I'll be the guest chef at Mission Street Food on Saturday, February 13, and I'd love to see you all there, you anonymous readers, you. I don't know yet what dishes Anthony will come up with for that night, but I'll have four delicious dishes on the menu this time, which are tentatively as follows:

• dashi-poached scallops, 50 degrees celsius, with grapefruit, silken tofu, arugula, and black sesame crisps, $11

• crispy-skinned chicken confit, with fried fingerling potatoes, kumquat-balsamic gastrique, chicken liver mousse, slow-cooked kumquats, sichuan peppercorn, and frisee, $12

• 36-hour beef short rib, medium-rare, with carrots two ways, pearl onion confit, black bread croutons, house-processed parmeggiano, and onion jus, $14

• house-made burnt caramel ice cream, with fresh blood orange, almond cake, powdered orange oil, chervil, and blood orange pate de fruit, $7

If those sound delicious, mark your calendars. If they don't sound delicious, please let me know so that I can rewrite the descriptions until they sound delicious. The full menu will be posted a couple days before at the Mission Street Food blog, at which time reservations will be available by emailing msfreservations@gmail.com with your name, time, and party size. We open for dinner at 6pm, and Mission Street Food is run out of Lung Shan Chinese Restaurant, at 2234 Mission St. in San Francisco. See you there!

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/02/05 @ 9:32 | Comments (1) | Lazy Bear, Restaurants

The idea from this course came from my favorite way to eat baked potatoes as a kid. We had baked potatoes whenever my Dad grilled steaks, and when he grilled steaks, he always glazed them with barbecue sauce as they cooked. When they were finished, he'd put all the steaks on a big plate to hold until we sat down to eat them. In the couple minutes it took us to wash up and gather at the table, the steaks would (it turns out) rest, which helped them stay juicy, but as they rested some of their juices would collect in the pan and commingle with the grilled barbecue sauce glaze. After we all took our steaks, my father would split open his baked potato, add butter, and then pour all those accumulated beef and barbecue juices all over the baked potato. It was delicious, and I started doing it, too.

This dish started out as a way to play on that taste memory. Instead of baked potatoes I used sunchokes and, since this was for a vegetarian dinner I couldn't use any beef juices. I tweaked this in a number of ways, but the end result indeed a good tribute to the baked potatoes of my youth.

The sunchokes were peeled, with all their knobby parts removed in the process, and held in cold water until used (to reduce oxidation). All the sunchokes were then vacuum-sealed in bags with salted whey (the byproduct of making the ricotta for the next dish at the dinner). They were cooked sous vide at 85C for 50 minutes, then chilled, drained and dried on paper towels just before serving, then sauteed and basted in lots of butter.

I also made sunchoke chips by slicing the sunchokes thinly on a mandoline then deep-frying at about 325F until fully golden and dried. Don't worry about peeling them before slicing if you're just making chips. Drain them on paper towels, then put them in an airtight container with desiccant packs. They'll keep for a week or so.

Along with the sunchokes I served a buttermilk gel (recipe below--a bit of a feat to use gellan for something with so much calcium), a barbecue gel (barbecue sauce and water in an equal proportion, so that the BBQ flavor wouldn't be completely overpowering but it would maintain the look of barbecue sauce, gelled with .7% gellan F then pureed and pushed through a chinois), a barbecue streusel, and buttermilk powder (olive oil, tapioca maltodextrin, salt, and powdered buttermilk).

The celery is not just a garnish. It really ties the whole plate together with the fresh, crisp texture and strong flavor.

Buttermilk Gel
190g water
310g buttermilk
1g sodium citrate
.5g sodium hexametaphosphate
3.5g gellan "F"

Calcium interferes pretty badly with gellan gum, so this recipe sequesters the calcium using two sequestrants: sodium citrate and sodium hexametaphosphate. Shear the sequestrants into the buttermilk. Shear the gellan into the water. Then shear the water and buttermilk together. Heat the mixture to at least 200F in a saucepan, stirring constantly once bubbles appear around the outside of the pan. Immediately pour the hot mixture into a shallow dish and refrigerate until fully gelled, which won't take more than twenty minutes or so, and will start happening immediately. Once fully gelled, cut the gel into inch cubes and puree them in a blender, doing whatever is necessary to get them to spin (this works best if you are making a larger quantity, such as twice the quantity listed here), such as picking up the blender and shaking it vigorously while it's on. Once it's fully pureed, push the resulting fluid gel through a chinois or tamis and refrigerate for up to two weeks.

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/02/02 @ 5:17 | Comments (4) | Food Additives, Lazy Bear, Sauces, Condiments, Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese

A bunch of people have asked me about the slate plate I used for my MasterChef audition dish, as seen in this post, wondering where they could get them, etc. Well, you can't get them anywhere, because I made them. Yeah, I made the dish.

That's not to say there aren't options around for slate dishes. Crate and Barrel, for instance, sells some for as much as $25. For a long time I was really liking the idea of presenting on slate plates, but didn't want to spend what they cost from Crate and Barrel. I also felt that the Crate and Barrel ones were a bit too squared, rather than natural-looking.

