My little brother was in town for the weekend. I took him to the Farmer's Market and offered to cook him whatever he wanted. He decided that goat would be pretty cool, and he would like sweet potato with it, so here's what we had.

• Rack of goat, seared, then sous vide 1 hour @ 140F, then finished with blow torch. Note that this was not as cooked as I'd like (and I like it rare). I had to put it in the oven for a while to warm up. Next time I'll try 145F, but I'm afraid I might even need it to be higher. Texture and appearance is just vastly different when cooking sous vide. If I cooked this traditionally, I'd cook it to an internal temp of about 130F. Sous vide, however, is different.
• Sweet potato, cut into rounds and cooked sous vide with butter and a bit of pomegranate molasses, cooked 45 minutes @ 185F (85C).
• Arugula
• Goat reduction, from deglazing pan used for searing with white wine, then reducing with some chicken stock and eventually adding in goat juices from sous vide bag. Veal stock would probably be better than chicken, but chicken is what I had.
• Sweet potato glass (recipe below). This stuff looked really cool, and tasted of sweet potato. However, once it got re-hydrated in your mouth, it got pretty damn sticky. Almost like caramel. Not bad, as long as you're aware of the effect, and intend it. Here, it wasn't the greatest, because it didn't lend itself to combining with the other components.

Sweet Potato Glass

• 200g sweet potato juice. Made by cooking peels and some sweet potato in water for about an hour, then straining that water and reducing, then cooking a bit of sweet potato until fully softened, then pureeing and straining completely. Alternately, if you have a juicer, that would be much easier.
  
• 25g Pure Cote B790 modified food starch

Chill sweet potato juice. Shear starch in with a blender, thoroughly (run the blender for at least five minutes). Chill again. Then ladle onto a sheet of acetate and pick up the acetate and move it around to get the starched juice to more or less cover it. Then dehydrate. I dehydrated at 170F in my oven. When somewhat dehydrated but still a bit pliable (1.5 hours or so, in my case), peel it off the acetate, then just put it right back onto the acetate. It'll make it a lot easier to get off later without cracking oddly. Then finish dehydrating, about another 1.5 hours at 170F. Times will vary quite a bit if dehydrating at lower temps. Once completely dehydrated, break into shards.

Posted by Barzelay on 2009/02/11 @ 10:24 | Comments (2) | Food Additives, Meat, Sauces, Condiments, Science, Technology, Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese

Comments

Name

Email

URL

Remember personal info? Comments (You may use HTML tags for style)

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.