A New Mountain Cookery

WTF

Saw this at Kroger:

I want to make it. I've seen plenty of sheets on plates from various sources, Alinea's campari sheet, Ideas in Food's shrimp sheets, etc, but I've never seen it with caramel. Delicious...but how do you do it?

Compressed watermelon

Very cool.

Vacuum seal pieces of watermelon (if you don't have one, just put it in a ziploc bag and take out as much as the air as possible)

Freeze it overnight

Take it out and thaw

This is what you get...I swear it's not tuna:

It's like super-watermelon crack. The cell walls break during the freezing process and compact all the flavors together, making the watermelon flavor very concentrated and the color much brighter. It allows for a new sliceable texture as well, making it easier to portion and cut.

An easy technique that allows for a lot of new possibilities.

Huge thanks to Chef Chad Scott for insight into this technique.

Advanta Gel

I got a sample from National Starch of a new product they have called Adavanta. It's a modified potato starch that can create firm gels without heat. Intrigued to find out how it holds up, I made a simple mixture of water and 5% Advanta. Provided literature said firm gels would be formed with 3-7% concentration.

After a whole night in the fridge, this is what came out:

It was interesting, to say the least. I think it would make a very cool fluid gel type puree, but I did not have a chance to try that out. It's hard to say what the consistency was like...I guess a very light agar blend that stands up better on a plate, I'm not sure.

I'll be trying it out soon with flavored liquid, so I'll see how that holds up.

Ultratex...

...is the shit.

It's a modified tapioca starch that imparts zero flavor into food and is a great thickening agent without the gross mouthfeel one can get with too much xanthan gum. Grant Achatz of Alinea has a seminal story about Ultratex where he discusses his way of making a parsley puree.

The French Laundry’s [Thomas] Keller is not only the current arbiter of what counts as good food, he’s also [Grant] Achatz’s mentor and he catered Achatz’s wedding. Still, there’s no real secret to a Keller parsley sauce, Achatz explains. He’d puree parsley and oil in a blender and strain it.

“Then he’d have parsley oil,” Achatz says. “It tastes like parsley and oil.” Achatz instead starts with parsley juice, maybe a little water and salt. “That liquid is going to taste intensely of parsley, because that’s all it is. Then I’d thicken it with Ultra-tex 3, a modified starch that imparts zero flavor but gives it the same viscosity as oil.”

Keller, in other words, would have compromised the flavor of the parsley. Achatz believes that technology can actually deliver a purer dish.

You can take pure, unadulterated flavors and thicken them without the use of anything that will impart anything else, so that you just get the true essence of what you wanted in the first place.

Take tomatoes from Red Hill:

Peel them, puree them in a robo-coupe, hit it with a little salt, and then add Ultratex until you get the consistency you want. Voila, tomato puree that is nothing but the taste of fresh tomatoes picked that day:

After you have made a puree, you can take it and spread it out thin on a Silpat and let the mixture dry out, aided by either a low oven or stovetop. Voila, tomato "paper":

National Starch should give free samples, I would check them out if you want to get some Ultratex. If not, check Le Sanctuaire.

202 Market

I had an awesome meal there last Tuesday night while in Roanoke. Unfortunately I forgot to charge up my camera, so I have no pictures.

I tried the Wagyu "tails" and the Fishing Creek Blue Crab salad for savory courses. They were both awesome, although I was impressed the most by the dessert, which was a "tarte tatin" with saffron ice cream. I hate saffron, but together with the apple and the raw cookie dough on the plate, everything was delicious. The apple is cooked sous-vide for several hours and it gets super flavorful and tender, lending a nice counterpoint to the spice of the saffron.

Chef Scott was nice enough to show me the kitchen and some of his set-up, which was very impressive. 202 has a gorgeous kitchen and it seems like a great place to work. He showed me some cool techniques like how to compress watermelon without a vacuum sealer, which will be up here shortly.

Here's someone else's experience at 202

Computer=Dead

No new posts until my computer is back up and running (hopefully) by next week.  In the meantime:

Ideas in Food's new column in Popular Science

Harold McGee's discussion of white pepper

Look at all those Gastrovacs

Pre-Order the Alinea cookbook and get access to Mosaic

More to come...

