Alinea at Home: Bison, Potatoes, Pistachios, Sweet Spices

So, I finally got this dish completed.  Good lord, was this one tougher than I had anticipated.  I was supposed to have this on Saturday, but circumstances which prevented it.  I then tried to have it Sunday but realized I had messed up some steps along the way so I rebooted and did some of the accompaniments over.  I had company on Tuesday and so I finally got to a point where I could finish.  So here we go.

The first thing I made was the pistachio puree.  Salt, sugar, water, yukon gold potato, and pistachios.  In the first go I used unshelled pistachios, which were probably a better option.  After I messed it up, however, I decided that the shelled variety would be easier.  Shelling the number of pistachios I needed is NOT a fun task.

The completed puree.  As you can see by the color the in the shell variety with the papery skin underneath removed is the purest way to get the bright green color they should have been, but I don't really care.

Next step were the braised pistachios.  This included salt, pistachios, water and butter.  These ingredients were combined and cooked until the pistachios were tender.

Here are the completed braised pistachios.

The third component was the spice pudding.  This is where I had really messed up the first time where I missed the instruction to strain the mixture before chilling it in the fridge.  The spices used include peppercorns, cinnamon, allspice and salt.  The spices were boiled and then steeped in a mixture of water and white wine vinegar.

Once the liquid boiled the mixture steeped for about 20 minutes.  Once the steeping had completed, agar agar was introduced and the mixture was brought to a boil again to activate the starch.  The mixture was then strained and then put in a bowl and put in the fridge to set up.

This is the completed spice pudding.

The final minor component was the spice powder, which included salt, cinnamon, peppercorns and allspice.  These spices were toasted and then ground.

This is the completed powder.

The final step was to prepare the main part of the dish, potatoes and the bison.  I sliced the potato very thin using the mandolin and then sliced into thin strips.  The real recipe called for a next of potato which required a spiral slicer, which I don't have. 

For the bison I trimmed off the sliverskin, chain meat and the head roast.  Then finally I cut off a small portion for this dish.

I seasoned the bison with salt and pepper and started to deep fry it.  After a couple minutes I added the potatoes.  Obviously you can't see anything in the picture but those bubbles mean that the oil is doing its job.

The completed bison and potatoes.  I seasoned the potatoes with a bit of the spice powder.  Now it's time to plate.

Completed plate.  Overall, I was very happy with the dish and it was of course delicious. 

Marinated Steak

So, I'm trying to get back into the groove here, but for whatever reason I just can't seem to do it.  Tonight I went easy and straightforward, grilled steak.   This dish actually started on Saturday when the steak first hit the marinade.

Here are the items that made up the marinade.  Olive oil, parsley, red pepper, poblano pepper, yellow pepper and garlic. I roasted the whole peppers to take the waxy skin off and then combined everything together.  Once complete the steak went into the marinade. 

Here's everything after hanging out for two days in the fridge. 

The completed steak.

The final plate.  Truly a perfect weeknight meal, especially when life is busy.

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. 

Steak Sandwiches

So I'll admit it, I'm hitting the reboot button a bit.  Life is just so busy these days, I have time to cook, but sitting down to put my thoughts into my little piece of the web is a little difficult at times.  Last Monday I had wanted to do a pork dish but none of the stores I went to had the pork loin I was going to need to pull it off successfully.  So I made this steak sandwich instead. 

 The first step was to prep the steak.  I used a sirloin steak which is not a cut you would eat straight up, so it was perfect for t his dish.  The steak was seasoned with salt, pepper, ancho chile pepper and brown sugar.

The sandwich wasn't just served straight up, it included a corn salsa.  The salsa included, corn, red onion, apple cider vinegar, mustard, sweet relish, Frank's hot sauce, ketchup, salt, barbecue sauce, brown sugar, and poblano pepper.  I roasted the poblano and then peeled it and diced it and mixed it with the rest of the ingredients.

 The final pieces of the sandwich, bread, olive oil and romaine lettuce.  The bread would end up getting toasted off on the grill after the steak was cooked.

 The seasoned steak ready to hit my NEW WEBER GRILL!  It is new, but this wasn't the first time I've used it, but this was the first non seafood item that I cooked on it.  I love it, the thing will get to 600+ degrees without even breaking a sweat.

 The completed steak.

The finished sandwiches.  These things were delicious. 

