playing with fire and water

grapes

One of my earliest taste memories is of grapes. Not of the insipid seedless supermarket variety. The grapes that I grew up eating were the European Vitis vinifera, grown in my backyard.

Growing grapes was my fathers passion. As far back as I can remember, he would tend the vines; training, pruning and grafting them year after year, in hopes of producing the perfect grape. The goal, of course, was to produce a great wine. The wines, though perfectly drinkable, were never remarkable.

When he stopped making wine, there was an abundance of grapes for the table. Just a few ripe bunches in a bowl would fill the house with a complex bouquet of aroma compounds made up of alcohols (methyl alcohol, ethyl alcohol), aldehydes (acetaldehyde, isobutyraldehyde), amines (methoxypyrazine), esters (ethyl, butyrate), thiols (mercaptohexyl acetate) and terpenes (linalool, nerol)--to name a few. Their flavor was amazing--a beautiful balance of acids, alkalies, tannins and sugars. 

Nature blessed these fruits with many great attributes, but she did not make them conducive for good eating. Unless you are a bird.

As with most fertile plants that cover our planet, the grapes loftiest endeavor is to go forth and multiply. In order to sustain the species, Nature designed the grape berry as a seed carrier. Only when the seeds are ready, do the fruits ripen-- making them attractive to the birds that will consume them and deposit the seeds.

 

Eating these grapes was a challenge. The skins, thick and tough, were unpalatable. Removing them was not an option, as they contained aromas and astringency necessary for a balanced flavor. The large seeds which contained the bulk of the tannins were completely inedible; Natures cruel joke to us humans.

As a child, I developed a slow, methodical approach to eating these grapes: First, the skins were split open to reveal the seeds, which were pried out with fingertips, and sometimes from impatience, with tweezers. Next, the tenacious skins were peeled, but only halfway, leaving them intact at the blossom end. Holding on to the end, I would insert the grape into my mouth, biting down on the skin to release the flavor and loosen the pulp, then remove and discard the masticated skin. Messy? yes. Attractive? no. It would take me nearly an hour to get through a small bunch.

Other members of my family did not have the patience (or neurosis) to eat them "properly" and would just eat them whole, or not bother at all. And yes, these grapes made an extraordinary jelly, but how many jars can a family consume or give away? 

Not that many, it turned out. And so, the grapes were left for the birds.

A few years ago, my father, tired of cleaning the mess and tending the vines, cut them down and installed an awning over the patio that was once covered with a flourishing grape arbor.

Every year since, come October, I get a craving for those old world grapes.

I miss them.

 

"Those things are better which are perfected by nature than those which are finished by art", said Cicero, a long, long time ago

Nature, with her infinite variations, has always been a primary source of inspiration, as well as aggravation, but I have to concur with William Blake, who said "Great things are done when men and mountains meet"

This is not a mountain...its just a grape. 

My intention here was to recreate the flavor and balance of the grapes, without the obstacles of seeds and skin. With my father's grapes no longer available, I turned to the the Concord (Vitis labrusca). The pulp was separated from the skins and each juiced separately. The pulp was set with agar and gelatin and molded. After a few trials, I found the best ratio was .85% agar to .35% gelatin. When the gelled pulp was unmolded, the grapes were marinated in the juice from the skin. Adria applies this technique in Gelatina Cru by vacuum sealing. I found that I had better control over the penetration and ultimate proportions of skin/pulp by simply allowing it to sit in the marinade for a few hours. 

For the first time, I am able to enjoy the flavor and texture of old world grapes with none of the distractions. This technique also opens up possibilities for other whimsies...grapes made of white wine, marinated in red. Or, other manipulations of flavor contrasts between pulp and peel...sweet orange gel, marinated in bitter orange.

Have I outwitted Mother Nature? Just maybe on this one...but she is still legions ahead.

For a philosophical take on Man vs. Nature in the context of food, read  "Cooking: The Quintessential Art" by Herve This and Pierre Gagnaire, a book that I forgot to include in my previous post. Chadzilla quotes from the book in a recent post, sparking an insightful conversation.

(I can't put up this post without a shout out to my friend, Uwe, who embraces the nicknames Uva and Queso [grape and cheese]. Check out his blog Gratifood. His food will make you drool. His language will make you smile.)

 

sea bean cardamom oyster

Seeing that so many of you are familiar with sea beans, I'll keep the description brief.

