chadzilla

cooking at home and collagen

It's been awhile since I talked about cooking at home...

Actually, I was happy to find a source of beef tendon here in south Florida.  It was frozen in a Vietnamese market... same way I bought it in New Orleans.

The last time I cooked it, it took hours in a crock pot.  I wanted to do it faster, and I thought of the pressure cooker (my stovetop model at home).  I also thought about cutting it up ahead of time... cutting the cooking time tremendously.  Actually, it was shortned too tremendously.  I ended up with a pot full of overcooked sliced beef tendon.  This was all cool but in retrospect, but next time I would leave bigger pieces to get cleaner cuts after cooking and to maintain a little of the structure.

But that's not the point.  It got me thinking of something that had popped into my head the other day.  Why don't we use collagen (or tendon stock) for thickening sauces and getting cool textures in the kitchen.  Now I know that gelatin is mainly collagen, but it seems like more of a puristic practice to extract it directly from connective tissue instead of from bones... which give you more of a gelatinized stock in the classic way.  It would certainly lend great flavor and umami to sauces on a more subtler level.  Unless I am wrong, tendon is made up of mainly collagen (which is a source of gelatin along with bones and hooves).  Anyway, I now have a bowl of thick syrupy (at room temp... in south Florida) beef collagen that tastes and feels a bit starchier than processed gelatin.  So now for a demi-thick sauce that is not as overpowering as demi-glace, why not include a significant amount of tendon in with the bones to get the viscosity?  Tendon has a great flavor also, quite different from the meat of beef.  Have you ever eaten those Vietnamese meatballs that have tendon in them?  They have great flavor and you could almost bounce them off the floor like Steven Chow in 'God of Cookery.'  Anyway, what else am I going to do now with a big bowl of tendon gelatin?

And speaking of umami, we utilized left-overs and things in the pantry for dinner. 

Aside from rice and some tempura chrysanthemum, I made truffled butter lobster with baby corn, chive blossom, and maitake and Ming made some pidan (century egg) cooked with kimchee, tofu, and katsuo flake.  This led me to another discovery that should have been obvious... century egg and truffle go incredibly great together.  It's like funk on funk... like Bootsy Collins and George Porter Jr. on the same bass line.  I will definitely utilize this cross-cultural combination in the future.

execution

Will Blunt from Star Chefs did our tasting alone.  He showed up with a Nikon digital on a huge tripod, took all photos himself, tasted and took notes.  He asked questions and he got answers and it went a little something like this...  hit it!

Our first alternative course... our stand-by of causa with shrimp.  The causa is wrapped in rice paper and micro cilantro.  The shrimp is key west pink shrimp poached in avocado oil with preserved key limes.  The sauces are salsa huancaina (amarillo) and a rocotto pepper sauce (rojo).  Tempura cilantro and avocado relish finish it.  We've pulled a lot of Peruvian influences over time, and this is a tribute to that.  Simple and clean.

Our Autumn seasonal compositional offered as an alternative dish... mulling spice braised pork belly, sweet pumpkin pickles, calabaza puree, maple syrup powder dusted chicharrones, 2 hour eggnog.

The belly was placed in a braising pan with fresh apple juice, chicken stock, toasted cinnamon, coriander, cardamom, clove (almost every spice that begins with letter C), and orange peel.  It was left to braise slowly for about 4 hours.  Afterwards it was pressed between two sheet pans while cooling.  We cut it, seared it, and glazed it with a thickened reduction of the braising liquid.  The calabaza, which is popular in Haitian cooking, was cooked down in liquid, pureed, and thickened.  Sweet pumpkin pickles were made using David Chang's pickle recipe from Gourmet magazine with only the addition of fresh ginger root slices (after tasting Chang's pickles, it's hard to imagine improving on them).  Fried thinly sliced pork belly was dusted with maple syrup powder.  The 2 hour eggnog was made by cooking eggs at 56C for 2 hours, cracking them into an insert, and whisking in heavy cream (sweetened and scented with vanilla bean) with a stick blender until foamy.  I cannot remember what the nice Autumn themed leaf is, but it was brought to us by Yvonne from Tropical Delights in Homestead, FL who grows a lot of our specialty accent produce.

