The War On Cookbooks

The Late late Christmas food diary.

 
 

Venison loin with venison stuffing ballotine, triple cooked goose fat chips, soubise of leek, caramelized onion hearts, parsnip crisps with a creme de cassis sauce and an orange sabayon.
 

Sorry sorry sorry, but due to feeling slightly under the weather and working over christmas and new year this is all coming a little late. 

I'm still not feeling great (COUGH!! SPLUTTER!!) so this is still going to be a short update. I have a week or so of work so I'll make sure I do a more meaningful update before its back to the kitchen.

So pictures and brief unsatisfying explanations it is then...ok ?

 

Roast pigeon on brioche, with pancetta and watercress in a maple syrup vinaigrette.

 

Boozy Mincemeat Pithivier with Beurre noisette ice cream, nutmeg anglaise, lemon pith marmalade and a brandy sabayon.

Unfortunately I forgot to consider colour when putting together the dessert. So it all looked very beige but tasted rather nice... I promise. The ice cream maybe being the star of the show if not the year. 

The lemon pith marmalade was made COUGH!!by blanching an refreshing lemon pith 10 times (to get rid of the bitterness) and then boiling it down in sugar syrup until the pectins thicken the sauce almost to a jelly.

The leek soubise was also pretty exciting in my little world. Slow cooked leek in butter and white wine for about 12 hours at 75oC, it falls apart COUGH!!almost to a sauce consistency and went well as a counterbalance to the sweet reduction sauce.

As always I'm happy to share recipes if anyone is interested, just ask kids.

happy new year and all that COUGH!!

x

 

Beurre Noisette Ice cream recipe for Mat

100g butter

200g double cream

150g milk

125g sugar

5 egg yolks

This Ice cream is easy and delicious. Burn the hell out of 100g of butter until black in a pan, leave to infuse for a few minutes then sieve out black bits with a fine cloth or muslin. Cool to room temp.

Add this to 350 grams off creme anglaise (My preference is 5 egg yolks, 200 ml cream and 150 ml milk but any ice cream quantity should do) brought to thickening consistency and then cooled to the same temperature as the butter. 

Combine whilst mixing well and instantly churn.

 

Blaggers Banquet (Reality Restaurant)

­Of all of the one million food related shows on TV ‘Masterchef' has always been my favourite. The one thing that propels it ahead of shows like Raymond Blanc’s The Restaurant' is its almost tireless mission to stretch the abilities of its contestants with seemingly undoable challenges. 'Obviously' part staged but never the less impressive feats, that give us hope in our fellow humans ability to do something they and we didn’t believe was possible a few weeks before. 

'The Restaurant' on the other hand seems to showcase a different viewpoint on our potential. Not one that sees the best in people but in fact the opposite. It’s the television equivalent of school kids pulling the legs of frogs and racing them round a obstacle course made from bits of random stationery. It’s the Apprentice, its Big Brother, its I’m a z-rated celebrity get me out of here, its one of Simon Cowel’s awful ‘ripping down our confidence piece by piece’ shows that make me want to scream and break things.  Very entertaining yes, but only for that moment. Only for that moment will I find entertainment in some loveable chavy chef, hopelessly putting together one of the worst plane shaped cakes I have ever seen. Though his humility and embarrassment will undoubtedly stay with him for some time to come, for me the memory will last only as long as Jedwards pop career. 

 Which is some strange way brings me to the Blaggers Banquet. Here we were with an opportunity to take over Hawksmoor a restaurant in London for one whole day, none of us restaurateurs. To make it even more difficult we had to source all the food for free, not pay for any staff, sell the tickets ourselves and for sell them for a whopping £75 each. This wasn’t for TV ratings, it was in Aid of Action Against Hunger and so therefore brings with it a whole new level of pressure.

    My task was simple enough. All I had to do was cook the main courses, something that I knew was well within my potential. So I set about planning a menu from the current information I had. So far I had been told we had secured a random selection of winter veg, some buffalo steaks and some stewing lamb and pork as well as some random bones for making sock.

