My name is David Harwood and I am currently the Catering Manager at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge in England. I was born in England but spend much of my youth and early twenties living in Oregon, USA.
I starting cooking at the age of 16 whilst working part-time in high school. I had taken a job as a kitchen porter (dishwasher in the US) in a small restaurant in Lake Oswego called the walrus and Carpenter. It was here that my love of cooking began with the constant smell of steaks, seafood and french fries!
Many years later, and now 42 years old, I have semi-retired from the kitchen. During the past two decades I have worked my way from Oregon to Florida, London, Madrid, Cyprus, the French Alps, and finally to Cambridge England where I met my Spanish Wife Mildred (I know, not a very Spanish sounding name!).
I recently learned about sous vide and the perfect results you can obtain by low temperature cooking. I rushed out and purchased the following:
Clifton water bath
Multivac chamber vacuum packing machine
various sizes of plastic bags designed specifically for vacuum packing
needle thin temperature probe
Under Pressure by Thomas Keller
Sous Vide by Joan Roca and Salvador Brugues
I then convinced Nick, my Head Chef ,to embrace this new style of cooking. I told him we could use this method for any size dinner, big or small, and his life would be so much easier! I then showed his Mr Keller's book. It would be rude to print what he said next, but suffice to say he needed more convincing. Two months on and we are re-creating dishes from Under Pressure for up to 150 covers, even the team at The French Laundry would be impressed!
Hence the Blog, we want to share what we have learned and what we are still learning. Below I have posted a picture of the compressed melon dish from page 234. We changed the cucumber sorbet to strawberry, but otherwise I think we did a damn good job. Nothing quite prepares you to the sight of watermelon as it's vacuum packed, the change in colour is simply amazing to watch!