Alinea at Home: Shrimp, Yuba, Orange, Miso

So for those of you who know me really well know that I'm an uber planner.  I work best when I know exactly what I'm doing and when.  So, I really got thrown for a loop when I had planned to do this dish last weekend and then as I thought I was ready to make it last  Saturday night I realized I needed about 36 hours to prep some of the stuff.  Oops.  So, I pushed it off until this evening.  It was definitely worth the wait.

The first step was to start the prep of the soybeans, which was the step that I didn't realized took so long.  The beans needed to soak overnight in some water.

The beans hit their watery grave.

 Once the beans had soaked the whole mixture went into the blender in order to make soy milk.  The next step was to simmer the mixture until a skin started to form on the top of the mixture.  This process is very similar to when you make a cream sauce without stirring it.  Dairy always forms this protein skin when left alone over heat.  Once the skin had formed I had the wonderful task of trying to pry it off without breaking it in order to form the yuba sticks.

 Here are the four sticks that I managed to successfully make.

I let the sticks dry at room temp then they went into a 170 degree oven for about 90 minutes to completely dry out.

 While the yuba was in the oven I made the red miso mayonnaise.  This is red miso paste, sugar, paprika, grapeseed oil, egg, lime juice and salt.

 Here is everything except the red miso past and paprika. 

Finally the whole mixture came together to form a mayonnaise.  I'll be honest, I'm not sure what I had was actually red miso. I think it was a little too spicy to be the real deal.  Oh well, it had the right effect on the dish.

Now this for the orange piece of the dish.  I made a simple syrup of sugar and water then took the rind off the orange and candied it.

Once the syrup had come to a boil, the orange peel went in until I was ready to use it.

 Now time to put everything together.  We have the red miso mayonnaise, candied orange peel, shrimp and the yuba.  The first step was to fry off the yuba skins in some oil.  I didn't take pictures of it but it worked out alright.

 I then took a pairing knife down the middle of the shrimp from the head end to tail end, making sure to not cut all the way through.  The bisected shrimp were then wrapped around the yuba and then went under a pre-heated broiler.

 Here is the concoction after spending about 3 minutes under the broiler.

The completed plate.  This was the best looking one of the four so I took its picture, I actually ate all four.  Overall and good dish.  I probably should have put some salt it places other than the mayo because the heat overtook any saltiness.  I didn't season the yuba or the shrimp so the flavor was a bit flat.  Would this be something I make again, probably not, but definitely something I would like a chance to try at the restaurant sometime.