IDEAS IN FOOD

Similar

In looking at garlic cloves we noticed they look quite similar to the muscles on frog legs. Large cloves take the shape of the quadriceps while the smaller cloves are eerily close to the calves. In both cases the visual association between garlic cloves and frog legs is supported in the culinary world by their hand in hand nature on the plate. At first we planned to serve a ragout of leg muscles and garlic cloves, the two looking so close that the diner would not really know the difference in what they were eating. That approach actually seems quite silly. If the diner cannot tell what they are eating, what does it matter what they consume?

We decided to look at the picture again. Often times frog legs are supposed to taste like chicken. If they taste like chicken, why bother to get frog legs when chicken will do? That was not the answer, yet is posed a solution. Why not gently cook garlic cloves in an intense roasted chicken bouillon. The cloves would still resemble a frog leg in appearance while acquiring the rich decadence of a roasted chicken. No, these are not frog legs, they are similar, they faux-g legs.

Deadlines

Scott and Joe from Elements stopped by to pick up a circulator and we were chatting.

Alex: Are we still thinking about doing a dinner this fall.

Scott: Yeah that'd be great. If you guys are up for it.

Alex: Definitely, we'd love to do--

Aki: A dinner after the holidays, after we've finished the book, right honey.

Alex: Um yeah..right, of course, after the book is finished.

Scott: (Grinning) Someone has to be the voice of reason. Early winter sounds good to us.

We love saying yes to opportunities and collaborations, but with just about two months to write 75,000 words I think it's safe to say it's crunch time around here.

Although while we're on the subject, our last guest chef dinner for the year will be at Blackfish Restaurant in Conshohocken, PA (outside Philly) on Monday November 2, 2009.

Have you ever peeled a lobster tail?

How much attention are you paying to the food you cook and preparations you execute? Could we be cooking better if we asked a few more questions and broke a few more rules? Try something you never thought to do, the results could be glorious and delicious.

inspired by...

I was thumbing through the program from this year's Star Chefs Congress and stopped on the profile of our friend Richard Blais. I had the pleasure of briefly catching up with him at the congress. Unfortunately we missed his workshop on breakfast. In reading the brief, a phrase jumped out at me-"Blais will also exhibit innovative methods for poached whipped eggs (using the isi Thermo Whip)"

Reading these words sent me to my feet in a flash. I do not know exactly what his method is and could make several assumptions. I was inspired by his idea. I immediately set to work cracking and weighing eggs, milk, butter, salt and hot sauce. I loaded up an isi canister and closed the top. I placed it in a water bath and after an hour I added some nitrous. A few shakes and we had the most ethereal scrambled eggs ever. What to pair them with? Since we were exploring textures some powdered raclette came to mind. Add a few fine herbs and some cracked pepper and the dish was done. 

What is even more exciting are the permutations. Aki's first thought was a sabayon. Aki's second thought was hot and cold deviled eggs. Aki's third thought is...being served this weekend.

isi Scrambled Eggs

506g whole eggs

113g sweet butter

85g skim milk

6g salt

6g Crystal hot sauce

2 nitrous charges

Whisk all the ingredients together and place in a non-thermal isi canister. Close the lid and place the canister in a water bath set at 82 degrees C. Cook the eggs for one hour and then remove the canister. Let the canister rest for five minutes and then add two nitrous charges. Shake the canister vigorously between charges. Dispense the eggs into dishes and top and serve with just about anything. If the butter comes out first, stop dispensing and shake the canister some more to evenly mix the ingredients and allow for the nitrous to be dispersed.

To further simplify the approach and make it easier to apply to larger applications, the egg base can be poached in vacuum bags or even mason jars and then added to the isi canister when needed.

first thoughts for a meal

scallop with 40 cloves of garlic

clams casino soup

xo cavatelli

sea urchin sheets

bone marrow gnudi

the chicken brine

root beer and squash

bacon or eggs

raclette powder

pistachio sauternes

sherry cherries

cheddar grits

powdered raclette

coffee cake

the smell of the sea

remember what can be water

what can be a bouillon?

cereal milk cheese...really? what kind of cheese? ricotta, cream, mascarpone

fried rice

toasted marshmallow fluff

Apples and Cheese

Apples and cheese consistently go together. The variables are the apple, the cheese and the textures sought. What is exciting are the variables and their interchangeable nature.

