IDEAS IN FOOD

The Sweet Side of Savory: Pistachio Donuts

Aki thought we should make gougeres.  I laughed.  I remember when I first learned to make gougeres when I was at Shenorock Shore Club.  I had to make a large batch of pate a choux and my arm aches just thinking of the memory.  Why in the world would I want to make gougeres.  Then I relaxed, because Aki said she would make them.  As she started organizing the ingredients and putting them into the pot I gently pushed her aside (actually I think she was baiting me) and took over the gougere project.  The dough came together and then we folded in some aged comte.  I filled the pastry bag and lined up the gougeres on a parchment lined sheet pan.  After a short turn in the oven the gougeres emerged, crisp on the outside warm and cheesy on the inside.  And the kitchen was perfumed with the heady aroma of toasted bread and melted cheese (the aroma of fresh baked gougeres).

I really enjoyed making gougeres again.  While I knew another round of gougeres was out of the question (we have been trying not to repeat)  I felt we could try something else with the gougere base.  If I remember correctly, I often do not, I saw a donut festival over on Eggbeater awhile back and part of the process included using pate a choux to make the donuts.  If I am mistaken the spark still comes from my poor ability to remember since I somehow linked pate a choux, Eggbeater and donuts together.  Either way, I was going to make some donuts using pate a choux as the base. 

I also did not want a plain donut.  Sure plain donuts are fine, though I new we could make a donut with a bit of character.  Instead of adding cheese to the pate a choux base for the gougeres I added pressure cooked pistachio puree and a healthy dose of pistachio oil.  I then filled the pastry bag again with the base.  Instead of baking the base I opted to cut sections of piped dough into hot oil.  The result was pistachio donuts.  We rolled the finished donuts in a cardamom flavored sugar.  The sugar acted to pique the flavor of the donuts, keeping them balanced and just a shade on the sweet side of savory.

Today we paired the donuts with white asparagus, rhubarb puree, borage leaves and a few whole pistachios.  I really enjoy the dish.  Yet, the breakthrough for me is all the possibilities we now have.  What can I flavor the donut with now: paprika, lemon, truffle, tomato, onion, lime leaf, pumpernickel?  And what role will these donuts play?  Can we serve them as part of a dish, a precursor to a dish, as an element in a dish?  And then what will we pair these donuts with: foie gras, vegetable salads, even perhaps a dessert.

Golden Pea Tendrils

Alright, perhaps they're a bit closer to yellow, although the delicate tips of these lemon colored pea tendrils are worth the time and effort to go through them and snip off the tender morsels, leaving the stalks for another use, like family meal.

Yesterday we served these tender tips as part of our pea soup with whipped ranch and tomato powder.  We find it quite amazing, the number of ingredients that can be found in powdered form these days. Add to that the items that we would like to make into a powder and you have a true abundance of ideas.  We have even seen packets of powdered  hollandaise and it makes us wonder what it would be like if we could make our own version powdered hollandaise and what we could do with it.  Imagine a small succulent salad of golden pea tendrils, lightly dusted with hollandaise powder perched on top of a few caramelized Florida Pink Shrimp. Or a small, silky square of deep chocolate, gently dusted with a yuzu-brown butter sabayon powder. Or...

Before and After

It's amazing what a little bit of heat will do for a grunt...

Three Chief Brewing Company

I had a moment to reflect on a home brewing project I undertook with two good friends in College.  We named the company Three Chief Brewing Company, after the fact.  Why? Well we were three chiefs, each with our own ideas, mindsets and beliefs about how the brew should be made, what ingredients it should have, how long it should ferment, and how long it should stay in the bottle.  We were all concerned with the minutia of making beer.  We all wanted our signature to be preserved in the bottle.  We each thought that we did all the work while our counterparts (the other chiefs) were only concerned with their personal visions of the perfect beer and not the practicalities of cleaning bottles and doing the dishes.  Pretty stupid and yet a contagious thought process. 

Was the beer any good?  Heck yeah, it was a tasty brew.  It's just that in the end we realized that Three Chiefs is way too many.

En Papillote

Coffee Pumpernickel and the Stream of Ideas

Bread consomme voiced its opinion today.  At first I was thinking brioche or sourdough and then rye turned to pumpernickel.  With the thoughts of pumpernickel in my mind and a quick read of the comment section on the previous post, coffee ran straight into the pumpernickel.  A consomme uniting the flavors of coffee and pumpernickel would be quite spectacular.  And since pine is still in the air what about a pine-pumpernickel.  For that matter what about a pine brioche.  Flavors blend and ideas combine not always because of lots of thought, rather because of their proximity to one another and the rearrangement of normal.

With these initial thoughts, in what direction do we travel?  How can we integrate ideas into a final dish?  What form will the flavors take, and what is their function? 

