The latest Cooking Techniques
EAT May June

Osso bucco in a bag, seabass in a can? Welcome to the new, high-tech world of fine dining.
by Jane Mundy

Imagine the chef at your favourite upscale restaurant dipping plastic baggies of food into boiling water moments before your $28 lamb sirloin or salmon fillet entrée enters the dining room. Or having your terrine of foie gras brought from the walk-in fridge in its individual plastic bag, having been portioned and sealed days earlier. Feel a wee bit cheated?

Would you feel better if you knew this was a bona fide cooking “technique” with an actual French name? You may well smirk and say there’s nothing new about boil-in-a-bag cooking with its attendant images of army grub, camping rations and Marks & Spencer’s food to go. But obviously something more is going on when our best chefs are embracing the technique of “sous vide” which literally means “under vacuum.”
The method came on the scene in the 1970s when former chef Georges Pralus invented it for his neighbour Pierre Troisgros of his three-star restaurant Troisgros in Roanne. He originally intended to find a cooking method that would reduce the loss of fat when foie gras is sautéed. Mission accomplished and more: they discovered there was less waste, therefore more profit. The method is widely used throughout Europe in supermarkets, restaurants and institutions, but North America never caught the wave. Until now. By preparing ahead of time, sous vide can streamline catering operations, take the pressure off restaurateurs when quick service is needed and even improve purchasing.

Sous vide involves slow cooking in a vacuum-sealed pouch that’s placed in a water bath with a temperature of about 52ºC (126ºF), followed by a quick chilling if the product is not served right away. This technique concentrates the flavours—there is no escape. Unlike other methods such as braising and roasting that can dry out ingredients, or steaming and boiling, which can decrease flavour and nutritional content, sous vide concentrates flavours because there is no additional liquid added. Vegetables and fruits retain their colour while texture gently changes from raw to barely cooked, depending upon your taste.
Chef David Hawksworth at Vancouver’s West (and Vancouver Magazine's Chef of the Year) places a piece of halibut on a buttered, tin-foiled piece of cardboard before bagging and dating it. For service, he will place it into a water bath for about 15 minutes. His lamb sirloin—with fresh thyme and duck fat—gets the same treatment but is then chilled in an ice bath and, for service, quickly roasted in a hot oven for about five minutes for a crisp, caramelized outside. The result is nothing short of sublime: a thin outer crust and the inside cooked to a perfect medium-rare. Hawksworth explains that uniformity and consistency are other bonuses when cooking sous vide. Foie gras gets triple treatment: seared, sous vide and a quick roast to finish. As for vegetables, “you get a fresher flavour” says Hawksworth, “an extra 30 percent bonus in flavour and texture.” One taste of his carrot puree is proof; it has an amazing buttery texture with a clean flavour, almost essence of carrot. And this cooking technique is practical for line cooking. It allows you to do other things when the halibut is gently cooking because “you aren’t continually basting or nursing,” says Hawksworth.

[[Gary: I have a call in to Chris Mills to clear up Daniel comment - would you rather just take this paragraph out?

Chef Chris Mills of Joey’s Global Grill reports that his restaurant has an Alto-Shaam—a low-temperature, moist cook oven that gives a digital read-out." We use it for many reasons, such as long-cooked beef roast for shaved beef sandwiches" says Mills, and "today we are doing a brined, bone-in-centre cut pork chop and eight-hour cheesecake.”

At the New York restaurant Daniel, says Mills, veal shank is prepared using a 32-hour cooking time at 64º Celsius. Do not try this at home unless you have the precision of a scientific experiment or a Cryovac machine which vacuum packs and seals its own plastic bags and are approved in the US for cooking. Rumour has it that chef Daniel Boulud also does short ribs sous vide for 36 hours, while chef Alain Ducasse has cooked pigeon sous vide for days. At Ducasse’s New York restaurant Mix, all the sous vide cooking is done with steam and not in a water bath.

