The Perfect Egg - Sous Vide Eggs!

Picture-perfect of a sous-vide egg - 45 minutes at precisely 64.5 degrees Celsius. In this state, the egg white denatures and unfolds to form a custardy-like texture, while the yolk forms a tender gel. Photo credit to my friend Jude who recently succumbed to sous vide.

Amazing how clean the shells are when I broke the SV egg.

I did wonder, why bother to spend 45 minutes on something that's gobbled up in 45 seconds. But I found SV addictive and in fact can't wait to get my hands on another batch. There are hardcore SV food bloggers who SV one whole batch of eggs for the week and simply warm them up every morning for breakfast.

See how you can do this at home without a SV machine.

Fine Dining At Home 3/3 - Sage-scented Rhugs Estate Pork Tenderloin

Home plating - much room for improvement!
But I daresay my sous-vide pork tasted better than the one I ate at the event.

And here's the third recipe - Sage-scented Rhugs Estate Pork Tenderloin

Ingredients for prune compote
150g fresh pitted prunes
100 ml whiskey
100 ml water

Ingredients for Scotch eggs
4 quail eggs
1 large egg
20g flour
100g minced pork
20g bread crumbs
1 shallot
1 garlic clove

Ingredients for celeriac puree
1 Celeriac (can be replaced by any hard and root vegetables)
150 ml chicken stock
20g butter

Ingredients for pork tenderloin
100g pork fat net (I skipped this)
1/2 bunch fresh sage
2 rhugs estate pork tenderloin, whole

Ingredients for sauce
1 shallot
1 garlic clove
150g mixed wild mushrooms chopped
250ml whiskey
200ml chicken stock
100ml veal stock (I replaced with beef stock)
100ml double cream

Method for prune compote
1. Roughly chop the prunes.
2. Add into a vacuum pack bag along with whiskey and water.
3. Seal the bag and place in a water bath for 45 min at 65C.

(Note to self: skip step 1 to get whole prunes which look better when plated)

Method for Scotch eggs
(This was super yummilicious and it's worth the effort and time!)
1. Boil the quail eggs in water for 3 minutes, then take out and leave to cool. (I did 2 minutes and still didn't get runny yolks that I wanted. Will try 1 min 20 secs next attempt, as advised by another chef)
2. Season the minced pork with salt and pepper and add any dried herbs and mix well.
3. Take 1 spoonful of the minced pork and place it flat on a board.
4. Peel the egg and put in the center of the minced pork then fold the pork all over the egg and place in the fridge.
5. After an hour, remove the eggs from the fridge and coat with bread crumbs. (Just realised I missed this step!)
6. Dip the wrapped quail in flour, then into a bowl of whisked egg, and finally the bread crumbs again.
7. Deep fry for 2 minutes and set aside.

Method for celeriac puree (I made carrot puree instead)
1. Peel the celeriac and chop up roughly.
2. In a saucepan, add a little butter and the celeriac.
3. Season with salt and stir for 2 minutes.
4. Add 150ml chicken stock and top up wtih water to just cover celeriac.
5. Slowly cook for 1 hour, then quickly cook out the rest of the liquid. (Chef tip: simmer to reduce liquid instead of throwing it away.)
6. Blitz in a bar blender until you have a smooth puree. (Chef tip: must be fully cooked to get smooth puree)

Method for pork tenderloin
1. Lay the pork fat net (stomach lining) flat, then place the sage leaves all over the fat and lay the pork on top.
2. Roll the pork twice in the fat.
3. Add a little oil to a frying pan to cook the pork
4. Season the pork and seal in the pan all over until golden brown.
5. Add a spoon of butter and baste the pork evenly for around 8 min until medium well, then remove from pan.
6. Remove excess fat from the pan but keep it to make the sauce.

As the pork I ate at the event was dry and tough, I decided to sous vide my tenderloin instead of using the above method. 56C for 3 hours, and I got amazingly moist medium pork. My friend who has not eaten pork in a decade, emptied her plate - what a testimony to sous vide.

You know, sous vide is so simple and makes your diners think you can cook like a professional chef. It's so easy I feel like I'm cheating!

Method for sauce
1. Chop the shallot and crush the garlic.
2. Saute them, along with the mushrooms, in the same pan you used for the pork.
3. Add the whiskey (to deglaze) and reduce to a syrup.
4. Now add the stocks and cream, and reduce until a nice glossy sauce is formed.

My sauce turned out too liquid although the taste was acceptable. Felt like there was no time for the reduction to occur when the meat was already being plated and getting cold. Will have to try this again.

