Sous Vide Makes it Better: Two Curries

I haven't made a lot of "new" dishes lately, but something I do a lot of is re-making things I've made before, only switching the cooking method over to sous vide.  I tried this with two curries last week, and was incredibly happy (for different reasons) with both dishes...  The first dish was Beef Rendang with Roti Canai.

This recipe is pretty easy to make as written, but (while cooking the meat until falling-apart tender) you run into that problem of having to cook the meat to super-well-done.  I thought it might be fun to go with a 48-hour sous vide braise instead of a 3-hour high-oven braise and see what happened... 

The other effort-saving change I made to the recipe this time was to make a spice paste from the above ingredients using a food processor instead of a mortar and pestle...  The first time I made the dish I went the "proper" route, smashing everything to a paste in small batches for approximately forever...  This time I went ahead and just chucked it all (other than the candlenuts and nutmeg) into a food processor.  Because the nutmeg doesn't get fully ground in the food processor (which I learned from experience a few years ago...) and you don't want big hunks of nutmeg in any given bite, the nutmeg and candlenuts went into a spice grinder before being incorporated into the paste...

To make up for the fact that you don't get evaporation when braising sous vide, I simmered the spice paste, coconut milk, curry leaves, lime leaves, and lemongrass for a few hours on their own until quite reduced...

This curry base is then chilled overnight until ready to combine with the beef the next day... The beef was cut into cubes, salted, and lightly blow-torched...

... then tossed with the curry base (from which I had removed the larger pieces of lemongrass and lime leaves).

I divided this into 3 vacuum bags (each containing 3-4 servings of beef rendang),

then cooked sous vide at 140 degrees for 48 hours, until flavorful, super-tender, and incredibly delicious...

The sous vide benefit comes not from convenience (it's technically a bit more time-consuming, I suppose), but from the fact that your beef comes out absolutely gorgeous...

The second dish was a Kerala-style Curried Calamari.  This is a dish that lends itself quite well to sous vide for two reasons.  The first is that the original cooking method already involves making the sauce (which can be done in advance) and then briefly cooking the protein in it, so you don't have to worry about mimicking evaporation, etc... The second is that calamari is amazing when cooked sous vide, and the method takes away the pressure of carefully trying not to overcook the calamari...

I made the curry base exactly as in the recipe, then chilled overnight.  Because the dish was just for me, I divided my sliced thick calamari tubes among 6 bags (each also containing two bird chilies, sliced down the middle to release their spicy goodness).

I had read over at Ideas in Food about cooking calamari sous vide at 138°F for 3 hours, and I saw no reason not to attempt the same for my calamari swimming in a beautiful Kerala-style curry sauce...

My curry was a less vibrant red from the beginning this time (which may be related to having to use frozen instead of fresh turmeric?), but the flavor was incredible.  The calamari has more time to absorb the flavors of the curry when cooked for 3 hours rather than for 2 minutes, and it comes out incredibly tender.  As a bonus, by re-therming (re-heating in a sous vide bath with the same temperature at which it was originally cooked) the curry instead of re-heating by a more traditional method, the calamari stays tender and amazing in your leftovers, as well.

I tend to cook everything sous vide that possibly can be cooked sous vide (because I enjoy playing with the technique if for no other reason).  These two curries represented two of the major benefits of the method, and were a fun experiment in modifying "normal" recipes to sous vide...  Looking forward to figuring out what to experiment with next...