Well the reason for the posting hiatus is that I’ve managed to spill coffee over my laptop. It’s in for repair, so for the next 3-4 weeks the postings will be a bit irregular.
She’s dead and it’s a real PITA because I had a really good post about citrus lined up. Oh well, you’ll have to bear with me for a couple of weeks. Sorry.
Congratulations Rasmus Kofoed!!!!
The results of Bocuse d’Or 2007 have just been announced and Rasmus representing Denmark won silver.
Here are the official results:
1st Place: Fabrice DESVIGNES (France)
2nd Place: Rasmus Kofoed (Denmark)
3rd Place: Frank GIOVANNINI (Switzerland)
As you may or may not know, Rasmus won the bronze bocuse in 2005 and famously left his position as Head Chef at Hotel D’Angleterre in 2006, for refusing to cook Stjerneskud in the gourmet restaurant.
Congrats man and good luck!
UPDATE!!
I found this video on youtube today. The bit with Rasmus is from 03:00
At the moment I am reading a very interesting cookbook called The Elements of Taste by Gray Kunz and Peter Kaminsky. Although it is long on recipes and short on the theory, it is still an entertaining book.
The book starts out with the supposition that chefs don’t use recipes to create dishes, they use tastes. From my own experience, I can defnitely say that this is true, but a dish is not only made up out tastes, but also textures, shapes and colours. But at a basic level the authors are correct in proposing their system of 14 different tastes in 4 categories. They are as follows:
Tastes that Push
Tastes that Pull
Taste Platforms
Tastes that Punctuate
This is essentially all of the theory that is in the book. The rest is recipes, tasting notes and plating tips. Although there are some nice recipes with good pictures, I won’t necessarily be stealing 
any of them. All in all this is a good cookbook if only for the elaborate system of tastes. A great book for the layman to learn about layering tastes but not a professional tome
Well, I didn’t have a chance to get any pictures of it this weekend…too damn busy. But Martin from Khymos has put up a very interesting post about DIY sous vide cooking. You can do it at home with a plastic bag and a digital thermometer. It’s all illustrated with some nice pics so check it out here.
Martin’s pictures show you how to do it at home, but tomorrow’s service will most likely be quiet, so I’ll try and get some pics of the process as we do it then.
UPDATE
I managed to get the pictures yesterday.
This is one of the vacuum machine we use.
The high rib of beef after being vac’d
During the cooking process in the thermostat-controlled water bath.
I didn’t manage to get one of the meat being seared, I was too busy myself. But I did manage to get a picture of it just before plating.
Doesn’t that meat just look gorgeous???….I hope you like the little photo series.
Well we’ve switched the squab in the main course out with high rib of beef. Definitely one of my favourite cuts if it is well hung. More texture than fillet, but so much more taste!
Before you read on here is something that I found at the bbc website that helps explain why red meat cooked at low temperatures for a long time is more tender than high temperature roasting.
The different proteins in meat are affected by heat at quite low temperatures, far below the temperature of a normal roasting oven. The myosin molecules start to shrink and squeeze out fluid from the muscle cells at about 55C while the collagen molecules start to change when the meat is slightly hotter, at 60-65C.
Although the shrinking of the fibres tends to make the meat more firm and chewy, the collagen reacts in a different way. It starts to break down to form gelatin. This is what happens when meat is cooked for a long time at a low temperature. The tough collagen molecules which hold the muscle fibres together slowly disintegrate and the gelatin dissolves into any liquid added.
Anyway, it’s been a long day so I’ll make it short. It is cooked sous-vide in a temperature controlled water bath at 55°C for 2 hours and then seared off on the griddle. Gorgeous medium rare. If you want it medium just give it half an hour longer at 60°C. An absolutely beautiful piece of meat. I’ll try and get a decent pic of it tomorrow…….till then.
goodnight
Dr. Peter Barham is a Reader of Physics at Bristol University. He has appeared on the Discovery chanel show Kitchen Chemistry and has worked together with Heston Blumenthal and guess what…he is coming to give a talk to us on February 12th at Madeleines.
I can’t wait and am really looking forward to it but until then, there are these videos from Videos from the MG seminar in Belgium in November of last year. Not as good as the real thing, but very generously have been made freely available. Found out about this from Martin’s blog at Khymos. Cheers.
Will be posting a post-lecture report after the 12th, so do check back.
I just thought I’d say a little something about our suppliers of dairy products, Grambogård. No, I’m not being paid to do this but…. I was drinking a glass of their full-fat milk (sødmælk) the other day and it reminded me what a great product it is.
Grambogård is a small dairy farm and butchers in the town of Tommerup on Fyn, DK. All of their products are extremely high quality. They base this understanding of quality on a tradition of craftsmanship and a closeness to their resources…..oh, yeah their low-fat chocolate milk (skummet kakaomælk) is awesome.
I knew that Bo, had been baking things with hay for quite a while. So, I wasn’t really surprised to see him working with it for this performance, but I was a little bit surprised at what he did to it…
…he burnt it. After “the burning of the hay” it is used as a base to cook whole celeriac on in the oven. The wicked thing is that you can actually taste the burnt hay and it really combines well with the celery flavour.
At Madeleines at the moment the show is called “The Seven Senses”. The first “Sense” is “crisp” and involves everything in front of you that eat or use to eat being crisp. I was making these today and thought it might be a good topic for molecules.
What you are seeing is pork crackling with nougatine and mustard powder. The crackling is sliced thinly, salted and baked in the oven for 25 mins @ 150°C. The nougatine is isomalt, glucose and fondant powderthat have been boiled together, cooled, pulverised and baked…. and well mustard powder is mustard powder
Nothing really wild just a little bit of fun.
Hi and welcome, as this is the first post on my new blog, I thought that I’d open with a classic.
Hervé This‘ chocolate chantilly. Essentially it is a chocolate mousse made purely with chocolate and water. The theory is that in the right ratio, the fat in the chocolate will emulsify with the water. Chocolate mousse made with just water and chocolate wicked huh….
Here’s how you do it:
For 500g
230ml H2O
270g best quality bitter chocolate.
That’s it! Ok, there is one drawback you have to be very precise with your measuring because it is all in the ratio of chocolate to water.
Setup an ice-bath (one larger bowl half-full with ice and a smaller one that will fit in the larger on & rest on the ice). Break the chocolate in small pieces and melt together with the water in a small saucepan. Let the mixture boil briefly and once the chocolate is completely melted pour it into the smaller, empty bowl. Whisk the mixture over the ice and within a couple of minutes, it should go like chocolate whipped cream.
Make sure to stop whisking just before you think it’s ready as it will thicken a little after. If you do go too far, you can always re-melt the mixture and start again. Beauty!
If it doesn’t whisk up, there are two possibilities. One, you have too much water. Solution: add a little chocolate Two, your whisk doesn’t have enough wires. Solution: Buy a decent balloon whisk.
Source: Heston Blumenthal (2002); Family Food
There was a reason why I started this post and that was because I wanted to tell you that you can actually replace the water with just about any fluid (within reason :)). We have made it work with red & white wine, beer, ginger ale……So you can make a savoury chocolate mousse. Hence chocolate salty balls.
We ended up making it with a light lager and combining it with smoked eel and glasswort. Sounds hellish, tastes heavenly
