chadzilla

takoyaki

The first experience I had with takoyaki was in Taiwan from a street vendor.  Today, it's on our regular "to order" list whenever Ming and I dine at our favorite local izakaya (and probably the only izakaya).  Tako does not refer to a Mexican tortilla dish, but is the Japanese word for octopus or cuttlefish.  The dish originates in Osaka where it was first called radioyaki (in reference to the popular new electronic device at the time although the corelation is completely lost on me).  Every household in Osaka is believed to have at least one of these devices.  These days, most Americans would guess the takoyaki pan to be the recent (and thankfully recently defunct) trend home kitchen item referred to as pancake puffs.

Ming recently ordered a machine from Japan and has been diligently seeking out recipes on the internet.  For some reason, these machines are always red and have the same cartoon octopus on them no matter what manufacturer designed it (ours even has little cartoon faces that can be incorporated onto the takoyaki and a ring for a headband although we haven't yet felt the need to do so yet).  Instructions are conveniently placed on the back of the box.  Luckily, Ming knows enough Japanese to translate (plus there are pictures for gringos).

We've done a couple of late night trials with various batters.  The last results were great.  Patience is definitely a must.  All of the dimples are filled with batter.  Chopped cooked tako is dropped into each hole.  More batter is put on top.  In our latest batch, Ming added scallion, chopped steak, and cheddar cheese.

Looks like a big mess, right?  This is where some of the patience comes in.  Using a toothpick or skewer, keep working the sides of each takoyaki until the batter firms up enough to flip it.  Shove the cooked parts from around into the takoyaki.  At this point, the takoyaki will have a light brown/pale crust.  Do not remove them.  Let them sit in the dimples and continue to brown, rotating them every few minutes (more patience).  The cooking time for good takoyaki in our machine has been from 15 to 20 minutes. 

Cooking for this long will allow the true takoyaki magic to happen.  Your culinary mind tells you that the inside is cooked and firm and will continue to get moreso.  Instead, a crispy brown outer shell forms and the insides are steamed, becoming creamy and soft.  That's the magic.  The texture reminds me of a good soft creamy goat cheese fritter.

But that's not the totality of the takoyaki experience... the condiments must be taken into consideration.  After the takoyaki are removed, each one is brushed with a sweet/salty brown sauce.  We're not sure of the exact traditional recipe for it but Ming's last creation had ketchup, worcestershire, and soy sauce... and it was pretty on point in flavor although not exactly traditional Japanese ingredients.  Afterwards, kewpie mayonnaise is squirted across the top of the takoyaki.  Shaved bonito flake and a seaweed furikake are added.  Nothing is as alive and magestic as hot Japanese dishes topped with bonito flake.  The thin slivers move back and forth from the thermal waves like an underwater scene.  The rhythm is very breath-like.  You've got to respect the Japanese aesthetic for such presentation.  It's a bit more humane than this presentation.

 

Now I can I use the machine in a completely different way?  methocel?  iSi batter?

heart of palm

 

Fresh palm hearts placed in a bag.  Lightly pulsed kalamatas and oil are added plus some sea salt, pepper, garlic, and a huge handful of fresh lemon verbena.  Vacuum seal and cook for 3 to 4 hours at 84ºC.  To enhance flavor even more, let them lightly roast in the oven or give them a quick roll on the grill.  Charcoal and smoke can only make it better, and the kalamata poaching gives it a nice natural woodsy look.

palm heart, burrata, burnt whipped balsamic, baby greens, tomato crumbs

au natural?

I've been (slowly) reading Hervé This' new book "Building A Meal."  For some reason, This always evokes debates over the boundaries of what is natural and what is not.  Perhaps it's his obsessive need to deconstruct food structure and the processes that transform it.  Maybe it's his free and unhindered practice of utilizing what most would consider blasphemous synthetic ingredients when constructing flavor profiles.  Whatever it is, he does it well.  So well, in fact, that I always seem to find myself teetering on the fence... not sure what side to jump down on.

