To prepare the poached cherries.

Wash and pit 500 gms of large cherries then place in a dehydrator for 6 hours at 54°C.

Place 500 gms of well washed cherries in a pot with a cinnamon stick, scraped vanilla pod, cardamon pod and clove.  Heat over a very low heat till reduced to a soft pulp.  Rub the cooked cherry through a sieve to achieve a smooth puree, add the cinnamon and vanilla pod to the puree then discard remaining pits and spices.  Add 2 tablespoons of sugar and 1 of balsamic vinegar, bring to a gentle simmer then add the dehydrated cherries.  Simmer for ten minutes then transfer to sterile jars.

For the chicken breast

Remove the tender loin from 2 large chicken breast and blend them to a rough paste.  Add 1 tablespoon of thick cream, a pinch of allspice, salt and pepper and blend to a smooth paste.

Pipe the mousse onto a square of clingfilm and then roll to form a neat cylinder, tie off the ends then vacuum pack on low and cook at 60°C using your Sous Vide Professional for 30 minutes.  Remove all wrapping from the cooked mousse cut into 2 pieces the length of your chicken breasts.  Roll the cylinders in roughly chopped, blanched pistachio’s to coat.

Using a sharp knife carefully butterfly the breasts from the thickest part towards the thinnest part to create a even thickness.  Season well and place each breast on a square of clingfilm.  Place the cylinder on the breast and roll into a firm cylinder using the clingfilm and tie off the ends.  Vacuum seal the rolls with a little chicken stock and a few sprigs of thyme, cook at 63.5°C  for one hour.

The chicken can then be served immediately, sliced to show your work of coarse.  Serve with a salad of dried figs, rocket leaves and pistachio halves lightly dressed with a balsamic dressing and a few cherries.

The cooked chicken rolls can also be chilled in an ice bath and served cold, reheated in the sous vide bath and served hot or cut into thick slices and pan fried to reheat.

The Recipe

Trim an MSA beef bolar blade in to steaks then marinade them in red wine, parsley stalks, thyme, bay and pepper corns for 12 hours.  Drain the beef and vacuum pack with a touch of seasoning and olive oil.  Cook in a water bath using a Polyscience immersion circulator at 60C for 12 hours.  Reduce the strained wine from the marinade then add 500 mls of veal sauce and reduce to a coating consistency.

Trim and vacuum pack the mushrooms with a nob of butter, thyme and seasoning.  Cook at 60C for 30 minutes.

Clean some shallots and vacuum seal with olive oil and seasoning, cook at 60C for 30 minutes.

To plate melt some butter in a pan add the beef and brown gently on all sides, add some cubed bacon, the shallots, the mushroom and then some of the finished sauce to glaze.

Place a bed of pommes puree on the plate for the beef and garnish with the shallots, bacon and mushrooms.

Wash, trim and clean the baby vegetables and vacuum pack each vegetable with some EEVO and a pinch of salt.  Cook the vegetables at 85C till tender.

To plate spoon some cauliflower puree on the plate, top with a beef cheek sliced and a spoon of veal jus.  Toss the baby vegetables in a hot pan with a little butter and use to garnish.

For the tongue

Soak the lambs tongues in cold water over night then drain.

Make a pickling brine of 10% salt, 3% sugar to 200 mls water, 100 mls white wine vinegar and 100 mls white wine.  Add pickling spices, mustard seeds, clove, black pepper, bay and thyme, then bring to a high simmer and allow to cool to room temperature.  Drain the tongues and vacuum pack them with the pickling mix for three days.

After three days drain and wash the tongues, then vacuum pack them on high and cook in a water bath at 70C for 24 hrs using an immersion circulator.  When the tongues are cooked peel off the skin and slice them in to thin slices.

To serve toss the tongue with some toasted hazelnuts, olive oil and season.  Arrange in a ball on the plate under a glass and use the Polyscience smoking gun to fill the glass with apple wood smoke.