Pine Needle Powder

I should really categorize this idea as just beyond my front door.  I walk in pine forests at least once a week, and walk by pine trees daily.  We have used spruce in a fair number of dishes, we were surrounded by them in Colorado, so it seemed natural that pine would eventually figure into our cooking here.  It is just that it took so long for us to integrate it into a dish. 

As the thunder clouds stacked in the sky and the lightning sparked like steel on flint, my mind wandered to the tall lightning rods which surrounded me, the pine trees.  I reached out and grabbed a handful of the needles and just pulled.  The smell was fresh, clean and of the forest.  This was not Pine Sol or another chemical smell.  The moisture in the air and the resin on my hands united into a brilliant olfactory sensation.  And so I needed to get this essence as light and fragrant as it is into a dish. 

Powder could work.  I could make pine needle powder.  I started with pine needle oil, an infusion of the needles and olive oil which I strained.  I then mixed the oil with tapioca maltodextrin.  The result was pine needle powder.  This powder became the unity I needed for a dish I was working on with musk and honeydew melons.  It brought the flavors together and in reflection, the pine flavor made the dish.

Strawberries and Blue Cheese

The dog walk was good to me.  I came back with a new dish.  Perhaps the walk was just the catalyst for the ideas.  Perhaps the true spark came from the early morning outdoor breakfast we prepared.  The morning light, breaking through the clouds casting steaks of painted color across the sky forced me to just appreciate the morning.  That appreciation in conjunction with a brisk morning walk proved to be enough of a surge to help me break through my creative roadblock.  The dish draws more on past productions, brought together in a harmony of flavors. 

We rolled some Fourme d' Ambert cheese and then sliced it into marble tiles.  We then topped part of the cheese tile with fillets of strawberries.  An accompaniment of whipped orange muscat tied the elements together.  A few leaves of sorrel tamed the sweet notes of the muscat and a grinding of Tasmanian peppercorns completed our assemblage.  An interesting note about the dish is that upon completion of eating it chocolate is craved.  That craving points us in our next direction.

Smoked Shrimp and Horseradish Marshmallow

Ideas eat at me.  We marinated a number of shrimp with combava, tarragon and crushed red pepper.  After several hours in this marinade we hot smoked the shrimp.  The result was a shrimp with hints of citrus, balanced spice and a smoky backbone.  Initially we were going to use these smoked shrimp with a corn soup.  Perhaps in the future we will revisit that.  Instead, we served a smoked shrimp cocktail.  A bed of arugula was topped with Grandma Kitty's cocktail sauce (ketchup, mayonnaise, horseradish) and then crowned with the smoked shrimp.  The dish worked.  The guests enjoyed it.  I wanted more.  And so the past several days have been spent working on permutations and directions in which we can go with the smoked shrimp. 

And then Aki began making fluff.  Really, a cooked meringue, though it might as well have been fluff.  That was the spark.  I took some of her base and seasoned it with horseradish and salt.  A sweet, tangy, concoction resulted.  It roughly resembled the cocktail sauce.  I was also working on a crispy pistachio recipe and as my ideas often collide, the dish came together.  We topped the smoked shrimp with the marshmallow and bruleed it.  A few tiles of crispy pistachio added texture to the dish and the small nasturtium leaves added bits of spice.  The toasted notes of the marshmallow paired well with the smoked shrimp.  A final grating of pistachios finished the dish.

Puffed Skin from the Drawing Board

Our approach to  puffed skins  started with our notebook and the drawings and has evolved to punching the  smoked skin out and stuffing the herb leaf inside and then vacuum sealing the two sides together after a dusting of activa.   While our initial skin puffs are small, I am curious to see how large a puff we can make.  I am hoping to try some  with shaved smoked pork fat stuffed with a thin slice of cheese.  Not quite sure if that will work though I have high hopes.

Speechless

Our thoughts are with Grant Achatz and his current battle with cancer. 

Serious Eats has some fine words.

Although we have never met Grant we have been truly inspired by his groundbreaking body of work.

Alinea

My New Favorite...

This butter is from the Vermont Butter and Cheese Company. As a NECI grad I'm often accused of being partial to ingredients from Vermont. All I can say is that I was partial to Vermont long before I ever went to school there. I's still one of my favorite states.  Actually, now that I think on it, I haven't been to Vermont in years. Not since the last New Year's Eve that Alex and I celebrated, cooking with Ann and Alex at the Fox Creek Inn in Chittenden, VT.  Alex had gone to school with their son Alex, and when they took over what was formerly the Tulip Tree Inn and transformed into the Fox Creek, they invited us to be their guest chefs for New Year's Eve. It was a lot of fun and a beautiful place to spend the holiday.

