Chef at Home

Twice a week we receive Tai snapper from New Zealand. You might think that buying fish from so far away you might not get a really fresh product, but when you open the box you realize it is really pristine. Today distances do not really matter. This Tai snapper is a sustainable fish and part of the sea bream family. Tai means good fortune in Japanese and it is eaten for celebrations in Japan. The fish is killed using the Ike technique. Ike means quickly, then it rests in a brine to clean it. 

Now we use the Tai snapper in a cooked preparation. The fish is scaled and dressed, then filleted. We remove the skin from the flesh and brine it in a salted water solution to firm the flesh. During service each portion is first steamed to order for a couple of minutes at 85 degrees Celsius. Then it is butter poached at a 60 degrees Celsius until the center of the meat reaches 50 degrees Celsius for medium rare. We season the fish with Murray River salt, then plate it.

 

We use Nopales from time to time in cold preparations. I definitely like the texture and the freshness of this vegetable. It can remind you a bit of a cucumber, but with a more vigorous character and a greener flavor. The first step is to remove the thick skin by peeling it with a knife. We cut it into a small dice, season it with 1% sea salt the cactus then place it in a sealed jar in a cooler for 24 hours. This allows the salt to penetrate and sweat the natural juices from the plant. It is then rinsed under cold water and drained. The result is a deeper green color and the texture is more gelatinous and crunchy like a fresh pickle. For our last preparation, we seasoned it with pickled ginger and some of the pickling liquid, fresh diced jalapeno and parsley leaves. We finished it with a touch of grapeseed oil and deep-fried dried shrimp on top.

 

Both of these preparations combine the same ingredients: corn and heavy cream. 

The hot preparation calls for a reduction of cream, shallot and corn, which is blended and strained. Then it is poured into a spherical mold, frozen, and rolled in egg and ground panko. The spheres are deep fried to create an outer shell and while the center remains warm and liquid. 

The cold preparation calls for corn juice and heavy cream, combined and heated to a simmer. A few sheets of gelatin are melted in the hot liquid. It is cooled down and poured into an ISO cannister to be set into a cold ladle then plunged into liquid nitrogen. This creates a shell on the outside, while the center is still fluffy and soft.

Corn kernels are quickly pan fried to garnish both of the preparations. Both are just a bite to start the meal.

 

 
 

 

  

A velvet skin, melting flesh, sweet and flavorful, the apricot translates summer by its warmness. 

I remember that special time, at our country property in France, when the apricot trees were full of fruit. Climbing up the tree and eating a dozen of them was the treat of the afternoon.  In the French boulangeries, they take a square of croissant dough, spread pastry cream on top then place two apricot halves, one on each side. It is rolled and baked in the afternoon, for the kids when they finish school. I have to admit I ate those more than a few times. 

I also like apricot jam where the fruit is present and the scent of vanilla compliments the flavor. Apricot sorbet is always creamy and doesn’t get icy because of the amount of natural pectin in the fruit. This year apricots from California are very good. I’ve enjoyed them after service just as they are.

We tried to make sesame paste out of sesame seeds, but there was always a bitter finish that bothered me. So we sourced sesame paste, black and white, directly from Japan. We use in recipes from time to time. The latest recipe is the combination of both in a macaroon. The shell use white sesame flour and white sesame paste with, of course, the basic ingredients (almond flour, egg white and icing sugar), while the filling is a bitter sweet ganache with the addition of black sesame paste and Murray salt. Nathan spent some time making both recipes work and the result is a very intense sesame flavor enhanced by the salt. I almost forgot to mention that he sprinkles a dust of black sesame flour on the shell . That was the ultimate touch that we always like.

 

 

Green papaya salad combines the freshness of the various ingredients used, but the real flavor for me is the dressing. I’ve visited Thailand on several occasions and each time I always went to the market to taste the dressing, made of course with a homemade fish sauce. Fish sauce is usually made with anchovies, salt and water that is fermented giving it a very unique strong salty, fishy flavor. It is a recipe of southeast Asia. In my hometown Antibes, we make a pissalat sauce with fresh anchovies, using the same technique. The pissalat is used to flavor the cooked onions of the pissaladiere (a kind of a foccacia covered with onions and black olives). 

But going back to the dressing for the green papaya salad, it combines palm sugar, garlic, fish sauce, Thai chili, lime juice and water. In Thailand the dressing is extremely spicy and you have to make sure you have a couple of cold local beers in hand to help. But the ingredients of the salad usually cool down the heat . We currently use shredded green papaya, jicama, star fruit, radish, pickled red onions, fried shallot, lotus root chips, kulantro and Thai basil.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The final dish combines fresh strawberries, marinated in the strawberry juice  to enhance the natural flavors, frozen strawberries filled with aloe vera or strawberry sorbet, preserved aloe vera diced into cubes, a black sesame seeds croquant and few drops of black sesame paste. The strawberry juice is poured table side over the fruit. A white sesame bun is served on the side.  

   

 

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.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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.