Monday, December 08, 2008

When did things get so complicated?

Food:
Water
Fat
Salt
Temperature
Sugar
Acid
Alkaline

Monday, December 01, 2008

Squab

chestnut, liver, coganc, dried fruit, vinegar, dark chocolate

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Chestnut Soup

Same soup, different method. This is a continuuing refinement. The first time I tried making this soup I roasted the chestnuts and pureed them in a blender with stock. This time I cooked the chestnuts sous vide with cognac and brown sugar. I thought I might preserve some of the chestnut flavor by using the sous vide liquid in the soup, instead of diluting it with stock. When I opened the bag the aroma was very clean and complex - almost floral. The color had changed from translucent, pale-amber to an opaque clay red. Ultimately I'd like to make a soup without the addition of cream or milk - or more like a chestnut horchata with nutmeg and cinnamon if dairy is to be added.

Unfortunately the liquid was much too astrigent to be used in the final soup and with it went all the aromatics. In the future, I might try blanching the nuts first in hopes of removing some of the astrigency. Some of the nuts were overcooked and not only became mushy but took on a less pleasant smell like cooked beans.

To make the soup I thinned the puree with turkey stock to desired consistency. Season with salt and brown sugar. Without the cooking liquid the aromatic end is lacking. I either have to replace it completely with another ingredient or rethink the cooking liquid.

for the chestnut puree:

450g chestnuts
50g cognac
25g brown sugar
250ml water

peel the chestnuts. Add the cognac to a pan warm slightly. Flame off the alcohol. Melt in the brown sugar and add the water. Seal the chestnuts with the liquid in a vacuum bag and simmer 25-30 minutes until the nuts are tender. Strain the liquid out. Pass the nuts through a tammis.

Monday, November 10, 2008

ham and brie

ham
bechamel
pork fat
oyster
mandarin
shiitake mushroom
smoke
brie
stale bread

My parents used to make a dish of cured beef sliced thinly over toasted bread coated with a bechamel-like sauce. It was delicious, salty and bland. there is something about salty, starchy blandness that is very important. A well made bechamel poured over stale bread could be very satisfying.

The smoke is the only hesitation and possible omition to this train of thought. I would hate to overpower the delicate fungal nuances of the cheese.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Thoughts on fall

apple
Beaujolais
brown butter
cabbage
Candy corn
Caramel apples
cauliflower
Cedar
celeriac
Chestnut
cider
Cigar box
cinnamon
condensed milk
Crab apple
dried fruit
endive
Fallen leaves
fennel
fermented flavors
frankincense
game
grains
Hay rides
Hazelnut
Huckleberry
molasses
mushrooms
Oak
Old wooden cabinets
oxidized wine
pear
Pecan
pheasant
pumpkin
Pumpkin pie
Pumpkin seed
root vegetables
Sage
salisfy
smoke
squab
squash
sunchoke
sweet potato
Thyme
toasted flavors
Tobacco
turkey
vanilla
venison
Walnut
Warm fireplace

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Frankincense



At the fat duck they used it with a clear venison broth. I'm not really sure what to do with it. Use it for smoking? It has a fragrance vaguely reminiscent of pine when burned.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Douglas Fir Ice Cream



This is not particularly creative or original. What I wanted more so was to test a cold infusion. We didn't manage to capture the citrusy aromas that filled the room as we crushed the needles but we also didn't extract any of the bitter or resinous compounds. Most importantly it did not come off like eating cleaner. The ice cream is made without cream because we wanted the flavor to be short lived on the palate. The pine flavor has a long lasting effect, however. It would be impossible to place this anywhere but at the end of the meal.

30g needles, picked and washed (about 1 cup)
120g sugar
6 egg yolk
500ml milk 3.25%

Using a mortar and pestle, pound the needles until they become very fragrant.

Whisk the sugar and egg yolks together.

Bring the milk to a boil in a small pot. Pour the hot milk over the sugar and egg yolks, whisking.

Strain the ice cream base and chill thoroughly.

Vacuum seal the ice cream base and crushed needles together. Refrigerate 48 hours.

Strain and churn.