Daniel Patterson tweeted a link to this Herve This article recently.  The only accompanying word to the link was "horrifying."  Considering that the article focuses on the world's first completely synthetic dish created by This with the assistance of Pierre Gagniare, 'horrifying' would be the natural reaction experienced by most chefs (I mean, is it closer to food or Castrol Syntex 3000?).  But then... Hervé goes on and blows my biasness (why does he keep doing that!?!?).  When questioned by critics on whether a synthetic dish is ethically correct, he responds by saying, "Sugar is not natural. Chips are not natural. They are both artificial. And if you tried to eat a wild carrot, you'd find it disgusting."  Why'd you have to go there?  Now I'm on the fence again.

So what's a synthetic dish?  The plate composed by This and Gagniare was described as apple and lemon flavored jelly balls that are creamy in the center and crispy on the surface.  That's not so bad.  When you consider that the dish contains no actual apple or lemon, maybe it's wrong.  Is it wrong that we currently utilize available techniques and ingredients to transform textures of foods?  Is is ok to take carrot essence and serve it as a set jelly?  As an air?  How far from nature are we leaping when we blanch vegetables in simmering salted water?  That's the problem with the whole argument.  Once you reach the conclusion that a line must be drawn, you face the issue of deciding where the line should go.  In our most open-minded liberal views, to draw any line is bad.  So where do the chef's scruples fit in?  Depending on where you draw the line, we've all served 'synthetic' food at some point in our careers.  Isn't that factory farmed chicken breast you just threw on the grill synthetic or not totally natural to a large extent?  How natural is a modern chicken anyway? 

On the same meal as the synthetic amuse bouche (which truly, by the way, lives up to what an amuse should be... sparking our emotions, our convictions... perhaps it should be renamed as an amuse tête) is a lobster dish with a polyphenol sauce.  Doesn't that sound appetizing?  The sauce contains tartaric acid, glucose, and polyphenols.  That's actually a rather vague description when trying to imagine the flavor (tangy, sweet, with some other flavors on top?).  Considering Chef Gagniare's reputation, I would venture to bet that the dish is good.  Hervé This claims that our need for control as chefs will ultimately change the way chefs compose.  "Tomorrow's chefs will frown upon plain vegetables, such as carrots, he says, and will instead use the molecules which make up carrots — caroteniods, pectins, fructose and glucuronic acid."  When you get down to it, hasn't our way of thinking already drastically changed since 20 years ago?  We certainly do not approach textures the same way as chefs in the 80's did.  We don't even approach the dining experience the same way.

My main point with this post is that I do not personally have an answer.  When I consider modern food, the state of foodways in the USA, the wave of recent films such as "FOOD inc." by Robert Kenner, it seems that everything is on a collision course with itself.  When will all of this collide?  Soon I hope.  For better or worse, we will find a comfort zone.  Kenner, in the trailer for "FOOD inc.," puts forward the notion of pastoral fantasies.  We all want to visualize the origins of food in America with rolling green fields, red barns, white-trimmed silos, old-fashioned tractors, and a rooster or two sitting on a white picket fence.  The real truth is far removed from this image.  He goes on to point out that certain items such as tomatoes are available year round and we've lost our seasons.  It's like the speech you give your girlfriend just before breaking up... "I'm not really in love with you, I'm just in love with the idea of being in love."  We, as a society, are in love with the idea of a tomato... not the actual tomato itself which has been gassed to ripeness and stacked in the produce isle.  Don't you want the love back?  Why do we feel the need to be placated, and why are we satisfied with a false image.  We generally feel better if we buy the organic potatoes instead of the other bag, but don't really take the time to factor in just what the difference is.

Where do you draw the line, and how blurry is that line?  Do we want to feel good under false notions, or can we actually handle the truth?

shrimp

We offer olive oil poached shrimp daily on our dinner menu.  It's bagged with olive oil, herbs, garlic then cooked at 48ºC.  Up till now, we had not strayed from this process.

Huge Madagascar shrimp were soaked in a laurel leaf salt brine for 45 minutes.

