Risotto. A Go-To Favorite, And Still Good

One of my go to dishes is risotto.  Especially when I can get fresh scallops.  This time I used carrot juice with the stock which really sweetened up the risotto.  I also used some saffron, which was nice. 

My basic risotto recipe is:  Chop an onion and saute in Olive Oil until just starting to brown, add 1 cup arborio rice and toast slightly.  Add 1 cup white wine and stir until absorbed.  Slowly add 4 cups of stock or other liquid (1 cup at a time until it is fully absorbed) while stirring continuously.  Add any mix ins with the last cup of stock. 

See.  Basic, easy, and versatile.  It works for me, and it's easily adaptable to whatever ingredients you happen to have on hand, though scallops are one of my favorites.  I finished this with some cracked grains of paradise, but apparently that was after the pic was taken.

Saffron and Carrot Risotto with Scallops and Morels

Pi 2: Tau rising.

PI UPDATE

I mentioned the 4 pie tarts I made in honor of pie day?  Well, we only actually ate two of those that night.  That left two for the following night.  I wasn't quite happy with the custard and orange foam combo.  It wasn't bad, but needed something else.  So, with the remaining 2 pies I topped the custard with pickled blueberries and then orange foam.  This was a great choice.  The pickled blueberries were a great intermediary and really enhanced both the custard and the orange foam.  This may just be the new apple pie.

Sous Vide Cinnamon Vanilla Custard, Pickled Blueberries, Spiced Cora Cora Orange Foam and Shortbread Crust Pie Tart

Also, for those of you not aware of the controversy that's brewing in math circles, you can catch up here:  Tau Manifesto

The Final Pi Day Ever? Fear the Tau

Today is Pi day.  Or Pie day.  You may have let this pass by with nary a thought.  But evil lurks out there and it's name is Tau.  Tau day is purportedly June 28th.  And it sucks.  Well, maybe that's a little harsh.  But would you rather have Pi(e) day, or Tau day?  I thought so.  There's a movement among math types to rid the world of pie.  Yeah yeah, we'll still have cake, but sometimes pi is better.  I like math, but I'm not on board with this nonsense.  Math, this is why people fear you.  Pi is good and you want to get rid of it.  Tau is no fun at all and yet this is what you choose to market to the world.

Anyway, since this might be the last pi day ever, I decided to make pie to celebrate.  Unfortunately, I didn't really consider what kind of pie, or a trip to the grocer, so I had to scrounge for whatever I could find.  Luckily I had purchased a dozen and a half eggs at the market on Saturday.  I had enough left for a custard filling for half a pie.  I suppose that if this was Tau day and I was making tau but only had enough for half a tau, this would work out well. Then I could have pie.  But this was pi day.  And what's half a pie?  Well, in this case, it's 4 tarts.  Only I don't have tart pans, so it's four tartish desserts made in ramekins.

So, I made half a crust.  2 egg yolks cooked through, some ground almond, all purpose flour, powdered sugar, salt, butter baking soda.  Seemed pretty tasty.  Like a shortbread cookie.  It didn't fit the ramekins very well, but with some serious patch work, I got it covered.  They weren't pretty, but serviceable.


Then I made a sous vide vanilla cinnamon custard filling.  And to top the pie, I found some Cora Cora oranges that I bought last week without any real purpose.  They appeared to be the only fresh fruit option, so  I juiced them, added some honey, a little star anise and clove, then added some gelatin, poured into the whip, hit with two canisters of N2O and had a fancy orange foam.  Orange flavor, white color.  Not bad for improvised ingredients.     

Pi Day Pie - Custard Tart

Pie Day Pi - Cinnamon Vanilla Custard Tartlet with Spiced Cora Cora Orange Foam

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

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!

Better Than Nintendo Cake (for the kiddies)

It's the week 6 challenge.  And this one kicked my ass.  But more about that later.  The challenge this week was to update something your grandma would have cooked.  So let's start there.

I don't really remember my Grandma's cooking. I think that at our family gatherings it was usually my mom or Aunt that cooked. Back when I was about 10 or 12 though, everyone was at my Grandma's for Christmas or Thanksgiving or some such holiday. My cousins, brothers and I were sitting around when Grandma came into the room and announced she had made dessert. She went on to proclaim that it was called Better Than Sex Cake, laughed, then looked around at all the kids in the room and said "Well, it's Better than Nintendo Cake for you kiddies." And I think that at every family gathering since, the Better than Nintendo cake made an appearance. If you're not familiar with it, basically you cook a boxed chocolate cake, poke holes in the top and pour over a can of sweetened condensed milk, and a jar of caramel. Then spread cool whip (*shudder* cool whip) over the whole thing and sprinkle Heath bits over the top.

So, with this challenge, the first thing that came to mind was Better than Nintendo Cake.

I've been wanting to make cajeta (goat's milk caramel), so I placed equal parts evaporated goat's milk and piloncillo in a mason jar with a vanilla bean and placed in the sous vide bath at 80 C. I left it there for, let's say, about 32 hours give or take. It caramellized pretty well, but didn't thicken up the way I would have liked. I added about 0.2% Xanthan, which helped, but it was still pretty thin. It tastes really good though, so I can deal with the viscosity. I've got enough for a while too.