    I instantly knew what to do with the Laverstock Park buffalo steaks. My opinion was that if everything else was a complete disaster then some well cooked steaks with some nice chips and a good helping of béarnaise should prove a well-timed distraction. This much I was pretty sure I could handle even for 50+ people.

    With the lamb I had no real idea at this point but with the pork I had a secret weapon. I have done on a few occasions a very successful Mexican pork stew. Pork braised slowly in cider, chicken stock and chipotle chillis. Served with some warming winter vegetables and some cooked ceviche (in lime juice) I figured I was on pretty safe territory for success. I fussed over the last ingredients I used and worked out some rough timings for a 10kg batch of pork. It all seemed doable, so I began to relax.

    I spent the next week concentrating on my final exams and Tante Marie, content in the fact that all I had to do was come up with a lamb dish to go along side my other two full proofs.

Two days before the event came, one exam left to do and I was in for a shocker. NO PORK!

    In fact the night before the event I was still a little in the dark about what meat we would actually have. It reminded me a lot of the Masterchef challenge when they take them to a school or army barracks and have to cook for unfeasibly large numbers. It was similar and perhaps more daunting considering this was 

a) not a school 

b) people were paying £75 a head for this food 

and 

c) this was not a television show with cuts and edits. 

In fact with all my exams and everything going on around me with new jobs and other things, it was only the night before the event that the enormity of the task eventualy hit me and for once kept me from going to sleep. Instead of sleeping I tried to think up with a few recopies I could use the next day. I think it was about 3 in the morning when I finally decided on my menu. It wasn’t until I got up the next day and had a quick shifty around the Internet that I would discover if either were remotely doable.

These are my two stews I came up with.

Braised Beef cooked in Beer with winter veg and chipotle en adobo

Beef supplied by Donald Russell

10k of braising steak, fat trimmed as much as possible

8 Bottles of Curious Brew Admiral Porter

2 ltr chicken stock (beef or veal probably better but lack of prep on the day forced it to be chicken stock, which is actually fine in practice and in some cases makes for a lighter more flavourful broth)

I large tin Chipote chillis in Adobo sauce ( I wanted this to be a subtle undercurrent. If you want a spicy stew add a lot more. )

2k of carrots diced

2k onions diced

1k leaks diced

bay leaf/thyme sprig (bouquet garnie. I don’t use parsley, as its flavour is never transferable)

Peppercorns

Various winter veg cut into large chunks or batons

smoked salt and white pepper

 

The process is simple enough. Brown the beef in a hot pan to develop the browning flavours for the broth. Remove and add the diced veg. Add a touch of salt and stir until soft and let the moisture pick up all the flavourful brown bits on the base of the pan. Once soft I add the chillies and sauce and stir for a few minutes.

    Add the beef back into the pan and cover with beer and chicken stock. Bring to the boil then skim of some of the scum and cover with some wet greaseproof paper and leave on a simmer for about 2-3 hours.

    You could if you like transfer this pan to the oven and cook covered for the same time at about 140oC. I prefer cooking ii on the stove, only for the reason that I can constantly check the texture of the beef during cooking. Because this is cut into chunks and is not on the bone, the time in between tender 'melt in your mouth' and over cooked and dry is much shorter.  If you know your time exactly stick it in the oven but if your are unsure use the hob as opening and closing the oven to check the tenderness will have you there for hours longer than necessary (especially when cooking 10K+ of beef).

    Once you think you have a beef that you can easily slice with a spoon take it immediately of the heat and leave it to cook in all the cooking juices. This is as essential with braises as resting the meat is with roasts or frying steak.  As the meat cools to around 60oC it sucks back a great deal of the cooking liquor and makes it even more moist and flavourful. It is this step in my mind that separates the men from the boys.

