Shiso Tasty

Shiso—like basil, mint, thyme, oregano and sage—belongs to the mint family; and, like all the herbs listed above, it has its own unique flavor. Some people that I work with describe it as being “like mint.” It’s not. It tastes like shiso: a strong, slightly bitter flavor with a little fruitiness at the end. Chances are, if you have ever eaten at a sushi bar, you have probably come across it at some point.

I don’t really like it. It has its place, certainly, with good Uni, or paired with pickled plum, but it isn’t something that I seek out. Other people I know will eat it like it’s popcorn. I suppose my taste buds just aren’t as mature.

It is a hard ingredient to incorporate into a dessert, which is why I havn’t used it thus far. While shopping around the other day, I found strawberries for $1.50 per pound, and knew that it was time to bring strawberries back to the specials menu. It has been a long winter, using the tart, flavorless off-season berries, so I was excited to be able to feature them at the forefront of a dessert. I also knew I had a place to use shiso.

I think people often pair strawberries with basil because they are both in peak season around the same time, and basil is a delicious complement to strawberries. The basil brings a certain spiciness to the party that balances out the strawberries, while it is sweet enough to still feel like a dessert item. Basil, however, doesn’t have much to do with sushi. I wanted to marry the shiso flavor with the strawberries in such a way that it was a major flavor, without masking or over-powering the other components.

Of course, the first thing that jumped to mind was a Strawberry-shiso sorbet. The idea seemed promising enough that I came up with what seemed to be a decent recipe, and tried it out. It was too sweet and the shiso flavor didn’t really come through, but it was worth a second try. After some trial and error, I ended up with a Strawberry, Shiso and Buttermilk Sherbet:

Strawberry+Shiso+Buttermilk Sherbet	Yield: ~ 2 liters
750g Strawberry puree 360g Sugar 400g Buttermilk 50g Water 5-6ea Shiso Leaves, washed and picked	1) Warm buttermilk just enough to completely dissolve the sugar 2) Combine all ingredients, thoroughly blend, and pass through a fine mesh sieve 3) Allow to chill in the refrigerator until it reaches 40°F or below 4) Process in an ice cream machine and allow to harden in the freezer for at least 2 hours

That was a good start. By this point, I had most of my dessert worked out. I was going to do a play on strawberry shortcake, with the sherbet, some macerated strawberries, and buttermilk biscuits, but it needed something more.

It was the perfect time for me to use another ingredient that I have been waiting for the opportunity to use. Soy lecithin, among other things, is really good at making foams. It can simply be added to a liquid and then frothed with an immersion blender or other frothing device, and you have foam. The beauty of the foams are that they can add a lot of flavor without adding a lot more “stuff” to eat. At the end of a meal, you should still be able to finish your dessert without feeling like you’re going to explode. Foams can pack a lot of flavor into literally no bites. As an added bonus, the shiso and buttermilk foam added a nice splash of green and an extra hit of shiso to the plate.

Not just for breakfast anymore...

Waffles. Of all the breakfast foods—other than Dutch Babies, which hold a special and artery-clogging place in my heart—waffles would be my favorite. Sure, I eat more French toast, but that’s because I always have stale bread lying around, and its quick to make, but waffles; waffles are king.

In America, we treat them as a breakfast-only item, but other places in the world sees it differently. In Belgium, one can find waffles in little street carts, with pearl sugar added to the batter so that it caramelizes as the waffle cooks. A similar sweet street food can be found in Hong Kong, topped with sweetened condensed milk. What makes waffles so good? I have no idea. What makes a good waffle? That is a different question entirely.

The first secret to making a good waffle is in the waffle iron. The whole idea behind a waffle iron is that the checkerboard pattern greatly increases the surface-area that is in contact with the hot metal. The result is something that cooks much more quickly, and a finished product that is crispy. If you are using an American waffle iron (the kind with the really small squares), you can make a half-decent waffle, but the deep Belgian style waffle iron is really the only way to go if you want a great waffle.

The next point, as important as the first, is that waffles are not pancakes, they are waffles. It sounds simple, but more than once, I have run into people who think that a waffle is nothing more than a square pancake. Its not. Pancakes are, well, cakes: soft, moist, and spongy. Waffles should be crispy on the outside, and soft on the inside—almost more like toast. Waffle batter is much stiffer than pancake. It can be leavened with baking soda, like a pancake, but most good recipes use other means to make the batter rise.

