chadzilla

hangin' from the poll

Sometimes I forget about the poll I created on the left column of this blog.  Actually, I hadn't checked the results for quite sometime.  The question is that of modern food movements regarding MG or food science or whatever term one uses or abuses.  Are today's fascinations with altering foods and creating new techniques based on analytical (or merely just the scientific approach) thought or by using ingredients formerly found only in industrial kitchens or research labs detrimental to the future of food or beneficial.  Obviously, knowledge is power.  The more we learn (whether approving or dissapproving the results) is a good thing.  Much has been said and debated in this area by chefs and scientists much more qualified than I.

Anyway, the results... 75% approve of new techniques and MG food movement ideas, 25% dissapprove.  Does this poll hold any true weight?  Probably not.  Most people that visit this blog have arrived here by searching out information on transglutanimase of alginate or sous-vide or other technique.  In that sense, their opinions are already formed.  The results are biased.

This blog was created as a small piece in the modern machine to share information.  There are no books out there for people interested in learning... ok, there are some but information is scattered and a lot of detective work must be employed.  The internet is a natural medium for those of us attempting to broaden our perspective of cuisine.  I have been contacted by people all over the world in regards to food through this blog.  Some write with information and some write with questions.  The chef interested in food as a science has a naturally curious mind.  This gives him/her the desire to share ideas as much as to seek them out.  This has been the greatest blessing for me since this endeavor began.  I have learned so much.

heart of a chef

A great opportunity for a first time event has come our way... the Heart Association's Driven to Dine in Miami.  Many of the areas best restaurants were involved, and we were lucky to participate.  Each restaurant hosted a table of 10 and prepared a special menu for the night.  This is the approach that we took with it...

We created a fun menu that focused on 'heart-healthy' or just healthy ingredients, techniques, and ideas.  Although I have pictures of each course, the shots were not all excellent.

sunflower seed dahl

This amuse was created by using ideas from Wylie Dufresne (at the Star Chef's conference) and on Ideas in Food with Alex and Aki.  We pressure cooked toasted sunflower seeds with onions and Indian spices to create the texture and flavor reminders of Indian lentils with a strong sunflower seed base.  It isn't much to look at on its own, but the flavor was incredible.

Heart beet confit with long pepper purée, pinot beet jelly, sous-vide duck with beet balsamic syrup

This is my least favorite as far as photo quality is concerned.  The plate was simple and nice... variations on beets.  We seem to pair beet with duck often now.  The combination seems all too natural for us.  The confit was made using vacuum pressure and syrup.  The jelly was puréed strained roasted beet jus with Acacia pinot noir.  The duck was cooked sous-vide at 60ºC.  The pipette is filled with the reserved syrup from the beet confit and aged balsamic.  The long pepper purée is from pressure cooking long pepper with liquid then blending and straining.

super food flight

Originally planned to be a flight of liquid shots, this dish became something different the day of.  It's sort of an extended intermezzo.  We presented a shot of Brazilian acai berry, blue berry, and pomegranate juice in a small glass.  This was accompanied by a creamed avocado and cilantro dollop and a smear of meyer lemon and ginger yoghurt.  The meyer lemons were also pressure cooked then puréed with ginger and blended with whipped yoghurt and honey.  Each element on the dish boasted of the benefits of these 'super foods.'

tea pot barramundi over seared oni-giri and dashi miso broth

This dish mimicks our latest salmon dish on the a la carte menu.  We make asparagus and tamago oni-giri then slice it and sear it with chile sesame oil.  The barramundi was poached in a flavored black tea broth.  We serve a tea pot of hot dashi miso on the side which the server pours into the bowl.  We needed a simple light dish, so we replaced the salmon with barramundi for the dinner.

lomo saltado

A healthier play on the Peruvian comfort food.  The beef was thinly sliced prime filet that I marinated in soy sauce, cilantro, olive oil, garlic, and aji panca.  We grilled it instead of searing for the health benefits.  The potato element was represented by a light yukon causa dough and baked potato crisps (from the Michel Richard "Happy in the Kitchen" book).  Instead of having the beef cooked with peppers and onions, we dehydrated sweet red peppers and green onions to make powders.  The flavors and aromas of these powders are intense... especially flavorful when mixed with the liquid elements on the plate like the cilantro oil.

heirloom tomato salad with pea and goat cheese

We cut cubes of red beefsteak tomato locally grown for this plate.  The pea is represented with a pea purée and pea tendrils.  We threw in some zebra tomato and yellow teardrop tomato raisins.  A skim milk goat cheese sauce is streaked across the plate.  After setting the salads down, we sprayed -8º vinegar on the tomatoes with atomizers.

chocolate angel food cake, frozen yoghurt, jasmine brown rice pudding, papaya foam.

