chadzilla

the great Miss Lewis

Bailey Barash of Barash Productions emailed me a video link to a 21 minute video on Edna Lewis.  Maybe it was because I had spent the evening before frying chicken at home, or that I had pulled Donald Link's recipe for buttermilk biscuits beforehand to mix this morning, but I was mentally groovin' for a Southern Food pep-rally.  Watching this reminded me of her importance in American food culture.  Arguably just as important as Julia Child and definitely moreso than Alice Waters when it comes to fresh ingredients.  (I actually knew close to nothing about Mrs. Child growing up, but I had heard of Edna Lewis.)

Miss Lewis defined Southern cuisine in America.  She represents this cuisine when it was all about coaxing the beautiful natural flavors in common ingredients.  It's too bad that many of these foods are so lacking in flavor today.  In the same way that poor cooks learned to take the lesser cuts of animals and turn them into tasty dishes, we are faced with trying to add flavor to bland mass produced meats and vegetables today.  I have made it a point of pride to use naturally raised free range chicken for frying (from Whole Foods, since sadly these are the best available to me... for home cooking, not as a chef).  Hearing Miss Lewis talk about frying chickens being available for a short time out of the year, that they were selected chickens raised separately and fed a special diet to insure maximum flavor and juiciness when fried... well, that's humbling.  I feel fortunate to have experienced just a small portion of this food culture in my life.  It's too bad that our food systems, while protecting us against going hungry have also alienated us from our food roots.  Maybe that's part of the sadness that Michael Ruhlman feels at the end of his recent post.

alternatives

Chef K's adapted/adopted philosophy...

"The best chefs are those who are good at Plan B."

... and my addition to this, "There is a definite difference between improvising a real Plan B and pulling something out yer ass.  Both are valuable skills."

I'm driving down through the Keys to enjoy a couple of nights in Key West.  Will post again this weekend.

pie & peanut butter

This dish was actually first inspired by the movie "Mall Cop."  There's a scene in the movie (one of the few which do not involve a Segway) where Paul Blart puts peanut butter over a hot slice of pie before eating it.  I'd never seen or heard of this before, but the combination seems to make perfect sense... isn't it just like warm peanut butter and jelly with pie crust thrown in for texture?

Well, that's how it started.  Banana as a choice of pie seemed logical to us.  To give the banana some added dimension green chiles and liquid malt were mixed in.  The terrine block is one that Chef K has been exploring for some time.  The peanut butter is homemade with some clementines added (why aren't there gourmet flavored peanut butters on the market?  Not the pb&j varieties but peanut butter with flavor essences).  A simple gastrique made from the clementine juice and red wine vinegar finishes it.

foie avocado terrine, banana green chile pie, clementine peanut butter, clementine gastrique

 

This course was used as a segway (not the gyroscope variety) between our savory courses and Fabian's 2 finishing dessert courses.  We used to put a big booming entré plate here, but these transitional dishes make much more sense to us now.  Foie is easy to incorporate into the flavor themes.

Aren't Clementines great, by the way.  They're like little BK burger shots (except for the nasty fast food flavor).  Instead of eating one big orange, you can scarf down 3 or 4 clementines.

okinawa

rafute, ramp hirayachi, sweet potato, soy gel, steamed ginger milk

Chef K decided to get back to his Okinawan roots on this one.  Yes, he is a Kansas City boy but he was born in Okinawa on an American military base (what a contrast in backgrounds!).  The rafute was braised down from Berkshire belly.  The hirayachi acted as a blini of sorts with booming ramp flavor.  Crispy fried Okinawan purple potato, soy gel pearls, and microcilantro finished it off.  The ginger milk offered a delicate contrast.

steamed milk with ginger

I found a few recipes online (Ryan's blog first) for a traditional Chinese dish made by mixing milk with ginger juice coagulated by steaming.  No other ingredients are necessary (aside from a minimal addition of sugar).  The curd will set naturally, and the end result is a soft mildly flavored silken custard.

Coming tomorrow...  this milk used in a dish, plus... Chef K's unlikely roots!!!

what to do with left-overs

Sorry for the 4 day lack of posts...

