chadzilla

culinary smack-down

Here's a link to a San Francisco Bay Area video featuring Iron Chef Michael Symon doing battle again with Chris Cosentino in the Il Canto kitchen.  It's actually not a battle because these guys are having way too much fun cooking together.  The only thing missing are the beer cans.  It's good to see chef commraderie.

hiro's yakko-san

Still enjoying the day off...

Ming and I spent part of the evening at Hiro's Yakko-San, still our favorite place to eat.  The menu features Japanese izakaya style food with a long list of specials every night... food uncommon to the Miami scene although combination sushi/Thai places are everywhere.  They also offer select sashimi, hand-sized oni-giri, and whole fish prepared different ways.  This is by far the best Asian food down here, and a quick scan of the dining room backs that claim.

Hiro has been present on the hot line since the summer.  He owns a couple of sushi spots and take-out joints as well around the Miami area, so it's cool to see the king of the Hiro empire cooking your food. 

Sitting at the counter allows you to catch all the action... like this guy pulling out some fresh uni.  This chef has been cooking behind the line since the first time we ate here.  They never break a sweat and the food just keeps seemlessly rolling out.

We got quick seats after 6pm before the rush came in (I would suggest the same to everyone who wants to come here... unless you are coming in towards their closing time of 1am which is also cool).  This place packs almost every night.

Some chrysanthemum tempura that looked like fans of coral followed up with pork and bitter melon with tofu and spicy fried shrimp with mayonnaise sauce (made with Kewpie).

Then some takoyaki (battered octopus fried in a ball that I found this great video for with an accompanying theme song).  Takoyaki is also popular in Taiwan.

... and seaweed udon that we had to wait on once the rush hit.  No problem, because we were already pretty full.

malpeque's

Off on the day after Christmas... time at the beach in the best weather ever followed by a snack of fresh shucked Malpeque oysters in the sun room at home.  The saltiest I've ever had.

under the christmas tree...

Ming gave me a great gift... a Shun Kaji 9 inch slicer.  Actually, I did drop a few hints.

This Shun has incredible balance and the nickel and steel blade is much more patterned than other Shun series.

The handle appears a little more awkward, but offers amazing comfort and weight.  The pakka wood is beautiful, and the Japanese symbol for 'Shun' is stamped in steel onto the butt of the knife (to remain there long after the emblem on the blade fades away).

This series (like the Wustof Ikon series) is available only through Williams Sonoma unfortunately.  That keeps the price up, and the measely 10% industry discount they offer helps very little at these prices.  I'm glad that the Kaji made it home in time to spend Christmas with the rest of the family...

These are my most used tools (except for the Ken Onion which mostly stays packed away unless I'm breaking lobsters).  I love modern cuisine with all of it's gadgets and techniques, but I still get excited over good knives.  I'm old school in that way.  My overall collection is not breaking anyone's bank, but I cannot use cheap knives.  I have better knives sitting in my tool drawer doing nothing than a lot of cooks use as their main knife.  Spending the money on good knives shows me that a cook has a spark of seriousness about the business.  It's a sign of commitment.

Hope everyone has a great holiday.  I will be at work again, using my Kaji to slice up those turkey roulades!  While all of you independent restaurant guys are enjoying the day off, we'll be feeding the masses who didn't plan ahead to find food on Christmas day.  Our door never closes.

additives in banquets

Otherwise titled, 'an obvious thought.'

We are slowly reaching a point when powders like xanthan, lecithin, versawhip, etc. will be at home in every commercial kitchen along with the usual array of spices on the rack.  As more and more chefs use these to create avant-garde cuisine and push the limits of tradition, I have been thinking of using them to create stability.  If chefs in positions such as 'banquet chef' in a hotel operation became educated on such products, they could ultimately save time and create a more banquet-stable food product.  Their is no more abusive environment to food than the banquet operation... hence the stigmas about banquet food.  You have to 'fire' and plate foods early on due to high volume.  Finished foods sit in hot boxes or salads sit dressed far longer than they would a la carte.  Chafing dishes unleash brutal heat on foods during the long course of a buffet and its preset.  So, why not use alternate thickening agents like carrageenans to give a stable and semi-heat resistant viscosity to creamed sauces?  Why not incorporate xanthan and lecithin to prevent cold sauces and dressings from separating?  What about specialty products like TIC Gums Dairy Blend to keep whipped creams standing tall through the night (especially when a dessert display needs to be set early in the banquet and no one touches them for an hour and a half?  You get my point.  It seems like an obvious thing and a step back towards the industrial uses of these ingredients.  At this time, the only chefs studying these things are the ones who want to create freaky foods... not plate a banquet for 350 people.  These people are more commonly drawn by a paycheck, and not a desire to study food.  Not to say that there isn't a sense of pride in their work, but there is a difference.  Executive chefs, this is your duty!  Learn how to use these products and pass on the information!

There is no better time to take advantage of banquet improvements than the holidays.  As I needed to make 12 deboned turkey roulades (to bad there isn't an enzyme that will dissolve bones and connective tissue) for a banquet-style Christmas menu, I took an alternate route to trussing birds... Activa RM from Ajinomoto.  We have used this 'meat glue' in the past to fuse meats together, strengthen gelatines, and create skinless sausages of any protein that could be sliced into clean medallions.  Why not just fuse turkey to turkey?

Using an old empty spice shaker, I made a seasoned blend of the transglutanimase with a little salt and some basic seasonings.  This was sprinkled onto plastic wrap and then all over the boneless turkey.