Finishing a meal like this is easy with a great pastry chef like Fabian.  This plate flowed flawlessly with everthing served that night.  The brown rice pudding was a very interesting element to throw on.  He topped the yoghurt with candied ginger and a ginger flower.  Angel food is also, of course, a nice 'lower in fat and cholesterol' choice for a meal finale.

This menu was fun to do on many levels.  The progression in the kitchen flowed well.  The servers were motivated by the energy of the guests.  The guest, in fact, were the most important element to the evening.  They were appreciative and willing to have a great time from the moment they walked in.  Their attentiveness and appreciation motivated us to go the extra mile.  We walked out for each course and explained what we were presenting.  Their feedback and enjoyment made the interludes fun for everyone.  If every table every night was like that, my job would be a complete and ultimate pleasure.

purees

We have had an ongoing textural fascination with purees lately.  Some of it comes from the amazing textural achievments that we experienced at David Bouley's restaurant.  Some of it is from experimentation with different thickeners, both traditional and nontraditional.  Revelations on it have come from re-examining the techniques listed in "Happy in the Kitchen" by Michel Richard.  This has got to be one of the most underrated culinary books in recent history.  He employs the techniques of using potato as a thickener in one section.  This is very similar to the Bouley purees and his use of vegetables as thickeners.  Both of these chefs have proven that extensive practice in this area can yield some incredible results.

The dish above was from a small dinner.  We used a small cube of wagyu shortrib and paired it with a bacon potato puree, a carrot puree, and a pea puree.  Each puree is based on a different method.  The carrot is simply carrot and cream.  The pea is a raw blend of pea, apple juice, olive oil, and flavorings.  The potato was Tate's effort in reproducing the bacon potato puree in Richard's book.  The method yielded the smoothest potato puree we have ever seen.  In fact, the poor picture above does it no justice.  The puree can be so easily manipulated on the plate with a metal spoon and the intensity of the flavor was beyond belief.  These were not your average mashed potatoes.

employing techniques

We have been incorporating (and eliminating) certain dinner menu changes.  One of our goals was to bring some of the different techniques from the table to the line.  The above dish is a new salmon preparation.  We rub salmon with TW7 spice and a few drops of sesame oil then cook sous-vide at 50C for 25 minutes.  The preparation must be done ahead of time and we are also dealing with the reality of not having a thermocirulator on the line.  This presents a technical problem as well as a training problem.  Reheating the salmon the wrong way will result in a cold interior or even worse, destroying the texture that we achieve through the sous-vide cooking process.  The dish is served over 2 pieces of seared oni-giri and enoki mushrooms.  A broth of miso dashi with mushroom is served in a teapot on the side to be Frenched into the bowl.  One problem (which is more cosmetic) is the thin layer of white salmon fat that blooms to the surface during the cooking.  Other meats or less fatty fish do not present this problem.  The winner in the dish is the soft moist texture of the salmon.

From new school to old school... duck confit.  This method is not commonly known to the younger cooks in the kitchen as much as it is to us 'slightly older' chefs.  I have been making confit since the beginning of my culinary days, and it is a technique that I have great love for... the same as curing salmon or working from scratch to make an incredible complex stock.  This techniques sometimes get overlooked by the newer group of kitchen staff.  Perhaps it is some sense of subconscious responsibility that I put on myself to expose these guys to the old processes... besides, well-made duck confit is one of the best things to eat in this world (even mixed with Manwich).  Our version above utilizes a mix of South Indian spices in the duck cure and pairs it with banana tamarind chutney and black mustard raita and crispy papadam.  Although not my favorite presentation, the flavors are a new blend of new and old.

duckwich

What the hell?  That was my thought exactly when Chef K decided to mix shredded duck confit with Manwich sauce in a can.  This was for a whimsical dinner menu written for one of our cooks who was coming in with her family.  The menu course was 'sloppy duck joes.'

