Alinea at Home: Crab, Passion Fruit, Coconut, Sprouts

Well here we are back into the Alinea cookbook.  I skipped ahead one recipe just due to timing issues for one component of the next dish I'm going to do.  I was excited for this dish because it contained some ingredients that I've seen in the store here but never worked with and never really tasted before outside of flavorings in teas or sodas at restaurants.

The first portion of this dish is a component that I didn't actually end up using because I couldn't.  These are the ingredients for the passion fruit syrup that was supposed to be part of the passion fruit leather.  It's sugar, water and passion fruit.

I halved the passion fruit and reserved the innards for another portion of the dish.  Then I combined the water sugar and the passion fruit rind to make the syrup.

The second component for this dish was the bread shards.  I took a baguette and sliced two thin pieces off of it and then seasoned them with salt and sesame oil and toasted in the oven.

Time to make the final liquid for the passion fruit leather.  This included water, passion fruit puree, passion fruit syrup, ultra tex 3, xanthan gum and citric acid.  All of these ingredients went into a blender until smooth.

So my first thought was to utilize my baking sheets, but those are slightly warped and probably need to be replaced and I didn't want the leather pooling in the low spot.  The only truly flat cooking utensil I have that is oven safe is my pizza stone so that's what I tried.  It worked great at first, but then as the mixture got warmer it started to make a break for it and I lost some it over the edge.  Once I saw that I adjusted and went back to the baking sheet.  From there however, the fundamental fall is that my oven only goes down to 170 degrees, the recipe recommended this being dehydrated at 130.  so by the time portion of the mixture had dried out to be tacky and pliable the edges ere completely solidified to the acetate.  FAIL!

One of the extra components of this dish was a slice of fresh heart of palm, which I actually scored from a farm in Hawaii.  To make this I made a vinaigrette of lime juice, water, grape seed oil, salt and sugar and then cooked the heart of palm slice sous vide for about 20 minutes until it was tender.

The second component of this dish is a piece of english cucumber which I sliced thin on a mandoline and trimmed down to the shape you see to get rid of the residual peel.

One of the garnishes for this dish was coriander salt.  I took some of the coriander seed and toasted it in a pan for a bit, ground it up and then combined with an equal amount of salt.

Another garnish for this dish was avocado pudding which included grapeseed oil, glucose, salt, lime juice and of course avocado.  I started this mixture out in a blender but given the small amount it worked better if I just blended it in a bowl.

The completed pudding which was reserved until I was ready to plate. 

The final garnish were the coconut bubbles which included coconut from which I harvested the water, salt, sugar, egg white powder and xantan gum.  No pictures of it but the whole mixture got combined together and blended until a foam had formed.

The main component of the evening is crab leg.  Now the recipe called for king crab but my store didn't have any so I used snow crab instead.  I steamed these for a few minutes until cooked through and de-shelled them for plating.

Here are all the components I needed for the plating.  The toasted bread, the crab, cucumber, heart of palm, reserved passion fruit seeds, coriander salt, coconut bubbles, avocado pudding, soy salt, and alfalfa sprouts. 

To plate I broke up the bread and put it on the bottom of the plate, which was then topped with the avocado pudding.  On top of there I placed the crab leg which was rolled with the cucumber and heart of palm.  Opposite of the avocado pudding I put the coconut foam and everything was garnished with the soy salt, passion fruit seeds and coriander salt.

Wow, was this dish good, I wi=sh it had the sweetness of the passionfruit leather, but that probably isn't going to happen until I bite the bullet and buy a dehydrator.

Ad Hoc at Home: Buttermilk Fried Chicken

This was actually the second dish I made from the Ad Hoc cookbook which is also a restaurant owned by Thomas Keller.  This restaurant specializes in family style dishes in a much more casual atmosphere than The French Laundry.  I didn't blog about the first dish I made from the book because I did a terrible job documenting it.

Needless to say, I'm back with a vengeance on this one, with a very simple dish that every red blooded American loves, fried chicken.

The first step, and probably the second most important component of this dish was the brine, prior to cooking the chicken.  Brine is intended to infuse flavor and moisture into the meat via osmosis.  This particular version included lemon juice, black pepper, salt, garlic, honey, water, bay leaves, thyme and parsley.  I brought the mixture to a simmer, then let it cool.

While the brine was cooking and cooling down, I dismantled a chicken into ten pieces and then placed the parts into the brine for 12 hours.

Fried chicken is made or broken by the crust.  This particular crust is a method I don't use very often, a seasoned flour.  I typically tend to find that I'd much rather season the meat directly over the crust that is likely to either fall off or get eaten without including the meat in the bite.  This particular curst was flour, salt, pepper, cayenne, onion powder, garlic powder and paprika.

I split the crust ingredients into two vessels because this chicken is a double breaded version where the chicken goes into the flour then the buttermilk and back into the flour before being dropped into the fryer.  

I fried the chicken up in my wonderful cast iron pan in plenty of peanut oi.

This is what the chicken looked like after coming out.  I didn't really do any fancy plating with this, but part of that was a timing issue.  My wife only likes white meat, and given how touchy fried chicken can be as far as when the best time to eat it after coming out of the fryer and the different cooking times I cooked her white meat first and let her eat and then I cooked my dark meat. 

My skepticism of the seasoned flour led me to put a little bit more seasoning on the meat before putting the crust on which unfortunately when combined with the brine lead to over seasoned meat.  But overall, this is one of my favorite versions I've ever had. 

