Soups & Sous-Vide

In the morning each kitchen was assigned a soup plate to make and plate for the class before lunch. Soups are really basic, usually just an infusion. So although it wasn't complicated I was excited to try something I hadn't yet!

Tropical Fruit Salad with Pineapple-Cilantro Syrup, Lime Sorbet, and Pineapple Chip

Summer Fruit Salad with Strawberry broth and Orange-Champagne Granita

Autumn Fruit Soup with Almond Custard Cubes and Quince Sorbet

Exotic Spiced Fruit Soup with Ginger-Lemongrass Ice Cream and Sesame seed Wafer
This is the one my kitchen worked on. Naturally I volunteered to make the ice-cream. As I was making the infusion I felt like the ratio of ginger to lemongrass wasn't great. The lemongrass was there, but the ginger was lost (not OK). I personally feel that in dessert applications (and most any) that if you add ginger, it should be obvious, it has such an incredible spicy flavor, why wouldn't you want to showcase it? Then again, I absolutely LOVE ginger. So while it was making I juiced some ginger and after the creme anglais cooled, added it until I was satisfied. It ended being about 4x the original amount. I was worried my fellow classmates would find it too spicy, though it was nicely mellowed by the lemongrass. I was wrong, everyone loved it! I got rave reviews, and the entire hotel pan full disappeared as we tasted. I was pretty proud. It's one thing to replicate a recipe successfully, but I always aim to make it as good as I possibly can. I liked it so much, I'm thinking of using it (or its sorbet equivalent) in my menu project.

The second half of the day was a sous-vide demo! Sous-vide is essentially "under vacuum." Although after food is vacuum sealed, it is often slow cooked in an immersion circulator the processes are not the same thing. Generally sous-vide and low temperature cooking are used together to attain better texture for meats. Basically, when you cook steak you want to break down collagen fibers, but not muscle fibers. In order to attain proper temperature, the outside is often over-cooked and many meats will become tough and dry. Sous-vide allows to reach to break down collagen (breakdown depends on time and temperature) while leaving muscle fibers (breakdown only related to temperature), by keeping it at a low temperature for a long time. Although, searing the meat is also often used after to get that desired brown crust. But it has many more applications, from infusions to flash pickling and creating multi-layered tarinnes. Though it was a brief demo, I'm glad we got an introduction!