Alinea at Home: Kuroge Wagyu, Squash, Yogurt, Sweet Paprka Taffy

So, I'm back with a vengeance with a fantastic dish from the Alinea cookbook.  Cooking through this book thus far has really stretched me as a cook and has shown me that there is nothing that I can't do in the kitchen.

The first step for this dish was to make the paprika yogurt glaze.  This included yogurt, simple syrup, salt and paprkia.  All the ingredients got mixed together and sat in the bridge until I was ready to use it.

 Next up was to make the garnishes, dried red peppers, garlic chips and dried shiitake mushrooms.  The mushrooms and red peppers were easy enough just slice and put on the baking sheet and into the oven for a few hours.  The garlic however, took a little more work.

 I sliced the garlic thin on the mandoline and then simmered it three times in a new batch of skim milk. 

Once the third simmering was complete all items went into a 170 degree oven for about four hours until they were dried and crispy.  These also went into the fridge until I needed them.

 Step number three, the beef.  This is my first time working with wagyu beef.  Wagyu is a special kind of beef that has a much higher fat content that what we typically can get.  This beautiful rib-eye was ordered from Dartagnan, which has become my go to source for hard to find products.  I love that place so much. 

I cut off the portion of the steak I needed and put into a vacuum bag with a bit of olive oil and got it ready to cook sous vide for about 20 minutes. Sous vide is poaching under a vacuum.  So, once the beef was sealed inside the vacuum bag I put in a pot of water at 135 degrees for 20 minutes.  This cooking method cooks things very evenly, it's quite an amazing thing.

Six awesome red peppers turned into the base for the sweet paprika taffy and the smoked paprika pudding. 

 Next up was the yogurt pudding, this one was also really simple.  Yogurt, salt, simple syrup and ultra tex 3 which is a modified starch.  All the ingredients got mixed together and was set aside until ready for plating.

 The acorn squash for the squash part of the dish. 

With the squash dispatched I harvested some of the seeds to be used for part of the taffy.  The seeds were fried off in a bit of olive oil until brown.

 Everything you need for the sweet paprika taffy.  Paprika, red pepper juice, sugar, salt, isomalt, butter, glucose, glycerin. 

 Everything except the butter was combined in a sauce pan and heated until it reached 235 degrees.  After the mixture reached that temp, I poured it into a pyrex pan to let it cool.

Once the taffy had cooled a little bit, I topped it with the fried squash seeds and let it cool the res of the way to room temperature.

The final component that needed to cook was the squash.  This was also cooked sous vide.  This time it got cooked at 190 degrees for about 45 minutes. 

Now that all the individual components had been cooked its time to put everything together.  We have Paprika, Oregano, the dried garnishes, the smoked paprika pudding, the yogurt pudding, the smoked paprika glaze, the beef, the squash and smoked paprika taffy.

The squash got topped with the smoked paprika glaze and went under the broiler for a few minutes.

The squash after coming out of the broiler.

While the squash was in the broiler, I seared off one side of the beef.  This is what they looked like coming out of the pan.

I topped the beef with the paprika taffy and put it under the broiler until the taffy had softened a bit.

The completed beef ready to hit the plate.

The final plate.  I'm in love with this one.  There were a lot of components, but this plating and the way the dish came out I fell like it was worth of the Alinea name and kitchen.