In retrospect, I would probalby cut the pickles a different way, but still not bad.  They just look a lot like play-doh french fries.

The salmon dish from our menu... sous-vide salmon rubbed with Taiwan 7 spice, seared onigiri, enoki take, compression wilted pea tendrils garnished with toasted shiso seeds.  We changed this one a little by putting fermented soy powder in the bowl, and hot dashi was poured in from a teapot.  The powder clouded up in the dashi creating a miso effect and flavor.

The wagyu short-rib from our menu... we call this "your grandma's pot roast on steroids."  The wagyu is seasoned and braised with porcini powder, dried mushroom, and mushroom soy. 

We did this version with a carrot potato puree, a pea puree, and black pepper dots.  The rib is topped with baked potato crisps.  The powder is tomato  5 spice made from cherry tomatoes.

Our menu brown butter poached lobster... we added vanilla to the butter.  The lobster is quickly blanched, then shocked to remove it from the shell.  It's then bagged with the butter to be finished in a water bath.  Other components... fingerling potato skins, St. Andre fondue, asparagus, toasted cocoa nibs (this was a surprisingly great combination in textures and flavors), smoked vanilla sea salt.  Will couldn't eat the lobster tail because he has an allergy to it (apparently the claws are ok because there are 'mites' that live inside the tail that he cannot eat).  I had never heard of this before, but it was interesting.  We get quite a bit of guests with allergies, and we always do our best to accomodate them.

Fabian's dessert intermezzo... tomato jam, ginseng jelly, basil ice cream. 

A thin crispy sliver of prosciutto was added but the picture was rushed because of the ice cream.

The apricot and chocolate dessert from the dinner menu.

Fabian's alternate dish... olive oil cake, gianduja croquant, coconut foam, chocolate mint croquette.  The croquette was a challenge due to the high temperature of frying and the volatility of the chocolate inside.

There was also an ice cream tasting dish because Fabian loves his Paco Jet.  No picture due to difficulty in time.

The whole day went smoothly.  Will was really cool.  He had 3 other tastings to do in the same day (along with Antoinette Bruno who was also doing 4 separate tastings a day), but it didn't seem possible.  In one sense, we were trying to fish information and weigh our chances at being included at the Rising Star Chefs for South Florida.  Everything went out clean, on time, and we tasted every single element so we know that the flavors were on point.  There was definitely a sense of relief in being done with it.  We also feel fulfilled because what we put out was among the best that our abilities will allow within the boundaries of familiarity and our comfort zones... but only for now.

At least if we fail, there will be no question or regret.  It's happy hour.

preparation

Our savory Star Chefs tasting was bumped up from 2pm to 10am.  Gotta get up early.

Peruvian influence

brown-butter poached lobster

kombu

sweet pumpkin pickles

causa

dashi

mulling spice braised pork belly

key west shrimp in avocado oil with preserved key limes

taiwan 7 spiced salmon

2 hour eggnog

hot cider and butter rum fusion

nervous anticipation

The day is almost here.

Chef K received a nomination from Star Chefs for their upcoming Rising Star Chefs of South Florida.  There is a strict set of guidelines to follow, and they must be adhered because the judges are doing up to 8 tastings a day at different locations.  Loosely speaking, we must demo 3 dishes from our existing menu plus 2 of our own choice (basically, whatever 2 creations we choose to present).  Fabian is doing a separate tasting earlier in the day, and his criteria is to present 3 dishes of his choosing.

Admittedly, this is probably the most anxiety-producing undertaking we have ever experienced.  It seems relatively easy on the surface, but we have had to put an excessive amount of though into it.  That leads us to another fear... overanalyzing.  Doing a tasting for Star Chefs means that there can be no mimicking of any other idea.  Everything must be a true representation of what we do everyday...  but beyond our everyday efforts.  Being chefs in a hotel make that more difficult than most cases.  Star Chefs has posted more and more ariticles lately on hotel food and hotel chefs.  The stigmas associated with these still exist.  We have also come to realize lately that we are not sure where we fit in here.  What is unique about us?  What is our message?  How do we present ourselves through our food.  It has always seemed so easy, but now so difficult.

