Chef at Home

Fanny at Le Sanctuaire introduced me to glycerin monostearate. It is the fat emulsifier which allows us to thicken fats (like chorizo oil) and emulsify liquids (non-fats) into the oil. Following the inspiration from the team in the modernist cuisine kitchen we created an on the fly whipped chorizo cream. Looking at cream as roughly 33% fat we used that as our model. A bit (1%) of GMS incorporated into the chorizo oil enabled us to incorporate 66% liquid. Once the ingredients were brought together we poured them into an isi canister and added a few nitrous charges. The results were whipped chorizo cream. The cream was tasty, held its peaks and bubbles and tasted of chorizo. Do we need whipped chorizo cream? We are still undecided on that part. We need to do a ton of refining and editing, but these results were promising and we are equally excited to see what we may do with GMS.

Similar words, completely different process, equally delicious and wonderfully surprising.

Our recent trip to San Francisco opened a number of new doors. The first of which is texturized chorizo oil.

The ability to design a service piece is something we have always wanted to attempt and not really known how to do. During my recent trip to San Francisco I had many wonderful and enlightening conversations. One of which, with James, was about setting an ingredient in a gellan block and then cooking it. This led to our plate making endeavors. Now James’ idea was not to simply coat a piece of fish or vegetable in gellan and serve it. Rather his thought was to really encase the ingredient in a thick shell like a salt crust, cook it, and then break the hot casing tableside to serve it.

The idea stuck and my mental wheels started spinning. I really liked the idea and wanted to put it into play. Unfortunately we did not have anything worthy of cooking in gel block on hand. Instead, I leapt forward into the idea of using gellan to create a beautiful vessel on or in which to serve food. A large percentage of gellan makes a gel that is not only heat stable but can also absorb and transfer aromatics quite well. Furthermore, the use of hot liquid gellan allows us to create shapes and sizes of any kind. A bit of refinement is needed to bring this approach into practical application, but it is certainly one which will allow us to create unique serving vessels, spiked with aroma and with an incredible tactile sensation.

As for using these dense aromatic blocks as a cooking medium, that too needs to be explored further because gellan is incredibly heat stable. This technique may lend itself to some amazing variations of cooking “en vessie” or salt roasting or for recreating the ever trendy technique of cooking in hay. Imagine a piece of fish, or even sweetbreads, cast in a hay or pine needle infused block, suspended like Han Solo and then brought to the table. The aroma would permeate the sweetbreads as well as the dining room and the visual presentation would be both startling and unique.

We pack our eggs with basil for two days and then cook them in a variety of styles: hot spring, scrambled, aerated, poached, steamed and more.

Yellow Tomato Sorbet

1030 grams cleaned and cut yellow tomatoes

110 grams sugar

100 grams liquid glucose

60 grams lime juice

6.5 grams salt

13 grams low acyl gellan

Put the tomatoes into a vacuum bag and seal on high pressure. When the bag is sealed, bruise and break up the tomatoes. Cut the bag open and press the tomato mixture through a course sieve to extract 350 grams of tomato juice. Put this juice into a pot. Meanwhile put the remaining tomato into a blender with the sugar, glucose, salt and lime juice and puree until smooth. Reserve this mixture. Put the tomato juice into a pot and bring to a simmer.  Pour the hot juice into a blender and turn it on low. Increase the speed until a vortex forms. Sprinkle in the gellan and increase the speed to medium high. Blend the mixture until the gellan is dispersed and hydrated. The mixture will thicken and the blending should take 1 minute. Pour the gellan mixture quickly into a Pyrex dish to set as gellan sets quickly. Allow the mix to set at room temperature and then put in the refrigerator to chill. When the gellan-tomato mixture is cold cut it up into small pieces and put it and the pureed tomato mixture into a blender. Puree the mixture starting on medium and increasing to high until it is smooth. This process can take up to five minutes, be patient. When the mixture is puréed, strain it through a fine mess strainer. Let reset several hours then freeze in an ice cream maker.

There is a laundry list of ideas to do with these tender bites. Somehow it took a of random observing to unveil what a unique ingredient has been staring us in the face.

Juicing ginger is not a task I usually get excited about. It takes time, clogs the juicer and requires more preparation and clean up work than I am willing to do for myself. When we cook for others we go an extra mile. At home, for us, somehow we just do not.

We have been exploring the world of cocktails and juices and aroma and tastes and working on extracting the most flavor with the least amount of work. Some things just do not have to be hard. Aki was working on an orange-verbena spritzer and wanted an element of ginger. Unfortunately, she thought of muddling the ginger after the drink was made.

But there, lying on the cutting board was our citrus juicer and a knob of ginger. I put the ginger in the press and squeezed. Out came a rush of beautiful ginger juice with very little effort. I tried it again and it was effortless deliciousness. Now we are looking at combining herbs and knobs in the press so that oils and aromas blend and delivered quickly and instantly into drinks. It also lends to finishing sauces, vinaigrettes, marinades and more.