Miscellaneous Food: New York (Il Buco Alimentari)

For some reason, when I tell people I'm going to be in New York, I'm often asked which Michelin-starred restaurant I'm going to be eating at.

 

Apart from the fact that (a) it's really expensive to keep eating at high-end places; and (b) they can often be quite inconvenient to get to, I actually get a bigger kick out of finding restaurants that are not only nearby, but are also the sort of place frequented by locals.

 

So I was not entirely sure if it was a good thing when S's fellow LLM candidate, an Englishman I knew from university, declared to us, while we were making our way to Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria, that that was the best meal he'd had in New York. "He's English", S whispered.

 

Still, signs were promising when we walked into the restaurant. A boisterous, casual Italian eatery, it was one of those charming places with a deli counter displaying home-cured prosciutto and handmade pastas, and lots of olive oil. Diner, deli and marketplace all rolled in one, what you get depends on when you drop by.

For dinner, we started with pulpo a la plancha, a dish of seared octopus served with fava beans and black garlic. A fist-sized octopus, perfectly grilled and smoke-charred, was meaty but supple, complemented by the silky black garlic sauce and crunchy split beans.

S's main course of orrechiete with a simple sauce of olive oil, parmiggiano and sausage meat was very tasty, if perhaps a little salty. Al dente pasta, as you'd expect from a restaurant specialising in freshly-prepared, rustic Italian cuisine, doused in extra-virgin olive oil that's been infused with the umami of the sauteed sausage meat, and the flavours of strong herbs like sage and oregano.

On hindsight, I really should have ordered a pasta as well, but I thought I'd be adventurous and have the slow-roasted short ribs with castelvetrano olives, celery, walnuts and horseradish. 

When the dish arrived, I was taken aback at the mountain of meat I received. If anything, it was larger than the steaks I'd had at Del Frisco's the night before. Not that it wasn't a fantastic cut of rib: I could taste and see that it was marbled through with seams of fat that made the meat both tender and irresistibly tasty. It also meant, however, that I was completely full after only after a few bites.

As much as I would have liked to have dessert, I had been completely done in by the ribs. Il Buco Alimentari does, however, offer a very tempting selection of home-made gelato and cheeses, as well as the usuals such as a panna cotta with a 10 year aged balsamico.

All in all, I'm not sure I'd say Il Buco Alimentari was the best meal I'd had or was going to have in New York, but for a casual, relaxed Wednesday night dinner, you could certainly do a lot worse.   

 

Il Buco Alimentari & Vineria
53 Great Jones Street, NY 10012
Tel: +1 212 837 2622

Miscellaneous Food: New York (Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steak House)

In Law Abiding Citizen, Gerard Butler's character, in an implausible storyline, shows up the criminal justice system while in prison by offering to give police and prosecutors information about a crime he himself had committed, in return for a steak from Del Frisco's.

That, I'm guessing, is a measure of the reputation that Del Frisco's has created for itself, and it's not all that difficult to see why. Del Frisco's is one of those old-school steakhouses with an ornate dining room containing waiters in starched white shirts and black waistcoats, and where ordering anything smaller than 24 oz and more cooked than medium is likely to earn you reproachful stares from the neighbouring tables.

It was my first meal in New York, and I was lucky enough to be hosted to dinner at this institution of a steakhouse along the Avenue of the Americas, not far down from Rockefeller Centre.

Although the steaks are the obvious attraction, some of the starters and side dishes here are equally deserving of acclaim. Chief among these were the crab cakes with a spicy Cajun sauce.  Pure chunks of fresh, sweet crab meat mopped up with a creamy, piquant sauce made for a really delicious start to the meal.

The caprese salad, one of the specials for the evening, was perhaps a little out of place considering that the rest of the menu was not exactly Italian, and the mozzarella cheese seemed to me to be a somewhat dry. 

"That's really a portion for one, sir," said our waiter with what I imagine was intended to be sympathy, when I indicated that three of us would be sharing a 24 oz porterhouse steak. Even though I knew that 24 oz was more than sufficient given that I wasn't that hungry and W and S weren't going to be eating all that much, I capitulated and ordered another 8 oz filet mignon.

To be fair, both steaks were beautifully cooked, and absolutely spectacular with just a simple serving of broccoli. The strip side of the porterhouse was particularly toothsome, deftly seasoned and brimming with meat juices. 

Del Frisco's is also particularly well-known for their sizable onion rings, but I've never really been a fan of onion rings, and just because the ones here are four times the normal size doesn't mean they're four times tastier.

If, by any chance, you still have space for dessert after the meal, there are all sorts of traditional, stick-to-your-sides sweets on offer, and the New York cheesecake doesn't disappoint. Thick, creamy and generous, the cheesecake is best shared between two or three people.

The chocolate souffle cake, served with a huge scoop of vanilla ice cream, was rather too sweet for me, but the truth is that no one comes to Del Frisco's for the dessert. 

At the end of the meal, we staggered out of the restaurant, filled to the brim with prime, USDA steaks, doubly-satisfied: for my generous hosts, a great way to wind down a trip to New York, and for me, starting a holiday on a particularly high note filled with good meat and wonderful companionship.