Now with just one day left for prep, Chef K and I have narrowed our presentations down to the salmon, the wagyu shortrib, and the lobster dishes from our dinner menu plus a shrimp and causa dish and a seasonally-influenced pork belly plate from our own improvisation.  This is a well rounded choice of offerings.  Either Antoinette Bruno or Will Blunt will be doing the actual tasting. 

The only remaining task is to make sure every element on every plate is perfect... and then the presentations themselves.

caviar on turkey day

We have tried a few different approaches through the years on Thanksgiving.  We have done brunch spreads in the ballroom, buffets in the restaurant, offered special turkey-day menus during dinner... none of which has ever brought much of a crowd in.  People do call and we feel obligated to do 'something,' but what?  This year, we did a later buffet-style spread with stations (which we always incorporate... trying to make them new and interesting) which ran from early afternoon until 8pm.  Still, turn-out was a let-down.

This station was inspired by a previous Spice menu.  I call it the Teeny Weeny Blini Panini station.  Sure, it's corny... but, what's Thanksgiving without corn?  We pre-griddle small blinis from buckwheat batter and sweet potato batter.  They are filled (like sandwiches) with chive marscapone, then lightly pressed to order, just enough to warm the cheese.  The caviar is dolloped on top.  We ignored the traditional condiments and went instead with maple syrup powder (which I cheated and bought from Le Sanctuaire) and whipped cranberry vodka (which I must have been tripping when I wrote the menu, and could not pull it off).  Versawhip won't work for just whipping alcohol.  I thought of other methods to keep true to the menu, and eventually had to add cream and Zurimix to make more of a mousse.  When the vodka taste was not pulling through, I just added cranberry powder (also from Le Sanctuaire) to get some sort of flavor.  It could not have been that bad.  One lady ate about 12 of them, and wouldn't touch anything else on the buffet.

Luckily, everything tasted great together and that is one of the things that I am most thankful for this year... all of the things we manage to pull out of our wazoo's and still get them to work.  Amen.

food pairing from food for design

I've had the date marked on my notepad for over 2 weeks now, but Martin over at Khymos beat me to making a blog announcement on the subject.  It's a good thing though, because although the site is the manifestation of the Food for Design team, they have not even posted it on their blog.

What am I talking about?  It's a food pairing website.  It is based on volatile compounds that select foods have in common with each other.  Heston Blumenthal has been using this method for quite some time, and his pairings have been only accessible to us after he has already created dishes using them.  Khymos has had a listing of certain matching foods for awhile also.  There is a program that can be installed into your computer that is also a data base for unusually matched foods, but their is a significant price to this technical chef's assistant.  This website is completely free, and open to anyone who visits it.  The main page consists of different foods, and reveals a graph (or branches) of flavors that share volatile flavor compounds with it.  For the unaware, these do not always match up but they reveal some interesting complements.

Some of these matches that we have used thus far are mango/pine, parmesan/chocolate, salmon/licorice, olive/caramel, and the many flavor combinations involving cocoa and chocolate.  I am also currently hosting TRGWT#8 based on a white chocolate/caviar combination.  This is a 'for fun' internet 'contest' that encourages readers to create coherent dishes based on the chosen combination.

Have a great Thanksgiving.  For those of you enjoying the day with family or working with your kitchen families in the many hotels and restaurants across America or riding the waters on a boat, peace and blessings.

china box

This is one of those cultural cooking methods that is vague in it's actual origins.  Their is a Miami website that sells them commercially that calls it La Caja China.  The company's owner claims that he invented the box after observing a Vietnamese method for cooking which was also based on heat from above.  The actual box appears to be a unique slow-cooking vessel, but most websites boast about it's incredible heat within and it's ability to cut down cooking times.  Either way, (if done right) you are left with an amazingly juicy tender pig with dark crispy skin... and that explains the Cuban love for it.

Our hotel has been throwing an annual 'Culture Day' to celebrate the many (and there are quite a few) nationalities that are employed here.  A definite high-point to the day has been having Severino 'Nena' Cruz, the grandfather of Christian in our Catering Dept., bring over his home-made china box and roast a whole pig.  His box was made 20 years ago by hand.  Like other boxes, it is made of wood... but like the better ones, it is plated with steel.  The commercial ones at La Caja China are plated with aluminum, and the top tray that holds the burning charcoal and wood tends to warp and fit less securely.  Nena's caja is a soundly-built machine.  He even added the modification of a side door that drops all the way down suspended on chains to allow easier access to the pig.  The commercial model and most other home-made versions require you (with the help of another) to lift the burning tray of charcoals before gaining access to the pig from above.

