Japanese Dinner

Last year our local gourmet club invited me to cater a dinner. This was historic because they've met for over a decade and have always gone potluck. They must have liked it since they asked me back. Here is last year's Spanish meal. This year I asked them to pick the theme and accepted Japanese because it would be a challenge for me. I love sushi and tempura, but beyond that I know nothing...so I researched and ended up with this menu:

Kaiseki Ryorik Grande
Sushi Maki
Kamo tsumire (soup with duck dumplings)
(Sorry, no pic)

Chawanmushi (cold custard) & grilled prawns
Tomago dofu (omelette)
Gelée assortment (lemongrass vinegar, blue cream soda and two others that I've forgotten)
Served with Chiyonosono Shochu, Kumamoto, Japan


Hotate Ringo Kama-Yaki (scallops in apple)
Onigiri (rice patty) with umeboshi and smoked salmon
Sake steamed asparagus, puffed sushi rice and espuma
Roasted squash oil
Seared scallop


Unagi Kabi-Yaki (broiled eel)
Fried whole trout
Rolled seaweed
Daikon in lemongrass vinegar
Korokke (croquette)
served with Yamazaki 12 yr Single Malt
(sorry no pic)

Ong's cover recipe from Sweet Spot - Spiced Plums


Chocolate kumquat springrolls

Liquid Nitrogen and my big photoshoot

Let's start with the liquid nitrogen. I've been wanting to play with this for a while and finally bought the storage container. Most of the uses I've seen so far have been gimmicky - meaning not really enhancing the food itself, but you know I'll obsess until I can find a good way to use it.

Liquid Nitrogen has been around (in culinary useful form) since the 1800s, but its resurgence has been just in recent years due to the molecular gastronomy movement. What intrigues me most is the possibility of freezing booze. Imagine a frozen sphere of rum set inside of a chocolate shell...or what if it was set in side of a coconut milk shell that had been made by freezing it in the LN. The idea is that booze will freeze at that temp, but once in a regular freezer it will thaw, leaving you with a liquid center. Opens up the mind doesn't it?

Here's I'm testing my photoshoot dessert to see if I can form a stable shell using the actual dessert mousse. It didn't work because the shell thawed too quickly.

This is an old trick where you fill a ladle with ice cream base, freeze it for a few seconds and then you have a bowl made out of the ice cream that you can fill...before it melts...this is a recurring problem.

I did the old standby of 30 second ice cream, and yes it was amazingly smooth and may show up on special occasions at the restaurant.

Not fully understanding the boiling properties of liquid nitrogen I was intrigued by the eruptions caused by placing my frozen dessert inside of a ladle of ice cream base. The base erupted needing a place for gases to release.

All of this was final play before a photo shoot for Dessert Professional magazine. I've submitted my rootbeer float dessert for publication and it appears to have been accepted. Since TasteSpotting and FoodGawker both think my pics suck, I went to a professional to make sure the pics were magazine worthy. I'll post some of the pics and the updated recipe over the weekend.

Upcoming book reviews

When it rains it pours! I have a slew of new books, some to review and some just for the library:

Reviews:
Reinhart's Artisan Breads Everyday
Migoya's The Modern Café
Samuelsson's New American Table
Young's Adventures in Chocolate
Pern's Black Pudding and Truffles

My enjoyment:
Torreblanca 2
and a bunch of Dutch cookbooks given to me by a friend
A really good looking edition of the Art of Eating magazine

Catching up on projects...

Lot's of little stuff that I've been filling my time with lately. First, rice krispie treats where I puffed seasoned sushi rice (hitomobore), raisins, pecans and homemade salmon marshmallows.


I think I served my last Ethiopian for a while. With dinners coming, the kitchen may not be able to handle my Ethiopian specials - always a huge hit, but always very demanding on my kitchen space.


I've been selling this breseola lately - really good stuff.


I made this black cake last June and we finally made time to eat it last week. Since I can never leave well enough alone, instead of wrapping in cheese cloth and adding a drop of rum every so often, I doused in rum and vacuum packed it. It was..ahem..very potent.


A friend gifted me with a back strap from his deer hunt this year (very generous of him).

Committing complete blasphemy I sliced it very thinly with my meat slicer, sprinkled with porcini salt, reformed it into its original shape...

Vacuumed and sous vide for 24 hours and served it as a peel-off appetizer at our staff holiday party last week. Tyler asked, "What, you couldn't just grill it?" No...no I can't.

Royal Foodie Joust: Fish, Nutmeg & Coconut

It's been a while since I've made time to do the online competitions, but I like reviving old favorites. The January Joust featured fish, nutmeg and coconut. Naturally I thought of MARSHMALLOWS!

I've done something similar to this in the past, but this time I used coconut milk instead of regular milk and made the marshmallow savory instead of sweet - letting the coconut serve as the sweetness.

500g Coconut milk
18g Gelatin leaf, softened
40g Salmon oil
Pinch, Nutmeg

I took a chunk of dry style smoked salmon - a good oily piece, and heated it in the 40g of canola oil. Once warm, I covered and let steep off the heat for an hour. Next I chilled 400g coconut milk until almost frozen. I then added the softened gelatin to the remaining 100g milk and heated in a sauce pan over low flame. In my mixer, I whipped the gelatin milk mixture for 30 seconds, then added all of the cold milk at once, whipping for another 3 minutes. At the end of the 3 minutes, I poured the oil, which I had strained out the salmon chunks and chilled slightly. Add the pinch of nutmeg. Another 30 seconds of whipping and then spread, chilled and cut. Finally, I dipped the marshmallows in tempered 85% chocolate.

I know you think this sounds gross but smoked salmon and dark chocolate go great together - really. I made an ultra rich 74% drinking chocolate with a hint of orange rind and cinnamon and slurped myself into oblivion.

Piloting a New Menu

When I started the idea of serving dinners at our restaurant my plan was to do mini tasting menus. I wanted people to give me an idea of what they liked by picking an entree and I could essentially do the rest. As the menu evolved, I offered them a choice of packaged meals - first course, entree and dessert, and then I would throw in two or three other bites to complement the meal.

As I get down to the final stages, the vast majority of people whom I show the draft menu to are wanting more control and more options. The latest menu let's them pick whatever they want, letting the entree control the price.

That's fine, but now a diner could pick a first course that simply doesn't go with the entree. I know not everyone eats like me, nor do they think through their foods like me, but my revised hope is that with time diners will come to trust my selections in a way that they will turn themselves over to me (as many of my lunch regulars do).

Here is my latest draft:

Big Opportunity

I'll be getting posts up later but I wanted to share some great news with my blog readers. Conde Nast magazine (I'm assuming the Traveler magazine) is doing a story about our area in a couple of months and I'm going to be cooking for them. The meals will be served over two days at a back country ghost town. I'll be doing my usual - regionally inspired, locally sourced molecular gastronomy. What will be fun is that this is in the back country which means my food will be packed to the site on an ATV, no power to cook with...should be fun. I'm obviously giddy and I'll be sure to share my menu as it develops.

BTW, if you are on FaceBook, feel free to friend me for more frequent, short updates (Rob Connoley or gfron1). If you do, just add a message line so I know you came from the blog.