chadzilla

raw food

We handle quite a variation of groups and events throughout the various outlets in our resort.  Food allergies are one and special diets are another, and it's beneficial when someone contacts us ahead of their arrival allowing us time to communicate the situation to our staff.  I was put on the spot last night by a different sort of dietary request.

The raw food diet has been around for a few years now.  Despite it's fair existence, I have never personally had to deal with it.  I guess that by keeping myself ignorant (even with great books such as the Charlie Trotter Raw book which has been our for a few years... and which I have never purchased or read), I left myself open for a spontaneous challenge.  That challenge came in as part of a party of 20.  Two women in the group claimed to be on the raw food diet, and I found out with less than 30 minutes to their reservation time.  Even worse, they were owners of a condo next door... who are famously high-maintenance and we can never seem to please for some reason... despite our best efforts.

So with a quick and fruitless internet search, I cursed our slow network and found a morsel of information.  People choose the raw food diet because they believe that vital enzymes and other nutritional goodies are lost when food is taken above 116F... that's just a little over room temperature in south Florida!  Also, 75% of their diet must consist of raw foods... that makes sense considering that certain flavorings and oils must undergo a good deal of processing (usually involving heat).  Dairy (considering the pasteurization process) I was not sure of, so I avoided it.  Raw meats... well, they fit the bill, but I wasn't sure on their acceptance.

Here was my submission to "Battle Raw Food."  The tuna component on the right is there only because I found out (again, only 10 minutes before dishing) that although the girls were on the diet, they absolutely allowed themselves the vice of seared raw tuna and soy sauce... whatever.  So the tuna went on, cold smoked with the new smoking gun, and topped with soy-infused shaved red onion.

The rest of the plate was my spontaneous creation... compression-braised watercress (smoked with peach wood, then compressed with grilled peanut oil), vacuum-infused eggplant with white anchovy oil, garlic, and preserved meyer lemon dust (compression technique again), slow-warmed teardrop tomatoes, and shaved pecans.

The watercress was interesting... allowing smoke and wilting without heat.  Strong meaty flavors there.  The eggplant was also interesting.  My train of thought was that although the dieter could not enjoy anchovies themselves, I could use the oil with compression to offer a similar flavor to the diner... this falls in accordance with the 75% rule in my book.

Next components.  To add more umami, I threw some tomatoes in the Alto Shaam for a short time on low temp.  This slow-ripening or pulling of flavor reminded me of MFK Fisher's story of placing orange wedges over her radiator in her French Apartment.  It's a slow dehydration and glutamate builder.  Taking something naturally good, and making it incredible with very little effort... only patience.  The shavings of pecan are just for extra flavor dimension and texture.  I wanted to incorporate some sort of nut shaved on the microplane, but which one could I use without toasting?  Maybe it was conceived years ago by growing up with a pecan tree, but the flavor of raw pecans are much better than toasted pecans.  I'm not sure if I'm the only one out there who feels this way, but it makes the pecan an anomoly among nuts.

So what's the conclusion here... when I offered to answer any questions about what they were eating, both ladies declined.  They also both ate the tuna from the plate and did not even touch the rest of it... insult to the chef!  I try not to let such things get to me, but I did run around hyped up for a good 40 minutes on this dish while organizing the rest of the parties food.  It wasn't a masterpiece, but I was momentarily proud of it (at least in technique and flavor... not in presentation).  Miami is full of trendy wannabe nobodies without a freakin' clue.  Rise above, Zilla!  The bright side is that it allowed me to educate myself on yet another ridiculous food diet and its unnecessary rules.

don't read this

Do not read this blog right now.  Grant Achatz's web-based portion of his Alinea book is out.  If you have pre-purchased the book... check your email for the password.  If you have not already pre-purchased, now is the time.  Mosaic, the web-site, will be updated regularly and is a pre-view of what we can expect from the actual book which will come out in the Fall.  Let's hope that the website also has a feature which will archive material after it has been posted and changed.

Woo-Hoo!

banh mi burgers

This falls into the home cookin' category... although not sous-vide home cookin'.