 

We then placed the shrimp on racks and cooked them in the C-Vap for 1 hour at 48º.  After they were cooked, we were able to peel the tails and hold them in the C-Vap until it was time to plate.  The texture and flavor of the tail meat was better than any we've had thus far.  The meat was not rubbery at all.  In fact, it remained quite pliable and relaxed.  The brine did wonders for the natural shrimp flavor to stand out.

laurel brined Madagascar shrimp, chaurice and celery cream risotto, pickled okra, bacon dust, pepper jelly, gumbo consommé (frenched table-side)

 

Side note on the C-Vap... this dish was incorporated on the Heart Association dinner along with the previous corvina dish I posted.  The pasta on the corvina plate was held open in the C-Vap along with the shrimp, patiently waiting for the moment to plate.  What an incredible improvement on timing with fresh pasta to have it cooked, nested, and ready to plate while being held in an optimum state indefinitely.  If we had a series of C-Vap ovens set to different temps, we'd have the most consistent food in the world.

corvina

We utilized corvina (lemon fish) a coule of times recently.  Although there are a growing number of references for sous-vide cooking, a chef is often forced to experiment a bit.  Every protein is a little different from all of the rest... not to mention the other countless factors involved.  After trying the corvina a few ways, we finally hit upon an amazing texture.

green tea brined corvina, banana caraway, goat cheese cream, black garlic bubbles, serrano powder, white asparagus

 

This was an earlier attempt.  We started this corvina at 50ºC then bumped it up to 55ºC in the last 8 minutes.  Beforehand, it was soaked in a green tea brine for 30 minutes.  Good, but not great... the flavor remained a bit too fishy and the texture was slightly sticky.

The other components consisted of a mash made from roasted bananas, caraway seed, and citric acid.  Roasted bananas run a unique parallel of becoming sweeter and more acidic tasting than their fresh ripe counterparts.  I like the extra boost of citric acid to enhance the caraway.  The goat cheese cream is a blend of chevre and milk with a little gelatin pumped out of an iSi to create a frothy cream.  The black garlic is an aerated solution of black garlic, soy, and water.

The winning plate... this dish was composed for the Florida Heart Association's Driven to Dine charity.  Some items were donated and we built the plate around them.

olive oil-infused corvina, artichoke purée, basil sauce, saffron-poached fennel, grilled compressed eggplant, squid ink pasta

 

The corvina was brined and bagged with a little extra virgin olive oil.  We cooked it at 57ºC for about 30 minutes.  The slightly higher cooking temp and the addition of olive oil really transformed the flavor and texture.  It was slightly more flakier and all traces of not-so-desirable fishy taste were eliminated.

The plate elements were a bit more Mediterranean in theme.  The pasta was fresh and donated by Ciao Imports.  Fresh artichokes were pickled and puréed.  The eggplant was tossed with olive oil, oregano, salt, pepper then compressed and grilled.  Basil is with Ultratex 8.  Fennel was poached in a light saffron syrup.

boar-ing barbeque

30 hour boar rack, guava barbeque sauce, chipotle queso fresco corn bread, vidalia spring onion rings, pickled watermelon rind, stout malt gelato, cocoa

 

Well, not boring at all.  In fact, quite comforting.

These boar racks were seared, bagged, and cooked at 55ºC for over 24 hours.  Typical barbeque flavors with some non-traditional twists round it out.

sarcasm

Yeah, it gets the best of me.

I receive some cool comments and emails on both sides of the fence concerning the 'how do I eat this?' question.  If my sarcasm helped to evoke stronger response than usual, then at least it's finally come as good use for something.  Conversations are very important with modern food.  Being open-minded and willing to share are at the heart of what drives this thing forward.

We love food.  We work very hard on our food.  There are a hundred other things going on in our hotel at any given moment, and the plates or ideas or playtime experiments that you see on this blog represent of very small fraction of our day-to-day.  It's our funtime, and we want it to be funtime for others as well.  We love to eat.  When we eat, it's personal and we don't want instructions as to what should be the first bite and what should be the last.  We do not want to dictate your enjoyment.

Freedom with food.  Crossing this line seems really counter-productive to the modern food movement.  There is such an open-mindedness and desire to share ideas and thoughts that we never want to rob the guest of their freedom to simply eat.  Every experience is personal.  It should be casual as well.  We want you to keep that side of yourself alive when eating a dish we plated.  When we put the elements of a dish together, we simply think of the relationships between the flavors and textures.  It's the same as viewing a painting.  Many colors come together simultaneously.  Eating is more than just a physiological phenomenon.  There are a life-time of personal references that each and every diner brings along with him everytime they eat.  That is the glorious part of your dining experience and no chef in the world can control that.  You experience is your alone.  Eat the dish as fate would have it.

