I have quite a few ideas to post from last night's dinner. We tried varying our approach to writing the menu a bit... not that we really have any kind of format that can be called a real system. Flavor pairings were emphasized a bit more (we're always trying to maximize flavors, but to clarify... we came into the actual menu writing from a different angle). It's a really great exercise to mentally challenge yourself by changing the parameters. I recently read an Achatz quote on Mosaic where he spoke of completely eliminating the use of demi-glace on their menu. Not because of disdain for it or for the sake of rebutting tradition, but simply to get rid of a crutch and force the mind to think differently. This is very important for food ideas and also for creativity with trying to survive in bad economic times.
Another key focus this time was to dig through the piles of bookmarked ideas and inspirations from outside sources... that incredibly fast growing list of techniques or things that we've read about here and there. Eventually, we will be completely overwhelmed by the amount of new things begging to be explored first-hand that it's very important to take an axe and start chopping the list down. It has been necessary for personal growth to do this every so often.
One of these techniques was for caramelized white chocolate. Michael Laiskonsis had recently posted about brown butter and caramelizing milk solids (another very cool idea we utilized a week ago for something else), and it prompted thoughts of caramelized white chocolate and a google search in Ideas in Food to find their past post on achieving this with a pressure cooker. All of these ideas originating in some form or another from even more sources, thus continuing the great collective idea base in the sky. It's really cool when you can tap into that universal collective, although sometimes I have trouble finding the right adaptor that fits the plug (and you find yourself saying things that begin with, "I can't quite remember where I read that recently, but I saw something about... damnit, where did I see that?!?). Eventually, I hope to go wireless.
The technique works wonderfully. First place your white chocolate in a vacuum sealed bag.
Then pressure cook it on high for 30 minutes. The resulting flavor really was like a hybrid of white chocolate and dulce de leche.
Most pastry chefs will most likely cringe at our crude use of this element, but we simply crumbled it up and paired it with mustard-braised rolled shortribs (C-Vapped for 24 hours at 68ºC), dehydrated cinnamon infused beet chips, and pistachio consommé (frenched over tableside) and shaved pistachio.
Another past Ideas in Food technique we looked at was cryo-blanching. We used it in conjunction with compressing oil into asparagus. Jumbo tips of asparagus were vacuum sealed with tahini oil and a little sea salt, frozen for 24 hours, then thawed. It's a double-"cooking" process of breaking down the plant cell walls from the expansion of internal water into a crystal lattice during freezing and the simultaneous denaturing of them from the oil compression (like dressing wilting your salad). The flavor was so fresh afterwards, that I'm surprised we've never utilized this before. Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees (or asparagus tips).
These were paired with hot smoked salmon from our friend, Gregg Donahue, in New England, buttermilk 'tofu,' whipped sesame oil, and kecap manis.
More re-hashing to come...