I had long been a fan of the  Vermont Butter and Cheese Company. We used their fromage blanc and mascarpone extensively for our old catering business. When we got out to Colorado it became difficult to get their products. Of course we also had access to Diane's amazing VT butter. Our daily kitchen butter became Strauss Butter and their yogurts also earned a permanent home in our kitchen. Oddly, here in Montana, the quality of the Strauss butter that we received is not quite up to what we were able to get in Colorado. I have no idea why and although we still happily receive the yogurts, we've made a change in the butter department. Even though we are now farther from VT than we were in Colorado, we are able to get the Vermont Butter and Cheese Butter.  We stick to the logs of sweet butter to ensure that we're getting the freshest product available and to control the salt content ourselves. It comes in logs, wrapped in plastic to protect it from picking up unwanted odors. Truthfully, it's a little harder to deal with the logs than it is to cook with sticks or pounds. It's worth the extra bit of trouble. This butter is rich and creamy, with a slight tang and we love it. It just makes things taste better. It's dense in a way that supermarket butters rarely are. It's density seems to allow it to come to room temperature more quickly and it spreads like silk across your palate. It's a beautiful thing and I just thought I'd share it with all of you.

Protein Mosaic

We have used vegetables, nuts and fruits to make mosaics as part of our dishes.  Recently we opted to incorporate some protein.  We took some avocado and scallops and combined them with a bit of salt.  We then put them in a vacuum bag and sealed them shut.  Once the scallop and avocado were contained we used a meat mallet to pound the two together into a thin sheet, extending the contents to the edges of the bag.  Once the two were combined and pounded we froze the mixture.  With a solid sheet of avocado we were now able to cut it easily into the shape we wanted.  For our purposes it made sense to cut the mosaic in half.  We then let the scallop-avocado come to a cool room temperature (a few minutes on the plate) and topped it with compressed watermelon, pickled watermelon rind, arugula leaves and yes, crispy duck skin.  This is our first run at the protein and vegetable mosaic, though I see many variations in the future.

Let's Try Again

Today I had some time to go over yesterdays mistakes and take a closer look at the cooking process for our thin skinned duck.  We have now dropped the initial cooking temperature to 49 degrees Celsius.  We cook the duck for one hour, then we pat it dry and deep fry it.  The result is a medium rare duck breast with an exterior of crispy roasted skin.  We also opted to lighten up the dish as the heat out here is not letting up.  We served the duck with a puree of chorizo (made with pressure cooked chorizo), baby tomatoes, nasturtium leaves and grated olives.

Just Ducky

The duck skin worked.  We were able to wrap it around a banana-juniper brined duck breast and then crisp its entire exterior.  We are still working through the finer points (cooking temperatures) for the breast itself, though last evenings foray into deep fried (yes I pulled out the big pot of bubbling oil)  duck demonstrated that we now have a new world of duck possibilities.  For instance, instead of wrapping a duck breast we could wrap a duck sausage and the thin skin could be the casing.  (hint, hint)  Pretty neat.

We served the duck with spiced beans, red leaf spinach and a cherry and onion compote.

Thin Skinned

Duck skin it too thick.  I have been bothered by my inability to get super crispy and extremely thin duck skin.  The flavor of duck skin is incredible.  It is rich and decadent, meaty and fatty. 

One idea I had was to take duck skins and stack them together to create a thick slab of duck skin.  That slab of skin could then be frozen and then thinly sliced to create thin sheets of duck skin.  Those thin sheets of skin could then be crisped and served as a garnish, wrapped around a duck breast or even adhered to a piece of fish.  That was the idea.

Well, I have had great success with the idea.  I blanch the skins in water, then I dry them and glue them together with activa.  We then compress the skins into a block of sorts.  Once the block is set, we freeze it and shave it.  The result is large slabs of wafer thin duck skin.  We then used the skins to wrap around roast banana brined duck.  The other sheets we crisped in the oven just to see how they would turn out.

The resulting crisps are unbelievable.   The are the essence of roast duck as thin as a sheet of parchment.  Now, I must see what else we can do with our slab of duck skin. 

Inspired by Someone Else

Ideas are often obstacles to overcome.  In cooking, if you hear of a great dish, you want to try it.  If you hear of a great preparation or presentation of an ingredient, suddenly a new benchmark has presented itself.

Often times it takes the creations of others to break through the existing ceiling of what is possible, to ask both simple and complex questions and then to find the answers.  After all, once you've seen someone else do something, then you know that it's actually possible to achieve the same results, although perhaps with your own interpretation or embellishments. Recently I saw pictures of Wylie's most recent breakthrough, "Knot Foie."  Wylie has figured out a way to make foie gras bendable, in fact his foie is so pliable that he can tie it in a knot and still retain the texture of a foie gras terrine.  That's pretty darn clever.  The idea of flexibility in food, coupled with the isolation and refinement of texture, is something we are seeing more and more.  Yet, it is the act of reaching for what seems impossible that is truly inspiring.