Sunday, September 07, 2008

Fall tasting menu

Chicory
smoked quail, banana, dandelion

Mandarin-acorn Squash
oyster-emulsion, cashew, sichuan peppercorn

Cured Duck Breast
mangosteen, taro, bear’s garlic

Shrimp
chestnut-bacon, leeks, malegeuta pepper

Langoustine
rose-steamed, lady apple, parsley

Lobster Seared
barbados cherry, bok choy, black-eyed pea foam, rosemary

Wild boar ragout
marinated fig, buckwheat, tasmanian pepper

Poached Lamb saddle
bean sprout, curry leaf

Loin of Venison
hyacinth bean, black apple foam, strawberry leaves

Monday, August 25, 2008

The Majesty of Tomatoes

Its high enough in umami taste (savory amino acids) to rival mushrooms and meat. Its a fruit from the new world that penetrated europe and became the only ingredient to be be featured among the 5 classic sauces of french cuisine.

Food Pairing lists the following common pairings

Fruit:
Grapefruit
Grapes
Banana
Pear
Sour Cherry
Strawberry
Raspberry
Kiwi
Orange
Black currant

Legume:
Beans
Truffle
Soybean
Pea

Seafood:
Mussel

Herb/Spice:
Tarragon
Cinnamon
Clove
Laurel (bay leaf)
Coriander
Pepper
Anise
Basil
Parsley
Oregano

Cultured Dairy:
Yoghurt
Buttermilk

Culinary Artistry Lists in alphabetical order the following common pairings:

Anchovies
Arugula
Basil
Bread crumbs
Champagne
Cheese – feta, goat, mozzarella, parmesan
Chiles
Chives
Cucumbers
Eggs
Garlic
Lemon
Lovage
Marjoram
Mint
Mushrooms
Olive oil
Olives
Onions
Oregano
Parsley
Pasta
Pepper, black
Peppers, especially red
Saffron
Salt
Seafood
Shallots
Sugar
Tarragon
Thyme
Vinegar – balsamic, sherry, wine

Saturday, August 23, 2008

"peaches and legs have supple character" -'uncle' Danny

Friday, August 22, 2008

Alinea

Headed down for a 2 day stage-interview. More details to come...

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Amuse Bouche




Tuna Tartar
spicy beet brunoise
olive bread chip

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Lamb Follow up




Roasted Saddle of Quebec Lamb
marcona almond puree spiked with preserved lemon juice
summer vegetables
lamb jus

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Elegance



Elegance; graceful, simple, beautiful.

A restaurant chef is always looking for the fastest and cheapest way to create something delicious that a customer will love. We throw carrots mindlessly into stocks and sauces. This recipe is incredibly simple and delicious and comes almost straight out of letters to a young chef. Of course, there are myriad flavors which pair beautifully with the carrot but for the sake of this recipe we want to keep it as simple as possible.

With any vegetable based soup, I start with a puree of the theme ingredient. If I can thin out the soup with the juice of that ingredient, it will be a beautiful clean soup. The carrot is a perfect example.

We start by glazing the carrots in their own juice and olive oil. Cook the carrots over low heat in a fair amount quality olive oil - about twice as much as you would normally use. The fat becomes a carrot-infused oil that will emulsify when the soup is pureed and enrich the finished product. With this method we capture the fat soluble flavors of the carrot with the oil. We use the oil to cook the carrot to represent the silky texture of cooked carrot and we add a lipid element that coats the mouth with the sweet flavor of carrot. To the sweating carrots, add fresh carrot juice, chopped ginger, coriander seed.

Once the carrots are cooked and the juice has reduced all the way down - puree the mixture and pass it through a sieve. Chill completely. When the puree has chilled, thin it with more fresh carrot juice. Season with ginger juice, lemon juice, salt, sugar, cayenne. This is your soup.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

New Additions to Our Library



Someone very special got this book for me, "just because..."

Michel Bras is a true artist. Its full of amazing ideas - incredible book.

Saturday, August 02, 2008

Blazing Saddles


We brought in some really nice quebec lamb saddles for a party. We also have live scallops and french black truffles coming in for the same party. Its more fun for the cooks.


We have probably 7-10kg of trim leftover. I'm thinking merguez?













Saturday, July 26, 2008

Tomatoes





its that time again!

