Guest piece on Herve This by Peter Crosskey

Well G has stolen my thunder, for a few days have been thinking to wake the blog up after an extended break, and log in today to find our first post of the year, ah well the hydrocolloid thing is nice to look at and playing is much easier now.

A short while ago after joining the UK food bloggers association I was emailed by Peter Crosskey who showed an interest in this post on alternative fish preparation. we got chatting about modern techniques and I found he had recently attended a lecture by the almost legendary Herve This.

I was far too jealous before I read the piece below which he has produced for this blog, and even more after! Any way, without any further ado I hand the floor, nay the screen, to Peter, many thanks for writing this.







The scientist who gets a cubic metre out of one egg white

Fresh from the Eurostar, Hervé This was in his element when he arrived at Imperial College to address a lecture hall full of chemical engineering students in London on November 30 last. With a twinkle in his eye and a playful smile that flitted across his lips between sentences, he was fulfilling his vocation: sharing his knowledge of the science that underpins cooking.

The co-founder of molecular gastronomy wears the weight of his learning lightly: March 2010 will see the 30th anniversary of a sunken soufflé. It was this which propelled Hervé to map out the scientific principles that underpin what happens in the kitchen.

He opens with an obligatory PowerPoint slide to introduce himself. Then he announces that on the train here he changed his mind about what he was going to do in this lecture.

"Let us make a simple experiment," he exclaims, much as his late colleague Nicholas Kurti would have done all those years ago when no-one had heard of molecular gastronomy. His approach is direct and engaging: he takes an egg out of its box and separates the white into a bowl.

"You say 'egg white' and yet it is yellow," he observes as he works. "But don't worry: in France we make the same mistake, too." He explains that there are about 30 grams of egg white in the bowl and that 90% of it is water.

"When the water is taken out, you are left with about 3 grams of protein – and it is yellow!" he exclaims, pulling out of his pocket a glass phial of dried egg white, like a stage magician. The phial is stowed as rapidly as it appeared and he is holding up two egg whisks: "Which one is better?" he asks, before grasping them both firmly in a single hand and using the two together.

Now an egg whisk is nothing short of "...medieval..." for This, who constantly challenges old ideas. "I hate tradition. Slavery is traditional," he interjects.

What distinguishes humanity from animals is an ability to consciously change the world around us, This argues. The mastery of fire and cooking food gave humans a decisive advantage in a hostile prehistoric world.

Society is constructed by human endeavour, This reminds his audience. "When it is built, it is beautiful," he says, pausing long enough in front of a Powerpoint slide with a restaurant plate shot to make his point.

He has been whisking steadily all the while, so the egg whites are firm now: he inverts the bowl abruptly just to make the point. So far This, who thinks nothing of generating a cubic metre of foam from a single egg white, has added only sugar.

He reaches for a bottle of water: this is his secret weapon that transforms the contents of his three-litre bowl into the magic cubic metre. "Of course it is very difficult to measure a cubic metre of egg foam at all precisely," he adds, returning to the scientific business in hand.

"Now, water has no taste, but you can use green tea, fruit juice, olive oil, anything you want." He crosses the boundaries between science, technology and cooking with ease, but never loses sight of his own role, even when pouring his egg white foam into a beaker and transferring it to a microwave.

"You see, I am a scientist and my job is to create knowledge: technologists use knowledge to make tools like this microwave, while chefs use their skill and equipment to make people happy at the table." He pauses, flings open the microwave door, withdraws the beaker and up-ends it with a vigorous shake, turning out the soft set foam.

He challenges the next generation of scientists to lay the foundations for greater things. He does it with such style and enthusiasm that we are all inspired to return to our laboratories, workshops and kitchens with raised expectations of what can be acheived.

Hervé was in the UK for a two-day whistle-stop tour to promote the English translations of two of his books. Earlier this year, Columbia University Press (CUP) published Building a Meal: From Molecular Gastronomy to Culinary Constructivism, being a translation of his 2007 book Construisons un Repas.

The most recent CUP translation is The Science of the Oven, a translation of his 2007 publication De la Science aux Fourneaux. Intended for a scientific audience, it remains an engaging read for lay readers, shot through with candour and Hervé's gentle humour.

Every month. in addition to contributing to the journal Pour la Science, This writes about a scientific insight for the website of his friend, the chef Pierre Gagnaire ( http://www.pierre-gagnaire.com/ ).

For readers of French, Hervé This has a blog at http://hervethis.blogspot.com/ which is well worth following.