Del Frisco's 
1221 Avenue of the Americas
Tel: +1 212 575 5129

Miscellaneous Food: New York Food 2013

So, are you tired of New York food reviews? I certainly am. I landed in New York, thinking, ok, I'm still seeing the same restaurants, so I'll just fill in the gaps. There are, as usual, a ton of new restaurants but many of them are a little unusual and far-flung (read: Brooklyn). Many, because of their home-grown size, don't take reservations, which as a visitor, can often be too tough to navigate. 

I began my 11-day trip with a dinner at Marea. This Central Park South institution has lovely pastas, probably some of the best that I've tried in recent history. My mother's take was they were "too salty". She said that about half the food on the trip, so I wouldn't take it personally, objectively, I suppose it could have been a little less salty. The restaurant is a sort of typical brown chair, shade-lighting corporate-style place and it is completely packed, we lived just a few doors away and it was always full, from brunch, to well past midnight. 

The service is good, if a little snooty, the bread is good, the meats though, weren't as good as their pastas. We had the braised octopus pasta and a simple tomato-based meat pasta, the texture of the home-made pasta was excellent. You know how, some pastas, when you taste them, the flavour, the chewiness, the soft give and slightly briney taste, you just know they are hand-made? Well, their pastas had that texture. Overall, I thought the restaurant was enjoyable though not necessary and I'm not entirely sure why it's just won its second Michelin star. 

The next day, we made the trek to Balthazar, the Chelsea Highline, the Union Square Greenmarket and the Mario Batali Italian emporium Eataly. At the Chelsea Highline, spring was out and so were the vendors for BBQ shredded pork sandwiches, Bluebottle coffee (from San Francisco) and artisanal popsicles. On the way back from the Highline, we stopped by a Planet Doughnut for their famous creme-brulee doughnuts, little stuffers filled with a flawlessly smooth creme-brulee cream. I also re-visited Pearl Oyster Bar in the East Village for a lovely, sumptious juicy lobster roll, but at $30 a plate and with indifferent service, it has somewhat destroyed the romance I used to have with in college- the only lobster joint I can now recommend is Red Hook Lobster Pound, where their $13 whole fresh-steamed lobsters and piping hot lobster rolls are really a steal.

We took a short couple days to Woodbury in upstate New York and basically went on a organic and grain buying binge, as well as dinner at Bear Inn, which wasn't very memorable except for some very good fiddlestick ferms, then headed back to the city in time to meet some friends for dinner at The Lincoln, a beautiful pyramidal glass structure at the Lincoln Center. The starters were not as memorable but again, the range and pastas were excellent. I had the spanner crab uni rigatoni, which was light and yet filling. It was a perfectly competent, even excellent Italian restaurant but again, although well executed, I felt the restaurant kind of lacked flair and it was very corporate- it was buzzing on an early dinner seating on a weekday and it was all suits and cocktails at this place, more sign I suppose that corporate New York is healthy and spending. 

The next day, we went to a restaurant called Park Avenue-Spring. This is a really interesting place, which changes its name, website and menu based on the four seasons (this must be quite confusing to taxi drivers). Again, the place was packed out on a midweek day and the space was beautifully decorated with cherry blossoms. The clientele was mostly Gossip Girl and Democrat senator lookalikes. (Ok, maybe more like young Republican senators). I am told the restaurant also has a $35 brunch prix fixe, which is one of the best deals in town. 

I was a little doubtful about the place, given the concept but it was excellent. The menu of spring vegetables was outstanding, tasty and rich and the Dover Sole was beautifully executed. My pea soup was velveteen and thick with taste and the carmelized roasted baby tri-colour beets atop a pistacho pesto with Danish Blue were a revelation. The prices were not cheap especially given we had a very light menu but pretty much what you would have paid for any top-end restaurant. I would have been impressed with this European menu for a romantic night out or a meal with friends or the parents. Although I didn't get to try it, I heard similarly good things about the restaurant Modern at the MOMA.

We spent most of the time dining near Central Park South or the Upper East Side because of some logistical constraints, I attribute this failing to the fact that I generally felt my food had more Michelin stars than it did inventiveness. I tried Sarabeth's for brunch, which despite it's fame, had not much else to recommend it. The inside of the restaurant was a pale mint green shabby chic, rather how the original Patisserie Valerie in Marylebone High Street used to look. The eggs were pretty good (but aren't they at every brunch place) and the waffles were thick and crisp and the juice was a whopping $8 USD. I picked up my coffee at Stumptown at the Plaza Hotel's Basement Food Hall and on balance, I think between Gimme Coffee, Stumptown and Bluebird, Stumptown Coffee is my favourite (although they are all good).

I also tried the Lady M cakes and crepe cakes, also at the Plaza Hotel's Basement Food Hall- I had the green tea crepe mille fuille, which was very good but oozing with cream and a little too soft for my liking. It was very well executed and although I didn't relish it, as I had expected I would (maybe my expectations were too high), I do think about it occasionally, a month later and that's usually a sign of a great pastry. I sent the aunts to Jean Gorges for his fairly-priced and well-executed set lunch (which the male cousins found completely inadequate for their appetites) and when we were too full for much dinner, we popped into Bar Masa at the Time Warner building. 

