Meat Cookery & Sous Vide

There can be no denying that sous vide cookery is fashionable. Chefs from Alain Ducasse to Thomas Keller and Heston Blumenthal are keen proponents of cooking at low temperatures with the ingredients vacuum-packed in plastic bags. Yet sous vide technique is not an instant mark of culinary modernism. Since the French chef Georges Pralus first perfected the procedure in 1974, it has had an abiding attraction for the savvy restaurateur and event caterer, with perfect portion-control and the opportunity to prepare everything well ahead of time.

And at its most basic level, the idea behind sous vide cookery is nothing new. There is a long tradition of enclosing ingredients in an air and water-tight vessel to allow them to cook in their own vapours and preserve delicate aromas and flavours; the container might be a pig’s bladder in the case of cookery en vessie, greaseproof paper (‘en papillote’) or even a salt crust.The novelty of the sous vide approach is in the emphasis placed upon extremely precise temperature control. Rather than briefly shocking a piece of beef at 250°C for fifteen minutes, the same cut of meat might be kept at exactly 54°C for twenty four hours or more, producing an impeccably medium-rare result with no loss of precious juices. These exactingly meticulous cooking temperatures open up an entirely new set of textural possibilities, allowing the chef absolute control.

But at what price? Are we sacrificing crispy textures at the altar of tenderness? Does it push the industrialisation of gastronomy too far? And does it remove us from an intuitive relationship with our ingredients?

Until now, the precision of properly-executed sous vide cookery has always required equipment beyond the reach of the home cook; even professional chefs have largely relied upon second-hand laboratory equipment. We are delighted to present one of the very first UK public demonstrations of a thoroughly-domesticated version of this equipment, followed by a panel discussion on the merits (or otherwise) of sous vide technique.

About the speakers:

Morten Aas, European Business Director of Sous Vide supreme, and Heiko Antoniewicz, a German chef, will be demonstrating a number of different applications of sous-vide cooking and the benefits that this cooking style can offer, with a special focus on meat cookery. The SousVide Supreme™ is the world’s first water oven designed specifically for use in the home kitchen— providing the everyday cook with easy access to the beneficial culinary style of sous vide.Tom Coultate, food scientist, started his scientific career as a lab technician and then research assistant at Unilever’s Colworth laboratories. In 1972, he graduated from Leicester University with a PhD, and then moved to London to work as a lecturer in Food Science at London Southbank University, from where he recently retired as Principal Lecturer in Food Biochemistry. In the early 1980s the Royal Society of Chemistry asked Tom to write a textbook on Food Chemistry for use by School Teachers of both Chemistry and Home Economics. The success of this book means it is now in its 5th edition and is a leading undergraduate textbook for food science courses around the world, and has been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Chinese. Tom writes occasional articles for food industry magazines and recently contributed to Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck Cookbook.

Rowley Leigh, chef proprietor of Le Café Anglais (www.lecafeanglais.co.uk) is one of the founding fathers of modern British cooking. After Cambridge University he tried his hand at farming and novel writing before falling into cooking ‘almost by accident’ in 1977. After a couple of years at the Joe Allen restaurant, he went to work with the Roux brothers at Le Gavroche in 1979. After stints at Le Gavroche, the brothers’ pastry laboratory and becoming buyer for the group, he took over their prestigious Le Poulbot restaurant as head chef in 1984, receiving many accolades including the Times restaurant of the year award in 1986. He opened Kensington Place Restaurant with Nick Smallwood and Simon Slater in 1987. Quickly hailed by he Times as restaurant of the year, Kensington Place and its blend of brilliant food and an informal and buzzy atmosphere set the pattern for London restaurants in the 1990’s. In the same decade, Rowley started a career as a cookery writer, winning the prestigious Glenfiddich award three times with the Guardian, the Sunday Telegraph and the Financial Times. He remains cookery correspondent of the Financial Times. His much accoladed book, No Place Like Home, was published in 2001. He left Kensington Place in December 2006 in order to open Le Café Anglais in 2007.