Smear salsa verde to one side of the glass sprinkle with chopped toasted hazelnuts and a salad of radishes and scallions that have been vacuum packed with a teaspoon of the pickling mix from above then cooked in a water bath for 30 min at 65C, baby beet leaves, baby rocket and organic edible flowers dressed in a hazelnut oil and white wine vinaigrette.

Sous Vide Australia, Henkelman and Polyscience are the supplier of sous vide equipment for FSA 2011 Chef of the year challenge, Williiam Angliss Apprentice of the year and the Great Australia Sandwichship.

Dale Prentice from Sous Vide Australia will be on the Birko stand demonstrating our Instanta digital water bath range and answering all of your sous vide questions.

FSAA 2011 Chef of the year will be using Polyscience Sous Vide Professional, The Anti Griddle and Henkelman vacuum systems to produce four amazing dishes in one hour from a mystery box of ingredients. 

Thanks to the generosity of Sous Vide Australia both the Chefs and William Angliss Apprentices will have access to some of the most advanced cooking equipment from Polyscience as they battle it out for the $10 000 prize money.  

> Click here to register for FoodService Australia 2011

It Is Going To Be Hot!

The heat in the kitchen will be nothing short of scalding when the FSAA 2011 Chef of the Year competition starts up on 19 June.

Competitors from across Australia have entered the mix to take on reigning champion Soren Lascelles (pictured) from Assiette in Sydney.

Entrants include Antony Campbell, Head Chef from Enoteca Sileno, David Albert, Executive Chef at the Sebel Citigate, Albert Park and Taxi Dining Room’s Commis Chef, Rosie Ung.

In what will make for a compelling test of skill and creativity, chefs from traditional restaurants will be taking on their counterparts from kitchens in hotels, the catering industry and higher education sectors.

“The work of a chef is constantly being judged by customers, critics and restaurant guides.  This competition will be a perfect opportunity to be judged by my peers as I compete against my colleagues” said Antony Campbell, Enoteca Sileno.

For a full list of competitors click here and make sure you don’t miss what is to be a standout event at this year’s FSA2011 Expo.

With delicate items that have a short cooking time, how do we know when the core temperature is reached and when to start the cooking time?  The initial temperate of the food, the drop in temperate of the cooking water, its recovery to set temperature and the thickness of the food item all effect how long any given item will take to reach a set core temperature.

Larger slow cook items over come this concern for accurate core temperature by the length of cooking time. 

In these smaller more delicate items using a hypodermic probe thermometer to follow the internal temperature is the only way to go.  A small square of closed cell foam tape is stuck to the side of the vacuum pack to be cooked, then a specially designed hypodermic probe thermometer can be inserted through the tape into the core of the food without effecting the vacuum.  By using a fully autoclaveable probe, the probe can stay submerged with the food item for the whole cooking process.

Why do we care so much about the core temperature?  Sous vide cooking at its best is about accurately cooking food in a way that was not before possible and to achieve new and exciting textural experiences.   This accuracy can only be achieved when the cook knows exactly what is going on at any given time.

Sous Vide Australia has just sourced a new range of thermometers, data loggers and hypodermic probes specially designed for sous vide applications.  I have carefully selected thermometers that over come many of the frustrations that sous vide cooks commonly have with general off the shelf products.  Both the HH801A and the HH802U can disable the auto shut off feature for longer periods of monitoring and hi/low temperatures can be recorded for each monitored period.  They also have a clip out bench stand and back lit display so that they can be easily read from a distance.

The HH802U data logger also comes with a USB cable and windows software to down load constant tracking to a computer.  This can be used for both health and safety records or monitoring HACCP.

It is so hard and time consuming to poach the perfect egg every time.  No matter how good you are at this time old art, distractions will cause at least one or two fully set yolks. 

Fresh eggs, perfect acidulated water just simmering, not to deep, not to shallow, constantly skimming out loose albumin, there has to be an easier cleaner way.