Increasingly I find that the places to go for innovative service pieces, and to buy unusual equipment are not kitchenware stores, not Crate and Barrel or Bed Bath and Beyond, not even restaurant supply stores. And they definitely are not a Front Of The House catalog. The places to go for interesting equipment and service pieces are Home Depot, hardware stores, lumber yards, Michael's art supply stores, TAP Plastics, science supply stores, library supply stores, etc. Those are the places where you're going to be inspired.

So, as is my wont, I went to the Home Depot and found a relatively large selection of slate tiles. I bought the tiles (about $1.60 each) and some tile sealer/enhancer (to make the porous slate waterproof and food-safe), and went home and got to work. I tried using a manual tile cutter, but it was extremely difficult and I didn't want such square edges anyway. Rather than renting an electric tile saw, I decided to just go at the tiles with a hammer. I figured out a way to get somewhat straight lines when cracking tiles by clamping boards along the break point. Then I whack all the edges carefully with the hammer in order to rough them up and get unexpected and natural looking lines. Finally, I seal the tiles with several coats of sealer/enhancer. Give them a nice wash and they're ready to go! I yield about one dish per tile, because the desired dish size is about half the size of the tiles (so, 12" x 6"), but I get a lot of breakage. That makes the total cost of these dishes around $2 each.

Now that I have the process down, and bought the necessary sealer and enhancer (which comes in a large enough quantity to make hundreds of these), I could make tons of them pretty easily. Anyone want to buy some?

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/01/27 @ 23:15 | Comments (6) | Food Politics and Culture

I rarely repeat dishes, but this was a reprise of a dish from a previous dinner. The first time was with "deep-fried chicken stock", but this time I used brown butter solids. Brown butter solids definitely have a different flavor profile from the chicken stock solids, which are almost coffee-like in the level of brown-ness. In fact, if I make this again and it has to be vegetarian again, maybe I'll add some coffee component.

Otherwise, the dish is just roasted cauliflower, a puree of roasted cauliflower with vadouvan spices (pressure-cooked together briefly in order to soften them adequately to make the smoothest puree), and a bit of cilantro. My vadouvan is loosely based on this formula, but I add a bit more sweetness and cut out the heat. Tasty and simple.

This is probably the simplest dish I've done for Lazy Bear.

Simplified Vadouvan

This version of Vadouvan doesn't have any chilis in it, hence it is not "spicy" in the normal terminology. If you want it spicy, throw in a bit of dried chili). It also isn't fermented, as many high-quality vadouvans are.

900g minced onions
450g minced shallots
80g minced garlic
55g vegetable oil
15g salt
5g fenugreek seeds
5g cumin seeds
2g cardamom pods
4g brown mustard seeds
2.5g turmeric
1g nutmeg
.7g cloves

Slowly saute the onion and shallots in a pot with the oil until golden and a bit browned, adding the garlic for the last ten minutes or so. It should take about half an hour total.

Toast spices, then grind them finely and add to allium mixture, along with the salt. Transfer the whole mixture to a parchment lined sheet pan and spread thinly and evenly. Bake in a medium oven (350F or so), stirring occasionally to seperate the ingredients (or else they'll clump too much and dry that way), until well browned and barely moist. It'll take around an hour.

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/01/25 @ 22:27 | Comments (0) | Lazy Bear, Sauces, Condiments, Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese

So, this is all pretty funny and slightly embarrassing.

Today I went to a casting call for a new Gordon Ramsay show, MasterChef. They're supposedly looking for the best amateur chefs around, and I still qualify. After a ton of people sent me links to the casting calls. All the applicants had to fill out a very long application in advance, and had to bring a dish to be plated at the audition, at room temperature. I hated the idea of serving something cold that is supposed to be hot, even if they will take that into account for the judging. I decided to do a chilled scallop dish.

I ended up getting the maximum possible score in the judging, and was supposedly the only person to get that score in San Francisco. I'm through to interviews on Tuesday, and I have to bring a bunch of pictures of me in the kitchen and with finished dishes. So, when I got home and had lots of mise en place left, I decided to plate the dish again to get some photos. We also took some photos of me plating. Ha!

This is a scallop poached sous vide in olive oil for half an hour at 50C, then chilled. Served below room temperature. While in line and waiting to be seen, I held them in a container on ice.

I served it with, basically, a beet and citrus salad. There are little cubes of roasted beet, little cubes of raw daikon, a bit of thyme, and little cubes of Meyer lemon gel set with gellan. I don't know the percentage because--get this--my scale broke a couple days ago when I dropped it, so I had to just eye it with the gellan! I couldn't measure. Based on the firmness with which it set up, I'm guessing it was about .6-.7% gellan. Perfect. I was actually really lucky with that, and proud that I'm experienced enough with gellan to just guess like that.

