ONGOING INVESTIGATIONS ON FOOD + COOKING
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food
smucker's jar | peanut butter mouse - crumbled peanuts - strawberry sorbet - salted brioche crisp
I don't do desserts often, but this is something simple that I could pull off without pulling my hair out (I don't like working with sweets). It's a playful take on a Smucker's jar, with the salted brioche crisp as the lid. You crack the brioche into the jar with a spoon, and enjoy the textural and temperature juxapositions these familiar ingredients would otherwise provide.
brioche-crusted halibut | white corn pudding - israeli cous cous - corn shoots
My sous-chef, Cecile, taught me a really cool technique with corn. Basically, you juice raw corn, saving the flesh, pulp, and cob for another purpose. Take that raw corn juice and heat it up, and the starches from the corn will thicken the liquid, making an incredibly intense corn-flavored pudding.
korean blt | bulgolgi bacon - bacon powder - cherry tomato - butter lettuce heart
The eggplant is deep-fried whole, dunked in ice water, then peeled. I like eggplant this way because it has a very clean taste. The texture is almost like that of a giant grape.
Sometimes I create dishes purely on a certain look that I'm aiming for. I have a picture in my head of how I'd want the dish to look, and then I make it work from a taste and culinary perspective.
into the wild | a salad wild of vegetables foraged from our coast
We have a forager that comes around every once in awhile. He brought us some exotic ingredients this time. I built a dish around them.
sake sherbert
pickled hearts of palm
sesame seeds
bergamot mint
pink peppercorn
yuzu/sudachi citronette
hazelnut milk
fresh ricotta
honeycomb brittle
fennel oil
chervil
pixie mandarin
pickled green strawberry
baby fennel
strawberries confit in olive oil
short bread
champagne gel filled strawberry & coated with chocolate and popping sugar
kiwi & green strawberry sorbet
Minibar is absolutely the best dining experience I have ever had--easy. Both food and drink were unparalleled.
dan dan noodles | sichuan spiced oil - iberico broth - jamon - shanghai noodles
dan dan noodles | sichuan spiced oil - iberico broth - jamon - shanghai noodles
"Dan dan" refers to the pole that street vendors originally used to carry the fresh noodles who made this dish popular. This dish tastes different every where I've had it. I like the flavors, but I usually get palate fatigue before I can finish a serving. The best I've had was at Spicy Town in Fremont. It's numbingly spicy, both from the amount of chilies, and the heavy use of sichuan peppercorns. It's intense, it makes you piss sweat and your lips feel as though you've rubbed it on habanero sandpaper, but it's delicious if you can manage the pain.
My version is more subtle. I clarified a broth made from jamon iberico bones and served with a noodle sample from Rice Valley. I made an oil with the same spices found in most Sichuan staples (coriander, garlic, chilies, sichuan peppercorns, cumin), and separated the liquids from the solids, and smeared the latter on the sides so the diners could control the heat at their discretion. Top that with some sliced jamon, and we have some fancied-up dan dan noodles.
raw scallops & coke farms strawberries | sake sherbet - pink peppercorns - fried sesame
raw scallops & coke farms strawberries | sake sherbet - pink peppercorns - fried sesame
This was dish conceived through improvisation of ingredients on hand. One of my favorite pairings is strawberry and pink peppercorn. It just works. The sherbet acts as a chewable dressing for the salad.
hen of the woods | koji marinated chicken - foie - truffle demi - siberian miner's lettuce
hen of the woods | koji marinated chicken - foie - truffle demi - siberian miner's lettuce
The breast was marinated in koji, which is rice inoculated with the bacteria 'aspergillius oryzae.' The same bacteria responsible for the fermentation of sake, soy sauce, miso, and a good majority of the Japanese pantry. If you'd like to learn more, listen to David Chang's lecture at Harvard, where he covers in detail.
lobster & asparagus | white asparagus & truffle ice cream - spring vegetables & legumes
I love falafels. To me, a good falafel should be explosively crunchy on the outside, and light and fluffy on the inside. A bad falafel is bland, dense, and sometimes even pasty. I've had my fair share of those.
This recipe took some trial and error to develop. Here are the most valuable things I've learned:
We start off with Cecile's sexy salad. It celebrates the emergence of spring, a meet and greet of ingredients local to our coast:
The Chef Team recently went to Gotham to work on the food program. We came back inspired by the restaurants we visited, from Eleven Madison Park, WD-50, to Momofuku Saam Bar. This week Chef's Table is a reflection of this inspiration. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
kumamoto oyster | vichyssoise - creme fraiche - caviar - edible sand
soy panna cotta | sake poached shrimp - salmon roe - passion fruit - wasabi peas - kelp broth
honey-cured duck breast| celery root - truffles - foraged mushrooms - pickled celeriac
frozen root beer float | a sherbert of root beer
milk & cookies | cocoa financia "cup" - malted vanilla milk - dehydrated milk foam - straus milk sphere - butter powder
The second wave of courses was the desserts, some of the most whimsical culinary imaginings, plated and edible. If Willy Wonka was a pastry chef, he would have worked at Alinea.
pork belly | with thai distillation
A linea' is latin for 'pilcrow' which is that backwards 'P' used to indicate the beginning of a paragraph. But, in the Middle Ages, this symbol was used to indicate a new train of thought, and in the case of Chef Grant Achatz, a new concept of cuisine.
