Grey hardboard binding with black title and author on the front board.

We provide an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available

• Note: This book carries a £5.00 discount to those that subscribe to the F.B.A. mailing list

For conditions, please view our photographs. A nice clean rare original book from the library gathered by the famous Cambridge Don, computer scientist, food and wine connoisseur, Jack Arnold LANG. 

Jack founded the Michelin Guide ‘Midsummer House’- Cambridge’s paramount restaurant. This dining experience is hidden amongst the grassy pastures and grazing cattle of Midsummer Common and perched on the banks of the River Cam.      

THIS IS A BOOK FOR PROFESSIONALS

Viktor Stampfer is a very experienced German chef who currently works in Dubai. He has been working with the Sous Vide process for many years and his book is a collection of some of his best recipes. These recipes will be of interest to professional chefs and high end gourmets. This book will be of less interest to those who do not have access to vacuum sealers and hot water recirculating baths.

Sous Vide is the hot trend with professional chefs. Stamfer’s book, like Thomas Keller’s recent book on Sous Vide cooking, best demonstrates the great divide between the world of chefs and the food processing industry. Chefs mistakenly believe Sous Vide cooking is a new cooking technique that originated in France in the early 1980’s. The reality is the meat industry has been cooking in hot water baths for many decades. The only thing that is really new is the small hot water recirculating machines that have in the last few years become available to chefs.

The danger with the Sous Vide process is the potential for the growth of pathogens. There is a serious issue specifically with Botulism toxins which are thermophilic and thrive in an anaerobic environment. Both Stampfer and Keller are aware of these dangers but they do not do an adequate job of explaining the essential combination of time and temperature that reduce the threat from these pathogens. They are great chefs but are out of their depth when it comes to explaining the food science of Sous Vide cooking. Any chef interested in Sous Vide cooking would be well advised to check out the mathematician Douglas Baldwin’s web site on Sous Vide cooking. It is the single best place to learn about the time and temperatures that are so essential to keeping Sous Vide cooking safe.

NOTE: Sous vide (French for ‘under vacuum’), also known as low-temperature, long-time (LTLT) cooking, is a method of cooking invented by the French chef Georges Pralus in 1974, in which food is placed in a plastic pouch or a glass jar and cooked in a water bath for longer than usual cooking times (usually one to seven hours, and more than three days in some cases) at a precisely regulated temperature.

The temperature is much lower than usually used for cooking, typically around 55 to 60 °C (130 to 140 °F) for red meat, 66 to 71 °C (150 to 160 °F) for poultry, and higher for vegetables. The intent is to cook the item evenly, ensuring that the inside is properly cooked without overcooking the outside, and to retain moisture.