The genus Salicornia is a salt-tolerant herb that grows along beaches in the US (where they are known as sea beans), Europe (known as samphire), South Africa and South Asia. Other common names include glasswort and pickleweed.

I was introduced to sea beans while baking at a restaurant, where they made a brief appearance on the savory side. Their succulent salinity (and a dare) challenged me to find a sweet application. Using the flavor of salted caramel as inspiration, I coated them with burnt caramelized sugar. The results were addictive. The sweet crust cracked, giving way to a snappy crunch, followed by a hit of refreshing salinity. 

My introduction to cardamom preceded sea beans by at least a decade and was far more dramatic. Opening a jar and inhaling deeply, I was met by a hot breeze that had traveled across hundreds of miles of ocean and sand. Another whiff confirmed the scent of saltwater drying on hot skin, seaweed and sand baking under an unrelenting sun, ground-up sea shells. Clean, bracing, and unambiguously masculine, I fancied it a cologne created by a deep-sea alchemist for Poseidon himself. I still refer to cardamom as beach-in-a-bottle.

A Virtual Day at the Beach

Contents:

Sea bean: nam pla sugar crust. 
Salt water taffy meets umami-o-the-sea.

Cardamom sable sand: Toasted rice flour, butter, poncillo, cardamom, lime, sea salt. 
A game of beach volleyball; sweet vs. salty.

Pearl: A burst of briny oyster liquor kissed by passion fruit. 
Hot sex on a tropical beach.

Directions:

          Smell. Taste. Chew. Swallow. Savor. Enjoy. Listen to the squalling seagulls and lapping waves.

(seashell and iPod not included)

tahoon cress

I returned from ICC laden with gifts. The best one-- a brainload of ideas and information-- I continue to unwrap and savor a little each day.

There were also tangible gifts:

 A big glossy book containing bios, interviews and recipes of all of the presenters.

A gift package from Heston Blumenthal. In true theatrical form, they were hidden under the seats. The velum envelope contained two packets that were to tie in with his presentation of The Perfect Christmas Dinner, inspired by the gifts of the Magi. The first was a Listerine strip flavored with frankincense and was immediately savored. The second was a newborn baby-scented communion wafer. Despite my fascination with babies, this just felt wrong to put in my mouth.

A flat of micro sprouts from Koppert Cress containing Affilla (peashoots), Mustard, purple and green Shiso, and the unfamiliar Tahoon.

The flavor of Tahoon took me aback. I was not expecting the deep, complexity of wood, humus, and nuts (it's said to taste like beech nuts), trailed by a sting of onion. There are defined elements of earth and fire with aromas that evoke freshly-tilled earth, baked by the sun, along with roasted tree bark. I don't know if this even sounds good, but it is. My taste buds say umami, but I could find no documentation on this. 

What I did find is that Tahoon (Toona sinensis) is a tree, native to eastern and southestern Asia, where the young leaves and shoots are enjoyed as an aromatic vegetable. It is more commonly known as Chinese Toon or Chinese Mahoghany.

As I munch on Tahoon, I am visited by a flight of dishes: caramelized onion flan with foie, pomegranate, and Tahoon; roasted potato ice cream, bacon dust, hamachi,and Tahoon oil; Tahoon-infused beets with curried chicken terrine; a dessert of pear, chestnuts, and chocolate--haunted by Tahoon.

My quickly dwindling supply led me to find a source for seeds. I can now grow a steady supply of sprouts through the winter. Maybe I'll even let some grow into plants that I can transplant into the garden come spring. Maybe, in a few years, I'll have a Tahoon tree of my own. But even as I sit here, typing and munching, thinking about steak, mushrooms, corn and Tahoon, I doubt that they'll ever make it past sprouts. 

puff pastry

Flour. Butter. Water. Salt. No leavening. Or is there?

When these four ingredients are combined into a homogeneous dough, then rolled out and baked, you end up with a cracker or flatbread. Not much rise there.

Blend the same ingredients together but stop while the butter is still discernible-- about the size of peas. Now roll out and bake. You have a pate brisee or a short, flaky pie crust with unevenly puffed layers that may have doubled in height.

