STUDIOKITCHEN

Lunch

More pictures and comments later.

New York Stories 2

A lovely day in Central Park today, after a quick client consultation and a nice chat on the benefits of CVap VS Rational Combi Oven with JOEL , I decided to get out of Manhattan for dinner.
A short scenic drive to the barnyard.
Very good food, great philosophy.
I suggest you go if you haven't already.
Anything else you want to know ?

Click HERE.

Sorrel Margarita with Arugula Salt.
Who knew ?

Wu-Xi

On my way to making my first Wu-Xi pork, let me repeat again the CVAP oven may be the best slow roasting device.
Any thoughts from anyone regarding CVAP versus COMBI oven ?

By the way those roasting juices...Oh my my!

Beets

Golden or should I say yellow beets are looking mighty fine at the market, if you were ever lucky enough to eat one of those Passard veggie dinners at Arpege, you know salt baking is the only way to go. Bury in wet salt, bake till tender, peel and use for a multiplicity of uses.

Simply dressed with white balsamic and excellent walnut oil is amazing.
Elemental cooking at it's best.

Point-Counterpoint

Parsley Root Soup Leeks, Ginger, Grapefruit and Lemon.

The amuse of artichoke soup at Jean Georges was very inspiring.
Pairing tart astringent flavors with rich, complex soups provides a delicious point-counterpoint.
I decided to revisit a dish previously made.

Today I made a Parsley Root soup. Increased the smokiness by infusing it with a smoked turkey wing. Toasted coriander seeds provide some complexity.
It is pureed and passed through a chinois twice.
The garnish/salpicon in the bowl is sweated leeks with ginger oil and lemon mirin marinated grapefruit. Curried hazelnut praline provides a nice textural addition.
I make lemon mirin the same way you would make limoncello.

 

Tatin Theory

I started thinking about my D'Yquem dinner coming up and the immediate thought for dessert was a tart tatin of some sort. Bananas came to mind. The only good banana tart tatin I ever had was at Jean-Cristophe Novelli's restaurant in London. The absolute best tart tatin of any sort I have had to date was the apricot one served at Harvey's when Marco Pierre White was there.

So I had a basis of how to do it, pretty straight forward.
It really is an old school dessert, you don't need to be Alex Stupak or Sam Mason to figure this sheet out. There are a few tricky road blocks however.

Despite using teflon molds, do not let that provide any measure of confidence as far as anti-adhesive properties.

Teflon and caramel are like an ex wife and your bank account.
Use parchment paper.
I found out the hard way.

Pain Perdu

A good friend has asked me to teach her how to make French Toast Tommorow.

I believe her exact words were "one that would blow people away".

I can handle that, it's just fried bread.

We will be preparing a delicious "Pain Perdu".
Come back for the lesson tommorow.
As you know, nothing is as it seems at SKBLOG.
Here is her ingredient list.

Eggs.
Milk.
Brioche Loaf.
Mascarpone.
Nutmeg.
Sarabeth's Peach-Apricot Jam.
kelloggs Corn Flakes.
Orange Flower water.
Salt.
Clarified Butter.

Pomme Ecrasee

One of the fundamental differences between European cooking and American cooking is Europeans make stuff, Americans add stuff, case and point potatoes.
Variations on mashed potatoes have been made ad nauseum, basil mashed potatoes, chipotle mashed potatoes, sun dried tomato mashed potatoes and and a host of other gruesome preparations.

On the other side of the ocean, pomme anna, pomme salardaise, pomme ecrasse.
Pomme ecrasee is my single favourite potato preparation next to perfectly crisp double fried fries in peanut oil. Essentially fork mashed roasted potatoes with a copious addition of fresh fruity green olive oil preferably unfiltered.

Copious is another word for sheet loads of olive oil.
Think of it as the olive oil version of the sickening mashed potatoes served at Atelier Robuchon.

Roasted potatoes.
Olive Oil.
Excellent salt like Maldon or Halen Mon.
No pepper.
No pepper.
Let me repeat again....no pepper.

For restaurant applications, the seasoned potatoes can be held in pouches in a water bath at least 62C.
Just before serving, add some quickly chopped Chervil.
Chervil is NOT Parsley.
Use Chervil.