Achatz’s menu at Alinea offers some of the most radical ideas ever to hit the plate. You can see for yourself here. In my opinion, his presentation skills are rivaled only by El Bulli, which was rated the best restaurant in the world by Michelin…Alinea was ranked 10—that’s still pretty good.
Incidentally, during his first years at Alinea, Achatz was diagnosed with cancer that effected his tongue, preventing him from tasting his own food—a chef’s worst and most ironical nightmare. He eventually overcame it, but during his treatment, Achatz continued to work full-time and even developed new recipes, saying that the inability to taste forced him to think outside the box and create a dish through pure and mental conception.
I had the opportunity to eat at Alinea during my vacation in Chicago. We had the prix fixe menu which consisted of a whopping 14 courses, and it was unforgettable.
ROES. It was salty, sweet, very briny, but refreshing. It felt like I was eating something straight off the ocean floor.
PORK BELLY W/ THAI DISTILLATION. House-made Sriracha, cucumber-infused lettuce, and braised pork belly. But the real star of the show was the thai distillation. It had all the floral aroma of a thai bird chili with none of the heat.
white asparagus parfait | yogurt - arugula flowers - avocado
WHITE ASPARAGUS PARFAIT. Served in a cylinder that, when removed, dropped the entire parfait onto your plate. Very interesting textures happening here.
BLACK TRUFFLE EXPLOSION. Served on his famous 'anti-plate' One of the most flavorful spoonfuls of food I’ve ever had. It was a literal explosion of truffle juice condensed into a pasta cup.
WAYGU BEEF W/ POWDERED A1. Pretty much like eating beef-flavored butter—it was so soft. It was served with a simple, but ingenious potato-chip crusted potato puree. It also came with a cellophane packet of powdered A-1…which was honestly more gimmicky than tasty, but it did taste exactly like A-1.
The kicker was the black urn centerpiece, which was sitting on our table the whole time, but wasn't put into play until the steak course. Water was poured into the urn and barbecue-scented smoke began to waft toward and engulf our entire party. A great end to the savory courses.
Stay-tuned for the next post on desserts. In the meantime, watch this craziness.
www.culinary-workshop.com
cognac-aged duck breast | chocolate duck demi - cocoa nibs - baby porcinis - fennel stems - butternut squash puree
The duck was brushed with cognac and lightly seasoned with salt before dry aging for three days in the walk-in. This intensified the duck flavor and tenderized the meat slightly, making it possible to cook the duck a bit more on the rare side.
I've been messing around with fennel stems because I think they're gorgeous, but they were terribly stringy. I found peeling, blanching, and then salting them helps with the texture.
Valentine's is synonymous with chocolate and flowers. We wanted to open up the meal this way, but with a savory twist. The chocolate candy is supposed to resemble a mole, and the flowers are to be eaten afterwards to hit the refreshing cilantro notes.
chocolate & flowers | edible cilantro bouquet - mole yam chocolate - sour cream - sea salt
i ♥ salad | cranberry dusted rhutabaga - hearts of palm - artichoke hearts - lettuce hearts - hearts on fire
A salad of all food pertaining to hearts. The dressing is a vanilla cream & mint oil. Frozen blood orange, creamy ricotta, and Jenna's granola finish the dish.
red | truegrass ribe-eye - beet demi - cabernaise - caramelized beets - beet greens
raspberry rose cream soda | fresh raspberry puree - carbonated rose water - whipped vanilla bean cream
heart's desire | elderflower marshmallow - melted salted caramel - passion fruit habanero push pop - satsuma coconut truffle
The meal ended with Jenna's beautiful spread of desserts pictured above. Aside from its artistry, each component of this dish was perfect, my favorite being the elderflower marshmallow that was made from both the flowers, and the berries from the same plant.
We don't often repeat our dishes, but the edible garden continues to resurface, perhaps because it's so pretty that it's hard not to show it off. We've changed its presentation over time to keep it interesting.
Most of the vegetables are blanched in heavily salted water in a very large pot. You want a large pot to prevent the vegetables you’re adding to the hot water from decreasing the temperature too much. The hotter the water, the quicker vegetables cook, and the greener they stay.
The cromesquis is made of eggs scrambled with gelatin and cream cheese in a thermal mix, heated just enough so that the gelatin can melt. They were then poured into a mold, frozen, breaded, and fried. It acts as sauce when broken into.
The vinaigrette is made from a vegetable stock that has been reduced significantly. It’s then whisked with arbequina olive oil, a touch of black truffle oil, and a splash of champagne vinegar. It’s a very savory and not so acidic vinaigrette.
edible garden
seasonal vegetables - edible soil - spinach moss - truffled egg cromesque - vegetable jus vinaigrette
seasonal vegetables
egg cromesque
vegetable jus vinaigrette
hummus
spinach
edible soil