Now, take the same four ingredients, blend the flour, water and salt to make a dough. Evenly layer the butter throughout the dough through a series of rolling out and folding. Stop when you have made 6 "turns", resulting in 1459 alternating layers of fat and starch. After a final rolling and baking, you are left with pate feuilletee or puff pastry. This time, the finished pastry leaving the oven has risen up to 6 times in volume from the raw dough that went in.

Three products...sharing identical ingredients in similar proportions...with significantly different results. Do you know why?

Lacking chemical leavening, the release of gases is not responsible for the differences between the three pastry products. And with the absence of yeast, it cannot be attributed to fermentation. 

What caused the puff pastry to rise to glorious heights and the pie crust to puff to a lesser degree is the steam created by the melted butter. As the butter melts and boils, the gluten matrix in the dough hardens, trapping the pockets of steam. The degree of rise in the three products varies with the distribution of fat and starch.

Understanding this was an epiphany. So was grasping the unfolding of egg proteins. And the destruction of sugar to make caramel. And so on. 

These were my AH-HAA moments. They allowed me to analyse mistakes and to not only correct them, but to control the outcome. They liberated me from bondage to recipes, and with this freedom came a broader one: the freedom to create.

Modern cooking places an emphasis on science, when, in fact, chemistry has been at play throughout the history of food and cooking. Does a strong knowledge of food science make us good cooks? If that were true then scientists, by right, would all be chefs.

What about technique? Consider the baker who gets up at 3 AM every morning to bake bread. After some time, he can turn out hundreds of perfect loaves even while half-asleep. He may even have a grasp on the chemistry of his craft through extended observation of cause and effect. His talent and dedication may move him onto the saute line, where through repetition he learns to turn out a perfectly cooked piece of fish every time. 

But would he know what to do with a salsify? Would he even know what to serve it with?

At ICC, Jordi Butron of Espai Sucre gave a presentation about the process of creating desserts. A lot of what he said resonated with me. In it, he stated (from my notes) "Pastry is techniques...but technique has to service flavor. Technique is easy--it only requires repetition, but a library of flavors takes many years to acquire."

As a baker, I have made puff pastry countless times. Through muscle memory, I could even make it while half-asleep. Because of my understanding of steam pockets and gluten matrixes, I was able to effectively teach it to my students, passing on the AH-HAA moments. My familiarity with this product allows me to play and ask questions:

Why butter? (because it is fat and for it's flavor)

What else is flavored fat? (oils..but they won't work, they're liquid and here, the fat needs to start as a solid)

What else is solid, flavored fat? (pork fat, bacon fat, foie, cheese...)

Cheese? Which cheese? (needs to be spreadable and have a high fat content...a triple cream)

Saint Andre? Boursault? Brillat-Savarin? (no...too subtle for the flavor to come through)

l'Explorateur? (a triple cream, assertive flavor...yes, it will work)

That is how I have come to make l'Explorateur puff pastry; a product that pleases me.

Will it please everyone? Is it ground-breaking? Life-altering? No. No. And no.

It is simply a token of where I'm at as a cook/baker at this moment in time and a synthesization of what I know about technique, food science and my own palate.

Do these things make me a better cook? I'd like to think so. What I do know for certain is that by relying on their guidance, I am free to contemplate and to think about food; what it is...what it can be. 

And that, I believe, is the starting point for innovation.

peach tomato pie

blushing fragrant peaches

lightly poached in their own esters

orbs of sun gold tomatoes

brazenly liberated from their skins

hesitant at first the duo demurely waltz across the tongue

then break out into an intrepid tango

seamlessly balancing sweet with tart 

cinnamon basil ice cream joins the dance 

after a cool entry he busts out his spicy warm moves

a chaperone of flaky pastry

moderates the party of eternal summer

in the first days of autumn

In Watermelon Sugar

Everyone knew about her thing for babies. How living things in miniature form made her stomach dance and her pupils dilate and her voice rise an octave. He, more than anyone, knew how to recognize the symptoms.
The first thing he noticed when she came bounding toward him was the glint in her eyes. Then came the voice.
"Look", she cooed with her hand outstretched, "a baby watermelon".

 

"Cool...how does it taste?"

"I don't know. Let's find out."

 

"Here", she said, offering him the small hemisphere "...you first."

"What about the skin?"

"It's OK...it's edible."

"...and the seeds?"

"Those too."

  

She watched the unraveling through his eyes. The synaptic storm that waged behind them. She put a hand to her mouth to cover her smile as his face contorted. 