I have to say that with the hype about Masa and how Bar Masa was a casual and competent accessory, I found Bar Masa incredibly underwhelming. It was like a typical, if high-end Japanese restaurant but when you looked through the menu, there was nothing really high-end or customized about it. In fact, it had dishes like fried bee hoon, which were distinctly Asian, rather than Japanese and the clientele was like most of the Upper East Side, conservative, sterile and boring. It rather felt like what it was- eating Japanese food in a mall. 

There were only a few places, and very targeted, that we tried, outside of this small geographical circle. One such place, was the Dominique Ansel Bakery in Soho and if I had to pick one thing that you need to try the next time you are in New York, it would be a hard fight between the DKA, Le Bernardin's fish lunch menu and Kyo-Ya for dinner. The DKA is the Kouign Amman from Dominique Ansel's bakery, a Breton pastry so famous, it has its own acronym. Ansel is the ex- pastry chef from Daniel and each of his pastry's is hand-crafted, for example, his madelaines take 8 minutes each and are baked to order, to make sure every piece is piping hot. His might be the best pastry shop in all of New York- quite honestly, outside of Paris, I have not tasted anything like his work and Certainly not the very poor cousin, in Tiong Bahru Bakery (oh, you have not lived). 

The DKA is the most popular item on his menu and it is his take on the flaky, twisted, croissant-like, caramelized croissant muffin. It is baked every hour and costs a whopping $5 USD each but if you watch the famous video of the-making-of, it is easy to see why. Crispy yet light and so very fragrant, this pastry, particularly with coffee, is incredibly indulgent and each bite is the stuff of dreams. 

Mid-week, I brought my cousins to famed steakhouse Peter Luger, in Williamsburg, which was, as usual, excellent. Had I more time, I would have tried this steak restaurant called St Anselm, which is also in Brooklyn, which came very highly recommended for their meats and succulent giant shrimp.The other place which my friends really enjoyed but which I didn't try was Quality Meats, it is meant to be an offshoot started by a disgruntled employee of Peter Lugur and they felt it was actually better, but Del Frisco's was unanimously panned. 

While in Brooklyn, you should definitely check out some of the dining scene there, but be warned that the area to cover is very large. We visited Franny's in Flatbush Avenue, which was fairly near the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, but quite deep into the heart of Brooklyn. For this reason, I had never made it on any of my earlier trips and it is fair to say that Franny's is actually many years into it's organic-produce-movement fame. It is still packed and the cuisine is best described as small world plates, with excellent thin, wood-fired pizzas. 

I have to say that if I wasn't in Flatbush Avenue, I don't know that I would have made the trek all the way there just for food. The small plates were excellent and they really inspired my palette but they were also quite pricey and the selection was small. The first plate was roasted leek with pinenuts and herbs- I had never realized that if you roasted leek, it became so very sweet and caramelized. It was excellent but it was $16 for a single, split leek. The second plate was freekah (which is a fat, rice-like grain) salad with cranberries, herbs and almonds. Again, the combination was refreshing, stimulative and unusual. The pizzas were indeed excellent and I guess in total, the bill, bring under $50, wasn't that expensive, but neither was the meal substantial. I have nothing against Franny's except that time has moved on and it just seems cute, rather than important, how they brand themselves as an environmentally- responsible enterprise. More importantly, the coffee was bad and there were lean, salt-and-peppered corporate executives with their adorable kids there after their weekend exercise, still dressed in their dry-fit bicycling tops and expensive leather mechanical-movement watches. 

When I visited my friends in Brooklyn Heights (the gentrified, green part of Brooklyn that has the most high-street stores and is the closest to the tip of Manhatten and Wall Street), it felt a little like Boston, with red brick-fronts and cute little streets called Orange and Pineapple. There was also a Smorgasburg, a cute take on a collection of food trucks that gathered in an open warehouse space over the weekends and served up local craft foods for lunch, things like Red Hook Lobster Pound's lobster rolls, artisinal breads, cupcakes and a BBQ and paella stores. My astute friend told me that the more successful of these home-grown enterprises had stopped coming to the market, to concentrate on their commercial enterprises. Brooklyn is doing roaring business these days, at the docks, we saw the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory (which looked a bit more like a poky, nostalgic 1960s store). The owner told us this was the first spring weekend that he was open and he had sold out in 5 hours on the Saturday and 6 hours on the Sunday. 

The last couple days were the best eating days of the trip. My most memorable day was the last night in New York, I spent the evening with friends in the Lower East Village at an amazing izakaya called Kyo-Ya. Now, I don't really care what you think you know about Japanese food, personally I find there are so many levels at which you can enjoy the variety of Japanese food and even Japanese fusion, relative to the price you pay. In this way, I sometimes feel it can be the most versatile of food cuisines. 