Finally, anyone can sign up for the lectures that Hervé This gives at AgroParisTech ( http://www.agroparistech.fr/-Annonce-Cours-de-gastronomie-.html ). Both the page and the lectures are in French, but the inspiration is universal.
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About panel:
This post has been contributed by freelance journalist and blogger Peter Crosskey who was fortunate enough to attend a lecture given by distinguished French scientist Hervé This, the surviving co-founder of molecular gastronomy. My thanks go to Alex for letting me submit this article. A more general piece, along with reviews of two English translations of books by Hervé This can be found at:

http://www.crosskey.co.uk/index.php/2009/12/05/science-that-is-good-enough-to-eat/

Hydrocolloid Heaven

It won't happen over night but it will happen....

I guess you’ve heard that before.
But over time and our shared love of the manipulation of textures and everyone's favourite the fluid gel, we have built up quite a handy collection of Hydrocolloids, Sugars and flavourings.
Previously we had them hidden away in a dark, hard to get to top shelf cupboard where you had to play musical Sosa tubs to find to one you were after.
After stripping the kitchen down for our Christmas break, Alex had the great idea to put them on the shelf behind me in the Pastry section and we've never looked back.
It's a good start towards setting up 'the lab'.... well one can dream can't they?

As I said before, 'it won't happen over night...

Pumpkin risotto with feta cheese

Ever since I began in this business there are a few jobs that have eluded me to get 'just so'

Bavoirs, since college where my lecturer would give me the same bavoirs recipe time and time again, only to be startled as to what it had turned into by the end of the day, sometimes even he could not explain what I had managed to do to it.

Turning mushrooms, thankfully a pretty much dead art, sorry I cannot get to grips with the sharpest of turning knives, my mushrooms just seem to resemble over zealous road-kill after I have tried.

and then this, cubing or slicing Feta cheese evenly, I have had chef after chef show me different tricks with hot knives to no avail, I simply end up with a pile of usually 'OK' cheesy bits. that is until now

a while ago I wanted to put a risotto dish on with feta cheese, simple, seasonal and quite lovely. I wanted it to look like we tried so the cheesy bits had to be sorted, so I thought if it was possible to make a cheese gel, without losing the trademark flavour elements to the cheese, so off I went.

I took a blind guess at a 2:1 ration of water to cheese and set about melting it.

Sitting on the edge of the solid top, I watched eagerly, hoping it would melt smoothly and not curdle and go grainy

It quickly arrived to the boil, hanging it nearly off the solid, I held my breath as things were not looking particularly good.

but hey presto, it melted into a silky liquid. stage 1 complete

I then weighed the resulting liquid and mixed in .19% xanthan (to restrict syneresis) and 1.1% Agar for the gelling. these ratios are what I commonly use for my fluid gels so don't set very firm, as I didn't want it to be small solid cubes, it still had to have the same mouthfeel as a cheese when warm

I brought the cheese and agar mix to just over 90C (to fully hydrate the agar) and poured into my chosen container, placed into the blast chiller and waited eagerly.

soon it was set, and as is usual with agar gels, came out of the container without any hassle, I had to prompltly chop some up

Result, perfectly clean no crumbling shows up any knife skill errors but hey, perfect diced feta. woo hoo. stick some in my mouth as a well done treat and......................

Mild cheesy gel, bother, bother and other words unpublishable.

but look at how clean,

left is normal cheese, not bad but wouldnt like to handle it much more, and you can juggle with the gel, BUT it doesnt taste like feta.

Anyway, I got busy for the rest of the day and resigned my cheese gel to the fridge whilst I actually did some work. 2 days passed..................

That afternoon, I had a bit of time to kill and was sorting the fridge, I came accross the gel and still cross that I had a failed product I started to think along the lines of increasing the feta and lowering the water. as I did this I stuck a couple of cubes in my mouth as thought fodder, and low and behold, the gel had started to take on a dry acidic flavour synominous with the feta and thought what will another day do. I re-wrapped and left it, and on day 4, perfect feta cheese, but gelled. The Agar had firmed slightly, as it does, and the flavours were much more pronounced and most acceptable for the dish. All's well that ends well, we now use 1.5 water to 1 feta to intensify the flavour and so it can be prepared closer to the time, any lower a ration to this and the cheese wont melt properly and is unpleasantly grainy.

But happy me, pumpkin risotto, feta cheese

risotto

flavoured with roasted pumpkin puree

pumpkin gel sheet over

pumpkin fluid gel

microplaned feta gel

amaranth

Next post will be a short photo journal of 2009 and my last post for the year, we close on the 23rd for the christmas break and return on the 4th of Jan, lucky us. To all other cooks out there having to work the holidays, have a great time and hope that business doesn't always get in the way of festivities, just remember 'all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy'

Seasons Greetings

back to fillets, well this week I call them medallions

A while ago in This post I promised to follow up with the technique for the salmon fillet, well eventually have got round to preparing and photographing it.

