tartare

The End of Cookbooks As You Know Them

More on the upcoming Alinea cookbook from Ed Levine at Serious Eats. Interesting backgrounder on Grant Achatz's concept for the book, the control he and his business partner garnered, and how is this is not just another cookbook.

Adulterated Olive Oil

[via megnut.com]
Really glad to see Meg is posting again. This is a fascinating New Yorker piece on adulterated olive oil. It used to be a big problem, what with all those mysterious container ships floating around and people slapping an Italian olive oil label on say, Tunisian olive oil or worse. Thank goodness those days are over. Or are they?
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/08/13/070813fa_fact_mueller?printable=true

Bourdain's Overrated Menu

Guess I am on a Bourdain kick this week. In this installment, gastronomy's garrulous curmudgeon, never hesitant nor reticent, rails about overrated menu items.

Money quote:

Be sure to sample our selection of flavored salts, and please await the water sommelier:
A chef who offers anything other than sea salt probably refers to himself in the third person. When the water sommelier comes over, I reach for my gun.

Experiment #3: Sous Vide Shrimp

Sunday saw my third attempt at sous vide, the first two being somewhat flawed (see note below). I wanted some tender and deeply flavored shrimp. And I have a FoodSaver. So, into the vacuum we go:

Ingredients:
1# shrimp, peeled and deveined
4 oz butter
1-2T fresh rosemary leaves, slightly bruised and rough chopped (dry rosemary is fine, too)
2 cloves garlic, minced

Method:
1) Place all ingredients into Foodsaver bag and vacuum seal. Refrigerate until ready to cook.
2) Using a candy thermometer, heat a large pot of water to 138ºF. Get temperature to a very stable state prior to putting Foodsaver bag in.
3) Place Foodsaver bag in pan and cook for approximately 12-15 minutes. To judge doneness, note the color of the shrimp, just like you would using any other cooking technique. You will also be able to feel a difference in the shrimp, though since they stay so tender, it will not be as pronounced a change.

Notes/Results:

+ This was amazing. The shrimp took on a beautifully tender texture and a gentle infusion of both the garlic and rosemary. Great for an appetizer or as a garnish item. Or toss the shrimp and the butter with some pasta and a nice parmesan.
+ It's fun watching the shrimp cook and the butter melt.
+ While the temperature would require more careful monitoring (unless, that is, you are using an immersion circulator), larger batches of shrimp could be done this way, making for an easy and hard-to-ruin way to prepare them.
+ I used (and highly recommend) Vermont Butter & Cheese Company Cultured Butter
+ Next steps: attempt this with other proteins, especially seafood, and other cooking liquids, such as cold consommés. (I am way too excited about what you can do with the cold consommé technique).
+ Rather than limiting this to a cooking technique, why not also use it as a flavor infusing technique for pantry items such as compound butters? Throw the herbs and butter for a nice long soak in their vacuum bag -- then cool and reshape.
+ For the curious, the first two sous vide experiments were #1) beets with a bad seal on the vacuum bag and 2) carrots that, while good, weren't cooked to the proper degree of doneness.

UPDATED: 9/26/07
Someone asked me why 145ºF? It was a desire to play it safe. While I know that many cooks have had great success with sous vide, the method does create an anaerobic environment, much favored by clostridium botulinum. Since I knew the cooking period was going to be short and resultantly, the time under vacuum equally short, I thought this time/temperature combination to be safe. If storage of the product is involved, the food safety measures would have to be more stringent.

UPDATED 4/29/08
After doing this numerous times, I have been backing off on the temperature. I now do this at 138ºF. The shrimp cooks pretty quickly, even at this temperature. You should make you own best decisions about such things -- just letting folks know what I have tried. Another tip: to help getting a good seal, make sure that you have toweled-off the shrimp prior to putting them in the vacuum bag. Also, you certainly need not use the amount of butter I have; I just like having the shrimp/garlic butter when I am done.

Top Chef: Miami -- Quick Thoughts

+ I loved this week's Top Chef. No bizarre cooking out of a vending machine or one aisle of the supermarket.
The contestants cooked classic French cuisine in front of and were judged by hard-core experts and practitioners this week. I have been hoping that they would do this for some time. In the softer challenges, the cooks can slouch toward their comfort zone. But classical French, judged by folks such as André Soltner? Being challenged to recreate a La Cirque dish and having Serrio Maccione judge it? This requires cooking to a standard rather than any contestant's particular sensibilities. If the dishes fall short of the mark, there can be no Howie-esque "well that's the way I do it" dodges.

+ Bourdain's write-up is a must read. His prose style is enjoyable to read and more importantly, his insights into the contestants are pretty dead-on.

New Alinea Cookbook On The Way

In the fashion of El Bulli, Grant Achatz and team have written a new cookbook revealing the techniques and ingredient combinations of four seasonal menus from Alinea. An pre-order of the book will set you back fifty dollars, but will also get you an autographed book and access to a special extended content website, Alinea Mosaic. The website access precedes the late fall 2008 book shipment. Will I be ordering? Color me ordered.
What other industry has folks that will sell you their research and development this cheaply? Amazing.

http://www.alinea-book.com/

The Summer of Tomato Amuses Ends

I had a whole lot of fun playing with food this summer, but I had to yank out the tomato plants yesterday. They're all done. So I thought I'd post some pics of what I was able to do out of our garden this year.

Here are some pics of some of the more successful items. This was a tomato filet/watermelon dish:

We enjoyed having nasturtiums around and I see greater varieties of edible flowers in future gardens.