Chef at Home

Archive for September, 2009

The party line is that Ideas in Food is our digital notebook. There is irony in the fact that these notes are first usually scrawled on post it notes, legal pads, old mail and an occasional napkin. Times are changing, sort of. Today I took notes and scribbled extrapolations and inspirations while at Star Chefs using my iphone. It was a brutal experience. There was no flow of ideas, rather a choppy typing. I could not doodle and extrapolate. My imagination was not free to roam. Incoming texts broke the mental flow of idea germination. Still in all, I was charged with thoughts and noodled a number of ideas. To get an idea of what today inspired here is what I scribed:

Substitute pistachio paste in miso marinade…sake mirin soy

What other nuts. Smoked nut what other nut substitutions

Powerful pure ingredients

Ginger curd

The switching of cultural herbs and seasoning

Coat salt with oil then fold into tartars to preserve texture try with 
other fats and sugar

Minced seasonal fruit relish

Bone marrow and sea urchin kinome and crispy

Pistachio soba

Use powdered sugar to dust and dry citrus skin olives nuts

Tomato miso

Use aerated brittle around foie or peanut butter etc

Roast garlic and buckwheat miso

Poached in pistachio milk flavored with lemongrass

Red wine dashi

Sauerkraut miso
Buckwheat groats with flavor purée perhaps squash

Dried onions flavored with miso

Black onion powder with roast buckwheat … Try other vegetables

Bone marrow mousse

Yuzu-wine- shallot sauce

Artichoke and soft cheese mousseline

A lighter onion sabayon

Onion or allium miso

Kasu and nut praline

Pork belly cooked in salt kasu crust

Use food grade plastic to shape and structure meats and fish

Can we make dashi in the cvap 60 c

Threads of kelp make in pressure cooker

Garlic oil or stock to enrich sauces

Toasted garlic consommé

Grilled applesauce
Prosciutto or country ham dashi

Vegetable dashi…grilled vegetable
Beer cake

Proteins help emulsions what can be a cream and what is the proteins

Fat flair up for flavor

Fruit acids help proteins to disperse

Shrimp for use as melting salt
Sodium citrate allows for remelting

What can be a cheese

25 percent gum Arabic solution as moisture barrier

Pork rinds etc 13 percent water

Grind dried pork rinds

crumbs of false cracklings how many incredible uses

Methocel foam as glue try with other tapioca starch

Try with fish skin

Use dog brush to evenly poke holes in duck skin for searing

Cook duck skin at 83 c then dry and fry

Don't forget layered duck skin in activa chapter

Deep fry or tempura smoked confit garlic: frog legs, garlic bread 
soup, etc ideas

What would powdered pickled watermelon rind be like?
Garlic poached in citrus nut milk then deep fried

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The dish has noodled about our brains for a long time. Finally we have been able to bring together our first version, after many years in the pondering. The dish is a soft boiled egg surrounded by chicken noodles tossed with watercress. Delicious and simple. Deceiving and delightful. With truffle season knocking on our door we could make the dish luxe. In the same breath we could start re-visiting classics. Today we enjoy the simplicity.

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Steak and red wine, not much thinking needed. Steak with red wine sauce, still a no brainer. Making a bath of red wine infused with onion and seasoned with soy to gently braise large steaks, pretty darn cool, especially for us since we just came across the idea. We cook the wine a touch to burn off some of the alcohol and then add sliced onions and soy sauce. To cool the mixture down we add frozen butter and then slide the meat into the tepid bath. A spin in the cvap and a kiss on the grill produces red wine infused steaks that are meltingly tender. The resulting liquid was perhaps even better than the steaks. When the steaks were done, we brought it to a boil, added some agar, cooled it quickly, and then clarified it to produce an incredible beef and wine consomme. This secondary product has yet to find a home, however a quick pairing with seared bay scallops would not be a bad place to begin.

