What the hell is a breast of veal? Breasts come from squab, ducks, chickens, and plastic surgeons, commonly. The average chap doesn’t often think of the breast of a baby cow, but Thomas Keller is no average person, I’m coming to find out. It turns out veal does have a breast, and it’s a pretty hefty thing indeed. I chose to make this recipe for my awesometastic toddler Bentley Danger’s 2^nd birthday, occurring on the intriguingly-auspicious 08.09.10. Why Linda, don’t you think he would have been happy with tater tots and easy cheese? Mayhaps, but I’m doing my best to cultivate a little urban gourmand, so I see no better occasion to make a multi-day feast than on the anniversary of Bentley’s birth. It is also a reminder of how far we’ve come in the last two years. Two years ago I was laid up in a hospital bed after 72 hours of 2-week overdue labor that included a crash cart scare and eventually being completely put to sleep for the birth of Bentley due to unforeseen complications. Everything is dandy now and I chalk it up to the little monster not being quite ready to enter the big, bright world, nevertheless it wasn’t the greatest few days. That is in stark contrast to our life now. Bentley is an aspiring sous chef, assisting me in the kitchen with all the dexterity he can muster. He has a surprising attention to detail (at least when it comes to licking the ice cream-churning beaters).

In lieu of a big party this year, we decided to keep his fete to family, since it was on a Monday. The reveler tally totaled 13 adults and four little ones, so I thumbed through The French Laundry looking for something that would feed a small crowd. It turns out the veal breast was what TK served the original crew of TFL a week before it opened, thus it’s a very meaningful recipe to him. I figured it would be an ideal dish to commemorate a momentous day, and so set out to gather my ingredients. TK suggests asking the butcher for a Bobby veal breast which is smaller than a regular breast, but I was unable to locate one. Just locating a veal breast itself proved challenging. Turns out we are not big veal eaters in this country, and least of all as strange a cut as a breast. No matter though, I planned to double his original recipe anyway since I had a larger crowd, so the butcher and I figured about half a regular-sized veal breast would do the trick. The whole breast weighed in at 20 lbs, of which I took 10.

The breast has ribs running up its length. The butcher compared it to pork spare ribs. I also came to find out it is full of cartilage and fat, which I suppose make it tender and delicious after a low and slow braise, but nothing turns you off of eating more than pulling a 10” long cord of cartilage out of a freshly-cooked piece of meat. The node-like tendrils looked like something out of a sci-fi film: half animate, half spare computer part. I wanted to share a picture but I couldn’t bring myself to ruin the magic of the final dish (it was definitely magical). About the time I was done braising and I was separating the rib rack from the meat, I started to seriously doubt this dish. There was a ton of fat, sinew, bone, cartilage, and all manner of odd thing interspersed between the flesh of the breast. How on earth would it ever taste good, and how could I serve my guests something so strange?

The next step calls for doubling the breast upon itself and weighting it so that it compresses together to form a solid, thin mass. I did this overnight, and the next day when I pulled the breast out to cut it into rounds for serving, the genius of the dish was apparent. The cutter wouldn’t cut through the fat, so it was easy to separate it at that time from the meat, and in the end I would up with perfect circles of meat the texture of tuna in a salad Nicoise with the flavor profile of well-braised veal. Every time I cook a TK recipe I go through a touch-and-go period where I firmly believe the dish won’t come together. Each instance so far, he’s proven me wrong. The steps are actually so clear and concise that any doubt and second-guessing is really a product of my own mind. I feel comfortable enough in the kitchen that I trust myself, but I guess I’m learning that I have to trust someone else too, if I respect them enough to cook from their book.

The grueling detail-focus in this recipe is maddening. For instance, he specifies shapes for the various vegetables that top the meat; the beets must be Parisienne balls, the carrots are 1” turned (whittled into miniature footballs), the celery are 1×1/4 batons, and the turnips are fluted ovals. If there is a soul among you who can scoop Parisienne balls from a raw beet, speak now! I wound up sous viding my beets, then perfectly cubing them- I think they were plenty beautiful. I spent roughly an hour chopping up a few vegetables for the dish. Had it been a creation from my own head, the same vegetables would have taken me 15 minutes and looked good enough to be served at a restaurant. Good enough is not TK’s style. They must be the best. My knife skills improved considerably in that hour.

