Recently in Sauces, Condiments Category

Foie terrine, crunchy coffee caramel, kabocha squash puree, kabocha squash balled and cooked in apple juice, raddicchio dressed with apple cider vinegar. Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce from a can, presented and sliced tableside (not pictured).

Candied zests of sudachi and calamondin (like a big kumquat), filled with juniper panna cotta. Lime and orange glass. Basil seeds with lemon oil. Buddha's hand zested over it. Yuzu panna cotta and foam. Seven different citrus fruits in this dish.

Octopus Confit, Black Garlic Tahini, Lemon, Savoy Cabbage

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

Lazy Bear entered the Lamb Takedown this Sunday, a competition pitting 20 professional and amateur chefs against each other with dishes made from various cuts of lamb. I made two kinds of "McNuggets" (please don't sue, McDonald's, thanks): sweetbread nuggets, and lamb shoulder nuggets. And I accompanied them with three sauces: hot sauce (which I called "Angry Bear Hot Sauce"), ranch dressing aioli, and a nuoc mam barbecue sauce. All of the sauces were delicious, but my favorite is the combo of ranch dressing and hot sauce (borrowed from the soft shell crab dish at the last Lazy Bear dinner.

There were a lot of great entries. My favorites were a Tunisian saffron-braised lamb shank, and a lamb rillette croquette from the boys at Restaurant Marche. Sadly, neither of those entries got as much love as they deserved.

With the lamb shoulder nuggets, I went for maximum visual and textural similarity to McDonald's chicken McNuggets. I hit it spot on (recipe below). Still, with a few exceptions, everyone's favorite seemed to be the sweetbread nuggets. They were tender and flavorful, but with a super crispy outside. Importantly, we fried everything a la minute, so everything was warm and crunchy.

And, in what might have been the crushing blow to our competitors, we presented our McNuggets in the appropriate containers: McDonald's-style to-go containers. They looked pretty damn sweet, though they take FOREVER to make since we do them by hand (that means printed at home, cut with an x-acto knife or scissors, hand-folded, and hot-glued). I often serve mignardises in this style container, so we have to make twenty or thirty at a pass. In this case we had to make 250 of them! Pretty ridiculous. Still, it was worth it for the glory.

One of the judges, Amy from Cooking With Amy, articulated the conceit behind my dish better than I ever have: it's a highbrow, luxury ingredient (sweetbreads), but presented in the most democratic, lowbrow way possible.

The hot sauce started out very traditional: pickled red fresno chiles, aged at room temperature for a couple weeks to allow some natural lacto-fermentation, which adds a lot of complexity to the flavor. It's like kimchi made of hot peppers. Then the peppers get pureed and the puree gets passed through a tamis. Then, in this case, I made the puree more rich and mild by adding cream, seasoned with salt and a bit of worcestershire and soy sauce, and thickened it with xanthan gum and Ultratex-3.

The nuoc mam barbecue sauce was a homemade barbecue sauce spiked with lots of fresh lime juice and fish sauce.

Here are some of the recipes:

McNugget-style Tempura Batter
75g corn starch
100g rice flour
100g AP flour
20g sugar
25g Trisol
2 eggs
275g flat water

Mix all ingredients together until uniform (unlike normal tempura batter). Dip flour-coated items briefly into batter until fully covered, let drip for a second, then dip directly into 375F frying oil.

For this competition, I needed to put out 250 portions (two nuggets each) in an hour and a half, so I pre-fried all of the nuggets. Frying a la minute wouldn't have been that bad, but battering would have been very messy and time-consuming. Anyway, each McDonald's gets all their nuggets pre-fried, so I feel that my method was authentic. So, after frying the nuggets (which Jeanette pitched in to help with), I let them cool to room temperature, then refrigerated them. I re-fried them at the competition for about one minute to get them hot and crispy again.

Sweetbread McNuggets

Sweetbreads are like little sponges. When you buy them, they are basically full of, unfortunately, blood. I soak them for 24 hours in cold water, changing out the water every few hours. That will gradually get the blood (and the iron-like taste it has) out of the sweetbreads. Then I brine the sweetbreads in a 10% brine for about an hour. It doesn't take long because, again, they are like sponges. Then I seal them up in vacuum bags. Don't worry about crowding them or adding any extra liquid--they'll expel lots of liquid and shrink once they get heated. I cook them sous vide for 1.5 hours at 67C, then chill them down. Once they are fully chilled (overnight, preferably), remove them from the bags and clean off all of the obvious membranes and sinew. In the case of lamb sweetbreads, you don't have to be quite as careful as you do with veal sweetbreads since the membranes are thinner and less noticeable when you eat them. Then just chill the cleaned sweetbreads until you're ready to fry them. At that time, toss them in rice flour, then into tempura batter, then fry.