Friday, July 04, 2008

Fennel Soup

We are currently serving this soup chilled with a smoked fig and little lemon foam.

I love it conceptually because its made of 3 different elements that come together cold. The triad reminds me of bass, mid and treble applied to music. I prepare each element of the soup seperately and mix them like a technician moves levels to create the perfect sound.

Bass:
This is the cooked element. The fennel bulbs are cooked for a long time with butter, water, pernod and fennel seeds. After 5-6 hours or whenever it starts to completely fall apart - puree and strain. The result is a rich, silky fennel puree.

Mid:
This element is nothing but the fresh juice of the fennel bulb with vitamin c to prevent oxidation. This is most mild and pleasant of the three. Light and sweet with an off-white color identical to the bulb itself. I could drink a glass of this with ice on a hot day.

Treble:
This came about because the chef wanted the soup to be green. Originally I planned on blanching the fronds and pureeing them into the soup for color. I found the fresh juice of the stems and fronds is a lot more interesting. This is the most intense and abrasive bit of the soup. It is vibrantly electric green in color and tastes almost sickenly sweet of licorice candy.

Once the three are prepared and chilled, I mix them, taste - too much green, too much cream, etc. The balance is simply beatiful. The only downside is it takes a case of fennel to make a little over 1/2 gallon of soup.

Monday, June 30, 2008

Confusion

"Barbeque" is not a device, it is a style of food. You might even go so far as to call it a method. A "grill" and a "smoker" can be used to create barbeque but you cannot "throw something on the barbeque" anymore than you can throw something on the remouillage.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

"...be generous, be extravagant. Without generosity there's no love, and without love there's no understanding. A mean cook is a failed cook."

-Marco Pierre White

Monday, June 23, 2008

Banana Fritter with Coconut Crust, Tamarind, Spiced Rum Ice Cream

The beauty of bananas is you really don’t have to do anything to them to make them pop - both on your palate and on the plate. The flavors are naturally vibrant and intensely floral. I can’t think of anyone who could say they don’t like a fresh banana. We use them right now with the lamb dish. We simply puree the raw banana with a little vitamin c and xanthan gum to thicken. No sugar, no salt.

In flavor and execution the banana fritter dessert was quite nice but the presentation was definitely lacking – brown, darker brown and off-white. Unfortunately we didn’t get a picture since it was a one time dessert.

For the Fritter:
Take very ripe bananas and mash them with a whisk in a large bowl. We wanted the fritter to have some texture so we didn’t puree the bananas. Add brown sugar, vitamin c, banana liquer and .24% dried agar flake by weight. Heat the mixture while whisking over a double boiler to 32C. Pour into molds and set overnight. In our case it was a sheet pan since we didn’t have rectangle molds for 150. Once they have set they can be sliced but are fragile. When you’re ready to bread them, unmold or slice as desired. We cut them into flat rectangles. The result is sort of a warm flourless banana cake.

Process equal parts panko crumbs and rice crispies. Add to that 50% chopped unsweetened coconut. Bread the fritter using standard procedure.

For the tamarind coulis:
Pour hot water over dried tamarind pulp and work with your fingers until everything but the hard skin is dissolved into the water. It should be a thick gloppy consistency. Add brown sugar, coffee, dark rum, lemon juice, salt. Pass through a fine chinois.

The rum ice cream was the only component for which a proper recipe was developed.

Rum Ice Cream

750ml whole milk
750ml heavy cream
14 egg yolks
100g white sugar
150g brown sugar
600g gold rum
½ tsp vanilla extract
1 (1”) orange zest
2(1”) lemon zest
¼ tsp nutmeg, ground
11 whole cloves
2 cinnamon sticks

Our test batch was made with dark rum which had a nice flavor but intense. The gold rum is a little more rounded and showcases the spices a little more. If you use spiced rum, omit the vanilla.

Set the rum aflame and allow to burn out. Cover and refrigerate. Whisk the egg yolks and sugars together. In a pot, heat the milk, cream, vanilla, orange and lemon zest and spices to 50C. Pour over egg mixture while whisking. Add back to the heat and bring up to 70C for ten minutes. Remove from heat. Its best to let the custard cool with the spices overnight or at least 4-5 hours before straining. Add the flamed rum to the cold ice cream base and churn.

