Alinea at Home: Duck, Pumpkin, Banana, Thai Aromatics

This is the second dish I've made out of the Alinea cookbook, if you can't tell I'm obsessed with the place.  This dish was actually pretty simple, though there were a couple of things that didn't work out quite as planned.  Overall, very fun to make.

 The prep started on Tuesday by making the base for the banana foam that would be a part of the dish.  Here we have a banana, sugar, banana chips, water, soy lecithin and citric acid. (Those two chemicals along with the agar agar are the only hard to find ingredients in the whole dish).

 The banana which was getting ready to go into a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes to roast.  I'll admit, bananas are one of those ingredients that I don't usually seek out.  I'm pretty sure this is the first time that I've bought them since I moved into my house 18 months ago and maybe since I moved back to Central Illinois nearly 3 years ago, and who knows how long before that. 

 30 minutes in the oven did this to it.

 All of the ingredients went into a pot and were boiled up for a bit. 

 The completed mixture after boiling for a bit.  At this point I realized that I shouldn't have added the soy lecithin but it was only a little bit so I didn't think it would hurt things too much.  (Spoiler alert, it didn't).

 The next step was the banana pudding.  Here we have banana, salt, sugar, half and half, banana chips and agar agar.  Crazy to think that all that stuff that ended up being two drops in the dish, but such is life at Alinea.

 The banana again was roasted off in a 350 degree oven, I guess I didn't get a picture of it.  After roasting the rest of the ingredients went into a sauce pan to boil.

The completed pudding, you can tell here even after 90 seconds on the heat the agar agar already starting to work.

 The first step yesterday was to make the marinade for the duck.  Here we have brown sugar, cinnamon, soy sauce, water, pineapple juice (The recipe calls for fresh juiced pineapple, but I don't have a juicer and I ain't using a food processor and cheese cloth), lemon grass, jalapenos, and ginger.

 The entire mixture went into a pan and simmered for a bit then steeped for a couple hours.

 Not a great photo, but here's the prepared marinade and the duck breast.  The duck breast went into a marinade for a couple hours before being seared off

The duck before going into the cast iron pot.  I didn't get a picture of the completed duck but you guys know what cooked meat looks like.

One of the garnishes were peanuts.  Here were have water, salt, peanuts, cayenne and sugar.  The dry ingredients except for the peanuts went into a bowl to form the glaze then the peanuts were coated with the glaze and went into a 300 degree oven for a while.  Didn't get a picture of the completed peanuts.

 Next up was the squash soup part of the program, here we have water, salt, sugar, cream and a butternut squash.

The squash before and after roasting in a 350 degree oven for about 90 minutes.

 After the roasting was complete the squash along with the other ingredients went into a sauce pan for a bit.

 Then they took a spin in the food processor.

 So apparently pumpkin seeds don't get sold on their own, but thinking on my feet while at the grocery store I remembered hearing that sometimes companies that make canned pumpkin substitute butternut squash in for real pumpkin I figured I could get away with substituting the seeds from the squash for pumpkin seeds especially since they look identical.

 I separated out some of the seeds from the pulp/

Then coated them with a curry salt that I had made a while back, it was just curry powder and salt.

The final garnishes, ginger, cilantro and lemongrass.

Two different angles of the plating.  Again this dish was a fun one to make.