We have traveled our own paths in looking at what is possible with food.  While I can say we have worked on flexible puddings and pies, the idea of a foie gras knot was something never occurred to me.  And still, I think that food tied in a knot is pretty clever.  And, I reiterate, it is the break-through thinking of others which often enables us to take another step.

In borrowing the idea of knotted food we went in a sweet direction.  Recently I have had a key lime pie fixation and this seemed as good a time as any to put my ideas into execution.  The knot itself is a derivative of key lime pie filling.  The crust is finely ground graham crackers bound with butter and olive oil.  The yogurt (my idea of whipped topping) is flavored with Tasmanian peppercorns.  I added a sheet of lovage and some leaves of basil in lieu of the usual mint sprig.  So, does it work?  Yes.  Have I been inspired by the work of others?  Yes.

And still I have issues.  The dish is a success.  It's both beautiful and extremely tasty. Yet it hinges on someone else's concept of being able to tie food into a knot, a concept that I did not come up with on my own.  Is that stealing an idea or being inspired by one? What do you think?

Bulls Blood Beets

Cooked for nine minutes under high pressure. A splash of Banyuls Vinegar and a sprinkle of salt. Sweet, tart, and salty on the palate. Firm, yet tender between your teeth. Beautiful to see upon the plate. Perhaps with some crusty bread and sweet butter on the side. The perfect home cooked meal in under fifteen minutes. Cooked at work of course.

Grape and Onion

I wanted to make a grape and garlic soup.  Well, I was plum out of garlic, try again.  I reached for some onions instead.  The initial idea, the spark for the soup was the thought of pressure cooking garlic in balsamic vinegar.  I thought an intense purple garlic puree would be amazing.  I still have plans to travel that road, once I get my hands on some garlic. 

For now, I had to settle.  And it was a good thing.  We took some onions, some grapes, some saba a bit of red wine vinegar (saving the balsamic for the garlic) and some salt and let the pressure cooker do its thing.  When the cooking was done we simply pureed the ingredients and the result was a silky sweet, tangy allium tinged soup. 

As far as accompaniments for the soup I wanted to use our shrimp terrine.  In today's preparation I sliced the terrine and then pressed it back together so that when eating the soup the diner could break the terrine into bites.  We also used lovage puree to balance the richness of the soup.  Our green grape olives punctuated the dish and some leaves of anise hyssop provide bright sweet licorice notes.

Sweet Corn and Sunflower Seeds

It has taken some time and a bit of executed listening to allow us to bring new life to our sunflower seed risotto.  One of Aki's issues with the risotto is that it can tend to be heavy.  We were using pureed sunflower seeds to thicken and unite the grains and garnishes and thus creating an intense and rich product.  The richness of the risotto forced us to serve small portions so as not to overwhelm diners.  Yet, we wanted to be able to serve the risotto as an appetizer.  Aki came up with the idea of using a vegetable puree to bind the seeds rather than the seeds themselves.  We continue to cook the seeds in a flavored broth in the pressure cooker though now a variety of vegetable purees add both flavor and body to the risotto.  Our first dish which featured the vegetable base was a risotto of sunflower seeds and corn served with smoked trout and piquillo peppers.  My only regret is that we did not try this sooner.  Actually we had plans to though I kept forgetting the plans.

Summer Salads

Sure, summer comes along and salads come to mind.  Yet, I am talking more about protein based concoctions which are a kitchens staple amidst hot weather and ever changing schedules.  We, namely Aki, have made more egg salad, ham salad, tuna salad, and chicken salad than we care to divulge.  And still I am.  These salads in their many variations have proven to be both tantalizing and inspiring.  Ham salad, an inspiration from the days of deviled ham has made the largest comeback since (fill in the blank).  It started off all nice and innocent with pickles and mayo, a dash of mustard and it was done.  Recently, Aki made a ham salad which was truly mind blowing.  Perhaps I was starving when I tried it first, though I still eat it even if I am full.  The secret is the addition of Piquillo peppers.  In fact, the ham salad was so good we transformed it from a kitchen staple to a star in its own right in the shape of ham salad ravioli.  Our first run at making the dish with the ravioli was quite tasty, though as we look closer at the salad and how we can tweak it to a dish I foresee truly great results.  For now I am settling with truly tasty.

As far as the other salads we have made tuna with tapenade, egg salad with truffle oil and Japanese mayo, and smoked chicken salads.  While these others have not veered far from their original purpose (providing delicious sustenance) they have all proved exiting and noteworthy.

iphone home

Well, I am now hooked.  We received the below shot from a reader of the website.  How bad do I want an iphone now?

Sky Inspired

The ever changing sky of Montana can truly be inspiring.  This mornings view helped fine tune a dish we have been working on.  The dish is Steelhead Trout with warmed nectarine-caraway, crisp nasturium leaves and smoked puffed trout skins.