This place was authentic and brilliant, in a fairly high-end way, although the restaurant itself, is a bit of a hidden gem, tucked away in a quiet wooden basement space that makes you feel transported into a different space. The food was beautifully executed, the pressed sushi was so beautiful and the tamago wobbled it's way to the table. The Japanese server was specific and knowledgeable and the variety of tastes was exciting. We each ate our way through $100 of dishes, which given how much we polished off, was really not expensive. This would definitely be my top recommendation if you were to be in New York for something insightful, quality and special. I remember thinking to myself that this kind of food, and restaurant, is the way I remember New York. 

After dinner, I went to an interactive play of Macbeth called Sleep No More, which was conducted over 5 stories in an abandoned old hotel, deep in Chelsea. This play was featured in Gossip Girl and the audience all wear white masks, seperating you from the actors who play out their scenes in a blood-filled bathtub, a taxidermist showroom, a christmas tree farm, 1930s jazz dance hall (the dancing and costumes were amazing), a barnyard, a cemetary complete with actual tombstones and earth, and simply rooms upon rooms of the most dynamic, intricate and true-to-form props. You were free to chase different actors around, to interact with the play and to ride the elevator or criss-cross the stairs to different floors and back alley paths. It was one of those quintessential New York experiences, spooky, transcendent and slightly pretentious. All in all, a really memorable and awesome night, if you are fortunate enough to be in New York while it is running, you should definitely catch a performance. 

We had saved the best for last with a 2pm lunch reservation at Le Bernadin. I had heard it was a 3 star Michelin rating, stuffy and very good for fish, but it really is Amazing for fish. It was perhaps one of the best, if not the best Western fish restaurant I've been to. The service was courteous, the bread was lovely and the fish, wow. I can't say enough good things about it, except that you have to try it when you are in town, for a classy and enjoyable lunch (dinner is very expensive) meal. As with all top restaurants, order the weirdest-sounding combination on the menu, it's probably excellent. 

We had the $75USD prix fixe for lunch, which was three plates across a selection of almost-raws and barely-touched appetizers, a main and a dessert. The appetizers were mostly oysters, beautifully presented, rich soups and carpaccios made of the oddest fish, some were the expected (and delicious) marinated tuna, but there was also fluke, geoduck, taragai (clam), albacore, bacalao and cobia. The menu, just for the appetizers, was long and extensive and I wished that I could come back again and again to try them all. One of the seats at our table ordered the bacalao, which is salted fish and was rewarded with an outstanding dish, it tasted faintly of bacalao as I remembered it from Portugal but it was meaty, juicy and delicious. 

The mains, or barely-cooked, were also similarly exhaustive, from lobster to Dover sole, striped bass, black bass, wild-fished salmon and so on. They were cooked to perfect, the fish flaky and falling off the bone. If there was a weaker spot, if it can be considered that, it would probably be dessert, which was all deconstructed (boo), petite and rich. It was good, just nothing outstanding, with nothing but a residual memory of a bit of this and a bob of chocolate ganache. All in all, this was probably the most comprehensive yet beautiful lunch and I would highly recommend it. You need to make a reservation way in advance, we booked a week and a half earlier and had only a single slot for a late lunch. 

Marea

240 Central Park South

212-582-5100

The Lincoln

142 West 65th Street 

212-359-6500

Park Avenue- Summer

100 East 63rd Street

212-644-1900

Franny's

348 Flatbush Avenue, between Sterling Place and 8th Ave

718-230-0221

Dominque Ansel Bakery 

189 Spring Street, near Sullivan Street

212-219-2773

www.dominqueansel.com

Kyo-Ya

94 East 7th Street, at 1st Ave

212-982-4140

Le Bernadin

155 West 51st Street

212-554-1515

Miscellaneous Food: Soaked Tomatoes, Herbs and Cheese

This is a really nifty gift idea, which can be done with anything that can be pickled- tomatoes, mushrooms or olives. If you have leftover herbs and some good olive oil, this is a also a lovely way of storing it for when you want to have it with crispy bread or next want to fry up some pasta.

I used sun-dried cherry tomatoes, but you can also use sliced sun-dried tomatoes. I used boccocini, small balls of mozzerella, but a hard cheese like feta actually stores better. If you're adventurous, you can also use anchovies or brined mackeral.

I warmed the olive oil with thyme and rosemary and the tomatoes, but you can use any herbs that you have leftover. Then into sanitized canning jars and tied up with a pretty ribbon!

Miscellaneous: Duck Breast (Duck L'Orange) with Heston Blumenthal's Perfect Mash and Lentils de Puy

This weekend, I decided to take on a Duck L'orange in the Sous Vide. I checked up several recipes, deciding between a charred orange Cointreau recipe here and balsamic honey recipe here. I went to Hubers for some duck breast - for a more economic option you can head to your nearest wet market but I decided to be a bit lazy and treat myself to some beautiful, cleaned cuts of duck breast (below).

I scoured the skins of the ducks and then marinated it with sea salt, pepper, orange peel, thyme and balsamic vinegar. The other seasonings that I saw were Chinese 5-spice mix and dry rub. Then I popped them in the bag and Sous Vide, for 2 hours at 57 C, which the temperature recommended by the many blogs and recipes that I looked up online.

