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Raisins, past and present, Maple, Yogurt, Grains

Left to right: Pumpkin Tuiles with Chicory Powder, Shiro Miso Puffs, Bacon Crackers with Egg Yolk

This was a fantastically delicious dessert, with floral quince and the bitter burnt caramel providing the main flavors. I wanted to play with yeast and fermentation here, and several of the components on the plate have been partially fermented. The yeast doesn't hit you immediately when eating it, but it's there in the background. It's that extra unidentifiable something that keeps you coming back to the plate.

There's burnt caramel ice cream and gel, balls of poached quince, membrillo, a fluid gel made by fermenting the quince poaching liquid then setting with gellan and pureeing, vanilla-flavored yeast-whipped cream, puff pastry, and puff pastry crumbs. To partially ferment the quince-poaching liquid, I simply let it come to room temperature, put it into a large container with a tight-fitting lid, then added a bit of yeast to it and left it out for around six hours. Then I put it in the fridge overnight, and the next day I gelled it with .8% gellan gum and pureed it to form a fluid gel, passing it through a chinois to finish.

If I'd had more time, I would have made the puff pastry out of a yeast dough.

The burnt caramel ice cream had probably the best texture of any ice cream I've made yet, achieved by the wonder of mathematics. It was fanastic, staying soft and perfect for quenelles even at normal freezer temperatures of around 10-15F. It also had a deliciously nutty and bitter burnt caramel flavor. Here's the recipe.

Burnt Caramel Ice Cream
1000g whole milk
60g nonfat dry milk
200g sugar
60g glucose
40g trimoline
50g sugar
4g stabilizer
200g yolks
150g cream

Whisk dry milk powder into the milk and keep it handy. Add first measurement of sugar to large sauce pot. Cook the sugar over high heat until sugar begins to liquefy, then begin stirring occasionally in order to get sugar to caramelize evenly. Cook sugar to a dark caramel. As soon as the first few burnt spots appear, pour in the milk all at once, being careful to avoid the splattering. Bring the milk to a simmer while adding the glucose and trimoline. Meanwhile, combine the second measurement of sugar with the stabilizer and whisk into the yolks. Temper the milk into the yolks, then cook the whole thing to 84C (183F). Remove from the heat and whisk in heavy cream. Chill in an ice water bath then refrigerate. Allow to mature for 12 hours before freezing.

First I served a miniature turkey pot pie. Just large enough for one bite, each one had some small dice of carrot, celery, and turkey breast, and the filling, instead of being a bland bechamel, was intensely roast-poultry-tasting.

These were pretty good, with one of my helpers, Aimee, being entirely responsible for the extremely tender, flaky crusts (which were based a buttermilk crust from Shirley Corriher's book Bakewise). They were made a little hastily on the afternoon of the dinner, and I think I could have tweaked the consistency of the filling a bit for a better result, but they were still quite delicious.

If you don't have Bakewise, by the way, I highly recommend it.

OLIVE OIL CRACKER
Creme Fraiche | Chives | Maldon Salt

This was the first amuse that went out, and it illustrates the importance of having a backup plan. It's just a simple olive oil cracker with flakes of Maldon sea salt embedded in it. I molded it during the baking in order for it to fit perfectly on the plates and to have a little crook in which to hold the creme fraiche. The creme fraiche had been whipped, rolled into cylinders, frozen, sliced into small cylinders which would fit perfectly in the crook of the cracker, then the cylinders held in the fridge. All that had to happen was that the cylinders had to come out of the fridge about half an hour before serving to allow them to come to room temperature and get creamy again.

However, some guests ended up being quite late, and the cylinders ended up sitting out for well over an hour. They turned to mush. I ended up having to throw them out, whip up some additional creme fraiche a la minute (no biggie), spoon it onto the crackers (guests at least got something resembling quenelles), sprinkle on some chives, and serve. So yeah, they didn't look so good. But I promise they were going to look much cleaner had they worked out as planned. Even so, it's not very interesting, I know. It was originally going to be paired with a goat bacon cracker, in the same shape, with a cylinder of egg yolk.

• Buttermilk-fried duck confit, with Trisol in the batter, as described in the previous post.
• Buttermilk biscuits, pulled into chunks.
• Olallieberries. They're similar to blackberries, but if you care to know their exact lineage, there is a chart on the olallieberry Wikipedia page.
• Olallieberry jam.
• Broccoli Rabe, sauteed with some butter, finished with a bit of buttermilk, and lots of salt.
• Radish.
• Chervil.
• Puree of fresh peas. This did not taste good with the other flavors. Everything else was delicious, and this was just weird with it. I should have known, but I thought it might work. It didn't.

• Peach-Coffee Glaze - So fucking delicious. For once, I kept great notes.

  150g Smith's Super Store Carolina Peach Syrup (pictures below)
  130g strongly brewed black coffee
  100g bottled peach juice
  20g Uncle Steve's Ribbon Cane Blend Syrup
  10g sherry vinegar
  5g soy sauce
  1g Worcestershire sauce
  .5g Tabasco

  Combine all ingredients and reduce slowly over medium heat until it thickens to a glaze. Reserve.