The waste present in most of TK’s recipes is a little staggering as well. In order to get perfect batons, balls and ovals, roughly 50% of the vegetable in question is peeled or pared away. In a commercial kitchen this would not be a problem, I wager, since stocks and sauces welcome the addition of wanton veggies. In my own kitchen I find myself scrambling to come up with clever ways to serve the unwanted bits, thus I make one recipe from TFL then eat remarkably unphotogenic (though usually delicious) meals for two days afterward. I have witnessed this phenomenon with vegetables, but also bones, duck breast, fish scraps, polenta remnants, et cetera. It’s something to be aware of, and I consider it a good and bad thing. It’s god in that it forces me to think outside the box to come up with alternative uses for the imperfect scraps. It’s bad because I imagine people across the country tackling the daunting recipes in TK’s books yet being busy enough in their lives that they simply boot the waste into the compost bin. I wish he would have addressed this issue by stating what he actually personally does with all the excess instead of the occasional “can be frozen for future use.” Future use in what? Let’s keep the food revolution going with inspired ideas for scrap foods. Maybe I’ll write that book. Hmmm, Goin’ Gourmet with TFL’s Tatters?

Last week I wrote about how TK inspired in me a love for strainers, chinois’, China caps, and the like. This week it’s got to be my round cutters of all sizes. He’s got me thinking I can make anything pretty by simply plopping it into a little round form. It really did the trick for this dish, however. Braised meat dishes tend to be among the most heart-warmingly delectable around, but they also tend toward unsightliness on the plate. A slop of stew, a smattering of spaetzle, and you are left with a full belly in front of a skid-marked plate. By packing the strands of meat into a round, pan-frying them, then serving them on equally circular cakes of polenta, the mess is virtually eliminated. It’s a fine thing indeed when the beauty of the plate matches the beauty in your belly, and this dish achieves that rare balance.

Bentley gave the dish the ultimate seal of approval when he unceremoniously (read: beseechingly, with sticky hands grabbing at the platter) requested a second veal breast round along with more polenta. He ate so much dinner he wasn’t overly obsessed with the chocolate/peanut/cajeta cups I made him for dessert, although they did end up all over his face during the manic unwrapping of gifts portion of the evening.

Corned beef doesn’t exactly conjure images of glamour and sophistication; nevertheless it’s one of those things I get a craving for it roughly once a year. How convenient that my craving happened a short while before St. Patrick’s Day so I can share my results with you lot (I’m told that’s a right Irish way of saying things- correct me if I’ve misspoken). 

Supermarket corned beef, in my experience, is tough, plagued with a lingering flavor of skeevy salt, and downright bilious in many cases.  Doing it right, which means doing it yourself, really only takes a bit of planning, is more economical and tastes infinitely superior.  I borrowed the corning technique from Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie with only minor adjustments based on my own taste preferences.  I’m a bay leaf fanatic, so I doubled up on those since my bay leaf tree is only too happy to oblige me with her radiant foliage.  I started with a lovely first-cut brisket that I picked up for a song from my favorite butcher in Pike Place Market.  The capable butcher men are always eager to help now that they know I write a Seattle food blog and they can log on and check out the crazy things I do to their meat. 

The brisket needs to sit in the cure for five days in order to achieve proper “corning,” which is great because it gives you lots of time to think about which sundry delicacies you’ll serve alongside it.  I also pickled some vegetables using a salt-brine rather than vinegar and let those get nice and infused over the five day period.  I came up with two appetizers that at first seemed slightly incongruous to me but in retrospect I realize there was, in fact, a common thread uniting the meal.  Appetizer “A” consisted of bresaola, which is air-cured beef, wrapped around stracchino cheese topped with a leaf of mache lettuce.