Method for plating
1. Place the Scotch egg at the back of the plate.
2. Place dots of celeriac puree all round the edge of the plate.
3. Place 1 spoon of prune compote in the center of the plate.
4. Slice the pork and add the desired amount on top of the prunes.
5. Spoon over the sauce and ready to serve.

Additional chef tip: heat oil very very hot and deep fry small sage leaves for 10 seconds to get dried sage for crisp and maximum flavour, and use it as a garnish on the puree.

I would say the Scotch egg is a must-try - it tasted superb with a lovely Tonkatsu kind of crunch and gooey inside. Sage and pork are also a winning combo to note. Overall, another tedious recipe worthy of your time, effort and attention.

Click here to see
- The MasterChef class event where Chef Lee Bennett presented these 3 recipes
- First recipe: Chilled Tomato Gazpacho with olive oil sorbet and lime vodka jelly
- Second recipe: Pan-fried Scottish Salmon with basil pesto, citrus powder and olive oil dust

Fine Dining At Home 1/3 - Chilled Tomato Gazpacho

I told you about the DBS Indulge MasterChef Class I attended and the recipes I would share when I attempted them myself. Well, this is the colossal effort dinner - to an extra virgin chef, this feels like a 100-step and a 100-ingredient recipe. I'll share everything with you but it probably needs to break into a few posts!

Not for the faint-hearted.

Ready? Let's go.

Recipe 1 Chilled Tomato Gazpacho with Lime Vodka Jelly and Spanish Olive Oil Sorbet (serves 4)

Ingredients for gazpacho
2 red peppers
1 shallot
3 Tbsp tomato puree
3 garlic cloves
1 cucumber
1 kg over ripe tomatoes
1 stick lemongrass
1/2 bunch basil
Few sprigs coriander
1 litre tomato juice
Salt
Sherry vinegar
Worcestershire sauce
Tabasco sauce

Ingredients for olive oil sorbet
100 ml EVOO
30 ml natural yoghurt
200 ml stock syrup
2 lemons (zest and juice)

Ingredients for lime vodka jelly
200 ml plain vodka
200 ml water
4 limes
6 leaves of gelatin

Method for gazpacho
1. Sweat peppers and shallot until soft, then add puree and cook for a couple of minutes.
2. Peel and chop the garlic and cucumber, as well as chop the rest of the ingredients and mix together.
3. Add the pepper mix, season well with salt, sherry vinegar and Worcestershire sauce.
4. Marinade overnight.
5. Remove lemongrass before blitzing and pass through a large-hole strainer at least twice.
6. Adjust seasoning, spice and ensure it is well chilled.
7. Serve cold on cold plates (my own notes).

Use the lemongrass as a stirrer! But remember to remove when blitzing.

Method for olive oil sorbet
1. Pour the olive oil, yoghurt and stock syrup into a mould along with the zest and juice from the lemons.
2. Churn to make sorbet and serve immediately or freeze (my own notes as his didn't make sense to me)

Method for lime vodka jelly
1. Place vodka and water into a vacuum pack bag along with lime rind and slices of lime.
2. Seal and place into water bath at 50C for 40 minutes.
3. Take out and leave to infuse for as long as possible (make in advance and leave for future use).
4. Soak gelatin leaves inside ice cold water.
5. Heat up 1/10 of the liquid and whisk in the gelatin leaves until all have disintegrated.
6. Whisk that liquid back into the vodka and leave inside the fridge for at least 5 hours.
(Own notes: I didn't understand steps 5 & 6 and basically just did my own jelly after the water bath.)

My sous vide machine came in handy. 

The flavour of the gazpacho was amazing, and I've decided this is my go-to recipe for all tomato soup! Bennett expressed surprise that cold soup hasn't taken off in hot and humid Singapore. Well, I'm a convert now, but I think most locals still prefer their soup warm if not hot.

The sorbet and jelly, while keeping the soup temperature down, also lifted the game, otherwise it would be just another tomato soup. There is enough in the recipe to keep for future use. It differentiates your dish from home cooking, and it's worth all the effort.

Up Next, Recipe 2 - Pan-fried Scottish Salmon with Warm Salad of Beetroot. Look out for the basil pesto recipe which was a hit with my diners that night. Plus how to make citrus powder and olive dust!

Private Dining, from a kitchen perspective

A quick snap of the dining table through the soft draperies before the family arrived.

I had an opportunity to work beside a Le-Cordon Bleu-trained chef in a private dining event recently. He has dreams of opening his own restaurant and is in fact one step closer to that dream now, having inked a deal with a landlord this week.

