Category: inspiration

chicken skate corn coconut

Imagine a morsel of tender, sweet, flaky fish. Now imagine it encrusted with a crackly-crisp crust of chicken skin.

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chicken-fried skate
silver queen corn
coconut
cocoa nib
sea bean
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That was the image that I kept fixed in my mind (and palate) and the inspiration for the chicken skin croquant. 
In the past, I've wrapped and glued raw chicken skin to another protein. The problem with that method is controlling the cooking time and temperature required to produce a crisp skin and a properly cooked filling. Sometimes these are incompatible. 
Then there is the issue of wrapping, which leaves areas of overlapping skin that result in pockets of flabby fat.
The control, I decided, would be to pre-cook the skin. But then how to apply it? Grinding was a logical step, but I wasn't looking for a crumb coating. I was seeking a crispy crust–one that did not require deep frying or prolonged heating. 
I needed something that would cook quickly, fuse the ground skin, and contribute to the texture and flavor. Sugar fit the bill and I liked the ideal of a bruleed coating, but the amount needed would render it too sweet. Mildly sweet isomalt, which behaves like sugar and quickly melts to the hard-crack stage turned out to be the solution. The addition of Tapioca Maltodextrin further improved the texture and helped with the bonding.
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The last silver queen corn of the season, when put through a juicer and heated, contains natural starch that quickly transforms into a velvety sauce. All that is needed is a burst of lime juice and pinch of salt to balance the sweetness. 
Coconut and corn is a marriage made in heaven. 
Cocoa nibs add complexity and a hint of bitterness.
Salty sea beans + chicken of the sea = delicious. 

mozzarella balloon

Back in May, I received an email asking me what I thought about the newly launched Mosaic site from Alinea. Just as I began to fret about not receiving the required password, I found it in a junk folder. I spent the next few hours (and many since) pouring over the techniques and ideas contained in the sampling of the anticipated book.

One of these, the mozzarella balloon, was what prompted me to give fresh mozzarella another try. It was very rewarding to finally succeed at making a high quality cheese that had eluded and frustrated me, but it was really the viable curd that I was after.

A few days ago, while in NYC for the International Chefs Congress, I took a break to visit Kitchen Arts and Letters. I can never resist perusing through their trove of esoteric cookbooks that is full of surprising gems. The biggest surprise awaiting me on this visit was a trail copy of Alinea. I'm here to tell you that it's for real, and it is an opus of a book, more massive and beautiful than us mere mortal cooks had any right to expect. Those of us who pre-ordered it directly from Mosaic will have it in our hot hands as early as next week. Get ready folks–this book is going to change everything.
mozzarella balloon
 Break off a 4-5 oz. piece of mozzarella curd that has been acidified and ready to stretch. Place it in a bowl and cover it with water that has been heated to 71C (160F). Allow it to melt for a few minutes, then pull and stretch it to form a disc of uniform thickness that is roughly 6" in diameter.
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Form hand into a C-shape and drape the disc loosely over.
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Half-fill a whipped cream charger with a mixture of salted tomato water and extra-virgin olive oil that has been set with 1.5% gelatin. Charge with NO2 cartridge. Chill. Shake charger firmly and place tip of nozzle over the center of mozzarella disc. Gather the disc around the nozzle, wrapping thumb and index finger around to hold firmly in place. With nozzle facing down, slowly discharge foam into mozzarella. While maintaining a firm grip, slowly slide balloon off of the nozzle, pressing and pinching the ends together to seal. Cut off any excess.
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Serve immediately.
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christmas in july

This is not what you think.
I am not one of those insanely organized people that begin their Christmas shopping in July.
Nor is it a shameless plea for gifts.

Last December, when my family asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I requested Peace on Earth. Even as I said it, I knew it was obnoxious to ask for something so monolithically impossible, but it was the truth. Sort of.

The whole truth was that I just wanted some peace in my life. The unrelenting wave of menus, prep lists, and shopping trips left me feeling like I was making every one else’s holidays perfect, while mine went spinning out of control. I longed to bake rustic loaves of bread in my own kitchen instead of fussy hors d’Oeuvres in the kitchens of others and to make thoughtful, personalized gifts instead of participating in the colossal cluster-f*** of consumerism. I was in full-out rebellion and my request was my protestation.

But my family was not responsible and when they justly called me out, I revised my request to something more attainable: books.

