So after my 4:30 in the morning revelation late this week of executing my theory to the (small) masses, I devised the menu for our Saturday evening's experimental dinner:
Exposition: Salt/pepper crackers with three cheeses, sweet cucumbers, and (surprise guest!) pork/chicken pate. Pairing: berry infused vodka martini.
Rise: Fried green tomatoes and eggplant, with blueberry aioli. Pairing: Sauvigion Blanc.
Climax: Roasted pork with coffee marinade, alongside (originally) tomato pasta (which became) red wine pasta with sage/lemongrass foam. Pairing: Schioppettino / Tempranillo.
Fall: Caesar salad with charcuterie. Pairing: Tempranillo.
Denouement: Duo of sweets (black forest cake and sweet potato cheesecake). Pairing: coffee, Puerto Rican rum .
There were several courses, which cumulatively added up to quite a bit of quantity. However, each course individually was not overly quantitative - but instead strove to hit all the parts of the range of flavors. Of particular note...
...Andrew (gracious thanks, as always!!) for all his help in the kitchen. I would probably have stopped at course 2 if not for his help. And Hubby, for helping to put together our vodka drink starter of the evening. Mmmm...
...the wines. And - of particular note - I can't say too much about the Sauvignon Blanc, as I understand that one can not purchase it in the States, but - the SB this evening was lovely. Smelled like lychee at the nose, lightly sweet and a touch of grass on the palate.
...home made crackers. Eeeeeeeeasy! And fun! But - definitely time consuming to roll out all the dough, cut, and lay on the stone. Imagine making 12 pizzas a night.
...the pork in the coffee marinade came out pretty well, with the exception being that there was not enough capascum hit to the palate (which we covered with having the chili powder at the table for service);
...the blueberry aioli which this morning I thought was as solid as cured concrete, but which I discovered yielded quite well and had good texture with application of the immersion blender;
...and the sweets, which was my first experiment in working with chocolate, but yielded a major FAIL in experimenting with a combination of cherry juice+sodium alginate+sodium citrate+sugar in calcium lactate solution. Another time, perhaps more sodium citrate and a little less acid.
This was not the typical meal I would serve to all guests - it was an experiment. I came out of the meal quite full - but I can gladly say that just about all our dishes were empty, and we have no leftovers. Maybe it was just the right quantity to match the number of mouths at the table.
A little peek into the recipes...
Coffee Marinade
- 1c ground coffee
- 1/2c soy sauce
- 1/2c sweet liquor (I used whiskey)
- 1/2c olive oil
- 1T (or more) ground garlic
- 2t (or more) ground ginger
- 2t salt
- 2t ground black pepper
- 2T sugar
- 2t ground chili pepper
- 2t ground coriander
Mix all in a bag, and marinate meat 24 hours minimum in advance of roasting. Roasting - roast at 350 for 45 minutes for a C.T. butt, then at 250 for 45 minutes. Cover with foil to rest at minimum 5-10 minutes prior to serving.
Blueberry Aioli
- 4 egg yolks
- 1/2c olive oil
- Juice of 1/2 lemon
- 1/4c - 1/2c fresh blueberries
- 1-2 cloves garlic, minced (adjust to taste)
- Salt to taste
Blend all in a mini food processor until smooth. Refrigerate immediately, and use an immersion blender just prior to serving to aerate sauce. I served this with the fried green tomatoes (I've posted my recipe on this prior - slice thin, salt overnight, flour/egg/panko, fry) and fried eggplants (same execution). This was a winner.
Now, having been busy during the course of dinner to take photos (DOH!), I have to say that my experiment with dessert was a)fun; b)tasty; and c)visually attractive. Isn't this combination what it's all about, no matter what we're doing?!
For the duo of sweets... Let's back up 2 days prior. I melted dark chocolate and discovered that an offset spatula and parchment paper work just fine to create a thin layer of chocolate to make chocolate bands (to surround cake). I then sprinkled the chocolate with kosher salt and refrigerated it in the fridge about 5 minutes to set. I pulled out my metal straightedge, and cut equal widths in the chocolate. I then quickly wrapped each chocolate strip around a round cookie cutter, and taped the parchment onto itself. All these rounded strips, then went back into the fridge overnight. The parchment pealed off each ring without sticking at all, and I had these great little chocolate band rings, in which I set chocolate cake and cherry juice for a modified black forest cake. Originally, the cherry juice was to have been cherry caviar - so that each round would look like salmon roe sushi. Alas...I will keep trying and playing with the pH.
