Fusion
This takes a classic french sauce and turns it on its head with bold Japanese flavours – Unusual, delicious, and doable on the stovetop in a fraction of the time needed for a traditional espagnole sauce.
Fusion
Chicken cooked sous vide in ponzu with our spicy asian tomato relish – Delicious fusion asian cooking that works as well for weeknight eating as for entertaining guests.
We recently completed our low-tech sous vide setup, and it is by far the best way of doing meat and poultry. You need a heating element, a thermostat with a switch, and a fish tank submergible water pump, and some MacGyver skills.
If you are new to the world of Sous Vide – Don’t run away! You can do it in your own kitchen (albeit with slightly more effort), all you need are ziplock bags and an accurate thermometer.
A sous vide setup is a water bath that you keep at a constant temprature, and you use this to cook food slowly and precisely.
You can do this yourself without a professional setup. Use the heaviest cast iron pot you can find, fill it with water, and, using your thermometer, bring it up on your stovetop to the desired temperature (between 60-62C in this case).
You will notice that this is considerably more difficult on an electric stovetop, as the heating element takes long to heat up, and continues to produce heat after being turned off. Removing the pot from the element reduces this problem slightly.
You will also notice that the heated metal of your pot continues to heat the water after you switch off the gas/remove from the plate, so you need to plan for the overshoot. I would recommend doing a test run to get the feel of things before starting on a meal for loads of guests that you want to impress.
Stir regularly (every 2-3 minutes at least), and when you turn on the heat, keep it on for very short intervals – you can always switch it on again and cook for longer, but once you overshoot properly the meat dries out and you can’t recover from that.
If you do overshoot, remove the meat from the sous vide immediately and wait for the water to come back down to the correct temperature before re-adding it.
European
Cooked and chilled cucumber soup has long been a summer favourite of ours, served cold outside in the garden.
This version is fantastic – we love the bite of the chilli, the cool creaminess of the milk, the freshness of the cucumber and herbs, and the steamed peas add substance and texture and bring it all together beautifully.
Japan and China
There are few things I enjoy more than home made udon noodles; the japanese have turned noodle making and eating into an art. This is super simple, and super delicious.
If you are looking for a good book on japanese cooking, Japanese cooking: A simple art is a really good place to start. This book details with precision the foundation of most japanese cooking, and this udon noodle recipe is adapted only very slightly from there.
Fusion
This is our take on chicken, veg and gravy – taken to the next level of course.
You need a sous vide cooker for this, but you can do it manually if you have an accurate thermometer.
The espagnole sauce here is an absolute winner – easy, cheap, healthy and exploding with umami flavour; it goes perfectly with any meat or vegetable dish.
European
This is my go-to chunky tomato sauce whenever I need something delicious in a hurry – This recipe is infinitely adaptable, and variations on the theme end up in a lot of our dishes.
Use fresh tomatoes if you can – preferably super red ripe ones that are on the verge of going off – but if your tomatoes aren’t as ripe as you had hoped, you can help them along with a splash of balsamic vinegar and an extra teaspoon of sugar.
Fusion
We made this mussel ragout in the eastern cape coast of South Africa. The old idiom “Necessity is the mother of invention” is certainly true here – We pulled the mussels off the rocks, and the watercress was growing wild at a spring near the house. The japanese flavours work perfectly with tomato and seafood, and really lift a simple dish to amazing heights.
I wouldn’t recommend doing this with shop bought frozen mussels – if you can’t get this absolutely fresh, then rather do something else with your mussels – white wine and cream can cover up the unhappiness of frozen mussels quite nicely.
Middle east
The problem with all the baked falafel recipes out there? They are all dry, every one of them. We spent weeks (and hundreds of falafels) comparing various weird ingredients, trying everything conceivable to make THE juiciest falafels.
We actually overdid it in one of the batches, and managed to make falafels that roasted and crispy on the outside, but were basically jelly inside – Weirdly delicious!
This recipe is toned down a bit, to get a light, fluffy moist falafel thats crisp on the outside and juicy inside.
If you want a seriously juicy falafel – add half a cup of cooked oats to the mixture and tone down the other liquid accordingly.
Japan and China
A friend requested a recipe for a classic miso soup, so here we are.
If you have the time, making your own dashi is effort, but oh-so-worth-it. You can harvest your own Konbu (Giant kelp) and dry it slowly in the oven, otherwise asian food supermarkets should have it. Katsoubushi or Bonito flakes are dry, shaved tuna flakes, difficult to make yourself but again, asian supermarkets will have.
With that said, freeze-dried dashi is actually not bad, and the convenience makes up for the compromise in flavour.
Wakame is a dried brown/green seaweed that is reconstituted in water and eaten as a sea vegetable. You can harvest fresh wakame if you are near the coast, just make sure you are not taking from any polluted areas.