• 

  Fresh peach - I lucked out with some delicious peaches from the little organic produce market by my house. Fantastic flavor and the perfect texture; I don't like runny, squishy stone fruit! So many people are enamored of stonefruit when it gets to the point it's so juicy you can barely pick it up without your fingers digging deep ruts into its flesh. Not me. I like my stonefruit firm but still juicy. Those qualities can co-exist, they just only do so for a very short window in the season. I managed to hit it. I just peeled the peach with a paring knife (didn't want to bother blanching and shocking for a single peach), then sliced it.

• 

  Cylindrical Hushpuppy - This component was tasty, but not perfect, for one or more of the following reasons: 1) The hush puppy recipe I based mine on was not perfect; 2) by combining the ingredients and then setting the batter into cylinders, I wasted the initial lightening action of the "double-acting" baking powder (which, according to McGee, likely had at least four different "actions" of leavening, which activate at different temperatures; 3) the overnight period of chilling and resting mine went through made the gluten develop in the flour, making the hushpuppies a bit tough. Still, they were pretty tasty despite them not being as light as I'd hoped. Everyone finished theirs. Here's how I did it:

  150g cornmeal (1 cup)
  80g AP flour (1/2 cup)
  10g scallion
  25g crispy, rendered, finely chopped bacon
  5g kosher salt
  1g ground black pepper
  .4g cayenne pepper
  1/2 tsp baking powder
  1/3 tsp baking soda
  47g whole egg (i.e., one large egg)
  1/2 cup buttermilk
  1/16 cup bacon grease, heated just enough to liquefy

  Combine the dry ingredients and whisk to disperse. Add the wet ingredients and stir briefly to mostly combine. Transfer to a piping bag and pipe into prepared cylinder molds (I use cannoli molds with a sheet of oil-wiped acetate rolled up inside). Chill until ready to use. When ready, remove acetate and unroll gently. With a palette knife or spatula, divide each cylinder in half, and drop each half into frying oil at 350F (177C). The hushpuppy is done very quickly, around a minute. Transfer to paper towel to drain. Salt while it is still warm. Trim off ends before serving to expose the innards of the hushpuppy.

• Hushpuppy crumbs - Leftover hushpuppy batter as described above, piped onto baking sheet in little mounds like gougeres. Baked at 400F (204C) until crust formed on the outside, then broked apart and dehydrated at 170F for around 2 hours. Then pulsed to grind up in a food processor.

• Collard greens - I didn't want to include these, because it was just too obvious a reference, but in the end, it just went well. Collard greens, chiffonade, pan-fried in a very hot pan with a bit of bacon grease.

• 

  Pork Belly - Brined and then cooked sous vide for 24 hours @ 160F (71.1C), as described below. After cooking sous vide, while it's cooling in the fridge, weight it down with something heavy and flat, such as a sheet pan with heavy stuff on it. This compresses and flattens the belly, and makes it looker better and crisp up evenly. At service, score the fat side and crisp it up in a saute pan while weighted down, again, with something flat and heavy (I put a cast iron pan directly on top of the crisping pork belly, and then sometimes put something heavy in the cast iron pan). This weighting also keeps the belly from curling up and helps the fat to render. Once the belly was crisp, I poured the fat out of the pan and added the glaze. Just roll the belly around in the glaze to coat (or if the glaze is too watery to coat, let it cook down for a while in the pan with the pork belly--it won't hurt the pork belly). Transfer the belly to a cutting board and trim it on at least one side to expose the nice pink meat for presentation. That way, you also get to eat the scraps.

  In my attempts to find the best combination of temperature and time for sous vide pork belly, I have tried all the way from 36 hours @ 142F (61.1C) to 12 hours @ 182F (83.3C). I've settled for now on 24 hours @ 160F (71.1C) because I think it provides the right combination of tender moistness but still holds together like a single piece of meat. Pork belly, cooked at higher temperatures, tends to fall apart along the fat seams. On the other hand, at lower temperatures, the fat seems to stay more firm and doesn't render as much while cooking sous vide. This can lead to the finished product seeming very, well, fatty, because the fat seems to contain more of the liquid fat until you bite into it. At this middle temperature, the pork belly is perfectly tender, but can still be sliced, and the fat does not feel so fatty in the mouth. My pork belly brine recipe is as follows:

  Pork Belly Brine
  950g water
  50g kosher salt
  4g pink curing salt
  50g dark brown sugar
  1g bird's eye chilis (about 10 of the little guys)
  1g bay leaves (about 4 whole)
  .5g dried thyme leaves

  Heat all ingredients together until salt and sugar have dissolved completely, then let cool to refrigerator temperature. Submerse pork belly in brine (this amount of brine is appropriate for about a 6"x6" piece of belly) for at least 24 hours (the brine doesn't take quite this long to do its work, but the nitrates in the sel rose take time to do their work, giving the finished product a nice, pink color, instead of the grayish brown it would otherwise turn.