Seriously, we rarely create anything that involves eating one thing then another then another in dictated order.  That's what the courses of a meal are for.  That order is already laid out such as the verse, chorus, guitar solo in a song.  The way you hear the song, or the way that you express the rhythm by either bobbing your head or throwing your hands up is your own personal experience with that song.  You are not altering the soundwaves coming from the CD player in your car, but your experience is unique to that precise moment in time.  We could easily say the same thing about a dish.  Eating it one day, then again a week later will not give you the same experience.  Just enjoy the moment and stop trying to analyze it so much.  Let life flow.  Bacchus would not be told how to eat and drink, but he would simply relish the indulgence of the moment.  Seriously, if we don't take this spirit with us when we eat, then we are discrediting everything that modern food stands for.

Also, I like the idea of creating a "How Would Jesus Eat This?" t-shirt.  Anyone else interested in promoting these?  What would be a cool image to accompany it?  A variation of DaVinci's 'Last Supper?'  It could be the next big thing.

how do i eat this?

This is a seriously disturbing phenomenon that I'm sure must be spreading across the US.  We get this question more and more lately.  It's the strangest thing.  It usually happens in the middle of a dinner.  Courses are going out.  Everything's on time.  The food looks nice.  Then... suddenly... it happens.  A guest will ask the question.  "How do I eat this?"  Should we contact a physician at this point.  It seems rather disturbing that a grown adult who has consumed food throughout his or her entire life will suddenly forget how to eat... and with food sitting right in front of them.  The frustration must be torturous.  Imagine having a fresh plate of food in front of you.  Your appetite is healthy, then you simply forget how to eat.  There are strange looking utensils sitting on both sides of the plate.  One of them has several tines.  Another one has a sharp edge.  What are they for?!?

Should we put instructions right on the menu.  Pick up food.  Open mouth.  Insert food into mouth.  Close mouth up and down in a 'chewing' motion until it is macerated enough for you to comfortably swallow.  It could be a step-by-step tutorial or possibly in the form of a flow chart.  It could be illustrated out like those little instructions on a chopstick wrapper.  I'm not sure which outline of the information would best suit the guest.

Maybe studies should be devoted to analyzing what exactly causes this to happen.  It could be a mild form of amnesia that strikes primal motor skills.  It could be over anxiety or fear of peer pressure... "Oh my God.  Oh my God.  What if all the other guests make fun of me or secretly despise me because I'm eating my food the wrong way.  I haven't exactly been keeping up with the new eating trends.  Maybe I should have grabbed that copy of 'Eaters Digest' in the supermarket checkout line."  Maybe you're Julia Louis-Dreyfus in a Healthy Choice commercial and you should ask the question because you are making a disgusting pig of yourself.  There is also the possibility that a diner's questions are based on religion.  "How would Jesus eat this?"

But seriously, please think before asking this.  Look at the food on your plate.  It is food afterall.  You have been ingesting it since you were weened.  Do you really need some guy in a sauce-stained white jacket telling you how to consume food in your adult life?  Do you look at a painting (even the most abstract non-traditional work) and ask the artist "How do I look at this?"  Do you go to a concert and ask the musician "How do I listen to this?"  It's not like you were placed behind the control panel of a 747 and asked to parallel park it.  Take back control of your own free will.  Eat the food whatever way you feel impulsion driving you.  Taste a little of this element, then that element, or just eat several of them combined in various combinations.  It's your choice.  You have a choice.  You have an option here.

Sorry for the sarcasm... well actually, no apologies are offered at all.  Chef K has been prompting me to write a post on this for quite some time.  We have actually been getting the question more and more frequently.  If it's a gesture of good manner on part of the guest, we understand but it is unnecessary.  You can eat it any way you'd like and it won't offend us.  Our food is not complicated.  If we had a piece of nitro-frozen jellyfish suspended on a flagpole while roasted canaries orbited it skewered on pretzel sticks made of oreos I might understand the confusion.  All of our food is on a plate... the same plate.  It may be arranged in such a manner which hopefully will be construed as an attempt at making it eye-pleasing, but it's all right there in one small space.  Please enjoy it... or don't enjoy it.  It's your choice.

carlos

Carlos is one of our PM cooks who will be leaving us soon... back to his home state of California, then to possibly Chicago.  Any chefs out there seeking a hard-working and ambitious young cook should drop a line.  Hopefully we can hire another one in the future.

