The Cooking Sketchbook #1 | Slow cooked lamb shoulder and roast potatoes

Sous vide is a cooking method that has become popular very recently which I have also started experimenting. In essence, it is just a long water bath for your protein (or any food) to be cooked at certain temperature. But boi, who knew that this 0.1C accuracy did made all the difference? I'm exaggerating a bit here, but the preciseness does do a lot of good.

To celebrate my birthday, I've decided to cook a portion of lamb shoulder that has been sitting in my freezer for pretty much half a year. The ice cold blunt instrument was promptly put into a ziplock bag along with salt and pepper, couple of sprigs of rosemary, juniper and some butter. Classical set-up it is, and 58C (136F) for 48 hours it goes. After that it's just some searing to create those Millard goodness. Should I tell you the meat was just so tender that I was even struggling to slice a complete piece out for plating?

To make the sauce, I simply sautéed some onion and garlic, then poured in some Port. It probably would have been a good idea to pour in some cognac to intensify the richness and counter the sweetness of the Portuguese wine too, but there was none left in the cupboard. Reduce by 2/3, add in cooked jus, and reduce by 1/2 again. Finally, mix in some butter. Again, nothing fancy.

I never really managed to find evidence to prove that adding alkaline substance helps cooking the perfect roast potato, but this J. Kenji López-Alt's guide has proved to be a damn good one empirically. Sometimes I wonder whether I became a competitive eater. That's because, it seems that no matter how many of those potatoes I make, I still somehow manage to finish them in one sitting. This time I ate three. Follow it, and you won't regret it. Just as Heston Blumenthal hinted, it's important to take them as far as possible, just don't boil them into a potato soup.

Happy cooking.