The technique has been in the pipeline for awhile--one forerunner is the boil-in bag mom used to put veggies on the table--but has only recently attracted top chefs. One is Thomas Keller, famed chef-proprietor of The French Laundry and Per Se. His mightily sized, gorgeously produced Under Pressure explores each inch of sous vide, counting the ramifications of utilizing this precision-cooking technique (one time time and temperature are established, excellent outcomes follow automatically) on the craft of cooking, which has always meant a potentially rewarding engagement together with the possibility of failure.
The book makes no bones concerning being addressed to professionals. Typical recipes, like Marinated Toy Box Tomatoes together with Compressed Cucumber-Red Onion Relish, Toasted Brioche, and Diane St. Claire Butter, involve multiple preparations and dernier cri ingredients, and like so resist home duplication. There’s in addition the matter of the pricey equipment necessary--chamber vacuum packers and temperature-maintaining immersion circulators--not to mention the precautions necessary to ensure this foods, usually cooked at low temps, are safe to eat.
What the book does propose the home cook is, however, thrilling. It introduces something new under the sun--an exciting, transformative technique of excellent potential. Anyone interested in food and cooking--not to mention lovers of extraordinarily well produced books--will would like to explore Under Pressure. --Arthur Boehm