Afterwards, a quick roll up and tightening seals the bird.  By tomorrow, they will be glued in this formation by the miracle of protein-binding enzymes.  I will inject a light brine into them with my cajun injector, and we will probably steam them a while to cook them, and finish them in the oven.

The best part will be the consistent rondelles of boneless turkey when slicing them.  There will be fewer pieces unrolling and less waste.  I basically have here a huge raw turkey sausage waiting to be cooked, sliced, and served.  The injected brine will help to keep the bird juicier through holding periods.  This method is simple and takes less time than traditional ways.  How could a banquet chef not love that?

It can also greatly off-set the high cost and bulk buying of these ingredients if you can divert some of the cost towards your high revenue banquet sales... banquets does pay the bills.

choco-fuel

While food is being manipulated by avant-garde chefs across the world, scientists in London have gone beyond the limits of 'mg' creativity in this yahoo article that Fabian sent to me.  They have designed 3 vehicles to complete an expedition from Poole, England to Timbuktu, Mali running entirely on fuel made from recycled discarded chocolate.  This gives us yet another use of chocolate aside from making Easter bunnies, studding cookies, and scoring brownie points with the ladies.

achatz triumphs!

A NY Times article by Bruni released 18 December proclaims that all traces of cancer have been obliterated from Chef Grant Achatz.  He credits aggressive chemo and radiation therapy, and also states that during this time he had only missed 14 services in his restaurant.

We should all remember that the next time we are feeling the exhaustion and yearning a day off.  It's great to hear of a chef defeating life-threatening illness instead of self-inflicting bad health from bad habits as is often the case in this industry.

little fishies

Here's another Ming meal at home.  I'm very lucky to be able to do what I do for a living, and still have a wife who can conceive the most satiating and thought-provoking meals at home.  They are thought-provoking due to the fact that they are put together from an Eastern perspective.  Ming reads a lot of recipes and food articles in Chinese, Japanese, and English and combines ideas from all of them... I guess that's what Taiwanese cuisine is from a simple perspective.  There is definitely a harmony of Chinese and Japanese thought when it comes to food orchestration.  These ideas inevitable influence my train of thought.

shushami or capelin fish.  These are great to eat.  The entire fish is gone in 3 bites (yes, the entire fish including the head and tail).  Cooking them requires only a quick fry (add a roll in starch if you'd like).  The best thing about them is that the mid-section is full of capelin roe.  It's like eating a fish stuffed with caviar.  The head end is booming with flavor from the internal organs... serious umami.  We just accent them with squeezed lemon and dip them in Kewpie mayo and sriracha.

Salmon don-buri.  Covering many spectrums of flavor, this dish has a base of white rice, topped with salmon cooked with vegetetables, then a topping of tobiko, another topping of soft cooked eggs, and furikake and nitsume sprinkled all over the top.

There is nothing super innovative about these dishes from a professional sense.  Since we both cook at home, our daily meals (when we do have time to eat at home) can be as sporadic as the food above mixed with southern fried chicken wings or Italian dishes or sandwiches.  I'm just happy with what comfort food has come to mean to me.  The balance and composition of them satisfy unknown cravings... even when eating something for the first time.  I never had these foods as a kid in south Louisiana, but they are just as satisfying as a big bowl of gumbo with potato salad.

'sort of' flexible butter

I just wasn't able to 'tie the knot.'  The butter, although having some degree of flex, would still split if it was bent too far.

I started with a couple of different konjac/xanthan ratios blended into melted butter (using the beurre monter method).  Chef K later found an article on the web that revealed Wylie Dufresne's actual proportions the the gums...  .45% konjac and .19% xanthan (or a .65% concentration of 70% konjac and 30% xanthan as he puts it).  Well, it certainly helps if the guesswork is removed, but still nothing works immediately.  I was able to get flex, but not full flex.  A useful application nonetheless.

The flexible butter still has all of the characteristics of 'normal' butter... you can squeeze it, spread it, it tastes and feels exactly the same on the tongue.  I'm thinking about increasing the water in the beurre monter to give more of a structure to the gum gel in the mixture.  This (if done slightly) might give you more flexibility without sacrificing the butter feel (?).  Obviously, it would be detrimental to add too much gum or you would change the texture beyond butter... notice the gum's 'remains' when the butter is melted whole under a lamp.

Once the fat melts out, you can see how much gum is in the butter.  Increasing the water might stretch the gum's power without adding more gum.  Fun for another day.  We also pondered using the thermomix to implement the gums and control the heat and emulsion during the melting phase.  This may work better than by actually making a beurre monter.

I don't know why I want to stick everything under the heat lamp lately.  It's sort of the same drive that makes Eric Cartman want to hit everything with a stick.

capt. charlie's question #1

Here is a new feature I'd like to call "Capt. Charlie's Questions... sailing the seas of curiosity."  I really wish I had a cool little theme song to go with this, but I'm not that technically savy and I probably wouldn't put the time into it if I was.

So...  What is Capt. Charlie's current question?

Why does milk look white in its natural state, then turn a strange yellow color when frozen, then return to white when thawed?

Admittedly, I do not know the answer to this one, and I have never really thought about it much.  If anyone out there is an aspiring Harold McGee, please enlighten us.  Then Capt. Charlie can again sail the seas of curiosity to other unanswered questions.

regular milk

frozen milk

Yup.  That certainly does look rather yellowish. 

If I had to guess at this, I would say it had something to do with the fat content and probably (or obviously) the way the light is refracted once it's frozen into a crystal lattice.  Maybe I should try it side by side with skim milk to determine any noticeable difference.