My method is one that uses yeast. The yeast gives a very distinct flavor, and also a… well… yeastiness.. I’ve had good luck with this recipe. They are good as sweet waffles, but you could just as easily top them with some fried chicken. I found that they even freeze better than other recipes that I’ve tried.

Yeasted Waffles

Yield: ~15 Belgian style waffles

12oz Milk 4oz Butter 2.5oz Sugar 3/4t. Salt 2ea eggs, separated 2c flour 1½t. instant dry yeast

1) Combine milk and butter and microwave until hot (Not boiling. Like 150°ish) 2) Combine dry ingredients except for sugar and sift 3) Add milk/butter mixture to dry, followed by egg yolks. 4) In a separate bowl, wisk egg whites, slowly incorporating the sugar, until they reach soft peaks 5) Fold egg whites into batter. 6) Pour into a large bowl or other container (batter will expand substantially). 7) Allow to rise for an hour at room temperature. At this point they can be cooked, or placed in the fridge for up to another 24 hrs. 8) Add roughly a 1/3 cup scoop to hot waffle iron and cook until golden

I made the waffles chocolate simply by substituting about ¼ cup of flour for an equal amount of cocoa powder. In truth, even with all the cocoa powder, the waffles didn’t taste that chocolaty, but it was enough.

The inspiration behind the dessert was bananas, chocolate, and peanut. I decided to top the waffle with some bruléed bananas (by far my favorite way to treat a banana), and peanut butter ice cream and a little chocolate lace (not pictured), to add crunch and that extra chocolatiness. People liked it so much I ended up running it two weekends in a row!

Stroke of Genius

It’s been a long time since I’ve made a post, for a few reasons. Firstly, my camera has been elsewhere, which really put a damper on my posting possibilities. Also, I have been relatively busy outside of work. Mostly, though, I haven’t posted in a while because I didn’t really have anything worthy of posting.

As I mentioned before, Jianken is in the midst of trying to update their menus, which are in great need of an update. My goal for the dessert portion of the menu is to make it one that has more to do with sushi and Asian cuisine. For the past few months, I have been playing with new ideas and flavors that might fit the new menu, but lately it’s felt like I’ve hit a wall: redundancy. I need a new flavor; a new idea; a new technique. Something. That’s when the light bulb went off:

Calpico ice cream. The girlfriend and I were cleaning out our fridge at home and discovered that there was a bottle sitting in there from a visit to the Asian market. For those who have never tried Calpico, also known as Calpis, it is a non-carbonated soft drink that is made from fermented dry milk. It is sweet and tangy like yogurt, but with its own distinctive flavor. What is even better is that Calpis is a uniquely Japanese product. It was first produced in 1919, and gained wide popularity because in its concentrated form it doesn’t need to be refrigerated. Calpis is as prevalent in Japan as Coke, or Kool-aide is in the US.

At first, I planned on making a Calpis sorbet. I have seen it as a shaved ice flavor, and figured that sorbet would be the next logical step, but I found that in order to keep the sorbet smooth once churned, the product had to be cloyingly sweet. It needed some fat to tone down the harshness of the calpis.

What I ended up with is technically an ice-milk. Ice-milk (at least how I define it), is a frozen dessert that is churned like ice cream or sorbet, but unlike ice cream, it contains no eggs and is thus not a custard. Ice-milk should ideally be less than 10% total milk fat. It has a texture that is more similar to sherbet or sorbet than ice cream. The crème fraiche in the recipe rounds out the flavor a bit more.

Calpis Ice Milk

Yield: ~ 1 liter

75g Sugar 50g Glucose powder* 550g Milk 250g Calpis 140g Crème Fraiche 2sht Gelatin° *Glucose powder can be substituted for an equal amount of regular sugar with similar results °Gelatin is optional

1) Combine Sugar, glucose powder (see note), and 100g milk in a small sauce pot and heat until sugar is dissolved and the milk is starting to steam. 2) Hydrate gelatin, squeeze out the excess water, and add to milk mixture. 3) Combine the remaining ingredients and homogenize with an immersion blender or wisk 4) Allow to cool for at least 4 hours in the fridge before 5) Process in ice cream according to manufacturers’ instructions 6) Allow to harden in freezer for at least 2 hours

I have found that I like the combination of bitter and acid, so I tend to pair things like dark chocolate and oranges, so it seemed natural to pair this with bitter matcha. Matcha rice pudding, Calpis ice-milk, and stewed cherries with brandy. Of course, its not cherry season, or they would be fresh cherries, but I did find a frozen product that was still remarkably sweet and full-flavored.