Try to chop your chervil with a sharp knife so you dont ruin it and it turns black.

I would estimate the potato to oil ratio to be minimun 5 to1.

Fan freaking tastic with meat or fish.

Edited to add:
Roasted potatoes are not baked potatoes, turn your oven to 425F.
Bake them till they smell roasted and cooked through.
Stick a skewer in it to check for resistance.

Enjoy folks.

Vessels

Vessels inspire new dishes.
Besides visual captivation, they also contribute to layering flavors.
Look to vessels for inspiration.

Green Herb Jus

Watercress, Parsley, Tarragon, Chive, Vichy Water.

For herb risotto with peas and spotted prawns.

Dashi.

I am getting pretty good results trying to recreate an authentic ramen broth. Anyone  know where to find high quality dried scallops in chinatown (NYC) ?

Pineapple Basil Ginger Chaource

Pineapple Ginger "Ravioli"
Lemon Chaource Ice Cream.
Almond Croquant.
Basil not so Fluid Gel.

This is coming together nicely, the flavors are perfect dead on but the next step is to get the basil gel into the middle of the scoop of ice cream.
This is a bit messy, so far a dollop of gel was placed on the IC and slightly melted with a heat gun.

Any thoughts from any Einsteins out there ?

Dessert Construction

Here are the preliminary steps for the pineapple "ravioli".
The frozen pineapple rectangles are wrapped in thinly sliced poached pineapple with a slight grating of Balinese long pepper and refrozen.

An Orange croquant will rest on top of two of these "ravioli" with a perfect scoop of the lemon-chaource ice cream on top.

Possible additions are basil oil or the previously made pineapple and kaffir lime oil.

The "ravioli" filling is cooked pureed pineapple.
There will also be pineapple cooked SV for a different texture on the plate.

I might whip the pineapple poaching water with Xanthan and versawhip.

Final plating tonight.

Carrot Puree

The carrot puree turned out fan-effing-tastic !
Cooked SV 85C 2 Hrs with vanilla and cardamon.
Thermonixed with carrot juice and butter, a touch of soymilk to change color.
Maple syrup to control sweetness.
Heat from Esplette pepper.
Maldon.

Pictured above:
Braised Oxtail Nuggets, Pearl Onion, Black Trumpets.
Cardamon Scented Carrot Puree.
Bitter Endive.

Oxtail is braised in Shiro Dashi, Sake, Mirin.

Perfume For Your Food

I have been spraying food post-cooking with hydrosols.
Quite interesting results, it provides a whisper, just the light aroma when properly used.

Orange Blossom hydrosol on Chocolate Ice Cream works just as well on a roasted Squab with Vadouvan spice.

"Perfume" for your food.

Bar Food

Everyone loves chicken sate with peanut sauce, sadly it is often so poorly made, dried out and the requisite ingredients that make Thai food haunting like shrimp paste and fish sauce are skimped or skipped altogether.
I recently out of boredom marinated the chicken in a vacuum bag first, cooked SV, cooled, skewered and griddled. A nice surface crust, intense flavor profile, moist and juicy. Even basic food cooked on a floating canoe in Bangkok can be improved though it seems perfect already.

Infusions and Botulinum

There are two things I am suspicious of.

One is any oil that has stuff in it such as lemons, rosemary, other herbs and miscellaneous crap floating in it.

The other is serving vanilla with seafood.
I feel like most infused oils carry low levels of botulism since I seem to be light headed with slight GI concerns absolutely everytime I have ever used one.

A month ago, I dropped an unsplit vanilla bean into a bottle of Moscatel vinegar, since it was already based on a sweet wine grape, logic would dictate that some synergistic affinity might take place. A month later you have this sweet vinegar with a perfect acid balance and hints of vanilla. It worked perfectly with a lobster salad with peaches, fennel and lemon balm. Rethinking the rules present different avenues.

It is important to note that in a dual experiment in the second case splitting the vanilla bean, the vanilla component was far too  overwhelming.

Cumin Caramel

Here is a first trial of braised chestnuts in Cumin Caramel, served in this case with Quail, Morrocan spices.

