Octopus Terrine #1 with gelatin

This terrine uses gelatin to capture the tasty liquid cooked out of the octopus, but I rushed things a bit so it's not as clear and dramatic as I'd like. The texture of the octopus was excellent, tender but not mushy; the aspic tasted of octopus liquid and was not too bouncy.

A friend mentioned having "octopus terrine" which I'd never heard of, but then recalled a chef's table meal at Galileo where we watched one of the cooks slicing something about the size of a mortadella but was clearly comprised of octopus tentacles.

Most preps I found simply cooked the octopus then tightly pressed the legs together in a mold while still quite warm, where the internal gel would set them overnight.

The version I'm doing here is based on a British site where they use gelatin combined with the juices exuded by the octopus to bind everything together. I had only small, hand-sized octopi and didn't want to waste the tasty liquid, so I cooked the beasts sous vide to capture the rendered liquid in the bag.

I wasn't very careful about this prep but would like to repeat it, perhaps without the gelatin, saving the juice for another dish like risotto.

1 pound Octopus, cleaned and thawed
Pimenton
Salt
Meyer Lemon Zest
1 envelope Knox Gelatin

Add the whole cleaned octopus to a sous vide bag. Add some Pimenton, Salt, and Meyer Lemon Zest. Seal and cook 5 hours at 77C. The octopus will shrink quite a bit and release a lot of liquid -- I figure we usually lose 1/2 to 2/3rd the weight of the octo to the liquid.

Strain a small portion of the octopus liquid into a bowl and set in another bowl of ice water: we need to cool it to prevent Gelatin from clumping. Add Gelatin powder to the cooled liquid, and let hydrate 5 minutes. Add the rest of the strained juice while still hot and stir well to combine.

With cling film, line a mold, ideally just big enough to contain the octo and liquid. Cut the tentacles from the octo, and slice the head. Add all the bits to the lined mold, then add the gelatin liquid.

Wrap the film around as snugly as you can, which won't be much as the gel is still liquid at this point. Weight the top to press firmly and chill overnight in the fridge.  We used little cutlery trays for kitchen drawers: they were about the right size and stacked neatly for the weights.

The next day, remove from fridge, unwrap carefully and tip out to a serving plate. To serve, heat a very sharp knife in hot water, and slice cleanly.

What Worked, What Didn't

I didn't rinse the octopi when I removed them from the sous vide bag, so the gel was muddied by the spices left on the beasties.

There's too much aspic, I think I'd prefer doing it without the gelatin, just saving the liquid for another use.

Cooking sous vide allows me to dial in the time/temperature I want, and captures all the tasty octopus juice, even if I don't use it in this preparation.

Seasoning was good -- just salt and pimenton -- but I didn't record what I used.

Next Time

Rinse the cooked octopi in hot water so the gel will be clear.

Use larger octopi with big legs.  Use about twice as much to fully fill the mold. 

If not using gelatin, we may need four times as much for the same size. Some recipes sans gel here, here, along with Chef Steps suggestions for sous vide time and temp.

Sous Vide Bacalao Pil Pil

Cooking the Bacalao sous vide allows us to use much less oil than our previous modernist approach, while perfectly cooking the fish and capturing the essential gelatin that gives us the Pil Pil emulsion.

Bacalao with Pil Pil sauce, Catalan style greens, Pa amb tomàquet

Previously, we'd used the science-based technique we learned from Basque chefs: they completely submerged the Bacalo in enough oil to cover and gently cooked to release the gelatin required for this sauce. This is much less work and much more reliable than the traditional method of sliding the fish back and forth in a pan with a little oil to release the gelatin, but it left us with a huge amount of fishy oil that we had to find a use for.

This time, we reasoned that we could use much less oil if we cooked the fish in a sous vide bag, and it would be trivial to capture the released gelatin.  It would also allow us to cook the fish very gently in a controlled manner.

We had gotten a big frozen chunk of skin-on, bone-in Bacalo from a Portuguese market. We believe it was salted like traditional Bacalao but it had been rehydrated to desalinate before freezing.

370 g     Bacalao (rehydrated to desalinate)
4   clove Garlic
1         Chili Arbol, seeded
250 ml    Olive Oil, good quality
1   pinch Salt

Seal Bacalao, Garlic, Chili, and Olive oil in sous vide bag.

Cook sous vide at 78C/172F for 30 minutes. When you remove the bag from the bath, you should see the white liquid gelatin below the fish and oil.

White gelatin elixir below Bacalao, oil

Pour off the liquid into a tall narrow container and allow to separate. Use a turkey baster to extract the gelatin from the bottom to another tall narrow glass. Repeat separation until you've got one container of oil and one of gelatin; it's all right if it's not perfect.

First settling

Second separation, mostly gelatin; oil is in the bowl on the right

To make the Pil Pil sauce, add 10-15 ml (2-3 tsp) of the white gelatin liquid to a pan and turn on very low heat.  Whip to incorporate air; I used a mesh scum skimmer which worked very well, but a fork or whisk should also do.  When frothy with fine bubbles, drizzle in a few drops of the oil. Continue whipping until a stable emulsion forms. Add more oil, a little at a time, and incorporate until you have the volume you need. If the emulsion starts to break or if it becomes too thick for your taste, add a splash of hot water and whip to incorporate. I took the pan off the heat and did most of this on the counter, as it seemed even the low heat was encouraging the sauce to break. Adjust taste with salt.

Whisk oil into gelatin with mesh skimmer to form emulsion

Plate cooked fish, and top with Pil Pil sauce.  We served ours with mustard greens cooked Catalan style with sultanas, toasted pine nuts and garlic; and Pa amb Tomàquet (toasted bread rubbed with garlic and topped with -- in our case -- tomato pulp instead of being rubbed with fresh tomato).