We have paired Gala apples with cider in a few forms and aerated pave d' affinois.

Foie Gras and Prosciutto

We have been working on making foie gras prosciutto. Since I am not the patient type, I wanted to taste the two flavors together. We took several slices of foie gras and wrapped them in prosciutto. We let the foie gras become seasoned by the prosciutto for a day and then pan seared the duo. The prosciutto crisped up beautifully and the foie gently cooked. We sliced the foie and prosciutto into medallions and paired it with gala apples and arugula. The pairing of foie and prosciutto is better than we imagined. It has renewed our efforts into fine tuning the our actual foie gras prosciutto.

Peanut Pumpkin

When the look fits the culinary connection is not far behind.

Pretty and Pink

If fish and meat are inherently tastier cooked on the bone, why would fruits and vegetables differ? Today we started exploring apple cookery, unpeeled and on the core sous vide. First observation: different apples cook differently, expect some failures. Second observation, this is so much better than poaching.

Bittersweet

Those brownies were a riff off the cocoa brownie recipe in Alice Medrich's book Bittersweet. I sometimes up the butter by an ounce or two and I bake them at 325 degrees Fahrenheit with convection, which I think is slighly different from her recipe, but other than that her technique is unchanged. We played around with adding a teaspoon of powdered harissa to add heat and depth. While it was a fun twist, frankly for me the cumin became a bit much. So that a batch of brownies that normally lasts two or three days at the most never actually got finished. The harissa was a good idea that tasted great for the first brownie and sated the palate quickly. Interestingly this tends to be the issue when trying to update classic recipes in general. We love them for a reason and it's very hard to improve on the tried and true. I suppose that's why we use Heinz's (organic) ketchup instead of making our own. Not that we haven't tried, per se, but because new isn't always better. A hard thing for a chef to admit, on the other hand, new classics are created all the time.

Digital Notes

The party line is that Ideas in Food is our digital notebook. There is irony in the fact that these notes are first usually scrawled on post it notes, legal pads, old mail and an occasional napkin. Times are changing, sort of. Today I took notes and scribbled extrapolations and inspirations while at Star Chefs using my iphone. It was a brutal experience. There was no flow of ideas, rather a choppy typing. I could not doodle and extrapolate. My imagination was not free to roam. Incoming texts broke the mental flow of idea germination. Still in all, I was charged with thoughts and noodled a number of ideas. To get an idea of what today inspired here is what I scribed:

Substitute pistachio paste in miso marinade...sake mirin soy

What other nuts. Smoked nut what other nut substitutions

Powerful pure ingredients

Ginger curd


The switching of cultural herbs and seasoning

Coat salt with oil then fold into tartars to preserve texture try with 
other fats and sugar

Minced seasonal fruit relish


Bone marrow and sea urchin kinome and crispy

Pistachio soba

Use powdered sugar to dust and dry citrus skin olives nuts

Tomato miso

Use aerated brittle around foie or peanut butter etc

Roast garlic and buckwheat miso

Poached in pistachio milk flavored with lemongrass

Red wine dashi

Sauerkraut miso
Buckwheat groats with flavor purée perhaps squash

Dried onions flavored with miso

Black onion powder with roast buckwheat ... Try other vegetables

Bone marrow mousse

Yuzu-wine- shallot sauce

Artichoke and soft cheese mousseline

A lighter onion sabayon

Onion or allium miso

Kasu and nut praline

Pork belly cooked in salt kasu crust

Use food grade plastic to shape and structure meats and fish

Can we make dashi in the cvap 60 c

Threads of kelp make in pressure cooker

Garlic oil or stock to enrich sauces

Toasted garlic consommé

Grilled applesauce
Prosciutto or country ham dashi

Vegetable dashi...grilled vegetable
Beer cake

Proteins help emulsions what can be a cream and what is the proteins

Fat flair up for flavor

Fruit acids help proteins to disperse

Shrimp for use as melting salt
Sodium citrate allows for remelting

What can be a cheese

25 percent gum Arabic solution as moisture barrier

Pork rinds etc 13 percent water

Grind dried pork rinds

crumbs of false cracklings how many incredible uses

Methocel foam as glue try with other tapioca starch

Try with fish skin

Use dog brush to evenly poke holes in duck skin for searing

Cook duck skin at 83 c then dry and fry

Don't forget layered duck skin in activa chapter

Deep fry or tempura smoked confit garlic: frog legs, garlic bread 
soup, etc ideas