Lamb Shoulder McNuggets

15 pounds lamb shoulder, lean only
7 pounds lamb shoulder, boneless, lean and fat
100g Activa RM transglutaminase ("meat glue")
200g kosher salt
800g lamb stock

To get 15 pounds of lean lamb shoulder, start with about 25 pounds of boneless lamb shoulder. Trim it very well, removing all of the fat, connective tissues, and sinew. Dice all of the lean lamb shoulder into 1/4 inch dice. Slice the 7 pounds of whole lamb into strips suitable for grinding, then toss them with the salt. Chill it very well in the freezer for maybe half an hour, then grind as per the usual procedure. Chill the ground mix again. Mix all of the ground lamb with the diced, lean lamb. Working in batches, mix in a proportional quantity of the Activa and the stock, then roll up the mix in roulades in plastic wrap, about one pound per roll (they should be about two inches in diameter), then chill the rolls overnight. Cook the rolls sous vide for 6.5 hours at 75C. More time will yield a slightly better, more tender product, but it'll be less like McDonald's McNuggets. Chill the rolls completely. Finally, unwrap the rolls and cut about 1/4-inch off two sides to yield a cylinder sort of shape but with two flat sides. Then slice into 1/3-inch slices, about 16 per roulade, and just under an ounce each. Toss these nuggets in rice flour, then batter and fry.

This is one of the simplest courses I have ever served, but Jesus Christ it's delicious. It's just a fried soft shell crab with a light but crispy tempura batter, ranch dressing "aioli," and a hot sauce made by traditional lacto-fermentation.

It's kind of amazing how well this pungent hot sauce (similar in flavor to Tabasco, but very different texturally) goes with the ranch dressing, and how well the combination still lets the crab flavor come through.

The soft shell crab is from the Chesapeake Bay. They come in two sizes: "hotel," and "prime." The prime are much larger; far too large for a single course in a tasting menu. Even the hotel size is a bit large for a course. Still, they are crazy delicious. You should buy them live (I paid $35/dz), and eat them within a day after they stop kicking (but ideally while they are still kicking--they're actually edible raw when they're still alive). These are dusted in rice flour, then fried in a tempura batter:

Tempura Batter
50g corn starch
50g AP flour
100g rice flour
100g Trisol
2 eggs (~100 grams)
280g cold soda water

The ranch "aioli" is basically just a ranch dressing (buttermilk, mayo, sour cream, garlic, worcestershire, black pepper), emulsified with some oil and thickened with some xanthan gum and Ultratex-3.

The hot sauce is a fairly straightforward, traditional hot sauce. It's made by lacto-fermenting chopped fresno chiles in a pickling brine and letting them age (at room temperature) for a few weeks. They take on an awesome, complex flavor reminiscent of kimchi, but at the same time all American. Then I strained the chiles and pureed them (seeds and all), seasoned with a bit of worcestershire, soy sauce, salt, honey, and extra of the pickling vinegar. Then I thickened with xanthan and Ultratex-3, and pureed some more. The blender is better able to catch the pepper skins when the puree is a bit thicker, so if you thicken a bit then keep blending for a few minutes you end up with better yield and a more silky, flavorful puree, at the expense of making it a bit tougher to push through a tamis. Speaking of which, after thickening and pureeing, I pushed the puree through a tamis.

I have to say, I didn't do much here, but it was honestly one of my favorite dishes ever. On the last night of this menu, I fried up all the rest of the crab I had (eight or so), and we feasted on them in the kitchen as we finished out the night. Amazing.

Rolled skate, like "roller skate." Get it? These were whole filets of skate from Maine, rolled up into tight spirals, poached, then browned on the outsides, served with a Mexican Coke fluid gel, chorizo bits (like bacon bits), lime, crunchy Mexican Coke glass, and a jicama-jalapeno salad dressed with lime and olive oil.

The chorizo bits weren't added until the second night, but they added a good bit of depth to the dish.

