Several elements came together today to help create a new dish and some interesting pantry and staple techniques. First of all, I had some leftover cranberry sauce from Thanksgiving. I have been a proponent of the cranberry-horseradish combination, yet this morning I took another path, blending dark miso and base cranberry sauce to make cranberry miso. Hello mouth, what have I been missing? By the way our base cranberry sauce consists of cranberries, OJ, salt and agave syrup cooked down to a thick compote. With the cranberry base we can go in many directions from the horseradish addition to the dark miso to the I have not thought of it yet.
So, we now have cranberry-miso in our larder. The sweet, salty, tannic and bitter flavors will work great with a number of ingredients, raw and cooked, fish and meat, as a sauce and puree. We have also spent some time revisiting the carrot, most recently in soup, and today as a hot crème caramel enriched with yogurt and balanced with a sweet spice espresso caramel. The carrot crème caramel is light, ethereal and equally balanced by the bitter, earthy and aromatic caramel.
We combined these two products together in a dish featuring griddled lamb belly and green onions. The elements all have distinct flavors and still work to complement each other. The hot crème caramel has been the subject of several dishes. In today’s dish the crème caramel is brought down in size in order to allow it to be a supporting character and still add an exciting element to a dish.