Vietnamese saigon subs with grilled pork have been one of my favorite sandwiches for years.  There was a bakery out in New Orleans East that sold them for under a buck each.  The sandwich is a simple balance of flavors, textures, and heat.  A few years ago, I decided to make banh mi burgers while barbeque'ing at home.  The simple idea was to make a burger patty of seasoned ground pork and serve it on a bun (instead of French bread) with the traditional dressings.

The is almost a universal rule among the apartments and condos of the greater Miami area that prevents anyone from barbeque'ing or operating a grill for fire-hazard reasons.  I've never lived in a place where this was a reality, but I'm slowly adjusting to my grill-less life.  To compensate somewhat for the loss of grill flavor, I used a smoke gun to put a little smoke on the raw pork patties before searing and cooking... but feel free to light up your grill and take this one outside if you live in a free country and not in Miami.

This is just like the traditional sandwich in every way except for the form of the meat.  Buy quality ground pork and mix it with minced onion, garlic, green onion, cilantro, fish sauce, oyster sauce, and a touch of sesame oil.  Shape the meat into burger sized patties.  The other sandwich ingredients can be arranged on the side... sliced cucumber, pickled juliennes of carrot (rice vinegar and salt), thinly sliced jalapenos, cilantro sprigs, shredded iceberg lettuce (not traditional, but it is a burger), and mayonnaise (kewpie if you've got it!) and soy sauce.  For the bread, I kept more with the traditional bread texture and went for Chicago hard rolls instead of softer burger buns.

This is really simple, and probably not totally post-worthy... but it is the beginning of summer, and if I had to submit a 30 minute meal for the season this dish would top the list.  Side items may consist of anything from a simple broth soup to an Asian themed slaw to green papaya salad and most definitely an ice cold Heineken or 33. 

The needle on the comfort meter is pegged out on this one.

pie filling

This is a play on the fluid gel texture.  We call it 'pie filling' because it most resembles that canned pie filling mouthfeel in texture.

What makes it even more pie filling-like is that it can be served pretty warm (we used it at 160F).  Since this version was called 'green apple pie filling,' we used apple juice and chardonnay along with apple pie spice for the liquid base.  .85% gellan f was added and the liquid was allowed to gel completely.  The gel was then pureed with a blender until smooth and glossy.  Diced compressed (with simple syrup) green apples were then folded into the fluid gel.

Why go through all of this trouble when we could have easily just made traditional pie filling.  The texture of our version was more like that canned pie filling gel feel instead of the cornstarch feel of tossed fruit and sugar baked in a pie crust.  Which one is better or worse or nostalgic or right or wrong is purely debatable.  Honestly, I really like the texture of this gel.  We served it with an apple smoked bacon wrapped seabass and also with some serrano paleta from Spain.  It works well with many savory elements.  You can argue the use of industrial additives vs. 'traditional' ingredients but a hydrocolloid is a hydrocolloid and we all know that cornstarch is also.  I just like this texture.

Fluid gels are increasingly working their way into the chef's repertoire as a sauce texture.  Agar agar is used in the same way as posted on playing with fire and water recently and a couple of months back in Food Arts article on hydrocolloids by Dave Arnold.  Sean Brock posted on using Gellan F in the same way for fluid gel texture.

Another element we have thrown back into our menus recently is the savory streusel.  Although not an entirely new idea by any means, it fits nicely into dishes for textural purposes and also for modern presentation such as plate visuals inspired by nature.

This Maytag blue and hazelnut streusel was used on smoked duck cooked sous-vide with ras al hanout.  It tastes amazingly like Cheeze Its.  Whether that is a good thing or bad thing depends totally on your nostalgia perspective.  If WD~50 can serve pizza pebbles that taste like bagged snacks, then we are totally within reason for loving this element... same as our 'canned' pie filling.

We are all trying to take extra days off this week.  There are a few special menus in the works along with some other extracurricular things.  We did just get one of our capital purchases in.  It will be used mainly for banquet stations, but I'm sure other uses will develop.  Notice the sticker top right says 2 of 2.

crossing the brine

Hydrocolloids are used industrially for controlling so many aspects of ingredients and cooking.  One of them that has stuck in my mind after reading is the addition of carrageenan to brines.  The concept is to make a brine, and disperse carrageenan into it (after the salts which will prevent it from dissolving).  Once the brine with the carrageenan granules eventually make their way into the pores between the muscle fibers, the meat can be subjected to heat.  The carrageenan in the brine will swell during the cooking process and the increased viscosity will make it less easy for the liquids to be expelled from the meat.  The result will be meat that has retained more of its juices.