Charcoal is used to start the fire.  Wood is added on every hour to bump up the heat.  There is always the claim of an Asian origin to this method... hence the obvious name, but with things of this nature... who really knows the its true beginnings... anyone from Louisiana ever heard of a 'Cajun Microwave'... very similar.

Here Severino opens the secure-fitting side door to check out the pig's progress.  Being a coonass, I have a deep love for all things falling into both the 'pork' and 'slow cooked' categories simultaneously.  I grew up watching old men patiently looking on for the slow-forming signs of readiness in spit-turned pigs.  One of my cousins still designs his own deep pig roasting trailers with spits.

This is part of the hourly rotation of adding and stirring the coals for intense heat.  Aside from the simple genius of this method and its Cuban appeal of tender pork with crispy skin, I only find one thing missing... smoke.  As a coonass, my only disdain for this process is that all the smoke dissappears into the air... never to kiss the sweet flesh of a pig.  I've naturally thought about the possibility of venting the smoke back into the box which would convert it into a smoker, but would that affect the integrity of the design?  A vent for smoke is also a vent to release heat.  Maybe there is no middle ground.  Oh well, where there isn't smoke... there's mojo.  Nothing soaks up mojo better than crackling pig skin.

All in all, it was a triumphant day for pig meat.  With all of the different cultures represented at our in-house event (all Central and South American countries, the islands, Cuba, US cities, Vietnam) pork was by far the most dominant meat.  It does me proud to see so many peoples offer pork dishes as representations of their cultures.  Viva la cochon!

the pimped-out kitchen wagon of ed bilicki

Sounds like the title of a Dr. Seuss book, but it's not.

One of the must-do things on my Orlando trip was to visit Ed Bilicki.  He currently has his hands in a couple of projects.  He is working to open Satava in the spring of 08 and is currently running the Orlando Dan Marino's in the absence of a head chef. 

The absolute coolest thing he has though, has got to be his mobile kitchen wagon.  It looks like one of those retro airstream silverstream campers from back in the day except that it's plated with shiny new steel.  4 huge propane tanks are bracketed onto the back on both sides of the door to fuel the hot equipment inside.  Sounds like a rolling taco stand, right?  Wrong.  How many guys do you know that have a portable kitchen equipped with a 4 burner stove and combi oven, a fryer, grill, hot water bath for sous-vide applications, a vacuum sealer, a paco-jet, ample amounts of cooler and freezer space, and plenty of work space.  It's at least 15 ft long.  There is overhead dry storage and wall mounted spice racks.

This is a better hood system than some stationary kitchens have.  Everything is stapped down and secured for travelling.  This is a guerilla cuisine chef's dream ride.  This thing should have been displayed in popsci... maybe go for a polyscience endorsement and bring in a few more toys... Ed has the space.  Well, being mobile gives you options.  You could always drive around in circles if you want to create a vortex in a beaker without any special equipment.

See... there is a sliding glass window... just in case you did want to sell roadside tacos.

In the kitchen here, which was designed and bought so that Ed could continue to create and cater while waiting for the restaurant to be completed, he showed us a few ideas that he was working on.  One of them is 'steakhouse in a test tube,' but I won't tell you exactly what it is... wait for Spring.  I can only say that it's a cool thing... Satava will definitely be a must-do in Orlando once it's open.

