This is a personal independent projects, I want to try food photography, based on a column I’ve seen before. The cuisine this time is the Pineapple and Apple with Honey Lemon Sauce by Alain Passard and Sousvide Chicken Thighs from Chefsteps. Speaking about the Chefsteps, this website was a beginning guide for me of the modernist cuisine with Nathan Myhrvold’s Modernist Cuisine, I am highly recommend it, even though I can’t make most of their receipts.
This project was done by Sony A7RIII I get from my firend, the efficiency of digital photography is just on another level.
This photo was created by compositing photos with PS, referencing this one.
The receipt is from this video, it is a petty simple one. The only key is to make the honey sauce: mix honey, lemon juice and olive il in a 2:1:4 ratio then blend until it emulsifies into a thick consistency, that’s all. Paring it with apple slices and pineapple would helps neutralize the think texture of the sauce, I also added some zest of lime. The sauce I have here didn’t mix wel because I spent too much time to set everything up after I finish it, so make eveything when you want to eat.
The sousvide chicken thigh is also an easy cuisine, it just request you buy one sousvide machine. As a person who purchased 3 Anova, Joule, which is from Chefstep’s team would be a much better option for family cooking, I have heard that this machine has a very low request for water level, which might be the most importnat thing for sousvide machine.
Sousvide Chicken Thigh
- Remove the bone from skin on thigh, do not use skinless thigh just because they are boneless. If you don’t eat skin then just eat breat, it is the essence of this cuisine. The bone can collect to make stock.
- Season the thigh with paper and salt, about 1%of thigh.
- Put seasoned thigh into the water bath bag, add oil and thyme; I added some crushed garlic for extra flavor. Make sure the skin is not covered by anything or folded; this matters for how this cuisine looks in the end.
- If you do not have a vacuum seal machine (which I highly recommend for every family cook), use water displacement method.
- water bath at 65 °C for 45 min.
- Take thigh out to a paper towel, make it dry gently.
- Heart a skillet with medium fire, add the thigh skin side down without oil, the fat between skin and meat will melt out. cook the thigh about 2 mins untill the skin looks brown.
Sweet potato Puree
- Remove the skin of the sweet potato.
- Steam the sweet potato to soft which you can easily insert a folk into the potato, this may need about 30-45 mins.
- Prepare 100g water, 100g butter and 5g salt for each 500g sweet potato we get in the last step, blend them to smooth.
- Use a sieve to filter any possible big parts in the puree.
To assemble, put the Puree on the plate and use the back of a spoon to make it cover evenly; put 1 kale over the Puree, and the rest around the Puree, cut the kale if it is too big, make sure you can still see the Puree under the kale; Thigh should be finished cooking at this moment, put it over the kale, and add some lemon juice. That’s it.
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