Chef at Home

We have been revisiting our brown butter puree and were looking for a new way to integrate it into a dish. It dawned on us that we could serve chunks and pieces of the puree if we froze it first with liquid nitrogen and then broke it into small fragments. The small pieces of brown butter hold there shape for a while out of the freezer and add texture as well as portion the puree so that it may be preciously placed within a dish.

  


The t-shirt “Dude Where’s My Gram Scale?” has had a rebirth. The original idea for the shirt was inspired by an embarrassing conversation with our friend Wylie many years ago and our subsequent search and obsession with the gram scale. To shorten the story, we were cooking in pinches not grams, an approach which does not yield consistent results nor repeatable results. Wylie, every so eloquently, encouraged the purchase of the gram scale. From that day forward we constantly ask about the location of said scale.

With the story now told, our friends over at Stove Monkeys have printed the shirt which is now available and shipping. Don’t get caught in the awkward predicament I was in. Locate your scale and weigh your pinch.

Today Amaya led us through the amazing experience of pasta making from scratch. She insisted we make ranch pasta dough to compliment the pea and smoked beef fat filling she was insisting that I get finished. On rainy days I can tend to be lethargic. Thankfully she is a task master and since she did not have to oversee the gardening duties she could make sure I was not lazy in the kitchen. These are our results. Perhaps a finished dish and a recipe or two tomorrow, if she lets us.

As the weather warms and the landscape begins to brighten and bloom, I begin wishing for goat cheese. For me this is a very seasonal craving, for a few short weeks nothing else will do. I search for soft tender cheeses with a creamy texture that melts on my tongue. They have a distinct pungent flavor, redolent of grass and warm meadows, with a pronounced earthy middle and a lingering milky finish. A well made goat cheese in my world is balanced and beautiful, never intensely chalky or astringent. They are usually small, which is perfect for our little family and easily eaten in one sitting, which is good for the integrity of the cheese.

As usual my search began at Di Bruno’s where we were happy to discover that they had just received a shipment from Andante Dairy. Hunter was excited about the new cheeses and so were we. They were exactly what I was looking for. Andante Dairy is a one woman show. Their cheese maker Soyoung Scanlon named the dairy Andante after the moderately slow tempo with a distinct flowing movement, which is often used to indicate strolling, to illustrate her desire for a slower way of life and the proper way to make cheese. It is a romantic name for a place that produces beautiful cheeses.

We were lucky enough to pick up three different cheeses. The Minuet is a triple cream goat cheese made with the addition of creme fraiche, giving it extra tang and an incredible texture. Acapella is a small soft ripened goat cheese rubbed with ash. The rondo is a mixed milk cheese blending Jersey cow’s milk with goat’s milk to create a small round topped with herbs and pink peppercorns. It’s easy to taste the care that went into their creation.

We need to thank Mike Mike for introducing us to and sharing some of his saltwort with us. The specimen we have is not growing in a tidal zone, the customary home of saltwort, and therefore is not salty to taste. The leaves, more like needles, are crisp and juicy with a grassy almost piney but not bitter note. Our saltwort is now planted in our garden and is already growing and developing in actuality and in ideas. Even though it is normally looked at as ground cover and occasionally a weed we see many opportunities to weave it into our cooking.

We have been working with a number of ideas based on smoked coconut. It works well as a sauce, and shows great potential as a soup or foam. The foam in mind blends the smoked coconut milk with lovage. (pictured is pre-foaming) We contemplated adding nuances and realized that the aromatics of the smoke combined with the flavors of the coconut and lovage need no additional layering. Nuances are meant to be subtle and overplaying our hand never leads to a good ending.

Aki came up with this fun dessert for Amaya. The peppermint stick ice cream is cold, the chocolate sandwich warm. All kinds of fun are had: biting, dipping, scooping and laughing. Food is fun, it is important to make it that way.