I won't bore with any further 'fillet' comments so without further ado here goes, am thinking of serving with a simple risotto milanaise and a herb/tomato oil.

1st trim up 2 sides of salmon, removing the skin and scraping the worst of the meat from the skin, ensure all scales are removed, thus

do the same with the other side, roll cling film accross the board from top to bottom, leaving it attached to the roll, arrange the sides to be dusted with activa transglutaminaise

slightly overlap and lay on the film with each 'head' side on the tail of the other to maintain an even size

pulling away from the roll, roll as tightly as possible, going around the salmon about 10 times, refrigerate for at least 6 hours to allow the enzyme to work.

set up clingfilm as before and cut your skins in half, dust liberally with activa and pat the loose dust off

remove the cling film from the roll, which should now be held together, place on the skin and roll carefully ensuring no gaps, again roll tightly many times

trim the ends cleanly and vacuum pack for at least 6 hours again to allow this bit of the enzyme to do it's thing

measure a scallop from top to bottom and cut that thickness of salmon fillet, you can just cut fillets from here, but this week we are going to do a salmon and scallop medallion. Using a cutter slightly smaller than the diameter of the scallop, cut a 'polo' hole out of the centre

leaving this, the cut out piece can either be served as an aside to the dish, or reserved for canapes

push the scallop into the centre and reserve in the fridge for service, sear quickly on both sides, finish for about 3 minutes under a salamander grill and finish with a lemon beurre noisette, when I have the dish up I will post a pic of the finished dish.

quite a lengthy process but very simple to prepare, just need to allow the times between when preparing as rolling the skin in the first roll is hellish to do, so I opted for this method and definitely gave me a cleaner product at the end of the day.

Oh what a night, Birthday factor the results

Well, the weekend is all done and dusted, and would love to post a long list of pictures and comments now, but have to report that the whole day didn't go exactly to plan and as for photos, well they never stood a chance.

So will sum the day up quickly as promised and then soon move on to something more visual.

Let's start with the not so successful, beginning with waking up, not a happy moment in my day, was sick as a dog, to the point of very nearly calling the whole event off, I spent the fist couple of hours wandering round (and occasionally running for the smallest room in the house) in a complete daze.

But eventually pulled myself together, finished off the last touches and got my mis organized, most things were fine except for a quick change of plan with the spherification.

The evening before I got distracted by my kids and left the spheres in the fridge setting, and of course forgetting until the next day, I was left staring at a completely set alginate baths of olive puree and strawberry juice, many things crossed my mind including cutting them out but in the end decided to drop the introductory olives and make a fresh strawberry jam for the semolina, off to the shop I went.

As for the rest of the menu, all went as planned, the whisky sour knocked everyone for 6 to start, the surreal moment of piping my meth cel potato underwater to set them was a new experience (and quite a warm painful one) but the dish pulled off well, and most importantly my sorbet flamed up a treat.

There were a suitable number of 'oohs' and 'ahhs' in all the right places and everyone had a great evening, I was glad to see the cheese crackers and petit fours go so I could finally sit down and join in but was satisfied to pull off this menu in my shoebox of a kitchen, and bless my eldest boy Cameron for digging me out with the washing up the next morning, thank you son.

Anyway, back to work and whilst we don't have a huge amount of time to play the next post should be a more visual affair with more playing and much less working.

A very busy birthday party

I approach this perticular time of year with a small sense of dread and excitement.

My darling wifes birthday is this weekend, and for the last couple of years for one reaosn and another has been a very low key affair, so this year I thought I would put in a bit more effort. well actually a couple of weeks ago she asked 'could I have some of those little tricks you do with food at my birthday dinner?'

'err birthday dinner?' I replied, I had thought of organising the babysitter, booking somewhere nice and letting someone else take care of the cooking. However she had been talking with one of her friends and had come up with the plan of us having dinner in our house, so as I said before time to put a little extra effort in and organised a menu of 5 courses with suitable 'tricks' for good measure, our other guests are blissfully unaware of restaurants such as Alinea and the Fat Duck so I could easily plagarise a few tricks without them being passe, sorry to Grant and Heston (oh and Ferran for my opening cocktail) for the odd blatant theft of recipe, but where needs must the devil drives.