On reflection, the orange peel doesn't really come through after the cooking and I would have cooked it for slightly longer, because as you can see from the photograph, although they were totally cooked, I would have liked it slightly less pink and bloody. I think 3.5 hours would have been more suitable. You should also leave it in the water bath, prefably up to the time that you are ready to sear and serve.  I pulled it out at 2 hours and then returned it to the water bath when I was ready to sear, in retrospect, that was a waste of effort and electrical energy.

I also sous vide some skinned potatoes. I'd watched Heston Blumenthal's video for the perfect potato mash, in which he recommended waxy potatoes (I used waxy thin-skinned red potatoes but I should have used the Australian washed potatoes). These need to be cooked at 70 degrees C for a half hour- this maintains the starch granules instead of having them break and flow forth with their starchiness- this was easier to do in the sous vide. Then, they were brought to a boil until soft and mashed. You are meant to push them through a ricer twice with 1/3rd their weight in butter- so my second lesson was that this was both messy and I didn't have the right equipment!

The other interesting step is that you are meant to use the potato skins and boil them in milk and cream. This infuses the milk with the earthy fullness of the potato skin and indeed, although I thought this sounded dubious, the resulting milk was the most potato-ey, earthy, full-bodied thing I'd tasted, absolutely like fresh potatoes but without their floury taste. Bravo! This is warmed and added back to the potato. To be honest, I found the only way to smoothen the potatoes (which I presumably had not boiled for long enough), was to put the whole thing in a food processor. The mash mellowed from the mash you see above, to the smooth, creamy texture on the plate, but it was still fairly bland, because I had neglected the salt and pepper in favour of the duck juices and also, it did still have small lumps in it- but it was really rich and tasty and I would definitely make it again.

The last step, as you remove the ducks from the sous vide bags, is to pat them dry and sear them, skin side down in a hot pan. Before cooking the duck, you may want to heat up the pan and burn the orange slices on the pan, then de-glaze the pan with orange juice and balsamic vinegar to create a sauce for the duck. The duck breasts produce a lot of oil, which is always likely to back-splatter, making this a much messier enterprise than sous vide cooking would suggest. Spoon the hot oil directly over the duck to help cook and crisp up the skin, then reduce the heat and continue to brown, occasionally pressing the breasts down to ensure good contact between skin and pan. Rest for 5 minutes, then remove to a cutting board and slice.

The lentils de Puy were bought from France and these were just boiled (you can also sous vide, along with the duck and potatoes- talk about a one-pot meal!) with red wine, chicken stock, carrot, celery, tomato paste and onions. You can entirely use the sauce from Sous Vide Short Ribs as the marinade and cooking liquid for the lentils. 

Miscellaneous Food: Fun Times with Sous Vide Cooking, Short Ribs and Beef Buakaluak

If you've ever wondered about the culinary phenomenon known as Sous Vide cooking, it's like immersing your food in a kettle, that has an intelligent thermal coil. I don't know if you ever did that primary science project about building a machine that could keep a piece of ice cool for as long as possible (my group carved a little styrofoam Russian Doll out of a cannister and insulated the interior with sawdust- we were 10), but a Sous Vide machine is essentially similar, it's a metallic insulated box fitted with a themacouple and heating coil that can hold the temperature of the water inside the box steady anywhere between 40 degrees to 150 degrees C.

This method of slow cooking, especially for meats, allows the protein strands to break down gently, creating a meat that appears hardly cooked but is actually cooked through, and so smooth and soft that it tastes like butter. Despite that and for some reason, I'd never really warmed to the idea of Sous Vide and deliberately avoided it for years, perhaps because it seemed like those infomercials where they sell you cooking bags- do you remember those? You put a chicken in a bag and microwave it and it comes out perfectly cooked? It just sounded hokey. I'm also slightly paranoid about acquiring kitchen equipment that doesn't have multiple uses or which can be replicated by other items, like a pressure cooker or a crock pot (neither of which I have, because one make scary noises and the other... but I digress). 

The recipe that turned me on to the Sous Vide method was Chef Malcolm Lee's Beef Buakaluak, where he cooked beef cheek for 5 hours at 80 degrees C, in buakaluak sauce. What a clever idea- of course the buakaluak sauce cooks through and perfumes the meat, yet keeps it perfectly supple and striated. After eating yet another perfect dish of his warm, savoury, rich beef buakaluak, I put out an SOS for anyone who would let me play with their Sous Vide equipment and was blessed to have great friends respond. (I also discovered that generally, the Sous Vide machine is quite a white elephant). 

It is, however, a really neat piece of kit. At full price, the most popular home Sous Vide machine, the Sous Vide Supreme, is about $600 and more for the sealing vacumn but on sale, I notice it has gone down to about half that. It's not that impressive though, just a regular box, with a thermostat. I was very careful when putting together the pieces, tipping the hot water in and setting the temperature. The sealing of the bags took me awhile to work out but it's really cool- if you were one of those kids who liked to fiddle and played with those cheap hand-held sealers that glued plastic bags close, you'll love this (and they are really good for vacuming herbs and vegetables in bags to keep them fresh). I was absolutely gleeful at this part. 

