Under Pressure, Cooking Sous Vide

Vacuum packed

Peter Tempelhoff explains why a book on sous vide cooking is not just for professionals.

A cookbook hasn't truly inspired me in years. You either find great food shots and little substance, or poor images with fantastic recipes - very rarely do you get both.

Which is why I regularly tell my colleagues that Under Pressure, Cooking Sous Vide by Thomas Keller (Artisan: 2008) is one of the greatest cookbooks published in a decade.

A must-read for food enthusiasts, it explains its subject in beautiful, explicit detail as it demystifies the intricacies of a fairly technical cooking advancement, developed over the past four decades in Europe and America. The book is riddled with simple but elegant recipes, striking food shots and very helpful temperature and time tables.

It is the first in-depth, English-language cookbook about "sous vide" cooking, a technique which sees food vacuum-packed in a plastic bag and cooked at very low temperatures in a controlled water bath until it is perfectly done.

Keller justifies his belief that this relatively new discovery is one of the most important culinary innovations of modern times, on par with the invention of the food processor and gas stove; it is like bringing frying into a world where only baking existed, "the beginnings of a revolution in cooking...".

Keller, one of the world's leading chefs, has restaurants in California (The French Laundry) and New York (Per Se), with the latter being voted the best in America. His first book - The French Laundry - gained instant acclaim among critics and was elevated to biblical status by devout culinary professionals needing inspiration in the '90s. It is still highly regarded as one of the great cookbooks, read in reverence by many, even a decade on.

The introduction to Under Pressure is for me the most fascinating and important part, as it explores different aspects of sous vide cooking, including its history, the theory behind it and most notably the safety aspects.

As Keller explains, this technique is not without its perils: if incorrectly practised, the low temperatures can be a recipe for the disastrous bacterial quartet of botulism, e-coli, salmonella and listeria!

But Keller also describes the benefits of sous vide for an array of different items, from fish, seafood and meat to fruits and vegetables, and reveals the non-cooking techniques - whereby the raw nature of a fruit or vegetable is compressed into a "meaty" version, its very essence changed almost unrecognisably (an example is the Compressed Watermelon, a play on steak tartare, served with a "yolk" of Hayden Mango...).

The book then opens up to an array of brilliant images: food trapped in sous vide bags, still-life shots in a haunting blackand- white style, and masterly crafted dishes (most of which are photographed against a black background - ensuring that the food's colours or details leap out).

All of these images are flanked by recipes which are creative, intriguing and well executed. The methods are simple to understand and have been clearly broken down into dish components, making preparation easy and quite logical.

Thomas Keller is a predominantly "ingredient- based" chef, meaning that his food is simply more "natural" than many of the world's other top chefs.

He is not out there to "wow" with mind-bogglingly complicated and almost unreal food, but rather relies on acquiring the best ingredients, keeping them simple, and giving his customers an end product which looks and tastes like it should - and cooking sous vide enhances this.

This is one of the main reasons his books are so accessible to professional and non-professional chefs alike. Keller takes a relatively new and somewhat technical method of cooking and simplifies it, making this book a definite must have for all cooks and coffee tables. I love it!

Peter Tempelhoff is executive chef of hotel group The Collection by Liz McGrath (The Cellars-Hohenort, The Marine and The Plettenberg).