Pistachio? Pistachio!

Whenever I swing by my parent’s house, there is a bowl sitting out in their living room filled with roasted, salted pistachios. I can plop myself down in a chair and blow through a handful of the little nuts before I even notice. For some reason, though, I have a certain disconnect with the salty little morsels in the bowl on their coffee table, and the nut so often used in European pastry.

It’s amazing to me that pistachios aren’t a bigger part of the American identity. We produce a lot of them. As of 2005, we were a close second to Iran in production, the majority of which comes from California. The nut, which is actually a drupe, originated in the Middle East, and was introduces to the United States in 1904. It thrives in airid climates, making places such as Iran, the Mediterranean, and southwest US ideal places for pistachios to grow.

Pistachios have a wonderful fruity flavor that is very well suited to sweet applications. While in the US they are generally bought, shell-on and roasted, for consumption as a snack food, there are occasionally places that sell them raw. If you can’t find them in a local store, there are plenty of internet sources that sell them.

Financiers (pronounced Fee-Nan-See-Ay) are another of those French confections that have fallen by the wayside of modern pastry. They are little cakes, generally made with almond flour, egg whites, sugar, and my favorite ingredient of all time: brown butter. Traditionally, they would be baked in little rectangular molds that would make them look like little gold ingots, hence the name financier. The cakes that ensue are enigmatic: light but chewy, airy but moist. Like the macaron, they are something that one can easily get hooked on.

As I said, financiers are traditionally made with almonds, but I don’t see any reason why one couldn’t use another nut in their place. A quick search through Google, and I found that I’m not alone. The only snafu I had was that I needed to make my own pistachio flour. In the end, it may be something that is worth buying pre-ground. In order to get the pistachios ground finely enough, I put them in a food processor to get them roughly ground, and then spread them out on a baking sheet in a LOW oven to dehydrate them for about 6 hours. I then put them in the freezer to get them rock hard before finally mixing them with 50% of the weight of sugar and putting them to the food processor one more time… As I said, it may be worth the investment to just buy the flour pre-ground. In terms of molds, you can certainly find financier molds, but its not strictly necessary. I used a flexipan with diamond shaped cavities, and was happy with the result. Also, mini muffin pans would work well.

Pistachio Financier adapted from Stephane Glacier M.O.F

Yield~ 30 cakes

250g Butter 300g Powdered Sugar 150g Pistachio Flour* 260g Egg whites 100g Flour 25g Honey *If you are making your own, subtract the sugar added during grinding from the total sugar amount

1) Place butter in a small sauce pot over medium heat and brown until golden and nutty-smelling. 2) Add the honey to butter mixture and allow to cool 3) Sift together dry ingredients 4) Whip egg whites to soft peaks 5) Fold in the dry ingredients, followed by the browned butter 6) Place in piping bag and pipe into molds that have been sprayed with baking spray. 7) Bake at 400° for 12-15 minutes, rotating one in between

What would go with pistachio financiers? Well, anything. In fact, it was only sheer willpower that kept me from eating the entire batch. Of course, they would be delicious with a cup of tea, such as Earl Grey, or English Breakfast. They also would be good dipped in chocolate or served with preserves. For me, I used them to sop up the remnants of a tasty coconut rice pudding with a scoop of banana-pineapple sorbet.

Rough

I debated with myself a lot on whether or not to share this dessert. Its not that I have some personal interest in keeping the recipe secret, I just think the final plate ended up a less-then-perfect specimen of a plated dessert. Normally in this case, I would just forget about it and wait until I had something worth posting, but after some reflection, I have decided that there were strong elements about the dessert that I liked and which were worth sharing.

As I have mentioned before, I don’t really like cheesecake. Blasphemy to many, I know. Get over it. Of course, I understand that other people like it, so from time to time I will throw one out there. Given this most recent cheesecake episode, I’m almost inclined to think that as long as you call it cheesecake, it doesn’t matter how ill-fashioned the dessert is: people fall on it like a pack of hungry wolves. It could taste like sawdust, and most people wouldn’t say a thing about it. After all, its cheesecake. How could it be bad? Not an inspiring thought.