Sounds highly logical, right?  I gave it a go and made a small batch of brine containing only water, sugar, salt, and mushroom soy sauce (I am really hooked on this super-umami juice).  The brine was divided into 2 portions weighing 50g each.  To one of them was added (once cooled in the refrigerator) 6% of a mixture of iota and kappa carrageenan (I'm not sure what types or percentages are used industrially).

2 pieces of pork loin were quick brined in vacuum bags and repeated vacuum pressure was used to force the brine within the meat.  For extra measure, the bags were then left in the cooler for 6 hours to brine.

Afterwards, both loin pieces were removed and fully blotted then placed in clean bags and cooked at 69C to ensure a fully done meat.  Using sous-vide as a cooking method dismisses any question of water loss to evaporation.

Both bags were emptied into containers along with their released juices.

After crunching all of the numbers (the pre-cooking brined weight, the meat weight after cooking, the weight of the released juice) it was clear that the carrageenan brined pork retained a tiny bit more of its juices than the traditional brined pork.  When I say tiny, I am talking about a difference slightly above 1 percentage point.  The traditional brined piece lost 20.91% of it's weight in juice, and the carrageenan brined piece lost 19.67% of its weight in juice.

This difference is so small that I realize there are many other factors that could attribute to the difference.  Maybe a higher percentage of carrageenan or different blend would result in a greater variance?  To a company producing mega-tons of cooked pork product a day this difference could prove ultimately huge, but is it worth it on a much smaller scale?

The one strange occurrence that filled me with wonder happened after the experiment was over and the numbers crunched.  On a whim, I took a plastic spoon and tasted the juices from both pieces of pork.  The difference was amazing.  The traditional brine resulted in a salty jus while the carrageenan brine had an incredible savoriness (or should I use the word 'unctuousness') to it... much more rounded with a noticeably greater sweetness.  I imagine this has something to do with salt ions bonding with other elements (namely the carrageenan... because it is the only variable) and rounding out the flavor much more effectively by masking some of the sodium.  The salt cannot just dissappear. 

Strange that I was looking for an improvement in juiciness and possibly an increase in the viscosity of the pork jus, but the greatest difference was flavor.

back out to play...

It's been too long caught up in all the holiday mad-house craziness.  Finally, with our Asst. Restaurant manager coming in to eat with her parents from Sweden, I had the chance to get back to food play.  The dinner was simple with just 3 planned special appetizers then their menu choices of the rest.  I thought about doing Swedish meatballs, but digressed.

First was a sample of Bellota Iberico jamon with honeydew melon confit and balsamic syrup.  I haven't mentioned the full story of this ham before.  Chef K called one of our special importers for a leg of the Bellota (which was the most expensive and revered jamon of the recently... actually not much more than a month now... made available in the US market Spanish jamons).  We were the first to request it, so good call Chef K.  That stuff is like pig heaven on a plate.  Unfortunately, our manager's boyfriend cut the fat off of his piece before he ate it... his loss.

Next up was a salad of pea tendrils with wakame dressing, sweet soy, toasted shiso seed, and a warm garnish of cheesy mushroom and crab rangoon (because I have a one track mind).  The rangoon seemed like a good salad element since warm melted cheese is always good on a salad.

My next course allowed me to finally utilize fried methocel batter on a menu.  I dipped skewers of monkfish nuggets into a batter made up almost purely of...

Lobster roe and fat!  I scooped out the black raw roe and green tomalley from 12 2# lobster's heads after blanch-steaming them for our brown-butter poached lobster dish on the dinner menu.  I added a little lemon juice, worcestershire, and water to the lobster offal and blended it before adding the tapioca starch, xanthan, and methocel SG A16.

The batter was a dull army green, then turned orange after frying.

Again, the fried batter texture is not crispy with the small amount of starch added... it's more like... sort of like stuffed fried tofu skin.