    At this stage we did an awful lot of skimming the fat. The meat we had received while beautiful was pre diced. So the time it would have taken for one person to trim 10k of fatty beef would have been far too long, so I trimmed what I could and skimmed the rest here.

    Drain of half of the skimmed cooking juices and strain into a separate container. Place the winter veg in a pan and cook until softened and slightly browned. Add the juices and boil the liquid, cooking the veg though and reducing the juices. When you have a nice consistency of the juices begin to season until the flavours pop out at you.

 

Add back the beef and warm though before serving.

  

Lamb Hot Pot.

Lamb supplied by Donald Russell

 

10k lamb neck diced

2 ltrs chicken stock

1 bottle of white wine

2k of carrots diced

2k onions diced

1k leaks diced

bay leaf/thyme sprig (bouquet garnie)

Peppercorns

2k onions finely sliced

750g unsalted butter

lots of potatoes (juts lots)

 

    As before brown the lamb in a pan, remove, add diced veg and gently season. Add back lamb and add chicken stock. Cook with the bouquet garnie and peppercorns until tender as before. Leave to cool.

Skim, pass and reduce the cooking liquor until it can be used as gravy.

    On the night I must admit this was the area I had most of my problems. I wasn’t at all happy with the tenderness of the lamb despite good reports. The issue came not from the lamb but from the fact that Hawksmoor only had one pot big enough to braise on the stove and it needed to be placed in the oven and braised in a covered tray. This would have been fine if the oven hadn’t stopped working 1 hr into cooking time and left me rushing about braising at high temperatures and cooling in flat trays at the end to make up time. As I said not prefect but I think we got a decent result in the end.

     The other components to the dish are very simple. Onions cooked very gently in butter and then in white wine. Using a frying pan either on a very low setting or just to the side of the direct heat gently cook the onions until incredibly tender in the butter. Once tender add a good helping of white wine and reduce slightly then season.

    The last element was the triple cooked chips that would act not only as the top of the hotpot but could also be served with the steaks. Slice the potatoes into 2cm thick pieces and cook in boiling water that is as salty as the sea. When they are at the verge of breaking up remove from the water and carefully place on kitchen paper and blot dry. Place in the fridge until completely dry. Fry the potatoes in oil at 150oC until slightly coloured, then remove and dry again in the fridge. At service fry at 180oC until brown and crispy.

 

Serve the lamb on top of the onions, pour on a little gravy and place the potatoes in a ring on top.

 

 
 

 

Crispy chicken skin Bites

Chicken supplied by Sillfield Farm

    Not one of my main courses but instead something that I knocked up for the canapés. We were given some chicken to use for stock. Instead of discarding the skin I took it of whole and laid it flat in an oven at 140oC with a little salt and lemon juice. The lower the oven temperature the less it shrinks. I let it cook until dry for a long time then crispened it up at 180oC for a few mins. Chopped it into pieces and seasoned it with togarashi and Maldon salt. Save the oily fat its great on practically everything.

  

 

Special thanks go out to Ben, Raluca, Cara , Charlie  and our leader Sig who was awesomely prepared for the day. Also a big thanks all the staff at Hawksmoor  that lent a hand and all the suppliers mentioned and unmentioned. And last but not least Niamh for being the organiser and excellent commander in chief.

     Doing what we did took a Herculean effort, which I am pleased to say we pulled off (much to my own surprise). The kind of attitude this task took in the kitchen was one of heads down and work hard until its time to crack open the wine at the end of service. Thankfully that’s what I got from all our helpers and fellow chefs. There was no mucking about, no going out for a skive or a fag, and no having a few glasses of wine during the day. It was as professional as most of the kitchens I have worked in my career. My hats of to everyone that helped out, it simply couldn’t have been a success without them.