Next: Vegan

So I did something that I didn't think I could successfully do.  Ate a meal at a fancy restaurant without meat.  Of course its Next so they were probably going to pull it off successfully, but I was still scared.  I love a bleeding piece of beef and it generally makes everything taste better, so I certainly had my trepidations.  Add in what was supposed to be a surprise trip with my girlfriend and it being the first full week of service of this menu and I was a nervous wreck before this meal.

  It's not a very good photo, but in typical Next fashion they have a centerpiece that is involved in the meal.  In this instance it was apple wood that held in its branches, the opening note (which Next has always done) and one other little surprise.

The second part of the centerpiece.  This is a glass box full of water and flowers and a candle.  I wasn't sure why this was on the table, but it did come into play early on in the meal. 

The first course was served to us on a rock, and utlized something else that was hidden in the tree, a sourdough starter cracker.  The cracker was use to scoop up a charred avocado puree that was studded with raw avocado, edible flowers, sorrell, kale, and sprinkled with Chinese five spice.  I'm not a big fan of avocados but this was a real winner for me.

Two more courses.  The left is called autumn leaf and its a roasted radicchio chip, good, but radicchio is always bitter and this was no different.  The right is called sprouted tempeh, I'm not entirely sure what this consisted of except there was a lot of soy involved.  Very salty and a jelly like texture that was probably also soy based.

This one is called frozen baked potato.  It's a roasted potato skin cup that is filled with frozen purple potato basically ice cream that was likely made with liquid nitrogen.  The cup also includes other flavors that one would find in a baked potato.  Of the first courses this was one of my favorites.

The next three bites.  Starting in the middle and working towards the bottom of the picture we have leek and banana.  The cup was a roasted leek leaf that was filled with a banana puree, the green bite is a nori dumpling and the third bite is a rambutan shell that was been filed with a rambutan jelly.  I enjoyed the rambutan and the leek and banana.  Nori has always been a tough flavor for me so I struggled a bit with the dumpling.

The final of the small bites to start the meal, baby artichoke.  You can't really see it, but there's a heavily roasted baby artichoke that has had its heart hollowed out and filled with an artichoke puree and served with the same basil pesto that was on the swordfish dish of the sicily menu.

 The first of the larger courses of the night.  This dish is called Fermented Apples with Lichen.  This includes granny smith apples, granny smith apple ice and lichen which is a fungus that grows naturally on apple trees.  

 In addition to the sparkling wine that was served with the first courses, t his course had a sipping vinegar that was served with it.  This was a red wine vinegar that was spiked with some other flavors.

 

This is the dish where the pond that was in the center of the table came into play.  This is a dish called LillyPond and I honestly don't know what was in it.  But the waiter fished the herbal garnish you see in the plate out of the pond and we ate it.  I enjoyed the dish, but for the life of me I can't identify the ingredients, though it's possible there were water chestnuts involved. 

The next dish was served with a sparkling cider which is sort of becoming a Next tradition.  I believe Sicily and Kaiseki are the only two menus that I've been to that they haven't served one.  I thoroughly enjoyed this glass.

 One of the more fun dishes of the night, White Asparagus and Rice Yogurt.  The top is a rice cracker that is served over the top of sliced white asparagus and a yogurt made from rice water.  The kicker with this dish is that a second sauce is brought out, licorice that was frozen in LIQUID NITROGEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  (Yes I'm a nerd) They spoon the frozen sauce over the plate and as it melts it forms a licorice syrup that went really well with the dish.

The first red wine of the night for the next two courses.  This is unlike any wine I've ever heard of.  The vineyard completely rejects all modern wine making techniques.  They don't use yeast cultures, they don't use climate control.  I hate to say it, but it's all natural.  This is a wine that is very similar to what would have been drank throughout the Roman Empire.  (By the way, this wine is made on Sicily on the slopes of Mt. Etna).  The result, is actually a natural carbonation that makes this wine almost sparkling, it was fantastic.

 This dish is called, Salsifies with Oyster and Dandelions.  Salsify is a root vegetable that is said to be very similar to both dandelion and oyster, so the restaurant played off of that and served it with both.  The right is the oyster version, it's a salsify (the with thing in the middle, served with oyster leafs (leaves that are supposed to taste like oysters) and a dandelion green puree.  The left is a roasted salsify served with a dandelion green.  The idea with this dish was to eat the right side first and then the left which was to give the diner the sense that they were eating an oyster course followed by a salad.