Save the rest of the precious gelatin; we froze ours.

What Worked, What Didn't

Everything worked beautifully with this technique: we got a bunch of precious fish elixir to use and to save for a future batch; we didn't end up with liters of excess fish oil; the fish was nicely cooked, and the Pil Pil sauce had a good texture.

Now that we've figured this out, a simple search shows us we are not the first to do it this way; duh.

Next Time

How low can we drop the heat and still extract the gelatin elixir? 78C seems a bit high to cook fish, can we drop it to 55C/131F where the gelatin is supposed to first start releasing? Does Bacalao need the higher temperature? Would other fresh (unsalted/rehydrated) fish be better at lower temperatures? One recipe we found recipe uses 65C/150F for 30 minutes.

Try traditional dry salted Bacalao; we have noticed that none of the boneless pieces had skin on, and the skin may be where all the gelatin lives.

Since we use so little oil and there not much effort, we can try other fish species; we've already ascertained Mahi Mahi works (and Sea Trout did not). What others will release gelatin for an emulsion?

Other Work

In 2022 we recreated this in our Barcelona apartment, at 55C for 30 minutes but pointed out 45-60 might be better. 

While looking for other sous vide bacalao recipes, I found two videos which provide more ideas. 

This first, which was done in 2015 and therefore predates mine, cooked at 65C for 30 minutes, and used the same strainer-in-skillet technique I did to create an emulsion from the "fish water", what I called "elixer. 

The next, from 2021, streamlines it even further: she cooks the fish sous vide at 60C for 20 minutes, but without adding any oil. She then drains off the fish liquid elixir into a cup, no oil separation required, and creates the emulsion with a stick blender, adding in the garlic-oil to build the sauce -- brilliant. She adds a bit of honey to each bag.

This one from 2020 is nearly identical, but he cooks at 48C for 20-30 minutes before emulsifying the fish liquid with a stick blender, then adding oil. He cooks the garlic in oil in a jar in the same bath as the fish, so he doesn't even need a sauté pan. He adds some membrillo to each bag. 

Peter Reinhart’s Bagels #1

These had a great slightly crunchy and chewy crust but the interior was too light, probably because I used all purpose flour rather than bread or high-gluten flour. I'd try them again with a higher protein flour.  I substituted brown sugar for the traditional diastatic malt, and added baked baking soda to make the water an alkaline -- I believe this contributed to the excellent crust.

Peter Reinhart's recipe in Bread Baker's Apprentice uses a mix of Imperial volumes and weights but I found very little correlation, e.g., he says 4 Cups flour was 18 ounces, but I got everywhere from 18-20 ounces depending on how I fluffed and scooped the flour. He also doesn't use metric, which is a shame since it's so much more convenient. I'm adding the metric-ized values I used, but should recalculate based on his bakers percentages which are more scalable anyway.

Sponge

1   tsp    0.11  ounce    4 g   0.31%  Instant Yeast
4   cup   18     ounce  510 g   51.4%  Flour, high gluten(I used AP)
2.5 cup   20     ounce  600 ml  57.1%  Water, at room temperature

Dough

0.5  tsp   0.055 ounce    2 g   0.16%  Instant Yeast
3.75 cup  17     ounce  500 g  48.6 %  Flour, high gluten(I used AP)
2.75 tsp   0.7   ounce   20 g   2   %  Salt
1    Tbs   0.5   ounce   15 g   1.8 %  Brown Sugar

Boiling Water (my additions)

2    Tbs                 30 g          Brown Sugar
1    Tbs                 15 g          Baked Baking Soda

Make sponge by whisking yeast into flour in stand mixer bowl then adding water and whisking until smooth like pancake batter. Cover until bubbly and nearly doubled, about 2 hours. 

To make dough, add in second batch of yeast, flour, salt, and sugar. Mix in stand mixer with dough hook until it forms a ball. Knead in machine 6-10 minutes -- it should be stiff pliable but not tacky. This is a dense dough and will give your mixer a workout.

Divide dough into 16 even pieces (about 100 g each), shape into balls, cover with a damp towel and let rise 20 minutes.

Line 2 sheet pans with parchment and mist with cooking oil spray.

Shape bagels by poking a finger through the center of each ball and enlarging the hole until it's about 6 cm / 2.5 in diameter.  Lay each on the parchment, mist with spray oil, and cover with film for about 20 minutes. 

Test the rise by placing one bagel in a bowl of water: it should float within 10 seconds. Remove the bagel, pat dry and return to parchment and cover. If the bagel doesn't float, rise 10 minutes more and try again.

Retard in refrigerator, covered, for 24-48 hours to develop flavor.

Preheat oven to 250C/475F convection. Get another cookie sheet, add parchment and mist with oil; dust with corn meal.

Bring wide pot of water to boil with brown sugar and baked baking soda.  Place bagels top (presentation side) down into the water bath and boil gently for 60 seconds; flip gently and boil for another 60 seconds. Place on corn mealed sheet, and boil the rest of the rounds the same way. Mine puffed up so I was not able to fit 8 bagels on a sheet, so I used the extra sheet pan.  Top with coarse salt, seeds etc if desired right after you take the bagels out of the bath.

Bake for 5 minutes, drop heat to 220C/400F convection and bake 5 more minutes. Let rest at least 15 minutes before slicing or eating. 

I cooked one tray of 8 bagels after a 24 hour retard, then the second tray the next day after a 48 hour retard.

Opening Act cocktail

Pleasantly bitter from the Campari. For each:

2 oz Domaine de Canton
½ oz Campari
½ oz fresh lime juice

Shake with ice and strain into the glass.
We garnished with Irene's dehydrated orange slices.