Rescuing My Caffeinated Dreams of Blowing Sugar

Challenge #7: Coffee.

Sous Vide Coffee Panna Cotta, Coffee Fluid Gel, Milk Foam, Coffee Spun Sugar

I've been wanting to try some blown sugar work after seeing a demo from Joan Roca (might have been Jordi Roca doing the demo, but Joan was narrating). I thought it would make a nice dish this week. I planned to blow sugar into a large coffee bean shape, fill it with a coffee panna cotta and dust with cocoa and ground chocolate so that it looked like a giant coffee bean on the plate.  The diner would crack the bean with their spoon like a creme brulee shell to expose the rich panna cotta within.

The inspiration: Apricot from el cellar de can roca

 
It seemed like a decent enough plan.  I worried that the panna cotta might dissolve the sugar shell before it set, but in case of disaster, I planned to line the inside of the sugar shell with cocoa butter, thinking the fat would protect the sugar from moisture and could set up nice and thin.  If only I could get to that point. 

What I learned is that blown sugar work is not something I can learn in a couple of hours. I was able to inflate a few sugar balloons, but they were all mishapen and collapsed on themselves and basically wouldn't cooperate.  Even with help, all I ended up with was something that looked like the stomach of an anatomy model, and a pretty nice round ball that promptly shattered when I tried to set it down.  So, after a frustrating evening, I punted on the blown sugar until another day.

That's improper sugar blowing technique.

It popped

Sugar Stomach...As good as it got, still not good.

Breaking Bad

Reconfiguring my dish, I made a sous vide coffee panna cotta with 400g heavy cream, 100 g mascarpone, 200g whole coffee beans, and 75 g sugar. I bagged and cooked it sous vide at 92C for 2.5 hours. I bloomed 5g of gelatin in 50g of milk an added it about 10 mintues before the end.

I wanted to stick to strictly coffee, sugar and cream in the dish, so I also did a 24 hour cold brewed coffee and made a fluid gel sauce, and served with some milk foam and coffee flavored spun sugar.

The sous vide coffee panna cotta was awesome. I was really just sort of winging it based on Chef Grant Lee Crilly's discussion of coffee butter and fat extraction of the beans. I figured the cream also had a high fat %, so it was worth a try. There was almost no acidity or bitterness, but the fruity notes of the beans really came through. Flavors that are subtle when brewed were forward and prominent in a way I didn't really expect.  I used a local roasted Terra Verde coffee which I find to be an excellent medium roast that really let's some of the herbal qualities of the beans shine.  The rest of the dish paired nicely, although didn't have the visual impact and playfulness I'd hoped for originally.  The rich creamy panna cotta, the strong roasted coffee sauce, topped with some foamy milk goodness and an ethereal sugar that started to melt into the other components.  It was pretty awesome.  And pretty much covered the spectrum of tan.  Next time, maybe some color.
 

Coffee, Coffee Cream, Coffee Sugar and milk?

Challenge coffee complete!

Chocolate Panna Cotta, Banana, Many Textures of Peanut Butter

This week's challenge from Chefsteps was a sous vide dessert.  I thought about banana cream pie, but got beat to the punch when someone else made a killer rendition first.  I wasn't really sure what to do, but Jamie suggested Peanut Butter Cups.  Seemed like a good enough idea: chocolate, peanut butter, pretty delicious combination.

I played around with the idea.  I thought I'd flip it, and surround the chocolate with peanut butter.  Also, throw some bananas into the mix as an homage to the banana cream pie that wasn't.  And bananas go well with chocolate and peanut butter.

I started with chocolate panna cotta.  Panna cotta is my new go to because it's easy and works as well sweet as it does savory.  This time, I wanted it to be intensely chocolate.  I cooked the cream and blended in enough chocolate to get the nice rich chocolate look I was going for.  Then, I blended in about that much chocolate again.  300 g total chocolate, to about 600 g of cream / half and half.  It seemed about right, so I added gelatin, and poured into plastic cups to set.  It was amazingly chocolately.  I licked the warm remnants from the pan. 

Next I started on the peanut butter.  Rather than run of the mill creamy, stick to the roof of your mouth PB, I wanted to play around with texture.  I thought many different textures all based on peanut butter would be interesting.  I came up with 9 different possibilities but that seemed like a lot, so I whittled those down to 5.  I'd made Powdered Peanut Butter before so that was easy.  I also figured I'd do a microwave Peanut Butter Sponge Cake a la Ferran.  Then Peanut Butter Ice Cream seemed like a good idea.  I used one of Jeni's splendid recipes and it was ultra creamy and delicious.  Then I found Thomas Keller's recipe for a Peanut Sablé, which without the accent is a type of weasel, but with the proper accent becomes shortbread.  The biscuit was good with rich buttery, salty, peanut flavor.  I should've rolled it a little thinner, but it worked pretty well.  And finally, I figured I'd do a Peanut Butter Sabayon.  Which is the French version of the Italian whipped custard dessert Zabaione, only with peanut butter.  As far as I could tell, no recipe exists for a peanut butter sabayon.  I adapted the Modernist Cuisine at Home recipe with a big scoop of peanut butter.  It was rich and delicious, yet airy and light and still warm when served.  Even with three N2O charges though, the foam didn't quite hold.    

I thought I'd caramelize the bananas, then decided I wanted a little more fruit, so I also poached some bananas in a bit of honey and cinnamon.  That's a good combination.  Banana, honey, cinnamon.  Put it in a ziploc bag, squeeze out the air, and throw in a 60C bath for about 20 minutes.  Yum.

Chocolate Panna Cotta, Banana, Many Textures of Peanut Butter

Chocolate Panna Cotta is in the center topped with Peanut Sablé.

12:00: Powdered Peanut Butter
02:00: Peanut Butter Ice Cream on a bed of shaved Chocolate
04:00: Cinnamon Honey Sous Vide Poached Banana
05:00: Peanut Butter Sponge Cake
07:00: Caramelized Banana
10:00: Peanut Butter Sabayon (sous vide)

The plating ended up a little messy, but I think the overall effect worked out ok.

Oh yeah, and I was picked as one of the winner's of the challenge!  Check it out.  And look at Chris Koller's Raspberry Chocolate Gateau.  It is absolutely gorgeous.  Obviously I need to work on my presentation skills.