Spec me a fancy sous-vide meal

[Scam]

Alright guys. Normally wouldn't post a request like that but we've invited some good friends round for dinner next week and the guy is a big cooking enthusiast like me. He's actually started doing courses and the like.. I want to do something in the sous vide because I don't believe he has one (yet) -- but I know he's been learning about traditional french-style cooking so I'd like to stick to that. Or British-style, you know what I mean

I was going to do a chicken roulade because I've done that once and it blew my mind as to how good a generic chicken breast could be. But the sort-of sauce that goes with chicken is mostly always going to be creamy (?) and they try to avoid dairy.

Perhaps I should go a bit more interesting, I was looking at a sous vide duck leg recipe on Great British Chefs. Something that lends itself well to a red wine sauce perhaps, maybe venison? Any other roulade I could do?

tldr; looking for inspiration for a "cheffy" sous vide dish to impress friends

 

[SoliD]

Beef Wellington!

 

[Scam]

I'm tempted, but I've not done it before and that's the sort of recipe I might want to try first lol. I'm happy to try something complicated, they are good friends so if it all goes wrong we'll just have a laugh... I don't know, I was sort of saving the welly recipe...

EDIT: Mind you a venison wellington is mighty tempting...

 

[SoliD]

Lamb Roast always works well sous vide for something simpler.

 

[Participant]

Halibut with braised cockles, pan-roasted scallops, and a white wine and butter sauce.

 

[Scam]

Beef Wellington!

Which sv recipe would you recommend?

Halibut with braised cockles, pan-roasted scallops, and a white wine and butter sauce.

Sounds lovely but I'd rather do a meat main (and I know they have bottles of red to get rid of!)

 

[Scam]

So, its going to be a venison wellington with celeriac puree and rainbow carrots. Perhaps a side of kale because my girlfriend wants some green veg. Oh and a port sauce. Let's hope I can pull this off

I went to the butchers and a 1kg venison loin was £52!! The girlfriend said "no ****ing way" (she's from Yorkshire, lol) so the guy suggest a 'thick' which he explained as a sort-of rump cut.

So, my question is that the venison loin recipe was only 2hrs at 52c but do you thin the rump should be given a bit longer perhaps? He said it's not fatty either, but I was wodnering if some additional time might be useful to render any of that out. Hmn...

 

[Hodders]

It always surprised me when people get upset at the cost of good ingredients.

I bought a whole Hereford fillet. About £70. Gave up about 10 awesome 40mm thick steaks plus the trai.

That's £7 per steak. You'd pay £25 for the same thing in a restaurant. Bargain.

 

[Participant]

Gave up about 10 awesome 40mm thick steaks plus the trai.

What's a trai?

 

[Hodders]

Tail

 

[Participant]

Outcome @Scam?

 

[Scam]

Outcome @Scam?

Well, the wellington itself was a complete success. But what we hadn't figured was that looking at the 1kg rump cut of venison was all well and good, but once made into a wellington and put on the plate, it took about half the plate so it certainly wasn't as fancy-looking as I'd intended. It was quite funny actually. A huge hunk of meat each.

That said, it was cooked very rare which was gorgeous (besides the bit of sinew running through the rump, which you wouldn't get on the fillet). Everyone was very impressed. My parsnip puree was awesome, the port and cranberry sauce was nice but not as unctuous as I'd hoped for (also should have sieved it). The sous-vide carrots were a bit disappointing, I cooked them at a lower temp than most SV recipes but they still came out quite soft which was annoying.

So, taste-wise it was all excellent but looks-wise perhaps not so much. And because of that and the stress of dishing up* I didn't get any pics But it really didn't look worthy of a pic, lol.

*The rump was so big it was quite tough to carve neatly whilst keeping as a welly.