There is an entire clique of cooks and chefs here that exhault Ed's knowledge and reputation.  Although he is no longer affiliated with bluezoo, his name is mentioned constantly.  In our conversation, he told me how important it is to leave your mark on a kitchen... no probem for him here.  Someone wants to order a burger... don't worry, a burger out of Ed's kitchen will be nothing short of perfect.  Ed's ideas linger about and are re-used by everyone here.  Why?  Because they work, and people love them.  If it's not broken, don't fix it.  It's easy to create, to think, to imagine, but Ed seems to have an uncanny ability to take ideas from fantasy to reality and have them just make good sense.  The effects of this are seen on everything here.  So, how was that burger... perfect, good.  Do you know why Ed's home-made french fries are so damn perfect?  It's not the technique but the potato.  He won't tell you though... in fear of diminishing his supply.  He somehow did a little kitchen espionage to find a potato that could be cut and fried perfectly with no pre-blancing.  What kind of potato is it... if he tells you, he'll have to kill you, cut you up, freeze your body parts in canisters, and puree you in his Paco-Jet.  In the mobile kitchen, he packs a variety of specialized ingredients like frozen huitlacoche still on the kernel, interesting spice blends, nitrites... and he uses them.  What's he doing with them?  You can bet they are not collecting dust.  Ed doesn't just collect interesting ingredients... he takes ingredients and makes them interesting.  He has the undanting persona of a mentor chef to many.  He is the general of an army of cooks who are not even on his payroll.

I used to think that our team of chefs was mafioso... until I met the godfather.

Here are some more specific pic's that Ed sent to me.

The combi oven...

The overhead storage space...

3 compartment sink that also has a secure-fitting lid for travel (can you believe it also has a spray nozzle!?!)...

And a view from the outside showing where the window is...

There it is... enough to make any chef envious.  The outside should be painted camo to promote the guerilla cuisine aspect of it.  Thanks for the tour, Ed.

tgrwt #

It's my turn to do this... They go really well together #8!

First off, I will begin with an apology to Martin at Khymos for my procrastination.  I bounced around on the pairing to use for a week or more, than I finally made my decision.  The flavor pairing for round #8 of TGRWT is...

White Chocolate and Caviar

To get an idea what TGRWT is, check out Round #7.

If you already know, or just want to refresh on the rules...

1. Prepare a dish that combines white chocolate and caviar.
You can either use an existing recipe (if there is any) or come up
with your own.

2. Take a picture of the dish and write an entry in your blog by
January 1st with TGRWT #8 in the title. Readers will be particularily
interested in how the flavour pairing worked out, so make an attempt
at describing the taste and aroma and whether you
liked it or not.  The deadline to submit a dish with photos is 1 January 2008.

3. A round-up will be posted here (with pictures). Please send an
email to me (link above on the blog) with the following details: Your
name, URL of blog, URL of the TGRWT #8 post and a picture for your
entry in the round-up. If you don't have a blog, email me your name,
location, recipe and a brief description of how it worked out and I'll
be glad to include it in the final round-up.

That's it.  Start thinking.  Brainstorm those white chocolate caviar ideas for the holidays.  Try them out on you family.  Pass them around at work.  Watch the weird look on people's faces!  Enjoy!

peru mucho gusto

... for Jenny.

A team member from Peru just gave Chef K an amazing book focused on the foods of Peru.  I feel obligated to re-mention Peruvian cuisine periodically because it can really explode in the near future.  It is the cleanest and more logically structured of all the cuisines of Central and South America.  Although I do not know the true history of it, I like to think it is because of the strong Asian influence that affects it.  It is a perfect fusion of Latin and Asian cuisine.  They also represented at Madrid Fusion 2006.

I mentioned 'The Art of Peruvian Cuisine' by Tony Custer before.  This book is much more detailed.  It's bigger and better and more beautiful.  The release of the book was April 2007, but it's outside the radar of books that we see popping up on our frequented websites and catalogs.  Prom Peru is government's tourism board and had done an excellent job putting it together.  It comes in a hard jacket similar to the El Bulli books.  Explanations are in Spanish and English giving it the potential to explode as an international culinary must-have.

Traditional recipes with clean modern presentations.  Many of these dishes are not altered or modernized.  They focus on the traditional components. 

So, if you are looking for something new and different with a lot of simple appeal, check out Peruvian cuisine.  With over a thousand varieties of potatoes in use with interesting preparations and giving birth to such international ingredients such as the tomato, Peru is worth a glance.  Nobu has roots there.  There are also many great Peruvian national chefs in the book contributing recipes and comments.  Gaston Acurio and Toshiro Konishi (who is also affiliated with the Umami Information Center) are represented.

Strangely though, for all of the links above I cannot find a website that allows you to buy the book.  So where to get it?  It seems that the Tourism Board of Peru would take interest in making this book internationally available, but it does not seem so easily accessible at the moment.  That's a shame because I want a copy for myself.  I cannot even find the price.