As much as this sounds like culinary blasphemy to mix perfectly well-made confit with something out of a can, it worked fairly well.  Just look at the ingredients... high fructose corn syrup, tomato paste, corn syrup (yes, it is actually listed twice).  The strange combination of tart tomato and sweet syrup are natural complements to salted duck confit... go figure.

In case anyone is wondering what the Snickers bar in the back of the above picture is for... Tate did a mock version of something called a Snickers salad.  This one incorporated baby apples and whipped apple juice over a slice of Snickers.

beyond texture

All chefs normally think about textures (or the balance and diversity of texture) when creating dishes.  Usually the thoughts stream only as far as to not bore the eater with a plate full of elements with the same of similar textures.  The mindset is to add in elements that are soft, crispy, crunchy, gelatinous, chewy, etc.  Our brains do not normally think beyond this... but maybe it's time to go beyond texture.

A couple of articles that have come to my attention lately raise the question of how our brains perceive texture... or as a comparison, do we have texture sensors (possibly based on the reception of soundwaves created by the vibrations traveling throught our skulls through the teeth) that function similarly to the tastebuds on our tongues perceiving flavor?  This possibility causes one to think in completely new directions.  Umami and the study of glutamates have pushed us beyond our conventional mindsets, and now we have a whole new world opening up.

Makiko just posted a link on her "I was just really hungry blog" that describes a group of scientists recent research on an English sandwich known as the bacon butty.  Their discovery was that the texture of the bacon had almost more effect on eater enjoyment than the smokiness or flavor of the bacon.

Also, one of my favorite websites and blogs from Norway, Khymos.org, just posted some information on Heston Blumenthal's experiments in this area and also recent studies that look deeply into the ultrasound vibrations that are produced when crunching on jazz apples.  Also, check out another post related to the subject that shows how the chew (or hardness) or certain cheeses can affect flavor aromas.

This is the beginning of a new subject.  Let's see what else will be revealed or how avant-garde chefs will take this concept to the table.

build your own caviar machine

This is a good post to follow up from my last (although it's been slow-coming).  Here is another Kitchen McGuyver idea from the team.  There are many devices available on the internet for producing the El Bulli-style caviar, but most of them either cost too much money or are ineffective or hard to clean.

This is the basic plan for Chef Fabian's caviar machine (pictured with Chef K) which we have utilized many times.

Download caviar_machine.doc

The plan is not laid out to scale or proportion, but includes all of the dimensions necessary.  Fabian designed the width underneath to allow for a half hotel pan filled with calcium chloride solution to fit perfectly.  The plastic syringes can be easily purchased over the internet.  The larger-sized ones that we use work great and are very easy to clean afterwards.  Cut the holes on top depending on the size you purchase.  All supplies (excluding the syringes) were purchased at Home Depot, and they will even cut the pieces for you (although they may complain about it and claim that there cuts may not be perfect to protect themselves).  Fabian coated all of the wood with a couple of coats of wood varnish to protect it.  Also purchase some type of reinforcing brackets to make the frame more sturdy (especially when putting weight on top).

apologies

Yes.  This is the Spring Break time of year, and being a resort on the beach in the Greater Miami area we have had no time to think.  All food play is thrown to the wayside.  We are starting our days earlier and finishing later and the in between consists only of the controlled preparation and flow of chicken tenders, hamburgers, pre-scooped ice cream, and kid's macaroni and cheese.  There is time for little else except reducing your staff to an old-fashioned brigade and yelling like a drill seargent all day (and getting yelled at as well).

The second (and final) wave of our dinner menu changes will be in place soon.  This one will be the most intense.  We will probably need at least 4 to 5 solid days of preparation to put it into effect, not counting all of the staff training that follows.  We have not been completely diligent with documentation during the first change, so there is even more work to do now.  We have pictures that have not been posted (neither here nor in the kitchen).  This menu will be a true test for us.  We will be pulling off cuisine that requires much more control in an environment that is becoming increasingly busier with less staff to accomplish it.  Of all of the hotel restaurants I've worked in, this one finally feels like a 'real' restaurant... finally.  The road has not been easy and the end is nowhere in site.  The physical toll has made me feel like a 75-year-old chain smoking homeless guy in the land of the beautiful people.