I received, as either a Christmas or birthday gift, The Sweet Spot by Pichet Ong. It’s a book that I highly recommend, especially for anyone trying to make desserts in a sushi restaurant. While not limited only to Japanese sweets, it is a book of sweets, from cookies to custards, which have Asian influenced flavors and techniques. It was here that I was first introduced to the Tofu Cheesecake.

As Pichet explains, Cheesecake is becoming almost as popular to the Japanese as it is to Americans. Presumably, someone Japanese cook discovered that by replacing the heavy cream cheese with tofu, the cheesecake could be made lighter. “Over time,” Ong explains “it has become something of a nouveau national dessert in Japan. The dairy-free, no-bake cheesecakes and perfect for a mostly lactose-intolerant population who, for the most part, don’t have ovens.”

Tofu Cheesecake adapted from Pichet Ong

Yield: ~1 9-inch cheesecake, or 10 individual ones

19oz silken tofu 2t Yuzu juice* 4oz Heavy cream 1t salt 5 sheets or 2¼t gelatin 2oz water 12oz cream cheese, room temperature 5½ oz sugar *Lemon juice can be substituted for yuzu

1) Place tofu and yuzu in blander and blend until smooth 2) Hydrate gelatin in the water 3) Combine cream and salt, and scald 4) Add gelatin to cream and stir to dissolve. Combine with tofu mixture 5) Add cream and sugar to an electric mixer with paddle attachment and cream until light and fluffy 6) Slowly incorporate the tofu/cream mixture until homogenous 7) Pour over prepared crust or into individually prepared ring molds

As you can see, the recipe still calls for cream cheese because it really isn’t cheesecake without that dense, tangy richness. As it is, it tastes like tofu… but in a good way.

I took the plain tofu cheesecake base, and poured it into ring molds and deposited a round of ganache in the bottom. Instead of the standard graham cracker crust (which I hate), I decided to do something a little different by sitting the cheesecake atop a cocoa nib crumble. To add a citrus pop, I topped the cheesecake with some basil seeds hydrated in sweetened yuzu juice. Lastly, the quintessential strawberries, this time in the form of strawberry pearls.

As I said, most of the components were delicious, but the plate was amateur. It looked a little jumbled together. If I were to do it again, I would probably change a few things:

1) The cheesecakes should have been molded and tamped better, to remove the air bubbles. It might not seem like a big deal, but it is.

2) Get rid of the basil seeds. I love basil seeds, but this was the wrong application.

3) Crumble the “crust” into smaller pieces, so that the cheesecake would stay level.

4) Change the plating… it looks messy

Classic

I’ve often wondered how I would look at food and pastry had I ended up going to culinary school. I certainly don’t regret my decision not to go; I often tell myself that everything one learns in culinary school, one can also learn on the job, yet I’m not entirely convinced I believe that. At the very least, culinary schools force you to be exposed to things that you might not otherwise encounter.

Mignardises (Meen-YAR- deez), as a whole, are something that one doesn’t often find in most restaurants. Taken from the Old French word “mignard,” meaning something small or delicate, mignardises are bite-sized desserts that are served at the very end of a meal. Think of them as dessert number two (or three… or four. I suppose it depends where you go). Some typical mignardises would be chocolates, cookies, or candies: pretty much any little confection one could enjoy with coffee. As I said, they don’t often get much play in a lot of restaurants today (especially in the Boulder area), which is a shame, because it gives the diner an opportunity to experience a wider variety of flavors and textures than any single dessert can provide.

I decided to do a mignardise plate at Jianken, to change things up a little, and also to sneak in some shameless self-promotion. Besides, ever since I stumbled across this video on the interwebs, I have been looking for an excuse to make macarons.

Macarons are one of those quintessential French confections that are not given the credit they deserve in the American foodscape. While there’s some debate as to their origins, most people believe that the macaron came about sometime during the 16^th century, most likely brought from Italy. In its simplest form, a macaron (note: one “o” not two. Macaroons are entirely different) is just almond flour, egg whites, and sugar, baked together. The ratio of sugar to almonds and sugar to egg whites will effect the end product; more sugar produces a chewier macaron, less makes a crispier one. I had never made a macaron prior to this, and ended up having to do a lot of research before I felt confident to try a batch of my own.

