I got myself a sous-vide cooking device, that little gadget lets you cook stuff within a .1 °C precision.
so what ?
Well for those of you familiar with biochemistry, it lets you congeal only certain proteins within the food and leave the other untouched
The most common example is a perfect egg : albumin congeals at 62°C whil the more complex proteins of the nucleus retained in sugars only congeal at 68°C…
Still nothing ? you can cook the white of the egg while leaving th yolk perfectly runny… Aaaaaah !
There you go. So, for meats and fish this is also a guarantee to never turn your steak into cobbling supply
This recipe will make you cook a firm but juicy John-Dory at 65°C,
and since I’m a responsible blogger, that takes seriously the hygiene regulation, and warns you about food hazards due to insufficiently cooked material, will advise you to NOT TRY this recipe at 60°C, this way, even if you store your fish in the sun on the ground near a swamp and are severely immunosuppress-ed, you still will have nothing to fear. Also, I will deny being sarcastic.
You’re probably going to say, well I don’t have this sous-thingumajig… whatever this thingy that cooks only half the eggs.
Hah! maybe ! But I’ll bet you have a dish washer, this wonderful tool has a washing cycle at 70°C, which will work almost as well.
for 2
- 200 to 240g John-Dory filets
- 50g butter
- 1 pinch Saffron threads
- a dozen Rosemary leaves
- 2 slices of pineapple (I got mine fresh out of a real pineapple, but I’m pretty sure the canned stuff will do fine)
- around 200g precooked sticky thai rice or sushi rice
- a little more butter for browning the pineapple
clean up your fillets and put the flat on a plate to season.
Crumble the saffron threads between your fingers over the fish, and do the same with the rosemary
should look like this
Place the fillets in a well sealed ziploc bag with 50g butter sliced thinly.
push the air off the plastic bag and place in regulated temperature bath at 65°C for 40 minutes.
As I said earlier, do not cook your fish at a lower temperature, like 1 hour at 60°C for instance, it would not do.
If you do not have a sous-vide cooking device, it goes into your dish washer for 35 minutes of a 70°C cycle (you dishwasher might impose a cold pre-soak cycle in its program, plan accordingly)
While the fish cooks, sear and brown your pineapple slices in a pan with a pinch of butter for around 4 minutes move it and turn it constantly, you don’t want it to blacken.
After forming rice balls of 20g each grill them, either on a pan, or for 10 minutes at 180°C in the oven
I place them in round siliconmolds with a touch of buttrer to avoid sticking it should hint a bit of crispness on the outside when done, adjust timings according to your rice,
you can optionally season your rice balls with a drop of soy sauce before cooking
when your fish is ready, place it on a warm plate gently, and pour the cooking juice as you would a sauce, I recommend going easy on the sauce, you don’t want to soak your whole plate, but since your diner may want to keep the remainder of the juice and serve it on the side.
I suggest assembling the plate like so.
