Hasty Pudding - a bit of food history bandwagon

It must be that chef's have had enough with innovation, the buzzword over the last couple of years has to be:

'my dish is older than your dish'

'but my dish is even older'

'mine was cooked by cavemen'

'but mine was cooked by dinosaurs'

'but mine.................' and so it goes on.

We are obviously struggling to come up with new ideas and concepts, and wrapping it up in buzz-word terms such as keeping history alive, and that they really had to know their flavours back then.

By now you must think I am slapping and slating this trend as a cop-out in culinary terms, this could not be further from the truth, I think it is completely fantastic that records of these foods exist and that with modern day technologly and know how allow us to expand on what was once was and were fantastic recipes and dishes.

So what is Hasty Pudding? in a nutshell it is a savoury porridge, a recipe for which I use has onions and leek in it, doesn't exactly sound appetizing does it? Sure Heston at the fat duck has been making snail porridge for years to much acclaim, however I wish to stand up and make the bold claim "this one's yummier", probably get shot for that. Not that I think the snail porridge is not a lovely dish having been fortunate to try it on a number of occasions both as a guest and working in the kitchen, just that this combination is soooo moreish. don't beleive me? well I was surprised too.

enhancing the original recipe, I simply make a leek puree to cook my oats in and get a great colour, add some shredded leek and soften with a little goat's milk, the chicken is pot roasted, a few baby leeks, some madeira jus and finished with a little goats milk tapioca and a shallot crisp. I love it when a plan comes together.

more information on this dish and other great dishes from the annuls of time here

Baked potato skins, the ultimate by product use up

On the The Staff Canteen site, a question was raised at the end of last month from a chef who does his mash the baked potato method, he asked if anyone in the forum had any ideas for utilizing the skins beyond the deep fried tater skins and dip route, I had a little (very little) time on my hands, and a tray of potatoes in the oven already cooking so thought I would give this a little thought and see what I could come up with.

Armed with my baked potatoes, I set to work to try a couple of different ideas. the 3 thoughts I cam up with were:

A) A baked potato milk ice cream

B) Baked potato skin mash (after a concerned comment about the colour), had to give it a go just to see for myself

C) Basic mash, infused with the flavour of baked potato skins

I took the skins, some milk, cream, multidextrin, glucose, thyme, garlic and bay leaf and set them on the edge of the stove to infuse without boiling, from these I passed one completely for the ice cream, placed the skins from another into a pacojet beaker and covered (just with the milk) and in the 3rd placed the potato scooped from the skins, with enough milk to again just cover.

the 3 beakers then were frozen for 24 hours, happy with the current flavours, just not quite ready for what the next day would bring.

The following day, I removed A), B) & C) and churned. I will now begin by dismissing C) as the starchiness of the mix damn near broke the pacojet and the end result was vile.

B) this however whilst struggling to churn due to a reasonable high starch level came out a reasonable colour and had good flavour, unfortunately due to the starchy nature of the product felt like eating a frzoen mashed potato, not great, I left this to defrost and set to churn the milk. This was to prove to be the revelation I was hoping for.

Once churned, I had guessed the glucose and multidextrin levels accurately and it churned through the machine beautifully. the end product was a great textured, herby flavoured potato milk and began thinking of applications such as a parmesan risotto with the ice cream and other thoughts. I then defrosted this alongside B) to see what results I would get hot.

The milk defrosted into a rich creamy liquid, the skin mash just defrosted, to this I added a little butter and proceeded to warm it through in the traditional method, whilst this was heating I heated the milk with a little xnathan and agar to creat a fluid gel for a creamy mash texture.

The skin mash had a nice earthy colour and good flavour, however the texture was that of wallpaper paste and was ridiculously gloopy, so back to the drawing board I go with that, however the milk fluid gel worked very well served hot and again a number of different applications spring to mind including using spherification to create a jacketless jacket potato?? Hmmmm

Anyway, this is how I have whiled away my time this week, does anyone have any thoughts on what common by-product that normally lines our bins that we may be able to get one or more dishes or garnishes out of?

left to right: milk gel, skin mash potato, plain mash (great, bad, bad)

30-Second Yoghurt Cake, 168 hours in the making.