I sauced it with a kumquat puree. To make that, I slice kumquats in half and fish out all the seeds, then throw the entire kumquat halves into the blender. I add a bit of lemon juice, orange juice, and water (just enough liquid with a fairly neutral citrusy flavor to get everything to spin fully in a blender). Let it blend for at least a few minutes, then adjust the salt, sugar, and acid. Finally, push it through a chinois with a ladle.

Last, I garnished with some nasturtium leaves, good olive oil, and Maldon.

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/01/25 @ 2:12 | Comments (4) | Food Politics and Culture, Life, Sauces, Condiments, Seafood, Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese

The deadline for this month's edition of Does My Blog Look Good In This is tomorrow, 01/24. We have 27 entries so far, which can be viewed in this gallery.

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/01/23 @ 13:46 | Comments (0) |

We don't always think about the role that drama plays in our enjoyment of food, but it's an important thing to consider. Whether it's presenting a whole roasted turkey at Thanksgiving that is carved at the table, the armor of bruleed sugar that encloses the delicate creme underneath, the smells wafting through a dining room as a particular course gets brought to another table, the traditional cloche covering up the dish as it is set before us and then revealed, we like our food to play coy with us. When that whole turkey comes out at Thanksgiving, or that whole chicken on Tuesday night, it's playing hard to get. We don't get to dig in immediately. We have to stare at it as our anticipation builds. Basically, we like food that keeps its secrets until the last possible moment, food that leaves something to the imagination, food that doesn't put out on the first date.

Sometimes we work hard to construct the drama, and sometimes--rarely--nature does it for us. This soup course comes with a bit of drama in several forms, some of which we created, and some of it was nature. The first kind of drama is built with the menu, which is definitely an avenue of drama that most chefs overlook. They use menus only to entice diners to order, rather than using menus to manipulate diners' expectations in a way that will keep them engaged once the course arrives.

In this case, the title of the dish is "Two Cabbages," but when the course arrives, there is nothing that the guest recognizes as cabbage. Not all the guests will even recognize the green hash as brussels sprouts, and of those, few will realize that brussels sprouts are a cabbage. Second, the dense white foam on the plate, studded with nigella seeds, does not look like anything recognizable, and also does not seem to represent anything that was on the menu.

Third, a short time after the bowl is set down (giving them a few seconds to be puzzled), they get a graduated cylinder of a blue-ish purple liquid. At that point, the course is described somewhat: "In the bowl is a brussels sprout hash with marcona almonds, and whipped Meyer lemon juice studded with nigella seeds. In the graduated cylinder is a red cabbage soup. Pour the soup into the bowl around the foam, then pay attention as you stir the foam into the soup." Any time the diner gets to do something to "finish" the construction of the dish, it gets them very engaged. People love that.

Fourth, what a dramatic description. "Pay attention?" "What will happen?" We don't answer the questions. Then people stir in the foam, and as they do the soup almost instantly turns from blue-ish purple to hot pink. It goes from liquid to silky and airy. Drama.

Oh, and also, it tastes good.

The color change happens because the pigment in red cabbage is a pH indicator, meaning that its color changes as the pH changes. The soup starts out blue-ish purple based on the pH of the water with which it is pureed. When the Meyer lemon foam gets stirred in, the pH lower dramatically from the lemon juice, and the color turns hot pink. The funny thing is that I initially conceived this course without realizing that the color change would happen. It was serendipitous.

When I first conceived the dish, I began testing red cabbage soups. I was very concerned with ensuring that the beautiful pink of red cabbage would be preserved in the pureed soup. I wasn't sure whether I'd need to cook the cabbage briefly, or blanch and shock, or blanch with acidified water, etc. The first method I tested was to simply boil the red cabbage and then puree. It turned a fairly ugly shade of blue-ish purple. But I noticed that when I poured it into the sink and ran the water it seemed to turn even more blue. That set my experimentation and research into motion. I figured out that if I wanted the bright pink color, I needed to acidify the soup. But then I realized that I could make that color change happen in front of the diner. Awesome. Everyone loved this dish, both nights.

Brussels Sprouts Hash

To shred brussels sprouts, cut sprouts in half from pole to pole, then lay the two halves next to each other so that you can cut both at once, and cut into 1/8" thick slices, stopping before you include the stem. Repeat until you have enough shredded brussels sprouts. Get a saute pan very hot, then add a film of olive oil. Once smoking, add the sprouts all at once and then season with salt. Toss occasionally. Cook for 3-4 minutes on high heat, adding almonds during the last minute.

Whipped Meyer lemon

100g Meyer lemon juice
50g water
3g Versawhip
1.5g xanthan gum
salt and sugar to taste

Combine all ingredients with immersion blender, then transfer to stand mixer and whip on medium-high until maximum foaminess is achieved. You can't over-whip Versawhip whips, so don't be too concerned.