What would powdered pickled watermelon rind be like?
Garlic poached in citrus nut milk then deep fried

The Importance of the Brownie

Chicken and the Egg

The dish has noodled about our brains for a long time. Finally we have been able to bring together our first version, after many years in the pondering. The dish is a soft boiled egg surrounded by chicken noodles tossed with watercress. Delicious and simple. Deceiving and delightful. With truffle season knocking on our door we could make the dish luxe. In the same breath we could start re-visiting classics. Today we enjoy the simplicity.

Rib Eye in Red Wine

Steak and red wine, not much thinking needed. Steak with red wine sauce, still a no brainer. Making a bath of red wine infused with onion and seasoned with soy to gently braise large steaks, pretty darn cool, especially for us since we just came across the idea. We cook the wine a touch to burn off some of the alcohol and then add sliced onions and soy sauce. To cool the mixture down we add frozen butter and then slide the meat into the tepid bath. A spin in the cvap and a kiss on the grill produces red wine infused steaks that are meltingly tender. The resulting liquid was perhaps even better than the steaks. When the steaks were done, we brought it to a boil, added some agar, cooled it quickly, and then clarified it to produce an incredible beef and wine consomme. This secondary product has yet to find a home, however a quick pairing with seared bay scallops would not be a bad place to begin.

How Baking Works

In much the same way that the Cvap moldered in our kitchen for almost two years before we truly discovered it, How Baking Works, Exploring the Fundamentals of Baking Science has been on our book shelves for years without ever being properly appreciated. This volume is a small treasure chest of information and should be purchased by anyone who really wants to understand the hows and whys of what's happening with the ingredients needed in creating what goes in the oven. It's more than a keeper, its an essential read.

Toasted Coconut Milk

There is something about the aroma of toasted coconut. It is rich, warm, and complex. In the past we have made toasted coconut consomme hoping to utilize these unique characteristics. The consomme was delicate and still evocative of the pleasures of roasted coconut. Still, we wanted to infuse that deep caramelized flavor in coconut milk. Our first tests produced really hot but still pale milk. It turns out that coconut milk needs some additional sugar to caramelize and develop the toasty elements. We ended up pressure cooking coconut milk in mason jars with the addition of some sweetened condensed milk. The results were amazing. The milk became a creamy version of the original consomme. Our first application of the toasted coconut milk was with a roulade of kampachi with tomatoes and melon. The one flaw was that the milk went everywhere and people were chasing the milk across their plates. Since it was an intimate setting the diners were comfortable tipping and scraping. As cooks we noted the flaw in the dish and sought to make improvements. In order to control the texture of the toasted coconut milk we added some agar so that we could make a pureed gel. The result is a delicious puree of toasted coconut milk which is easily eaten and can be enjoyed in both small and large bites. With the modification to the coconut milk the dish became a bit cleaner in aesthetic and certainly easier to consume.

Two Ingredients

Rembrandt Gouda and Blis Elixer

Salmon and Fennel

The dish is simple. The salmon was slow cooked in the CVap at 50 degrees Celsius until ready to serve (approximately 15-20 minutes). The fennel puree was enriched by caramelized cream cheese and lightly smoked with hickory. The fennel sticks were the fennel stalks were cleaned, peeled, and vacuum sealed. Simple and delicious.

