When I went cruising for ideas, there were a lot of recipes with a fruit sauce. Black currant and red wine was tempting. I've done that with duck and it came out quite nice. After a lot of searching, I found a recipe and promptly forgot to bookmark it. All I could remember is it contained two kinds of whiskey (and I had both some bourbon and a bottle of Seagram's 7 in the cabinet), mushrooms, and cream. After checking that butter & cream were okay to serve my guest, away I went.
Everything that went in the meal:
In the vacuum bag
- 1.5 pounds of boar loan
- Salt
- Pepper
- Lots of fresh thyme
In the sauce:
- 6 oz crimini mushrooms
- One shallot, finely diced
- 1 teaspoon butter
- Bourbon
- Seagram's 7 (a straight whiskey, more on that later)
- Salt
- Pepper
- Thyme
- Cream
- The juices from the sous vide bags
In the oven:
- a 9x9 casserole dish with a layer of cubed rutabaga
- Salt
- Papper
- Olive oil finished with
- 1/2 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
- Parsley
Also on the stove
- 8 ounces trimmed green beans
- these would be blanched in boiling water for about 3 minutes--start testing when they're bright green, then tossed with a little butter & lemon zest.
This is going to get long, but it was so delicious, I forgot to photograph it.
More research was needed before I got started as I've cooked pork loin before, but not boar, which is a bit leaner. If you'd like a good reference for time & temp for pork sous vide, I suggest this page from Serious Eats. Yes, if you keep pork cooking long enough, even at a much lower temperature than you're used to, it will pasteurize just fine. I decided to go for 135 degrees F for two hours. I seasoned the boar with salt & pepper and vacuum-sealed it in a bag with a lot of fresh thyme. Then I got to cutting things up.
I cut up a few small rutabagas into approximately 1-inch (2.6 cm) cubes and set them aside. A little later, I would roast them in olive oil and roast at 425 F (218C, 491K) for about an hour, then toss with a little apple cider vinegar and sprinkle with parsley.
Next up, the slicing of a 6 oz package of crimini (the ones they now call baby bellas) mushrooms, and the fine dicing of a shallot. I threw the mushrooms into a non-stick pan and turned the heat to medium-low.
You might have noticed that I didn't add any oil or butter or any other liquid yet. I forget where I picked this up, but I have learned if you sweat your mushrooms when they are dry, they will give you some delightful liquid and their flavor will also be nicely concentrated. Once the mushrooms were reduced in size by half, I set them aside to melt half a tablespoon of butter in the pan. Once melted, I added the shallot, stirring constantly until it was golden brown. Once I hit that point, I added the mushrooms back in, and then a bit of salt & pepper.
Time for the booze! This recipe would be lovely with cognac, but I was low on it, and I had plenty of bourbon and a big bottle of Seagram's 7. If you aren't familiar with the types of whiskey, you can either borrow one of my favorite people or you can read this quick overview. Either one will be educational, though the human factor is much more entertaining.
I started adding the booze one Tablespoon at a time, tasting here and there. I ended up with a 3:2 ratio of bourbon vs straight whiskey. I added enough to cover the mushrooms, turned the heat down, and added cream to cover, and got the heat down to low. Then I set aside 3 Tablespoons of bourbon & 2 Tablespoons of straight whiskey into a measuring cup.
When the sous vide cooking was done, I cut open the bags, removed the loins to a cooling rack that I had prepped on the counter with paper towels underneath it. The juice from the bags got stirred into the sauce. I gently patted the loins dry with a paper towel and heated some safflower oil in a pan on medium-high until it started smoking.
The loins got seared for a scant minute on each side, then put on a plate and covered with foil to rest. I deglazed the pan with the booze I'd set aside, scraping all the brown bits into the liquid, the poured in the rest of the sauce and turned the heat down.
The beans cooked while the meat rested, which gave me time to pull the neeps out of the oven (I love saying neeps and have it mean something). They got tossed with vinegar and parsely.
From there, it was slice, serve, and enjoy with a bottle of Bordeaux.
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