Community, Duck, Equipment, Recipes, Sous vide 2 comments

Sous vide foie gras

By on July 4th, 2010

The idea of making my own foie gras came from my sister, she’s doing it all the time and i though it was pretty cool. You can season it any way you like and it pretty damn good and satisfying.

It’s not very hard, really. All you need is a good quality fresh goose or duck liver (South west France origine is obviously the best), a bit of salt and a bit of pepper. You can also booze it up a tad. I added sliced truffles in this one.

Sous vide duck foie gras.

500 gr fresh duck liver.
8 gr salt.
2 gr pepper.
Port.
Cognac.
Truffles  as much as you can afford (Optional).

As I said above, it’s really not complicated to make your own foie gras, but it can be messy. Inside the velvety liver run a network of veins and other stringy bit that nobody want to see or eat. It has to go and that is the first step. In France you can buy them already deveined but they ‘re more expensive which beats the purpose of doing it yourself.

The first thing I’ll advise to do is to setup you Foie gras making station. a clean board, a knife, a fork and/spoon, the weighted salt and pepper, kitchen paper and a container to place the liver pieces.

Now it’s time to get dirty. Atop the board, using the knife as straight as possible scrap the thin membrane covering the surface of the liver. It’s not a big deal if you’re not doing it, but removing it helps the pieces to stick together when forming the ballottine. Once cleaned place the liver, smooth rounded side down on the board and with your hand, try to opening it up like you would open a piece of bread. You going to see the veins running trough it. Don’t be too fast and try not to break the stringy bits, you want to remove them as one. using a spoon or fork or even a butter knife dig around the veins like you were unearthing telephone cables from the ground. It doesn’t matter if you have to break up the liver in doing so. At the end of the day it will melt back with the rest when cooking.

Your liver is now hopefully de-veined. The first time I did it, I almost gave up. It took me something like an hour to get through it and the liver was in a state that resembled scrambled eggs. So if you feel the way I felt that time, know that you are not the only one. Nowadays I can de-vein a liver in around 15 minutes and that’s when it’s a hard one. So don’t give up, it will get better.

The hard bit is done. From this point on there’s various ways of going about finishing the foie gras. You’ll find different people proposing different variations it’s all up to you. I for one, don’t mind long process and I am a firm believer that the longer you care for a product the better it becomes, so here’s how I do it.

You lay all the pieces in the container making sure of having only one layer. Then you sprinkle half the salt all other ensurring that all of the piece get some and you repeat with half the pepper. Turn the pieces, exposing the non seasoned side and repeat. That’s the moment when you decide if you want to booze up your foie gras. Here again various school of thoughts. Over the times I  used Malt whiskey, port, cognac, armagnac and even calvados in my foies. Again, up to you. For this recipe I used a teaspoon of port and a teaspoon of calvados for 500 gr of liver. I didn’t want to use more because I was adding truffles and I didn’t want the alcohol to overpower them. The same way you seasoned the liver pieces with salt and pepper, sprinkle the two alcohols and shuffle them about to make sure that they all get their share.

This is where people’s ideas differ. Some will just tell you to form you ballottine and to cook the thing,  others like to let the seasoning permiete the meat. I like the latter. I cling film the container and place it in the fridge and leave it there not for an hour or two, but for 24 hours.

Twenty four hours passed and the salt, pepper, port and calvados did their magic and it’s time to shape the foie gras into what is called in French a ballottine, which is nothing more than a log. I lay several layers of cling film 3 or 4 is enough inside a terrine dish and I place the pieces of foie inside. When I reach the halfway point, I lay some slices of black truffles through the middle and finish with the rest of the liver. I fold the hanging cling flim and remove the whole thing from the terrine on a clean surface I roll it into a saussage and I tightly tie both extremities. it should be a nice saussagey shape and very tight. using a toothpick or other pointy thin object I look for air bubbles and burst them. If I was cooking it the traditional way I wouldn’t do that, the fat form the liver will seep through the tinny holes into the water, but because I going to sous vide the thing, this ballottine will be safely placed in a vacuum bag.

Which is the next step, but first I place back the ballottine in the fridge for an hour to firm up a bit and avoid the vacuum process from flattening the nice shape I spend some time building.

You take the liver saussage from the fridge and place it in a adequat size vacuum pouch. In a restaurant they would use retractable bags, to keep it nice and round but I’m not a restaurant and I don’t have a £2000 chamber vacuum sealer. So a normal bag will do. Vacuum pack your balotine, with the cling film still around it.

It is time to cook. I started my Swid and set it to 57 degrees for 45 minutes. Once at temperature, I plunged the pouch and walked away. If you don’t have a circulator or a SousVide supreme, you can still use the traditional way of cooking foie gras. You can heat up some water place your balotine in. Make sure that it is not boiling water but simmering if you have a thermometer use it to control the temperature or you can just ditch the balotine all together and use a terrine dish, in that case you place your terrine dish in an oven proof container with an inch or so of water at the bottom and cook it at 180°C. Every ten minutes or so, check the internal temperature of the foie gras, when it reaches 54°C remove it from the oven and let it cool, then place it in the fridge.

Foie gras is not at its best when it just been cooked, you need to leave it unopened for at least 3 to 4 days before you dig into it. it give time to the flavours to mingle and know each other better. Once opened it’s going to start oxydizing (Becoming grey) it’s not a big deal, it will keep, in an well close terrine for a week. If you have a vacuum sealer you can seal it back after each use and it will keep much longer. If it goes green and furry and that you can name it and play with it as a pet you might want to throw it out.