 A while back I had a bit of success with a Chocolate and Beetroot Microwave 'coral' cake which was a combination of a two recipes and quite a few ingredients. It worked well on the first test only needing minor tweaking for version 2. I was happy with it, well for now anyway. I had plans for the torn pieces to go with a Beetroot Parfait I was testing from Johnny Iuzzini's Dessert four play book ( recipe was about 10 miles off from being ok...but I did rip off his presentation, well expanded on it and had some fun with it ), the parfaits another story..... had to run off to Sainbury's to get more beetroot half through so you could taste something other than pink creaminess. Anyway least after all the adjusting and tinkering I got a working recipe out of that experience.

After the reasonable ease of the Chocolate and Beetroot Microwave cake and the recipe from the incredible Natura book by Albert Adria, I was off to try out the Yoghurt cake recipe for my plan to put together a canapé with Aloe Vera Gel and the Yoghurt cake for the new canapé menu. I had always wanted to put the two flavours together after
 travelling through Japan a few years ago when I came across Yoghurt with chunks of Aloe Vera. It became a daily staple for me, absolutely loved it.

Straight from the book the recipe works ok but felt it was a bit too strong on the egg whites. I didn't have the Texturas Yopol Yoghurt powder but I was using a Sosa version. Maybe that was the problem? Quick phone call to my wife to ask for a favour to have a look on the internet while I was working away, she came across Michael Laiskonis's version from Le Bernardin and it's currently on their dessert menu. Test - No, way too soft and wet. Hmmm....
I brought in some Yoghurt from home the next day and adjusted the recipe to accommodate the extra liquid content in the recipe. The flavour was a bit deeper, softer crumb but still the texture just wasn't right. Next day I ordered some Yoghurt from our supplier, low fat natural Yoghurt come in. Whizzed up another version, flavour was still there but the texture had changed for the worse. Thinking it was the fat content and only having the low fat Yoghurt .1% fat. I tried adding a drop of oil to get back the texture and softness back. Nope, worst of them all.
I was almost ready to scrape the idea. Going over my notes of the various tests seeing which ones come out the best and what characteristics they possessed. So far it was the original, lacking flavour and ok structure and the one with Yoghurt from home better flavour but not as much volume. I compiled a recipe of the two, an average to say. No more Yoghurt meant it was time to go home and wait for more to come in the morning.

Over my morning Porridge, I checked out the fat content of the Yoghurt I had at home, 4.7%. Now that would explain the softer mouth feel I had back in test #2.
I boxed some up and jumped on my bike to work. Put the Yoghurt into my 'average' recipe.
At last I could feel I was getting close. Good texture, great holes and the flavour was almost there. Acceptable but I had one last thing I wanted to try. Greek Yoghurt, 10% fat and that meant waiting another day.
My perseverance paid off, the Greek Yoghurt added an extra depth in flavour and texture.
At last I was happy with my results.

I think the half of the problem was the fact that I've had the pleasure of having an amazing near perfect Yoghurt microwave cake at Arzak late last year. It was probably my second most favourite course from the whole experience. I think I've come close with my version but it's hard to compete with the R&D that goes on at Arzak.....

The original plan for my canapé with the cake and Aloe Vera, well hasn't come to much. Didn't even put it in on the new canapé menu.
That was partly dew to the fact I couldn't track down a good supply of solid Aloe Vera Gel.
There is another source I'm looking into for the Aloe. While I was travelling around Australia I stopped into a random Shop for a cold drink when I was walking around Sydney. I grabbed a bottle of White Grape and Aloe Vera juice with chunks of Aloe Vera in it. Thought it sounded nice at the time, well I can still remember how refreshing and delicious it was. Don't think I'll ever forget that day.
So far I've found just one place that sells it in the UK. Just another hurdle I've got to jump over, starting to get  used to the obstacles. Eventually I get around them.




??? Yoghurt or Yogurt ???