Red Cabbage Soup

Make a vegetable stock with plenty of onion and spices, but no acidic ingredients like tomato. Chop cabbage into manage pieces, and simmer the pieces for ten minutes or so in salted water. Drain the cabbage and transfer to blender. Blend, adding plenty of veggie stock to get the puree to blend smoothly in a proper vortex. Salt the soup, and adjust the consistency by adding extra vegetable stock if necessary. Strain through a chinois. The soup will keep, refrigerated, for a week or so, and its color won't suffer from reheating.

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/01/21 @ 23:06 | Comments (3) | Lazy Bear, Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese

I actually designed this dish for salsify, rather than burdock. When the farmer with the salsify ended up running out despite promising that she wouldn't for several more weeks, I tried burdock instead. Burdock and salsify are nearly identical in terms of their texture and the process one uses to cook them. However, their flavors differ a bit. Salsify has a buttery, artichokey, oyster-like flavor, whereas burdock's flavor is sharper and more pungent, but lacks any of that briny, oyster kind of flavor. Still, after trying the burdock, I decided that it would stand in well in this dish. And after some tweaking, it did.

This dish was the one that I changed significantly from Friday night to Saturday night. On Friday, it looked like it does in the picture to the right: 4 dollops of chestnut puree, each topped with a piece of butter-fried burdock, each piece of which was topped with a bit of apple, and one dollop of stinging nettle pudding which was topped with a roasted chestnut.

Friday's guests, for the most part, didn't like it. It was most people's least favorite dish. They liked the flavor pairing, and they loved the nettle. No one mentioned it, but I don't think the chestnut puree was hot enough when we sent it out; it just took too damn long to plate these. Lukewarm chestnut puree is not good. So, not being one to repeat my mistakes, I changed it around for Saturday night. In addition, at that point, Jeanette and I decided that even if we are doing this underground restaurant thing out of our home, and only have a single oven, we really can't get away with not warming our plates. Every course from then out (and forever and ever) had dishes warmed before plating.

On Saturday night (on extremely hot plates), I put a big ring of a bunch of nettle pudding, on top of which we plated about twice as much burdock as the dish had Friday night, and a roasted chestnut. Then in the center of the ring went a spoonful of piping hot chestnut puree, and top of that went a small salad of julienned granny smith tossed with a bit of white wine vinaigrette. It was much, much quicker to plate, and then I spooned hot brown butter over the burdock just before serving.

On Saturday night, everyone loved it, and it was many people's favorite dish. All the same flavors, just adjusting the proportions a bit and keeping things warmer made such a huge difference. The funny thing is, there were other dishes that didn't change at all between Friday and Saturday but that people loved on Friday and weren't as wild about on Saturday, and vice versa. That's food.

Stinging Nettle Pudding

Before dealing with the nettles, make a small quantity of vegetable stock, adding a healthy amount of caraway seeds, which I find brings out the flavor of nettles. Then move on to the nettles, always being careful not to touch the nettles with your bare skin. Don't worry about pulling the leaves off the branches (it'll be vastly easier to do so after blanching). Just throw the whole things into a big pot of vigorously boiling salted water for about 30 seconds. Immediately fish them out and plunge them into ice water for a minute or two to preserve the vivid green color. Then remove the biggest of the stalks, the more stalks you remove, the better. Add all the nettles to a blender and blend, adding only as much vegetable stock as is absolutely necessary to get them to blend in a proper vortex. Blend for at least a few minutes to get the puree as smooth as possible. Then taste the puree, adding salt and, if necessary, an acid (I may have used a bit of white wine vinegar or lemon juice or something--I don't remember). Strain the puree through a chinois, discarding whatever is left in the mesh. Then taste the puree for its texture and mouthfeel. I wanted a pudding-like texture for a more luscious mouthfeel. Also, you don't want the puree leaking water as it sits on a plate. So, I adjusted by blending in a bit of Ultratex-3 and xanthan gum, giving it a more pudding-like texture and controlling the water. Each of those additives, on their own, yields a particular gummy texture if you add too much, so be judicious. Using both helps keep those gummy textures at bay since there isn't enough of either to make it gummy. Nettles' deep green color is quite resilient and will last for at least a week if refrigerated. However, after a week or so you'll want to make sure to test the consistency, as the hydrocolloids will tend to exhibit some syneresis (leaking of water), so you may need to add bit more xanthan and Ultratex to keep the pudding looking tight on the plate and feeling luscious and not watery in the mouth.

Chestnut Pudding

Soak dried chestnuts overnight in water. Strain the chestnuts and add them to the blender. Blend, adding just enough of the soaking water to get them to puree smoothly with a proper vortex in the blender. Blend for several minutes to get the smoothest puree. Adjust the salt, and adjust the sweetness of the puree with agave nectar (though it won't take much), remembering that it's going to be set against sweet and tart apples. Push the puree through a chinois by pumping with a lade, or through a tamis.