    On reflection there were a few things I would have done differently and better but given the randomness of the ingredients I was pretty pleased with how it all turned out. I feel in the end that we started off facing 'The Restaurant' type humiliation but ended up looking like Masterchefs, which is the way we had hoped it would turn out. A lot of money was raised and is still being raised and a lot of people gave up their Sunday and many days in preparation and worked hard for no reward and fed a lot of people a lot of great food…. Job done.

 

 
 

 

For more info and reviews see http://blaggersbanquet.wordpress.com/

all photos nicked from foodbymark  or someone else. 

 

 

 

Trio of Lamb with Pea and Mint Puree and a Madeira Jus

Lamb Neck harrisa burger, Moroccan braised lamb spring roll and haggis tortellini on a bad of pea and mint puree with a madeira jus. 

An update on an earlier dish I did on here. I did this for my final exam at Tante Marie along with the sea bass dish a few posts ago and a dessert of tarragon panna cotta, a white chocolate fondant, passion fruit and an olive puree.

Like the Sea bass this dish has been reworked but if I had a bigger budget and more time I would maybe play around with it some more. For instance a richer brioche recipe is certainly better but needs longer to prove than I had available.

I'll give you the recipes anyway. The exam was done over a 3 hour period and for £11 for 4 servings so is certainly doable for most cooks.

You may notice the photography has improved a little. It's amazing what a little DIY lightbox can do for your non-daytime photography, which was starting to piss me off a little now its getting dark so early. I cook these things not just for a blog but for real time dinner and neither me nor Helen are too keen on shifting our whole life 6 hours behind just to get a good enough shot of my food (even if we were that hungry). Also I love arts and crafts so it would have been worth it even if had looked turdamundo

Lambs neck harrisa burger.

140g lambs neck minced

1 tsp harrisa paste

1/2 tsp salt

25g butter

      Brioche burger buns

      15g fresh yeast

3 tbsp milk, hand-hot

1 tsp sugar

25g strong white flour

200g strong white flour


2 tsp salt

1 tbsp caster sugar

50g butter

2 eggs beaten

1 tbsp milk

1 tsp sesame seeds

 

1. For the burgers mix ingredients and roll up in Clingfilm to form a thick sausage shape.
2. Chill and then divide into 4 equal portions.
3. Fry in a little oil and butter until browned on both sides and baste with pan juices.
4. For the buns mix the yeast, milk, sugar and 25g of flour and leave for 20 mins or until bubbly.
5. In another bowl rub the butter into the flour and mix with salt and sugar.
6. Mix beaten eggs with yeast mix and add the other ingredients.
7. Mix, bring together then knead for 10 mins or until the dough springs back.
8. Remove 4x 25-30g portions, shape into balls, brush with a little milk and sprinkle with sesame. Leave to prove.
9. Cook at 200oC for about 15 mins. Leave to cool.

 

      Moroccan lamb spring rolls

600g lamb shoulder

1 litre chicken stock

1 carrot

1 leek

1 bay

1 sprig thyme

4 peppercorns

1 tsp ras el hanout

60g apricots

8 filo shoots

1 egg

1tsp salt

 

1. Season then brown shoulder in a deep and when nicely coloured then add the chicken stock, veg and herbs then top up with water until covered. Bring to the boil, skim then cover and simmer for about 2 hours until tender. Alternatively once at the boil it can be transferred to an oven and cooked at 140-160oC.
2. Remove from pan and place in a bowl with some of the stock and leave to cool slightly.
3. Once cool enough to handle pull apart from bones and fat and drain of most of the stock.
4. Mix chopped apricots and ras el hanout and season to taste.
5. Lay out filo sheets and place 1/4 of the mixture in each and roll up using beaten egg to seal.
6. deep fry at 180oC for 5 mins or until nicely brown.

