Work in Progress

So this is my first attempt at “Entremets.” I’m not necessarily posting this as something to strive towards, but as a starting point.

One could think of an entremet as a cake, and they would be sort of right. I think of it more as a dessert that you eat by the slice. The shape can be similar (in this case, a standard, 10” round), but what it is made of can be very different. A good entremet should be many layers of contrasting textures and/or flavors that complement each other; sort of like getting a little bit of everything in a single spoonful.

For this attempt, my flavors were a little on the tropical side: banana, coconut, caramel. Layers of banana bread and caramel sauce, suspended in coconut bavaroise (mousse). It was then covered in a white chocolate glaze and colored white chocolate décor.

If I were to give it a rating, I would give it a 6/10. Not bad for a first attempt, but could use some improvement. Among other things, it needed some crunch and was a little too sweet. I also wish that the layers were a little more visibly distinct. But it was good, and the other people that ate it had great thing to say about it.

As I said, it’s a work in progress.

Pear

Happy New Year! Again, it has been longer than I would like since my last past, and as a result, one of my resolutions is to pick back up the pace of my posts to at least once a week.

Note: For some reason, the pictures I took of this dessert seem to be missing. Instead of putting off posting, I decided to go ahead, and I will add the pictures in later.

I decided to celebrate the end of fall with a pear dessert since pears are really only worth eating in the fall. I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with pears. When they’re good, they’re great. It’s really easy, however, to get pears that are either too soft, or too mealy. My approach to the dessert was three different pears five different ways.

The focal point of the of the dessert is the sake poached bosc pear. Bosc pears are good for poaching because they don’t let go of their water as much as many other varieties, so they don’t shrink during the cooking process. I took a bit of a gamble by poaching them in sake as opposed to wine, because despite the fact that sake is called “rice wine,” the flavor it brings is far different. The result, happily, was a pear that kept its delicate flavor, while picking up some of the dryness of the sake.

For the second iteration of pear, I took the poaching liquid from the pears, reduced it down, and made a caramel out of it by adding some extra sugar, bringing it up to around 320°, and adding scalded cream and sake to make a complex caramel sauce that has a strong taste of sake and also a slight fruitiness that is distinctly pear.

The third variety of pear is a pear galette, which is simply puff pastry, topped with sliced pear, brushed with butter and sprinkled with sugar. When they bake, the pears –bartlet this time—wilt down a little bit, but keep all of their flavor. I chose bartlet pears for the galette because I think they have the fullest flavor, and are [fairly] consistent.

The fourth preparation for the pears is another taken from the pages of Keegan Gerhard: a sweet-and-sour roasted pear (though I don’t know if he would necessarily describe it that way). For this I used the little Forelle pears, which taste similar to a bartlet, but are only about a third the size, and made sure that they were a little on the hard side. I roasted them in palm sugar and butter in a 300ish oven, cored and skin on, but with a few slits poked in the sides, moving them around the pan every 20 minutes or so. After about an hour and a half, I added a sprinkle of yuzu juice, to add that distinct tartness.

The final style of pear is a simple pear chip (you will notice that it is missing in the picture). To make the chips, I took the left over Bartlett pears, sliced them very thinly, and lay them out on a silpat. They dry out in a low oven (150°) for 2-3 hours, and then are ready to go.

Of course, in keeping with my obsession over brown butter, the dessert wouldn’t be complete without the addition of a scoop of brown butter ice cream.

Roasted

So I realize that it’s been a while. I would like to blame the chocolates, but in truth, it has been a combination of laziness and lack of material that kept me from posting. The special I made two weeks ago was nice, but needed a lot of work, and I decided to hold off on posting until I came up with something better.

The original idea for this weekend was a Li Hing Mui roasted pineapple. Its something that I have done before, and really liked, but didn’t get quite right the first time. The nice thing about pineapple is that it is pretty much a year-round fruit, which is ideal for a menu that doesn’t change seasonally. The Li Hing (which is made from dried sour plums, sugar and salt) is huge in Hawaii, and adds a fun complexity to the pineapple.

Li Hing Roast Pineapple	Yield: ~12 pieces
2ea Pineapple 6oz sugar 1t Li Hing Mui 8oz Plum Wine	1) Skin pineapple and cut into roughly 6 large batons per pineapple, removing the core 2) Combine sugar and Li Hing Mui 3) Toss sugar with pineapple batons and place in a roasting dish 4) Add the plum wine to the pineapples, and roast at 350° for about 45 min, or until soft

When I think pineapple, I think coconut. I decided to take a page from Ferran Adria, and try my hand at the “micro-sponge.” One combines all the ingredients in a foam siphon, and dispenses into paper cups. The mixture is then microwaved. The result is an incredibly light, moist sponge that tastes faintly of coconut and sort of like sweetened condensed milk. The key to the sponge is getting it to unmold without deflating. It is so light that if it is handled too much, or if it isn’t cooked enough, the air pockets in the sponge collapse.

Another flavor that I think is a must with pineapple is vanilla. Truth be told, vanilla is a good flavor to go with most things. Few people give vanilla the credit it deserves. I decided to incorporate vanilla onto the plate in the form of another new concept to me: fluid gel.

As the name suggests, fluid gel is a gel (usually set with agar agar or gellan gum) that has been vigorously agitated while it set, so that the end result is a consistency similar to a reduction or gravy. Fluid gels are really useful in situations where the flavor is damaged with heat (things like mellon which, trust me, should be left as close to uncooked as possible), in either sweet or savory applications. I recently ordered a few fun ingredients to play around with, one of which is powdered agar agar. I have tried working with the flakes, but they require a long time to soften, and then must be boiled for a long time in order to ensure that they dissolve, which it never seems to do fully. The powder, however, can just be added straight into your liquid and dissolves readily.

