Bladwins tables) and found it was 35 mm and cylindrical, so I cooked for one hour. MC prefers 55C but lists 58C as the temperature for "pink", between medium rare and medium. It has worked well for me including service for 40 people last month.

One hour at 58C is my best bet for venison loin. See this entry Venison Loin

Sous Vide Venison Here is a simple venison dish. The venison loin was cooked sous vide for 1 hour at 58C and then seared on a hot cast iron skillet for 1 minute on each side. Once again, I used the reduction of Momofuku marinade for the sauce. The venison was perfectly rare, very tender and flavorful. It was a big hit.

Caramelized Carrot Soup This is the lat­est ver­sion of the Caramelized Carrot Soup I have made. I got sev­eral com­plaints about the tex­ture of the micro-cubed gin­ger, tar­ragon and ajwain seeds, so I pow­dered the seeds and left out the tar­ragon. I found a recipe in MC that uses tapi­oca pearls to carry oys­ter fla­vor into a dish. I decided to cook some small tapi­oca pearls and soak them in gin­ger juice overnight. It worked like a charm. The pearls were infused with the gin­ger fla­vor with­out the fibrous tex­ture of fresh gin­ger. I made a coconut foam, left out the herbs and added 1% agar and .2% xan­thum gum to thicken it a bit. It all came together very nicely and was the sub­ject of much con­ver­sa­tion among my guests. I also did the Duck Confit recipe (MC 3-178) but made a Yukon Gold Potato/Celery Root puree and Sauteed Kale to finish the plate. The sauce is a reduction of Momofuku's short ribs marinade that goes great with any red or rich dark meat.

I followed the cure and sous vide steps for the duck legs but made my own version of a potato/celery root puree and Kale sides. The sauce is a reduction of the marinade in Momofuku's 48 Hour Short Ribs. This, along with the carrot soup modifications I posted in that discussion made the day.

This is the latest version I have made. I got several complaints about the texture of the micro-cubed ginger, tarragon and ajwain seeds, so I powdered the seeds and left out the tarragon. I found a recipe in MC that uses tapioca pearls to carry oyster flavor into a dish. I decided to cook some small tapioca pearls and soak them in ginger juice overnight. It worked like a charm. The pearls were infused with the ginger flavor without the fibrous texture of fresh ginger. I tried Seattle Food Geeks suggestion for coconut foam but added 1% agar and .2% xanthum gum to thicken it a bit. It all came together very nicely and was the subject of much conversation among my guests.

As I recall, David advises against using low fat milks such as 2% etc. because they cause the grainy texture you want to avoid. The fat in ice cream coats the water molecules and prevents them from freezing. Emulsifiers help keep the water and fat molecules together. I have started to use Cremodan 30 stabilizer and the results are much creamier and do not freeze as hard, which makes them easier to scoop. You use 0.5% in the mix. I am working on an eggless version with whole milk 73%, sugar 10%, non-fat dry milk 9.5%, light corn syrup 5.5%, invert sugar 1.5% and Cremodan 30 0.5%. Add any flavor you want to this base. I recently harvested a lot of hickory nuts. These are darn near the hardest nuts to crack, but with a brick and a hammer I broke some up and steeped them in the milk for a few hours, strained out the solids and made this mix. It came out very creamy with an unusual nutty flavor. No ice crystals at all.

Absolutely. I have used both versions of mine to braise tough cuts such as short ribs for up to 72 hours with never a problem. The temperature stays rock solid at the set point. I check the temperature once or twice a day and ensure that the water level stays high. The cooler version had an insulated lid which keeps evaporation at a minimum. I float a piece of bubble wrap on the stock pot version and that eliminates almost all evaporation.