I then melted more chocolate, did the same thin-layer thing on parchment, fridged it for 5 minutes, but this time I took the same round cookie cutter and used it to "score" the chocolate with equally-sized rounds. On each round, I dropped some puffed rice, for textural difference, and I sprinkled on some truffle salt (!) for umami contrast. Fridged this stamped chocolate overnight, and the next day the chocolate broke into perfect pieces to leave the rounds intact. On each chocolate plate, I served a same-sized cut of sweet potato cheesecake. I think the flavor came together pretty well.
Now imagine both of these served on a white plate. The color was rather nice. Damn, where was my camera when I needed it! Alas...another time...
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
I have a theory
If, at every instance you put something in your mouth, what you eat covers every flavor in your tongue's spectrum of tastes, the desire for quantity no longer exists.
This theory is beginning to drive the way I eat (and cook) these days. Not all meals, but most of them - and it's making me really think about what I'm putting in my mouth. It's a simple idea.
I forget exactly what it was that I served, but the other day Hubby was, again, my guinea pig for trying out a little food marble I've been tossing around in this cranial cavity of mine. The dinner I served covered the tongue's spectrum of tastes, and it covered the major food types. It left a hungry Hubby full after one serving, not even wanting of dessert. (I had incorporated some sweet flavors in the entree course) And this experiment led me to wonder, whether it is not so much the size of our stomach that drives the desire for food, but more this muscle in our mouth that acts as a direct extension of the human creature's, or any animal's for that matter, innate ability to self regulate.
Could it be that our tongue, this direct - and usually first - connection between our human organism and the foods that fuel it, has a natural map of flavors that would cover all the nutrients our body needs? It is, after all, the only sense that comes into direct physical contact, in most cases, to the actual foods we ingest. If the tongue has this natural map - maybe, then, the tongue is not as much a reactionary organ that sends the message of what it encounters to different synapses in our brain. It may, instead, be the provocateur, fulfilling the body's quota for various nutrients by requesting foods available through nature and mapped into our genes over human history, foods which harbor nutrients necessary for our organism's survival.
(here's another plug to eat foods that haven't been processed - the more processed foods we eat, the more it may modify our - and our offsprings' - genetics to want processed foods)
I'm preparing for a dinner this Saturday - and I'm serving this marble to the masses. For the dinner, I'm coupling the idea of taste spectrum with the layer of texture spectrum. The verdict is still out.
This theory is beginning to drive the way I eat (and cook) these days. Not all meals, but most of them - and it's making me really think about what I'm putting in my mouth. It's a simple idea.
I forget exactly what it was that I served, but the other day Hubby was, again, my guinea pig for trying out a little food marble I've been tossing around in this cranial cavity of mine. The dinner I served covered the tongue's spectrum of tastes, and it covered the major food types. It left a hungry Hubby full after one serving, not even wanting of dessert. (I had incorporated some sweet flavors in the entree course) And this experiment led me to wonder, whether it is not so much the size of our stomach that drives the desire for food, but more this muscle in our mouth that acts as a direct extension of the human creature's, or any animal's for that matter, innate ability to self regulate.
Could it be that our tongue, this direct - and usually first - connection between our human organism and the foods that fuel it, has a natural map of flavors that would cover all the nutrients our body needs? It is, after all, the only sense that comes into direct physical contact, in most cases, to the actual foods we ingest. If the tongue has this natural map - maybe, then, the tongue is not as much a reactionary organ that sends the message of what it encounters to different synapses in our brain. It may, instead, be the provocateur, fulfilling the body's quota for various nutrients by requesting foods available through nature and mapped into our genes over human history, foods which harbor nutrients necessary for our organism's survival.
(here's another plug to eat foods that haven't been processed - the more processed foods we eat, the more it may modify our - and our offsprings' - genetics to want processed foods)
I'm preparing for a dinner this Saturday - and I'm serving this marble to the masses. For the dinner, I'm coupling the idea of taste spectrum with the layer of texture spectrum. The verdict is still out.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Heat, have you returned to me?
I should have known. Having come from a little island on the equator originally, I would, of course, be where the hot weather would stand, oh so comfortably. As for me - not so much. I may have come from the little hot island of Taiwan, but I spent my formative years in the more temperate summers (and colder winters too) of the mid-Atlantic.
As I'm looking at the forecast, and not seeing relief in the near future (I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for next week), I share a little recipe that I love from my homeland, for just this weather.
Shaved ice, with toppings of your choice
Ingredients:
Ice cubes
Red beans (either dry and cooked, or canned and rinsed)
Coconut jellies
Tapioca pearls
Honey, sugar syrup, or condensed milk
Fresh fruit (I love passion fruit syrup in Taiwan, but it's hard to find here in the States)
1. If you need to cook the dried red beans, do so - and add a healthy helping of sugar to the beans. Let the beans cool before topping onto shaved ice.