Low Tech Roasting

The 2 best new technologies is cooking are the combi and Cvap ovens , unfortunately both cost several thousand dollars. Plan B here cleverly uses porcelain molds to roast apples without burning the heck out of them and glazing them in the process. A complete win-win situation that results in an unexpected tangent of a fantastic apple broth. Each apple is halved, cored and set over a ramekin half filled with water and two allspice berries. The apple cavity has a half stick of cinnamon, a knob of butter and honey. Roast at 350F and the steam from below moistens the apples while they slowly caramelise on top. Remove them and pour out the apple broth which is quite substantial. A low tech combi-oven.

Exploring an idea.

Prior to the "seedless tomato" below, I initially proceeded in the direction of conventional wisdom by trying to do something with tomato and mozzarella. Since I had no mozzarella or buratta on hand, I decided to use stracchino. The thought was to see if one could encase the "cheese" inside the tomatoes like a ravioli of sorts. Although the idea works with moderate success, I am not quite happy with the results. It did spark the idea of the seedless tomato and perhaps deserves to be revisited. I envision a tomato/cheese ravioli in some sort of clear nage, perhaps verbena, balsamic or  gin/juniper infused tomato water. Tomatoes and gin are one of the most overlooked stunning combination.

Reconstituted seedless tomato.

In a telephone conversation yesterday with Alex at Ideasinfood, I was curious about . the post on compressing fruits under vacuum. Here is what I was referring to : Tomato/Mozzarella Ideasinfood. For many years I have thought of the idea of a whole tomato salad , to reconstitute a tomato without the seeds, pulp and skin but still keep it juicy like a very ripe peach. Various approaches including stuffing or using gelatine in a mold have been tried. The answer was right in front of me the whole time. According to Alex one can just stack tomato petals and compress them. After a few experiments compressing tomatoes, the spark of geometry took over. If you think of half a tomato in the sense of an ovalized demisphere, if you stack 3 ovalized petals with 3 in the opposite direction, you could compress at full vacuum, remove and twist gently in plastic film like a "bon bon" to recreate the shape of a roma tomato. This is a juicy yellow brandywine as a roma. Completing the dish simply required a trip to the garden, the tomato should be served really cold with a full complement of citrusy herbs.

I used the following :
African purple basil.
Lemon Basil.
Lime Basil.
Lemon Balm.
Tangerine Sprouts.
Lemon Verbena.
Lemon Thyme.

Verbena though incredibly fragrant does not have an edible mouthfeel, the soluion was to simply compress the "tomato" with verbena leaves for about 2 minutes and peel them off, it imparts a whisper of verbena essence. A simple basil vinaigrette completes the dish. It becomes the perfect tomato, sweet, ripe and bursting with juice like a ripe fruit.

Peach Chutney Vol. 2

The fresh peach chutney is delicious but should certainly benefit from increased complexity over the next 4 weeks of refrigeration. This is a fantastic condiment that needs to be made in voluminous quantity for the winter. I ended up making two concurrent batches.

Batch 1 had toasted ground spices added to the chutney directly.
Batch 2 had toasted whole spiced wrapped in a cheesecloth bag.

Preliminary results show marginal flavor differences but a definite increased clarity in the cheesecloth sachet  batch. It sparks the idea of making a "chutney glaze" by using a higher liquid proportion, straining off at the end and perhaps thickening with a clear gum such as keltrol.
I suppose one could also make a stonefruit chutney consomme for a foie gras torchon.

Above: Smoked Foie Gras Peach Chutney Young Celery Orange Oil.

The pop of mustard seed adds a great texture.
Another use for green coriander seeds perhaps.

Buratta

Every now and then, clients dictate what they would like to eat. Specific parameters remove almost every element of creativity, all we can do is focus on the quality of our ingredients, refine out techniques and deliver an interpretation of the client's request. In this case the client requested a really good tomato-mozzarella salad. At the end of the day, the dish was refined by peeling the tomatoes, using low acid brandywines and warming them together with buratta in silicone cups. It is simply finished with exquisite salad greens and a simple fruity olive oil based dressing.