Black Sesame Macaron

Yield ~ 50

190g egg whites, at room temperature 250g sugar 100g water 40g black sesame powder 235g almond flower 230 confectioners sugar

1) Add egg whites to stand mixer with wisk attachment. Start on med-low speed. 2) In a saucepan, combine sugar and water, and cook to 240°f (soft ball stage) 3) Increase mixer speed to medium and slowly stream in the cooked sugar, trying to pour between the bowl and the wisk so as not to fling the sugar around the bowl 4) Whip until the meringue has cooled and forms still peaks 5) Sift together dry ingredients 6) In three stages, fold the meringue into the dry ingredients until homogenous 7) pipe 3cm circles onto parchment, allowing room for expansion 8) allow to dry for a minimum of 30 minutes at room temperature 9) bake at 400°f for 11 min, or until done. 10) cool, remove from parchment, and sandwich two together with about a teaspoon of yuzu curd

It took a couple attempts to get a batch that I was happy with. For having so few ingredients, macarons are tricky things to get right. I just need to do it a few thousand more time and I will be as good as the guy in the video.

As for the rest of the plate, I went with some old stand bys, just in case the macarons never turned out. Glazed caramel cake, earl grey and lavender bon bons, and peanut brittle. Classic.

Who knows. One of these days, I may even try my hand at entremets…

Copycat

A lot of chefs seem to like to refer to the craft as an art. It’s a nice thought: something so simple and necessary as food turned into an expression of ones self and ones feelings. Nice, and yet for the most part, I disagree. While there certainly chefs who one could call artists, and for whom food is an expression of the soul, I like to think of us more as the marketing department. You know you need to eat, but our job is to convince you to eat (and generally pay) for the food we make for you. The refined plating and complexity are just a way to make our product stand out… like packaging.

Thinking of food as art does have its advantages, though, because it allows us to do something that a marketing VP generally cannot: Shamelessly steal ideas.

The first seeds of this dessert were planted when they had a chocolate savarin on the menu at D Bar. I remember trying to take the recipe back home to fiddle with it, but didn’t ever manage to get the texture right. It wasn’t until I found a similar recipe on the Callebaut website that I decided to give it another go.

The basic principle behind the Savarin Moelleux is a mousse that is slightly baked, both to give it [some] structural stability and to prevent any possibility of salmonella. What you get is a mousse that is firm enough to hold its shape, but is airy and light on the palate.

Savarin Moelleux adapted from Alexandre Bourdeaux

Yield: ~750g

100g butter 250g Dark Chocolate 100g egg yolks 225g egg whites 50g sugar pinch salt

1) Combine butter and chocolate and melt 2) Whip egg whites on medium speed. 3) Slowly add sugar and salt into egg whites and whip to medium peaks 4) Add yolks to chocolate mixture and emulsify 5) Fold egg whites into chocolate mixture thoroughly. 6) Dispense into flexipans and freeze solid (about 4 hours). 7) Bake at 425° for 6-10 min, rotating once 8) Return to freezer and freeze solid (about 5 hours) 9) Unmold, and allow to thaw.

A couple caveats: Freezing the mix ensures that they won’t soufflé up during baking. If they begin to rise, they are most likely over baked. If you get impatient, and try to unmold them before they are completely frozen, you risk breaking the pieces.

With this as the center of the dish, the rest of the dessert just seemed to fall into place. I filled the well in the top of the savarin with a white chocolate and crème fraiche ganache. A quenelle of orange chocolate creameux, and a lacey chocolate tuile on top to add crunch.

Thinking of winter desserts, it is hard to ignore citrus fruits, which are coming into their peak right now. While at the store, I picked up a bag of clementines thinking that I would give them a try and see how they were. To my excitement, they were exactly how I like them. They were tart, but sweet, with little pith and a nice thin membrane. The acid would do wonders to cut the thick fats of the chocolate and cream.

After eating one or two (or five), I realized that if I didn’t do something with them soon, there wouldn’t be any left for the dessert. I took a gamble, and let the segmented clementines soak in strong brewed earl grey tea. Earl grey is fermented with bergamot, a variety of bitter orange, and so is the natural choice for citrus applications. After about four hours in the earl grey, I drained the segments and popped one into my mouth. The initial taste was very earl grey, but as I bit down discovered that the membrane of the celemetines had absorbed the earl grey, but it hadn’t penetrated into the rest of the fruit. The meat was still bright and clean. I’m so happy with this technique, I might always use it from now on. The other benefit of the soak is that it will prevent the segments from drying out over time.

