Chef at Home

Once we have the strawberry juice, it is filtered and set with agar, then liquefied to become a gel at a liquid stage. The strawberry molds are first seasoned with grounded black pepper to recreate the natural strawberry seeds on the outside of the fruit. The molds are filled up with the liquid strawberry gel. After being tapped upside down, only a fine layer will remain on the inside of the mold. The molds are frozen to set the gel. Some molds are filled with a strawberry sorbet, made with a mixture of fresh strawberry pulp and strawberry juice. Others will be filled with an aloe vera sorbet, made out of aloe vera juice.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I glossed over the seasoning on our strip steaks. Our go to seasoning for meat has been a blend of brown sugar, cayenne and salt. However, with the rice seasoning out of the cabinet we added it to the mix. The seaweed and sesame added a deeper dimension to the meat and provided a greater understanding for why we crave surf and turf.

The local strawberry season is pretty short in Chicago and if you miss it by a week, there’s not too much left. They are not as sweet as the fruit in the warmer regions of the country, but the flavor is wonderful. To accentuate the natural flavor and gustatory emotion, we extracted all the juice from the fruit with a bit of sugar using a gastrovac. The gastrovac allows us to extract the juice at a lower temperature and keeping all the flavors intact.

 

We often finish our steaks with a healthy lathering of butter. Occasionally we branch out and use garlic butter for the flavor. Somehow in all this looking forward we have forgotten the power of flavored butter. Maitre d’hotel butter is a classic and we have done it a disservice by overlooking it. At the store yesterday I saw steaks packaged with black truffle butter. Eureka. That would be amazing on top of charred steaks. Why had I not thought of that? The bigger question is why had I forgotten about that?

We seasoned the steaks and grilled them and when it was time for them to rest we slathered them in the cold black truffle butter. As the steaks rested and the juices mixed with the butter and the heat released the aromas from the butter we were indulged in olfactory and soon to follow flavorful bliss. Now we need to look at what we can and will flavor our butters with and how to customize them to the dish and ingredients at hand: pine needle miso butter with lobster, elderflower butter on biscuits, dark beer and mustard butter on sausage cured corvina.

Watermelon Grace

Crack open the green womb
juicy red fertility
within
freckled by black seed.

Touch the velvet surface
Feel
it ooze beneath
the pressure of eager fingertips.

Smell the
faint odors
of sugar cane and pollen
of hot summer sun.

Bite the soft
fruit
hear the crunchy chatter
of teeth on flesh.

Slurp
sweet red blood
runs down mouth
fingers
neck.

Lick the
last sticky dew drops
breathe summer breeze
Remember
how sweet, how cool.

-
Shelly Butcher

We made a quick tomato salad for dinner tonight. To season the tomatoes we looked back at our affinity for nori and tomatoes. Unfortunately we were pressed to get food on the table and our pantry had the answer. We keep a variety of rice seasoning in the cupboard. This one was a blend of salt, sugar, sesame seeds and nori. It was perfect in this pinch and has now marked its place as a go to for vegetable seasoning. We ran to the weed patch and grabbed some basil blossoms and leaves to finish the salad.

In looking at the use of the rice seasoning on the tomatoes we realized that we had actually utilized it a few weeks ago to season some sauteed peas. I guess we should have written about that when we did it so that we could remember these delicious adventures.

We were able to shape our instant potato gnocchi in a more traditional manner.

Instant Potato Gnocchi

 

360 grams milk

175 grams butter

6 grams salt

1 gram garlic powder

0.75 grams nutmeg

0.75 grams black pepper

140 grams flour

110 grams toasted potato flakes ground into flour

165 grams grated cheese

324 grams/ 6 whole eggs

 

Put the liquid, butter, spices and salt in a pot. Bring to a
simmer. Add the flours and stir until the dough forms a ball and pulls away
from the edges. Put the dough into a mixer with the blade attachment and add
the cheese. Paddle the dough for five minutes to cool, then start adding the
eggs one at a time allowing each one to be incorporated into the dough. Let the
dough cool and either put into a piping bag and extrude the dough into
simmering water to poach or shape into balls while cold and then roll on a
gnocchi  board and then poach and
chill.

We often look to ingredients for inspiration. The cherry when ripe and juicy eludes creativity. If you open a refrigerator and begin eating ice cold juicy cherries, filling the side of your mouth with spent pits, then you understand the beauty of this fleeting ingredient. We have preserved cherries and pickled them, made miso, pie and ice cream and still nothing captures the essence of a cherry like a cherry. The one place for improvement is the pit. Either we need to replace the pit with something equally delicious or we need to find a more elegant way to dispose of a mouthful. We are currently working on both. The research is difficult, but someone has to do it.