Sweet-heat

Glazed puffed rice + high quality Togarashi. An awakening topping for citrus or yogurt based frozen desserts such as a simple lemon sorbet or ice cream. Ground fine to a powder, it extends to a coating for lemon or yuzu marshmallows.

Foie Gras - Unagi

There are several precedents for combinations of Foie Gras and Unagi, rumor has it the first was Martin Beresetagui, can anyone confirm this ? Here is a terrine of foie gras, duck liver and unagi served for a client last week. The foie was marinated with sake and mirin, salt and sansho. The dish was finished with a young salad of mizuna and tatsoi in keeping with the japanese influence.

Coriander Seeds

Chocolate Moelleux Tart.....deconstructed.

It's been a busy weekend with relatively no time for blogging, a client asked for a chocolate tart with a prerequisite of "lightness" and intense chocolate flavor. Perhaps because my patience was short and I wasn't feeling particularly creative, my immediate respone was "what are you smoking". Of course I did not say that, I was thinking it. My mind eventually transferred to the smoked chocolate "soil" from the M dinner. It has a crumbly texture reminiscent to a very delicate pate sucree. I decided to revisit pending projects and put together a deconstructed tart of sorts. My favourite chocolate tart of all time was made by Robert Bennett the long time pastry chef at Le Bec Fin. Though it was a great place to work in terms of seriousness of cooking and ingredient quality, the human-socio-political aspect was challenging.  The best thing about getting there at 6.45 am was the copious amount of dessert  the pastry department placed in front of us every morning. I fondly remember Bobby's chocolate tart. I have a couple of things to do in the next few weeks requiring template circles, from a cost perspective it made much more sense to buy the tools and make your own as opposed to dropping more coin at JB Prince. I found a great store called "Everything Plastic", bought some sheets and found a compass cutter to fabricate templates. The rest involved making a chocolate paste that could be formed into a delicate tart shell, a chocolate custart stabilized with carrageenan, a chocolate sorbet with hints of ginger and the aforementioned smoked chocolate soil. A mandarin orange glaze and crystallized orange rinds complete the dessert. Fairly conventional, tasty and light with the requisite intense chocolate flavor.

Apple. Cucumber. Celery. Horseradish

I finally got around to playing with the idea of a palate cleanser I could universally serve regardless of menu. I like the idea of a green apple sorbet with some crunch of cucumber, the vegetal flora of celery and the heat of horseradish. I started from the sorbet and built the dish up and down. Fresh granny smith apples made good sorbet but even with careful ratios of simple syrup or inverted sugar, it was too icy and way too sweet. The depth of apple flavor was also directly proportional to the sweetness. The answer was to do as Romans do when you are in Rome, seemingly gelato in Italy always tastes better because of the base products. I decided to simply use a blend of fresh green apples, citric acid and PRE-GEL Italian gelato base. It may seem like cheating and taking the easy way out but with everyone using fancy gums and such, why the heck not. It tastes good and mirrors the taste of the apple. It's texture was also perfect as it included stabilizers. Horseradish was introduced in the form of wasabi root. Seedless cucumbers were de-seeded (yes they have seeds, it's like decaf coffee) and then vacuum compressed with eldeflower syrup.
Fresh celery sprouts and a few drops of lemon scented olive oil complete the dish.
Cold, crunch, floral, lingering heat of wasabi.

Fig Anchoiade

About every 3 weeks, I am asked to cater to a vegetarian within the guest list at a client's home. I take inspiration from the French chefs when it comes to vegetable cookery. Perhaps the most famous vegetable dish within the circle of those who actually are knowledgeable about food is the "Gargouillou" from Michel Bras's restaurant in Laguiole. This dish is inspired by the gargouillou but as complex as it may seem, it is a highly abbreviated version of the original dish which has close to 40 components. I have added an element of familairity by pairing it with a relish reminicent of a Bagna Cauda. Bagna Cauda is Piedmontese while Anchoiade is Nicoise. Thankfully our vegetarian eats fish which is a whole other discussion but the cooked and raw vegetables are served with an anchovy based dip. The "Anchoiade" is given a slight exotic twist with the addition of Delfina cilantro roots, green coriander seeds and fig jam which adds a sweet balance to the saltiness of the anchovies, olives and capers. A mortar and pestle must absolutely be used as it extracts much more fragrance from the cilantro roots and coriander seeds, a lesson  quickly learned when making manual Thai curry pastes. Fruity olive oil finishes the relish with  ground black pepper.

