Puerco Tonnato sous vide

We made a Vitello Tonnato, cooking the beef sous vide, and it turned out well but wasn't quite the right cut. While searching for other cuts, we found a pork tenderloin that looked like a great shape. While unconventional, it turned out well and is worth repeating. Nothing in this recipe requires precision except the sous vide temperature: it resulted in a beautiful pink texture while being cooked through.

Garnished with red bell, capers

The Pork came in a cryovac bag (wet cured) had only a little "meat diaper" in the bag, which is food-safe, so we cooked it right in its bag. The Tonnato sauce was basically a home made mayonnaise with intense flavors folded in. We used a mixture of oils from some smoked salmon and anchovies packed in oil, but you can use a mix of olive oil and lighter vegetable oil to prevent it being too heavy.

This amount seemed at first to be too much for a two person dinner, but we polished it off: we were ravenous after our 10 Km (6 mile) walk from Montjuïc Castle back to our apartment.

500 g  Pork Tenderloin, in its cryovac bag
  1    Egg Yolk, room temperature
 15 ml Lemon Juice
  5 ml Dijon Mustard
       Oil (olive and sunflower)
 20 g  Capers
  2    Anchovies, salt-packed
104 g  Tuna packed in olive oil, with its oil (2 small cans)

Cook the Pork in its bag at 58C (136F) for 2 hours; this is low enough to keep it pink, and long enough to heat through the 5cm thickness of the cylindrical meat.

Put the bagged pork in an ice bath in the fridge to drop temperature; once chilled, you can leave it like this until you're ready to prep and serve.

Remove Pork, wipe dry, wrap in film, and freeze for an hour to make it easier to slice cleanly.

Sear in a ripping hot cast iron pan filmed with some oil and salt, and hit the top with a Searzall torch if you've got one.

Remove and slice thinly.

Let return to room temperature.

Kullenschliff knife made for clean slices

Whisk Egg Yolk and Lemon Juice with a stick blender and whisk; whisk in Mustard.

While whisking, drizzle in the oil until you have a thick Mayonnaise -- don't make it too thin.

Combine Capers, Anchovies, and Tuna and its oil, and whiz with a in a mini-food processor to a mush.

Fold the zesty, salty mush into the mayonnaise.

We plated out red endives, topped with the Tonatto sauce, then added the Pork, and garnished with thinly sliced red bell peppers and caper berries. 

White wine worked fine with this

What Worked, Improvements for Next Time...

The Pork could have been more firm for even slices, but it was tender enough that it sliced cleanly with my good kullenschliff knife.

If we didn't have pre-bagged pork, I would salt it before bagging and cooking -- our unseasoned pork really benefitted from the hit of salt. 

The Tonatto sauce pooled on the plate; next time, lay out the endive base and pork, use a squirt bottle to dress the pork with the sauce, so it's more attractive and evenly applied; then garnish as you like.

My garnishes still appear a bit heavy, perhaps a finer dice would be more appealing.

Some grilled bread would go really well with this, and provide a balancing starch.

Seaweed Pasta #2 with dried wakame

I made pasta with fresh seaweed recently, but it wasn't a success: the wet seaweed reduced the structure of the pasta too much. This time I tried dried seaweed, like Maria Finn posted in 2014: it worked quite well, though the flavor wasn't as dramatic as I'd hoped -- something to amp up next time. The sauce we improvised was really tasty and also worth repeating.

Seaweed pasta with anchovy butter sauce, with stuffed squid

This makes enough for two dinners for two people as a substantial side. We froze half of the pasta so we can make a quick dinner later. 

100 g Flour

100 g Semolina Flour

  2   Eggs (103 g without shells)

 20 g Wakame dried Seaweed

I pulverized the Dried Wakame in a coffee/spice grinder and passed it through a sieve because I didn't want large chunks to absorb water and interfere with the structure of the pasta; it gave me about 3 Tbs of powder.

The pasta is made fairly conventionally: whisk Flours, add pulverized Wakame, make a well, then whisk in eggs. 

When it gets too stiff, knead on a counter to bring it all together. 
I had to add a few drops of water to make it workable and collect all the flour. 
Wrap in film and refrigerate a couple hours or overnight to hydrate.