Next day at work, I am thinking of her menu when I am checking the business for this week, and never have I had such a mental week at work, what am I going to do? loads of split shifts needed, when am I going to prep?!? but of course we always make time for the important things in our lives, the only true issue I have had all week is to stop adding courses.

here is the menu, in the next post I will follow up with the pictures of the dishes with comments from our guests (providing i don't forget with the stress of cooking on her birthday)

she also commented on the fact she never gets a cake for her birthday, so with the genius of G's baking skills at hand, can finally put an end to that issue too, (she is normally the one who makes the cakes in the family, so she does get short changed when it's her day)

anyway the menu

Opening cocktail

Whisky sour

(blatant robbery from el Bulli, saw him prepare it a few year ago at a demo in London)

Butternut squash risotto & Heart of palm

‘Cannelloni’

(risotto with squash fluid gel filling a palm heart)

Seafood Platter

Lemon & saffron pudding, olive oil ‘rocks’

(mix of prawns, mussels, calamari and a rocket salad, lemon fluid gel and olive oil compressed in vacuum with tapioca multidextrin)

Truffle & cipoline onion tartlet

Savoury frangipane

(puff paste, classic frangipane (using multidextrin instead of sugar) great finger food to save on the washing up)

Rack of Lamb cooked at low temperature

Melting potato, ratatouille, mint and redcurrant

(58 degrees for 2 hours, then fat rendered and browned, meth cel potato, mint espuma and redcurrants enveloped in a redcurrant gel sheet)

Flaming sorbet

Poached apple ‘on the bone’

(1st part ripped off from the big fat duck cookbook, 2nd part spawned from a post on Ideas in Food)

Love in the mist

Semolina, strawberry spheres (or caviar) and iced foam

(born from Sally's comment on her favourite dessert of all time (as usual a childhood memory as it often is) classic semolina, strawberry reverse spherification, strawberry juice and versa whip frozen)

Cheese cracker

Chutney transparency

(first saw this cracker on the madrid lab blog and thought it one of the most creative frugal ideas I had come accross in some time, as for the chutney, this is an evolution of G's agar filtered juice from an earlier post)

Bounty bars & balls

Nearly texture-free

(sitting watching the hells kitchen final the other day, munching through a box of Celebrations, well what can I say I need simple comfort sugar every now and then (usually now))

(we were discussing a scene in Zombieland where Woody Harrelson finds a hostess truck in his search for a twinky bar, only to find it full of snowballs, he said it was not the flavour that was a problem, just the texture. Sally completely related to this but loves the flavour of coconut, so I had no choice really for petit fours, but to try and re-create a texture-less bounty bar so she can savour the coconut without spitting out the dry dessicated at the end, did I succeed? I say nearly, the chocolate I have used to coast is dark so a little overpowering but the filling is exact, and with only 2 ingredients too! I have done some bars which are agar set, and filled some truffle shells with a coconut fluid gel.)

Anyway I guess only time will tell if I got it right, see you after the weekend!

Slacking off, we don't mean to honest

Only just started the blog, and it looks like we dried up.

not really, just not enough hours in the day to play at the moment, what between business picking up ( a very good thing) family wintry things a plenty keeping me busy, hallowe'en, guy fawkes night tonight and this weekend (with a barbeque for about 500, ouch) and the pressures of making sure we get the correct toys purchased for christmas (not to mention the money involved), not leaving much time to sleep, let alone blog.

I can only apologise for now but will drop in from time to time and get back into some serious funtime after the holidays.

Alex.

Lamb stock - sous vide the real way forward

"why are stocks simmered for so long?"

"WHAT!"

"err, why are stocks made over days constantly topped up with fresh water?"

"Because they work that way, get on with your mis....!!"

sure that all cooks have has sous that had the stock answer (usually shouted) of "because it does", often accompanied by a swift thwack accross the back of the head, perhaps this is why I grew up in kitchens where questions were seldom asked, for myself I was quicker at ducking than most so asked anyway, also if something didn't make sense then I had to get an answer, even if it was dug up myself.

but one question still has not been answered.

so have stuck to these rules for the last 20 years as I have not known better.

recently the trend has led towards pressure cooking stock, this can lead to outstanding flavour, but also to a heavy gelatinous mass and (once pressure is achieved) loses volume anyway, which could lead to 'topping up' the main issue I have in the whole process. why add fresh water when you are trying to impart as much flavour as possible into the liquid.

which led me to this task:

whilst preparing a petit gigot for this weeks menu, I ended up with an inordinate amount of trim due to the nature of the mis en place, so with the idea at hand, it seemed as good a time as any to try out the thought.

so step 1; traditionally roast the bones in the usual way, rendering as much fat as possible for use later.

here is the fat infusing with orange and rosemary, this will later be used to fry the gigot in for service

Step 2: is to fill large Vac-pac bags with, bones, water, red wine, rosemary, thyme, mirepoix, seal at full pressure and double bag

Step 3: set my Rational oven to 66C and put deep waterbaths in the oven, add the bags and cling film the waterbath to minimise evaporation.

