There are two distinct kinds of dishes that I come up with when I'm conceptualizing and menu-writing. In the first kind of dish, some concept springs into my head fully formed. Whether from some nebulous creative dimension, whether inspired by some visual concept, or whether ripped off from some other chef entirely, it's just kind of there. I usually know how I'm going to plate it as soon as I come up with it. Sometimes I'm not even sure of the flavors yet.

The second kind of dish is arguably more organic, more natural. In this second kind of dish, instead of waiting for inspiration to strike, I just get work and start putting flavors together. I end up with a bunch of flavors on a menu that go together in my head, and then only later do I figure out what forms they'll take in the dish, how I'll balance them, how I'll accent them, how I'll intensify or temper them in order to make a delicious and engaging dish. I sometimes get into trouble with this kind of dish because what goes on the menu doesn't always suggest its form, and it is often a struggle to graft a form onto the flavors. These dishes are usually but not always less visually interesting than the first kind.

The second sort of dish creation often produces dishes like this radish dish a few posts ago. It's pretty cool, and a lot of the plates, the ones where we were able to be more precise when laying down the blanket of puffed pork streusel, looked great, I thought, with hints as to what lay beneath poking out. But it's not likely to be an iconic dish.

This pea dish pictured in this post, on the other hand, was a product of the first kind of creation. It's a lasagna of pasta and Benton's ham cream, with ham bits, fresh peas, sauteed morels, and freeze-dried peas. We garnished with arugula and, on the second night, garlic chive flowers.

It came as a concept fully formed. It's visually interesting, it's fresh, and it's a template onto which lots of flavors could be grafted. And, at least this time, with these flavors, it's AWESOME. This was so friggin' delicious, in addition to looking really cool. I guess it must have been a continuation in my mind of this dish from last summer, but I wasn't conscious of that at the time I came up with this

I must admit that our execution wasn't perfect. I didn't have enough time to test multiple versions of the ham cream with methylcellulose, so I just went without it. I set the cream, as intended, with agar and gelatin, but it had nothing to hold it together once it got above 80 degrees Celsius (at which point the agar gel starts melting--the gelatin has long since melted at that point). We knew this, so we just made sure not to bake it so long that it melted. Trouble is, that meant that by the time the diners got it, it was lukewarm. No one cared, because it was still so good, but that imperfection pained me to the very core of my being, and has been bugging me for days. Still, I'm proud of the dish.

To make the ham cream, first we ground up a bunch of the leaner bits of a Benton's ham. Then we toasted those ground bits in some frying pans. Once they were fairly dried and slightly browned (reddened, really), we added some really gelatinous brown chicken glace. After simmering that for maybe twenty minutes we added a bunch of cream. After a lot of tasting and seasoning until it was amazingly delicious, I weighed out the resulting cream. 2380g. Then I whisked in 19g agar (.8%) and brought it up to a boil. After turning off the heat, I added 8 sheets of bloomed gelatin. Be careful if you use that as a guide. The actual total gelatin is tough to gauge because the ham cream included that very gelatinous stock. I used 1 sheet of gelatin for every 300g of the ham cream, but who knows how much gelatin was already in the stock? Then I poured out the ham cream into two hotel pans (about 5 1/2 cups of ham cream per pan) and put them in a refrigerator on a level shelf and let them set for a couple hours.

The pasta was standard egg pasta, but the eggs were blended with some blanched and shocked spinach before being incorporated into the flour. After resting, the pasta was rolled out (setting 4 on the Kitchen-Aid attachment). We cut the ham cream into portions (48 pieces per hotel pan, i.e. 24 two-layer portions), and then cut the spinach pasta into pieces the same shape as the ham cream pieces but slightly larger. From experience (in other words, I screwed this up this time and won't do it again--sorry, Colin) I can tell you that it will be much easier if you are really careful to be consistent when cutting the ham cream, so that you can quickly cut the pasta instead of having to measure each piece to a particular piece of ham cream. Use a ruler.

We stacked each individual lasagna portion with 3 layers of pasta and 2 layers of ham cream, spaced them out on an oiled sheet pan, and then put a dollop of rendered Benton's ham fat on each. At service, we baked them in a 350 degree oven for about 6 minutes to warm them through. The ham fat on top melts over each lasagna and keeps the top layer of pasta from drying out in the oven. When plating, my intern Colin figured out the best way to get them from the pan to the plate was using two mini offset spatulas, one beneath each lasagna, the other on top pressing down.

For the morels, after cleaning really well (7 or 8 changes of water, with lots of swishing for each), I sauteed in whole butter over high heat, letting the morels give off all their water then start browning and crisping a bit. Once they have shrunk to like 1/2 to 1/3 of their original size, despite having absorbed all the butter, then I dump them out onto a sheet pan, wrap, and refrigerate until service. At service, just pop them in the oven for 5 or 10 minutes. Oh, and on the second night, we FORGOT THE MORELS IN THE OVEN. We realized it as soon as the plates had gone out, so we went out and spooned the morels on to the plates at the table. Haha. Oops. Can't shaft people. If the menu lists a premium ingredient like morels, the plates better have morels, right?

Again, this was really awesome.

Posted by Barzelay on 2011/04/26 @ 21:15 | Comments (0) | Lazy Bear, Meat, Veggies, Fruit, Grain, Cheese