It turned out pretty stiff and I didn't need to add flour to run it through the Atlas pasta roller/cutter; it was a little too dry and threatened to crack, but worked well enough. 

Dust the rolled sheets and cut into fettuccini, let rest on cloth while assembling a sauce.

I wanted to feature the fishiness so I made a simple but rich sauce, but you could use anything you like; this amount was enough for the half-portion of pasta made above.

 25 g Anchovies from a jar, minced

 55 g Butter, softened

  7 g Parsley, minced

1/4   Preserved Lemon (home made), minced

Use a fork to mush the Anchovies with the Butter, Parsley,  and Lemon.

Boil the Pasta until al dente, drain.

Add the Sauce to the hot pot, then the Pasta, and gently toss to coat.

We served this with Squid stuffed with Shrimp that our grocery store made (living in Barcelona has its perks!).

The Pasta texture was great, it never threaten to fall apart like the one with fresh seawead: the Wakame didn't absorb water like I feared.  

I failed to pay attention to its flavor before saucing (sorry!) but the combination with the buttery/fishy sauce was great.

Next time: Amp up the seaweed taste with twice the Wakame; add a bit more of water to make the dough more pliable. Back out the butter just a bit in the sauce, maybe 50 g. Higher quality, more flavorful anchovies would be better, now that we know the sauce works well.

That sauce really is good, it could go on almost anything: baked potatoes, vegetables, fish, even good toast. I hope I can get a pasta with enough seaweed intensity to do it justice! 

Gâteau Basque #2

I made Gâteau Basque once before with an unusual technique that required piping the base and top in a spiral; it was a nuisance but I see Spanish Sabores does it the same way. This time, I want to avoid that fuss and make a more standard pastry top and bottom, like NY Times (paywall) and Serious Eats do; like Serious Eats, I'll fill with both jam and pastry cream; I've got an excess of marmalade so I'll use that instead of traditional black cherry. Here in Barcelona, I don't have my old stand mixer, so I'll make the pastry by hand, as shown in this traditional preparation video which I found on the Fête du Gâteau Basque official site, and also this video with clear quantities and technique. I'm starting from the Serious Eats recipe, including their Pastry Cream.

When I made this, I let the Pastry butter warm up, and was not able to get the sandy texture -- it congealed. But I chilled it and reworked a bit later, and it still turned out well.  My cake pan has a 20 cm (8 inch) interior with 4 cm steep sides, and 24 cm across at the top. The quantities of Pastry and fillings below worked well for this. The Almond "flour" is actually very finely ground almonds, not as fine as wheat flour. 

Pastry

250 g      Flour

 50 g      Almond "Flour"

150 g      Sugar

  4 g      Baking Powder [I had only 3.2g]

pinch      Salt

210 g      Butter, unsalted, cold, cut into 1cm cubes

  1 large  Egg (50g [mine was 59 g]), cool

In a large bowl, whisk Flour, Almond Flour, Baking Powder, Salt, and Sugar.

Mix in half the cubed Butter, and rub the butter into the flour; add the rest of the Butter, and continue rubbing in to get a sandy texture; see the video for clear technique.

Add 1 Egg, and again mix by hand, then knead into a smooth ball; it should be soft and sticky.

Divide in two portions, one slightly larger than the other for the bottom; shape into flat disks, wrap each in plastic wrap, and refrigerate 3 hours or overnight.

Pastry Cream

455 g      Whole Milk

           Orange Zest from one Orange (microplane)

115 g      Sugar

 30 g      Cornstarch

pinch      Salt

  4        Egg Yolks (70g)

 30 g      Butter, unsalted, cold, cut into 1cm cubes

2.5 ml     Vanilla Extract (1/2 tsp)

Infuse Orange Zest in Milk by combining in a pot, bring to bare simmer, then cover and steep for 30 minutes. Because this is hot, you'll need to temper the egg mixture.

Make an ice bath to chill the Pastry Cream and set aside.

In heatproof bowl, whisk the Sugar, Cornstarch, Salt; whisk in Egg Yolks until smooth, pale yellow, and fluffy -- about 1 minute.

My Infused Milk threatened to separate so I blitzed with a stick blender.
Slowly whisk the warm Infused Milk into the Egg mixture to temper it.

Return to sauce pan, cook over medium heat while whisking continuously until it begins to thicken (at 80C), about 5 minutes. 