Caraway and...

Caraway is a spice that goes without much fan fare and yet provides a burst of flavor and aroma when it is integrated into dishes.  I revisited some of our older notebooks, (downloads on the sidebar) and just searched for the word caraway.  It was quite revealing to see the combinations in which we had or had plans for integrating caraway.  They ranged from the simple caraway and strawberries to the more exotic cocoa-caraway with dried orange and cocoa nibs.

These thoughts on caraway where further piqued when we recieved a fresh supply from Le Sanctuaire.  The burst of aroma on opening the bag spawned another series of caraway thoughts.  One, which we began work on today was caraway and nectarines.  We toasted the caraway seeds and then just cooked them with exposively ripe nectarines, a few splashes of water and a pinch of salt.  The combination of the floral summer fruit supported by the aromatic caraway is really something that shall become a staple in our summer pantry.

Oysters Thoughts

A point of reference, that is a good place to start.  I can still remember Jeff, the oyster farmer extraordinaire, of Pemaquid Oysters, covered in mud with a bag full of over sized oysters and the question, "can you use these?"

The oysters Jeff brought were roughly ten inches long, many as long as a foot, and he could not ship them to restaurants so he asked us if we could use them.   Sure I said, not really knowing what we could or would do with giant oysters.  Then as he handed over the bag it sparked.  Well an idea did.  We would use the shell as the plate and serve several giant oysters in the shell.  Our first attempt at serving these oysters was as Oysters Rockefeller.  We served three oysters on a bed of bacon creamed spinach topped with a soft boiled egg yuzu glacage.  Yes, we took a few liberties.  These giant oysters became a springboard for ideas and thoughts on oyster preparations and presentations.  Another dish we served was oysters with scrambled cauliflower.  Of course this was before our introduction to Methocel so we just ground cauliflower and then cooked it with creme fraiche and American cheese.  We cooked the oysters in a Champagne cream and spooned them on top of the now scrambled cauliflower.

It is these oyster memories which sparked our recent foray into oyster cookery, the dishes and means in which would serve them.  Once again we started with Pemaquid oysters.  Really, these are the best I have ever had.  In our remote setting, not in Jeff's backyard, we used smaller, traditional sized oysters.  We trimmed the oysters and used the trim to make a traditional oyster stew.  We then started work on trying to find a balance between the raw and the cooked texture of an oyster.  We settled on cooking them for ten minutes at 48 degrees Celsius, then icing them down.  The oyster retains its bright briny flavors while taking on a slightly more stable texture. 

Once we had our oyster cookery settled we began work on a few dishes.  One which truly came together united the poached and chilled oyster with goat cheese, musk melon and arugula.  Here we borrowed the approach from our past, plating several oysters and the accompaniments in a single shell.

Bargain Book

If you're looking for a little light summer reading, about food, there's a great buy ($4.99) at Amazon.com that is totally worth the price.  How I Learned to Cook: Culinary Explorations from the World's Greatest Chefs, is entertaining, intriguing and easy to read.  The collection of chefs interviewed for this book is eclectic, from Ferran Adria to David Chang to Michelle Bernstein. Their inspirations are equally diverse and range from meeting Julia Child to an eye-opening meal in Italy to falling into the restaurant business as a way to pay for a vacation. The short essays mean that you can pick it up and put it down multiple times without ever feeling as though you've lost your place.  It's on the bedside table right now and on those evenings when I can't fall asleep, it's a wonderful reminder of why I love this business.

Shake and Bake

Yesterday we were doing a canape of shrimp.  We had some beautiful blue shrimp and as Aki was cleaning then she asked if we should save the heads.  I have not been one to save shrimp heads recently.  Sure, we could make stock or oil, dry the heads and make powder or pulverize them with some butter to use as a liaison for a sauce.  Perhaps I have been feeling lazy.  And sure enough when she asked I shrugged and said no, don't  bother.  While these words were still clinging to my lips and her ears I had a gut check.  Wait I cried.  I remembered an incredible approach to shrimp heads that I witnessed and also ate at a Japanese restaurant before we came out west.  The shrimp was served first.  In fact, I do not remember the preparation of the shrimp itself.  I was mesmerized by the sushi chef's approach to the head.  He removed the outer carapaces and then trimmed off the eyes, the gills and the legs.  He had a center cut shrimp head.  He then proceeded to tempura the head and serve it with a light dipping sauce.  Unbelievable.  All these years of eating and trying shrimp heads and just not being that impressed.  It was at this moment I realized that the stripping down and refinement of ingredients can and should be applied to all ingredients and aspects of cooking.