Finally, I took the left over earl grey “marinade” and added it to about half its amount of orange juice and reduced it down to a sauce consistency.

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.

Jiggle

The restaurant is undergoing a potential menu change. It’s a very exciting time. I designed the previous menu, based on guidance from the owner, and it’s an ok menu, but it has been almost two years, and I’m tired. Time to move on.

I am realizing that I really do believe in the idea that it is easier to be creative when you have restrictions. Or at least, the final result is better. At Jianken, there are a lot of things that need to be kept in mind when designing a new d

essert. First, it has to be Asian influenced. There are a few items on the menu right now that really have nothing to do with sushi, and I’m embarrassed that they are still on the menu. Secondly, any line cook has to be able to plate it. My short time at D Bar has made me long to quenelle things and make the plating really elaborate. Unfortunately, the line cooks couldn’t put the plates out the way they were supposed to look, and that’s far more upsetting than just forgoing the quenelle. It’s much better to have a simple plate than an ugly one.

So, with that in mind, I set out to revamp our current panna cotta, which is a lemon-yogurt panna cotta with yuzu curd and a ginger tuile. I love yuzu, so I wanted to keep that part, but change up the panna cotta base, and maybe change the plating as well. Enter: Black sesame.

Black Sesame Panna Cotta	Yield: 3½ Cups, or about 7 4oz ramekins
12oz Whole Milk 12oz Heavy Cream 4oz Sugar 3T Black Sesame Powder* 1T or 9g unflavored gelatin	1) bloom gelatin and milk in a mixing bowl. 2) In a pot, combine cream, sugar and black sesame powder 3) Bring to a simmer and pour into the milk and gelatin mixture 4) Wisk to combine thoroughly and strain 5) Pour into ramekins or silicone molds. Allow to set for at least 2 hours

*This can be found at asian stores. You can make your own, but definitely remember to strain the final custard.

Traditionally, I haven’t been a huge fan of sesame period, but it is a very distinctly Asian ingredient, and a lot of people love it. While browsing the interwebs, I stumbled across this recipe, from a food blogger with a lot more experience than I. I decided to give it a try. The recipe itself needed only a little tweaking in order to make it stand on its own, as opposed to being eaten out of the ramekin. The flavor is really quite beautiful; there’s just enough black sesame to be earthy and delicious without overwhelming the taste buds. Paired with the yuzu, it was awesome.

Yuzu Curd	Yield: ~1lb
3oz butter 6oz sugar 3oz Yuzu juice 2ea eggs	1) in a steel or other non-reactive pot, combine eggs and sugar. Wisk together to combine. 2) Add Yuzu and butter, and start over low heat. 3) STIRRING CONSTANTLY with a spatula, cook until thickened and bubbles start rising to the surface 4) Pour off into a bowl or container and cover the surface immediately with plastic to prevent a skin from forming

Of course, there was a problem. How to transport it? I wanted it to stand on its own, but just barely. If one were to try to pick it up on its own, it would fall apart. That’s where the Sablé Breton comes in. A thin sable crust that has been topped with a white chocolate feullatine would allow one to pick up and move the panna cotta without actually touching it, and the white chocolate also prevents the crust from getting soggy. The panna cotta is allowed to set in its mold, and then frozen solid. Once its solid, you can unmold it without worrying about damaging the custard, place it on the sablé, and let it thaw. The end result is soft, jiggly custard on top of a crispy crunchy cookie. To finish, I’ve added a little tart yuzu gelée and a honey-sesame tuile.

Honey Sesame Tuile	Yield: 10 oz
7oz Granulated sugar 3oz Honey Sesame seeds	1) Combine sugar and honey and mix thoroughly, until a uniform paste is formed 2) Place scoops of paste onto a silpat or parchment. A tablespoon sized scoop will make roughly a 4 inch circle 3) Bake at 400° until only small bubbles appear 4) Remove from oven, and sprinkle with sesame seeds 5) While still slightly warm, remove from silpat and twist or break into organic shapes