Ruth

Last week I made what they call a pork blade steak which was just about the size you mention. I braised it with dried chiles, adapting a recipe I found in Alice Waters "The Art of Simple Food". Her recipe was for a larger piece and I halved her cooking times, checking with a probe thermometer. We enjoyed it very much. This was a piece of heritage pork I bought at the farmers' market. If your pork has the skin you might want to sear it at the end although if you keep the skin above the liquid you may not need to. If you have her book the recipe is on page 139. I don't think it would be correct for me to post the recipe but if you do not have access to it and are interested you can send me a pm and I can scan and e-mail it to you.

Yes, I think I told you where to buy peanut oil in large format

That should not happen. I cooked six duck legs (Moulard) sous-vide yesterday, also at 180° (83°c) for ten hours. My Julabo circulator brought the bath back to temperature in ten minutes and the legs came out beautifully. Perhaps you need a larger container. For six legs I used a huge stock pot. How many legs did you cook?

You can buy the very best peanut oil by the gallon at any Chinese supermarket. It comes from Hong Kong . I have never known peanut oil smell fishy but canola oil heated to high temperatures most certainly does. It apparently is loaded with omega 3. I never use it for frying or even for any kind of cooking.

Thank you. I was just thinking of going out to the back yard to collect some pebbles. Presumably the beans would be a touch more hygienic!

Since it is virtually impossible to extract all the air from a ziploc bag how do you prevent it from floating? I ask this question because even though I have a Foodsaver occasionally my bag of vegetables seems to retain a little air and it floats.

Today my sauce could not have been simpler. I had cooked the veal breast sous vide and chilled it. I had almost a cup of gel. After sautéeing the mixed mushrooms with some chopped shallots and chives. I added the gel from the veal and brought it to a simmer. This served as a perfect sauce for the veal which I cut in strips and seared "a la plancha". But , I am a mere home cook.

I came to the same conclusion and I can think of no reason as those same juices are very flavorful. I cooked some veal breast sous vide yesterday and for tonight's dinner I plan to sear it and braise some mushrooms in the juices for a sauce. Keller does not seem to like strong flavors - notice how he wraps his aromatics in plastic when cooking sous vide - and he may feel that the flavor of the aromatics in the juices is too strong.

e-monster do you have a chamber vacuum or do you freeze the marinade before vacuuming?

Actually I love to cook steaks sous vide. I season them well and cook sous vide at 52°C for one to three hours depending on thickness and quality of the meat, then a quick sear in a super hot cast iron pan. An inexpensive cut becomes truly succulent when cooked this way and is uniformly rare throughout.

Doh, i should refresh my windows before replying!! Anyways, back on point, i love goose. Just coming back from Hong Kong on holiday i really miss the roast goose there. Just can't get roast goose here in the UK, not the Cantonese style anyway. I suppose it must be the breed, do you have the Cantonese style in the US Chinatowns? ← I know where you must have had the goose in HK. It is sui generis and excellent. Did you also have the thousand year old eggs? That is the very best place to eat them. Nonetheless I stick to my guns - when cooking goose breast Western style as opposed to Chinese style it is at its best cooked exactly like a duck magret - that is very rare.

Be sure to keep it very rare. It would be good cooked very slowly in its own fat to no more than 120°F. If you have the equipment I think goose breast would be the perfect candidate for sous vide.

Well, I have the Julabo and am very happy with it. It is very easy to use and very reliable. The display is in celsius. I like that and feel that being able to switch between the two systems could well lead to confusion. At the time I bought my circulator my model was a little less expensive than the Polyscience. Remember that circulators are designed for lab use and have to be accurate. For sous-vide cooking we need nothing more than accuracy. I would go for the least expensive brand with a good track record

i have been using the Professional III Foodsaver for the past three years (prior to that I had a Professional II which served me well for many years). I have no trouble using it for sous-vide cooking unless I forget to pre-freeze the liquids. This week I cooked potatoes, artichokes, fennel and quince using "Under Pressure" as my guide and was delighted with the results. For the quince I froze a cube of lemon juice and added it to the bag. With this model you can even do an extended vacuum to make sure that you have removed the maximum amount of air. Tilia has now upgraded this machine to give it a pulse feature which will make vacuuming liquid even easier,

That looks beautiful and I shall do some as soon as I find the tails. I find trotters and ears in Chinatown in New York but I do not recall seeing any tails. Did you buy them in a Chinese or a Mexican market?

That is the correct answer. It is an amazing book. I love the precise instructions for cooking vegetables and fruits sous-vide. As for using liquids without a chamber vacuum pre freezing them works very well in most situations. Today I plan to cook artichokes, quince and potatoes using Keller's temp and timing. As for complaints about his use of metric measurements What could be more accurate? I would be happy if I never saw another "cup" measure again.

What temperature do you have in mind? I did it once at the same temperature I had cooked short ribs sous vide (70°C). That was too high and all the juices were expelled into the bag leaving me with dry and stringy osso bucco. What would you say to 60°C?

I have an important (for me) question. If I do this with a strong meat stock -I always add one or more pig's feet to my meat stocks - will it still gel after the gelatin filtration? I like to make head cheese for which I need a strong almost hard gel. The natural gelatin is also essential when one uses a stock as a base for sauces. I can see this is a great solution for fruit and vegetable based stocks but would like to know exactly what will happen to the texture of a gelatin- filtered meat or fish stock. Ruth Friedman

True for both asparagus and broccoli - if not shocked in ice water immediately after cooking they will not only soften but will lose their vibrant color and visual appeal. Both texture and visual appeal are important on a plate. I found the scientific discussion fascinating and learned a great deal from it but we must not forget the ultimate purpose.

http://forums.egullet.org/style_images/dev...icons/icon7.gif There is nothing I hate more than volume measurements for solids. Cup measurements are so inaccurate and cumbersome that they should have been abandoned long ago. Excellent digital scales that measure in both ounces and grams are now available at reasonable prices. No serious cook should be without them

Joan Roca suggests 70° C. What would be better at 58°C? The texture? Did you actually do that with suckling pig? I would think that it would need to stay in a 58°C bath for much longer than twelve hours, especially the haunch.

Last week I bought a 12 lb, suckling pig. The idea was to try different cooking methods in preparation for a party next month. I had it cut into six portions (two haunches, two shoulders and two ribs). I roasted one of the haunches traditionally with the oven set to 350° convection until the meat reached 170°F and turned on the broiler at the end to crisp the skin. It was good but the meat was rather dense. Last night I vacuumed the other haunch after seasoning it and adding a little lard. I cooked it for 12 hours at 74° C for exactly twelve hours. After allowing it to rest for 30 minutes or so I boned it before refrigerating. For dinner tonight I seared the skin side before serving. The meat was tender and juicy and the skin deliciously crisp. The idea came from Joan Roca although I used a slightly higher temperature than he suggests. I did,however, make his orange-shallot sauce which was a perfect accompaniment.

Nathan, while in Shanghai you should definitely go to the Whampoa Club on the Bund (I think it's number 3. The same building houses Jean-Georges - definitely not recommended). The Whampoa club has high-end ,very modern, Cantonese food. My husband and I had two very special meals there when we were last in Shanghai. Ruth

I am not from Chicago but whenever I an there I cannot resist having one meal, at least, at Topolobampo/Frontera Grill, arguably the best Mexican restaurants in the US. If you all enjoy Mexican food you could have a good lunch there.

I have pretty much given up on out-of-season tomatoes although I think a salad suffers without them.What is the Splendida brand grape tomato and where does one find it in NYC?