The skate filets were brined for one hour in a 10% brine with various spices, then towel-dried and rolled up with plastic wrap into roulades using Activa RM. The roulades were vacuum-sealed and poached for one hour and 15 minutes at 55C. After poaching, the bags were chilled in ice water, then overnight in the fridge, allowing the ample gelatin from the skate to set. At service, the bags are circulated at 55C or less for thirty minutes or so before I intend to serve, then the bags are cut open, the plastic wrap removed, and each roulade dried off. They are then sauteed in very hot pans with ample olive oil, in order to get the outsides of the roulades golden brown. Finally, the filets are allowed to rest slightly, and the ends are sliced off to expose the rolled spiral and give a clean presentation. Because of all the gelatin in skate, you could actually do this without Activa, you'd just have to remove it from the bags and tie it with twine before sauteeing to brown and re-heat (rather than re-heating in the bath then browning).

For the Coke glass, you must use Mexican Coke, which is sweetened with real sugar, rather than American Coke, which is sweetened with corn syrup. Otherwise the glass won't stay as crispy as it ought to since the invert sugar of corn syrup is strongly hygroscopic and will therefore attract water and they'll lose their snap. To make these, simply cook Mexican Coke, allowing it to reduce until it has reached hard crack stage (310F), then pour it out onto a Silpat and wait for it to cool. Once cool, break it into shards, then grind all of it in a spice grinder, and store the resulting Coke caramel powder in an airtight container with desiccants. You can store it this way indefinitely. When you're ready to serve (same day is best) sift that powder onto a Silpat in a 1/8-inch layer, either using stencils or else moving the powder into shapes using a bench scraper (or just pour it all evenly and then break it into random shapes). The thicker of a layer you sift, the thicker the resulting glass will be. Use too much and they'll be quite hard to chew, instead of having a delicate crunch. Use too little, and you'll end up with more of a lacy glass with tons of holes, and it will be more difficult to make nice shapes with it. Bake the sifted powder at 350-400F for about six minutes, until it has melted together. Remove from the oven and let cool, then break apart if necessary, and store the resulting shapes in an airtight container with plenty of desiccants. The pieces may start to stick to each other after a while. To avoid this, store them in layers separated by parchment or wax paper.

The Mexican Coke fluid gel uses Mexican Coke, set with 1% agar, then pureed in a blender to form a smooth gel sauce. Everyone has trouble getting their fluid gels to blend in normal home blenders, but food processors simply can't get them smooth. My favorite method for getting the fluid gels to blend is to pick up the entire blender while it is running and shake it vigorously. Stop every fifteen seconds or so to scrape down the sides of the blender. Eventually you'll get it all to where it is blending in a nice vortex. Let it blend for at least a minute or two once it reaches that phase. Finally, push the resulting fluid gel through a chinois, then load it into a squeeze bottle (easiest to dump it into a funnel and push it through the funnel with a small ladle) and it's ready to go.

For the chorizo, mince the chorizo as finely as possible, then stir it in a pan over medium heat until it has released all of its liquids and most of its oils, and most sizzling stops. Remove the chorizo bits from the pan and drain on paper towels, saving the chorizo oil for another delicious use, then store the bits in a container in the refrigerator. Take them out of the fridge half an hour before you're going to use them to allow them to come up to room temperature.

The salad is simply julienned jicama and jalapeno, seasoned then tossed with a lime vinaigrette. I garnished with mizuna one night, and red ribbon sorrel the other night. Most of the plates looked great, but as always, I give the best ones to the guests, and save the ugliest for the photos.

Tons of morels (about 3 oz per person!) sauteed in very flavorful brown butter, served with these really awesome little brown butter "pebbles," orecchiette, microplaned Marcona almond, lemon juice, chives, and no-fat brown butter sauce. UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the orechiette was a second-night addition which made the course more substantive and well-rounded, and also helped absorb and round out the sauce.

The sauce was made by simmering intense brown butter solids in water, leaving to steep overnight, then straining and clarifying. I used agar clarification to clarify, which works pretty well. Then I reduced that brown butter water a bit, added a touch of milk, thickened it slightly, and added salt.

I've used brown butter solids three or four times in the last several months, and each time I've used the same butterfat for browning the milk solids. As a result, that butterfat had become SO nutty and had such an intense depth of flavor far beyond any normal beurre noisette. So I used that brown butterfat to saute the morels. I also made brown butter "pebbles." They are awesome! The texture changes from the outside in. On the outside is a dry, powdery coating. Just inside that is a crunchy layer. Then on the inside is the moist paste. I got this technique from pastry chef Ron Mendoza (his blog, one spoon quenelle, is fantastic), though my understanding is that his "pebbles" are sauteed in a nonstick pan rather than baked, and usually have something else holding them together (white chocolate or graham cracker crumbs are the two examples I've seen so far). I tried sauteeing but for me it resulted in some flat sides and required constant tending. Would have taken forever to make them in any bulk.