French Laundry at Home: "Chips and Dip" Potato Chips with Truffle Dip

This was the second of two truffle dishes I cooked out of the French Laundry cookbook last week.  This was certainly the easier of the two, but just as delicious.

So you've seen this photo before but I utilized one of the potatoes and the truffle for this dish along with the clarified butter for the chips.

The chips before and after going into a 300 degree oven for about an hour.

For the dip portion of this dish it included white pepper, creme fraiche, white truffle oil, salt, and fresh black truffle.  The creme fraiche was whipped slightly and then the seasonings and a portion of the black truffle was added.

Everything you need for the final plating, the creme fraiche mixture, some more black truffle and the potato chips.  I chopped the truffle for garnish.

French Laundry at Home: White Truffle Oil Infused Custards with Black Truffle Ragout

Truffles are one of the most magnificent ingredients on the planet.  The white truffle oil isn't anything super special but not a lot of recipes use it and it definitely gives a dish that distinctive truffle flavor.  If you've had anything truffle flavored at a restaurant it was likely truffle oil  you tasted.

Fresh truffles, are a completely different beast entirely.  The truffles I got for this dish are perigord truffles which are widely considered the best in the world and are only sourced from France, Italy or Spain.  These truffles are the winter truffles which are slightly different than summer truffles and of course there are black and white versions of each as well.

So some of these pictures are going to be combined prep photos from this post and the next one because some of the steps were identical.  So both dishes needed baked chips that were basically the garnish.  The custard dish went with potatoes that were studded with a chive.  I'll explain the second dish in my next post but suffice it to say that truffles and potatoes were involved.  Also involved were salt and clarified butter.

I brushed my brand new silpats with the claified butter and seasoned with salt.  I then pared down the potatoes for to the desired shape for each f the dishes and put the proper accoutrement in each and topped with the other silpat which was weighted down with another baking sheet and then it went into a 300 degree oven.  According to a recipe it should take about 25 minutes to get the chips a perfect even golden brown.  I cooked these suckers for over an hour and still got unevenly cooked and not so crisp chips.  Thankfully, in my reading of other blogs on the subject indicate that most people that try these dishes at home have a very tough time with the chips.

The chips Were made a couple days before everything else.  When it was time to make everything else I started with the custard.  This included an egg, milk, cream, salt white pepper and truffle oil. 

I combined the milk and cream in a pan and brought the mixture to a boil.  Once at a boil the I took the milk and cream mixture and put it in the blender with the rest of the custard ingredients.

From here, I let the mixture sit for a few minutes and then it went into the hollowed out egg and into a 275 degree oven for 45 minutes.  Baking custards in this manner have never been very successful for me.  in that it takes way longer to cook than the recipe states.

The final piece of this puzzle was the truffle ragout, this included a portion of the veal stock I ma while back, black truffle, white wine vinegar, butter and truffle oil.  I sauteed the truffle in the veal stock and seasoned with a little bit of the vinegar and then finished with the butter and oil.

The components for the final plate.

You can see the second part of this dish in the foreground, and in the background is the custard.  The chip is suffering from the effects of not being crispy enough.

French Laundry at Home: Veal Stock

So over the past week I've been a busy boy, so much so that I'm going to split this weeks French Laundry cooking escapade into three posts.

Ironically enough, one of my favorite things to do when I cook our of these fancy restaurant cook books are the various stocks and broths that they use throughout the meal.  One of the primary stocks that the French Laundry uses is a veal stock, so that's what I made last weekend.

It's dishes like this that make me absolutely love the internet.  Stock isn't really a stock without bones, in this case veal bones.  I live in a subdivision in Central Illinois, where the hell am I going to get veal bones.  I have some food connections, but no one I know raises veal.  Hello google!  Type in mail order veal bones and after like 10 seconds I'm lead to a place headquartered in California but ships from New Jersey that supplies restaurants and can get me 25 pounds of veal bones shipped overnight.

So what makes French Laundry's veal stock unique is the fact that the bones aren't roasted, they are blanched.  I ordered 25 pounds of veal bones, the recipe for the stock calls for 10 pounds, but I don't have a pan nearly that big, or even enough storage for two stock pots the size I have s I cut the recipe in half and used 5 pounds now.  In reading through the cookbook I suspect I'll be making this stock again soon. The picture above is the five pounds of bones and water.  The recipe simply says twice as much water as bones so there's no exact amount for this first step, but I used about 6 quarts.

So the secret to French Laundry's method is bringing the pot to a simmer slowly.  So the way these were blanched is that the bones and cold water went into the pot and then hit the heat.  Once the water reached a simmer I turned the heat off and drained it and let the bones cool to room temperature. 

The next step was to make what the recipe called veal #1.  This included the blanched bones and another 6 quarts of water. 

The second key to stock is vegetables.  This stock included tomato paste, tomatoes, leeks, onions, garlic and carrots.  The veggies were chopped to various sizes and added to the bone and water mix once everything came to a simmer.  From there I simmered for 6 hours.

Once everything had simmered for six hours, I strained it, reserved the liquid as well as all the solids and held it overnight.  The next day I put the reserved solids back into the stock pot with a fresh batch of six quarts of water and brought it to a simmer and simmered for an additional six hours.  This mixture was strained again and reserved.

On the third day, I pitched the solids and put the two liquids back into the stock pot and simmered for 8 hours. 

This is what the stock looked like at the end.  From here I reserved a small portion of this for my dishes this weekend, the rest went into my freezer for use later.

While stock is simply one component of one component of a dish I still love making them.  I think it's because it takes much more than just throwing stuff in a pot and cooking the hell out of it.  It takes time and patience to get a stock right.