Step 4: go home and have a nice weekend with the family, leaving the stock (and some duck legs for good measure) ticking over for the weekend.

Step 5: 60 hours later, remove the baths from the oven, drain the duck, god what a texture, more on this another day. but eagerly drain the stock bag in anticipation of the contents, first thing to note was the meat was squidging off the bones incredibly but the mirepoix was still firm, so my first thought was, 'bugger no veg flavour' thankfully this was a short lived concern, as the flavour was greatly pronounced.

step 6: chill the stock to remove the last of the residual fat, and found the stock beautifully gelled and clear as a bell (this is where impatience got the better of me and should have agar filtered at this point, but one step at a time). the flavour was like none I had tastede in such a simple stock, deep and meaty but with a fresh sweetness of vegetables and herbs and none of the usual stewy notes of the usual over cooked veg in stock.

step 7: reduction, had to fulfill this with respect. most of our jus at this point gets either wine, or port a little fresh veg perhaps but all get as much gas as I can get underneath it, quick reduction and pass and store, next job.

but not this one. kept the temperature between 75 & 80 (mostly) but never boiling and brought down slowly, slowly heightening flavours and not just evaporating water, trying to maintain the balance of flavour I had in the original stock, also to this stock I added nothing, just time. the end flavour was a depth I have not known in a jus of such basic ingredients, no fancy wines or ports, just a basic stock.

step 8: pass, chill, store. Ready to be served with the Gigot which I will post briefly next time.

Agar clarified Apple juice, first dessert.

Time to put the clarified Apple juice into its first use…

Simple but flavoursome, completely clear and colourless Jelly.

I had an idea to play with the classic combination of Apple and Blackberry Pie and Custard and pulling all the components apart and ‘playing’ with all the pieces of the puzzle…..

Agar clarified Apple juice Jelly

Poached Apple balls, warm

Granny Smith infused Granny Smith ball

Bramley Apple puree

Pan roasted Blackberries

Blackberry reverse spherification, ‘ravioli’

Walnut crumble cubes and crumbs

Vanilla Custard Cremeaux

Apple Pie Ice-Cream

Apple tuille

I’m quite happy with how the puzzle came together, different textures, temperatures, tastes and techniques.

Maybe now after my head has cleared from my bike crash I might see it differently on Monday???
But several scraped clean plates on Friday make me think that it’s not just me…

Apple Agar Filtration.

I heard through Chinese whispers about this last year from a Pastry Chef I used to work with, his friend was telling him about a Chocolate Consommé he was doing at The Ledbury in Notting Hill but the technique wasn’t revealed. We thought about it momentary and then kind of just forgot about. But a few months ago it seemed to be popping up everywhere on the internet, with Ideas In Food using compression on there gels for clarification. Within less than a day I believe a new and incredibly simpler method from Cooking Issues stormed onto the scene.

Again I stored it away in the back of my Cerebral Cortex with all stuff I’ll get round to doing? Till the other day I was thinking about an idea with caramelising a hot Apple jelly to go with some Apple Pie Ice-Cream. I ran the idea past Alex and we discussed the concept a bit. I originally wanted to keep the beautiful green colour of whole Granny Smith Apples in the hot caramelised Jelly. I can’t remember how, but the Agar clarification method popped into my mind. I went back to the web site and checked out the ratio and set to work.

At first after cooking the agar to fully hydrate it and then adding the cold green apple juice to it, I thought that I had done something wrong. Not enough agar? I expected it to show signs of stating it set at least, it was cold enough. I come back to it a minute later and gave it a quick stir and at that moment right before my eyes it instantly started to turn into curds with a clear liquid swimming around them.

I passed it through a J-Cloth and left it to hang.

The perfectly translucent colourless liquid collected in the jug was quite astonishing to look upon. I eagerly picked up my spoon and dipped it in.

I then immediately proceeded to pour myself a shot glass of it and knocked it back.

Yeah, it was good. Put a big smile on my face.

Before and after

Ratio 0.2% of liquid volume

I honestly didn’t expect the results I got, especially for the first test. I imagined less flavour with some of the ‘body’ of the apple being left behind.

With this base of Apple water I can instantly think of numerous uses to fool, surprise and arouse people’s taste buds.

I’m thinking for my dessert a soft gelatine based jelly would be best to let the fresh flavour of Granny Smith melt in your mouth and linger just that little bit longer….