Pears poached sous vide with ginger

I saw this quick post on Aki and Alex's blog, and it sounded easy and seasonal. Ginger and pear is a good combination. We served it with Point Reyes blue cheese, candied walnuts and port.

2 Bartlett Pears
1 thumb-sized piece of fresh Ginger

2 small slices intense Blue Cheese like Point Reyes
2 small handfuls candied Walnuts

Peel the pears then slice in half (extra points if you can retain a slice of stem in each half); add to sous vide bag.
Grate ginger to extract juice, retaining the fiber; add to bag.
Seal bag, cook sous vide at 83C/180F for 1 hour; chill and fridge until ready to serve.

Pull out the pear halves and put each on a plate.
Top with a bit of the Blue Cheese, garnish with candied Walnuts.
Serve with port.

Bacalao with Idiazábal cream sauce; spinach, pine nuts, prunes

We had this combination of bacalao and Idiazábal cheese -- a surprising combination -- at Restaurant Fonda in the opulent Hotel España in Barcelona; its stuck with me, so we tried to recreate it. Turned out well, but we have some work ahead of us if we're going to have the finesse their chef had.

I searched for this combination of ingredients and it turns out it's not uncommon; we based our dinner on these two recipes, both of which used the classic combination of spinach with pine nuts as a base. The substitution of prunes for typical white raisins was a welcome addition.

2 x 130 g Bacalao loins, without bones, desalted over night in water
    100 g Olive Oil, frozen
1 clove   Garlic, sliced thin
1         Chili pepper, sliced

 25 g Idiazábal cheese
 30 g Cream, heavy, 40% fat

100 g Olive Oil
      Salt
 20 g Pine Nuts
 50 g Prunes, sliced
300 g Spinach

Freeze the Olive Oil so it won't get sucked into the vacuum sealer, add it with the Bacalao loins,  Garlic and Chili in a sous vide bag and cook 20 minutes at 55C/135F. Hold until ready to plate.

Grate the Idiazábal cheese fine and add to Cream, heat very gently until melted together.

Toast the Nuts in Oil and Salt until starting to brown, add Prunes and sautee a little, then add Spinach and cook down. Hold until ready to Plate.

Open the bag and strain the liquid from the Bacalao.
Plate the Spinach mixture, lay on the Bacalao loins, then sauce with the cheese cream, and garnish with the cooked chili and garlic (warning: the garlic will be fierce, as it's not really cooked).
Serve.

This worked pretty well: the spinach base was a classic combination, the bacalao stood up to the cheese sauce. Next time, however, we might want to take more care of the cheese sauce as it had a grainy texture -- this might have been due to too-quick heating, or maybe I just need to strain it (although that will be difficult with such a thick intense sauce).