Cooking for the rich in Singapore is quite an experience in itself. The kitchen in the villa is bigger than my house - not exaggerating! 3 empty giant fridges to store all your ingredients and food, 7 ovens, 3 large island tops to work on with endless storage space. Every 2-arms'-length drawer opened up to a world of branded utensils for different cuisines. A private dining paradise. Too bad I can't show you pics of the villa - I need to be discrete if I'm to make a living out of cooking, you know!

Here are some pictures to share from the experience.

Good food starts with good produce

Chocolate soil

Preparing the Chorizo for the Barramundi with
Cannelini beans

Cooking is in his blood.

Tiger-striped peaches

Chemist at work - Mint, Feta, Watermelon

Egg chaud-froid with Pomegranate Molasses

Hokkaido Scallop Cerviche

Lavendar Roasted Magret of Duck with Fennel Potato Puree
(sous-vided in my SV Supreme!)

White Sangria like no other

Spice Poached Pears with chestnut cream and Brandy espuma

Petit Fours - home-made marshmallow popsicles
and rich chocolate cookies

Pretty sophisticated menu for a family dinner, and I didn't understand most of them. But it was a wonderful experience, and I made some new friends in the kitchen, which is always great.

Next post: I'll show you the egg opener we used during this event.

Sous Vide Beef Cheeks - this one took me 72 hours.

Yes, you saw right, 72 hours. Three days to make one dish. My Sous Vide culinary adventure continues and I'm starting to wonder if I can somehow find a way to make a living out of this. No, I don't want to start a restaurant.

Ingredients? ONLY SALT AND PEPPER! HALLELUJAH!

So here's the venture in photos.

Ben's Food is the place to go for affordable cuts perfect for such experiments.

Vacuum-seal after trimming excess fats.

Pre-heat Sous Vide Supreme to 55 degrees C (130F) for medium-rare or 60C (140F) for medium. Results guaranteed with a sous-vide since over-cooking is impossible with a set temperature.

Plonk them into the SV for 72 hours. You can do it in one day at 80C, two days at 72C, etc... longer time, lower temperature...you get the drift.

 3 moons later, I was the proud owner of a kilogram of sous vide beef cheek. At this point, I can freeze them for months or put them in the chiller for a day or 2 until ready to serve.

When ready to serve, heat up a pan till it's very hot. Remove meat from pouch. Mine came with a bonus - see these red gelatins I've placed on top of the meat for you to see? Psst...the flavours are all in the gelatin - don't throw them away!

Generously season with salt and pepper (put more than you think) and sear both sides until it's mahogany brown. Mine took about 3 minutes. I saw all that beautiful jus left behind and made an impromptu decision to make a sauce with chicken stock. This step definitely added to the overall palate sensation.

 My fussy eater daughter who is always wary of my food and ever the reluctant food taster actually came back for a second round after the first round of force-feeding. It's moist and succulent - never dry with a sous vide. Medium-rare is guaranteed - how many things in this world can be guaranteed??

Sous Vide is 'da bomb!

And heere's what I made out of the second batch - Beef Cheek Salad on a Lemongrass Skewer. Thai food with French cooking technique. Kids loved it and said, Thanks, mom, for the duck!

Heston Blumenthal's 36-hour Sous Vide Pork Belly

"It's going to revolutionise home cooking in ways that the microwave didn't even dream of doing."

Heston Blumenthal on Sous Vide cooking

So, this post kicks off my sous-vide (SV) recipe collection, starting with Heston Blumenthal's 36-hour sous vide pork belly. 

Pork Belly - A very cheap cut to be experimenting with SV.

Temperature-controlled

Timing set

I set the temperature and timing on Friday night 9pm and woke up on Sunday morning 9am to become the proud owner of 2 slabs of Sous Vide Pork Belly.

Here's what I did:

Friday morning: Rubbed salt all over the meat and left in the fridge
Friday evening: Vacuum seal meat with marinade of apple cider vinegar, salt, sugar, mirin. Place in SV for the next 36 hours
Sunday morning: Remove meat from SV, kept in fridge under heavy weight overnight
Monday evening: Remove from fridge, pan sear few minutes to get crispy skin and serve for dinner.

Verdict:
1. You don't need patience even if it's 36 hours. Just plonk your meat in and forget all about it.
2. SV is interesting as you can cook your food in a vacuum and chill or freeze it until the day of your party, and just finish off with a 5-minute pan-sear to serve. I've been told many fine dining restaurants do that.
3. The SV machine is low maintenance - a tub of water to fill, then throw and just wipe dry to clean.
4. No real culinary skills needed. Anyone who can set the temperature and timing can SV.

Check my other SV recipes and more pictures:
- Duck Breast, featured on Asian Food Channel Official FB Page
- Beef Cheeks, featured on AFC
- Pork Tenderloin, recipe by Chef Lee Bennett who trained under Gordon Ramsay