Brown Butter Pebbles
250g brown butter fat, strained of solids, warm
~75g tapioca maltodextrin
5g salt, finely ground

For the brown butter pebbles, you mix the warm, liquid brown butterfat with tapioca maltodextrin as if making a powder (and season with the salt). When you start adding maltodextrin, you'll reach a point where the butter and malto forms a paste, and if you keep adding it, eventually it'll form a powder, as chefs often do. But between those two points (paste and powder), the paste will reach a point where you can easily roll it into balls that will hold together but won't stick too much to your hands. Too little malto and it'll stick to your hands too much. Too much malto and the balls won't hold together. The proportions listed here are estimates. You can only get it right by feel. Form the little balls (about half an inch in diameter), then put them on a piece of parchment paper on a sheet pan, without them touching other balls. Toast for maybe three to five minutes at 375F. Let them cool completely then hold them in an airtight container until you want to use them.

If I may be so bold, I make an awesome liver mousse. I served a chicken liver mousse last time I guest cheffed at Mission Street Food with chicken confit and kumquats. It was easily the best component of that dish, so I decided to feature it in its own dish. Wow, this chicken liver mousse was good. I vary the flavorings each time (the spices and wines used, whether I use creme fraiche, yogurt, cream, ricotta, or mascarpone, etc.), but the recipe for this one is below. I served it with carbonated murcot mandarin segments (clean each segment really well, then load whole segments into a siphon and charge three times with CO2, chill for a couple hours, then discharge all pressure, unscrew top, and dump out carbonated segments, then serve immediately), mandarin marmalade, endive, some griddled, crusty bread, and neutral pop rocks. The carbonation of the tangerine and the popping of the pop rocks were intended to help to keep the course light and to cut the richness of the chicken liver mousse. I'm sure that I've seen foie and pop rocks somewhere before, but I can't remember where.

Brined, Sauteed Chicken Livers

850g raw, fresh (not frozen) chicken livers
1200ml water
100g kosher salt
32g pink salt
10g sugar
.25g white pepper
.5g black pepper
3g coriander
pinch dried thyme
lemongrass
ginger

Combine all ingredients except livers and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Simmer for five minutes then turn off the heat and let steep for half an hour. Strain then chill completely. Brine livers three hours, then rinse and dry.

Saute the chicken livers in many batches on high heat, browning the outsides and cooking the insides through to medium, being careful not to burn the fond. Pour off any remaining fat from the pan but reserve the fond for the mousse. The livers will now weigh significantly less than when you started.

Chicken Liver Mousse

600g sauteed, brined livers from above
65g sliced shallots
20g sliced ginger
2g coriander seeds
1g black pepper
45g butter
170g dry white wine
100g mirin
5g soy sauce
60g creme fraiche
20g heavy cream

In the same pans from sauteeing the chicken livers, add the butter and sweat the shallots, ginger, lemongrass, coriander, and the two peppercorns. Sweat without browning, scraping up any fond. Once soft, add the rest of the wine and the mirin and reduce by two thirds. Strain the liquid through a very fine mesh, discarding the solids left in the strainer. It should weigh about 135g. If it's more, reduce it further. If it's less, add water until it equals 135g.

Add the livers, wine, and soy sauce to the blender. Puree the livers completely, adding the creme fraiche and cream while the blender is running. Finally, push the mousse through a tamis, then mold or shape it the way you want it (I rolled it into cylinders with plastic wrap) and chill it completely overnight, keeping it covered as tightly as possible to avoid oxidation. Slice or quenelle to order (or no more than a few minutes before serving) to avoid oxidation and keep the nice pink color.

Fiddlehead ferns have very little flavor other than a generic, fresh greenness, but they have a really nice, succulent, crunchy texture. So I figured, why not play up their texture with a preparation that is all about texture: deep-frying. The first of the two nights I had my proportions a bit off and the batter turned out kinda greasy (see picture on left). That night I also sprinkled toasted nori over the fried fiddlehead, and I decided that the nori just didn't add anything. The second night, the batter was perfect and the fiddleheads turned out crunchy but light (see picture on right). I garnished with a spicy nasturtium leaf from my backyard, and the ginger aioli and togarashi went well with it.

It had been my intention to stick the fiddleheads on lollipop sticks, fry them, and present them as fiddlehead tempura lollipops. Unfortunately, I couldn't find more than a few fiddleheads large enough to withstand the insertion a lollipop stick. So, I presented them these ways. The second night was definitely much better.