I tried out a few recipes, the first being the beef buakaluak with beef cheek or beef shin. I quickly ran into the common issues that users complain about, with the sous vide. First- it is time consuming. Not just because the water takes time to heat up, which is actually fine, since you need time to prep before plopping the bags in, but because most recipes, in water, at low heat, will take several hours to accomplish. There is a reason you usually stir-fry on high heat- it's faster.

The Sous Vide is best for the well-prepared cook, not necessarily the home cook for two reasons- first, you can only really eat the meal the day after it's cooked, or start in the morning, or at best, at lunch, for a meal at night. And second, if you are sealing liquids into a bag, you should be freezing those liquids first, which means that marinades, sauces and cooking liquid needs to be prepped up to several days beforehand. I froze my sauce in little plastic tupperware cups lined with clingwrap, so that I could cleanly pull out the frozen pucks of sauce, as you see in the picture above, and wouldn't have to wash out the cups.

It also doesn't take cooking out of the equation- for example, the beef buakaluak, needs to be cooked with buakaluak sauce, which is spices, lemongrass and the flesh of the local buakaluak nut slowly dry-fried in oil. This is the most tedious part of most Peranakan dishes, so if you  have to procure the buakaluak sauce, you have to spend a lot of time and preparation effort in the kitchen anyway. This idea that the Sous Vide makes for 'easier cooking' is quite a myth. If you can't cook, then the Sous Vide isn't going to add much to your life. 

What is does do though, is help to take the "attention" part of cooking out of the equation. Instead of having to watch a fire or an oven, you can simply leave your bags in water for hours. Even if you are out for an extra hour, it does not dry up, it does not burn, it stays immobile and cooking slowly in the lukewarm water and won't start a fire. It is also more accurate, with the water being able to conduct heat to within a degree of the pre-set temperature, as opposed to say an oven, where the air molecules don't transmit heat evenly.

The second bag that I put into the Sous Vide was just chopped sweet potato and carrot- this was going to cook for 2 hours, until tender and then get pureed as an accompaniment to the short ribs. It is possible to cook an entire meal in the Sous Vide and save time, because you can cook all the bags together.

The caveat is, they have to be cooked at the same temperature, and therefore you have to adjust the cooking time of 'sous vide' recipes slightly to compensate for that. This bag was quite a surprise, it comes out of the Sous Vide looking exactly as it went in, except bouncy soft- the vegetables keep their raw colour because they don't oxidise and the strong and high flash heat from stir-frying, for example, doesn't sear away their pigment. I gave this bag to my friend with a young baby, to test out for baby food puree- I can see that it would be much brighter than usual steamed vegetables and probably more concentrated, because they literally, cook in their own juices. 

If you have been to a Japanese izakaya and had sweet potato that has been burned over a charcoal fire, you would know what the texture is like and how the blistered skin, (prefably with a square of hot, sweet Japanese butter) gives way easily to the soft, caramelized interior of the potato. If you Sous Vide an entire sweet potato, it will be somewhat similar, except deceptive, because the exterior will look completely normal and raw, but the inside will be perfectly cooked, soft and very, very sweet. It will probably be sweeter than being smoked over a fire because it will have cooked for much longer and therefore released much more sugar. But it will not have the smoked taste. In fact, it won't have come into contact with high heat at all, so it will have no 'char' taste. This is probably why Sous Vide is considered one of the healthier forms of cooking- but probably also why so much restaurant food, taste so sterile and 'cooked yet tasteless' these days. 

This is also why a lot of Sous Vide is combined with searing before or after it is cooked. David Chang's Momofuku recipe for 72-hour ribs, suggests that after the water bath, you deep fry the ribs to give them texture and browning. That makes perfect sense. But it also means that actually you do have to do a lot of work not just before but also after the Sous Vide. 

In professional kitchens though, I can see exactly why the Sous Vide machine is such a boon. In fact, in any situation where you are cooking for a large number of people, it is incredibly helpful, but particularly in a large restaurant where you have calls for different kinds of meat, confits and shanks and ribs and steaks, essentially, you could have a line-up of perhaps 10 Sous Vide machines, all quietly heating different types of meat to various degrees of done-ness. It would be silent and eerie and clean, like a lab growing different aliens in bell jars.

The machines would keep the bags of meat or vegetables perfectly warm and when the diner called for a meal, they would be fished from their bath, cut open, emptied in a hot pan and seared, then plated and served still hot. It allows for control and it allows for each plate to be kept hot, rather then stored cold and reheated. 

I admit that I was suckered into making the short ribs because of a beautiful cut of meat at the butchers, it was pink perfection, marbled USDA prime. This was a great deal- from the same cut as the USDA rib eye but for half the price, and looked just lovely, cut into square pieces. If you are planning to make the short ribs, you should have lots and lots of odori (the holy trinity of carrots, onions and celery). 

