Works In Progress

I had the urge to try some new stuff out this weekend, but had very few ingredients, so here is what I came up with

First, I have been wanting to try out some dehydrating. It’s a little bit more towards the modernist side of things I suppose, but I figured that it would cool to make things crispy that normally aren’t crispy. For example: Cabbage, Cucumbers, peaches, Cherries, etc. I decided to start off with cucumbers.

I set the oven to as low as it can go (for me it was 200⁰F) and cracked the door for 6 hours while I was at work. The results were less than satisfactory.

The heat was too high and the cucumbers were in for too long.. That much was clear just from the color. They were very crispy which was awesome, but I think that if I had dropped the heat they might not have shriveled up. Perhaps if I just left the oven on warm and let the cucumbers go for a little longer, they would not shrink up from the higher heat and cook a little more gently. Or I could just get a dehydrator.

Expect more dehydrated cucumbers in future.

Secondly, chilled soup of cherries, peaches, and cucumbers.

A few days ago, My fiancée brought home a bunch of fresh fruit and cucumbers from her aunt and uncle’s garden. Needless to say I was pretty excited about this. Mostly about the cherries and peaches, two of my favorite fruits when in season.

I could have made some dessert out of them, but that’s what everyone does. I decided to shoot for the savory side. I started by marinating peaches, cucumbers, cherries, basil, thyme, olive oil and vinegar in a bowl overnight to let the flavors get to know each other. The next day, after Straining and pureeing, I got a slightly viscous but not completely smooth soup. It was a sort of intriguing texture, and it had great flavor, but was really unexciting. I am thinking of garnishes now, something along the lines of balsamic reduction, honey mascarpone, and black lava salt. Perhaps a table-side pour?

Anyway, I thought that I would do a quick update about the random crap that I am doing.

Hope you enjoyed.

-Tim.