 

 

      Haggis Tortellini

120g haggis

basic pasta 

275g pasta flour

3 egg yolks

2 whole eggs

1tbsp olive oil

 

1. Sift the flour onto a board and make a well in the centre. Ad the eggs, egg yolks and olive oil and bring together into a dough.
2. knead for 10 mins or until elastic. Cling and refrigerate until needed.
3. Divide the haggis into 10g balls.
4. Roll pasta to mark 2 on the pasta machine.
5. Make tortellini with haggis using water to stick.
6. Bring a pot of salted water almost to the boil. Add pasta and cook for roughly 4 mins or until al dente.

 

 

      Pea and mint puree

400g frozen peas

30g fresh mint leaves

2tbsp water

salt and pepper

 

1. Blanch the peas, drain and blend with mint and water.
2. Season.

 

      Madeira jus

      150ml Madeira

300ml Stock from lamb shoulder

100g mushrooms

1 shallot finely diced

 

1. Reduce Madeira in a pan on a high heat with the mushrooms and shallot until thick and syrupy.
2. Pass the lamb stock though a fine sieve and add 300ml to the pan and reduce again until thick and syrupy. Strain and keep warm.

 

The Full English

Two Pork and apple sausages, heinz beans, unsmoked bacon, french toast, a potato waffle, roast cherry tomatoes and a poached egg. (HP sauce on the side)

I have many versions of these and lets face it anything goes. I especially like haggis and black pudding but sainsbury's and waitrose denied me this time on both counts. 

I do have a list of rules though.

1. Always with beans. It's just not the same for me without them, and they must be heinz or you can get f**cked.

2. Brown sauce is also a must. HP is god but that tiptree  stuff is good too. 

3. Sausages should be of the upmost quality and pork. I want soft and moist banger type sausages not your dry european type (listen local gastro pub...listen!). Cook slowly and evenly and in the same pan as the bacon.

4. Bacon should be streaky and unsmoked. Cooked from a cold pan without oil. 

5. To enhance the flavour of the beans add them to the same pan as you cooked the bacon and sausage in and use them to deglaze all the pan bits.

6. French toast is better with french bread. 

7. Waffles are waffly versatile.

Sea Bass with Candied Aubergine and Fennel with a Ponzu Reduction

 

Sea bass on a bed of shaved fennel with candied aubergine

and a ponzu sauce made from a reduction of citrus fruits 

with dashi, soy and mirin.

The fennel is shaved and marinaded in lemon juice and salt.

The aubergine in cooked in a simple syrup and then cooled. The 

process completely changes the texture and taste but it's not 

overly sweet (think nice ripe fruit sweet). The sweetness 

counteracts perfectly with the sharpness of the fennel and 

ponzu.

The ponzu is made by reducing clementine and lime juice and

adding dashi, mirin and soy. I discovered Ponzu from my time 

spent with Nuno Mendes but it's actually not his recipe. Its more 

an Alain Duccasse recipe that I've tinkered with.

This is one the few dishes I've worked on in detail so far.

It's practically perfect in balance and is one of the few dishes

I would happily add to my future 'dream restaurant' menu in

it's current state.

It's also a possible starter for my exam at Tante Marie next month,

and if they don't like it I might just shoot them.

Pork Belly Tortellini with Prosecco Poached Pears, Pecorino and a Sage Brown Butter

I’ve been so consumed with exam stuff and final projects that I have sadly neglected this site a little.

That’s not to say that I haven’t been cooking but as I don’t want anyone to know what my Tante Marie final exam dishes are, I can’t really blog them. So I was relieved today to find the time to do something a little different…a distraction if you will. 

Eatlikeagirl set a challenge on her blog to come up with a perfect food match to some Bisol Jeio Prosecco. I relish a new challenge and seeing as when I tried the stuff at her stall a few weeks back and liked it I thought this might just be for me. Find out more about this competition and her excellent website here . 

After securing a bottle myself we had a few taste tests to see what we thought it would work well with. We did our best Jilly Goolden impressions and came to the conclusion that the predominant flavour notes were toasted nuts with lots of fruit which we thought were either apples or pears (I think more pears).