The small bowl, by the way, is a small chunk of butter, into which I mix herbs like rosemary, thyme, garlic and parsley. A tip that every home chef should know is that you should keep a tub of some butter mixed with garlic and herbs, in the freezer. Every time you have leftover herbs, chop them up and mix them into that same tub of butter, then freeze. This way you don't waste anything. You can also do this with olive oil- the fat basically preserves the herbs and when you next need to cook, whether it be meat bolognaise, or sauteed vegetables, or garlic bread, you can use some of that oil or butter. Every time you use a little, add a bit more fresh butter, then just keep adding all your leftover herbs over time, instead of letting them go bad in the fridge. 

I heated up the pan to a high heat, then seared the sides of the short ribs quickly and deglazed the pan with some leftover wine from last night's dinner. Pouring the glaze aside, I sauteed the vegetables, adding stock, wine and tomato paste, then put the short ribs and stewing liquid into the vacumn bags and sealed them. Then, fishing out the sweet potatoes which were done by then, I added the bags of meat into the Sous Vide for their long 18 hour sleep. 

The oddest thing about this process is probably shown by the picture above, the tray next to the machine is my drying rack- traditionally, when you pull out cooked food, usually with greasy tongs, you need a wooden cutting board, or a metal rack to rest it on, or else a plate or blotting paper. In this case, your tongs come out of near-boiling water clean and you need somewhere to dry off and cool your bags of food. It's somewhat bizarre. 

The other thing of course, is the absence of smell. You may be accustomed to dancing around the cooking, asking, is it done, is it done? And of course, in this instance, there's no real way to tell, because the bags look, for the most part, exactly the way they did when they went in and there's absolutely no aroma.

It's science- you just have to trust that meat at 80 degrees (and some people use it at 50 degrees which is woo, even more walking on the wild side) for 5 hours will produce a certain done-ness and redness of meat. I guess it's a bit like steak and the timing and temperature for perfect medium rare, but done in a total and literal vacumn of smell and sound. I can imagine that the Sous Vide is actually great for Indian food particularly, and it's only when you cut open a bag of dhal for example, that you'll be able to smell the onions, the cumin, the saffron- it really cuts apart the different touchstones of human senses.

Of course, the true test is in the taste. This was the beef buakaluak that I had cooking at 80 degrees for 5 hours and the same picture of the meat, cut open. The odd thing is, when the meat is packed within the bag, it is deceptively solid and when chilled in the fridge, it is deceptively hard. It was actually really soft, although when I was first heating it up, I really worried that I had undercooked it. When I prodded it with a fork though, the thin strands of meat all started to come apart. Also, when the packets cool down, the fat from the meat coagulates into these orange solids, so it is perfectly easy to remove them, leaving behind a thick, luxious and hopefully more nutritious sauce. 

The result was simply sublime, soft, tender, falling apart within it's own sauce. The only compliant that I've heard about the sous vide taste is that all meat is indistinguishable, it is all gelatinous and without flavour. It is definitely true that there are many modern Europrean restaurants that use sous vide extensively and I have to agree about the homogeneity of the taste and texture of meat particularly if you have too much of it. In the case of a once-in-a-while dish like the beef buakaluak, the mouth-feel of the striated meat was excellent, it was as rich as butter, and the beef cheek gave it enough body to not be mushy.  

This was the beef short ribs that I had put in the sous vide for about 12 hours. I didn't do the whole 72 hours in the end, as it felt a bit obsessive. In truth, it really doesn't need that much time and while I appreciate that it would be a lot softer if I had cooked it at 57 degrees C instead of 80 degrees C, this was plenty soft for me. The short ribs were especially buttery and felt apart as they were forked through- delicious and tasty. 

What amazed me particularly, was how solid the short ribs looked when they came out of their packet- deceptively whole and square. But with just a prod, they fall open as shown in the second picture. I think this was the dish that really sets sous vide apart and I can imagine it being used for multiples of uses, including different meats and meat ragu pastas. 

Miscellaneous Food: Heston Blumenthal at Andre - The Evolution of Taste

I was really blown away by a recent dinner, where I was lucky enough to be an invited guest at a womens' event. The funny thing was, I didn't know if I had been included until the day itself, which meant that after work, I was dressed up and still not quite sure if I'd any place to go. Although the dinner was headlined as Heston Blumenthal at Andre, somehow I understood that to be Andre takes on Heston Blumenthal's recipes. (You know, like the Youtube ones- yes, I was having an off day). To be honest, it was quite enough to be invited to dinner, surrounded by some wonderful women but....

Imagine my surprise when I was shown into the restaurant and up the elevator and the doors open and I found myself face to face with, Heston Blumenthal himself! What exactly does one say in such situations? "Triple fried chips! Triple fried chips! Can we get a picture?" No, actually you talk about food in Singapore and what he has been up to recently. Then, thankfully, we were whisked away to dinner, a wonderful affair laid out by Andre and his team, so I was spared my own embarassing fan-dom. 

The titled "Snackings", were small plates filled with molecular Fish and Chips, Chlorophyll Capsules, these awesome little bubble-like pods filled with a green liquid. There were also simple but tasty items like Potato Bravas, Summer Porcini, Lemon Sous Vide and White Asparagus Meringue. 

