playing with fire and water

chicken skate corn coconut

Imagine a morsel of tender, sweet, flaky fish. Now imagine it encrusted with a crackly-crisp crust of chicken skin.

chicken-fried skate

silver queen corn

coconut

cocoa nib

sea bean

That was the image that I kept fixed in my mind (and palate) and the inspiration for the chicken skin croquant. 

In the past, I've wrapped and glued raw chicken skin to another protein. The problem with that method is controlling the cooking time and temperature required to produce a crisp skin and a properly cooked filling. Sometimes these are incompatible. 

Then there is the issue of wrapping, which leaves areas of overlapping skin that result in pockets of flabby fat.

The control, I decided, would be to pre-cook the skin. But then how to apply it? Grinding was a logical step, but I wasn't looking for a crumb coating. I was seeking a crispy crust--one that did not require deep frying or prolonged heating. 

I needed something that would cook quickly, fuse the ground skin, and contribute to the texture and flavor. Sugar fit the bill and I liked the ideal of a bruleed coating, but the amount needed would render it too sweet. Mildly sweet isomalt, which behaves like sugar and quickly melts to the hard-crack stage turned out to be the solution. The addition of Tapioca Maltodextrin further improved the texture and helped with the bonding.

 

The last silver queen corn of the season, when put through a juicer and heated, contains natural starch that quickly transforms into a velvety sauce. All that is needed is a burst of lime juice and pinch of salt to balance the sweetness. 

Coconut and corn is a marriage made in heaven. 

Cocoa nibs add complexity and a hint of bitterness.

Salty sea beans + chicken of the sea = delicious. 

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.

pea soup

When I tell people that I've been cooking since childhood, they invariable ask how I remain interested and enthusiastic about the preparation of food. I could go on citing reasons for days--don't even get me started--but at the very top of the list is what lures me out of bed each morning:

It is the power of transformation.

Transformation is what hooked me on baking. It taught me the effect of fire and water and the role that science plays in the kitchen. Even now, I am still amazed at what butter, flour, sugar and eggs can become.

Outside of the kitchen, the theme of transformation is the common thread that unites my other interests. When I look at a raw carrot, it is no different than how I view a blank canvas, a length of fabric, or the lens of a camera. My eyes see what it is, my imagination tells me what it can be, my hands make it be.

The journey from abstract idea to concrete product is fueled by constant dialog about possibilities and limitations. The road is not always straight or direct, and I often take detours, get lost, and crash along the way. But the joy is in the journey-- the manipulation of infinite variables, the witnessing of and participation in the transformation.

The transformation that I am concerned with here is not the kind that happens in the kitchen, but at the table.

 A clear, steaming hot consomme of fresh peas made by gelatin filtration is poured into a bowl of carefully arranged elements: a perfect raw oyster, a lacy mantle of roasted peanut oil and cocoa butter,  mango pearls, and the flower, stems and leaves of pea shoots.

The initial effect, and most dramatic, is the melting of the roasted peanut-cocoa butter lace. Peas and peanuts are both legumes and share many aroma compounds. The emulsification reverts back to a fragrant oil that forms droplets on the surface and lends the soup an enticing aroma and flavor. As the consomme level rises, the pea shoots soften and float, the leaves open and unfurl. These add texture to the soup and reinforce the flavor of the consomme. The pearls dislodge and swirl to the bottom of the bowl, waiting to be scooped up and burst their bright mango juice in the mouth. The oyster coddles in the heat of the consomme and is intended to be the last voluptuous bite.

playing with ricotta

Some days, I go to the playground, looking for fun, but find that it is deserted. I can see my good friends, Ideas and Inspiration, lurking in the shadows; just out of reach. As much as I coax and cajole them, they refuse to come out to play.
Then there are days, like today, when they are already there waiting.

