Popping Grapes

My wonderful husband got me an isi gourmet whip for Christmas and I decided it was time to play.  I had co2 cartridges and grapes so I made carbonated grapes as my second experiment (I made whipped cream the day after Christmas but I can’t post those pictures). The secret to carbonated is…owning an isi whipping syphon. That and cold.  Cold allows Co2 to get into food on a molecular level.  No cold, no fizz.  You need to chill both the whip and the grapes completely.   Then you need to put in 2 Co2 cartridges being sure to hold down the handle to expel gas after the 1st cartridge but not the second.  This gets rid of the air at the top of the canister so that it is completely filled with Co2.  The  Co2 must now make it’s way into the fruit so you refrigerate the whole thing on it’s side.  Grapes take 8-10 hours to carbonate and last about 10 minutes so serve immediately.  Once we expelled the gas and pulled them from the canister they were sizzling and whistling with co2. They taste almost like fermented grapes. We paired them with some Pt. Reyes blue cheese, but we immediately thought…sangria!

 

 

 

 

 

Grass Fed Rancher Steak Sous Vide

In Los Angeles we have an incredible butcher named Lindy and Grundy.  They carry only organic, local, pasture raised and grass fed meats, but the most unique part is that they are a snout to tail butcher.  Not only is the meat incredibly healthy, only grass fed on 100% organic small farms, but you can get really unique cuts. I feel better about my daughter eating it, and I know it’s sustainably raised so I can feel rather smug about my elitist home cooking.

The cut I was working with today was a rancher steak, also know as heart of the clod.   Although it sounds like a middle school insult, it comes from the shoulder clod and is a tough piece of meat only good for braising. This makes it an ideal cut to sous vide. I’ve never understood people who take an expensive New York and sous vide it. Instead I want to coax flavor and texture from more overlooked cuts that would normally require a lot of time and effort to prepare. My steaks came from the butcher already tenderized with a jaccard so all I had to do was marinate, bag and cook.

Prepare a marinade of Worcestershire and soy sauce. Place the steaks in a shallow pan and cover with marinade. Refrigerate for 2-4 hours.

Start sous vide warming to 133 (my Nomiku does a more precise temp of 132.7 but 133 will be fine)

Remove from marinade, season with salt and pepper and place in a food saver bag with sliced onions and mushrooms. I used some trumpet and crimini mushrooms but pretty much anything flavorful would work. Add one pad of butter in the bag and vacuum seal. The butter is critical to the flavor and texture. You won’t get the same result from olive oil. Under my links you can read serious eats steak sous vide primer. It discusses in ore depth the reason that butter is important. I placed mine in the 132.7 water for 16 hours plunged into an ice bath and then froze them for later meals for my daughter. One of the things I love about sous vide as a mom is that I make small portions that are easy to thaw and heat in minutes.

To serve I thaw them in the sink, heat an iron skillet to searing hot, add butter and a drizzle of olive oil and sear on both sides. The steak is cooked to medium rare temperature so if you prefer medium or your kids won’t eat pink meat simply cook a bit longer on the skillet. The texture is amazing. Closer to a New York, and the flavor is fantastic.

Sous vide beet carpaccio

I love beets! I love them, but many people don’t. Here’s a beet recipe I came up with that satisfies even the beet haters amongst my friends. It introduces a savory element through thyme infused in a sous vide slow cook. The beets come out perfect every time and it’s a lot less messy than roasting in your oven. They are simply beautiful and will dazzle your dinner guests. I often take these to dinner parties as a starter and they never fail to amaze.

When you serve them always introduce an acid element such as vinegar or lemon juice. I’ve served them simply on a white plate with lemon juice and lemon zest sprinkled on top or I’ve made a micro green salad with them. Here I paired them with humbolt fog goat cheese, micro arugula, baby kale and some walnuts. I lightly drizzled it with a champaign vinaigrette.

Recipe

Preheat the sous vide water bathe to 185.

Peel and thinly slice the beets.

Place in a vacuumed sealed bag with a sprinkle of salt, a drizzle of olive oil and 2 sprigs of thyme.  Vacuum seal the bags and place in the preheated sous vide.

Cook for 2 hours and afterwards immediately submerge in a ice water bath for 10 minutes to stop the cooking process.  If you’re feeling lazy you don’t even need to do this since you’re cooking veggies, it just means they keep cooking so your texture could be slightly less firm than you want. You can serve immediately or keep your little gems in the fridge for a month. They are great right out of the bag but they benefit from added acid and a peppery element such as arugula or just a sprinkle of pepper.

Sous vide success !

The 19 hour sous vide octopus is a smashing success! We took out one of the yummy umami tentacles and simply sliced it over some lemon, sprinkled with paprika and chowed down. It is fantastic. Perfect texture! We also got out our sriracha and dabbed some on top because we thought it could use some heat. We have tons of ideas for this and we are having some friends over tomorrow to try our little experiment. Check out Wednesday for the update.

Blame it on the Wine!

