A New Mountain Cookery

Banana Consomme

...and an unexpected find.

I started today hoping to make a gelatin-filtered consomme with a banana stock, but things turned out surprisingly different. A stock was made with 2 bananas, about 5 cups of water, some cloves, red onion, a bay leaf, and salt and pepper. It simmered for about an hour...

Long story short, it tasted delicious. The banana really came through and provided a base for the counterpoint of clove and onion, which together formed a really nice sweet and savory pairing. Better yet, I didn't even filter it, as it was already fairly clear. Yum.

A funny thing happened on the way however, as the onions in the mixture picked up an amazing amount of delicious banana flavor while still maintaining the onion flavor that is so loved. The texture was really nice as well, as the onion had a really nice crunch while still being full of sweet flavor.

More on what comes of this consomme later...

18 Hour Short Ribs

136 degrees.

Milk Powder

Inspired by the use of brown butter solids (wow I read a lot of Ideas in Food)...I decided to try out not only their recipes but also come up with new ideas for the cheap and readily available product.

Here are the brown butter solids. Melt butter, add about half (by weight) dry milk powder, and slowly brown the butter until everything is nice and caramelized. It smells delicious.

I kept thinking. What else could you do with the milk powder? Could you seal it in a bag and cook it sous-vide? Could you add it to other liquid? Could you just brown it in a dry pan?

Well, I only got to one of those thoughts...

Put milk powder in a dry pan over medium-high heat until it starts to brown and get crispy.

What's it taste like? Well, breakfast came to mind. The first bite tasted like burnt toast as it crumbled away, then turned into a nice creamy, slightly sour mix that reminded me of yogurt.

New ideas...let's see what they'll turn into.

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.

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.

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.

Recipes-Lecithin and Xanthan Gum

Thanks to Jay for all the recipes that are in the comments of the first post.

One of the roadblocks to this style of food is that it might seem a little daunting at first. There are indeed a lot of ingredients that one must order, like tapioca maltodextrin and activa, but there are a lot of really cool things you can do with everyday grocery store materials.

Enter soy lecithin and xanthan gum.

Soy lecithin is a soy-based product that is commonly used as an emulsifier and is sold in health departments everywhere as a supplement. Read the ingredients of a chocolate bar the next time you get one and there it will be, keeping the cocoa and the cocoa butter together. Luckily for us, it is used in restaurant settings to create foams and "airs," something you might have seen in menus.

Here is some grapefruit air I just made just using grapefruit juice and soy lecithin, both of which I bought at the Barracks Road Kroger. I just eye-balled this recipe, a little lecithin goes a long way. Simply mix the two ingredients and hit it with an immersion blender until the air collects at the top.

Xanthan Gum is a polysaccharide and thickening agent derived from the fermentation of a certain bacteria. The gum is used in items like salad dressings to maintain the emulsion between oil and vinegar. It is also used in gluten free baking in order to give a similar mouthfeel to wheat-based bread. You can find it in the baking aisles of most grocery stores. I have used it to thicken sauces without reducing them, although one has to be careful about over-using it, as it can create somewhat of a snotty feel if too much is applied. Usually around less than 1 percent of total weight will do the trick.

Unfortunately, I am fresh out of xanthan, but I will post something as soon as I get some more. Until then, look at Sean Brock's blog from Charleston, featuring his restaurant's new biodynamic farm.

PS, this recipe collection put together by Martin Lersch of khymos.org is incredible, take a look at it:

Download hydrocolloid-recipe-collection-v2.pdf