We plated these on a rectangular plate with the fritter at one end and the sorbet resting on shredded coconut at the other. A painted stripe of tamarind sauce connected the two.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Desserts

Desserts have been a constant struggle since we opened the dining room. In previous years all the pastries were outsourced from a company who is as mediocre as ubiquitous in the area. There is no room physically or in the budget for a pastry person. Neither myself or the chef have any real pastry training and the result is a lot of time wasted and a lot of frustration. Just as I'm about to give up, I look through the desserts we've run so far, and think about how much I've learned in a desperate attempt to make salable pastries.

sorbets:
green apple
red plum
cucumber
lavender
kirsch
banana
banana-lavender
espresso
spiced rum
blueberry
gazpacho
celery leaf
grape
saffron
croissant
green tea-mojito
black olive-root beer

Next week we'll try a mango dessert with a lychee bavarois and rosehip jelly. Quebec strawberries are nice right now. I'm thinking it would be nice to marinate them in strawberry juice and serve with a white grape-vanilla mousseline and tarragon syrup. Cherries - always on the brain.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Cornish Hen



I've had to sit two weeks on my awesome new rebel xti without having anything of which to take pictures. Last night was slow so I packed up some mep and cut out early for a quick photoshoot.

I'm really glad I got a picture of this because we recently stopped running it due to lack of sales.

We connect the supremes and skin with activa. The leg meat is made into confit and stuffed into the raviolo which is glazed with port wine reduced with spices and fresh plum juice. We roast the carcasses to make the chicken jus. There is a little bit of silky parsnip puree in the background. Not a bad dish - but nothing really special.

I managed to get about 3 pictures of the lamb dish before the camera battery died. Argh.

Friday, April 25, 2008

Roasted Halibut with White Beans and Chervil




In a mad effort to create some "beauty shots" for the upcoming menu, I did something I've never really done before - this photo is somewhat fake. We are opening the restaurant very soon, but not soon enough to have any of the mise en place to make these dishes, or access to the plates for that matter.

We got the word we needed some pictures at about 11:30 yesterday. By 12:30 we were knee deep in Atwater market hunting for truffle oil, quail eggs, and any picture-worthy produce we could get our hands on. We were unfortunately unable to secure proper lighting equipment. It makes me cringe just to think this picture was lit with energy-saver flourescent lights, which accounts for the overall badness of the photo. We now have a picture of a tomato salad that sadly looks like vomit. Since my computer died I no longer have access to photoshop to attempt to fix the green spike from the light.

Without the time to braise the beans properly we hastily resorted to the canned version for the sake of the photo. The "chervil emulsion" is a honest to goodness herb oil (not chervil) folded into egg whites. The rest is real, the fish, the crudite salad, the snap peas. By 1:30am we had about 5 photos...I'm tired.

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Whisky-Peach-Tea Sauce

Maybe a few times a year I return to the idea of bbq sauce. This turned out well but lacked the tang needed for a good bbq sauce. The addition of tamarind, malic or ascorbic acid will probably round it out nicely.

Whisky Peach Tea Sauce

630g peach nectar
6g worcestershire
6g sriracha sauce
85g cider vinegar
60g ketchup
50g brown sugar
25g jack daniels whisky (flamed)
20g lipton tea
1/4 tsp allspice
25 grinds black pepper
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground mustard
1/4 tsp ground clove
1 clove garlic

Cold infuse the tea for two hours.

Combine everything in a pot except the whisky. Reduce mixture to 250g. Remove from the heat. Stir in the whisky.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Salmon Tartare




Salmon Tartare, Black Pepper Coulis, Meyer Lemon Curd, Avocado Ice Cream

The black pepper coulis really ties together the crisp acidity of lemon at the same time as it complements the floral qualities. It cuts through the fat of the salmon and avocado. I pressure cooked the peppercorns in water for 2 hours. The result was less tender than I would have liked. The puree was a thick paste but even when passed, contained a lot of solids. Tenderizing a dried peppercorn to the point it can be pureed is an ongoing search.