I filed the approach to shrimp heads and low and behold the file ended up on my desk yesterday.  I grabbed the heads, cleaned them as per the sushi chef's technique.  I then veered a bit off course.  I decided a soak in buttermilk would be good for these heads.  When the heads were done soaking I borrowed another idea from Aki's book.  For the shrimp canape she decided to make a light corn flour coating for the shrimp.  She placed the dry mix in a bag and then added the shrimp.  She smiled as she exclaimed "Shake and Bake baby."  The shrimp were perfectly coated and seasoned.  Instead of baking the shrimp, she sauteed them, though it is shakeable seasoning approach that I grabbed.  I did the same thing for the heads with a corn flour and chermoula seasoning.  I then sauteed them. 

Man are shrimp heads good.  They were bursting with flavor, crispy on the outside a whole lot of seafood on the inside.  Glad I decided not to throw these shrimp shells in the trash.  And what did we end up doing with these heads?  Well, besides eating them like popcorn we started work on a true and false, hot and cold, oyster and shrimp dish.

Wave Action

Here in Montana waves are different. Instead of the swelling peaks of greenish bluish water endlessly crashing and withdrawing from the shoreline, here we have softly undulating waves of tall grass, rippling endlessly across the landscape. Strong winds sweep across the terrain, causing the green trees to whisper and dance, bending gracefully backwards and forwards, shimmying in tune with the currents of air.  Patty swims nose deep through this golden green ocean, in search of rabbits and prairie dogs to chase. Birds swoop and hover, scouting their passageways through the grain. Depending on where you look, these waves conjure visions of succulent leaves of watercress still damp from the salad spinner, deep green herbs and colorful flowers falling from my fingertips, softly sticky caramel sauce rippling along a plate, and swirls of butterscotch pudding waiting for a spoon. It's peaceful and wild at the same time. Clouds can be seen above and below. Depending upon your perspective they are fluffy pillows of spun sugar or huge, ponderous shadows sliding over hills and dales. We see stories in their shapes and magic in their motion.  Mother Nature is unadorned and free to wander in these mountains. We experience her each day in all her glory and it makes us better people. It reminds us that though the waves may look different, the inspirations are always there for the taking. 

Natural Beauty

Dude...

When I hand you hot plates with hot food to take to the dining room and you stop in the butler's pantry, put down the plates, eat a few leftover shrimp from the cocktail hour--making sure to get plenty of sauce, wipe your mouth, then pick up the plates again and finally, head into the dining room...I CAN SEE YOU! Truly, I can. I'm glad you like the shrimp, but seriously, it will still be there when you get back.

Ranch Dressing

Since we have taken the time to clarify buttermilk the next step for us was to see what buttermilk bases we could make clear.  Our horseradish-buttermilk consomme is a derivation of horseradish sour cream which I enjoy smeared on prime rib.  That sauce application sparked the idea of clear dressings.  We started earlier this week with ranch dressing.  Our ranch base contained ranch seasonings, buttermilk and water.  After we balanced the ranch flavor as a broth we set about clarifying it.

The results are in.  Clear ranch is well worth the effort.  While it may not have that creamy and clinging dairy mouth feel, the clear ranch is just that.  In fact, clear ranch does have a decadent mouth feel.  A spoonful of the consomme brings back flashes of taste memories, from crudite dips to chicken salad dressed with ranch.  And still the broth is not overly ranchy.  It merely captures ranch without clouding the concept.

And while we are talking about clear dressings the other big three may be coming soon: Thousand Island, Russian and Green Goddess.  I did not forget blue cheese, it is just that we made Roquefort water last year and its flavor is on par with the great blue cheese dressings I have eaten.  Of course, we could try and make a clear version of the Student Prince's signature blue cheese dressing, Russian dressing with Roquefort crumbled in table side.

The First Time is Not Always the Charm

The more we cook the more I understand the importance of practice, refinement, reflection and reduction.  It is truly amazing to me how often the first idea for a dish is the polar opposite of what the dish becomes.  Many of the elements of the initial dish remain, yet the construction and re-arrangement of those parts converts what was at first a failure into a success.

Let us take an example.  Roughly two and a half years ago we started this blog.  We began taking pictures of our dishes and sharing our ideas with whomever wanted to stop in and see what we were up to.  The website, our digital notebook, has cataloged many of our successes and failures over the years.  It also acts as a visual time line illustrating how we approach food and the process of stripping down ideas to their bare essentials.  Below are two tuna dishes, one from a little over two years ago, one from today.  You can see the evolution for yourselves. While both dishes were thoughtfully constructed and delicious, the newer one is definitely a bit sharper and more focused in it's details. Who knows what the future dishes will reveal. This process of evolution is part of the simple joy of cooking.