Continue whisking, pausing every few seconds to check for bubbles; when they appear, set a timer and whisk continuously for 1 minute; this neutralizes starch-dissolving egg proteins.

Off heat, whisk in butter until melted and thoroughly combined.

Strain through fine sieve into heat proof bowl; I skipped this as I want the fine zest in my filling.

Put film directly on surface to prevent skinning, and transfer to an ice bath  to chill 30 minutes, then refrigerate until cold, about 2 hours or overnight.

Whisk in the Almond (Vanilla) Extract.

Whisking eggs into sugar

Assembly, Baking

200 g      Marmalade, room temperate to ease spreading

  1 large  Egg (50g) for wash

 15 ml     Milk for wash

Preheat oven to 180C (350F).

Grease 20 cm (8 inch) cake pan with butter and hold in refrigerator.

Whisk the Pastry Cream with an electric whisk, egg beaters, or regular whisk to fluff it up.

Remove dough disks from fridge; you'll need to let them warm up for 15-30 minutes so you can roll out the dough.

Spread film or parchment on a counter, then place the larger dough disk it, and cover with film or parchment; roll it out to 28 cm -- enough to cover bottom and sides of cake pan. 

Store covered in film/parchment in fridge while you work on the next one.

Repeat rolling out the smaller disk for the top, rolling to 24 cm between film/parchment; store in fridge.

Remove the larger disk and transfer to greased cake pan, gently pressing into corners, and running it up the sides.

Add Marmalade and smooth out.

Add Pastry Cream and spread evenly on top of the jam.

Remove smaller disk from fridge and transfer to cake pan to cover the filling.

My filling did not come up to the top of the pan, so I pressed the edges of the top to the bottom where it ran up the sides, then folded it over to the center to seal.

Whisk 1 Egg with the 15 ml Milk and brush top.

Use tines of fork to create a traditional diagonal crosshatch pattern.

Use a knife to cut a few small air vents along the crosshatch lines.

Bake 45 minutes at 180C (350F) until cake is puffed and deep golden brown

Let cool completely, about 2 hours.

Loosen edges with a knife, invert, then invert again onto serving platter.

Slice and serve.

Marmalade on bottom, left side; lots of pastry cream on top, crumbly cake-y top

Next Time...

I'll use cold butter for the pastry, as I've corrected in the instructions above.

The bottom is a little wet; can I warm up the jam and spread it on top of the pastry cream?

Bacalao Pil Pil sous vide: streamlined without oil in the bag

We've been making Bacalao Pil Pil in the US for years, and now that we're living in Barcelona, we have easy access to quality Bacalao. We hit upon a couple YouTube videos that streamline our sous vide technique by eliminating the oil from the sous vide bag when cooking the fish so we don't need to separate it from the fish liquid. We've made two variations that are very promising; we're zeroing in on a streamlined technique with terrific results.

There are multiple attempts in this post, scan down to find the latest findings and techniques. Sadly, I didn't take photos for most of these.

Streamlining: no oil in the sous vide bag

This first video (predating my sous vide technique) was done in 2015 and is cooked at 65C for 30 minutes, using the same strainer-in-skillet technique I used to create an emulsion from the exuded fish liquid. In the next, from 2020, the chef cooks at 48C for 20-30 minutes without oil, then drains off the fish elixir and emulsifies it quickly with a stick blender, then adds the 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. The last, from 2021, cooks at 60C for 20 minutes, again without oil. She too drains off the elixir into a cup and creates the emulsion with a stick blender, adding in the garlic-oil to build the sauce.

The temperatures above are 48C, 60C, and 65C; I think 48C (118F) is too low for "cooked" fish, but want to avoid overcooking it, so we'll pick a middling 55C (131F). Times ranged from 20 to 30 minutes, and we'll go with the higher end to make sure our relatively thick loin cuts are cooked through.

Both are portions for two, but the first is a bit meager since you lose some weight to the fish liquid.

First Try: too garlicky

250 g      Bacalao lomo, cut into 2 pieces for serving
  2 clove  Garlic, sliced thin
 80 ml     Extra Virgin Olive Oil

De-salt the Bacalao by washing the salt off, and putting in a bowl of water. Change it twice a day for two days, then once again the morning you're going to cook.

