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Culinary Challenge 7 (Something Coffee)

grant

This week's objective: Prepare a dish—savory or sweet—utilizing sous vide techniques and coffee. For example, consider using coffee for an infusion, broth, rub, smoking media, or a textural component. Your idea can be coffee anything!

Outline: Take the challenge in your own kitchen then share your results via the ChefSteps forum. Describe the dish you have chosen and techniques used to make it. Describe where your idea or inspiration came from, what your plan of attack was, and finally, post your pictures.

The top 3 posts will get their photos posted on ChefSteps' Pinterest board. Please have your entry posted by Sunday.

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Comments

rutjens

@Jim - I believe you could get a rough estimate of the pressure in your canister making some assumptions.

Consider the ideal gas law which states PV=nRT (P=pressure, V=volume in L, n= number of moles of gas, R is a constant number and T=temp in kelvin)

So my 1 L isi-whip canister with 250 ml water (at 4C) and charged with nitrous oxide (16 grams total from 2 N2O 8 gr chargers) will result in:

R=0.083 for pressure calculations in bar/atmosphere or 1.2 for results in psi

T=277 K (4C)

n= 0.36 moles (16 grams divided by the mol weight of N2O (= 44 gr/mol) makes 0.363 moles)

V=0.75 L (1L - 250 ml of water)

makes P= (0.083*277*0.36)/0.75= ~11 bar = ~160 psi add up to that the atmospheric pressure at the time of closing the canister gives you ~12 bar or 174 psi.

I incubate my cold brew for 12h at 4C and start with water of 4C so leave T constant. I also didn't include the coffee volume I add to the water. Lastly this calculation will give you a starting pressure and assuming your water is not gas saturated over time a pressure change will occur but as Chris mentioned the calculations to include all these factors become very complex and installing a pressure gauge would be an interesting option.

So your brave experiment of adding 3 chargers to a 0.4L canister would result in a blasting 16.5 bar or 450 psi!

Hope this helps a bit

Chris_Young_80640

@jimseven — Sadly no easy formula for pressure based on number of charges. The variable would be:

(1) Ratio volume of liquid to volume of headspace

(2) Temperature of liquid, since solubility of gas is a strong function of liquid temperature (gas is far more soluble in cold liquid, but even a couple of degrees can make a big difference).

(3) Nature of liquid (gas will have different solubility in water, alcohol, etc).

Easiest thing to do is find someone handy and install a pressure gauge on your siphon.

Brendan_Lee_56950

This youtube video has a rough approximation of how to calculate the pressure in the canister http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqcErDStLfQ

I'm not sure (not a coffee aficionado) what you mean by oxidative flavors but I will say a lot of the nuances of chocolate and roasted tones came out nicely from a jamaican blue mountain bean I was using.

James_Hoffmann_21713

I will have a play soon (all my siphons are full of tincture experiments).

I'm curious about a few things:

- Whether better extraction can be achieved so you need less to coffee.

- Whether you're getting any oxidative flavours so common in cold brew and whether these can be mitigated.

Out of curiosity - is there a nice equation for working out the pressure inside a siphon based on amount of air in the canister (however much isn't liquid), and number of charges? (i.e. 3 canisters in 400ml of space = approx 50psi)

Brendan_Lee_56950

That's how I do it at home as well. I left it overnight the first time. Very smooth and no bitterness that way.

seijoed

Lack of coffee also can induce a headache...

grant

@jimseven

We make it in house. There will be a how to video going up soon but essentially this is the recipe.

100% water

20% fresh ground coffee(grind size for press or drip)

Pressurize to about 50 psi. In a liter ISI siphon it takes 3 charges. Let stand for anywhere from 1 hour to 3 hours depending on what profile you'd like. Depressurize and pour through paper chemed filtration. I don't recommend a larger batch than about 600g total in the 1L siphon as when you relieve pressure the foam carries debris that can clog the siphon valve and then you get a headache instead of coffee.

Chris_Young_80640

@jimseven — The cold-brew was house made, but I'll let Hans or Grant go into the technique. Would love your thoughts...

James_Hoffmann_21713

@Ryan_Matthew_Smith

Can you tell me more about the cold brew coffee? Home made or store bought? If home made - how are you doing it?

michaelnatkin

I got to taste that (the Churchill's Breakfast) and holy crap was it good. The smoked cinnamon is haunting.

