So, what happens when a chef gets a call at 6:00am because one of his first shift cooks called out sick and the others are running late. Well, if that chef is Gordon Ramsey, he might give his cook a real reason to call out sick. If he's not, then the reality of keeping a job, paying his bills, and feeding his family will probably cause him to restrain those primal urges just a bit.
Anyway, another thing he might do (if he also has to work the pm shift) is seize this golden opportunity to do some "slow and low" cooking. Since I just happen to be the afore mentioned chef, I took some venison osso bucco that we had just pulled from dead stock in the freezer a day ago. I placed each shank piece in a cryovac bag along with a green apple quarter, whole shallot, minced rosemary, our own cardamom pomme spice, a pinch of Maldon sea salt, telicherry peppercorn, a splash of demi, and some of the breakfast cook's bacon drippings. The bags were sealed under vacuum.
Unfortunately, our kitchen doesn't have any thermocirculators to poach the meat in a water bath at a constant temperature. What we do have, however, is a full-size Alto-Shaam combi oven in our banquet kitchen that just happened to be free for the entire day! I placed the sous-vide bags in perforated pans and placed them in the combi on steam at 160ºF for approximately 14 hours.
Ok, what to do for 14 hours now? First thing to do is finally drink that cup of coffee. Second thing is to deal with all of the problems of the day until you can run your special that night...
sous-vide venison shank with rosemary pomme spice apple over cocoa mascarpone spätzle!!!
Not quite Grandma's pot roast, but then Grandma didn't own a vacuum sealer.