I bagged the Bacalao (without the frozen olive oil I used to use) and cooked sous vide 30 minutes at 55C / 131F. I put the Garlic and Oil in a ziptop bag and put it in the bath as well to infuse the oil and cook the garlic (or not!).

As expected, the fish liquid was easy to pour into the cup of a stick blender; I kept the fish warm in its bag in the bath.

I added the Garlic from the Oil bag and blitzed with with a stick blender. After it turned creamy white, I drizzled in the Oil. I think I added some Salt and that was too much. It didn't thicken as much as I'd like but had a light cream texture like I'd seen in the videos.

Plate the fish, top with the sauce.

Oh, my! That garlic was pretty raw, way too hot and unpleasant even for me; it was also too salty. Clearly, the garlic cannot cook enough in a 55C bag in 30 minutes, let alone the 48C bath the chef used. I would have preferred the sauce a bit thicker, but not as thick as the mayonnaise consistency I'd been making in the US. 

I kept the excess sauce in a baggie in the fridge for a few days for another attempt.

Second Try: tamed garlic, bacalao al punto de sal

I used some frozen Bacalao al Punto de Sal; this is fresh cod that's been brined with "just enough salt", then frozen. It's handy if you haven't planned ahead for the real thing.

360 g  Bacalao al punto de sal, frozen
       Leftover sauce from previous batch with too much garlic and salt

I divided the Bacalao between two bags, sealed, and cooked them sous vide -- again at 55C for 30 minutes. 

The pil pil sauce from the previous batch had gelled in the fridge, probably from the protein or collagen in the fish elixir. To tame the garlic, I cooked it in a small sauce pan on low, whisking occasionally; the texture seemed to stay the same. After a while, I turned up the heat to medium and let it bubble just a bit, and whisked again -- wow, it quickly developed a delightful light mousse-y texture.

I plated and sauced. As expected, this fresh-frozen cod did not have the intriguing funk of salt-cured Bacalao, and the texture seemed a little mushy compared to the real thing.

The sauce was a terrific texture, light and fluffy, not like thin cream nor thick mayonnaise: really great. The garlic had been tamed as desired: still assertive but very edible. It was still too salty but we can fix that next time.

We didn't use the liquid that was exuded from this fish because we didn't need it. I noticed it didn't seem to be a cloudy suspension like salt-cured bacalao provides, but more a separate clear liquid with flecks of white protein mixed through. It also did not turn to gel in the fridge like the salt-cured elixir. I suspect it will not make a creamy emulsion when blended, but it's worth a try.

What we learned, improvements for next time

Garlic cannot be cooked sufficiently in our sous vide temperatures and times. Next time, cook the garlic in oil in a sauce pan on low while the bacalao is in the bath; when cooked (but not browned), remove the garlic and save it to build the emulsion with the fish liquid. Keep the oil warm for the pil pil sauce.

If blitzing the elixir with garlic and drizzling in the oil doesn't make as thick a pil pil sauce as you'd like, heat it in a pan on medium and fluff with a manual whisk. Hold the fish in the bath its bag so it stays warm for service.  Don't add salt to the pil pil sauce, it'll have plenty from the fish.

2024-01-23 Pil Pil Espuma

This version learns from the above and is the simplest yet. However, I used an electric whisk to create the Pil Pil and it fluffed up into an espuma (foam) that was almost identical to whipped egg whites in texture; it was fun and unusual, but too fluffy to be a proper sauce. I think there may other interesting applications, but this veers too far from tradition -- Basque grandmothers would be spinning in their graves if they saw it.  

Pil Pil was an espuma rather than a sauce; served with fried polenta

300 g      Bacalao loin, cut in two pieces

 80 ml     Olive Oil

  2 clove  Garlic, lightly smashed, peeled

Hydrate the Bacalao and desalt over 2-3 days in water, changed daily.

Put the fish in a sous vide bag and seal on "wet" setting so it doesn't squeeze the fish.

Cook sous vide 30 minutes at 55C.

Meanwhile, heat the Garlic in the Oil on very low to extract flavor without browning garlic much.

When the time is up, drain the fish liquid into a stick blender jar; hold the fish in the bag in the hot sous vide bath for service.

Add the Garlic to the blender jar and whip with an electric whisk: it will froth up like a meringue; while whipping, drizzle in the infused Oil -- ours turned became a fluffy espuma rather than a sauce.

