Earlier, I wrote:
. . . On the other hand, sous vide is essentially a slow cooker. A smart crock pot with water in it. For us geezers who no longer leave home for work at 0700 to return 10 hours later, planned and slow cooking methods have lost their time saving attractiveness. (We haven’t used our crock pot or an oven timer in years.) Which only leaves the culinary value of sous vide, which is substantial and attractive enough to the seasoned home cook that I’m writing about it. Sur la Table carries the SousVide Supreme and reportedly sold out their initial buy of a thousand units in two months. I’m going to pass.
Well, having earlier considered sous vide, and after reading through Modernist Cuisine, and thinking about it all, and writing a short review, I decided to go sous vide.
Where to start? First and foremost, sous vide (French for under vacuum) is just another way to cook food. It is not a substitute for braising, grilling, boiling or crock potting. Rather, it is a technique that allows the experienced cook, in Thomas Keller’s words, to “re-imagine countless traditional preparations.” You don’t need a sous vide recipe book.
Are those reasons enough to buy into it? First, the food to be cooked must be bagged and vacuum sealed–you need a machine for that. Secondly, the food is then cooked in a water bath at a low temperature, precisely controlled–you need a tub, water and a “circulator” that heats the water, circulates it and maintains a set temperature plus or minus a tenth of a degree (F or C). Third, you need to know (by tables and experience) how long to leave the food in the water–that requires some reading, some trial and error sous vide’ing, a timer, a good thermometer and some special 3M tape that sticks on the bag and allows a thermometer to be stuck through the bag and into the product and out again without creating a leak.
If you can get through all that, you have an expensive fool proof means to prepare food. All you need is the desired temperature of the water and the time of emersion–two numbers. The food comes out the same every time whether you pay attention to it or not: unburned, not ever over cooked, seasoned, without shrinkage or loss of moisture. Think of a whole tenderloin of beef cooked to your precise degree of doneness without having to watch it.
Here are some photos: First, the circulator and tub of water. Next, a halibut steak, vacuumed sealed with seasoning and a pad of butter (from the fridge or from the freezer (thawed). Next, a small rib eye steak ready for a bath. Next, determining the core temp of the steak with the aforementioned 3M tape (you should only need to do this once per product). Finally, the same steak dropped from the bag into a hot skillet and browned. Note that the doneness of the steak is the same from browned crust to crust–not over done at the surface nor under done in the center. (Therefore, FWIW, sous vide can cook the best well done steak on the planet: well done throughout, un-burned, un-shrunk and un-dried out.) Lamb chops come out rare from the surface to the bone, which cannot be done otherwise.
Oh, and are you worried about the raw eggs called for in the recently posted Caesar Salad? Pasteurize the eggs in a sous vide bath at 134.5F (57C) for 2 hours. They will be safe yet still raw.
So there you have it!
Modernist Cuisine ‘s Embarrassment
It turns out, now that the first printing of this book has been vetted by thousands of owner/readers, that the darn thing is riddled with typos and errors. 31 pages of corrections are yours for the downloading at their Web site. Good grief!
Well, after looking the whole mess over and giving it some thought, I’ve embarked on making corrections to the Kitchen Manual only (no mean task). The rationale is that I need the Kitchen Manual to be accurate since I use it–three recipes so far. Now that I have read through volumes 1 through 5, I don’t think I again need them save for reference and amplification. Making these corrections is tedious and I feel like I’m an ensign in the navy again where this onerous task fell upon the most junior officers. Sigh . . .
Typical of Modernist Cuisine ‘s Outrageous Nostrums
The authors of MC devote a chapter to wine in Volume Four. They like the stuff but are skeptical of the aura that surrounds it. So they conducted and reported blind tests, which again confirmed that wine experts are much influenced by the situation, instant. But they bought the idea that aerating a just opened bottle of red wine improves the taste. So, decanting a bottle before serving is well worth the effort.
Being who they are, they thought that if aerating wine by poring it through some little plastic gadget did the job, why not really aerate it— like in a blender at high speed for 30 seconds? “Hyperdecanting” results in “hyperoxigenation and outgassing.” They say it works and in any case, it’s worth a try in front of a crowd just to experience the gasps and vapors shed by the ‘wine experts’ attending.