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In much the same way that the Cvap moldered in our kitchen for almost two years before we truly discovered it, How Baking Works, Exploring the Fundamentals of Baking Science has been on our book shelves for years without ever being properly appreciated. This volume is a small treasure chest of information and should be purchased by anyone who really wants to understand the hows and whys of what's happening with the ingredients needed in creating what goes in the oven. It's more than a keeper, its an essential read.
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Those brownies were a riff off the cocoa brownie recipe in Alice Medrich’s book Bittersweet. I sometimes up the butter by an ounce or two and I bake them at 325 degrees Fahrenheit with convection, which I think is slighly different from her recipe, but other than that her technique is unchanged. We played around with adding a teaspoon of powdered harissa to add heat and depth. While it was a fun twist, frankly for me the cumin became a bit much. So that a batch of brownies that normally lasts two or three days at the most never actually got finished. The harissa was a good idea that tasted great for the first brownie and sated the palate quickly. Interestingly this tends to be the issue when trying to update classic recipes in general. We love them for a reason and it’s very hard to improve on the tried and true. I suppose that’s why we use Heinz’s (organic) ketchup instead of making our own. Not that we haven’t tried, per se, but because new isn’t always better. A hard thing for a chef to admit, on the other hand, new classics are created all the time.

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The party line is that Ideas in Food is our digital notebook. There is irony in the fact that these notes are first usually scrawled on post it notes, legal pads, old mail and an occasional napkin. Times are changing, sort of. Today I took notes and scribbled extrapolations and inspirations while at Star Chefs using my iphone. It was a brutal experience. There was no flow of ideas, rather a choppy typing. I could not doodle and extrapolate. My imagination was not free to roam. Incoming texts broke the mental flow of idea germination. Still in all, I was charged with thoughts and noodled a number of ideas. To get an idea of what today inspired here is what I scribed:

Substitute pistachio paste in miso marinade…sake mirin soy

What other nuts. Smoked nut what other nut substitutions

Powerful pure ingredients

Ginger curd

The switching of cultural herbs and seasoning

Coat salt with oil then fold into tartars to preserve texture try with 
other fats and sugar

Minced seasonal fruit relish

Bone marrow and sea urchin kinome and crispy

Pistachio soba

Use powdered sugar to dust and dry citrus skin olives nuts

Tomato miso

Use aerated brittle around foie or peanut butter etc

Roast garlic and buckwheat miso

Poached in pistachio milk flavored with lemongrass

Red wine dashi

Sauerkraut miso
Buckwheat groats with flavor purée perhaps squash

Dried onions flavored with miso

Black onion powder with roast buckwheat … Try other vegetables

Bone marrow mousse

Yuzu-wine- shallot sauce

Artichoke and soft cheese mousseline

A lighter onion sabayon

Onion or allium miso

Kasu and nut praline

Pork belly cooked in salt kasu crust

Use food grade plastic to shape and structure meats and fish

Can we make dashi in the cvap 60 c

Threads of kelp make in pressure cooker

Garlic oil or stock to enrich sauces

Toasted garlic consommé

Grilled applesauce
Prosciutto or country ham dashi

Vegetable dashi…grilled vegetable
Beer cake

Proteins help emulsions what can be a cream and what is the proteins

Fat flair up for flavor

Fruit acids help proteins to disperse

Shrimp for use as melting salt
Sodium citrate allows for remelting

What can be a cheese

25 percent gum Arabic solution as moisture barrier

Pork rinds etc 13 percent water

Grind dried pork rinds

crumbs of false cracklings how many incredible uses

Methocel foam as glue try with other tapioca starch

Try with fish skin

Use dog brush to evenly poke holes in duck skin for searing

Cook duck skin at 83 c then dry and fry

Don’t forget layered duck skin in activa chapter

Deep fry or tempura smoked confit garlic: frog legs, garlic bread 
soup, etc ideas

What would powdered pickled watermelon rind be like?
Garlic poached in citrus nut milk then deep fried

Go to Source

Go to Source

Go to Source