Featured:

Young squash and blossom
Red radish
Diakon
Black string bean.
Brussel sprout leaves.
Chinese celery.
Kosui pear.
Peas essentially raw.
Peas cooked.
Fava beans.
Eggplant puree.
Asparagus.
Shisito pepper.
Baby leeks.
Caramelized apple.
Caramelized parsnip.
Micro basil.
Micro purple shiso.
Cinnamon cap mushroom.
Golden beet.
Baby fennel.
Chive.
Yellow carrot.

Amplifying Maillard Reactions.

Before you go further, if you arent familiar with what Maillard reactions are, lets save you the trouble off googling it.

Click HERE.

Essentially my thought process was to see if one could greatly amplify the surface flavor of cooked meat without any acrid charring of super high heat searing. After various experiments, the combination of super nutty peanut oil and concentrated jus de veau works exceptionally well. Yeah yeah I know meat stocks are old school but this tasted dam good. While I rarely ever make demiglace more than once every 2, years this only works if you make the stock properly without burning the bones. Upon final searing after CSV, you get a nice meaty nutty flavor which manages to remain on the surface only and does not cloud the nuanced flavor of the meat, assuming you are buying good meat.

Recipe:
4parts veal jus to 1 part peanut oil.
1 cup veal jus.
1/4 cup peanut oil

Stocking the pantry and the brain.

If every ingredient was a line item, there are thousands of possible things that go into food preparation. This abbreviated shopping list is a mix of the familiar, items to assess for quality and recipes to play with. A few things mail ordered, a drive to Boun Italia in the Chelsea market, Sunrise, Despana, Chinatown and the big C. On the agenda this weekend :

Sarabeth's jam and Balthazar brioche for pain perdu.
Taste "Artisan" Shoyu from Sunrise.
Cook Steak with Tasmanian pepper.
Taste XO sauce, try new sauces.
Taste Yuzu Kosho, verify heat and spice.
Piquillos for piquillo-honey puree.
Compare Monk's pepper to Pondicherry.
Cook Millet in pressure cooker, check flavor and texture.
"Kimchee no moto" for fennel kimchee.
Cook Kamut "Farro Style", note liquid absorption.
Jasmati rice pudding, see if it holds aroma/fragrance post cooking.
Irish oats for kamozawa-Talbot  savory oatmeals, use morels.
Eat Fideos for sunday supper.
See if Esplette from Williams Sonoma $10 gift certificate is decent quality.
Dried Kaffir Lime and essential oil for sea-herb glass a la Gagnaire "flavors of winter".
Brewers Yeast and brown butter potato fondant might be good.
Taste and try pre-ground Bottarga relative to "grated to order".
Check flavor and heat of Aji-Panca and amarillo, read PERU book.
Agave Syrup for "Albufera" consomme.

Copper River Salmon

The vibrant color and mystique of Copper River salmon could easily set you up for disappointment if it wasnt for the fact that most farm raised salmon is quite tasteless and anemic. In fact the ones with better complexion may in all actuality have been fed orange pellets.
I scored a couple of fish samples to taste and play with cooking temperatures, nothing groundbreaking here , I just wanted to answer a few questions in a controlled fashion.
This was my first time oil poaching Copper River King, it takes very well to this cooking method as it tends to dry out quickly from careless conventional methods. It's best just slightly below medium rare.
The fish are bagged individually with olive oil, lemongrass and lemon thyme.
Cooking temperature is 54C.
The wild stuff as you guessed is indeed better, most of the fish was from Citarella  on 6th Ave in Greenwich Village. The tastiest stuff was from Townsend .
Thank you Chef.