So we tried it. With a group of five. I opened a 1992 Mondavi Cabernet mag, that was in the cellar. The wine was good and had not thrown any sediment over time. We set aside two test sample glasses and poured the rest into the VitaMix and spun it on high for 30 seconds.
The book is right: it frothed big time but then dissipated quickly. Result: our group, once recovered from the shock, agreed that 1) the blender trick did no harm and 2) the hyperdecanted wine was more balanced and pleasant than the withheld samples.
So, here you have it by the glass:
Modernist Cuisine has shown up. Now what ?
FINAL UPDATE: I’ve finished it! All five volumes. It’s been quite a journey.
Nathan Myhrvold and his staff of sixty have labored in a high tech savory lab for four years to explore, learn and create a book that defines modernist cuisine within the grounded context of established culinary cooking techniques. It is a reasoned and organized exposition of other ways to cook the classic culinary repertoire. It is a work of major significance . . . of lasting value . . . a huge contribution to the liturature.
SECOND UPDATE: Well, I just started Volume Four. The whole experience is like trying to take a drink from a fire hydrant. There is so much information presented here, even for the knowledgeable reader. For example: They use their vacuum machine for sous vide, but also to hasten marinating products. They also like the microwave as another good kitchen tool. Haven’t tried it, but a nice trick is to vacuum bag an artichoke and then microwave it for 5-7 minutes–to doneness. Cool, if it works. Again: I learned in school that you need 25% fat in forcemeat preparation to “hold it all together.” Wrong! Fat makes forcemeat tasty but hinders binding, which is done by protein molecules (myocin) that morph into gels when heated.
Here’s how to read this thing: (With apologies to Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book.
Rule Number One: Digest the first chapter of Volume One, as it sets the stage and presents the authors’ biases and technical conventions.
Rule Number Two: As you read, don’t look ahead since each page is a visual delight enhanced in the moment of a paged-turned discovery. Don’t spoil the fun.
Rule Number Three: If you own it, mark it up as you go. It is so encyclopedic, that a discreet pencil mark here and there will serve later to find text that caught and held your attention the first time around.
BACKGROUND:Of course I ordered it! And did so in early February with a promised elease date of 6 March. Then the release date was pushed back to 18 April.
A word of explanation is needed. Mr. Nathan Myhrvold, a chronic overachiever, is a retired MicroSoft chief technical officer who likes to cook and has gone at it with the intensity and thoroughness he has applied to all his previous endeavors. The result is a massive 6 volume, 2400 page cookbook, discounted at Amazon, for just under 20 cents a page! The tome represents about four years of research in a cost-be-damned savory lab manned by a brigade of well qualified cooks and techies. This is not a pioneer effort. He is receded by best selling food science writer Harold McGee. But early peek reviews
suggested that this effort is so over the top that it could be a watershed event sweeping away all before it. FIRST UPDATE:
The UPS guy showed up with a 46.3 pound box. Inside that box was another box and inside that were custom corner pads and multiple cushion pads–all layered. Inside it all: a massive slip case of 5/16th plexiglas, holding five books tightly fitted. And a 6th volume outside the slip case. Just unpacking this monster was a fun experience.
I decided first to flip through volume six, The Kitchen Manual. This volume gathers up the recipes found in the main texts. There are doable recipes here for the home cook. For example, I liked the section called Thickeners, which had quite a number of barbecue sauces and some emulsions. It also presents the many uses of sous vide. It was fun and informative. But it was also sort of out of context. It’s always best to start at the beginning, “I gotta start reading Volume One.”
But it is already clear that this tome is over the top and is a water shed culinary event. It’s a publishing event, too. Brilliant photos on heavy paper. Endless text.
Who should buy it? Cooking schools offering professional courses, chefs and cooks of all sort who take food and its preparation seriously and, of course, affluent foodies. Best bet is to lobby your library to pop for a copy.
Is it practical? Hardly. Is it essential? Yes, within the trade. Is modernist cuisine a movement that will grow and endure? Maybe, but . . .
Bottom line: “Wow”