The ice cream base is made from of 3 parts fat free milk to 1 part heavy cream, and sugar. I added .15% iota carrageenan. The avocado is pureed into the cold base raw with citrus.

The meyer lemon is preserved in salt and sugar, blanched, pureed and set with carrageenan.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Musings

In case anyone has become as distraught as myself searching for a creme anglaise recipe in the CIA Pro Chef textbook - fear not. It is listed under its proper english name, "vanilla sauce."

I am still unable to find a recipe for "freedom fries" however. If anyone has a good recipe please email me immediately.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Salmon with Gazpacho Sorbet and Meyer Lemon Coulis



The salmon was cured via standard gravlax.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Asparagus Soup



If you said "asparagus soup" to me, I would probably yawn and go back to searching for a good recipe for butterstoch-miso or chocolate parmesan gnocchi. At this point I have to realize I've completely lost touch and need to come back to reality. Asparagus is a wonderful spring flavor and a king among vegetables. It deserves to star in its own dish and not just take second stage to beef or chicken.

I was looking at an old recipe I wrote for a chilled green asparagus soup and it got me thinking about how I would make it today. The fact that its a green vegetable is really what drew me back to the idea, because care must be taken to preserve the color. I start to get a little more excited when I think there really is no cooking past the stock and the asparagus destined for puree.

At this point I'm engaged in a brainstorm focusing solely on my methods. It has actually been quite a challenge to completely omit, garnishes, flavor combinations etc from this thought process.

We can break it down and focus on the elements. A vegetable soup is basically a vegetable puree that has been thinned with a water-based liquid to a soup consistency.

So we have 1) the liquid and 2) the puree. So how can we infuse and preserve the flavor of the asparagus, at the same time controlling the heat to preserve the nice emerald green color?

We can infuse the base liquid or stock with the woody end of the vegetable and the peelings that we normally discard. We can steep the liquid with raw asparagus. We can use the raw juice of the vegetable.

Asparagus juice

Juice the stalks in a juicer over an ice bath. We could always juice white aspargus and reduce it down.

Asparagus Stock

vegetable, chicken or bean stock
mirepoix and herbs
parmesan rind
whole coffee bean (3 per liter)
asparagus, woody ends and peelings
thinly sliced raw asparagus

bring the stock, mirepoix, woody ends and peelings up to a boil and cook 10-15 minutes. Strain over the sliced asparagus and allow to steep another 10-15 minutes. Strain again and cool completely. Save the asparagus juice for the finished soup.

Asparagus Puree

Normally we would blanch the asparagus in heavily salted boiling water and shock it in ice water. There are a lot of aromatics and flavors lost in this process. I don't want to completely eliminate the cooked element, but how much do we really need to cook it to make a puree? Can we sous vide it for a very short time and use the pacojet? Pressure cook it? Pressure cook it sous vide? If we can boil the asparagus in a bag, we can save all those nutrients, but it may discolor before its cooked in time.

Use the asparagus stock and juice to thin out the puree to a desirable soup consistency. But we can still add more flavor. Since we are not reheating the soup, we can cold infuse it with more asparagus and herbs.

Cold infusion

thin sliced asparagus
herbs

Add the asparagus and herbs to the finished soup and cold infuse until the soup is ready to be served. Strain and serve.

Is this the best I can do? What about asparagus powder? Can we use a gastrovac to reduce asparagus juice without heating it enough to discolor?

Saturday, March 01, 2008

Tokyo Stars

This isn't really news, but looking at Michelin's 2008 rating of Tokyo is pretty crazy - 150 restaurants adorn Michelin stars in this city. More than Paris or London combined? Well London, don't get me started... According to Michelin, Tokyo has around 190,000 restaurants compared to its count for NYC of 18,000 in 2005 and 25,000 in 2008. This makes sense considering most people in Tokyo don't even have kitchens in their apartments, and homecooking is not an option. But what the hell? 150 restaurants? they care less about stars than we do. At least Robuchon can tack on another three and Gordon Ramsay is dicked once again. haha, EAT IT!