 This is a dish called Swiss Chard and Douchi.  According to the waiter, this dish was born out of necessity.  Apparently, one of the chefs in preparing for this meal made a call to a local farming probably talking about the farmer's ability to supply a bunch of Swiss Chard.  Evidently, the chef forgot about the call until the farmer called and said I have 12,000 Swiss Chard plants ready for  you.  The mixture on the right is the douchi.  Douchi is a fermented soybean concoction that is native to Japan.  In this case it was deep fried (kinda like a sweatbread) and tossed in a flavorful mixture of who knows what.  The douchi mixture was placed on top of the tempura fried chard leaf and eaten like a toastada.

This next dish was Kombu Atoll.  The atoll comes from the way the dish is plated.  Against the blue bowl that looks like the ocean the dish looks like an atoll.  The dish itself was kombu (seaweed) topped with yuba skin and served with a ponzu sauce and yuzu juice.

Up next was cherry blossom and almond.  Nothing special at all here, the white stuff is an almond milk almost yogurt that had the flavor of goat cheese.  Sam and I both were not fans of this dish. 

This next wine is a 2008 Barolo.

The wait staff then brought out this center piece which they told us was just for us to look at for a while.

A couple courses back the staff brought out a cart, inspired by the French cheese cart,  that had all kinds of mushrooms on it to show us what would be coming later.  The cart consisted of morels, the home grown shiitakes that they are growing, enoki mushrooms, beech mushrooms, and several others.  This dish is titled Mushroom Cart.  It's a mushroom risotto that uses faro instead of arboio rice.  The liquid was probably mushroom stock and the whole dish was topped with various mushrooms. I thoroughly enjoyed this dish though I don't think it was above any other mushroom risotto I've ever had.

Red Onion:  Inspired by Stupak.  This dish includes heavily caramelized red onions that were tossed with mint, cilantro and fresno chiles.  The sauce on the outside was a brussels sprout puree.  The Inspired by Stupak portion of the dish is the quinoa "wire" that is on top.  Alex Stupak is famous for creating these food wires and the chefs consulted him to get this one done with a grain.  I'd be very curious to see  how it was done. 

This is the dish where those earlier test tubes came into play.  This dish is called curry roasted cauliflower.  The orange sauce is a harissa sauce.  Before we ate, we were asked to push the crunchy bits from the test tube on to the dish to create the garnish.  The dish was really good, but a bit too spicy for me.  If a dish is too spicy for me I'm really scared for Sam, but she loved it, might have been her favorite of the night.

The dish was served with grilled nan bread, a quintessential Indian staple.  In funny fashion, that was likely the result of the first week of service, the waiter that brought out the bread flat out told us that he had no idea what it was.

Before we ate this dish we were given a spoon that had a bit of the olive oil jam and Sichuan pepper the idea being that the Sichuan peppers would give your tongue a tingly feeling before eating.  I didn't notice anything.  This dish is called Olive Oil Jame with Biter Chocolate.  The yellow stuff is the olive oil jam sereved with a bitter chocolate almost sponge cake and the red stuff are freeze dried strawberries.  Fun and pretty delicious dish.

The cocktail for the desert courses was lambrusco, Cocchi Roso, Luxardo and Maraschino. 

I never thought I would say this but probably my favorite dish of the night was a desert.  This is hibiscus and pistachio.  There is hibiscus syrup, a hibiscus crusted vanilla ice cream, a couple of sponge cakes, another crusted vanilla ice cream and garnished with crushed pistachios.

The final desert was developed out of little competitions the kitchen staff apparently has on Sunday nights.  These are steamed crepes.  The top level is vanilla brulee flavored.  The bottom has a passion fruit flavored and chocolate flavored crepes.  These were good, but again not mind blowing.

The menu. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this meal.  In none of the courses did I miss the meat, and I left the restaurant very full.  I feel like the long menu is the chefs trying to compensate for not having any meat, which is totally understandable given no meat.  But ultimately, for what it was this meal was entirely too long.  Some of it was due to opening weekend but it was a four hour meal start to finish.  Lots of simple timing issues that I think will be corrected as time goes on.  I'm glad I went, but if I never eat Vegan again it will be too soon.  Looking forward to November and Bocuse d'Or.  I still have no idea what to expect with that menu.