Mark Miller: evaluation

Transcript context

…The sous-vide revolution: how do you feel about this? I’ve been working with it a long time. I worked with American Airlines in the ’80s and ’90s, I worked with Cuisine Solutions. It is an amazing technique, and it tends to be overused by chefs who believe that a perfect texture is preferable to a more complex uneven. Now, actually that’s wrong, because the brain doesn’t know what it is. It knows what it’s not. The key to teaching flavor is not teaching what that ingredient is, it’s teaching what it’s not. If I have a sous-vide piece of lamb, and it’s not crusted, and it’s not browned, and there’s no Maillard — when you look at lamb, and it has rosé of 50 percent, it will start darker [around the outside]. It will be more Maillard-y, it will be cooked. The brain, then, has four, five different perceptional zones to actually understand and appreciate and differentiate. A sous-vide piece of lamb that’s pink all the way through, with one texture, with no Maillarding, and no flavor of the lamb developed, because it never went high enough — it actually wouldn’t be lamb-y enough, and it will taste like a lamb piece of bubblegum or a sponge. I use interrupted sous vide. I do a Chinese squab. I used to brine it for 48 hours with 14 spices, mainly cumin and chiles to get it all the way through the squab, then roast it, and then deep fry it like the Chinese. I found that by sous-viding it, they went in for 24 hours. Then I cook it sous vide at a different, higher temperature, even after it’s been brined. Then I deep fry it. I find that that, what I call interrupted sous vide, as a technique — you get intensity while preserving some freshness. Let’s say that I did scallops, and I do them sous vide. My scallops are cooked for exactly 18 minutes, and with a wine dinner, I want to match the chamomile in a sauvignon blanc. How do I do that? I actually put in some fresh chamomile with the scallops, cook it sous vide, and the aromatic profile goes through. I do a tostada, do this and that, and that sauvignon blanc with that is amazing. [laughs] What is the biggest mistake that people make when they go into a southwestern restaurant and sit down and order?…

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