The ginger aioli was made by pureeing fresh, peeled ginger with egg yolks, lemon juice, and garlic, then emulsifying with peanut oil, and pressing the aioli through a tamis to remove any ginger sinews.

Light Tempura Batter
25g corn starch
50g rice flour
25g AP flour
50g Trisol
1 egg, lightly beaten
160g cold soda water

Mix the dry ingredients well. Add salt to taste. Add the egg and water all at once and stir gently but quickly until barely mixed and still lumpy. Dip fiddleheads (or other things to be fried) into the batter with chopsticks or tweezers, then fry at 350F.

Pan-roasted Tokyo turnips with romesco, grilled spring onions (an homage to calçots and romesco), fried chickpeas, raw zucchini, and various greens on top. No molecular gastronomy here. Just a delicious and fairly traditional combination of stuff. In the photos, the turnips are hidden by all the foliage on top. The effect is more dramatic in person, since it's easier to see through the greens to the stuff below, which reveals itself further as one digs in.

The Tokyo turnips were blanched and shocked, then browned in a hot pan with olive oil, then chilled, then roasted in the oven to warm and finish just before serving. The fried chickpeas are super easy and delicious, and are made by draining canned chickpeas, then deep frying them at 300F until they've mostly stopped bubbling. Drain them on paper towels, then fry them again just before serving at around 350F, drain, and season. In this case I tossed the fried chickpeas with a mixture of salt, chopped parsley, and lemon zest. The zucchini gets shaved lengthwise then rolled up. The greens and mustard flowers are tossed with sweetened lemon juice.

Almost all of the produce is from County Line Harvest.

This was the vegetarian version of one of my recent Mission Street Food dishes. It was a delicious combo with scallop or with daikon, so I reprised the dish (a.k.a. used the leftovers) for a private vegetarian dinner a few days later.

First I made dashi with 20 grams of kombu per liter of water, circulated at 65C for an hour (which yields maximum glutamate extraction according to Cooking Issues). Then I poached daikon radish in the dashi (traditionally, on the stove) until tender but still with some bite, which took maybe an hour. Then the daikon was chilled until ready to use, sliced, and served at room temperature.

The swoop of light green sauce is a puree of arugula and silken tofu. This component was awesome, and really brought the dish together. The arugula gets blanched and shocked (and I throw in a few spinach leaves, which gives it a more vivid green color without affecting flavor). The ratio of tofu to arugula was quite high, though unfortunately I didn't measure. The puree was salted to taste, and I added a couple drops of pure lemon oil for extra brightness of flavor. The tofu ends up giving the puree a very light and buoyant texture--almost foamy--and it stays that way for days and days. I will definitely start using silken tofus in purees more often.

Finally, the crunchy black sesame crisps provide an interesting and delicious textural contrast, with their slight sweetness playing against the lingering bitterness of the radish. These are awesome, and are reminiscent of Oreo cookies (without the cream filling). I plan on utilizing them for post-dessert treats in the future as well: black sesame oreos with white sesame cream centers. Here is the recipe (and sub-recipes).

Black Sesame Powder
380g black sesame seeds
500g dashi
400g water

Pressure cook seeds, dashi, and water on high for approximately 50 minutes. Drain the seeds, reserving the cooking liquid. Add the seeds to a blender and puree on the highest setting, adding as much of the reserved liquid as is necessary to get the seeds to spin properly. Once pureed and fairly smooth, dehydrate the puree by spreading it thinly on Silpat and and baking at 200F for several hours. You'll be able to fit about 1/3 of the puree per half-size Silpat. Finally, break up the resulting brittle (which won't be very crunchy), and grind it in a spice grinder, then reserve in an airtight container.

Neutral Caramel Powder
2 parts liquid fondant
1 part powdered glucose
1 part powdered isomalt

Cook all three sugars to 320F, then pour out onto a Silpat-lined sheet pan. Let cool to room temperature, then break into smaller pieces and grind in a spice grinder. Transfer immediately to an airtight container, add a desiccant pack or two, and seal until ready to use.

Black Sesame Crisps
70g neutral caramel powder
60g black sesame powder

Keeping neutral caramel powder sealed as much as possible, and working quickly, measure out two powders into a bowl and whisk them together, then sift the powders onto a Silpat evenly in a layer about 1/8 thick. Bake at 350F until melted together, about 5-7 minutes. Either wait for it to cool (about fifteen minutes) then break into shards, or else cut and/or shape the crisp while still hot, then let cool to set. Either way, store in an airtight container until ready to use.