Rethinking Bread Soup

Bread Soup.
Pancotto in Apulia, Ribollita in Toscana, countless variations in France, Croutons in Onion Gratinee.
Bread and soup have always enjoyed a great relationship.
The concept of "bread as soup" probably evolved through economy in peasant communities.
Here above we have a Croissant Soup with boneless chicken wings, onion marmalade and a poached egg.
Not exactly summer food but sometimes inspiration strikes out of season.
Standard aromatics, onion, leeks, garlic, coriander seeds.
Chicken bouillon, a smoked turkey wing.
Several toasted croissant, bouquet garni and requisite dairy products.
Puree and chinoise.
Which came next, the chicken or the egg ?

Raw Meat.....dont think so.

Does Carpaccio have to be raw ? Nope actually. In fact it seemed to have a more delicious meaty flavor when cooked to just below medium rare. Cook the meat SV to an internal temp of 55C. Cool, freeze till pretty firm, salt and sear quickly (seconds). Cool and slice on a meat slicer. Here is a rolled tied lamb leg carpaccio, Sorrel, fingerling potato chips, pistachio-anhovy praline.

Activa RM

Activa has changed the structure of how chefs compose dishes from Wylie's Skate to Heston's Pigeon. Here we have "bonded" filets of Barramundi to Dry Scallops. Toothpicks were temporarily used till it was tightly wrapped in plastic wrap. Here are the scallops cooked with a lentil-cumin broth and morcilla.

Tomato Conclusion

On the way to making yet another annoying Caprese, along came a few rock shrimp. Texturally the tomato salad with high quality salted burrata from Formaggio was excellent. On the other hand the detail of dis-assembly of tomatoes provided an opportunity to experiment. Ultimately the yellow tomato water was infused with gin, tomato vinegar and Combava (Kaffir Lime) essential Oil. The sweet-acid balance was tweaked with simple syrup. The resulting liquid is set with Pectin and gelatin. The rock shrimp were cooked at 53C for 20 minutes with some olive oil and drops of pastis in the bag. The dish was finished with a sorbet of yellow tomatoes and a spice mix of Bee Pollen,Grains of Paradise, Salt and Sugar contributed to my pantry by Aki and Alex.

Tomatoes Part3

After slight dessication, the tomatoes were noticeably moist but slightly dehydrated, this is really wierd. In fact while the actual petals were somewhat drier, the juices seemed to seperate rather that evaporate. I strained this excess juice which almost filled a wineglass. While the original idea continues, it now sparks the idea of clear bloody mary.The juice is like a nage, clear, tangy, full of fruit flavor. I will freeze with .05% gelatin to clarify and see what happens.

Tomato Progression

Returning to the tomatoes which were refrigerated over the weekend. Today they were sliced in half, the pulp was removed, pureed and strained to remove the seeds. The "Petals" were sprinkled with Sea salt and sugar, drizzled with blood orange oil and each has a superthin slice of garlic. The petals will be dessicated at 200F for about 4 hrs till they are just sweet and tangy. The trace amounts of sugar and salt should balance with concentrating the acidity which is already quite low.  The pulp puree is placed in a superbag to drip overnight and harvest a clearer, lighter tomato water. The assembly continues. Not quite sure where I am going with this but there are lots of sparks. The client actually requested a tomato-mozzarella salad, perhaps we can elevate and refine the ingredients.

Vapors, Essential Oils, Hydrosols

Last week, Daniel Patterson had a well deserved rant in the New York Times, His restaurant is here.

Early Season Tomatoes

While it is certainly far too early to be thinking about worthy tomato dishes in May, thanks to the various greenhouse complexes in the area, some good stuff is sporadically available. Here is a salad of crab with sweet brandywine yellow tomatoes. The tomatoes have been peeled, seeded and dehydrated slightly in my Memmert Oven. Slightly dehydrated tomatoes are then transferred to CSV bags with olive oil ,laurel and thyme, chilled, sealed and cooked at 52C for two hours. Yellow tomatoes are then diced, tossed with superfresh crabmeat, chives and topped with a quenelle of tomato-verbena sorbet which can be made by countless methods. A lovely salad of young celery and orange mint adds the perfect seasonal brightness.
Memmert's Ovens are great dehydrators and can be found by clicking Here.