Plate the fish and top with the espuma sauce.

Next time, try using the regular stick blender blade rather than the whisk to discourage rabid foaming.

Use a larger weight of fish, this was a bit meager. 

2024-03-25 Blend instead of whisk

I buy a large high-quality Bacalao loin when they're on sale: they keep a long time in the fridge. I cut a 640 g piece in half for this, and the resulting 325 g piece was enough for two people with a large side dish. The pil pil was not an espuma this time, it was creamy after I thickened it a bit over heat.

Bacalao Pil Pil and Black Garlic, with sautéed Artichokes

325 g      Bacalao loin, cut into two serving pieces

 80 ml     Olive Oil

  2 clove  Garlic, peeled, sliced

  2 clove  Black Garlic, sliced, for garnish (optional)

Rehydrate the bacalao, bag and seal it, and cook 30 minutes at 55C.

Meanwhile, heat the Garlic in Oil on very low.

Pour the liquid from the sous vide bag into a stick blender jar with the Garlic and blend.

Drizzle in the Oil while stick blending.

If it's too thin, add it to the pot used for the Oil and whip with a hand whisk until it thicken.

Plate the Bacalao, top with the Pil Pil, garnish with Black Garlic.

I had extra Pil Pil which I put in the fridge. The next day, it firmed up like a mousse and was quite tasty. It made for a fine topping on earthy bread topped with smoked salmon, and I'll use it on Arroz Negro tonight.

Bacallà a 65 amb crema de pequillos (Perelló)

We had this for lunch  at Perelló, a bacalao vendor and excellent cafe in Mercat Ninot. I assumed the bacalao was cooked sous vide at 65C, and then served on a smooth puree of pequillo peppers. My attempt to recreate it at home was disappointing: the pequillo sauce was fine but the fish was too salty, and not at all tender and flaking. I may have under-desalted it (causing the centers to stay stiff), or I may have overcooked it (the fish exuded a lot more white liquid than I expected).  I need to try it again and adjust my technique, because I've done similar sous vide preps for Bacalao Pil Pil and they've come out very well.

For the sauce, I would normally use garlic and oil, but I had left over oil from my super garlicky Toum sauce that I wanted to use up.

A light serving for 2.

250 g Bacalao loin, skin on

225 g drained Pequillo Peppers from a jar

 10 g Extra Virgin Olive Oil

 25 g Toum Oil

  5 g Salt

Cut the Bacalao loin into 2 pieces for serving and de-salt it in a bowl of water for two nights, changing every day.

Dry and put in a sous vide bag and seal.

Cook sous vide for 45 minutes at 65C.

While that's cooking, combine Pequillo Peppers, Oils, and Salt in a vessel and blitz with a stick blender until smooth. Taste and adjust seasoning.

Drain and reserve the white liquid from the Bacalao bag; this should contain protein sufficient to make a Pil Pil sauce when blended with oil.

I seared the skin of the Bacalao portions with a Searzall torch, but don't think this added much; it's not something Perelló did.

Spread some Pequillo sauce on a plate, top with Bacalao.

We served with pan fried potatoes.

Garnish with parsley.

Seaweed Pasta #1

I've been wanting to try adding seaweed to my fresh pasta for a while -- I hoped it would give it a flavor of the ocean and be an interesting color, even if not as intense as my squid ink pasta. This wasn't a big success, and I'll explain why, but I'll try again with a variation.

Seaweed pasta, reduced fish/cream sauce, caviar

The beautiful Mercat de Sant Antoni is a short walk from our place, and vendor Giro sells exotic fruits and vegetables including fresh seaweed. We got a package of mixed seaweeds in light and dark green and an attractive burgundy color.

I soaked it for a bit to remove the salt, then squeezed out all the moisture I could, and blotted with a dish towel (just like you would for spinach), giving me about 125 g of damp seaweed. This wouldn't mix into the pasta as is, so I blended it; it needed some liquid for the blender, so I added the eggs from my normal pasta dough recipe and blended as best as I could.  Then I made the pasta as normal, but had to incorporate a lot more flour to accommodate the additional mass and liquid of the seaweed -- it was a bit of a fuss, actually, to get it to come together. 