Community, Equipment, Reviews, Sous vide, sousVide Supreme, SousVide Supreme 9 comments

SousVide Supreme review

By on June 29th, 2010

A month ago I promised a review of the sousVide Supreme and I suddenly disappeared. As some of you who read the “about me” section of this website, know, I work in Visual Effects. The latest project I’m working on is so, that, coming home from work, I didn’t have the energy to sit down and write. Today I decided that I had to do it and here I am, back at it. So here it is, the review of the sousVide supreme.

As you might know SousVide Supreme arrives in Europe. Eades Appliance Technology allowed me to try out a unit for a while. After the Swid by Addélice, the 7306 by Polyscience it’s the turn of the sousVide Supreme to go through a series of tests. I’ve been playing with it for three weeks and it has been good fun.

Review #3 SousVide Supreme by Eades Appliance Technology.

First, what is the SousVide Supreme. In 2009 Doctors Michael and Mary Eades founded Eades Appliance Technology. The Eades are phisicians and health book authors. They came to the sous vide for the health advantage of this cooking methods. Finding the existent technology costly and alien to the home cook they decided to create their own. Thus was born the first water oven for the home kitchen.

I recieved the SousVide Supreme at work and was very eager to get home that day to try it out immediately. The first thing you noticed when you open the box is the size, approximately the size of a standard bread machine, the all stainless steel exteriore makes it a very stylish appliance that can match pretty much all styles of kitchen, if it’s something important for you that is. The machine is shipped with a Manual/recipe book and a instructions DVD, which I didn’t have to use to kick off the machine. The SousVide Supreme(SVS) is extremely easy to use. all you need to make it work in situated on a control panel on the front of the machine.

The first thing I did that night was to cook some lamb chops, I wasn’t trying to prove anything, I was just excited by the new toy and wanted to use it. If I didn’t have meat, I would have thrown a couple of eggs in it, just to use it. Although I love me an immersion circulator, there is something quite nice in using a waterbath. It makes the process less special, more natural and normal, like using a deep fat fryer or a pressure cooker. With this first use I notice the noise that the machine makes. None, it is very, very silent.

Let’s be a bit more technical for a moment. When I first used the SVS, I poured coldish water around 24°C, I wanted my chops medium rare, around 66°C. It took around 20 minutes to get to temperature, which is alright. It’s not rocket fast, but it’s not slugish either. That night I didn’t measure the temperature throughout the cooking, but the chops came out perfectly cooked.

There’s a couple of interesting features on the SVS that I should mention, the first one that I really appreciated is the fact that you can use it with or without setting the timer, it’s particularily useful when doing very long cooking. the other one is the lid, which is often absent from circulator. (Polyscience sell a bundle including a container with lid.) It’s very useful to retain a constant water lever by avoiding evaporation. lastly the SVS is sold with a pouch holder that sits inside the bath allowing to keep the bags submerged throughout the cooking. I really liked this as some of the longest cooking ie: 72 hours can result in air buildup in the bags allowing the pouches to float at the surface of the water creating uneven cooking.

As I said before all the controls can be found at the front of the machine and are very simple to understand and use. It’s where you’ll set the cooking temperature and the timer if you choose to use it. I usually don’t. There’s nothing to say there, it’s completely straightforward. I didn’t open the manual before using it.

It’s all well and good, but what did I do with the SVS exactly? Personally there’s a very important thing I’m looking for with sous vide cookery, the first one is precise cooking, for fish or tender piece of meat and very consistent temperature for long cooking. I tested the temperature of the water the same way I did on the previous reviews using two home digital probe thermometers and a thermocouple. I noticed a slight temperature variation of about half a degree during an hour period, which is pretty much nothing. Next I wanted to see how the unit would do with long cooking. It did very well indeed. I used the SousVide Supreme for a week, non-stop and I mean non-stop. Day and night for 7 days. I cooked pork belly for 72 hours. Beef cheek for 72 hours (Sous vide Beef cheek was a revelation by the way, if you didn’t try, run to your butcher now and order some), a brisket for 72 hours, Duck legs for 24 hours.

The machine didn’t show any sign of weakness whatsoever, I turned it off for a day then used it again pretty much every day while I had it. I was very impressed really.

A couple of things would make the SousVide Supreme a near perfect machine for the home cook. A removable container would make for an easy cleaning. Having to expose the electrics to water is a bit scary. The lid could do with a handle at the top (Like the Clifton food range waterbaths) or hinged. It will allow user to open and close with one hand. The SVS is unstired, which makes it less precise than a circulator, but home cooking rarely demands this degree of precision, it can be a problem with perfect magic eggs (I actually forgot to try eggs during my testing). Size could be a problem for bigger pieces,  but food can be divided into smaller portion, so not so much of a problem.

All and all this is a good machine, ideal for the home cook for whom it will look and feel familiar, it’s very easy to use, which will attract the general public. I really enjoyed using it. No need to attach a unit to some container, it’s all there, open the lid stick your food in there and kick it off.

SVS2

Community, Equipment, Reviews, Sous vide, SousVide Supreme 5 comments

Coming soon. SousVide Supreme review.

By on May 24th, 2010

I’ve been keeping the secret, but two weeks ago, I received the European version of the SousVide Supreme. Since it came out in the states, I really wanted to test and write about it. The good people at Eades Appliance Technology sent me a unit so I can do just that. I’ve been probing and testing and cooking with it for about 10 days and should be ready to post a full review at the end of the week. Stay tuned.