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Late for my own party - Daring Cooks July

By sketchy on July 15, 2009 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (0)

Due to some domain issues, my website went down the day before the big reveal. SO verry sorry.

Each month the Daring Cooks take on a challenging new recipe to test out abilities and comfort zones. I was granted the honor of hosting the July challenge. I opted to go for one of my own culinary passions - Molecular Cuisine. Many people are afraid to even broach the subject in the kitchen, or have decided they don't like the cooking style - having never attempted or tried the resulting food.

I chose something that would introduce the Daring Cooks to the style of cooking without requiring expensive tools or exotic ingredients (no chemicals required). An oven or microwave would prepare most of the ingredients. All you needed that was 'different' - a coffee/herb grinder, or a morter and pestle.

For July, I delved into a fascinating cookbook and pulled out Skate - Traditional Flavors Powdered. This is a dish from Grant Achatz, found in the Alinea cookbook - page 230.I feel this is a good introduction to Molecular Cuisine. Just a little work and you can make this, the techniques are not very hard and only require a few tools.

Onto the recipe:

Skate, Traditional Flavors Powdered - with changes

4 skate wings

* Beurre monte

* 300g fresh green beans

sea salt/kosher salt

1 banana

454g butter - 4 sticks

300g lemons

5g citric acid/vitamin c tablet

150g cilantro

150g parsley

100g dried banana chips

300g spray dried cream powder (or powdered milk)

100g cup minced red onion

200g capers (brined, not in oil)

Powders - prepare ahead of time
caper / onion
lemon powder
cilantro/parsley powder
'brown butter' powder

Powders once dried, all powders should be pulsed in a coffee grinder/spice mill/morter and pestle then passed through a chinois or fine mesh strainer.

Citrus powder
300g lemons
1000g simple syrup
5g citric acid/vitamin c tablet

Zest 300g of lemons (10.6 oz), remove the pith from the zest and poach in the simple syrup three times. dry with paper towels and move to a dehydrating tray. 130 for 12 hours. pulse the zest in a coffee grinder, pass through chinois, and mix with citric acid/vitamin C powder. If you do not have a dehydrator, place in microwave for 8 to 10 minutes at medium powder. Once dried, follow the other instructions.

Cilantro/parsley powder
150g cilantro
150g parsley

Blanch the parsley in boiling saltwater for 1 second, submerge the leaves in ice water for 3 minutes. Dry on paper towels and place on dehydrator tray. 130 for 12 hours. grind and pass through chinois. If you do not have a dehydrator, place in microwave for 30 seconds, turn over leaves and microwave for another thirty seconds. They should be dry by now, pulse in coffee grinder, pass through chinois and reserve.

Onion powder
100g cup minced red onions

dehydrate - 130 for 12 hours microwave at medium power for 20 minutes. pulse in grinder, pass through chinois

Caper powder
200g capers (get the ones packed in brine/vinegar)

Run the capers under cold water for two minutes to remove some of the brine. dry on paper towels and dehydrate for 12 hours at 130 degrees. microwave instructions are unclear. Dry them as much a possible with paper towels, the microwave on medium for 1 minute. Check the moisture content and stir them. repeat for 30 second intervals until they are dry. If you use this method, pleas post the time needed to dry the capers. Once dry, pulse and sift the powder. Mix it with the onion powder.

Brown Butter powder
100g Dried banana chips (unsweetened if possible - many are coated in honey - the freeze dried ones would be brilliant)
300g spray dried cream powder

If you cannot find the cream powder, you can substitute Bob's red mill non fat dry milk powder, or even carnation instant milk powder. The substitutions will alter the flavor a little, but you will still get the general idea. preheat the oven to 350 degrees, sift the cream powder into a fine layer on a silpat or on parchment. bake for 4 minutes, then remove for heat. If it bakes for too long, it will burn.

Be very cautious with all powders in the oven. They all go from browned to burnt in a few seconds. grind the banana chips in a coffee grinder and mix with the toasted cream powder. Pass this through a chinois and reserve.

* For green beans, slice each beans into very thin rounds (2 mm)
* Beurre Monte - 454g butter (4 sticks, 1 pound) cubed and cold, 60g water. In a small saucepan, bring the water to a boil, remove from heat and whisk in the butter 1 cube at a time. This should from an emulsion. Keep this heated, but under 195 degrees. The emulsion will not break - this is your poaching liquid.

Skate
Prepare the skate - 50G v shaped cuts are recommended Bring 100g water, 100g beurre monte, and green bean rounds to a boil over high heat. Cook until the water has evaporated (about 3 minutes), when the pan is almost dry, remove it from heat and season with 3g salt.

Bring 300g water and 300g beurre monte to simmer over medium heat, add skate wings and simmer for 2 minutes. Remove the pan from heat and flip the wing over and let rest in pan for two more minutes. Transfer to warming tray lined with parchment and season with 5 grams of fine sea salt.