Last night I had my first big flop in molecular gastronomy. I wanted to make mozzarella spheres but I had a couple of problems. #1 we had gone out to dinner with the kids and had some wine, got my daughter to bed late and got started around 9PM after some wine and cocktails. #2 my scale died. Note to self – never ever attempt molecular gastronomy without a scale. I know it might seem intuitive that just winging it isn’t something you should do with anything starting with the word molecular but I really really wanted to do it and thought it would be a good experiment. Today my husband gave me a crash course in our sous vide supreme and we prepared a sous vide of octopus. I will post about that later. In the mean time I’ve got a little sodium algenate mess to clean up and a fridge full of liquid mozzarella.

Is that yogurt bursting in my mouth?

Experiment #1 Spherical Yogurt

Mom always told me not to play with my food. But mom had never seen Wiley Dufresne on top chef! I have long marveled at molecular gastronomy but as a busy ad executive with little experience in the kitchen I left fancy stuff to the real chefs. Now that I’m taking a work break to spend more time with my daughter I’m doing what any suburban mom would do, I’m experimenting in molecular gastronomy.

Last night I surprised my husband with a fantastic meal of fennel crusted ahi and a spherical yogurt experiment. Luckily my husband is way more of the chef than I am so he’s really into the experiments. Here’s how my day went…

In the afternoon while entertaining kids on a play date at our house I pulled out my agitate bath from the fridge (previously the bubbly snot). Now totally smooth it was ready to make spheres. I got out my shitty imperfect scale and made the yogurt mix I found on molecular recipes . I followed the recipe to a t this time but I will riff on it next time, using this as a base. It makes enough yogurt mix for approximately 50 yogurt balls which was really overkill for a Thursday night family dinner. Next time I will half it and still have too much. After my yogurt mix was made I followed the instructions placing small spoonfuls of the yogurt into the bath. At first I thought I had done it wrong because they sort of hung on the surface but eventually they sunk into the agitate to form balls.   I set my timer for 2 minutes and gingerly fished them out. This is trickier than I had anticipated. I had a 3″ fine mesh strainer but the mesh was so fine the agitate (again, think consistency of snot) barely went through and took a long time. I was also getting lots of agitate in the water bath and I found fishing them out of a square bowl challenging because the strainer was too big for the corners. I tried a slotted spoon I had but the slots were big enough the spheres slipped right through like magic. They are slippery little suckers! I will be making a trek to William Sonoma tomorrow for the perfect slotted spoon. Once in the water bath I gently stirred a bit and fished the first one out. It was far from a perfect sphere in the bath but once I got it on the spoon you couldn’t tell. I tried it with some key lime syrup and it was yummy. The yogurt is tangy and sweet and the texture is perfect. A little pillow that bursts in your mouth. The experience is sensual. I can really see building a meal around this for parties.

Making these was really a small time investment once i had all the right tools. the agitate bath took maybe 15 minutes to make the night before, the yogurt mix came together in a few minutes and making the spheres took about 5 minutes. there was maybe 10 minutes of prep time getting all the tools lined up and the water bath prepared. its also fairly efficient and would be easy to do for a party. I was able to make about 10 at a time in my 5″ x 7″ container. The depth of the bath is important. Mine was about 4″ deep and that seemed perfect. I would not go less than 3″ in depth or your balls aren’t going to drop properly. Ok that probably sounds wrong but you get the picture.

Now that i had been ignoring the kids for 15 minutes (after explaining that private parts are to remain private), I thought I’d surprise the them with a treat. It’s sweet, it’s yogurt, it’s cool. Kids should love this right? No. They took one look at the shiny little white balls sitting in pale green syrup and said ‘no’! I should have colored them blue and called them dinosaur eggs. What was I thinking? I was once a great advertising exec, have I forgotten already? Oh well, I loved it. More importantly I saw the possibilities that this blank canvas presents. Suddenly I’m ready to open up my restaurant. I’ll call it chez play dough.

That night when my husband got home I had the first trial waiting. Before dinner I started us with a cocktail of lemoncelo yogurt spheres on cute little spoons I got at restaurant supply. We thought it was ok but the strong vodka taste really overpowered the yogurt. Our search for a perfect pairing continued. After dinner I made a bunch more yogurt spheres and brought the water bath over to the table with the spheres rinsing inside. Then I place sliced fruit, mint, syrups and liquors on the table for us to try mixing. They key lime syrup with tiny mint leaves was a hit but our favorite pairing was putting it in a spoon with a few drops of something called liquid love by Tobin James. It’s essentially chocolate flavored desert wine. The mix tested a bit like an ice cream Sunday. We also tried it with ice wine which was not great and Bailey’s which was surprisingly bad. Then we tried it with star fruit which was good and kiwi which was better. I think it might be best with mango I was just too tired to slices a mango. We also experimented with previously made balls and ones made ala minute. I had read that even after you stop the process in the water bath the gel continues to form so you need to serve them right away. We found that after several hours in the fridge in a water bath they were ok but a bit more firm. They lacked a little of that pillowy texture that was so sensual. They could hang out in the bath for 15-30 minutes without too much loss in quality but beyond that was definitely a compromise.

By the end of dinner we were talking about ways to turn this savory by eliminating the sugar and putting in some herbs or pairing with spice. I saved the bath so that we could see if it can be used twice and tonight I want to do some non sweet versions and maybe the mozzarella spheres. This weekend I think my husband will be showing me how to sous vide so that I can make sous vide octopus.