Friday, July 25, 2014

Simple Sous Vide Chicken Legs

Recently, I'm learning Sous Vide cooking techniques at home. All thanks to Alan for encouraging me and connect me to this awesome Polyscience product. Also, I chance up to have a great lunch at Heston Blumenthal's restaurant on my recent trip to London. I witnessed how they cook my lunch using sous vide techniques!

After I came back from my 3 weeks Europe trip, I tied up my hair, put on my apron, take a deep breath and start exploring my sous vide machine, starting with the most simple recipe. Simple Sous Vide chicken legs, and then I roasted the chicken legs into perfection before serving.


For those who doesn't know what sous vide is - Sous vide (literally under vacuum in French) is one of the most popular modernist cooking techniques. If you've ever heard or watched famous chefs like Thomas Keller and Heston Blumenthal from hit television shows, they are the people who usually seen promoting sous vide cooking on TV.

Sous vide is very different from traditional cooking method. It needs alot of reading and understanding, as conceptually, it can be very difficult. From the various types of sous vide equipment, questions about vacuum sealing, the food science on the safety of sous vide can be quite confusing at the beginning. It takes me quite sometimes to explore and understand sous vide before I finally decided to invest on the equipment a year later. It's expensive! Of course I have to understand a few basics sous vide cooking before I invest on one.

I won't write too much to introduce on sous vide here, because all infos about sous vide is easily available on google. Once you understand a few basics, sous vide cooking is one of the easiest and most foolproof ways to cook. It saves me alot of time preparing my weekday dinner ahead!


My Sous Vide Professional Series machine, clamped on a big and tall stock pot, vacuum sealer made in Italy, vacuum bags, and some basic ingredients.


How simple? I just rubbed the chicken legs with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Put the legs into the vacuum bags, add a few dashes of olive oil, throw in a clove of garlic and some thymes. Seal it.

Ingredients
  • 4 Fresh Chicken Legs
  • 4 Cloves Garlic
  • 4 strands of Thymes
  • 1 tsp Kosher Salt
  • 1 tsp Freshly ground black pepper
  • Olive Oil 
Method
  1. Pat dry chicken legs with kitchen towels. Rub chicken legs with salt and pepper. 
  2. Put the legs into the vacuum bags, add a few dashes of olive oil, throw in a clove of garlic and thymes.
  3. Vacuum seal the bag. Sous vide for 4 hours at 70C. 
  4. To serve : Pre-heat oven at 270C, fan ON.
  5. Gently remove the chicken leg from the vacuum bag. Put the chicken leg into the oven for 10mins.
  6. Remove from oven and serve immediately. Incase if you wants better appearance, you can either leave the chicken leg into the oven for another 3 to 5mins or blowtorch it as a finishing. 
Here, they are all nicely vacuum sealed and ready to go into the water-bath.


Knowing that I need to crisp the chicken leg skin under a very hot oven before serving and thus the meat will be cooked slightly more from sous vide treatment, I sous vide the chicken leg at temperature 70C, which is slightly lower than the desired core temperature (74C).

The actual process of cooking sous vide is simple. You just need to determine the temperature you'd like to cook your food. Press the button, sous vide machine will heat up the water up to that temperature you want. Place the bag of sealed food in the water-bath until it is done.


When they came out of the sous vide waterbath, there are two options :

1st Options (To eat immediately)
  1. Slightly pat dry the chicken leg with paper towels. Remove garlic and thymes. 
  2. Put the chicken legs into a very hot oven and roast for 10mins or upto 15mins. Or as I mentioned above, blowtorch up to it's perfection. 
2nd Option (To Keep)
  1. Prepare a large bowl of ice-cubed water. Remove the vacuum sealed chicken legs from the water bath. Shock in cold by putting the bags into the ice water until the chicken legs are completely cooled. 
  2. Place the chicken legs bags into the freezers and freeze away. 
  3. To serve - Put the frozen bags of chicken legs into the sous vide machine with the same setting (70C) and let it sous vide for about 30mins (or more) while you pre-heat your oven.
  4. Repeat 1st Options steps.
Blow-torching your food is another awesome cooking method. If you are trying to get your guys to help out more in the kitchen? Buy a blowtorch. No kidding. I know blowtorch isn't really necessary, but it does make the process easier (and way more fun for the guys). It browned the meat very well :)


The thing about sous vide is that the temperature should ideally be the exact temperature you want the food to be when it is done. The result is a piece of meat that has retained the maximum amount of its juices, while still being done. It's an astonishing technique, but all my rambling has done miraculously little to convince anyone. Not many friends around me is into sous vide actually. Even my mother-in-law gave me the weird look when she first saw what I'm doing. I can understand that. Sous vide is not common in Asia tho.