This morning, while enjoying my breakfast of ricotta, fruit, and coffee, I was struck by the how the flavor of ricotta mingled with the coffee. I began to wonder if it was possible to unite these flavors before they hit the palate.
Ideas told me that this might be achieved by marinating the ricotta in coffee. Obediently, I brewed a fresh cup and stirred in some ricotta. A few hours later, I was dismayed to find that there was only a faint flavor of the coffee in the ricotta.
I was about to give up hope, when Inspiration suggested that because the ricotta was now a few days old, it had already 'set' and was not open to absorbing any more liquid, but that a fresh batch would still be porous. It seemed plausible, and because it is quick and easy, I made more ricotta.
While the fresh batch drained for the requisite 5 minutes, I brewed a fresh cup of coffee and stirred in the still- warm ricotta. This time, after only 20 minutes, the ricotta had taken on a rich brown color and tasted distinctly of coffee.
Before the ricotta cooled, I tried other flavors:

                coffee                            caramel                                raspberry

                

Moving to the savory side, I had on hand some gelatin-filtered tomato sauce that I had infused with basil and garlic.
This tasted just like pizza!

I was having a great time playing with my friends (they get so wound up), but I had other things to do (like work). They did, however, convince me to try one more thing with ricotta before abandoning it for the day: ricotta caramel.
I cooked some sugar with a bit of water until it turned dark amber, then stirred in some well-drained ricotta. I had expected it to turn out hard and brittle, but instead it was soft and chewy, interspersed with flecks of curd. Interesting texture...more play for another day.

                                 

 

gu A c A moL e

chef #1:  dude, Baldor just dropped off a case of avocados...they're peaking...wanna make a soup or something for a special tonite?

chef #2:  ...how about some guacamole?

chef #1:  dude, that's lame

chef #2:  yeah... but not if we deconstruct it...

chef #1:  ?

chef #2:  see, there's this philosopher dude, Derrida, who deconstructed text by examining and reforming words, syntax and language to personally connect with the context rather than the author.

chef #1:  ????

chef #2:  Then architects ran with that and applied it as theory by reorganizing the spatial and structural elements of a building, making it less familiar in order to create new relationships between these elements.

chef #1:  ?????????

chef #2:  So...we can apply this to guacamole by taking the flavors that are familiar and presenting them in a way that is unfamiliar, to force us to think about their relationship.

chef #1:  F**k that, just make soup.

                           

TGRWT #8 white chocolate and caviar

Chadzilla is a food blog written by chef Chad Galiano that I always find inspiring. When he announced that he would be hosting round #8 of TGRWT(They Go Really Well Together) and put white chocolate and caviar on the table, I knew that I wanted to play along.

To my knowledge, Heston Blumenthal was the first to pair caviar with white chocolate. I recall reading an article which appeared in the Guardian back in 2002 and being shocked by the combination, but intuitively, I knew that it would work; salty and briny with a sweet, milky finish. Since then, many chefs have adapted this pairing and put their own spin on it. Recently, I sampled Will Goldfarbs version--Indonesian vanilla ice cream with American Sturgeon caviar and chocolate bits at Dessert Studio at Michel Cluizel--and they did indeed go really well together.

Blumenthals version calls for a dollop of caviar atop a thin white chocolate disc and suggests that the whole thing be placed on the tongue and allowed to melt. I don't know about anyone else, but once food enters my mouth, it must be chewed. And chew I did, and spoiled the experience.

For my version, I wanted to soften the bite of the white chocolate without losing the mouthfeel. I combined creme fraiche (to tame the sweetness) with white chocolate in a 1:2 ratio to create a firm ganache that could be molded into a caviar-filled truffle. Molding the ganache without crushing the caviar was a challenge. Using demi-sphere silicone molds that were filled with the fluid ganache, frozen, hollowed, filled with the caviar, than gently pressed and blended together was a bit tedious, but produced the product that I was looking for. Now I could enjoy the sensation of biting through the soft, creamy shell, the release of delicate pearls spilling out onto the tongue, the play of crunch and melt, sweet and salty--the familiar taste of childhood Easter bunnies with x-rated caviar.
                         
The only thing that could heighten the experience, I decided, would be the addition of a dry, crisp element. Potato chips came to mind, and I taste-tripped back to a dessert that I had at WD-50, in which Alex Stupak studded a flexible white chocolate ganache ribbon with sweetened, dehydrated potato shards. He served this with a white beer ice cream, in which the element of bitterness was mind blowing; a revelation. The whole combination bordered on culinary genius except for the indiscernible flavor of potato in the shards. I really wanted to taste their earthiness with the white chocolate, so I fried up some thin slices of potato, then dehydrated them until they were crisp and sprinkled them with sea salt. Nibbling on these between bites of the truffle added another dimension to the experience. But I have never been one to leave well enough alone...