Ryan_Matthew_Smith_2910

http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/cocktail-churchill-s-breakfast

little late to the challenge but check out our cold brew coffee cocktail

http://youtu.be/nsTKNWK2b9U

prince_of_porcelain

This was the effect I wanted, but with a coffee bean. It didn't quite work out that way though. I'll have to work on it.

Andrew_Erickson_9623

Thanks @Brian_Douglas!

I like your sugarwork coffee bean idea, that would be fantastic. Your dish looks very tasty.

prince_of_porcelain

@Andrew_E - I didn't say it before, but that's really a beautiful dish. I love the asymmetrical plate and the linear plating. Looks delicious too!

seijoed

I want to taste that.

prince_of_porcelain

I've been wanting to try some blown sugar work after seeing a demo from Joan Roca (might have been Jordi Roca doing the demo, but Joan was narrating). I thought it would make a nice dish this week. I planned to blow sugar into a large coffee bean shape, fill it with a coffee panna cotta and dust with cocoa and ground chocolate. My plan was that when you cracked the thin sugar shell of the bean you'd have a rich panna cotta inside. It seemed like a decent enough plan.

What I learned is that blown sugar work is not something I can learn in a couple of hours. I was able to inflate a few sugar balloons, but they were all mishapen and collapsed on themselves and basically wouldn't cooperate. So, after a frustrating evening, I punted on the blown sugar until another day.

Reconfiguring my dish, I made a sous vide coffee panna cotta with 400g cream, 100 g mascarpone, 200g whole coffee beans, and 75 g sugar. I bagged and cooked at 92C for 2.5 hours. I bloomed 5g of gelatin in 50g of milk an added it about 10 mintues before the end.

I wanted to stick to strictly coffee, sugar and cream, so I also did a 24 hour cold brew coffee fluid gel, some milk foam and some coffee flavored spun sugar.

The sous vide coffee panna cotta was awesome. I was really just sort of winging it based on Grant's post of the coffee butter and fat extraction. I figured the cream also had a high fat %, so it was worth a try. There was almost no acidity or bitterness, but the fruity notes of the beans really came through. Flavors that are subtle when brewed were forward and prominent in a way I didn't really expect. The rest of the dish paired nicely, although didn't have the visual impact and playfulness I'd hoped for originally.

Andrew_Erickson_9623

Here's my entry for this week's challenge:

I wanted to do something savoury and my first thought was seafood. I have cooked prawns in coffee butter sous vide before with good results so I decided to try scallops this time.

One of my favourite websites is http://www.foodpairing.com, I'm not so keen on the cost but I do use it a lot and find it really useful for helping to create dishes. Looking around there I hit on asparagus and strawberries as a good combo with coffee, they're just coming into season here in Switzerland so I thought I would like to use these in the dish.

The dish is a warm scallop salad with coffee butter poached sous vide scallops, asparagus, strawberries, coconut, mango chilli leather, coffee infused coconut water air and garnished with coriander leaves.

Here's a breakdown of the components:

Scallops - poached to 50C in 10% smoked coffee butter and seared to finish. I made coffee butter as @Grant described and then lightly smoked it with the smoking gun and coffee beans. The smoke wasn't strong enough and didn't really come through and I think I would reduce the amount of coffee butter next time, maybe 5%, as it was a little too strong for the scallops.

Asparagus - peeled and sautéed in sesame oil then reserved the heads and shaved stalks for plating.

Fresh strawberries quartered.

Coconut - I finely sliced fresh coconut then toasted it in the oven at 180C until golden then reduced the temperature to 90C to dry them out for a couple of hours. Finally I seasoned with salt. These make an excellent snack on their own, I'm definitely making them again.

Mango chilli leather - After seeing the MCaH video for this I thought it would be a nice addition to this dish, I only wish I had made the pieces larger as the burst of chilli were great but the mango did not come through.

Coffee and coconut air - I vacuum sealed fresh coconut water and little coconut milk with whole coffee beans (33%) and cold infused for 12 hours. Then I seasoned with salt and lime juice and added lecithin and foamed with a hand blender.

Overall I think the dish worked really well and it's something I will definitely try to refine. The flavours complemented each other and the air really helped bring everything together.