 Next up was an inventive take of seared foie gras.  I had gluten-free folks coming to dinner so the toast squares I might have normally served the foie gras with were out.  I decided to be inventive with the base of my dish and use baby artichoke halves as the “bread” to the foie gras’ “butter.”  I halved them and cooked them in pear butter in the Sous Vide Supreme for two hours at 183° and they were perfect in texture.

  They took on a touch of sweetness from the pear which matched the rest of the dish well.  I topped the artichokes and foie gras with a pear-Sauternes sorbet I whipped up while the artichokes were stewing.  I steeped anise, cardamom, clove and nutmeg into the sorbet and those flavors really brought out the delicate taste of the foie gras. 

Have you realized what everything has in common yet? Every course features something that has been cured, aka something that falls under the vast realm known as charcuterie.  It is interesting that charcuterie is today considered a delicacy.  Much like necessity being the mother of invention, charcuterie at its source was really just a means of preserving food so it would last longer before the era of refrigeration.   Nowadays we don’t technically need to cure meats, so it’s moved into the domain of luxury and often the price of good charcuterie reflects that.  It’s a fun world in which to dabble; oftentimes all you need is an inexpensive cut of meat, some salt and a bit of time. 

Back to the corned beef.  After it finished curing in its rock star juice, I rinsed it and bagged it along with some homemade pickling spice liquid and plopped it into the sous vide bath at 176° for 26 hours.  For those of you battling with the sous vide/foodsaver bagging liquid issues, I’ve finally come up with a bit of a workaround.  I know many people freeze the liquid into a solid so they can suck all the air out. I also know Thomas Keller feels the foodsaver is unacceptable and everyone should really be using a $3,000 cryovac that really does the trick of sucking all the air out even when there’s liquid in the bag.

  Short of spending three grand or taking the time that I don’t often plan for to pre-freeze my liquids, I’ve found myself SOL on several occasions now.  It helps to use gravity, ie hold your bag below the foodsaver as you’re sealing and it will be harder for the foodsaver to suck up any liquid.  The other really great trick that has been working wonders for me is a double bagging system.  First I pack the corned beef (or whatever) and liquid into one foodsaver bag without sealing it.  Then I insert this bag sideways into a second, larger foodsaver bag.  I seal the outer bag and it’s able to get a ton more air out since the liquid is all trapped in the inner bag.  It’s not a perfect solution but until I have a spare three grand lying around, it will do. 

The time and temperature seemed to be just right, and I’m glad I went with my gut instead of listening to all the random voices on the internet.  If I had an extra day or two to play around I would have been really tempted to do a 48 hour cure at a lower temp, perhaps closer to 134°, but now that I’ve achieved a result I’m immensely satisfied with I think I’ll stick with it next time too. 

 The only truly great solution to this problem would be a parallel tasting. Don’t you think the good folks over at Sous Vide Supreme should lend me a second sous vide machine so I could throw in two briskets, two sea bassies, two Silkie chickens and two Jerusalem artichokes all at different times/temps to get down to the real nitty gritty of culinary perfection?  There are plenty of scientific studies on the affects of different sous vide temperatures and what happens to the sinews and muscles not to mention gasses released by the meat. 

 I would opt for a different approach, however, one that defies scientific logic in many cases.  After all, aren’t some of the greatest culinary feats in history achieved by happy accident? I’m thrilled to note that my typical “cook-by-feel” approach seems to work in the sous vide bath thus far, I only regret not being able to mess around with multiple times, temps,and preparations simultaneously so I can arrive at a final consensus sooner.  After too many words (why am I so long-winded) I will leave you to your gastronomic devices, any questions on sous vide corned beef? Leave me a comment and I’ll hit you back.

*One final note: I will be on vacation away from the land of technology in the coming weeks. I haven’t forgotten about my amazing readers, I just need a bit of r and r.  When I return I’ll be back with a vengeance, but in the meantime please enjoy this lovely springtime and join me in a virtual clinking of wine glasses. Salute, Linda :)