Friday, February 29, 2008

New Menus



We started work this week on a spring menu for a restaurant in Montreal. The process of writing a new and seasonal menu is so challenging. We look at the same ingredients every year and try to keep them interesting to both the customer and ourselves. We think dredge up all the recent ideas and things we find interesting and write it all down. At this point I stand back and look at and think, "that's it?" What about the lamb, the morels, the fava beans, the pork belly, the zucchini, the artichokes? Oh my god the artichokes. Oh boy.

There are a few specific reasons for the seasonal defectiveness of some ingredients. However, most of these dishes need some spring-ification. Here is the brainstorm process:

mosaic of lightly-cured salmon and avocado
quail egg, horseradish, gazpacho sorbet

sauteed veal sweetbreads

spring peas, saba, bacon vinaigrette

rabbit terrine

pickled ramps

hot and cold or swirl of asparagus soups
shaved crudites, parma ham (crisped)

ravioli of braised lamb/wild boar and swiss chard
reconstituted raisins, crispy chard, golden raisin puree (cumin, tumeric)

pork cheeks braised in milk and honey
fennel pollen, shaved fennel salad, lavender, lemon vinaigrette

(Soup)
cockles, sauteed garlic scapes, wild mushrooms

hot and cold foie gras

Mains

braised beef cheek/short rib
(brined and cooked at 56C for 72 hours)
rhubarb puree, madeira-coffee jus, asparagus, potato fondant

bacon-wrapped monkfish
ragout of white beans, tomato confit, "sauce bordelaise"

butter-poached lobster
golden beet puree, sauteed spinach, chorizo emulsion

tea-smoked duck breast
(or poached in french toast stock)
pain perdue, black olive caramel, pickled daikon

terrine of squab breast
chicken liver, tellicherry-currant coulis

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Spice Quiz




I love cooking with spices. You can give any ingredient or recipe an instant sense of regionality as well as a fiery heat or delicate complexity. Spices can breath life into a dish and they can bog it down and remind us why we started using them in the first place, before refrigerators came into fashion.

Do you know (without looking up on google) what what makes up the chinese 5 spice? How about Arabic or Turkish 7 spice (baharat)? French "quatre epices" (4 spice)?
I started thinking about this the other day when I ran across one that I hadn't heard of before; vadouvan. What are characteristic elements of less clearly defined mixes like, cajun, pickling spices, tex-mex? Or older mixes like shichimi togarashi, zaa'tar, garam masala, ras-el hanout, chermoula, harissa, berbere?

A little while back David brought this website to my attention: Gernot Katzer's Spices. Its really an amazing resource.

I was able to find recipes I was happy with:
berbere
vadouvan
pickling spices
tex-mex

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Manufacturing Deliciousness


Nowadays we can use gas chromatography and olfactometry techniques to analyze different foods and see why they go together. There are a number of commercial databases that list thousands of popular ingredients and their threshold levels of volatile compounds. For the most part, this information is best used to explain a tasty combination. However, we can look at compounds and try to predict interesting combinations with varied success. This idea is the very heart of what we refer to as "Molecular Gastronomy" - to completely deconstruct something down to its most basic elements. This can mean the physical and chemical process behind heating a dish, flavors and textures of a classical dish or aromatic compounds in a specific combination of ingredients. How we reassemble the data is the interesting part.

I've barely begun to scratch the surface of this topic personally. In the spirit of science, I've decided to post these limited findings. Most combinations are based on similarly high levels of specific compounds. Of course these are not guaranteed to work. I was really excited to find things like lavender and juniper occur so frequently, because I like them both very much and find them really hard to work with. My combinations go from simple and typical like orange, cilantro and cardamom to very strange like, asparagus, coffee and popcorn. Here's what I found.

Combination #1:
orange
lemon
dill seed
fennel
juniper berry
lavender

Combination #2:
lavender
banana
coffee
honey
gin
allspice

Combination #3:
bay leaf
cheddar cheese
gin
allspice

Combination #4:
caviar
cilantro

Combination#5:
asparagus
coffee
popcorn

Combination #6:
orange juice
cilantro
cardamom

More on this topic visit, Khymos.org, TGRWT, Leffingwell.com

Friday, February 01, 2008

Sugar as a Cooking Medium



This is just a thought... We can use syrup to cook things at a high temperature like when we pour it over nuts to make peanut brittle so why not other things? Heat a pot of hot syrup and immerse ingredients in it to cook the same as you would water or oil. You could use it too cook sous vide over 100C. We could poach scallops in honey or glaze root vegetables in hot syrup. A solution of 99% sucrose can be heated up to 154C/310F without breaking down - the temperature of a low oven. But since its considerably more dense than oil it would cook faster than in a fryer. Glucose syrup is 1.5 times more dense than water and can be heated well past the boiling point, making it much more efficient. If you cook a beef roast in syrup at a hard-crack temperature it should form a crust when it cools that will chip off. Something to think about.