Roasted Chestnuts

Soak fresh chestnuts in water for half an hour. This softens the shell, allowing you to cut it. Score the flat side of the shell in an "X" with a sharp paring knife. Then roast in a medium oven (325F-ish) until the shells have fully split at the X and the chestnut meat inside if getting toasty and somewhat softer (20-40 minutes). Remove the chestnuts from the oven and, wearing work gloves to protect your hands, begin peeling the nuts at the X while they're still hot. Be careful--they're easy to break. You'll find that many of them will be bad inside, with the meat dark and shriveled or else chalky and breaking apart when peeled. The peeling needs to be done while they're still hot or else the shell will harden too much and you'll be very likely to break the nuts while getting them out of the shells. If they start to cool too much, you can return them to oven briefly to warm them up again. Once you have the nuts peeled, you can either use the nuts immediately, store them at room temperature for up to two days, or else refrigerate in an airtight container for a couple weeks. When you're ready to use them, simply warm them in an oven.

Sauteed Burdock

In this case, I used extremely thick burdock roots. Your process may differ if you use the thin ones I often see in Asian groceries: the small ones may require much less time to soften while blanching, and it would make sense to cut them into elongated cylinders rather than coin shapes. For the larger ones, here's what I do. Peel the very thin skin of the burdock root, wasting as little as possible, and keeping the root as round as possible. Hold the peeled roots in water while you peel the rest of them, as they oxidize quickly. They'll gradually turn light purplish-gray after cooking anyway, but you don't want them to be brown before cooking. Throw all the roots into boiling water, and simmering for 15-40 minutes. If the pieces are different sizes, they'll all finish at different times, and you'll have to test each piece individually for doneness. They are finished when they become softened somewhat and the outside is no longer as springy. It's tough to explain, but you'll know it when you see it, kind of like hard-core pornography. Let them cool completely. As they cool, they'll turn grayish. Cover them and refrigerate until you're ready to use. At this point, you can treat them pretty much the way you'd treat potatoes. In this case, I sliced them into half-inch thick rounds and sauteed them in lots of butter on medium-high heat, basting them with the butter. Salt them very well, as they are quite starchy like potatoes and need a lot of salt. After sauteing, you can hold them for a few minutes in a warm oven, but they dry out fairly quickly.

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/01/20 @ 20:24 | Comments (0) | Lazy Bear, Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese

This dish is a pastiche of the garden dishes of many chefs, all of whom pay homage to the original: the "Gargouillou" of Michel Bras. This New York Times article, though brief, describes the phenomenon.

The idea is to showcase what's fresh at the moment. In my case, it's what's available from the farms in the vicinity of San Francisco, many of the best of which bring their produce to the Ferry Building Farmer's Market. I've started to develop a relationship with many of the farmers, and I follow their selection of vegetables quite closely. They, in turn, point me to special produce that I might otherwise miss, or let me know when certain things are particularly fantastic, or sometimes even slip me a bag of something that isn't set out for the normal customers--and of course, they often give me wholesale prices and other deals.

The dish turns out a bit differently every time--even from Friday (on the left) to Saturday (on the right). Each night, the dish included around twenty components. The base, in this case, was a buttery, warm cauliflower puree. There was also a bit of beet puree, and a bit of carrot puree. Those would change depending on the season, the week, the availability of certain produce, etc. Then several vegetables are plated, including some raw and some cooked--various carrots, various beets, various radishes, romanesco, nameko mushrooms, etc. Then a bunch of leafy things get plated--spigariello (leaf broccoli), Japanese kale, tat soi, several chicories, red Nagoya kale, red Russian kale, orach. Finally, some herbs and flowers are plated, for their flavor and visual impact--chervil, mustard flowers. The idea is that the guest will dress the greens with the purees, and combine all the flavors in whatever ways he chooses. It's a very active dish for the diner, in that the diner must assemble his own bites from a large variety of flavors and textures, only a few of which can be in a particular bite. In that way, it commands the attention of the guest.

Yet the cooking is all quite simple. Nothing fancy at all, though preserving the natural colors does take some care in certain cases. The skill is all in the shopping and the arrangement. And the plating, with so many components, takes forever. I served this dish to a party of sixteen at a private party last Wednesday, and then to groups of 9 and 10 on Friday and Saturday. Plating 16 of these at once, or even 9 or 10, can take quite a while for one person--at least ten minutes! And that's after all the components have been individually prepped and assembled, greens washed, large greens torn or cut artfully, radishes sliced, beets and carrots cooked and in some cases peeled, in all cases selecting only the most handsome specimens. Suffice to say, it is a complex dish. Nevertheless, it is one of the most beautiful things I've ever plated, in my opinion. All the work is there for the guest to see, and the visual impact when these are brought out is pretty awesome. And the impact continues as the guest discovers other components lurking beneath the canopy.

In the future, I may tweak the purees, and I also might start dressing more of the greens. I found, when eating it, that some bites lacked acidity, particularly when you fail to get any of the purees along with your greens. I wanted to dress it with a citrusy froth, but I felt that if I did, my dish would too closely resemble David Kinch's at Manresa. So I held back on that. We'll see about the future versions.

