How to elevate past "cook meat in sous vide, steam veg".

Hey all, I was wondering how you all go about thinking about what *else* to do after all your meat and/or veg is sous-vided, tender and ready-to-eat.

While I've made some of the more delicious and lengthy recipes in MC and MCaH, I find that for day-to-day use I'm doing not a lot more than just sous-viding steak or chicken or fish/scallops, and then blow-torching or searing them and putting them on a plate with some salt and pepper.

I'd like to up my game a little by thinking more about easy-to-make sauces and or different preparations of veg that complement the meat. Something that will elevate my dishes past tasty and convenient to still-pretty-convenient but even more amazing. What resources do you turn to for things like that? How do you think about quick sauces or garnishes for plating? Do you spice your dishes before you put them in the bag or after? [That is, is it just a matter of my putting some indian spices in with the chicken, or south-american ones in the bag before sous-viding?]

Thanks for any directions/paradigms of thinking about this. I've got lots of great gadgets in my kitchen that I use with regularity, but I feel like I'm still just the modernist cooking equivalent to making "meat and potatoes".

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com-chefsteps

While there are zillions of options, these days I'm back in love with the old-fart-French purée. Cook a vegetable completely (hey, more SV if you like, or blanch/shock) and purée it, then adjust the thickness with water (unlikely), cream, reducing, or a chemical thickener (I like xanthan gum or ultra-tex 8). Season and hold for service, and then you can fancy-drag your purée around the plate with your spoon.

Another old-fart-french option: mayonnaise small-sauces. Add sriracha to homemade mayo.

If you're pan-searing, deglaze with cream and cognac, season and whee, free sauce.

And I'm a big fan of the various pestos in MC@H (I think it's the home version). Whenever I've overbought salad greens, I purée 'em up with some nuts and - pesto! (xanthan gum helps here, if you want to quenelle your pesto). I'm including a pic - this was a random Tuesday night meal and I was playing around with plating. It's a pork tenderloin (SV, obv) with spiced apples and pistachio-spinach pesto. The quenelle isn't nearly the best option here, I think, but I need the practice.

Is this the kind of answer you're looking for? I can't quite tell the level of detail you want.

FrankM_3301

Maybe more general than what you were looking for, but....

read, a lot....cookbooks to blog posts to forums....

look at food porn

listen to podcasts

have a well stocked pantry (that includes modernist ingredients)

eat out often

consider what is in season

consider what is local

consider flavor, color, and texture

at the end of the day, I just want delicious.

Brendan_Lee_56950

I usually start with the book The Flavor Bible. I look up the main ingredients I am using for the dish and then come up with a sauce/garnish possibility from the pairings that make the most sense to me.

Sometimes the dishes only need a simple jus and not a really extensive sauce. I keep dashi powder, miso, and various other flavored bouillion on hand to make quick flavorful liquids that can then be thickened (usually use xanthan) when needed or just reduced and mounted with butter for the dish. Other times, I just think about a typical vegetable pairing that would normally go with that type of dish and then make a puree from that veg to create a base for the dish.

For garnish, I tend to look for things that add color and some herbal notes since they won't be cooked or be available in mass quantity on the plate. Citrus is also a great way to finish up a dish that is in many cases even better than a sauce.

Ian_Tuck_75954

Ted and Brendan, thank you, that is just what I was looking for! I use the Flavor Bible a lot for cocktails because that's my main area of interest, but it makes total sense to use it for food, which I imagine was the authors' original intent.

I'll start experimenting with purees as a way of a) improving my plating and b) complementing the flavors already in the plate.

Thanks heaps!
I.