In an effort to excercise and practice different techniques, we had Carlos put together 2 dishes for our last dinner.  His flavor inspirations were eastern, both middle and far.  Some of the recipes were borrowed or utilized mainly for the experience of executing them.  Either way, it shows that he pays attention and doesn't mind taking on extra tasks... and we always encourage that.

"flavors of falafel"  chickpea dumplings, confit tomato, tahini powder, whipped parsley oil, spice pita crumble, shredded lettuce gel

 

seared scallops, toasted sweet chile marshmallows, nori pearls, umami mushroom sauce, lime film, furikake

 

traditional starches

After utilizing some nice modified industrial starches for awhile (ultratex, pure cote, trisol, etc), we've found some very interesting textures from more traditional starches.  The post title is not to suggest that the following starches are any more 'natural' or less processed than the industrial ones... just that they have more of a set place in traditional cuisine.  In this case, that cuisine happens to be Asian.  Both of these were actually brought to my attention by Ming.  It's always exciting to explore old techniques for modernity.  The texture of the taro dumpling below is especially refreshing.  I always like to compare it to Grant Achatz' epiphanal moment of creating the truffle explosion.  How similar it is in context to a centuries old Chinese soup dumpling.  Just another juxtaposition of old school and new school.

Sweet potato starch is used in Taiwanese fried chicken.  The texture is different from our western style version.  It is very crispy, and the breading process requires the starch to rest on the marinated chicken for half an hour after being dredged.  I found this instruction to be interesting since I was told to avoid that when first learning to fry southern style chicken (a la Popeyes style).  My mind also reeled back to eating Taiwanese fried chicken from a street vendor in Dan-Shuei near T'aipei.  For an American southern boy, I was taken aback by how good it was.  All apologies to Edna Lewis.

Here is one common brand of the starch.  Price is cheap, so keep it in y'er pantry.

 

Not much visible difference here.  What I've also noticed with it is how great it picks up sauces if tossed or stir-fried afterwards (much moreso than flour dredges).  That was actually how I first pondered sweet potato starch.  Ming and I were sitting in our favorite Miami izakaya one day, and I was trying to analyze the chicken liver dish being executed in the open kitchen.  Ming said, "I think they are using sweet potato starch."  I said, "hmmmm...," and it has not left my mind since.

As an aside, I've always wished for more English books on Taiwanese cuisine.  Hopefully it will be one that really gets attention in the near future.  Due to the politics and the way the country was founded, many Taiwanese dishes are more true to Chinese culture than they are in China.  What the new Chinese communistic government has tried to stamp out was celebrated and preserved on the little neighboring island (not to mention the waves of master Chinese chefs who migrated to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-Shek during the revolution).  The influence of Japanese cuisine and ingredients just makes it all the more interesting to boot.  It's almost time to make another trip... let the baby see the other half of her lineage.

 

The next interesting fried texture will be familiar to anyone who has had a Chinese dim sum crispy taro dumpling.  After searching the web, I found this recipe on Eupho Cafe (which Ming swears must be written by a Taiwanese woman).  It used a dough consisting of taro root and wheat starch to encase a filling before frying.  The Eupho link is outlined spectacularly with pic's and instruction, so I won't get into too much detail (except for a modification I had to make).

Use large taro root, steam, then mash.

 

Wheat starch is a key element.  It is mixed with boiling water and formed into a gelatinous dough before being incorporated into the taro dough.

 

Afterwards, lard, baking soda, salt, and sugar are mixed in.  The dough forms a very cool system of fried 'netting' which gives a sensation of lightness.  It actually took a while to get the dough correct.  The Eupho recipe wasn't working for me, so I incorporated an extra 6 tablespoons of AP flour to force it to maintain itself in the hot oil.  For these, I made a lobster filling and we served it with a roasted banana caraway purée.  The banana and caraway was a great combination.  Also, the recipe goes into great detail on how the frying oil must be at the perfect temperature... and then doesn't give out the temp.  I ended up frying mine at 355ºF.

 

The outside of the dough forms a crispy netting, but the interior stays soft like a taro mash working its way to the filling.  I like the flavor and texture of the taro.  The scent of the root coming out of the steamer is incredibly appetizing.