125 g Seaweed that's been rinsed and squeezed dried

125 g Eggs (2 XL eggs out of their shells)

100 g Flour

100 g Semolina

 25 g Flour to knead in for consistency

Blend the Seaweed with the Eggs until it's as smooth as possible; I feared that large chunks will break the structure of the pasta so wanted to break it down.

Put the 100 g Flour and Semolina in a bowl and add the blended Seaweed.

Stir and combine with a spatula, then move to a floured counter to knead; I had to add the additional 25 g Flour because the dough was too wet. Knead until fairly smooth, then cover in plastic wrap and let hydrate in the fridge for a few hours. 

This much pasta was enough for two 2-person servings so I cut it in half for our dinner.

Roll and cut into fettuccini with a pasta roller. I usually go down to a size 7 for fettuccini, but stopped at 6 for this because I was concerned about the seaweed breaking the structure of the pasta.

Bring salted water to boil and cook until barely done.

We made a sauce with Irene's fish stock, reduced down to concentrate, then added cream, and reduced further. This didn't thicken quite as much as we wanted, but it tasted great -- rich and full of fishy flavor. We plated the pasta, drizzled the sauce, then topped with a bit of caviar.

The sauce was tasty but the pasta didn't have the flavor of the sea we hoped to get from the seaweed; it certainly wasn't as dramatic -- or rewarding -- as my squid ink pasta.

I froze half the pasta for another night, as I usually do, and this damaged the texture of the pasta when rolling and cooking. I think the freezing broke the cells of the seaweed and caused it to break down, so my pasta turned out ragged. Many vegetables break down when their internal moisture freezes, expands, and explodes the cell walls, so this isn't too surprising -- just disappointing. I've made pasta with chlorophyll and it did not have this structural problem, but that's a lot more difficult to make.

Working with the fresh seaweed was difficult, but I'd try this again with dried seaweed. The only post I found that incorporated seaweed into pasta used dried wakame, kombu, and sea palm, and cautioned that "nori is not the right color and texture". I really like wakame but know that it expands greatly when hydrated, so I'm concerned it might break the pasta.  I plan to pulverize the dried seaweeds in a blender and mix with the flours and eggs. I'm hoping this won't require the addition of so much extra flour, and provide a more intense flavor.

Vitello Tonnato sous vide #1

Vitello Tonnato is an Italian dish: veal served with a tuna-based sauce. I usually find it uninspired but at Bar Eixample in Barcelona we had a fantastic rendition that we wanted to re-create. The uniform pink of the meat suggested sous vide cooking, with the slight brown around the edge indicating a quick sear. We knew we'd have to cook, chill, sear, chill hard, then slice thinly. It came out pretty well, and we have thoughts on improvement and variations at the end. 

Our rendition

Bar Eixample's archetype

We started with an "Estalvi!" (sale!) cut of Vedella. In our grocery in Barcelona, "Vedella" is younger cow (under 18 months?) than "Bou" which is older than 18 months; neither is as pale as the "veal" you can find in the US.  I trimmed out the cut, removing fat and gristle, but I don't know what cut it was -- it was on sale, and we're just experimenting. We don't have our usual vacuum sealer and Searzall torch, so we improvised. 

This served two for a very pleasant lunch.

250 g Vedella, trimmed of fat, sinew, etc

1 Egg Yolk, room temperature

Lemon Juice

Tarragon Mustard

Sunflower Oil

52g Tuna, canned in olive oil

1 Anchovy

Capers

2 Endives, sliced in rounds (you could use Arugula or anything else)

Tomato, peeled, sliced in cubes

Capers

Parsley, chopped

Lemon zest

Cornichon

Pickled White Onion

Olives, black and green

Black Pepper

Vitello:

Cook the Vedella sous vide at 57.2C / 135F for 1 hour: you want it pink inside.

Let cool on the counter to absorb the juices, then chill over night in the fridge.

Heat 2 cast iron pans until smoking.

Thoroughly dry the Vedealla, then put it on one pan and put the other on top to sear both surfaces at once.

Sear for about a minute: you don't want to overcook the inside, just brown and maybe give a crust.

Let cool a bit, bag, then put in the freezer for 30 minutes to firm up for slicing.

Slice as thinly as possible, I was able to get 1-2mm slices.

