So, I'm back into the Alinea cookbook, and given that we're getting into spring and the cookbook starts with spring recipes I started with the very first dish in the book. This little amuse bouche is about four bites of food total and includes a clam, nasturtium and a shallot marmalade. Shocking, I know given the title of the post.
The first component was the lemon pudding. This dish included agar agar, water, sugar, salt, saffron, lemon zest and juice.
I first made the base which was a combination of water, salt, sugar, saffron and the lemon zest. Those ingredients I brought to a simmer and then let it steep for 20 minutes.
I strained the mixture in the first picture and then mixed in the agar agar and brought the clean mixture to a boil.
Once the mixture was brought to a boil, the mixture was strained again and then it went into a bowl and then sat in an ice water bath until it set.
The set jello mixture went into a blender along with the lemon juice until the mixture was smooth and then I reserved it in a squeeze bottle.
The second component of this dish is the shallot marmalade. The start of this dish was all the ingredients you see here except for the cucumber and then simmered down until the liquid evaporated. That mixture was then cooled in the fridge and then the cucumber went in.
The final garnish of this dish was the nasturitum soup. Nasturtium is a peppery type green, that I can't every find in a store here so to the internets I turned and I had four ounces of the stuff in two days. Would have been overnight if Louisville didn't get hit with a winter storm. So the first step of this component was to cook the potatoes in a bit of the half and half, salt and water.
Once that was cooked that mixture went into a blender until smooth and then at that time the nasturtium leaves were added. Once the nasturtium was blended in a few ice cubes were added to smooth everything out.
Finally, everything went into an ice bath to chill out.
The main component of this dish, clams, and their seasoning. So I don't work with clams a lot. Ironically enough, this is one of those few ingredients that restaurants generally make better than I do. Thankfully, one of the clams I got had a cracked shell because I don't think I could have opened any of them if not.
The recipe called for surf clam, which I've never actually heard of and didn't necessarily think that there would be that much difference in the littleneck or middlenecks that I can get here in Bloomington.
Well I got the first one opened and it was about the size of my pinky fingernail. So I improvised a little bit. I knew I could grill them so I pan fried it quickly right before I was ready to serve.
The final plating. The lemon pudding had a bit of air in the chamber and blew out on me. The stuff on the fork was eaten in one bite and then the nasturtium soup was consumed. The fork was outstanding and I don't particularly like clam. The soup was interesting since nasturtium isn't something I normally eat.
One feature I am going to ad to these posts is a wine pairing. I generally love the wines served at these meals and I'm going to do what I can to pair appropriate wines with each of the dishes. For this one I chose an Italian wine, Inama Vin Soave Classico 2013. This should be pretty easy to track down, my local Binny's had it for $14.
Til next time where I open the French Laundry Cookbook and an amuse bouche from that justifiably famous restaurant.