From that I went on to construct a dish, which would compliment those characteristics in a simple relaxed Italian style, much like the prosecco. Relaxed style is not really my bag these days (as some might have noticed) but I have to admit it’s nice to get back to it. It’s also nice to see how far I can take dishes like these given my journey into doing all the hideously complicated ‘gastronomic Lego’ stuff. Actually at the end of it I feel the ‘less is more’ bug might be coming back to bite me…which in itself has made this a worthwhile project, even if nothing else comes of it. 

My dish I settled for was a pork belly tortellini with poached pears, pecorino and sage brown butter. The cheese and the brown butter give the perfect kind of nutty vibes with the pear complimenting the fruitiness. The addition of the prosecco itself into the menu doesn’t harm the combination either but the effect is a subtle undercurrent. 

For once I wont bang on about how good or bad it is and contrary to my track record write you out the full recipe with all the numbers and stuff so you can see for yourself if you like. 

Pork Belly Tortellini with Prosecco Poached Pears, Pecorino and a Sage Brown Butter. 

Serves 2 

500g pork belly with skin 

300ml chicken stock 

1 bay 

1 sprig thyme 

peppercorns 

half a carrot 

1 leak 

half an onion 

1 garlic clove 

150g butter 

small bunch sage 

200g pecorino 3/4 grated and the rest shaved 

100 ml Bisol Jeio Prosecco 

2 pears (peeled cored, and cut into 8 slices.) 

100ml water 

100g caster sugar 

200g 00 flour 

6 egg yolks 

1 egg 

1 tbsp olive oil 

pinch of salt 

salt and black pepper 

a little hazelnut oil 

Separate the skin from the belly and brine belly in a 15% water to salt mix for 2 hours. Drain, pat dry and place fat side down in a cold pan and turn on to a high heat. Melt the fat and brown on all sides. Remove from pan and drain of the fat. Deglaze with a little stock and then add the rest of the chicken stock, herbs and veg and the belly and braise for minimum of 2 hours in a covered pot or in the oven at 140oC. It’s done when it pulls apart easily with a fork. 

In the mean time salt the skin until the juices start to come out. Dry and salt again and put into the oven for about 45 mins at 220oC basting with its own fat regularly. Remove when blistered and crispy. Put to one side. 

To make the pasta, make a well with the flour and add all the ingredients. Mix with your finger in a circular motion and combine when it begins to come together. Knead for about 10 mins or until it springs back. Leave to rest for an hour in the fridge covered with cling film. 

Mix the sugar, water and prosseco in a pan and heat until sugar dissolves. Add the pears and cook until tender. Remove dice up half and leave to one side. 

Remove the belly and place in a bowl with some of the braising liquid. Leave to cool in the liquid so as to absorb some of the juices. Sieve the remaining braising liquid and put back in a wide bottomed pan and reduce to a thick constancy and season appropriately. 

When the pasta is ready, roll out with a floured pasta maker to the second from last setting and cut into large rectangles. 

Drain the belly and pull apart with your hands and a fork. Add the reduced braising liquid and mix well. Chill. 

Fill the pasta with a ball of the belly and shape into tortellini’s. 

Boil some salted water and cook the pasta for about 3-4 mins. 

At the same time brown the butter in a large frying pan and when the nutty aroma is at it’s peak and brown dots start to appear add the sage, the pear and the grated cheese and then the pasta with a little of the cooking water. Emulsify everything in the pan and toss till everything is warmed though. 

Season with salt and pepper and pour onto the plate. 

Decorate with a few deep fried sage leaves and some of the crispy skin and drizzle with a little hazelnut oil.

The Front Line Food Diary (Sea Bass done three ways with pil-pil sauce)

Sea bass sous vide in sea water, pan fried and raw marinated in soy, olive oil and orange peel with crispy fried skin. The three opposing methods give lots more textures out of the same fillets and I think make for a more interesting dish. It's a pity I didn't get a better picture of the pan fried one. I was really proud of how well it came out.