The first plate was an Andre classic and tribute to Japanese ingredients, the Mosiac of Japanese seafood on arrival (this was small bits and pieces of very fresh and rare sashimi), seasonal wild forest herb coulis, spring flowers and edible plants. This was followed by a second and then a third course, the Roasting broth of fifteen mushrooms (fifteen, woohoo!), Omi beef and Cevenne onion confit, baby mushroom caviar. 

This was my favourite dish, two thick slices of beautiful beef, seared on the outside but with that distinctive Japanese pink marbling. The broth was then poured from a curved teapot into the platter and the combination was just delicate and yet meaty, luxurious yet light.  The dish that I pictured above was the last course, of 5 main courses, the Pigeon de Bresse "a la plancha" with Noirmoutier potato glass (a lovely smooth texture) and Wild spring asparagus cooked in milk.

Dinner was for want of a better word, a remarkable and charming affair. It was like Andre but taken to a higher plain of dedication. Each dish was beautifully and I could tell carefully, prepared and service was as usual, impeccable. But then, we were all rather on a high to be joined by Heston at dinner- maybe even a good burger would have sufficed, so it was a treat that have such a lovingly plated meal and unlike most meals at Andre, this was really filling!

Dessert was not one but a trio of dishes, first the Purified yoghurt "a la maison" that came in the beautiful glass jar, Granny Smith VS Wild Fennel and the last, which was I think my favourite, Andre's classic Snickers 2012, which is a deconstructed dessert of chocolate, peanuts, caramel, freeze-dried ice cream. All the desserts were very tasty, with his characteristic balance of sweet and savory tastes. 

The meal was complimented with some lovely wines and an amazing company of some very qualified and inspiration women. It was absolutely beautiful work and the two chefs clearly have mutual respect for each other's process- Heston complimented Andre on the food and the distinct pleasure of being cooked for, and Andre looked awed by Heston's later presentation and said he found his work interesting and inspirational.

After dinner, we were treated to a demonstration by Heston and he explained his thinking behind experiential food. I had actually dined at the Fat Duck many years ago and had not been too impressed. While I liked the boldness of the food, I was put off by tastes that I felt clearly didn't go together, like passionfruit and oyster, as well as their admittedly snooty and unaccomadating service. I didn't quite understand what he was trying to accomplish and remembered only a vague combination of tastes and flavours. Why would you pay for that, I wondered, why had we driven hours to Bray to be subjected to this weirdness? The only dish that really stood out for me at his restaurant was the most familiar, a slow-cooked beef with a creamy potato that completely overwhelmed me with its concentrated strength of flavour and made me realize that he indeed was a superb cook. (I just wished at that time that the whole meal had been such).

I guess what I didn't completely understand was the thinking behind why and how he had put together his menu. Taste, he explained, was an evolution of the five senses, the five tastes and the important ingredient of memory. By combining tastes, he was making us question why we liked certain things together and why we were unable to accept certain other combinations (like oyster and passionfruit, for me). Why do we think that ice cream and chocolate go together, or Oreos and icing, but not sweet and salty flavours- when sugar actually enhances salty flavours like olives?

He explained that the ability for our tongue to taste different textures and tastes at different times and in various parts of our mouth, is further complicated by the introduction of senses, other than taste, like smell or hearing, or memory. He did a test with his bacon and eggs ice cream- tasters who were played the sound of bacon frying and sizzling, were more likely to taste pork, while tasters who were played the sound of hens clucking, were more likely to taste egg, even though they tried exactly the same item. It is the role of the brain in connecting sound to taste, or even memory to taste, or smell to memory- for example, does the smell of sweet extinguished candle smoke make you think of birthday cake from your childhood? Or how about when lemongrass or jasmine macarons make you remember old memories from childhood visits to Thailand. Or the smell of liquorice, cinammon and browned sugar spray, would make you think of Hansel and Gretel and an old-fashioned sweet shop.

This is the feeling that he tries to capture in his food, distilling the evolution and evocation of taste. He explained the process of some of his more famous meal items, including the Mad Hatter's Soup, which is his attempt to recreate and riff off old Victorian recipes. He first creates this amazing consomme, then by freezing it and dripping it over a muslin bag, he concentrates the flavours without reheating, which changes both the content and taste. This is then jellied and wrapped in thin gold foil, into the shape of a wristwatch. The idea is that these are brought to your table in a ticking watch box and you then stir the pocket watch into a cup, all symbols from Alice in Wonderland, then you get completely surprised at the end result.

I don't want to spoil the surprise, except to say that Heston was way ahead of his game. He had conceived this, indeed this forms the Forward of his first book called Heston at Home, Simple Recipes for Home Cooks, way before other chefs were even developing the techniques and while building his arsenal of cool, scientific laboratory toys, he had already done research into old recipes and reinvented the theatre of food- different animals that were stiched together and meats that were glued together to amaze the senses, liquids that tasted cold and hot in the same sip, reindeer ice cream on caramelized brioche french toast, incense and extracts from 2000 year old frankincense from Oman. The resources but moreover, the dedication that he brings to food history and cooking, is astonishing and I felt very blessed indeed to be part of this wonderfully curated and educational event.