The gift certificates sat in a drawer, nearly forgotten. They were waiting for inspiration to strike. The spark started with the recent launch of Mosaic, the interactive website that I gained access to after pre-ordering the Alinea book last fall. The announcements of soon-to-be-released cookbooks by innovative chefs prompted me to dust off the certificates and spend a peaceful afternoon shopping online.

I didn’t get Peace on Earth. Instead, I received the gift of childlike anticipation.

Thank you M, D, & R.

On order:

Underpressure

        Under Pressure– Thomas Keller

        Thomas Keller. Sous-vide. Enough said.

Bigfatduck

       

The Big Fat Duck Cookbook– Heston Blumenthal

          This is the priciest of the lot, but a small price to
          pay to play in the mind of the mad genius.

        

Elbulli

        A Day at elBulli – Ferran Adria

       

Martin sums it up best with his comment:
        “The fact that a 600 page book covers a single day
        at el Bulli says a lot about how much thought they
        put into their cooking.”


Dessertfourplay
                                    
         Dessert Fouplay– Johnny Iuzzini

         From the rockstar of pastry, I’ve been hoping for
         this book since tasting his desserts at Jean
         Georges.

Ontheline

          


        On the Line–  Eric Ripert

         The master of seafood gives us a behind the scenes
         look into his kitchen at Le Bernardin.

Coming up:

Noma

        Noma Cookbook– Rene Redzepi

       While this book is no longer available in English, the
       very helpful staff at Kitchen Arts & Letters informs
       me that there is a new book on the horizon. No
       release date yet.

Untitled-1 copy
       Nathan Myhrvold, former CTO of Microsoft and
       French-trained chef is said to be working on a
       high-tech cookbook due out in 2009. Dr.
       Myhrvold has also worked with Professor
       Stephen Hawking on research in cosmology,
       quantum
field theory in curved space time and
       quantum theories of gravitation. Can’t wait to
       see what he does with food.

Wishlist:

Shout out to Wylie, Sam, Alex and Jordan:  Please, oh please, get busy boys!

workshop

Yesterday, I attended a high-tech dessert workshop at the French Culinary Institute, led by Dave Arnold and Nils Noren. Dave Arnold is a self-proclaimed gadget geek who works directly with Wylie Dufresne and other avant guarde chefs in NYC as their culinary tech support. He is neither a chef nor a scientist, yet his knowledge of food history and chemistry is vast and formidable. Nils Noren is a Swedish-trained chef, former Executive Chef of Aquavit, and current VP of Culinary Arts of the FCI. Together, they form a dream team with chef Noren’s classic background, modern approach, and assured manner playing off of Arnold’s frenetic free-flow of technical information.
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The workshop consisted of demonstrations of three desserts and one savory dish, each followed by a tasting. The equipment used included a commercial vacuum sealer,
a pressure cooker, a pacojet, and a rotary evaporator. The vacuum was put into service to quickly remove bubbles from blended hyrocolloid solutions, a process which usually requires many hours of settling time, to fully pickle red onions in a matter of minutes, and to infuse heavy cream with the smoky flavor of Lapsang Souchong tea without the use of heat. The legendary Durian was cooked in the pressure cooker, then processed into a silky ice cream in the pacojet. This ingredient excited me above all others as it was my first experience with "the king of fruits". I found it strangely wonderful, though not everyone present shared this opinion. The rotovap, a piece of laboratory equipment that Arnold salvaged and then jerry-rigged into a distiller that will extract pure, crystal-clear, liquid essence from anything he desires. It differs from a traditional still in that it uses carefully controlled low temperatures to preserve the flavor and aromas of the resulting elixir. The products in yesterday’s workshop were clear brandies, or eau de vies, of two wines:  Madeira and  Beaumes de Venise. Their flavor and alcohol content (up to 130 proof) were intoxicating. Arnold was quick to point out that the process of privately distilling alcohol is illegal.

Other revelations were puffed pasta, a simple technique that is worthy of it’s own future post, and the introduction of red lime paste (made from red slake lime–the mineral, not the fruit), a product that Arnold recently discovered serendipitously. It is alkaline, like baking soda, and was used to soak under-ripe bananas in order to allow them to caramelize and retain their shape. To me, the highlight was the 15 minutes after the workshop where Dave Arnold allowed me to pick his brain with questions about products, applications, and techniques that interested me. I could not write fast enough to keep up with his onslaught of information. He drew me into his maelstrom and gave me a new horizon of possibilities, leaving me awed by how much there is still to learn and discover.

Time to go destroy my kitchen.