Chicory Soil

Combine 3 parts vegan chicory soil (recipe below) with 1 part brown butter solids.

Vegan Chicory Soil
30g ground, dehydrated, roasted chicory root
60g sugar
60g flour
40g olive oil
5g salt

Mix all ingredients in a mixer, then roll out between two sheets of parchment paper. Bake at 300F for about 10 minutes, then remove the top piece of parchment and bake for another 5 minutes. Take it out and let cool, then break up the "cake" into a loose soil consistency. Return it to the oven for another several minutes until it gets more dry, and fairly toasty.

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/01/19 @ 0:15 | Comments (1) | Lazy Bear, Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese

These were tasty, salty snacks to start off the meal. They are puffs made of carrot, leek, and beet, in the style of pork chicharrones, but vegetarian!

Though they're actually pretty delicious on their own, straight out of a bag, we plated them up with some cheeses and veg purees, for a little more visual impact, to keep them from sliding around on the serving plate, and to boost the flavors a bit. Each type of puff has a dollop of a puree of its vegetable and a dollop of a different cheese. The carrot has whipped cream cheese, the beet has whipped chevre, and the leek has processed Parmeggiano-Reggiano (recipe follows). I figured out how to make processed parmesan by reading cheese-processing patents. Who says my law degree isn't applicable to cooking?

These puffs are quite time-consuming to make--they take even longer than pork chicharrones, and are only half as delicious (which is still pretty delicious). It's also mostly active time, as opposed to just waiting for something to cook, or waiting for it to dehydrate. I've done carrot, leek, green garlic, beet, ketchup, and mackerel. On the bright side, when you make them, it's easy to make a HUGE batch. However, after this most recent time making three different batches, each of which was for three separate events (a catering gig and two nights of Lazy Bear), I've said repeatedly that I am never making these again unless someone specifically requests them. I don't know whether I'll keep that vow, but I'm pretty confident that I will never again try to make and serve three different kinds at once. At least not until I've got stages to do the work for me.

Puffs
1 part intensely flavored loose puree or liquid (preferably fat free)
1 part tapioca starch

Make a puree of a vegetable through ordinary means. It should be a fairly loose puree, with plenty of liquid for it to spin well in the blender. Pass the puree through a chinois and then measure out enough puree for the batch you want to make. I typically do a batch of 250g puree, which ends up making 60-120 finished pieces, depending on how large you make them. So, it goes a long way.

Combine the puree with an equal amount by weight of tapioca starch, stirring and then kneading a bit to get them evenly combined into a dough that vaguely resembles pasta dough. If your puree was particularly dry, you may want to add only 75% of the amount of tapioca starch. If it was particularly liquidy, you may need to add more tapioca starch to get it to resemble a pasta dough.

Roll out pieces of the dough between two sheets of plastic wrap, about 50g of dough at a time. Get it as thin as possible (a couple millimeters). Leave the sheets of dough between the plastic. Steam the sheets (I now steam them individually, but if you have a larger steamer, do as many as you want) until the tapioca has fully hydrated and the sheets have cooked entirely through. I've sometimes done this as short as 4 minutes, but it's safer practice to steam them for 10 minutes. Unwrap the sticky sheets from the plastic. The steamed sheets will now be easy to work with. Cut the sheets into strips no more than half an inch thick (though you can go as thin as you want). Put all the strips onto parchment paper on a sheet pan or onto a dehydrator tray. Dehydrate, or if using the oven, bake at 200F for several hours, turning strips if necessary for drying. When they are dry, they will feel like hard plastic. At this point they can be stored in an airtight container indefinitely.

Fry the strips at 375F until fully puffed, continuously agitating to make sure all parts of the strips get puffed. I usually do batches of around 10 dehydrated strips, but you may be able to do more depending on the size of your strips. Drain the puffs on a rack, salting while they're still oily. They'll keep for quite a while in an airtight container with desiccant packs. Otherwise, serve within a couple hours.

Processed Parmeggiano-Reggiano
120g grated Parmeggiano-Reggiano
120g water
6.5g sodium citrate (2.7%)
.4g citric acid
60g extra virgin olive oil

Dissolve the sodium citrate and citric acid into the water and bring to a boil. Add the grated cheese and whisk until smooth and re-emulsified. You'll be shocked at how easily that will happen. The sodium citrate binds the calcium and ensures a smooth emulsion even when adding tons of water and oil. The citric acid compensates for the flavor dulling of the sodium citrate, adding back some nice tartness to the cheese, but if you add too much citric acid, you'll lower the pH too much and the emulsion will break. If that happens, add more sodium citrate and it will re-emulsify. Finally, add extra virgin olive oil, occasionally testing whether you've added enough by taking a small quantity of the now-processed cheese and spooning it onto a plate or something then letting it cool. You'll know you've added enough olive oil when the cooled tester dollops stay more liquid. I am guessing at the 60g figure.