Plating
Take the tip of a small spoon and make a small mound of the citrus powder, the onion-caper powder, and the cilantro parsley-powder. Swirl these around in a hurricane type pattern. I found that it is easier, and you get finer lines if you lightly shake the plate to flatten out the mounds, then swirl the spoon through it to get the pattern.

Peel the remaining banana into very think slices (3mm) fan three slices on the plate, place green beans on top and place skate wing portion on top. On the tall edge, sprinkle the brown butter powder.

Continue reading Late for my own party - Daring Cooks July.

Dragonscale fish and chicken balls

By sketchy on August 7, 2008 8:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Some say there are no practical uses for molecular gastronomy. I have to disagree. You might have to get creative, but we have great resources to give you inspiration. WD~50 has a dish where they wrap chicken breast in chicken thighs ad wrap the bundle in chicken skin. Well, I took that as my first challenge. There are no recipes, there are no instructions oh how to make it, just a tiny 1 inch picture on a website.

Running blindly with a pouch of Activa RM (provided by Veronica), I took a stab into the world of Transglutaminase (meat glue)! It has no flavor, but allows you to do things that would be close to impossible to do otherwise. After the enzymes have bonded the two proteins together, you have a sturdy single piece of protein to work with. One practical use is to bind two tenderloins together - this way, you don't have to deal with small tail portions. Everything can e uniform. Then you could use the 'glue' to bind a slice of bacon around each cut tenderloin. The bacon will not fall apart or unravel when cooking. But who said anything about practical - I want to experiment!

First up - Sketchy's attempt at chicken balls (gotta find a better name):

These were great -- they were crispy on the outside, and very juicy on the inside. I served them with asparagus tips, potatoes, and a reduction of potato and fresh roasted vegetable and chicken stock. We both really liked this, it will probably been seen again in our household.

Next up is the mythical dragonscale fish. OK -- it should be mythical - it was so good.

I took some cod, layered two on top of each-other, and bound them with the Activa. Next, I took thinly sliced spicy chorizo and wrapped the fish in the sausage (each slice brushed with Activa to promote the creation of a skin of chorizo). This was tightly wrapped and allowed to set up for overnight in the refrigerator. the next day, I pan seared the top and bottom, then tossed it in the convection oven until the fish was cooked.

The fish was unbelievably moist. The Activa bonded the sausage to the fish and created a kind of skin. This held in the moisture when it cooked in the dry heat. The fish had a great texture, and the addition of the chorizo flavor added so much flavor to the normally bland cod. I call it dragonscale because the layered effect of the chorizo makes it look like scales. They exposed parts of the chorizo were crunchy, while the covered parts were perfect.

I served this with an olive and tomato tapenade, honey glazed spicy carrots and red peppers, and a celery and cumin salad. The spanish flavors exploded from this dish, and the fish was simply amazing. This will definitely be making another appearance. Perhaps at a certain bbq taking place this month. Adding some smoked flavor to this would be amazing. I think I will have the guys at Belmont Butchery slice the chorizo for me, that will give me uniform thin slices and save me a TON of time cutting it with a knife.

What's next? Perhaps hammering some chicken pasta-thin and making ravioli with an unbroken egg yolks.

Busy Saturdays and dinner parties

By sketchy on July 2, 2008 7:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

This last Saturday we had company over for dinner. Aidan and Finn ran around and exhausted each other while I ran a marathon in the kitchen. Piet, his wife (and their son), brought over some excellent gravlax and sauce. I made some sourdough pumpernickel bread. This was my first time making pumpernickel, it was surprising that so few stores have pumpernickel flour. I tried Ukrops, Krogers, The Fresh Market, and Elwood Thompson's. As a last attempt, I tried the organic section of the Ukrops by my house. They had a small bag of dark rye flour, this is not pumpernickel flour, but it was really close, and closer then anything I had found. The addition of coffee and the molasses from the brown sugar made a very dark crust, and a deep, rich colored crumb.

Next was a little kitchen science. This was my first attempt at the elBulli staple: Liquid Pea Ravioli. This is a simple mixture of peas, mint, and two chemicals, topped with a tiny mint leaf and a bit of sea salt. This was interesting, the texture of the peas is much thicker then the fruit juice mixtures I've been doing. It took a little experimenting to get a clean release from the spoon, but once that was solved, we had a handful of pea ravioli to munch on.

During this entire time, we were sipping miscellaneous drinks. We had carbonated Bombay Sapphire Gin, foamy absinthe mojitos, and passionfruit whisky sours with passionfruit foam. The mojitos were made in the soda siphon, and the passionfruit foam was made in the gourmet whip. We broke up the red wine and white wine for dinner.

