Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Lagunitas Tasting



We realized during our last tasting - while trying to break down and isolate flavors and aromas in each beer - that we completely overlooked the basic foods that go great with beer, tacos, chili, spicy foods...sausage. The idea of pheasant
"choucroute garni" has been in my head for awhile.

For the sauerkraut, we cured the cabbage with 1% salt for 5 weeks in the wine room. The result was all we could have hoped for. We cooked the fermented cabbage in butter with onions, ham hock jus and spices until tender.

The pheasant sausage recipe was derived from a guinea hen terrine from a former chef. It contains pheasant breast and leg meat, pork belly, smoked bacon, thyme, raisins and sage. We grilled it for service.

The garnishes made the dish a logistical challenge from the small, ill-equiped kitchen. From left to right apple cider gel with sage tip, celeriac braised in butter with celery leaf, apple cube braised in butter with apple slice, pheasant breast with cracklin', pork belly with whole grain mustard.

The apple cider gel is set with agar and gellan gum and heated for service. The pheasant breast was cooked at 58C for 1.5 hours. We fried the skin, dehydrated it overnight and then robot couped it. The pork belly was cured for three days with the choucroute spices and cooked sous vide at 85C for 4 hours. We seared it for service.

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