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/01/18 @ 4:09 | Comments (0) | Food Additives, Lazy Bear, Science, Technology, Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese

I just realized that I am supposed to be hosting this month's edition of the long-running monthly food photo contest "Does My Blog Look Good In This" (DMBLGIT). Having volunteered months ago, I had no recollection of said contest until I received an entry! For those not in the know, DMBLGIT was started by Andrew Barrow, and you can get more info about it on his site.

Last month's contest was hosted by hosted by Arfi Binsted of HomeMadeS. Here's last month's winner:

I still need several other judges for the panel, so please let me know if you are interested. "david" at this url. And if you're interested in hosting a subsequent month's contest, let Andrew know. He is always looking for more hosts.

The Rules for Participation:

1. Send a photo that has appeared on your blog during December 2009. The photo should be food and/or drink related. No diptychs allowed.
   
2. Your photo must be text-free.
   
3. Only one entry per person.
   
4. The photograph must have been taken by you.
   
5. Deadline for submissions : January 24, 2010.

Send your entry to david AT this blog's url (eatfoo.com) with DMBLGIT in the subject line with the following details:

• Your name.
  
• Your location.
  
• Your blog's name and URL.
  
• The photograph that you wish to enter, of no more than 500 pixels wide.
  
• Your photograph's title.
  
• URL of the post containing the photograph.

Every photo entry will be compiled on this DMBLGIT January 2010 photo album. I will try to send everyone an email when I have uploaded your photo to the gallery, so that you know that I received and accepted your entry.

The judges will review your entries on the basis of:

• Aesthetics: composition, food styling, lighting, focus, etc.
  
• Edibility: "Does the photo make us want to dive in and eat the food?"
  
• Originality: the photograph that catches our attention and makes us want to say wow!, displaying something we might not have seen before.

From these categories, the judges will come up with several winners: one overall winner with the top combined score in the three categories, and three additional winners for the photographs with the highest point totals in each of the three individual categories.

By submitting a photo, you agree to your picture being redisplayed and altered in size on my site, in an online Picasa album of all of the contest entries, and on the DMBLGIT page.

Good luck!

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/01/12 @ 3:52 | Comments (4) |

This was a fantastic dessert that I'm quite proud of. The flavor combination is unexpected but works perfectly, I perfected a new technique, and it's an especially great pairing with stouts and porters (which I love).

There are cylinders of sugar pumpkin pudding, frozen chocolate mousse "pumice," chicory ice cream, and powdered coffee-infused pumpkinseed oil

Sugar Pumpkin Pudding Cylinders
600g sugar pumpkin puree
2.4g low-acyl gellan "F" (.4%)
2.4g Iota carrageenan (.4%)

Gellan gels set very firmly, which allows you to set this pudding in a cylinder or other shape and have it retain the shape when it's unmolded. But you don't want a firm, brittle gel for texture--not very pudding-like. Iota carrageenan, on the other hand, doesn't set firmly at all. The iota keeps it pudding-like while still adding a bit of holding power to the gel. This particular combo and ratio works perfectly and gave me exactly the texture I was looking for. It's much, much softer than it looks. It stays together completely, but slices with a fork and no pressure, and turns almost liquid under the shear distortion of the mouth.

For the sugar pumpkin puree: roast a whole sugar pumpkin at 350F until its flesh yields to the touch. While still hot, peel the skin off with your fingers. It should come right off. Remove the seeds and center of the pumpkin, but you don't need to be too careful about it. Then pass the entire flesh of the pumpkin through a tamis.

Shear the additives into the puree with a blender or immersion blender, then heat the puree up to at least 95C (203F), stirring constantly toward the end. Immediately pour the puree directly into a disposable pastry bag (it must be a new one with the tip uncut, or else the hot and liquid puree will immediately start pouring out). Working VERY quickly, hold the pastry bag over cylinder molds (i.e. cannoli molds lined with acetate, oil having been wiped onto and then off of each piece of acetate), cut the tip of the pastry bag, and pipe quickly into all of the molds, not worrying about a bit of spillage. Let set for at least an hour or so before pulling the acetate and pumpkin out of the molds, unwrapping the acetate, trimming, and serving.

Frozen Chocolate Mousse "Pumice", adapted loosely from Rick Billings
30g sugar
20g cocoa
17.5g dry milk powder
1.5g salt
9g gelatin
200g cold cream
200g water
125g bittersweet chocolate (I used 62%)

Mix the sugar, cocoa, milk powder, and salt and then combine them with the cream and water in a pot. Bring to a boil, whisking occasionally and scraping the sides and bottom of the pot. Strain the hot cream over the chocolate and stir until the mixture emulsifies. Let it cool to around 115°F, then pour it into a cream whipper and charge with three nitrous oxide charges. Line a quarter sheet pan with plastic wrap, then dispense the mixture from the whipper in an even layer and immediately put the pan in the freezer. Leave it without touching it overnight. Finally, take it out and break the mousse up quickly into roughly hewn chunks with a mallet and other random implements and return them to the freezer until you're ready to use. They look like pumice, or aerated chocolate, but they eat like ice cream.