Cryovac at Cioppino’s
Both West and Cioppino’s have invested thousands of dollars in a state-of-the-art Cryovac machine that vacuum-packs and seals its own plastic bags. The method isn’t used only for sous vide. At Cioppino’s, chef and owner Pino Posteraro has most of his menu individually bagged and sealed. He uses it to reheat braised dishes such as osso bucco as well as cooking sous vide. He believes that every restaurant should have a Cryovac: it prevents oxidation, cross-contamination, bacteria and bad odours. And health inspectors approve. Posteraro “embraced the sous vide philosophy” in 1992 when he met chef Patrick Jones, who was giving classes at the Hyatt in Singapore for chefs throughout Asia. Sous vide is widely used in hotels, and Posteraro thought “why not apply the sous vide principle to fine dining, especially when qualified personnel is so hard to find …” He also discovered that “sous vide gives you a head start … I had 100 people at a function last week,” says Posteraro, “and they all had beef tenderloin medium rare. With 63ºC water temperature, the heart of the meat will be 58ºC and six ounces of tenderloin will take 12-18 minutes, just add a little veal stock to the bag.” What’s more, his terrine of foie gras cooked sous vide has 5 percent waste versus 40 percent shrinkage (with loss of fat) when oven cooked.
There’s more high-tech magic in the dessert menu. Thea Willgress, pastry chef at Cioppino’s, uses an induction machine to heat and cook sauces. It has a magnetic field that interacts with metal—when you put your hand on the element you feel a little warmth, but a metal pot filled with water will boil in seconds. “You gotta be high tech,” says Posteraro, who believes that induction is “the future.” This means that Willgress doesn’t have to go over to the hot side to make sauces. Posteraro believes this is a more efficient and cleaner way to cook. Ventilation isn’t needed because there isn’t any carbon dioxide.

Bis Moreno’s Italian Susci ™
At Bis Moreno, Moreno Miotto has adopted an innovative cooking technique from his mentor, chef Moreno Cedroni. The Italians are hesitant to eat raw fish, so Cedroni invented what he called Susci™ (yes, he trademarked it), a technique to cook the fish without heat, using acid such as vinegar or lemon. Chef Cedroni was the first Italian chef to introduce sushi to Italians, using Japanese techniques and working with familiar Italian ingredients in a new way. Chef Moreno has his own interpretation in an amazing raw and cooked scampi dish. Scampi Susci ™ is marinated for about 10 minutes in a little white balsamic vinegar (according to chef Moreno, dark balsamic is the ketchup of Italy), olive oil, orange (less acid than lemon) and salt. It is then served with a warm tomato concasse alongside grilled scampi with cold tomato concasse. Wondrous.
If you’re just getting used to the idea of food in plastic baggies, be warned that chef Moreno predicts the next big trend will be fish in a can. On a recent trip to Italy, Moreno’s fish course was presented simply: a can on a white plate. The waiter peeled the lid back to release aromas of sea bass, onions and herbs. The fish is steamed in the can and just before service, it is brought up to temperature.
With sous vide, of course, one isn’t reminded of the cooking technique by being presented with the plastic bag on one’s plate. As for a can on a plate, I can’t quite picture the presentation, but the first plate of nouvelle cuisine or the first whiff of foam must have raised a few eyebrows. For chefs who can afford the equipment, space and time, sous vide will most likely be here to stay and for those of us who have sampled dishes prepared sous vide, who have marveled at the intense flavours and textures, encouraged and requested at our favourite restaurants.

Sidebar

Do Try This at Home
The sous vide method is still fairly new in this country, which explains the wide range of cooking times and temperatures. But it’s fun to experiment. Salmon is the perfect candidate to cook sous vide, resulting in a natural salmon taste, retaining moisture and gently enhancing any flavours from ingredients you add to the bag.

Chef Hawksworth jury-rigs a thermometer with Styrofoam and floats it in a wide and deep pot to maintain a constant temperature—don’t hang it off the side of the pan.

And for those of us who do not own a $5,000 Cryovac machine, Ziploc freezer bags work well. I double-bag the Ziplocs, although it can be tricky to get all the air out. Use a heavy dish to keep the bag submerged—you want the packages exposed to an even and constant heat. Or try plastic wrap, as in the recipe below.

Adapted from Chef David Hawksworth’s Fish Sous Vide

You will need the following:
Water bath or a pot of water that will maintain a constant temperature of 52ºC
Piece of fish such as salmon, halibut or ling cod in portion form, about 150 grams
Thermometer
Sprig of thyme
Zest of fresh lemon - small amount
Timer
One roll of Glad “Press n Seal” with Griptex

Method:
Roll out about 30 cm of the plastic wrap. Place fish in the middle of the wrap. Lay one piece of thyme on top and zest of lemon.
Fold the wrap over the fish to create an airtight package, careful to remove all the air. Boil water and turn heat off for 15 minutes. When the temperature reads 52ºC, place the sealed package in water for about 12-15 minutes. Snip and serve!
You can play around with the time and temperature depending on how you like the texture of your fish.

Carrot Puree
Place a few peeled carrots in a Ziploc freezer bag along with a few tablespoons carrot juice, a little olive oil and, depending upon the carrots, a pinch of sugar and salt. Fold and remove all the air and double-bag. Place in a 52ºC water bath for about 15 minutes (check for doneness). Puree.

Cioppino’s, 1133 Hamilton St., 604-688-7466
West, 2881 Granville St., 604-738-8938
Bis Moreno, 1355 Hornby St., 604-669-2812
Joey’s Global Grill, 604-376-2524