I had been rolling and cutting pasta all afternoon. The KitchenAid attachment makes this so easy. If you like to make pasta, I highly recommend the attachments. No hand cranking, variable speeds and size settings. I've rolled pasta by hand, without the aid of a crank machine, and they all produce the same quality, but the amount of work involved in making the pasta is minimal with the automated tools. Once the pasta was rolled and cut, it rested for a few hours in the refrigerator. Next up was more food prep. Pancetta and bacon from Belmont Butchery. The smell of cured and smoky pork. Mmmmmmmmm.

This was sauteed in white wine, then tossed with the hot pasta with eggs, parmegianno reggiano, pecorino romano, and garlic. More commonly known as Pasta alla Carbonara. This was accompanied with some sundreid tomato, basil, and parmigiano sourdough bread. We had a fresh heirloom tomato and olive oil topping for the bread. The pasta cooked in two minutes and thirty seconds, one of the nice things about fresh pasta.

I had a intermediate course planned, but we were all full from dinner. I'll discuss this down at the bottom of the post.

For dessert, we had a chocolate tart with caramel and peanuts. This was my second recipe from the Baking with Dorie cookbook. This came out very well. I made ti a few hours before company arrived, and have been enjoying it for dessert each night this week.

The skipped course. I was planning on sfering some cantaloupe and serving it with prosciutto. Sunday night, amid the thunderstorms, I was in the kitchen. Like Dr. Frankenstein, I was making something come to life as the lightning struck around me. Drip Drip Drip Drip. One by one, droplets of melon were going into a waterbath and being transformed into melon caviar. I've made fruit caviar a few times, and I have the technique down.

Ventures into the unknown

By sketchy on June 10, 2008 9:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

This will be my first installment of Molecular Gastronomy Techniques for the home chef. I'm going to focus on the recipes and my experience with it. I'll try to keep the science talk to a minimum, but give enough for those interested. My first technique will be sferification. I think this technique goes to El Bulli Restaurant/labs, if I'm wrong, someone feel free to correct me, and I'll update this little point.

What is sferification? Sferification is the process of making liquid caviar and pasta-less raviolo. With the use of chemicals, one can take a food liquid (anything from fruit, vegetables, meat juice, or chicken stock), submerge it in another liquid, and a gel will form around the liquid through ion transfer. OK -- if you want the science behind this, send me a mail and I'll send you some resources.

I started with caviar because it is one of the easier things to attempt. In the last week and a half I've attempted this five times. My first attempt was using the wrong chemical bath, so that was a mess, my second attempt was a success, three and four were a mess and a pot of gooooooo. My fifth attempt worked great. I've determined it is all about measurements, pH, and timing.

Measurement is the first critical thing. I need a scientific scale, something that can measure a tenth of a gram.
pH is the next critical thing. I think I need to buy testing strips. If the pH is too high, it will not work, if it is to low, it will not work. I already have chemicals to alter the pH, but I need a way to test the solution before I proceed.
Third is timing, this is the easiest. If you let your sferes sit for too long, you get a solid gel. If they don't sit long enough, they break.

There are two processes for sferification. I will focus on the standard process, and explain the reverse process in another post.

First, you need the right chemicals: Sodium Alginate, Sodium Citrate, and Calcium Chloride.

Apple Caviar

8 ounces Apple Juice
1/2 tsp Sodium Alginate
1/8 tsp Sodium Citrate

2 cups of water
1/2 tsp Calcium Chloride

One or two water baths.

Mix a third of the apple juice with the sodium alginate. You need to use an immersion blender for this to work (a stand blender would also work). Heat this mixture to 205 degrees - this helps remove the air bubbles formed from blending. Add the rest of the apple juice and sodium citrate, mix to combine. Chill. This part can be made in advance and held for service.

Mix the water and calcium chloride in a large bowl.

When you are ready to 'cook' the sferes, transfer the apple mixture to your dropping apparatus. Syringes can be purchased at CVS, specialty equipment can be purchased from your chemical vendor, and you can use a squirt bottle. I have a 96 pipette dropper, and a squirt bottle. For speed, the dropper is amazing, but I prefer the slightly larger sferes that the squirt bottle makes.

(This is where the timing comes into play)

When you drop the mixture into the water bath, the reaction is instantaneous. The longer the sfere is in the water, the thicker the shell. As the chemical reaction takes place, the apple is gelling; if it sits too long, you have a solid sfere, instead of a liquid filled sfere. Thirty seconds to 45 seconds is the time the sferes need to cook. If they are in there much longer, they will solidify on you. Remove the sferes with a slotted spoon, strainer, or skimmer and dip in the water bath. I use two baths: one for the first dip, and the other ice water bath to cool the sferes (I used them in a cold dish).

You now have apple caviar.

If you want to make raviolo, fill a round teaspoon with the apple mixture and place the spoon under the water. Rotate the spoon over and flip the apple out of the spoon. It will naturally take on a sphere shape in the fluid as the bonds are formed. Let these rest for sixty to ninety seconds. Then remove and dip in water baths to remove the chemicals from the outside.