2. If you have an ice shaver, use it to shave the ice. Otherwise, a blender or food processor does pretty well as well. Shave as much ice as you'd like to serve.
3. Top shaved ice with all the toppings listed. Serve immediately.
Enjoy as many servings as you'd like, until you cool off. Given our current weather conditions here in DC, I am going to have this shaved ice every meal from now until, oh, autumn.
As I'm looking at the forecast, and not seeing relief in the near future (I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for next week), I share a little recipe that I love from my homeland, for just this weather.
Shaved ice, with toppings of your choice
Ingredients:
Ice cubes
Red beans (either dry and cooked, or canned and rinsed)
Coconut jellies
Tapioca pearls
Honey, sugar syrup, or condensed milk
Fresh fruit (I love passion fruit syrup in Taiwan, but it's hard to find here in the States)
1. If you need to cook the dried red beans, do so - and add a healthy helping of sugar to the beans. Let the beans cool before topping onto shaved ice.
2. If you have an ice shaver, use it to shave the ice. Otherwise, a blender or food processor does pretty well as well. Shave as much ice as you'd like to serve.
3. Top shaved ice with all the toppings listed. Serve immediately.
Enjoy as many servings as you'd like, until you cool off. Given our current weather conditions here in DC, I am going to have this shaved ice every meal from now until, oh, autumn.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Camp in all its, ahem, glory
We had the best of intentions. I remembered when I went to camp, often Girl Scout camp, when I was little. And while I wanted to learn how to tie all the knots and learn to survive in the wild like the cool Boy Scouts, I trudged through the be-nice-and-friendly skew of Girl Scout cookie sales, the so-necessary basic skill of plastic bracelet brading (how often I use those skills now!), and the occasional toe's dip in the proverbial learning pool what one should do if one's canoe capsizes - all this torture, albeit, in a relatively calm and easy-going environment. So it was with this enlightened sense of being, that I signed up Baby1 for her first camp experience ever, in the safety of our local Y, walking distance and all.
So as you can imagine my surprise, as when I dropped her off to camp this morning with her little backpack and her packed lunch and snacks, that I was faced not by some quiet little camp of kumbaya's around the campfire but by, I'm sure they were...hyenas. Hyenas, numbering no less than 100 to 150, whose collective voices, surrendered to the molecules of air engulfing all of us bewildered parents, carried all the energy generated by successfully-trained parents who gave their kids the prescribed half-a-day's worth of sleep a night, to store up energy enough to tackle the day. Or, at least, the first 30 minutes of screaming at camp - and I could have sworn I saw sound waves bouncing off the concrete walls of the gymnasium this morning.
I don't think I've ever clung onto Baby1 so tightly, as I did this morning. No, actually, there was one other time: I hung onto her for dear life once when she came back to me, at 2 years of age, after bolting from our car towards a very busy intersection right at 5pm on a Friday, smack in the midst of rush hour and too many people trying to get to too many places 15 minutes ago. I thought I'd lose the race for her with the cars, but, luckily, she heard the panic in my voice over the din of car motors, stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and U-turned back to me. But today, watching this clan of hyenas running around, screaming and yelling, I was not ready to let my Baby1 go and tackle the world on her own. Judging from her clinging tightly onto me as her eyes spoke of horror at the visions of hyenas dancing in front of her eyes, she wasn't about ready to jump in either. And imagine my horror, when she headed out with the wrong camp, and I had to go fetch her. From the other end of the building. And the counselors for the camp all along my route didn't ask me who I was, request my ID, or ask me where I was going with said child. Hello, paranoia-induced panic!
But in the end, at the end of the day when I picked her up, she seemed all right (read: intact), no worse for the wear. When Hubby asked me for specific drop-off directions this evening for tomorrow morning, however, this is what I told him:
1. Sign-in for camp takes place outside, so look for the organized line of parents and bewildered children, the characteristics of which flip once entering the building.
2. Sign off on one of the multitude of sheets of paper that supposedly correspond to the individual camps going on for the day, on the table in front of the multitude of camp counselors, each of whom seems to know no more than the person next to him or her as to what in the world is going on. Find the sheet of paper yourself while the counselor is asking you which camp Baby1 is in. You'll find it faster.
3. They will tell you to bring your child inside the building. Don't be fooled by the lack of noise from the outside - concrete walls make for amazing insulation.