When considering the combination of caviar, creme fraiche, and potatoes, it was not a leap to add vodka to the equation. I could have just poured it into a shot glass, but the fingerling potatoes were too perfect in size and shape to not utilize them as a vessel. A little dusting of chopped dill and I knew thaat it was done.
                   
Recently, I had a conversation with a chef friend about chocolate pairings. When I mentioned this combination, I saw a look of panic flicker over her face. I assured her that it is good and cited some examples. She wasn't convinced and asked,"What's next...chocolate and blue cheese?" I thought about that for a minute and could only smile while I silently thanked her.

tequila sunrise

Ah, citrus...a ray of sunshine in the bleak of winter.

One of the first elaborate dishes that I recall making with citrus was a terrine in which supremes of various citrus were layered in a mold, ascending in color from dark to light. Each layer was set with its own gelled juice and when sliced, made a stunning presentation.  I served it as a dessert then, with white chocolate ice cream and a caramel tuile, but I have since used it as a component to other courses. In fact, I have come to rely on it as a bright, high note to play off of other elements such as lobster or ginger glazed duck.

I've been thinking about this terrine lately--how to refine it and simplify its form. When considering the translucency of the citrus slices, tissue paper came to mind. If you are me, when the brain connects food to a non food item, its time to play.

Tissue paper collage was my introduction to color mixing, learning how layering colors produces new colors and design. This concept, applied to food really excites me, because of the added element of taste. Imagine a collage of thin veneers of poached vegetables layered on a plate, each bite a different color and flavor...the mind reels with possibilities. Back to the task at hand...

Keeping the design linear produced an ombre effect. I couldn't help but think of a Tequila Sunrise, which threw me in a new direction with flavors. Color is always foremost in my mind when designing a dish, and I decided that green was where I wanted to go with this. I auditioned different flavor combinations and chose pumpkin seeds (pepitas), green chili, and cilantro. I knew that texturally, I wanted a rich, creamy element and so I combined the ground pepitas with yogurt (I would have used kefir or labne if I had some on hand) and allowed it to drain overnight to produce a sort of cheese. The green chili and cilantro oil adds a counterpoint of heat and herb. 

What to drink with this? Tequila, of course...preferably a smooth, balanced anejo like Chinaco.

                                 Citrus Pave

pave:
thinly sliced supremes of:
blood orange
ruby grapefruit
orange (reserve juice)
white grapefruit (reserve juice)
1/2 tsp gelatin
1 oz tequila
   On a sheet of plastic wrap, lay down overlapping slices of citrus starting at the top with the white grapefruit, in shingle-style rows, working down to the blood oranges. Keep in mind that the surface touching the plastic wrap will be the top.  Place in the refrigerator to chill thoroughly. Combine the reserved juices and measure  1/2 cup . Sprinkle the gelatin over and allow to soften. Heat until gelatin dissolves. Stir in tequila and let cool to room temperature. Remove pave from refrigerator and spoon a thin layer of the gelatin over the top of citrus, spreading to completely cover. Chill until set and repeat 2-3 times until  you have achieved an even, thin layer that will hold together the slices.

pumpkin seed- yogurt cheese:
1/2 cup yogurt
2 Tbsps finely ground pumpkin seeds
pinch salt
   Mix all ingredients together well. Make 4 small cones out of triangles of parchment. Snip the tip to produce a small hole for drainage and suspend them in tall shot glasses so that their tips are not touching the bottom, and fold back the parchment that rises over the glass. This is easier to do if you slit the excess parchment to the rims. Tie a string or rubber band over the excess to secure. Spoon in about 2 Tblsps of yogurt mix into each cone, being careful to not leave air pockets. Move to refrigerator and allow to drain overnight.

serrano-cilantro oil:
Flesh from 2 serrano chilies
1 cup cilantro leaves
pinch salt
3/4 cup avocado oil
   Place the chilies,cilantro and salt in a blender or food processor with a little of the oil until finely chopped. Drizzle in the remaining oil with the motor running.

to plate: Cut the pave to desired size. Invert onto plate using the plastic wrap. Unmold cones by peeling away the parchment. Arrange on pave and dot plate with oil.