Getting ready for spring we started working on a sorrel soup. The soup base is made with pureed sorrel blended with buckwheat porridge. We have also developed a buckwheat cous cous to add a textural contrast to velvety soup. On the side of the soup we have a buckwheat crisp, made from drying out our porridge in a dehydrator.
This composition is a good example of taking an idea and theme too far, or at least making it too large. The sorrel and buckwheat need something to balance them out. A bowl of this acidic and vegetal soup is too much, but as a sauce for something else, let’s says scallops or salmon we would come closer to a harmonious dish.
Let’s take an evolutionary approach to the dish. We can look at the complete dish as a way to create elements for separate dishes. The sorrel soup would be great as a green sauce on raw fish. The buckwheat crisp would work wonderfully with a composed vegetable dish or as an accompaniment to a soup, maybe just not sorrel. The buckwheat cous cous is tender and earthy and calling for richer flavors like morels, asparagus, and smoked rabbit sausage. Imagine a spring tagine with buckwheat cous cous as the backbone.
The soup was the catalyst for the ideas, yet the application and integration of them into our playground will be in a variety of unintended forms.
Years Past:
February 23, 2007
February 23, 2006
February 23, 2005