I just wish I was faster at plating, it was too cold. I had to watch my wife stick it in the microwave

Chris_Young_80640

@jim — a very nice job. And @Tim, really like your work this week. Keep up the good work everyone.

jim_53915

@Tim that sounds like a great idea!

Tim_Sutherland_52834

@jim, nice.

A white chocolate mousse on a passion fruit sauce in the chocolate cup would be a nice colour contrast and cool effect when the cup was cracked (think a yolk running from a poached egg) saucing the dish - in fact I'm going to steal your chocolate cup idea and try it.

jim_53915

For this week I wanted to try my hand at baking and pastry since its one of my culinary weak points. I infused French roast whole beans with a basic vanilla ice cream recipe @ 64C for 45min, then chilled over night in the fridge. The next morning I strained out the beans then churned in an ice cream maker. I infused whole French roast coffee beans with dark chocolate @ 64C for 1hr, then took small blown up balloons and dipped them and let cool, then popped balloons with scissors and removed from chocolate shell. I took the rest of the chocolate and made it into a chocolate mouse by adding gelatin and heavy cream, then strained into a pint ISI syphon with one N2O charge. I let it chill for 20 min and filled the chocolate cups I made with the balloons, then reserved in fridge to ensure the mouse set. I then made a chocolate cookie crumble from a chocolate waffer recipe by cooking as per recipe, then breaking it up and drying in oven at 300F for 20 min. Once crumbles cooled I pulsed lightly in a food processor to get an even consistency. I made a vanilla bean infused caramel agar fluid gel, and a passion fruit pudding with ultratex 3 to help break up the richness of the chocolate and coffee. I found that my chocolate work needs some serious work, but the flavors of coffee and dark chocolate were balanced and spot on. The crumbles added great textural contrast, but I found the vanilla caramel fluid gel was too delicate for this dish and was lost to the rich flavors. The passion fruit did provide the right acidity to cut through the rich flavors and cleanse the pallet.

On a side note @Grant_Lee_Crilly I couldn't help but try your recipe for coffee butter so I added spinach sauteed in coffee butter on top of my pasta and it was great!

Brendan_Lee_56950

I have some chicory coffee bagged and cooking in the circulator right now. 67C for 90minutes, strain, chill, blend with sweetened condensed milk, add boba, enjoy!

seijoed

I think the pouring it out is the coolest thing ever, darn near impossible to do as easily with a traditional poach!

prince_of_porcelain

Everytime I see a sous vide egg I think it looks so damn delicious. Nice work @Johan

seijoed

Oh well

Coffee and coriander cured pork butt bacon, 62.5C egg, pickles, sous vide veggies

and the pommes rosti.

Tim_Sutherland_52834

@ Joshua, this plate I had cold so the flavours were a bit muted. As it is an agar gel I can heat it which should make it taste better.

Each of the different coffee gels taste different. Together the coffee and milk come through. The brandy is lost. As I play with the dish over time I will try a very milky lait gel on a very strong espresso gel. The gel in the cup is too rubbery so I need to make a gel that just sets for here. The candied pecans are definitely needed for a sweet and crunch factor.

The dried milk foam has the texture of a dry meringue but tastes like sweet milk. I tried to make the foam thicker but in the time taken for the thick foam to dehydrate, it takes on a yellow tinge. I could use other methods to get a milk foam on the plate, but the dessert needs the dehydrated foam for texture.

This is a very flat plate that needs height. The cup is the highest item on the plate, takes up a lot of room and is hard to eat. Every time I look at the cup I hear "if you can't eat it, don't put it on the plate!" (the favorite saying from a chef I know). A custom mold of the cup (sans handle) to make a white chocolate cup would be nice, but that is beyond my means at the moment.

From a texture point the dish is very "airy" and needs something denser. A warm espresso fluid gel with a quinelle of milky coffee ice cream would be interesting to try. An almond tuile could be stuck in the ice cream to give height, or the tuile could be made into an "ashtray" for the cigarette.

A long answer for a short question, the flavours are approaching what I had in mind, but the textures and presentation still need to be worked on.

seijoed

And before I get pegged I'll make a joke about the other side.

We'll lose 170 million jobs!!!!

-- We have about 129 million employed today.

seijoed

I predict Tim will make me look like the Bush guy.

I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully....

Joshua_Sharp_47919

That is pretty incredible looking @Tim. How does it taste?

seijoed

Very, very cool @Tim!