"Well?"

"Uhm...it's not watermelon."

"What then...?"
"Not sure...something familiar...not watermelon."

"Does it taste of summer? and sunshine? and fruit ripened on the vine?"
"Yes...all of those things...but not watermelon."

 

 

anticipay-ay-tion

If you live on this planet (even if only in a physical sense) and read food blogs, then you are surely familiar with the wildly popular and hilarious French Laundry at Home . If you are not, then you're in for a treat.

FLH is written by Carol Blymire, who described herself as "a pretty good cook"  when she decided to cook and blog her way through The French Laundry Cookbook nearly two years ago. Her razor wit and quirky obsessions with 80s music and Mike Bloomberg have garnered her many fans and readers, myself included.

I found the blog, late one night, through an email link to her April 1, 2007 post. The maniacal mess that she created in that post made me laugh out loud. And I don't mean LOL, but the kind of uncontrollable, gut-busting, tear-streaming, soul-cleansing howls that wake your dog and make him charge at you, barking in concern. I've bookmarked that post and refer to it often when food gets too intense and I need to lighten up.

I am not posting about French Laundry at Home merely as a recommendation, although I am glad to do so. Instead, some recent news has piqued my interest, and maybe yours too. As Carol runs out of recipes to cook from the book, she has announced in a recent post her plans to launch a new site this fall. Although she is keeping mum about the specifics while ironing out the details, she promises that it will involve two books that I am eagerly awaiting: Thomas Keller's Under Pressure and Grant Achatz's Alinea, and will go so far as to say: "So, while I may not cook my way through an entire El Bulli volume, I am going to continue to push past my comfort zone to see what I am capable of in some new arenas."

Carol Blymire...taking on Ferran Adria?

Oh baby, this is gonna be good.

strawberry soup

I've been on a fruit soup kick lately. My juicer has been working OT. I promised him a break after this one.

The other night, I made a cold cherry soup infused with star anise and swirled with yogurt. I've never been to Morocco, but that soup took me there. Landed me in a souk in Marrakesh. With each spoonful, the saturated colors of silk and pottery intensified, the sounds of vendors haggling with buyers grew louder, the scent of leather and sweet spices grew stronger. By the time that I had finished, I half-expected to find my feet covered in dust and my house redecorated with exotic carpets and textiles, all purchased at the lowest possible price.

This strawberry soup, perfumed with Riesling and sweet woodruff sorbet, transports me to the Bavarian Alps, on the first day of May.

Sweet Woodruff (Galium odoratum) is a woodland herb  that grows prolifically in Northern Europe. In Germany, it is known as Waldmeister (master of the woods) and is steeped in white wine with strawberries to produce May Wine, traditionally served for May Day celebrations. It's primary aroma compound is coumarin, which lends it's characteristic sweet hay and vanilla flavor. Coumarin is also found in high concentrations in tonka beans; it's moderate toxicity is the reason why they are banned in the US. Fresh leaves of sweet woodruff have only a faint odor--they need to be wilted or dried to release the essential oils. In haste, a quick blast in the microwave does the trick.

 

Sour cream pearls couldn't be any easier when applying reverse spherification.  Dairy products already contain sufficient amounts of calcium to react with a sodium alginate solution (1 liter water + 5 g. sodium alginate). This technique produces stable spheres that remain liquid in the center and can be served hot or cold.

parrano avocado pineapple

parrano
avocado
pineapple
rue
lime

Freeze-dried pineapple is like crack. Once you bite into it's shattering crispness and allow it to fill your mouth with it's sweet, fruity esters and tickle your tongue with it's metallic sting-- you'll be hooked. And when it's just a memory, you will scheme and plot ways to get more. Don't say that I didn't warn you.

Besides eating out of hand, it can be ground into a powder and folded into ice cream, meringue, cake batter, and bread dough for an intense pineapple punch without added moisture. A sprinkling over a finished dish reads like seasoning on the palate.

Every time that I score buy more, I intend to set some aside to play with. I wonder about reconstituting it...what would the texture be like?...would the liquid be flavored? Alas, it never makes it that far. I am weak.

summer

sweet:   lobster. corn. mango.

salty:  bacon.

sour:  lime- watermelon.

floral:  kaffir lime.

herbaceous:  parsley pollen.