The pil-pil sauce I made by making a rapid white wine reduction with the bones and adding some garlic and chili infused olive oil as a slow emulsion to the result. I also added lemon juice, a little sherry vinegar and parsley at the end. It's not a traditional pil-pil which should be made with slowly emulsifying salt cod with olive oil in a pan, but its my interpretation...also I didn't have any salt cod.

Slow cooked Lamb Shoulder. How Slow ? How Low ?

The phrase 'low and slow' has become something of a buzzword in home cooking over the past decade and ever since the rise and rise of food costs 3 years ago nothing could be more fashionable.

Gone now are the halcyon days of fillet steak and pan fried duck breast in flavour of the more modern penny pinching cuts such as cheek and leg. Cheaper cuts maybe, but with awesome depth of flavour. Something michelin starred cuisine has known for some time now. Why is it that people will pay between £25 + on a piece of meat that costs less than a £2.50 and yet supermarkets apparently cant shift them in enough bulk to make it worth their while ?

Things do seem to be improving however, I noted pigs trotters in waitrose the other day and pork belly is now readily available. How long will it be before we see pigs heads and bone marrow ? ...Fingers crossed.

So what is the secret of these tougher cuts of meat. Why are they so flavorsome and how do we maximize that flavour ? 

The main differences between a cheaper cut and a prime cut are the connective tissues, the collagen (the primary protein in connective tissues) and the fat content. Prime cuts of beef are mostly free from connective tissues and collagen. When you fry a piece of tough meat the fatty sinus tighten up and shrink the meat and the collagen doesn't have long enough to break down and dissolve. So what your left with is a nasty piece of tough cooked meat. 

On a prime cut the fat is thin and nicely marbled and enhances the flavour of the meat without you having to chew though big chunks of fat. On cheaper cuts what you have is basically big chunks of fat which need to be rendered somehow. 

So in order to cook the meat properly we need to render all these things down.

Most people just cook the shit out of them, which makes perfect sense given that traditional rational says you need to cook them at high temperatures in order for all these nasties to melt. Stew, roast or braise any of these will do the trick. The connective tissues given a long enough timeline and a high enough heat will eventually break down and leave you with a succulent flavorsome feast.

So thats it then ? That's all we need to do or know ?...well not quite. 

While cooking at high temperatures (and by high I'm talking anything over 100oC) we loose a great deal of the products weight. The meat itself becomes dryer and eventually a little tough. When we cook using any method (except microwave cooking, which I think we can ignore) the heat is conducted through the meat from the outside to the inside. Meaning that whenever we reach our perfect medium rare in the centre of the cut, the outside will have already exceeded that temperature by a long way, and lost a lot of moisture in the process. So in effect even the most perfect roast will have some areas that are less than perfect and the bigger the cut the bigger the imperfection. This is not to say that its bad to cook this way or wrong on any level but it can be improved upon if that's your bag.

Truth is cooking anything above 70oC will result in some moisture loss. Collagen on the other hand we are told rapidly dissolves at 90oC and begins dissolving at 70oC. Which leaves us with the problem that in order for us to melt the collagen we must cook at temperatures that make moisture loss unavoidable. 

Luckily thats not the case at all. Collagen actually begins shrinking somewhere between 50 and 70oC and given a long enough time line will eventually dissolve. Also Chemicals in the collegian once broken down apparently start tenderizing the meat giving an even better result. 

The last bit of the puzzle however is one less concerned with meat quality and more concerned with health and safety (dull dull dull, I know). 

At any temperatures below 60oC we a faced with the dreaded danger zone temperatures. Meaning that if we want to cook our meat safely we are only allowed in this zone for less than 4 hours (1 hour if your being ultra safe). Which is hardly long enough to cook a rump steak at these temperatures never mind a whole shoulder. 

