Under pressure: more fun with sous-vide

I buckled under pressure a few days ago and replaced my off-brand food sealer with a real honest-to-goodness FoodSaver. The Bay had the v2860 model for $249.95, which I know was more than I could have found a similar spec unit for on eBay or from Amazon, but there's something to be said for instant gratification.

On getting the aluminum and black plastic monster home I realized just what I'd been missing out on: this puppy sucks. But in a good way, of course. I will never doubt late night infomericals again.

So, on to business. What to cook? Steak seemed like a good next target and the king of tenderness is certainly fillet mignon. Off to St. Lawrence Market I went. A bit of a pet peeve of mine is fillet mignon wrapped in bacon, but I found some "Texas style" fillet mignon that was sans-bacon.

Mmmm....meat. Good colour, nice marbling.

All wrapped up and nowhere to go. (Other than into the DIY sous-vide cooker in my kitchen, that is). There's a little bit of Montreal steak spice in the bag as fillet mignon isn't always the most flavourful cut.

Two and a half, yes 2.5, hours later the meat was removed from the homebrew sous-vide machine. They were cooked at 59c so that a hard searing the meat would rise the internal temperature not much beyond rare (60c). Note: the browning is not actually due to the Maillard reaction as that would require a temperature ~100c higher and a dry environment, but rather the lack of oxygen.

After being well seared. (I forgot to take a picture before searing, but look back at my sous-vide duck post and you'll get the idea: not very appetizing!).

Final product as plated. Note the consistently rare colour and the strong searing delimitation. I had a bit of an accident plating the balsamic reduction, hence the big puddle. But I was always told "waste not, want not".

My girlfriend doesn't like her meat quite as rare, so this was seared quite a bit longer. Starting to look more like a pan friend steak around the edges. A bit heavy-handed with the balsamic this time around, too ;)

Oh, for dessert I had picked up some dragon fruit in Chinatown earlier in the day. Here's how to make a very light, refreshing dessert with it.

Dragon Fruit "Two Ways"

1 large, "fancy quality" dragon fruit
50mL of ice wine
1g of guar gum
1g of xanthan gum
2.5g of freeze dried raspberry powder with more for decoration
mint for garnish

Using a large chef's knife or cleaver, half dragon fruit carefully inline with the stem. Using a tablespoon, carefully scoop out both halves of flesh in one piece. Clean and reserve the dragon fruit "husks" to use a serving bowls later. Place one half of the dragon fruit in a small mixing bowl and reserve the other half in the fridge.

Using a fork, gently break up the dragon fruit in the bowl until watery in consistency. Be careful not to grind up the seeds as they add to the mouthfeel of this dish. Add the 50mL of ice wine and work into the mixture. Add the 2.5g of freeze dried raspberry powder and work into the mixture. Finally, gradually work in first the xanthan and then the guar gum. Using a cappuccino whisk can help to break down any lumps that form without damaging the seeds. Set aside in fridge until ready to serve.

With the remaining dragon fruit flesh, cut across the fruit to create "ribs" and set aside in the fridge until ready to serve.

To serve, loosely place the ribs in the fruit husk and spoon the dragon fruit jelly mixture around them in sufficient quantity that they stand by themselves. Garnish with a sprig of mint and sprinkle more freeze dried raspberry powder onto the plate for decoration.

Yield: two servings.

Lots of people have been writing to ask me how to make their own sous-vide machine, or even if I can build one to sell them. There will be a post in the next few days on how you can both build your own and acquire a pre-built kit from yours truly.

Comments

[tadej]

How did you made homebrew sous vide machin. I have a vacum machin but the problem is maintaing a temparature.