For me, I took the roasting liquid from the pineapple and added agar agar at 1.5% of the total weight (in other words 1.5g for every 100g of liquid), boiled for 2-3 min, and then poured into a container to set. Once set, I popped it into a blender, and blended for a few minutes, or until completely smooth.

I finished the plate with a scoop of caramel ice cream on top of a coconut crumble, to anchor it to the plate, and a pineapple chip on top.

Under Ripe

There’s a part of me that believes that it’s impossible to improve on nature. Well, not impossible, but there are few things that beat a good apple eaten out-of-hand. Or cherries. Or a nice, sweet, delicious mango. When the product is good, there is no reason to mess with it. It almost seems a sin to make a peach cobbler if your peaches are sweet and juicy. If, however, you find yourself with fruit that are a little under ripe…

I have to admit that I spent very little time thinking about what the special was going to be this week. My mind was on chocolate, and the holidays, and our Guatemalan line cook getting deported… ya know, the usual. So, when my alarm went off this morning, I found myself doing what I always do when I don’t have I good idea: I copy someone elses.

Tarte Tatin is on a lot of menus right now because apples are amazing this time of year. Woefully, apples don’t really fit with the sushi theme. Believe me, I’ve tried to make apple desserts at Jianken, and while they’re all taste, they are decidedly “not sushi.” I instead found myself looking at mangoes. I searched three of my local supermarkets to find good mangoes, but even the nicest ones were firm at best. A smart person would scrap that idea and go back to the drawing board, but being stubborn as I am, I decided that I would make this Mango Tarte Tatin anyways. I bought them, peeled and ate a bite of one and was pleasantly surprised to find that while hard, they were still fairly sweet. I diced them up and into the oven with some palm sugar, which has a slightly molassesey taste, and butter.

Classically, Tarte Tatin is apples that are baked with sugar and butter with the crust baked on top. The whole thing is then flipped over and cut into wedges. It should be very caramelized and dark. Mangoes, when roasted, tent to drop a significant amount of their liquid, which means they would turn to mush before they started to caramelize. To get around this, I roasted the mangoes until they were just soft, and drained off all the moisture, reserving it. I then made a basic clear caramel sauce, but used the roasting liquid in place of the water.

To order, the caramel is heated in a small saucepan with the mangoes, then stacked in a ring mold. A pre-baked circle of Sablé Breton is added on top, followed by cucumber granita, that way, when the ring is removed, you’re left with three distinct layers. I finished off the plate with a little avocado cream, a quenelle of chantilly, and a phyllo crisp to add a different kind of crunch.

Cucumber Granita	Yield: ~1 quart
20oz English cucumber, seeded and chopped 4oz Sugar 4oz water 1T Lemon or lime juice	1) blend all ingredients in a blender for 5 minutes, or until completely smooth 2) strain with cheese cloth or a coffee filter over a bowl. Allow to drain until all liquid has separated out 3) freeze solid and flake with a fork

Why cucumber and avocado? Well, I love using avocado for dessert. It’s delicious and creamy and possibly better sweet than savory. In fact, if everything goes according to plan, I will be adding some sort of avocado chocolate to this year’s collection. Cucumber granita is something that I have wanted to try making, partly because I think cucumbers taste more like a melon than a vegetable, but mostly because I have always had, in the back of my mind, an idea to make “dessert sushi” that actually uses sushi flavors, not just the style. Plus, its pretty rare that you can get something that green in a dessert naturally. That’s right… there’s no food coloring in it.

“But David,” you say, “That plating looks a lot like the apple Tarte Tatin at D Bar.” Why, yes. It does. I like to think of it as an homage to them, not as copying. Either way, I think that the final result was damn good.

Nostalgia

I don’t tend to think of myself as a nostalgic person, especially when it comes to food. The things I like to cook are certainly not the things that I could see my grandmother making. That’s not to say that I don’t like eating warm homey chicken’n’dumplings or rich delicious sugar cookies. It’s just that, when I think about cooking for the restaurant, the food that I get excited about is usually something more modern. So I was surprised when I found myself begging my mom for her Banana Bread recipe, which she got from my grandmother.

Banana bread is one of those foods that I grew up on. Bananas, being cheap and relatively nutritious (for a fruit), were something that was always around the house; and when there’s bananas aplenty, one can be sure that there will eventually be over ripe bananas. Banana bread is an ingenious use of a product that is past its prime.

I have tried this recipe many times, and many ways, but came to one conclusion. The bananas MUST be overripe. Anything less results in a final product ranging from “just alright” to “absolutely foul.” You could add nuts, raisins, or chocolate to the batter, but why mess with perfection? Here is your basic banana bread recipe:

4oz butter 8oz sugar 2ea eggs 10oz Banana purée 11oz flour 1t. baking soda 1/4t. salt

1) Cream butter and sugar until lightened in color and texture 2) Add in eggs one at a time to ensure a smooth emulsion 3) Add bananas and mix to incorporate. Be sure to scrape the bowl well! 4) Mix in the dry until just smooth. Over-mixing will result in a tough bread. 5) Bake at 375° in a 9x5 loaf pan for about 45 minutes, or until a tooth pick comes out cleanly

Thinking more about the plate as a whole, I like my banana bread toasted with butter, so warming it in a buttered sauté pan is a must. There is a dark rum caramel sauce to counter some of the sweeter elements. Also on the plate, I’ve added some toffee bits for texture and to anchor the caramel ice cream, which was sprinkled with a little Murray River salt. To finish, a fired plantain chip tossed in sugar, because it looks an awful lot like a banana and it got adds some nice height to the plate, along with a nice crunch. I think it came out very well. My only fear is that there isn’t enough to counteract the potential dryness of the banana bread. Something to think about…