I was struggling with this the other day.  The perfect breakfast scenario would be an egg perfectly poached in its shell.  How good would it be if every time you needed that next poached egg for the two hundredth time in a morning, it was just sitting there at the perfect temperature, waiting to be cracked straight on to the piping hot toast.  Just add a rash of bacon and a confit tomato and “table 52 away!”

How hard could it be to soft cook an egg in its shell and hold it hot, accurate temperature would have to be the key. 

I put it to the test in my Instanta SVA-38 water bath 63°Celcius for 45 minutes, see below, WOW!  It looks perfect, and the yolk, ahh soft and creamy and just runs when you cut it with a knife.  

The real test was one hour later, half of my eggs were still in the water bath.  How would they be after one hour forty-five?

I cracked one out on to a piece of toast, it was exactly the same.  It had a set white and a soft just runny yolk and was warm all the way through.  Just to be sure I cracked another, and another, and another.  They all slipped straight out of the shell as identical soft cooked eggs.

I used my Instanta for this trial as it has very low water movement even though it is a circulated bath.  The water is circulated under a false floor inside the bath, this moves the water around the temperature probe and the heating element with very little disturbance of the cooking food.  I used two deep fryer baskets to hold the eggs so that I could lift them out without putting my hand in to the bath all the time.  63°C is a little hot for my precious fingers.  The two baskets held so many eggs I lost count but I think it was around 120 to 150 and everyone came out just like the others, again and again and again.  When the first basket is empty I simply slide the back one to the front refill the empty basket, place it in the back half of the bath and reset one of the five timers. 

No wounder Phillip Preston from Polyscience keeps harping on about ” Perfect repeatable results every time with sous vide”

Why cook Sous Vide

•       Polyscience makes a great Christmas present for the progressive chef.
•       The Instanta sous vide range now available in 10amp models
•       Fruit cooked sous vide
•       Great new Utube on the blog

What will your chef be getting for Christmas

Polyscience Sous Vide Professional!

Sous Vide Australia, Polyscience’s Australian distributor wants your chef to get a toy for christmas that will breath new life in to your menu this christmas.  Turkey and pork have never tasted so good.   We have Sous Vide Professional immersion circulators in stock, and can also supply “the smoking gun” and the “Anti griddle”.  Being an agent also means that we will be handling maintenance and repair for Polyscience in Australia.

PolyScience is a leading manufacturer of heating and refrigerating laboratory equipment and has been providing innovative temperature control solutions for customers worldwide since 1963.

In recent years the culinary world has discovered the exciting opportunities with precision temperature control. PolyScience has made itself a name by utilizing its four decades of precision temperature control experience and expertise to develop products for food service applications. Many of the worlds leading chefs are now using PolyScience equipment in their kitchens.

Further information here

Instanta Digital water baths

Our latest shipment of the stunning Instanta range are now all produced in 10 amp models.  They still have the same accuracy and responsiveness that we have come to expect from such a high quality manufacturer.

Sous Vide Pears 

Pears, apples and bananas cooked sous vide, you will never experience pure fruit in the same way.   Vacuum pack apples and pears just peeled and seeded for fruit cooked in its own natural juice.  Caramel, flavoured sugar syrup or wine syrup can also be added to the bag to produce stunning results.   Apples and pears cook at 82.5 for one hour.  Banana’s are easier to prepare semi frozen so as to not damage their shape.  I add rum infused caramel about the consistancy of honey when cold.  Banana’s cook at 65 for 30 minutes.

When vacuum packaging make sure that all ingredients are very cold to achive the best vacuum possible.

Sous Vide Australia Blog

Do not forget that the blog has many recipes posted on it and more are added regularly.  The website has all of your sous vide needs, Henkleman vacuum machines, Instanta sous vide circulated baths, Sealed Air pouches. For orders or assistance email me directly dale@sousvideaustralia.com

In Closing

The newsletter of Sous Vide Australia is bi-monthly bringing both recipes and information to make sous vide the new method of cookery for Australia.