4. Head into the building, and head toward the crescendo of screaming hyenas.
5. When you enter the concrete room with the screaming hyenas, find one of the camp counselors, preferably not the one who is trying to operate the computer to provide drum and base louder than the screaming hyenas to the speaker system. They do this in an effort to really rev up the hyenas beyond their already revved-up awake state.
6. Try to yell louder than the hyenas to find out where her specific camp group is located. The counselor will no doubt give you the wrong answer, since they've gone deaf with the screaming hyenas and nothing in their training booklets told them about needing to learn to lip-read. When this fails, try asking one of the hyenas. They should know.
7. Try not to panic as you set Baby1 free into the sea of hyenas. Exit the door with your eardrums somewhat intact, and, again, try not to panic. OR, better yet , as I did this morning, and Hubby has decided to do after hearing my rundown of my morning experience: wait until the camps have all been organized and each are exiting the concrete box, and confirm with the counselor leading the specific group of hyenas out of the concrete box that they're leading a) the right camp; and b) the right kids for the right camp.
I'm trying not to be as embarrassingly protective of my kids as my parents were of me. But it's days like this that I eschew all dignity and protect the hell out of them.
So as you can imagine my surprise, as when I dropped her off to camp this morning with her little backpack and her packed lunch and snacks, that I was faced not by some quiet little camp of kumbaya's around the campfire but by, I'm sure they were...hyenas. Hyenas, numbering no less than 100 to 150, whose collective voices, surrendered to the molecules of air engulfing all of us bewildered parents, carried all the energy generated by successfully-trained parents who gave their kids the prescribed half-a-day's worth of sleep a night, to store up energy enough to tackle the day. Or, at least, the first 30 minutes of screaming at camp - and I could have sworn I saw sound waves bouncing off the concrete walls of the gymnasium this morning.
I don't think I've ever clung onto Baby1 so tightly, as I did this morning. No, actually, there was one other time: I hung onto her for dear life once when she came back to me, at 2 years of age, after bolting from our car towards a very busy intersection right at 5pm on a Friday, smack in the midst of rush hour and too many people trying to get to too many places 15 minutes ago. I thought I'd lose the race for her with the cars, but, luckily, she heard the panic in my voice over the din of car motors, stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and U-turned back to me. But today, watching this clan of hyenas running around, screaming and yelling, I was not ready to let my Baby1 go and tackle the world on her own. Judging from her clinging tightly onto me as her eyes spoke of horror at the visions of hyenas dancing in front of her eyes, she wasn't about ready to jump in either. And imagine my horror, when she headed out with the wrong camp, and I had to go fetch her. From the other end of the building. And the counselors for the camp all along my route didn't ask me who I was, request my ID, or ask me where I was going with said child. Hello, paranoia-induced panic!
But in the end, at the end of the day when I picked her up, she seemed all right (read: intact), no worse for the wear. When Hubby asked me for specific drop-off directions this evening for tomorrow morning, however, this is what I told him:
1. Sign-in for camp takes place outside, so look for the organized line of parents and bewildered children, the characteristics of which flip once entering the building.
2. Sign off on one of the multitude of sheets of paper that supposedly correspond to the individual camps going on for the day, on the table in front of the multitude of camp counselors, each of whom seems to know no more than the person next to him or her as to what in the world is going on. Find the sheet of paper yourself while the counselor is asking you which camp Baby1 is in. You'll find it faster.
3. They will tell you to bring your child inside the building. Don't be fooled by the lack of noise from the outside - concrete walls make for amazing insulation.
4. Head into the building, and head toward the crescendo of screaming hyenas.
5. When you enter the concrete room with the screaming hyenas, find one of the camp counselors, preferably not the one who is trying to operate the computer to provide drum and base louder than the screaming hyenas to the speaker system. They do this in an effort to really rev up the hyenas beyond their already revved-up awake state.
6. Try to yell louder than the hyenas to find out where her specific camp group is located. The counselor will no doubt give you the wrong answer, since they've gone deaf with the screaming hyenas and nothing in their training booklets told them about needing to learn to lip-read. When this fails, try asking one of the hyenas. They should know.
7. Try not to panic as you set Baby1 free into the sea of hyenas. Exit the door with your eardrums somewhat intact, and, again, try not to panic. OR, better yet , as I did this morning, and Hubby has decided to do after hearing my rundown of my morning experience: wait until the camps have all been organized and each are exiting the concrete box, and confirm with the counselor leading the specific group of hyenas out of the concrete box that they're leading a) the right camp; and b) the right kids for the right camp.
I'm trying not to be as embarrassingly protective of my kids as my parents were of me. But it's days like this that I eschew all dignity and protect the hell out of them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)