Glucose Density (g/cm3) = 1.54
Water Density (g/cm3) = 1
Oils Density (g/cm3) = .91-.93

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Lentils



I'm really glad I can post about these because they are a great love of mine and have tremendous sentimental value. My Indian friends would make them with spices in the consistency of a porridge with chopped tomatoes and scrambled eggs. Ruth loves lentils cooked with spices and I made them for her often.

Lentils have a natural delicious and deeply satisfying quality that is extremely easy to bring out. When I graduated culinary school I didn't have the slightest clue how to cook them. I feel they are often neglected. It is a unique quality to both add to and benefit from the liquid in which they are cooked - you can create a stock and an delicious product both at the same time, which is not the case for meat and animal protein. I think a good bean broth rivals chicken stock and is no comparison to vegetable stock for a non-meat alternative.

Because this technique is really economical, its easier to use less efficient techniques like gelatin clarification which can easily yield as little as 50%. A bean/lentil consomme is an amazing medium for poaching and braising. We braised salt cod in curry-lentil consomme which turned out very nice. I've also used lentil stock as a cooking liquid for lentils which yields great results.

At Daniel I was taught a standard way of cooking dried beans and legumes.

Soak overnight, or as needed.
Place in a pot and cover with cold water
Bring to a boil
Skim off any scum and strain liquid
place in a pot again and add cold water, this time with a sachet of standard mirepoix herbs and spices
simmer until tender
remove and discard sachet
strain liquid and discard
allow the beans to cool

This was really the first exposure I had to a proper technique of bean cookery. I'm not quite sure if there is any value to the blanching process. I later learned the value of smoked pork and salt in addition to the mirepoix. The bean/lentil soaks up more water as is comes close to being cooked so the liquid must be well seasoned. If not you have a lentil that tastes like tap water.

At Lucias restaurant in Minneapolis they have a standard preparation for braised white beans.

2-3# dried beans
1 tomato, halved
1/2 bu. thyme
1/4c. olive oil
5 garlic cloves
2-3T salt

the beans are brought to a boil and allowed to rest for 1 hour. Then they are simmered until tender.

The "hot soak" is not desirable and the method is definitely a regression from the aforementioned but it includes the tomato which completely dissolves into the water in the time it takes to cook the beans. It also includes oil which is of questionable value.

At The Fat Duck, the lentils are placed in a vacuum sealed bag with de-ionized water, mirepoix containing leek and garlic and cooked at 90C for 5 hours. This method is perfect. Using filtered water gives you more control over the water. I'm not sure if the process controls the pH, but I know that affects the texture and the way they cook. The vegetables create an acidic environment and probably add to the cooking time.

In his book titled Molecular Gastronomy, Herve This states "...the percentage of lentils that burst open during cooking increases exponentially as a function of time as the temperature rises above 80C...above 86C, the proportion of lentils that fall apart exceeds the proportion of lentils that become soft while retaining their form..lentils should be cooked at a temperature lower than 80C." I suspect my experience with the higher cooking temperature is designed to reduce the cooking time.

Here's how I cook them:

1 1/2 cup lentils
1/4 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic
1 whole tomato, peeled and chopped
1T curry spice blend
1 tsp corriander, ground
dash cinnamon, ground
1/4 tsp cumin, ground
1/8 tsp cayenne, ground
salt and water

cook the onions in oil until golden, add the garlic 5 min. Add spices and cook 1 minute. Add the tomato and cook until it starts to fall apart. Add lentils and cook 30 seconds. Add water - the amount depends on what you want as a finished result. I usually add about 2 cups of water and let most of it cook off. The cooking liquid should taste fairly salty. Simmer until the lentils are tender.