Remember back in April when we told you that Gabriel Bremer of Cambridge’s Salts had been named on of the Best New Chefs of 2007 by Food & Wine Magazine? Well, the issue acclaiming Chef Bremer, along with nine other chefs from across the country, is finally on newsstands and online. Readers can learn how to make Bremer’s chilled peaches with arborio rice pudding and cinnamon churros and read a very nice profile of the chef.
Bremer’s entire profile is great reading, but we were most intrigued by his fascination with the immersion circulator. An immersion circulator, for those of you who don’t obsessively follow trends in kitchen gadgetry, is a device that keeps water swirling at a modestly warm temperature, enabling the chef to cook food very slowly in the liquid. “But wait!” you say. “Wouldn’t the food fall apart in all that water?” Oh you, so clever! The food doesn’t fall apart in the water because it’s (wait for it) vacuum-sealed in plastic bags in a technique called sous-vide (in a moment of proof that everything sounds better in French, the term simply means “vacuum-packed”).
Food cooked sous-vide emerges from its warm bath flavorful and, as Slate’s Sara Dickerman puts it, “uncannily tender.” Since immersion circulators are wildly expensive, it’s a difficult technique for home cooks to master, but fortunately, we have chef sous-vide devotees like Bremer to create dishes for us.
Salts [MenuPages]
Salts [Official Site]
Best New Chefs 2007: Gabriel Bremer [Food & Wine]
Thermal Immersion Circulator [Wikipedia]
The Joy of Cooking with Plastic Bags [Slate]