Hangar Steak

As Aki mentioned earlier this week we were both introduced to hangar steak under the same roof and have enjoyed cooking and eating it over the years.  Unfortunately, the varied shapes and sizes of cleaned hangar steak lead to multiple cooking distractions.  If only we could have a uniform size and thickness of hangar steak?  We have been able to generate uniform pieces of hangar steak.  Now we are working on dishes.  Unfortunately, I continue to with my steak phobia.  The dishes are tasty.  The steak is tastier.  I would like to serve just steak.  We have trimmed the elements of these steak dishes down.  We are getting closer to steak on a plate.  Yet, we cannot just serve steak on a plate.  So we need elements which support the meat and make it seem like all we have is steak on a plate.

The first dish is the sauteed steak with shaved romano beans and a blanket of Old Bay flavored potatoes.  A touch of plum-miso acts to punctuate the dish.  The second dish is even simpler, griddled hangar steak with grilled leeks and smoked balsamic vinegar.  I am happy with the steak though still the dishes fall short.  How short?  I am not sure.  The flavors come together and balance each other.  Yet, I still think we can do better.  That is obviously frustrating, though the answer to the dishes will come with more stripping down of ingredients and ideas.

Omlette Souffle

I used to eat four egg omlettes with bacon and white American cheese all through high school.  The eggs were beaten and then spread thin over the griddle.  The cheese was laid in place and the bacon on top.  A few flips of the wrist and I was eating this oozing eggy, cheesy, bacon delight with a couple sides of toast, some ketchup and an iced tea.  This was breakfast.

The key to these omlettes was the griddle.  The spacious hot steel allowed the eggs to spread thin, cook quickly and create a large enough surface to be folded over and enclose the contents.  These were good omlettes, I would even say great.  They are a food memory, a benchmark in my mind and palate.

Recently I have had the pleasure of adding another omelette benchmark.  Aki has attempted, tackled and gloriously produced omelette souffles for our guests and I have been the lucky recipient of the "extras." These souffles are the complete opposite of the high school omelettes save for the fact that someone else is making them.  These omlettes are light and airy though they have a decadent mouth feel with the filling held in suspension by the whipped egg whites.  These are omlettes to be savored.  When you first cut into an omelette souffle and bring the first bite to your mouth you realize these are something special, as a diner you are being spoiled.  With the second bite you realize it is good to be spoiled.  With the subsequent bites you understand why.  Of course even the last bite provides something great, a reason to remember the omelette and truly thank the person that made it.  Yes, these are that good.

Today I had the good fortune of dining on a crab and Beaufort omelette souffle with some sauteed pea tendrils.  It's tough eating "extras," and I will just have to continue to do it.

Stained

While this dish may sound relatively straight forward it took many more attempts and trials than I care to go into here.  The results of my harried day are described below.

In the process of infusing flavor we figured we could use the marinade to add a bit of color to the dish as well.  We have some beautiful beets on hand and our horseradish consomme in the freezer.  Though, the ingredient which sparked the union was some impeccable sturgeon.  With these three elements we set to work on the dish.

I took some of the roasted beets and pureed them with the consomme.  We then soaked the sturgeon in this marinade under vacuum for several hours.  We took the remaining beets and marinated them in some Elixer.  Once the marinade had stained the fish, we gently cooked it.  In fact, we used some of the marinade in to cook the fish.  The rest of the reserved horseradish-beet juice, the marinade, was reduced to make the sauce for the dish.  Finally, a few leaves of borage completed the dish.

Fourth of July Suggestions

Here in Montana, you know it's summertime when you look up from your computer and you can see the big, black insects lazily drifting by your window. The hum of the air conditioner may drown out the sound of the birds, but they are there to see in all their multi-colored glory. If you can brave the insects and sit outside, an entire world slowly unfolds just past the edge of your screen. Early morning coolness is savored by one and all, as the dew kissing the grass quickly evaporates with the sunshine. The heat presses down upon your shoulders like a blanket and at moments the air seems to shimmer with the weight of it. There are a couple of prairie dogs living in a stone wall outside our bedroom window that are driving Patty to distraction. When we sit in the backyard, it's actually kind of funny to see them sneak up behind her, squeak loudly, and then race away down their hidey holes. White tail deer wander down the roads at dusk and that gorgeous, textured Montana sky provides daily inspiration.

The Fourth of July is sneaking up on us ever so steadily. Alex and I are going to lend a hand with a barbecue for the employees. We picked up hangar steaks on Saturday and he and Ben spent an hour or so butchering and marinating yesterday. They resurrected a version of the old Clio marinade from years ago.  I wonder if Ken still uses it. It was the first place where I learned to cook hangar steak and it's still one of my favorite cuts of meat all these years later. I love it plainly seasoned with salt and I love that it can take on many layers of flavor and still keep it's beefiness intact.  It earned its name from it's placement inside the cattle, where it is attached to the last rib and the kidney and literally hangs from the diaphragm. There is a line of membrane that runs roughly down the center and divides the meat into two. To butcher the meat, we follow the membrane to split the hangar into two pieces, remove it and any silver skin or excess fat. For more casual uses we season or marinate these pieces whole, and then sear or grill them and slice on a bias. It has a wonderful rich flavor and chewy texture. As it's many names (butcher's tender, hanging tender, hanging tenderloin) indicate, it is a very juicy and tender cut of meat when treated properly. When cooked past medium, the meat tends to become dry and somewhat game-y on the palate. For more elegant presentations we may "glue" the two pieces together for one large steak, butterfly it and roll it, or even layer it in thin slices which are again "glued" back together, cooked, and then sliced. It all depends on what we're planning to do with it. Tomorrow we're planning to pull it out of it's marinade and cook it outside on a wood burning grill.