Sous-Vide Fruit

How do you make fresh fruit tastier?

Cooking is sometimes the answer for things like blueberries, yet with conventional cooking methods, you have to sacrifice the integrity of the fruit. I say, fire up the water bath to 128 degrees and let loose. There were some good results.

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The melon "confit" was cooked with a bit of salt for 30 minutes, while the blueberries were left in the bath for a full hour, packed with some honey. I honestly was not expecting much difference between the cooked items and their raw counterparts, yet after trying the melon and the berries, I was impressed at the mouthfeel of the two fruits. The melon took on a rich, soft texture with less of the somewhat off-putting "melony" aftertaste.

While the melon provided a luxurious experience that reminded me of Iberian ham or toro, the blueberries touched off memories of blueberry pancakes, where bites of fluffy cake are interspersed with plump and juicy berries that are cooked, yet not to the point of structural breakdown like that of a compote. They pop like a ripe grape and are full of delicious flavors without the tang of raw blueberries, which can sometimes overwhelm the mouth.

Moving forwards, cooking things sous-vide allows for the addition of poaching liquids, enabling new flavor combinations and textures. Poach melon in a prosciutto consomme, for example. Go savory or sweet, or try and bridge the link. Go wild with it. That's what it's all about, experimenting and finding new flavors and striving towards the goal of great food.

Thanks to Ideas in Food and Food 102 for the inspiration.

Richard Blais

So he didn't win Top Chef...

While I thought he made some very clean, clever food, I thought that his overall approach to cooking was somewhat lacking in terms of ingredients. He seemed to sometimes let the gadgets and progressive techniques run the direction of his dishes, and not the other way around, in effect creating a barrier between himself and the diner. He has proven himself as an amazing chef within the show and in jobs he has had, so I'm not trying to take anything away from him. His cooking just seemed too "busy," I guess is the word.

I prefer seeing a more "organic" approach, where new techniques are used to elevate already terrific ingredients, whether through new textures, temperatures, or what have you. The dishes seen on Ideas in Food, for example, seem to be a perfect combination of ingredient and technique.

Apparently at the moment Blais is working at Home Restaurant in Atlanta, which has a pretty interesting menu, and from what I've read, it's on point. It seems like he's taking a simpler approach to the food, although he is using a lot of modern techniques with the menu-liquid nitrogen, sous-vide, etc.

All the best to him and I hope to try his food at some point.

Locally Inspired

It's that time of the year again. This area has amazing produce which lends itself to simple, delicious food. My body required vegetables today, and as the Meade Park market was in session, I checked it out.

Bowl of veggies from Louisa and Red Hill:

Local vegetable tasting with roasted turnips, grilled carrots, and a radish slaw with carrot gastrique and rosemary oil. Props to Brian:

Pork steak (apparently in the style of Fred Flinstone) from Babes in the Woods. I was going to cook it sous-vide, but I was very hungry so I just put it in a pan. Next time I think I'll try for a low and slow approach so the meat will be more succulent. It was very good regardless. Topped with pickled apple and fennel for some crunch:

This season promises to bring great things...

Caviar recipe

Here is the recipe for the amuse-bouche dish that was discussed in the C-ville article...

For the honey mix:

200 g water
2.0 g sodium alginate
150 g honey-I used Virginia wildflower

Combine the alginate with the water using a hand mixer. Let settle so the air bubbles dissipate. Mix in the honey. Put mixture into a squeeze bottle with a fine tip or a syringe.

For the setting bath:

2.5 g calcium chloride
500 g water

Pour the calcium chloride into the water and let dissolve.

When ready to plate, simply drip the alginate mixture into the setting bath. Let the balls "cook" for a minute or so and remove using a strainer. Wash off the caviar in cool water-calcium chloride has a bit of a bitter taste if you don't wash it off.

Use the caviar to top a bite of melon and Virginia ham. Garnish with local spring onion point and reduced balsamic.