So this whole course is known as Grill, three little bites that at the restaurant were served on a wood burning grill which is actually a very Japanese thing to do. Needless to say, I don't have a table top grill that I can use, so I used an actual plate in my dish but I did grill these things outside.
So the hardest part about this dish was tracking down the chicken heart portion of the evening. I considered mail ordering them but most of what I found was actually dog food. Then I found that Tyson sold packages of hearts and gizzards. Their website said Meijer which is where I usually shop so them, but no dice. Saturday morning when I started this dish I finally broke down and went to WalMart which was also on the list. Sure enough they had them along with a number of other nasty bits that I wouldn't have expected including beef tripe. Needless to say, I will be frequenting Wally World for all my offal needs.
Anyway, the first step for this bite was to prepare the cure for the hearts. Sugar, pepper and salt. I must also note that in an entire like 1 1/2 pound package of hearts and gizzards there were three hearts, that's it, fini. Everything else was gizzards, of which I let the dog enjoy a couple, the rest I got rid of.
So I mixed together the cure mixture and put a bed of it down in a pan the put the hearts in and created a little curing dome.
From there the mixture went into the fridge to sit for six hours.
Once done I pulled them out of the cure and washed them off to get ready for the actual cooking part.
Then I vacuum sealed them to cook sous vide for about 4 hours. It's funny, I bought my food saver 2 1/2 years ago, and I'm pretty sure I've never done anything but try and sous vide with it. This despite the fact that I've read places that it doesn't work very well because the bags are designed for it. Personally, I think the bags work fine, it's not having an immersion circulator that is the problem. Without that wild swings in temperature are the issue which leads to over or under cooked food.
Anyway, from here the hearts sat in a 194 degree water bath for about 3 or 4 hours. I didn't get a picture of the final product.
While the hearts were finishing up I started working on the squid. That's a squid body, the recipe called for the tentacles, which upon further review would have been a better call, but they are so damn difficult to find and I didn't want to drive to Peoria to try and find them. I probably will for the real thing.
Either way, squid, fish sauce, palm sugar, lemon and Thai chile. The whole mixture sat together for about an hour.
The final component was the strawberry. A single strawberry and a bit of vegetable oil .
I cut the berry in half and seared it off in the oil until charred.
So from here I skewered the heart and squid and grilled them for approximately a minute. This is the food ready to go onto the plate.
I finally skewered the strawberry and plated them up on my new long platters.
Overall the heart was good, the strawberry was amazing, the squid was for some reason inedible. This was why I think I need to actually find me some tentacles next time.
We're moving right along on this journey and this week will be fun, provided I can find 15 hours of uninterrupted time to make this stock.
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