Sous Vide Recipes: Whole Beetroot with Ginger, Pumpkin Seeds & Sesame Oil

Last Friday's conversation with a colleague:

"Hey, do you want some beetroot?" There was loads of beetroot.

Me: "OK, what will I do with all of it?"

"Sous Vide it." I'll think about that, chef.

My adventures with beetroot were limited up to now. Just an addition to salad, sometimes grated to make a dip. So the suggestion to sous vide it by @itsachefslife sent my imagination sailing. I had made a quiet decision that I preferred sous vide-ing food items which don't have their own oils or fats such as fish, lean meat, vegetables and fruit. The controlled slow poaching seals in the little juices they have and concentrates them. With conventional cooking things like duck legs or pork bellies hold their own, they have enough jelly to keep self-basting. But with our beets, sous vide turns their deep fuchsia flesh into some kind of wonderful.

Sous Vide Recipes: Sambal Salmon with Lime & Thai Basil

After a long hard slog of a year to move into the food industry full time, it's time for a blog post. It's been emotional and exciting but so far so good and there's no looking back. Experimenting with cool foodie gadgets comes with the territory and this week I've been testing out the Sous Vide Supreme, darling of the slow cooking and poaching world.

My mind got thinking to Chinese and South East Asian cooking techniques that sous vide could easily replicate and enhance. Poached, steamed and slow braised dishes would all be wonderful and plunging a bag into a machine that claimed to cook food to perfection whilst I twiddle my thumbs was extremely welcome.

I decided on an easy classic with a twist for my maiden sous vide adventure: juicy salmon smothered in a spicy Malaysian sambal lined with lime slices and plenty of Thai Basil.

Fish Head Rice Noodle Soup 鱼头米饭

Lately I've been hit by desperate cravings for homely noodle soups. I'd like to think my desperation would make me unfussy, that hunger trumps putting myself through inconvenience. Wouldn't it just be fine to make up some soup through stock cubes, toss in noodles and fillings? Nope, that's not how us noodle lovers roll. I of course had to make everything from scratch and traipse around London for the "right" ingredients. But then I wouldn't have discovered some very interesting details about one of my childhood favourites, Fish Head Rice Noodle Soup.

Pan Chai

Pan Chai opened in April this year to one of the world's retail meccas: Harrod's in Knightsbridge. The latest in the Mango Tree restaurant group, its menu bears similar characteristics to predecessors Awana and Mango Tree itself. We perch on booths in the famous Harrod's food hall underneath a wavy green "awning" and dive into the dishes.