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.