Chris Windus left behind some nice spaghetti squash during his dinner with us.  We roasted them, puréed them, and turned it into... spaghetti.  Well actually a gel noodle, but the color looks like fat home simmered spaghetti coated with butter.

squash spaghetti, fried nodini, pancetta, chocolate, coffee, olive, fennel

We are using an agar, LBG, xanthan combination to gel our noodles although we haven't used the technique in a while.  Still can't triumph over the syneresis issue, but if it's known ahead of time it can be utilized in the dish.  The 'crust' on the fresh mozzarella nodini was a combination of trisol, flour, cornstarch, and spices.  Getting a solid shell around it proved to be more challenging than expected, but the spices and the crunch ended up having a flavor very similar to pizza-flavored snack chips (probably all that ground up fennel seed).

I'm taking a week's vacation starting today, and Chef K the following week so no Paradigm dinners during that interim.  We'll try to find interesting (or at least amusing) material to post about in between.

really kind words

Thanks, Frod.

You're right.  2 biggest lessons...  mise en place is everything, and keep your chops up.  You don't want to get rusty and forget how to pull sh*t off.  If you don't challenge yourself constantly, you're just spinning your wheels.  It's a mental and physical exercise.

cuban & peruvian

2 dishes on our last menu draw influence from ethnic foods that have been very big in Miami for a long time... Cuban and Peruvian (obviously, if you just read the title).  Cuba is 90 miles south of Key West and is just a short swim away so it is firmly rooted in Miami culture.  Peru... well, I can't say it's more prevalent than Columbian, Venezuelan, or Brazilian culture here, but thank God it's here.  Peruvian cuisine is a unique blend of Latin flare and flavor governed by Japanese restraint and aesthetic.  Many well known chefs from America and beyond have started to pay attention to Peruvian food over the past year.  There are many key dishes to borrow inspiration from.  Here are a couple of riffs we did with Chris Windus...

cuban sandwich... pickle-brined berkshire belly, swiss 'loofah,' wild turkey honey mustard, gianciale powder, pickle froth, pressed cuban bread

peruvian tiradito... yellowtail snapper, coconut pearls, crushed cancha, aji amarillo vinaigrette, sweet potato polenta

tech support

Chef Howard Richardson from Winston Industries stopped in while in the area.  Although we've been using our CVap oven a lot, the uses have been pretty straightforward.  Howard showed us how to maneuver around the control panel a bit more, and gave us a lot of insight into controlled cooking.  We discussed temps, times, brines, transglutanimase, texture manipulation.  The conversation was so good, I almost forgot to take notes.

Here's Howard examining some wagyu brisket after running 24 hours at 56ºC.  The brisket is actually for our Scotch Single Malt dinner tonight.  (Reservations still open!)  After using the CVap for a couple of other quick projects, the more desirable mid-sections were cut from the brisket and all pieces were bagged with herbs and jus to run another 18 to 24 hours.  Can't wait to pull them out and taste them!

Afterwards, we tasted some organic vodkas and liqueurs from Tru (amazingly balanced spirits).  Not a bad afternoon... mad preppin' again all evening.

Sean Brock will be doing a C-Vap demonstration for the 2009 Star Chefs ICC in New York.  Can't wait to check that out.

toob tech

When we first began collaborating with Chris on the last Paradigm dinner, one of the things we wanted to utilize was the bluezoo 'tubes.'  These borscillicate glass cylinders were first implemented by former chef, Ed Biliki, and Chris has personally done countless versions of flavor combinations using them.  They were featured as the first course for the dinner, and the flavor combination was 'chowda.'

So, how does the tube work?  Both ends are open, so a 'plug' must be created for one side.  This will usually involve a soft gel and some sort of crisp plant matter... we used a bacon fat infused potato.  The gel that Chris is setting within the tube is smoked tomato water.

The rest of the elements are subsequently built over it... in our case, chopped razor clam tossed with brunoise of mirepoix and serrano then oyster cracker crumbs.  Afterwards, we foamed bacon cream inside the tubes to 'hold' it all together.  The tubes are placed on specially made stands with clips to hold the tube horizontally (sorry, no picture), and the guest is instructed to forcefully suck the food out.

The 'plug' at the end forces all the elements to enter the mouth at once (don't worry, it's pre-measured as a perfect 'bite').  You can only imagine what kind of perverted thoughts and strange looks the guests can give after this tutorial.  It's all a good laugh, and fortunately we had the perfect crowd for it that night.