• Sablefish - A fatty, white-fleshed fish that is exceedingly flaky. Sauteed.
• Grapefruit - Segments of citrus for the acid and sweetness. I marinated them in beet juice, mostly because I wasn't happy with the color of the grapefruit. It turned out that the beet actually came through in the flavor (at least for me, because I knew it was there--otherwise I wouldn't have noticed--it was very subtle) and added an earthy deliciousness.
• Creme fraiche, whipped with minced chive (and salt, of course). My one-spoon quenelles are getting better. I somehow photographed the plate where they just looked okay.
• Fennel, caramelized very slowly with a bit of olive oil and some added sugar, then drained on paper towels, chopped, and plated using a ring mold.
• Olive Oil Cracker - I made them as described in the previous post, but I set up a sort of mold on my baking sheet to give them a rolling landscape kind of shape. I taped paper towel rolls to the baking sheet, several inches apart, pressed down on one of them to compress it halfway, then draped aluminum foil over the whole thing and taped it down as well. When I went to bake the olive oil crackers, I simply draped them over the shape I'd created, baked them otherwise normally, and let them cool slightly before removing them from the baking sheet.

For some reason, Jeanette and I have been loving chive and creme fraiche lately. It's a very common combination, but I'd never used it until I put it on scallop sashimi a couple months ago. It worked really well here with the fish, and really well with the grapefruit, and, more obviously, really well with the cracker. In fact, the leftover crackers were all quickly consumed the next day with the leftover chive-creme fraiche. The caramelized fennel was easy to overlook because the way I plated it (under the cracker) hid it. However, I think that the earthy sweetness of the fennel really brought the dish together, grounded it, and balanced the flavors.

• A light, crustless cheese cake (recipe below)
• Meyer lemon fluid gel
• cocoa soil
• Meyer lemon zest

I made this because I had a friend coming over who is on the Atkins diet. Cheesecake is actually pretty low carb. If you use Splenda instead of sugar, the only substantial carbs come from cream cheese, and even then it isn't that much. This whole dessert is only about 4-5g carbs per serving, and it's pretty delicious. And, compared to most low-carb desserts you'll find, this is pretty upscale. Anyway, it's definitely more delicious with sugar, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Also, thanks to the low-carb tag, I'll get ten times as many hits on this as I have on all my other posts. Wooo, maybe some people will comment!

Cheesecake

• 900g cream cheese (about 2 pounds)
  
• 250g sugar (about 1 1/4 cups) (in this case I used Splenda, and measured out 1 1/4 cups)
  
• 4 large eggs
  
• 55g heavy cream (about 1/4 cup)
  
• 15g Meyer lemon juice (about 1 tbsp) (this can be omitted)
  
• 8g vanilla extract (about 1 tsp)

Mix cream cheese in a mixer using the paddle attachment (or preferably, this thing--comes in various models and I like mine a lot) until it's smooth. Add sugar and keep beating until it's dissolved. Add eggs one at a time, incorporating and scraping down after each addition (unless you're using this thing). Add vanilla. Pour into a prepared mold or springform pan. Make bain-marie for baking by setting baking dish inside another dish and pouring enough boiling water to come about halfway up sides of baking dish. Bake at 325F until center is jiggly but outsides are set (specifically, until center of cake reaches 150F--any more than 160F and your cake will crack and have a crappy texture). Let it cool for about ten minutes, then run a knife around the outside of the cheesecake to keep it from cracking due to it clinging to the sides as it contracts. Let it cool, uncovered, for about an hour total. Then cover it with plastic wrap and let it set in the fridge for a couple hours. When you cut it, do so with a hot, wet knife.

• Fried chicken - Chicken thighs, deboned, skin reserved, pounded out and then rolled in its skin into a tight ball. Cooked sous vide, 2 hours at 150F, then chilled and reserved until use. To finish, dredge in buttermilk powder, then buttermilk-egg mixture, then in flour, and fry at 350F until golden and heated through, about six minutes, turning occasionally.
• Buttermilk pudding - Similar to soft chocolate, but no chocolate, buttermilk instead of water, and some salt.
• BBQ Sauce Sheet - I used the Alinea sheet method, but cut out 2/3 of the agar, resulting in a much less jello-like, softer, better-flavored, more pliable sheet, that also had better flavor release. Basically barbecue sauce + water + a teensy bit of agar + gelatin, then poured onto acetate and moved around acetate to cover in a thin layer. Then chill a couple minutes until set, cut, and cover already-plated buttermilk pudding, being very careful not to tear sheet.
• Crispy Collard greens - Ribs removed, then cut into 1/4" strips and pan-fried in hot bacon fat.
• Southern-style Buttermilk and Bacon Cornbread, baked in tiny metal baking dishes that I'm beginning to love. The dishes are about 4" long and 2" wide. Very useful for preventing waste.
• Barbecue-maple sauce - Barbecue sauce + maple syrup, reduced a bit.

Is there any question whether this was delicious? It's super-crispy fried chicken with the silkiest internal texture, served with things involving buttermilk, bacon, and barbecue sauce. It's tough to screw up.

On the other hand, I will say that a ball of fried chicken is tougher to eat than other shapes, unless it's 1 bite or smaller. This was many bites, and so yes, it was a bit tough to eat. Next time I'd make a plank of fried chicken, I think.