September 12, 2009

Almost crunch time, a few changes may still occur but this is the current prep list:

Manhattan Clam Chowder

 

Minced Tuna

spicy mayonnaise, watercress

 

Kona Kampachi

avocado, caramelized coconut milk

 

Fresh Corn Polenta

 

Liver and Alliums

 

Toasted Linguine with Clam Sauce

 

Sockeye Salmon

fennel

 

Roasted Chicken Tail

harissa yogurt

 

Beef Shank

sauerkraut purée

 

Rembrandt Gouda

blis elixer

 

Apple and Butternut Squash Crisp

blackberry-wine sorbet

 

A Bounty of Shells and Sea

Now that we're somewhat landlocked, the scent of the ocean and the walks along the sand are what I miss most. It's one of the pleasures of living near the ocean and one that I missed this entire summer. On the bright side we'll be in Rye, NY next weekend and Amaya will be taken on her first stroll along sandy shores. The first of many, if all goes according to plan. But I digress...

Buying seafood has been a challenge since we moved. To be honest, buying seafood retail is always a challenge, nowhere is the difference between restaurant quality and retail more obvious than when it comes to fish. High quality meat is hard to find, pristine fish is a near impossibility. Thankfully we have friends willing to help us out. When lobsters are out of reach, clams are a worthy substitute to satisfy my craving for salty sea breezes and briny deliciousness. We're lucky enough to have two varieties to work with for the weekend, littlenecks and razor clams. My first instinct is to steam them with garlic, white wine, and whatever herbs we have available, and then hunker down with a loaf of bread, some bitter greens and a bottle of wine. Unfortunately  this bounty is not for me and our guests will be expecting a little more finesse, no make that refinement, on their plates. It's a challenge and one we're looking forward to. You'll have to wait to see what happens next.

Beef Shanks

Great ingredients have a voice. They are not silent on the sideline, they scream to be picked. Great ingredients want and need to be used. Today, we were called to action. Incredible beef shanks that we had to get our hands on. A great place to begin is with something amazing and we just happened to have some extraordinary pastrami stock on hand. The shanks, the stock, a dinner this weekend, it's a promising combination. We are excited to see what comes of this.

Foil Packets

The grill is on, it is giving off heat. How to maximize the heating and cooling of a grill, well, besides the active act of cooking. We have taken to making and cooking in foil pouches. We season onions, garlic, root vegetables and others ingredients we want to stew down in foil packets either seasoned simply with salt and pepper or occasionally we add elaborations like ginger and lavender. The key is blending flavors, utilizing the heat, and capturing the essence and flavor of the grill. These foil packages are not always for the meal at hand. They are often an after thought, an idea in the making, a little something extra we have lying around to play with, perhaps something to work with for breakfast or even a dish in development. The point is remembering to utilize all of the grill and what it has to offer. Foil packets are a great addendum to whatever we were already cooking.

A Meeting of the Minds

 

During today's workshop we were working on a pastrami consomme made from short rib bones. We had some beautiful big eye tuna, which we brushed with olive oil, seasoned with salt, and warmed in the CVap. Finally we were working with Gellan and created an apple/Sierra Nevada Pale Ale sheet for draping over compositions. After everyone left I remembered some melon terrine in the fridge and the dish dish was born. The meatiness of the tuna was beautifully balanced by the pastrami consomme, the lightness of the sauce, combined with the sweet and bitter accents brought a decidedly Japanese slant to the mix. It was a delightful change of pace and according to my wife, utterly delicious.

The Porterhouse and the CVap

Some days things just come together. We were in Princeton picking up a few things from Elements, including two very cool framed menus from the dinners we did there (Thanks again guys!), and we decided to find the local Whole Foods and check it out. We found some beautiful cheeses and then wandered over to the butcher. It was our lucky day. Porterhouse was on sale for $10.99/#. It even looked like prime,although it was not marked as such, it was that well marbled and beautiful. We often hesitate over buying meat on sale, asking ourselves what went into that low price. Somehow being at Whole Foods alleviated our concerns, for better or for worse, somehow we just assume that it's high quality meat because it's within their walls. Anyway, they had three butchers behind the glass and our salesperson happily transmitted our order to them. They custom cut two 2-inch thick steaks for us and we went happily on our way.

