Author: playingwithfireandwaterofficial

Sweet Lemon/Sour Orange

you just know that Mother Nature was giggling when she planted these.

Sweetlemonsourorange_005psp

These are not new, just new to me.

(left) Sweet Lemon (Citrus Limetta) Round and thin skinned, these seemed so promising when I scratched and sniffed the rinds– heady and floral with spicy undertones– but the pulp is a disappointment– insipid and unremarkable. At least I can salvage the zest. A quick search yielded no practical uses…can’t imagine why this one is still being propagated.

(right) Sour Orange (Citrus Arantium) Also known as bitter orange, this is the All-Star of the orange game. It makes the best marmalade and is used to flavor Grand Marnier, Curacao, and Triple Sec. Its flowers lend their fragrance to orange flower water and the seductive Neroli oil. The pulp is wonderfully puckery and sweet– that is if you can get to it through all of the seeds. No danger of extinction here. I plan to preserve these in salt. After a few weeks, I can utilize them in a relish with cerignola olives, toasted marcona almonds, and roasted piquillo peppers.

The call of the rainforest

While the temperature hovers around 0 degrees here in the Northeast, I should be thinking about hot, soothing soup, or a slow-braised joint of meat. Instead, I am finding comfort in dreaming of the tropics.

The rainforest fascinates me…an infinite and largely undiscovered source of plant and animal life. As a teenager, I spent a glorious month in Brazil, staying with family in Santos, but my stay was confined to the coast around Sao Paulo, and only skimmed the outer edges of the Amazon.

Perhaps the most celebrated chef in Brazil today is Alex Atala of D.O.M. Restaurante in Sao Paulo, which is counted among the top 50 restaurants in the world. Besides being a gifted chef and speaking 3 languages fluently, chef Atala is enthusiastic about discovering and sharing the resources of the rainforest, which he calls "a universe of aromas". This is no small feat, considering that the Brazilian diet is still tied to old customs and subsists largely on rice and beans and other imported goods.

Seabass_banana_tamarind_psp

Having captured my imagination, I set out to weave together flavors/aromas from crops that are widely grown in rainforest climates…and I do mean weave in a literal sense…hey, if Wylie can tie foie in a knot, why not weave?  I edited a long list of possibilities down to those that I knew would work well together:
banana
coconut
lime
tamarind
coffee
vanilla
cashew

I began with a piece of grouper, which was seasoned and placed in a bag with vanilla-infused coconut milk and a piece of banana leaf, sealed under vacuum, and cooked sous-vide at 50C for 20 minutes.

Next, I separated the flavors and aromas into two agar sheets. I chose agar because of its heat stability–I didn’t want it to melt as soon as it came in contact with the hot fish–but I was careful to keep these sheets on the soft side, barely firm enough to manipulate. The first sheet (creamy, rich, slightly sweet)  was made by mashing bananas with lime juice(for flavor and to retard darkening), I added agar to the coconut milk, brought to a boil, then combined this with the banana mash. I then poured this out onto a plastic-lined flat container to a thickness of 1/4" and chilled until set.

The second sheet (aromatic, tart, bitter) was made using the same procedure, except the agar was heated with tamarind puree and a hint of vanilla extract, then combined with a pulled shot of espresso and molded.

After both sheets set up, I cut them into 1/2" strips and carefully wove them together, holding them in the refrigerator until just before service, when they were inverted onto the squares of grouper. To finish, a little sprinkle of ground cashews and lime zest.

So, you may ask, is this dish "a universe of aromas"?
No…but, maybe a microcosm.

Welcome

Learning to cook was not an option for me.

My mother is of a generation and culture that believed that young ladies should be skilled in the domestic arts in order to be marriageable. I was a reluctant student and I resented being called in from playtime to help prepare meals. Cooking seemed boring and repetitious, but baking, well, baking was what hooked me…measuring, stirring; the alchemy of watching liquid batter turn to soft, solid yumminess…better than a day at the park.

Looking back at that time, I never dreamed that cooking would become not only an occupation and  profession, but a preoccupation and an obsession.

Over the years, I have cooked in many capacities: caterer, wedding cake baker, cooking instructor, private chef, pastry chef, and various positions in professional kitchens. It has occurred to me lately that of the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of dishes that I have prepared, only a sad few can I recall having cooked for me. I have always tailored food for the diners, clients, students, chefs, family, friends, and have had to take into account limitations of space, time, equipment, and product.

What if I could cook whatever I wanted with no limitations?
Why not?

There has never been a better time to be a chef. No, I am not referring to the star chef phenomena, but to the heightened awareness of food that has gone mainstream. Even in my little rural corner of Northwest Connecticut, I have access to amazing products: artisanal cheeses and bread, raw milk, grass-fed beef, heirloom fruits and vegetables, and ethnic products from around the world. There are also new techniques and movements to explore, the most exciting of these being the application of science to cooking, aka avant garde cuisine or molecular gastronomy.

A new year calls for a new approach.
I feel like a kid at the playground.