Prepare some salad to go along. I did mine simple. Some Oak Leaves Salad, dressed with Balsamico di Modena. No fuss!


The appearance of the meat on the photo doesn't speak how good it is. Instead of stringy tough (I mean overcooked), the knife can effortlessly cut through the meat. The chicken leg is cooked juuuuust nice! This is a simple recipe that requires very minimum ingredients. But if you'd tried this, it's enough to make anyone convert.


Max ate the chicken leg happily. My only questions was whether was it the cook (me) or the machine? When I tasted the chicken meat, obviously the machine had a hand in what happened.

To say the food that came out of the machine tasted good, is something of an understatement.

I'm still a noob in sous vide cooking. More to explore, more to learn. Do share with me if you are into sous vide. I'm looking forward to make improvement.

Saturday, July 19, 2014

Totally Chocolate Chocolate Chips Cookies

A whopper of a deep dark chocolate cookie packed with chock full of chocolate chips. There's no reason to resist eating this cookies. Absolutely delicious, and by far the best cookie recipe I've ever used! There's nothing short of SENSATIONAL!!!

Incase you don't know.... Now this, my friends, is what I called chocolate cookies :)


The glass of milk is not just a prop. It is a necessity for this. A bite of chocolate chips cookies and a sip of milk? I'm totally on board. It's just heavenly! These are the chocolatiest cookies I'd ever come across.


I adapted this recipe from Nigella Lawson, but tweaked abit. It makes 12 big cookies or make it 14 if you want your cookies to be slightly smaller. I urge you to make full recipe. Because this is so good, I guarantee you, it won't keep long. But if you are only feeding 2 to 3, you can bake half the dough and freeze the other half. Just form the cookies dough into balls, freeze the cookies balls on a little tray. Once they're hard, just bung them in a freezer bag, seal, and stash it back in the freezer. You could bake them unthawed at a later date.

Using good chocolate is important. The logic is simple. If you use good chocolate, you will get good quality chocolate cookies. This is what I call an investment. And it's worth it. I used Hershey's brand chocolate chips and chocolate powder for this.

Recipe
  • 125g Dark Chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids)
  • 150g Plain Flour
  • 30g Cocoa Powder (Sieved)
  • ½ tsp Salt
  • ½ tsp Bicarbonate Soda
  • 1 tsp Baking Powder
  • 125g Soft Unsalted Butter
  • 75g Soft Light Brown Sugar
  • 50g White Fine Sugar
  • 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
  • 1 Large Egg (cold from the fridge)
  • 320g Dark Choocolate Chips (semi sweet is preferred)
Method 
  1. Preheat the oven to 170°C, fan ON. 
  2. Melt the 125g dark chocolate in a heatproof dish over a pan of simmering water. Set aside to cool. 
  3. Put the flour, cocoa, bicarbonate soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. 
  4. Cream the butter, fine sugar and brown sugar in another bowl. Add the melted chocolate and mix together. 
  5. Beat in the vanilla extract and cold egg, and then mix in the dry ingredients. Finally, stir in the chocolate chips, mix well. 
  6. Divide the cookies dough into two portion. Wrap them with cling wrap, and shape them. (Refer pics below)
  7. Put the shaped cookies dough into the fridge and refrigerate it for 20 mins.
  8. Cut the dough into equal piece, remove the cling wrap layer and shape the cookie dough. (Refer pics below) Place shaped cookie dough on a lined baking sheet about 6cm apart. Do not flatten them. 
  9. Cook the cookie dough for 18 to 19 minutes, testing with a cake tester to make sure it comes out semi-clean and not wet with cake batter. If you pierce a chocolate chip, try again. 
  10. Leave to cool slightly on the baking sheet for 4 to 5 mins, then, transfer them to a cooling rack to harden as they cool.  
The secret of this recipe is simplicity and good quality ingredients. Do bear in mind.


Step 5 - Mix wet and dry ingredients together, and stir in the chocolate chips. Look at the sinful mess!


Step 6 -  Divide the cookies dough into two portion. Wrap them with cling wrap, and shape them.


Step 8 - Cut the dough into equal piece, remove the cling wrap layer and shape the cookie dough. No mess!


Place shaped cookie dough on a lined baking sheet about 6cm apart. Do not flatten them.


You cannot go wrong with this recipe. They are so easy and absolutely delicious! Max requested me to bake 30 pcs for him to bring to work next time.


Do I have to say more? It look and taste nothing short of perfection. This is definitely a MUST TRY recipe.

Update : Sorry that I forgot to mention, this is a crispy cookies :)