The Cook Avoids Seppuku

Sometimes you just say, fuck it, I'm going to cook up some poison.  In this case, maybe a mild irritant more than poison, but still verging in the realm of poison.  Yes, I'm not going to give up on this poison thing.  Legend has it, that if a diner dies from eating Fugu, the chef must take his own life using the same knife with which he prepared the fatal fish.  Since I was cooking only for myself, this didn't reasonably seem like a potential outcome.  If by chance the poison ended my life, I couldn't very well raise my blade in one final act of solidarity.  Also, I wasn't cooking highly toxic blowfish, but merely a weed capable of inducing paresthesia in any unlucky passerby who happen to touch it.  So carry on...

I had a big bunch of stinging nettles that I thought would be good for dinner.  Since it was just me, I figured I was only risking my own discomfort if things went south.  I'd never cooked nettles before, but I have been stung by them.  In small doses not too bad, but not something you want to unnecessarily subject yourself to.  So, I donned some gloves and set to separating the leaves from the stems.  Soaked the leaves in cold water, then tranferred to boiling water.  They smelled delicious when they hit the boil, and I kept them in there for about 5 minutes until I deemed them safe to eat.

I toasted some pistachios, some garlic, some dried tart cherries, and tossed with the cooked nettles and rice.  I added some feta cheese, and topped with some gratuitous smoked belly that I'd recently made and pickled mustard seeds.  It was pretty tasty, but I think I killed the nettles.  By the time they left the boil, they were sapped of much of the intoxicating (pun semi-intended) aroma that they had when they first went in.  Next time, maybe a litlle less cooking would be ok. 

Rice with Stinging Nettles, Toasted Pistachio, Dried Montmorency Cherries, Feta Cheese, Topped with Gratuitous Smoked Belly and Pickled Mustard Seeds

Stinging Nettles, Toasted Pistachio, Dried Montmorency Cherries, Feta Cheese in Rice, Topped with Gratuitous Smoked Pork Belly and Pickled Mustard Seeds

 

Sort of Liquid, but not really, Scotch Egg

Liquid (or verging on it) Scotch Egg

So the challenge this week was to take a dish that's normally a solid and turn it into a liquid dish.  I had some trouble with a concept here.  I kept thinking of dishes that were already liquid.  Like soup.  And drinks.  And drinking.  And food you consume while drinking.  And I started thinking about a Scotch Egg.  If you aren't familiar with the scotch egg, I suggest you familiarize yourself.  Head down to your favorite local establishment, and order one up.  If they don't have it, then set down your Bud Lite, and head back out the door and down the street to a better location.  Order yourself a real beer this time, and get prepared. 

The scotch egg is a hardboiled egg, covered in sausage, breaded and deep fried.  Needless to say, it's pretty damn delicious.  I like mine with a nice mustard and hot sauce.  And of course a few strong beers.  I'm pretty sure this is of British origin, and it is pub grub at it's finest. And yes, pub grub can be fine.

A mighty fine looking typical scotch egg courtesy of Becks & Posh

For this take, I thought that I'd lighten it up a bit.  Don't ask why, just roll with me here.  Focus on the egg and back off on the sausage and fry.  Also, rather hard boiling the egg, I though I'd cook it more gently, keeping the yolk runny and the white tender, just on the verge of setting but still reasonably enough loose to be considered liquid. 

To do this, I wanted a yolk cooked to 63C and a white cooked to between 70 and 72C.  So, I cracked some eggs and separated them.  Yolks went into a jar of olive oil, along with a couple morels that I thought could infuse.  The whites got blended with some half and half, butter and salt, bagged and dropped into the water bath.  When they were just starting to set through, I pulled the whites, dropped the temp, and submerged the jar with the yolks in the now 63C bath.

While the yolks cooked, I hit the whites with an immersion blender to fully reliquify them, and then transferred to the whipping siphon.  Hit it twice with N2O and shook the hell out of it, then set the whip into the bath with the yolks to stay warm. 

Meanwhile, I cooked up some sausage and broke into crumbles, and coarsely chopped some crostini into the same.  I'd prepped some pickled mustard seeds earlier in the day via the pressure cooker, and always have some Sriracha at the ready.  All components were go.

To plate, I placed the foamed egg whites down first.  They were light and airy, but held up nicely on the dish.  I placed a yolk in the center of each.  This was a little tricky as removing a single egg yolk from the jar, and plating it without breaking proved difficult.  A few ended up pre-broken, but I did my best.  Then I added some crumbled sausage and croutons for texture and finished with the pickled mustard seeds and some dots of Sriracha.  When you broke the yolk it ran down over the whites.

Overall, I think this worked pretty well.  The flavor of the egg whites on their own was a little lacking (probably to be expected of egg whites) and I might jazz them up a little the next time, but when everything came together it was pretty delicious. 

Deconstructed Scotch Egg