This also is a play on the term 'poor man's lobster' in reference to monkfish.  The fried fish texture is exactly like lobster, and you simultaneously get all of the rich creamy roe flavor at the same time.

I decided to base the other dish elements on buffalo wings by adding compressed celery (texture lightened with a simple syrup made from envision so that it would not be sweet) and blue cheese dressing.

The red sauce is... buffalo soja sauce.  I took our old recipe for soja (made with ketchup, soy sauce, and mounted with butter) and added chile paste to it.  All apologies to Bob Marley, but I could not resist the name... in fact, I composed the entire dish this way just to use buffalo soja on a menu.

This was my first time using envision.  It did not dissolve as readily as sugar (although it is a sugar), but once it did the syrup was the same consistency and had the stickiness of sugar.  When tasting it, you get only subtle flashes of sweetness.  This is definitely an interesting product for getting the effect that only sugar can offer without the sickening sweetness.

trump 57

I've never been a bottled steak sauce fan, opting more for a nice compound butter, bearnaise, appropriate roasted bone-based sauce, or even chimichurri... but I realize that there are many people out there who are.  I can't remember the exact reason I even created this recipe a few days ago (I think it was on a prep list somewhere), but it came out exceptionally good.  Most bottle varieties, especially A1, tend to taste too similar to ketchup.  I'm not sure if that's the base of their appeal for some... like the redneck guy in "Waiting..." who said, "nothing sets off the flavor of a good steak like ketchup."

Here's a little smear of it alongside a piece of (sous-vide slow-cooked then grilled) cote de boeuf.  The flavor is surprisingly 'friendly' with even a world class chunk of beef such as this earthy dry-aged specimen.  I guess balance is key with steak sauces.  I've even considered bottling it up and trying to peddle it in the restaurant, but what for the name?  Trump 57 does have that nice 'familiar' ring, but with probable legal issues.  I also kind of like 'Trump Steak Toupe... the perfect topping for your steak,' but that may prove detrimental to my job security if word gets out.  Anyway, here's the recipe (no hydrocolloids, just well-balanced ingredients)...

1 C mango nectar (or juice)

1/2 C golden raisins

1 C orange juice

1/2 C soy sauce

1/2 C spiced Carribean rum

1/2 C yellow mustard

1/2 C ketchup

2 Tbsp aji panca (Peruvian panca chile puree)

1 C dried diced mango

1/2 C worcestershire sauce

zest of 1 lime

juice of 2 limes

Place all ingredients in a sauce pan, and bring to a boil for about 2 minutes.  Remove from heat and allow to cool naturally until just lukewarm.  Puree fully in a blender.

Things have been crazy, and with crazy goes comedy.  Here are a couple of examples.

I tried a new approach to shutting up all of the noise from people congregating and asking a million questions at the expo since yelling has caused my voice to strain.  For the record, this didn't work either.

... and what would the day be without a little illiteracy from the waitstaff (this example comes from the beach servers)?  It was hard to resist not sending these dogs out with a bite taken out of each one.  I get so many of these I could actually start a weekly special section of chadzilla from them (maybe take it a step further and request chefs all over the world send me photos of their 'questionable' orders... but that may be a little to Jay Leno-ish).

frying high again!

Ok, I'm back!

I've had a note jotted down for a few days to try frying with Methocel.  After using it to whip liquids, and considering it's properties to gel at high temperatures and melt at lower temps (and the ability to transfer these properties to other ingredients) had me thinking about using it as a tempura batter... sort of.  This is not some revelatory shot-in-the-dark (ok... last Ozzy reference).  Methocel is used commonly in industrial foods to add stability to fryable frozen convenience products in breadings and batters.

Being a Southern boy and always looking for great new ways to fry, I shoved some chopsticks into some Methocel whipped liquid and dunked it into the deep fryer to see what would happen.  It puffed up and held a nice shape, but soon collapsed seconds afterward.  It is inevitable to add some degree of starch to the 'batter' to hold the form once fried... however, I wanted to keep this amount to a minimum.

My first real attempt was at recreating buffalo wings.