Chicory Ice Cream, adapted from various Michael Laiskonis recipes
750g milk
45g nonfat dry milk powder
112.5g sugar
22.5g glucose
30g trimoline
20g chicory
37.5g sugar
6g stabilizer
150g yolks
112.5g cream

Whisk dry milk, first measurement of sugar, glucose, trimoline, and chicory into the milk in a saucepan. Bring to a boil. Cover and allow to infuse 30 minutes. Strain through a chinois. Meanwhile, combine sugar and stabilizer and whisk into egg yolks. Temper the hot milk into the yolk mixture, then return to heat, stirring until slightly thickened, 84ºC (183ºF). Once it reaches that temperature, remove from the heat and whisk in the heavy cream. Chill and allow the mixture to mature for at least 12 hours before freezing in an ice cream maker.

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/01/10 @ 21:29 | Comments (2) | Desserts, Lazy Bear, Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese

This was just a palate-cleanser before dessert. I wanted to bring in some tartness to accomplish that purpose, some sweetness to lead into dessert, and some cheese to serve the usual cheese course role as well. These are bruleed partially-dehydrated Meyer lemon segments with cubes of Fiore Sardo pecorino cheese, and microplaned Marcona almond.

I segmented some Meyer lemons and laid the segments out on a Silpat on a baking sheet. Then I partially dehydrated them at around 170F for several hours. You want to get them so that the outside is dried out, but the inside is still plump and juicy. Peel them off the sheet carefully and put them in a sealed container. At that point, they'll keep for several days. When you're ready to use them, lay them out on something heatproof, sprinkle them with sugar, then brulee with a torch.

Speaking of torches, don't ever buy a creme brulee torch. They are expensive, lack power and control, have a low capacity, and are tough to refill. Instead, go to Home Depot and get a real torch.

Fiore Sardo is delicious, and so are Marcona almonds, which add fatty richness.

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/01/10 @ 19:20 | Comments (1) | Lazy Bear, Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese

This was great, but I've since perfected the technique on the short ribs. On a recent catering gig I changed up the plating a bit and ended up with a much better presentation.

Here's what I do now, for nicely glazed short ribs that are perfectly medium-rare and tender inside, but are nicely square for a pretty presentation:

I take each short rib off the bone, then salt and pepper them and vacuum seal them with a knob of butter, three or four per bag (however many fit). I cook them for 36 hours at 60C (140F). Once the 36 hours are up, I take them out, chill them quickly, and refrigerate them until they're completely cool. Then I remove them from the fridge, cut open the bags, and trim the ribs into a perfectly rectangular shape. I trim nearly every side. This causes the yield to go way down, but makes for a beautiful presentation. You can't trim them before they cook, because they deform as the proteins denature while cooking. Then I re-bag them. If I'm doing it for a dinner where everyone will be served the course at once, I put four or five per bag. If I'm doing it for a to-order situation, I bag them individually. During service, I toss the bags into the circulator at 60C. Ten minutes out from plating, I melt some glaze or demi-glace or something like that in wide pans on the stove. When I'm a couple minutes away from plating, I take them out and dump the contents of the bags into a big bowl or something. I put the ribs directly into the glaze, turn them a few times to coat them in the glaze, leaving them in the pan for no more than two minutes or so. Then plate. Sometimes I lightly sear them before adding them to the demi-glace.

In this case, the picture shows a rib that was trimmed before cooking. You can see that it ends up in a wonky shape that is not very attractive. It still tasted great.

I served them in this case with a beet sauce, cannellini bean puree, roasted baby beet, purslane, beet glass, and some black truffle grated over (which turned out to be a bit of a waste--beet overwhelms the black truffle).

The beet glass was made with 88% beet puree, 12% Pure-Cote B90, sheared in for 20 minutes, poured thinly onto acetate, left out in a dry place overnight, peeled off the acetate and flipped over, then dehydrated until completely dry and crisp, torn into shards, and stored in an airtight container with some desiccant packs.

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/01/10 @ 18:52 | Comments (2) | Food Additives, Lazy Bear, Meat, Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese

This was okay, but not entirely successful, due to the plating. I made the mistake of plating components apart that were intended to be eaten together--something I've been much more conscious of lately.

It was veal sweetbreads, poached in a court bouillon, pressed while chilling, marinated in buttermilk, battered in a 75% AP flour, 25% Trisol batter, then fried in peanut oil until very crispy. Served with deep-fried brussels sprouts, cranberry fluid gel, and stuffing puree (make some stuffing, using the traditional out-of-the-bird method, pressure-cook it with some extra chicken stock, puree it while adding extra stock as necessary to get it to spin smoothly, and finally pass it through a chinois).

All the components were tasty, but the combination didn't elevate the components.

The brussels sprouts were added after this photo was taken.

Posted by Barzelay on 2010/01/10 @ 16:41 | Comments (1) | Food Additives, Lazy Bear, Meat, Sauces, Condiments, Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese