A New Take

A new take on the duck prosciutto dish we were playing around with.

We still used chervil, tarragon, and pickled beets, but also threw in pickled spring onions, edible kale flowers, peas, pickled beet gelee, pear espresso powder, and olive oil emulsion.

I thought that it looked pretty cool. We made 30 of them.

which is a lot.

Until next time, when my hand is better and I can cook again,
-Tim

Almond Gazpacho

I made this the other day at school for another team’s 5-course tasting menu.

Some things to know about this dish: It is not a true gazpacho. Classic Gazpacho is a tomato based soup, thickened with bread and is served cold. There are a lot of variations of gazpacho that I really like (peach and almond are my two favorite), but besides being thickened with bread and having a slightly acidic taste, they are really only gazpacho style soups because they don’t have tomato in them.

Anyways, down to the good stuff.

The thing I like about this dish is it’s flexability. You can do almost anything with it because it is so simple. For example, you can swap out the almonds for hazel nuts or pecans, you can play around with salt-vinegar ratios, or you can change the vinegar type completely to give it a different flavor profile.

Here are the ingredients I  used.

1 part Almonds, plain

1 part Bread plus a little extra for the adjusting of thickness

Red wine vinegar

Salt

Grapes

Garlic, whole cloves

Grape juice from peeled grapes.

Extra Virgin olive oil

Mineral water (I don’t know why, but it just tastes better)

The process may seem tedious, but it is for good purpose.

I started out by combing the almonds, garlic, and enough mineral water to cover. I brought that to a boil and strained it out. I added a fresh cup of mineral water to the drained almonds and brought it to a boil again. I then strained it out one more time. The purpose of the boiling and straining is to mellow out the garlic and almonds a little. That way there is no bitter taste in the almonds, and the garlic isn’t nearly as pungent.

After that, I added the almonds, garlic, and more fresh mineral water to a blender. In addition to the above-mentioned ingredients, I added a little red wine vinegar. I blended it all together, adding mineral water as necessary. When it was starting to get smoother in texture, I started adding olive oil slowly to emulsify it with the other liquid.

When it was all done, I adjusted the taste with red wine vinegar and salt, and stuck it in the fridge to chill.

For garnish, I did a couple of pretty cool things. First, I made some Smoked paprika almonds, which contrasted and balanced really nicely with the subtle flavor of the gazpacho.

This was pretty simple, but really good. To make infused oils, I take some E.V.O.O. and heat it up to exactly 100 degrees Fahrenheit.  Right when it reaches that point, You throw in whatever flavor you want (in this case, I used smoked paprika, but you can use garlic, thyme, rosemary, etc.).

After I made the oil, I poured it over some sliced almonds and let it cool. I also added a little bit of raw paprika to give it a slightly spicy and smoky flavor profile.

They came out looking really freaking cool (and they tasted good too!).

For the rest of the garnish, I just sliced some grapes in half and made it all pretty like. Here is the final product!

Thanks for reading! Check out my other posts in the archives (to the left of the page)

You can also follow me on twitter @RookieChef or tweet from this page (also on the right)

-Tim

P.S. I got a third degree burn on my hand, so im not allowed to cook for a week. dang it.... Doctors orders.....

Tasting menu

Here is the 5 course Tasting menu that we did for school (based on Heston Blumenthal's cook book, The big fat duck cook book").

Kumamoto oyster with Kale flowers, lavender, and passion fruit jelly

This one was pretty simple. We used Agar Agar (a japanese product made from seaweed that is similar to gelatin) to thicken up som passion fruit puree and sugar to make the jelly. while it was still warm, we poured it over the oysters and let them set in the fridge. we then garnished with the flowers and little fruit tuile.

Vegetarian "Pot Au Feu"

Pot au feu is actually made out of bone marrow, so its impossible to make a true pot au feu vegetarian. What you see here is actually a heart of palm with the center pushed out of it, filled with a a sort of horseradish custard filling. The trickiest part of the whole thing was getting it to stand up. We garnished with carrots and green onions and poured a vegetable broth into the bowl table side.

Cauliflower Risotto with chocolate jelly, Dried Cauliflower

This one didn't plate up as nicely as I thought it was going to. It was super good though. We started by making a pretty standard risotto base, But instead of finishing with cheese and butter, we made some cauliflower cream and cauliflower veloute, and mixed that in, making it super creamy and giving it a nice semi-sweet cauliflower taste. 

We garnished with a dehydrated cauliflower, shaved cauliflower disks, and a chocolate jelly, which was quite a rigorous task because the gelatin in the chocolate didn't quite set up all the way, so the disks tore when we tried to pick them up. it turned out alright though and paired nicely with the cauliflower.

Licorice poached salmon, asparagus, vanilla mayonnaise.

This one was probably the most interesting. we poached salmon via the sous-vide method (poached in an airtight bag) and glazed it with a sauce made from slowly cooking licorice down to thick glaze. after removing the salmon from the bags, we poured the sauce over them to coat. We garnished with balsamic reduction and grapefruit membranes.

Thats it! Hope you enjoyed it! more food goodness to to come. feel free to comment or check out my older blog posts (archive to the right).

-Tim 

P.S. You can follow me on twitter @RookieChef or email me at TimothyChambers91.blog@gmail.com

Tasting Menus from school

Over the last few weeks of class, we have been putting together 5 course tasting menus based on the style of a chef of our choosing. here is what some of the other student teams have put together (although, I certainly helped out with these).