Seared both sides on cast iron, leaving center rare

Tonnato:

With a stick blender, whisk the Egg Yolk up until frothy, with some Lemon Juice.

Add a dollop of Mustard, continue frothing with the stick blender.

Drizzle in the Oil to form a mayonnaise.

Separately, whiz up the Tuna, Anchovy, Capers then fold into the Mayonnaise; if you want it smooth, whiz them again together.

Plating:

Lay out the Endive rounds on a plate.

Top with some Tonnato.

Slice the now firm Vedalla thinly and arrange gracefully on the Endive bed.

Top with more Tonnato.

Garnish with the Tomato, Capers, Parsley, lemon Zest, Cornichon, Pickled White Onion, Olives.

Add a good grind of Black papper.

Serve with white wine and some good bread or crackers.

This turned out well, a very elegant lunch, without a lot of fuss.

It could easily be scaled up, and almost all of it can be prepared ahead of time.

Next time...

Add some Salt to the Vedella to help the flavor; I understand this is usually contra-indicated for sous vide, but figure the moisture it draws out from the meat will have time to migrate back in, like it does with a dry brine.

Freeze a bit longer, maybe 45-60 minutes, to firm up and make thin slicing easier.

Add another Anchovy and maybe a bit more Tuna to boost flavor.

The presentation at Bar Eixample indicated a cylindrical muscle like a loin; we should seek out other cuts.  Ours, cooked, had a taste and texture like properly cooked American Roast Beef; the Bar's was more lightly colored and less pronounced flavor, as if from a younger animal.

We could try other meats: pork loin would be the right shape, we can find lamb here easily, even turkey could work; we'd have to experiment to see what temperatures give us a good color and texture.

Samfaina amb Bacalao: Easter dish of salt cod with stewed vegetable sauce

Samfaina is a classic Catalan dish of stewed eggplant with a sofrito of onion, garlic, and grated tomato; it's frequently a side dish to meats, or used as a sauce, as we do here. Ratatouille is a more famous French version, but Claudia Roden and makes the case that this preparation of vegetables originated in Spain, since the Arabs introduced the eggplant to the Iberian peninsula long ago; both she and Coleman Andrews point out that peppers and tomatoes came from Spain's conquest of the "new world" and were widely used here before they appeared in French cooking. 

I'm drawing from Coleman Andrews book "Catalan Cuisine" for both Samfaina and a chef's take on Bacalao amb Samfaina. Claudia Roden's recipe in "The Food of Spain" is similar, but she adds the vegetables in stages. Directo al Paladar has a recipe including bacalao that is detailed with pictures. Many recipes include zucchini, but Roden doesn't like that version, and I don't think it adds much.

The red bell peppers we get in Barcelona are huge, compared to the green/red bells we got in the US. The eggplant I got here looks like a smaller version of the "globe" version in the US, but I think any variety (including slender Japanese) would work fine. Proportions are approximate, below is the weight of the veggies I had on hand. 

Bacalao on Samfaina, with white beans and crunchy breadcrumbs

This serves 2 but you'll probably have extra samfaina; keep it to serve with other dishes.

 50 ml     Extra Virgin Olive Oil, as needed

150 g      Onion (1 medium), chopped

  4 cloves Garlic, minced

330 g      Eggplant (1 medium), skin on, 1-2 cm dice

240 g      Tomatoes (4 medium), grated or chopped

300 g      Red Bell Pepper (1 large), skin on, seeded, 1-22 cm dice

250 g      Bacalao, hydrated 2 days to desalinate, skinned

           Flour

           Olive Oil

Heat the Oil on medium with some Salt, add Onions, cook covered for a few minutes.

Add Garlic.

When onions are soft, add Peppers and Eggplant; add Oil if needed.

Cook covered on medium for 30-40 minutes.

Uncover, increase heat a bit, cook until liquid has evaporated, stirring occasionally.

Add Tomatoes, continue cooking uncovered, until liquid evaporates again and vegetables are very soft, probably another 20 minutes. 

Season with Salt and Pepper.

Dry Bacalao thoroughly, cut into 2 serving size pieces; dust each with flour then sauté in a small amount of Oil on all sides until golden-brown. 

Add on top of the Samfaina, cover, cook on low until fish is cooked through.

Serve by spooning out some Samfaina onto plates and top with Bacalao.