As you may have noticed, we're planning a barbecue. The main course will be that grilled steak and there will lots of young Southerners attending. They seem to like their food simple and tasty, spicy and sweet. So if you've got any down home favorites for this holiday that you'd like to share, we'd be happy to read about them. More than that, we may use them in the employee kitchen to make some of these home sick southerners feel a bit  closer to their roots. Hell, we may even use them in our kitchen (ever so slightly adjusted) because I've always been a sucker for southern food myself. We're toying with the idea of a shrimp boil to start, maybe some corn fritters, perhaps some peach pies, sweet and sour slaw, mashed potato salad, we're still tossing around ideas. So if you've got any recipes or suggestions or just great Fourth of July food stories, please leave a comment and share it with us. The kids will be working hard all day and ready for great food and relaxation by dinnertime. We can use some fresh inspirations out this way to help appease their hunger.

Hot Diced Artichoke

What to do with the liquid left from braising artichokes?  That was yesterdays question.  We use our horseradish consomme to braise the artichokes and then marinate them in it.  Yet, when we serve the artichokes we usually discard the broth.  That was until yesterday.  Actually, we have used the broth as part of a vinaigrette, though we have not done so recently.  The question was voiced about how to best utilize the artichoke and horseradish broth.  It is packed full of flavor and needs to be utilized. 

While in liquid form the artichoke broth is tasty we wanted to serve it solid.  We wanted to dice artichokes. We contemplated making a gel which we could dice like a tuna tartar though we opted for a larger cut, a macedon, which we could use as an element in a salad.  Then we figured since we were gelling anyway, why not make it a hot gel so we could serve it hot or cold.

We made a hot gel from the artichoke broth and paired it with the braised artichokes and our trout crusted in bread.  The dish is really simple and quite fun since we can serve all the components of our braised artichokes, nicely diced.

Understanding, in this case brisket

Brisket is not easy.  Actually it is beast to cook.  More often than not it is two different pieces united by sinew and fat.  There is a lean part and a fatty part.  If you cook the two parts together, one of them suffers.  We have not found the ideal means to cook brisket.  In fact, I have a love-hate relationship with brisket.  I love the idea of it yet the results both ours and those we have dined upon are like playing a game of Russian Roulette.  Even the grand masters of brisket cookery, Katz's with their pastrami, have good and bad days.  I guess if it was easy everyone would cook and we would be out of a job.  Aside from that idea, my mind is perplexed and stimulated by the idea of brisket cookery. 

I find it even more intriguing that I then search out this difficult cut to cook in fish.  We marinated what we considered the brisket of a striped bass in a blend of chermoula, smoked soy sauce, bourbon infused maple syrup and water.  We then slow cooked the brisket and then crisped the exterior.  I paired the fish brisket with a dried lima bean puree enriched with truffle oil and sauteed fava beans.  Young lovage and tarragon accented the fish as did a sprinkling of chermoula.

The fish was tasty.  The puree was tasty.  The two went together just fine.  Yet, like my difficulties with brisket cookery I had difficult in presenting a fish brisket dish.  Yes it tasted good.  It is even visually appealing.  Yet, it does not scream brisket.  Why not?  Because, we are still learning, trying to understand ideas and weave them into a completed dish.  This is what haunts my waking and sleeping hours.  An understanding of food and how to share that understanding with others.

Old Bay Mashed Potatoes In Action

The idea of Old Bay mashed potatoes works even better when you eat it.  Instead of getting my hands on Old Bay proper, I went to our spice shelves and assembled a version of Old Bay using a number of spices and blends on hand.  I was quite happy with the results.  I also simplified the process of making the Old Bay flavored potatoes.  We simply cooked the potatoes in water seasoned with salt and the spice blend.  Once the potatoes were cooked we went about our normal procedure for making mashed potatoes.  We used a blend of creme fraiche and heavy cream for our liquid and plenty of butter to make the potatoes decadent. 

We seared the rib eye cap and the bass cheek.  We wrapped the cheek in a sauteed pea tendrils and used a touch of smoked balsamic vinegar to round out the dish.  As for the leftover potatoes, yes I did not eat them all, we may make some gnocchi in the morning.  Of course by morning we may have another idea to try out.