I made a straightforward English toffee with roasted almonds, and whipped some heavy cream and mascarpone to stiff peaks.

And, in modern cooking 1987 style, I whipped up some molten chocolate cake batter (Vongerichten style, not Bras) with 70% dark chocolate, ceylon and cayenne (no ancho to be found in my spice rack tonight, so had to make due with cayenne).

So I mentioned an ass-kicking? Well, the plating went horribly awry. I don't really have an explanation, but suffice it to say, I couldn't picture how I wanted it to look, and it somehow ended up much worse than I could have imagined.

Not my best dish by any means, but the flavors were good, though really sweet. I tried to cut back some of the sweetness with the spices and bittersweet chocolate, and a little Maldon on top with the caramel. But, yeah, it was still pretty sweet. Or as we said in the 80's Suh-weet! 

Better Than Sex Nintendo Cake - Updated?

Better Than Sex Nintendo Cake

Control your temper...ature. Embrace the sous vide.

As you may have seen from the past few posts, I've been spending some time on a site called ChefSteps.  Basically it's a web destination for anyone and everyone who's interested in modern cooking techniques.  They are developing an online class for sous vide cooking which I've been working my way through.  There's also an active forum to ask questions, discuss knives, compete in weekly challenges, exchange recipes and ideas, or just contemplate the differences between various grades of methylcellulose, if you're into that sort of thing.  Anyway, I've been enjoying the site, and picking up plenty of tips and tricks along the way.  I thought I'd do a menu based on several of the recipes, ideas, or discussions from the site.

So I started off with Caramelized Carrot Soup.  This was a recipe featured in Modernist Cuisine, then adapted for the @Home version of the book.  I'd been wanting to try it.  Since many of the ChefSteps crew worked on the Modernist Cuisine books, it seemed like a fit.  So, I pressure cooked some carrots.  I have an old canning cooker that I use (not sure of the vintage, but the manual includes directions for use on your coal fired stove so I assume it's been around longer than the 2 years I've owned it). I adapted the recipe slightly to cook the carrots in jars, because the cooker is just huge otherwise.  After cooking, they went into the blender, through the sieve, and combined with carrot juice.  Then I added some butter, and emulsified with a stick blender until it was silky smooth.  The finished soup was topped with Creme Fraiche and Roasted Pepitos.  It was pretty damn tasty, and perfect for wintertime.

Caramelized Carrot Soup

Look at that texture.

Next up was the Salmon Mi-Cuit.  That's French for half cooked or lightly cooked.  I had some fresh Ora King Salmon that came in to my local fishmonger this week.  Early that morning, I brined it for an hour, then cooked at 40 degrees Celsius (that's 104 Fahrenheit) for an hour.  It went immediately into an ice bath to rest until dinner about 10 hours later.  It was plated with a vibrant green watercress puree, pickled onions and horseradish cream.  The salmon was awesome.  It had a texture that just melted in your mouth.  Not like sashimi, definitely not flaky, but something altogether different.  This recipe was part of the class, and looked beautiful on the plate.  The top pic is mine, followed by the ChefSteps version on the bottom.  Mine's not quite as elegant, but not half bad.  You can check out the recipe here: Salmon 104 Degrees.  I highly recommend it.    

My Salmon Mi-Cuit

The original ChefSteps Version

The entree was Beef Short Ribs.  These had been cooked for 48 hours at 64C (147F).  The long cook time allows the collagen to break down so that the ribs are tender, but only cooks the meat to medium doneness.  Contrast this with a typical slow and low braise, crock pot or smoking process which functions similarly to break down the collagen, but cooks the meat to well done.    The ribs were paired with a Chimichurri sauce (parsley, oregano, garlic, olive oil, white wine vinegar, crushed red pepper, black pepper).

I served the Short Rib with a Potato Pave that I believe originated from Chef Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc, and had been getting rave reviews on the forum.  Those reviews were well deserved.  Essentially this is a Potato Gratin, but the potatoes are sliced thin, dipped in cream, layered, and cooked until tender.  Then they are pressed together and cooled.  After refrigerating overnight, I sliced into cubes and fried the side of each.  This way, every individual potato slice was crispy on the edge.  I think I had about 25 layers of potato in these.  You should search this recipe out, because it is phenomenal.

Also with the beef, was some Brocollini that I cooked sous vide at 90C for about 9 minutes, then charred with a blowtorch and sprinkled with sherry vinegar.

48 hour Short Rib, Chimichurri, Potato Pave, Brocollini

Final Sear on the Short Rib

Potato Pave, ready to go

Creating the crust on the Potato Pave

The final dish of the night was a Lemongrass Cardamom Creme Brulee, which ended up without a picture.  These also got cooked sous vide, though somewhat less successfully.  Although they didn't fully set, they were still quite delicious, and a nice way to end the meal.  

All in all, quite a successful dinner, though it really put my single circulator through the paces trying to complete everything. Several times I put the ribs into hold mode while I borrowed the circulator to cook other items in a separate bath.  Maybe I need to get another.