As you can see, the first trial was not bad at all (this rarely happens).  I whipped some crystal hot sauce with 1.25% Methocel (adding a little garlic, worcestershire, and other necessary modifications), and then added 3% tapioca starch.  This amount is minimal, but was enough to hold the shape once fried.  After dunking the wing in the batter to coat and frying it until done, I had the wing you see above.  The result... very spicy (imagine a batter made almost purely of hot sauce) and slightly crispy.  The methocel batter does not really get crispy, but does have a unique and enjoyable texture... sort of like a fried puffy skin.  All of the flavor remains.  All in all, promising results.

Next victim... a prawn tail.  This time (for a more unique trial) I made the batter from the eggs and tomalley in the prawn head.  To this I added lemon juice, worcestershire, a little water, and the same percentages of methocel and tapioca starch.  The flavor was like eating an entire shrimp at once while simultaneously sucking the goods out of the head.

The skin and inner layer of the shrimp was slightly reminiscent of a baked sweet potato (in texture and color, not flavor).  It was quite interesting to have that shrimp tail encased in it's own fat.

In following my train of thought for the shrimp... for years and years we have fried chicken using batter made from its unborn dead unfertilized children... why not allow this same atrocity to shrimp?  It sure does taste good.  This method will definitely be explored further.  If you're going to spend the money purchasing a huge barrel of Methocel, you may as well use it in every possible way.

Basically, any liquid can be turned into a batter with this method.  My first thoughts go towards classic fried preparations... coconut shrimp fried with a batter of pure coconut milk, chicken fried in a batter of pure buttermilk, corn dogs fried in corn juice batter.  You get the idea.  Many more ideas surface when abandoning tradition.

I cannot wait to show this technique to Big Basco... the fry master.

last but not least...

There was a late entry for TRGWT#8 from Ontario that I failed to post earlier on.  Daniel Whitefield submitted this caviar/white chocolate combination.

tobiko-'crusted' goat cheese and white chocolate creamsicle with tarragon pretzel stick

Nice job on this 'eskimo pie.'  Daniel also added the flavor of tarragon which complimented both of the other flavors.

Please join in the flavor combination craze with TRGWT#9 (Parmesan and Chocolate) which is currently underway on lamiacucina.

sea squirts

Since first spying these little guys in their imported packaging within the frozen foods section of a Korean market a few months ago, I've kept a secret obsession to work with them.  Being from south Louisiana, I have eaten a variety of strange things that are pulled out of the water.  This was something new and interesting, and there isn't much information of the web except for the traditional Korean preparation, and a mention of their super human ability to kill cancer.  What they are to America is an invasive species, and all invasive species should be eaten to diminish their numbers.

After eating one raw and gathering top secret intel from my tastebuds as to the flavor and texture of these squirts (or tunicates), I decided to marry them with some preserved key lime, aji amarillo powder, and some refined olive oil.  When using the preserved limes, there is no need to add additional salt or spices because the flavor imparted by them is incredibly well rounded for simple preparations such as this.  I vacuum sealed the squirts and let them sit in the cooler for a day.

Once removed from their bag, the squirts were plated with some cucumber coulis, Ximenez syrup, and baby shiso leaf.  I wanted to add some toasted cancha for texture and to parallel the use of aji amarillo as a Peruvian ingredient.  Perhaps toasted shiso seed would have given a more appropriate crunch and smooth nutty flavor (this is one of our favorite 'crunch' additions to dishes lately, and they can be found at most Asian markets).

 

So about the flavor... kind of like a chewy intensely flavored fatty oyster when in its pure raw state.  The flavor actually lingered in my mouth for over an hour afterwards.  Once married with the other flavors, it maintained its oyster essence, but with overlying layers of 'boiled crawfish (mud bugs)' and fatty shellfish (not clean like lobster, but more funky like mud dwelling crustaceans).  Assuming these guys are filter feeders, the strong sea flavor is understandable.  The amount of squirts on the plate above is extremely excessive (although one of the Korean interns in the restaurant ate 3 of them... a good sign).  I cannot imagine putting more than 2 of them on a plate, as they are interesting but not something you would immediately eat a slew of upon first encounter.  Having the word 'squirts' on a menu is just strangely appealling to me for unknown reasons.  Maybe even paired with spicy boiled tots (squirts and tots?).  Eat yer squirts, dammit!