Last month, I invited a group of friends to my house for dinner. There was no real occassion for it except that I had a rare weekend off and I wanted to cook a proper meal in my kitchen. Also, my refrigerator was bursting with beautiful citrus that needed to be celebrated.
I planned the meal with the same approach that I would take for a client: taking into account food preferences, what was fresh and available, limitations of time, space, and equipment. The major difference with this meal was that I had the luxury of time to document it by recording recipes and photographing the preparations and presentations.
I thought that I would share the meal with you here in a series of posts, but they grew unwieldy and dragged on forever. Lucky for us, there are more space efficient and visually appealing options for sharing documents. Enjoy.
Playing with Fire and Water 
Holy s#it! That’s what you do on a free weekend? How do I get to be your friend???!!!
Absolutely amazing presentation, I hope to try a couple of these preparations some day.
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Absolutely stunning! Thank you so much for posting! You are a true inspiration to me and my cooking. 🙂
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I love this, please do more of these!
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you need to be off more often, simply beautiful.
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Amazing presentation! If the meal was half as good as it’s presented it’s awesome.
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Amazing! Have you been to Eleven Madison Park? The way you did this post reminds me strongly of the EMP cookbook.
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Beautiful, creative and great in book-form! Neat presentation.
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Absolutely beautiful. The presentation is to the point as well. Really great!
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Wow, that looks amazing!
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Great booklet. Quite impressive. Thank You for sharing!
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Love it! Wish I could have been there just to see you prepare these dishes! Cheers!
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That looks like an amazing dinner. Thanks for posting it.
I was inspired to make the Chicken Liver Parfait over the weekend. The result was delicious (though I fear I didn’t attempt to match your presentation).
I’m new to sous vide cooking and am puzzled by some things about this recipe. It would be great if you could explain why you did it that way.
The liver mixture is cooked twice, once at 122F for 20 minutes and a second time at 150F for 40 minutes. When I poured my mixture into the bag it was about 35mm thick. Based on the Baldwin tables it should take two hours for the bag to reach 122 degrees, so 20 minutes is quite short. Convection should reduce this time significantly, and the liquids are at room temperature rather than cold, but it’s not clear to me that the mixture actually reaches 122F. Even if it did what does this accomplish? What would happen if the liver were pureed with the egg without this step?
The second cooking period is 40 minutes long, but again the Baldwin tables suggest that this is not long enough. At least starting from refrigerator temperature it is supposed to take 90 minutes to pasteurize and 120 minutes to reach 150F. Now these times will certainly be reduced somewhat by convection and also because the initial temperature might be as high as 122. But it seems likely that I wouldn’t actually reach 150F. (I neglected to measure the temperature of my Parfait when I removed it from the bath, because I didn’t think this all through until I was pondering the recipe after the fact.) Is the intent that the liver mixture does reach 150F?
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Arian, I’m so glad you made this recipe!
The first heating at 122F is not intended to cook the mixture, but to bring the ingredients to the same temperature so that they can be properly emulsified.
The actual cooking at 150F for 40 minutes should indeed bring the parfait to the target temperature of 150F. Depending on the temperature of the parfait when it goes into the water bath, it could take less time, but even at room temperature, 40 minutes is still sufficient.
Heston Blumenthal’s recipe (as it appeared in The Guardian) calls for the parfait to be baked in the oven at 212F until it reaches 147F, but since the water bath was already heated, I thought it more efficient to cook it sous vide.
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Chef, this is simply stupendous.
I’m amazed that apart from having done this over the course of *one* free weekend, you follow up by documenting it over FIFTY-SEVEN pages so that the rest of us can follow along.
I’ve been hesitating to set up a nukadoko but as I’m already playing around with levain it’s not a stretch to set up another lactobacillus environment. Besides, I can say that I’m doing it to eat more vegetables.
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Thanks for answer my questions. I found Blumenthal’s recipe online and it was interesting to compare them. I think the sous vide cooking approach certainly seems better here–simpler as well as more efficient.
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That citrus blog is stunning matey….STUNNING.
As for the Meat Fruit ha ha…..i know in my heart the torment that you went through my dear.
http://cumbriafoodie.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/meat-fruit-making-a-heston-favourite-at-home/
Its bloody torture over six days ha ha.
Im well impressed with your efforts.
Cheers
Alan ( cumbriafoodie )
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