The last couple of steaks we've had had been cooked sous vide before hitting the grill. I must confess that I, unlike Alex, am not a big fan of pre-cooking my steaks. I prefer cooking them a la minute, seasoned simply with sea salt, and letting them rest to a perfectly cooked medium rare. Alex has a tendency to slip the meat into the immersion circulator while I'm tending to naptime with Amaya and I was determined to keep that from happening with these beauties.

"Um Honey," long pause.

"Yes." He looked at me in the rear view mirror. Amaya's not a fan of the car, which necessitates my sitting in the back seat beside her for distraction and entertainment.

"About the steaks." Another pause. "Could you not put mine in the circulator today?"

He raised his eyebrows at me. "No problem. I wasn't planning to put them in the circulator. I was planning to put mine in the CVap with butter, salt, brown sugar, soy sauce and whole cloves of garlic and finish it on the grill."

There was a brief silence as I absorbed that information. "Oh, in that case you can cook mine too."

The steaks were amazing, juicy, flavorful, and perfectly cooked.They cut like butter. Was it Whole Foods, CVap or Alex? You decide.

Smoked Avocado

We have not smoked avocado before, it was about time. The smoke permeates nice and gently. Not quite sure where we are taking smoked avocado though made into guacamole and paired with some Del Maguey Mezcal would not be a bad place to start.

Organized

It is always impressive what nature shows us.

Gently Warmed

What we know is that it takes awhile for an idea to develop. More so, when we focus in one direction we often forget about the numerous possibilities that lie in the other directions. The greatest piece of equipment in our kitchen, which gets the least amount of use and acclaim is the CVap. Its lack of use is probably 80 percent our fault and 20 percent the CVap's--as if a piece of equipment could be held accountable for not being used. Let's start with the 20 percent. We have a CVap drawer which is bulky and not the prettiest to look at. There is a fair amount of wasted space in the drawer, the the drainage is easy enough, although filling with the unit with water is not a seamless process. The CVap allows us to cook precisely in a moist environment at exacting temperatures. We have been able to use it to isolate the starch in potatoes and to reheat soft boiled eggs. We have used it to delicately cook fish and to  braise pork belly. What we have not used it for until today is gently warm fruits and vegetables. In the past we have use circulators and bags to warm our fruit glued preparations. Tomatoes have been another story. We have tried low flames and delicate induction burners to warm them and the results have just not been stellar. Today the light bulb went off. We seasoned peeled tomatoes and a melon terrine with salt and olive oil and placed it in the Cvap. We set the temperature at 55 degrees C. The fruit warmed and still kept all its natural structure. In fact, the tomatoes were like miniature ravioli, bursting when popped in the mouth. Today we scratched the surface. Tomorrow is a wide road of possibilities which we had previously not seen.

It's Official

 

The contracts are signed and our first official book will be published by Clarkson Potter and is scheduled for Fall 2010. It's been a long hard road and we're finally here. It feels damned good. We're going to savor it for a few moments and then get to work. Our deadline of December 1 has our noses to the grindstone for the next three months in order to get everything we want done in time. We pushed hard for that deadline to get the book out as soon as possible so we have to follow through on our end. We're going to try and keep the blog and the book separate so that the material in the book will be fresh to regular readers. Here and there you may see a teaser, like compression/agar clarification, because we simply can't resist sharing an amazing idea, but you'll have to wait till next fall for the whole shebang. Oh, and we'll be looking for some volunteers to test recipes starting in a few weeks. Email us if you're interested but only if you're serious. As we mentioned, it's a tight schedule so if you don't have the time to actually make the recipes please don't volunteer. Fair warning, there will be some paperwork to fill out along the way. This is serious stuff and there's no time to lose.

Blackberries and Wine

Many red wines are described as brambly, with the flavor of red fruits like tart, decadent, fully ripe blackberries. These descriptions offer us paths to follow. We are working on a blackberry and red wine sorbet. To complement the sorbet a corn product is likely to emerge. On the simple front I like the idea of a griddled corn muffin. On the complex front I like the same pairing, perhaps a corn custard or a souffle. How then to bring them together? That's a question for tomorrow. For now we are happy to just smell the brambly blackberries in the heady wine. We will get to the second part when the time is right.