 

Pear, beet, smoked salmon skewers

 Wild Mushrooms risotto with lardons. (Recipe-May 5 blog post)

 Braised pork shoulder, Apricot sauce

 Blueberry tart

 Pinapple tomato skewer

 Almond Gazpacho with grapes and smoked paprika almonds

 Shellfish bisque with ceviche

 Potato with Octopuss, balsamic flashed calamari, paprika and olive oil.

 beet cilantro salad

 Seared quail with yellow lentil bacon stew

 braised Pork shoulder with cheesy polenta

 orange segments with red wine sauce

 fried plantain chips with ceviche

 warm duck salad with miso dressing

 ahi tuna poke with soy aioli

 ginger crusted halibut with corn relish

Guinea fowl with mole and hazelnuts

Anyway, I thought that these were pretty cool. I am doing my tasting menu tomorrow, so stay tuned for some more freaking awesome food.

-Tim 

Also, You can now follow my blog on twitter! @RookieChef

Thanks! Happy eating!

Risotto with wild mushrooms and shallots

Risotto is a really classic Italian dish of rice with stock slowly stirred into it to make it super creamy. It is usually finished with some kind of cheese such as parmesan. Below is a recipe that I tested out the other day that turned out really great. If there isn’t a specific amount of something in the ingredient list, it’s because I added it to taste. I didn’t add salt and pepper to the list either, because salt and pepper should go into almost everything. When I made this, I was really proud of how it turned out, so I thought I would share it.

So the first thing to do with ANY recipe is to gather your mise en place (Meese-en-plahs), which in French means “everything in place,” more commonly known as prep.

Here’s what I used for this dish.

Arborio Rice (1 ½ cups)

Stock (Chicken- 6 cups)

½ medium onion, small dice

Enough butter

¼ cup parmesan cheese, grated

crème fraiche

Wild mushrooms (black trumpets or hedgehogs are preferred)

1 Shallot thinly sliced

2 cloves garlic, fine mince

Thyme, Tarragon, Finely Chopped

The first thing to do is put your stock on to boil. Once it boils, reduce it down to the lowest setting to keep it hot, but not simmering. It is really important for the stock to be hot, or it won’t absorb properly into the rice. In a separate pan, melt about 4 tbsp of butter and make it hot. When it is hot and totally melted, add the onions. They should sizzle when they hit the pan. If they don’t, let your butter get hotter.

You want to do this over medium heat so as not to brown your onions. You just want them to sweat and get translucent. When they are translucent, add your rice. Let it absorb the butter and get a little toasted. When all the fat is absorbed, add 1 cup of the stock to the rice and stir constantly until only a couple of tablespoons of stock are left. Don’t rush the rice. This process will take you about 15 minutes to complete.

Keep adding stock in this manner until you have added 5 cups of stock. Taste the rice. If it is still too firm, crunchy, or hard, add more stock. Alternatively, at this point (right before it is done) you can spread out the rice into a shallow pan to cool, saving it for later, ready to finish up in just a few minutes. This is what a lot of restaurants do, to make the cook time of the risotto much shorter for service.

The last thing to do before totally finishing the risotto is to cook the mushrooms, shallots, and garlic. Add about 4 tbsp of butter to a sauté pan and make hot. Add the mushrooms and cook them until they are caramelized (nice darker golden brown color). At this point add the shallots (making sure that they are THINLY sliced-see picture below) and garlic. Cook for about a minute until translucent. If the garlic is brown, the heat was too high. Set aside the mushroom mixture.

To finish the risotto: When the rice is cooked through, remove the risotto from the heat. Add parmesan cheese, 2 tbsp of butter, and a dollop of crème fraiche. Stir in to melt. Fold in mushroom mixture and serve hot. The risotto should spread out slightly when place on a flat plate, but should not be runny. This is what it should look like when it is finished.

My chosen service vessels today were little demitasse cups on plates with adorable little doilies. I garnished with some reserved sautéed mushrooms and sliced chives.

I know that it’s a complex looking procedure, but really, it’s pretty simple once you get the hang of it.

Have fun.

-Tim

If you are new to the blog, check out the archives for older posts

Spring Duck Prosciutto

Today at Blueacre, some friends of the chef came in, so my buddy Eric and I did a little something special.

rolled duck prosciutto, with fresh herbs, shaved pickled beets, crostinis, and parsley oil.

So the food is a lot simpler than it looks.

For the duck prosciutto, we cured a duck breast in curing salt and spices for about 3 weeks. We then popped it into the freezer for a bit so that we could use the meat slicer to get nice thin slices, which we then rolled into what you see up above.

After we had the meat all prepped out, we started the meticulous work of picking chervil off of it’s stem to make them look like miniature trees-very cool.

The product of my labor- a chervil stem

The leaves.

You see, the whole idea of the dish was to make it seem life like and “springy,” using spring colors and herbs and scattering them around the plate.

We also picked dill, tarragon, and made parsley oil.

For the beets, we took some raw yellow beets and shaved them paper thin (this way, they weren’t as hard to eat raw). After that, we just put them in some pickling liquid for 5 minutes or so to let them absorb some of the flavor.

 Beets in a sweet pickling liquid

And here comes my favorite part. After the plate was arranged, we spooned some parsley oil and vinegar into the prosciutto cones to form something kind of like a vinaigrette. We didn’t do this for flavor, but the idea was that when you picked up the prosciutto, the green would spill out onto the plate.

Thought that was awesome.

See you next time.

-Tim