Personally, given a good enough meat I'd happily cook at 56oC, which I'v cooked at before for a 72 hour veal shoulder. As long as I pan fried the outside afterwords I'd happily take the risk (which I have to say isn't a huge one at all). But assuming you want to play by the rules 63 degrees is perfectly acceptable.

How long do I cook for is the last problem. For this I researched the egullet boards and came to the conclusion that none of them had a clue. The longest anyone had tried was 36 hours and the results seemed to yield only marginally satisfactory results. As I knew my 56oC experiment needed 72 hours I figured I'd just go bang in the middle. So 56 hours it was.  

And this was the result .

The hole you see in the meat was where the shoulder bone just fell out...yes I said fell out. You will notice that not only has the collagen and fat rendered to nothing but the meat is still pink and right the way though . So much in fact you'd think it was pork and no I have not done anything in photoshop except resize it for my blog. 

I know its unlikely that most of you will have the time or equipment to cook this way. Not all of you are stupid enough to have a home sous vide kitchen but it still leaves you with some great knowledge that can be of use even if you don't go to these extremes. Low is anything below 70oC and slow is your whole weekend or indeed maybe your whole week. 

Just while I'm at it however this is one of the things I knocked up with the result. 

Glazed Shoulder with Roast potatoes, Pea and Mint puree and ras el hanout caramel.

It was top.

The Front Line Food Diary (Tuna and Watermelon Tartare)

If Carlsberg were to make snack food it would probably be something like this.

The tuna was simply diced and marinated in a mixture of freshly squeezed orange juice, soy and rice wine vinegar. Don't leave it for too long as you want it raw and the longer you leave it in the citrus juices the longer it gently cooks.

The watermelon you could just chop, but I compressed it first in a vacuum bag on a very high setting and let it rest for a few hours. This changes the structure of the melon entirely making it more like steak tartar. It was then finely chopped with a little salt and olive oil.

To season just a little togarashi and were done. 

My only wish is that tuna become less endangered so I can feel ok buying more in the future. Its a really indulgent treat and I firmly believe I would never get bored shoveling it down my big fat throat.

Christmas Canapé Project part 5

Egg Nog

 

Although I don't think I've ever been near egg nog in all my 30+ years, reading the ingredients I immediately knew what it tasted like. 

Milk, egg, sugar, cream, eggs are mean its basically a crème anglaise with flavoring. Which is fine cause whilst I've never made egg nog or tasted it, I've made and eaten crème anglaise in vast quantities. Sometimes I drink it straight up...I know disgusting, right ? but it's still an improvement over my old habit of drinking condensed milk straight out of the can. In 1000 years I may evolve to just having a refreshing glass of milk but don't hold your breath.

So I decided to start with a base crème anglaise infused with nutmeg. I did this in a water bath ( I know boring, right ?)  but it can easily be done the standard way. Just chop of a bit of nutmeg and let it infuse in the pan. Cover with some cling film whilst cooking and leave covered once cool and leave over night for best results. 

In addition to this I slow cooked and egg at 65oC for exactly 45 mins. Not a minute more or less. The result was this.

The runny white simply falls off and you are left with a perfectly cooked yolk soft on the inside but strong enough so you can throw it about a bit.

In order to do this you need a good fresh egg. Supermarkets are fine in fact I found the best ones at sainsburys in the end. 

To tell how fresh your egg is simply look at the best before date. The date is there not because the egg goes bad on that date but because the egg has a natural immunity to bacteria for 28 days after it is been laid. Meaning that after 28 days you need to put it in the fridge, not chuck it out like my mum does. 

So the date stamp will give you the exact date it was laid. I found one that was laid two day ago. I also found some in my all organic, all singing, all dancing, freshness guaranteed farmers market that were laid 20 days ago...tut tut.

The egg was rolled in a mixture of cinnamon and caster sugar then topped with some icing sugar for decoration. 

The result was fabulous if a little messy to eat. And yes I have already finished of the rest of the creme anglaise, and yes I feel a little sick as a result.