Easter eggs, the long good friday

I have often wanted to make my Mrs. an egg for Easter, but usually opt for a last minute Lindor or Wispa egg on my way home from work on Easter Saturday, as I am now in a job that shuts down for bank holidays and left with a 4 day weekend I had finally run out of excuses to put my money where my mouth is.

One teeny problem, having always been well staffed in the pastry department, I have not had the neccesity to temper my own chocolate i realised for over 15 years, sure I have come up with desserts, but with the constraints of everyday work have often asked of my pastry section to do the nitty gritty of the mis-en-place before I step in at the 11th hour and take the credit for the creation, slightly different here, G is a great teacher and a chef who always pushes himself to the limit regardless of business levels, so I have taken to producing my creations and re-learning the pastry section piece by piece.

So Thursday, I jump on with G to make a god awful mess (I mean make eggs for our members with him), during this time (a whole 3 hours, where G tempered all the chocolate for me, so didn't practise any myself), I picked his brains on tempering, decorating and making the eggs themselves.

Armed with this new(ish) knowledge, and about 3kg of chocolate and some moulds in my bag I set off home with the express mission to make my darling Mrs. an egg within an egg within an egg. oh did I tell you how much experience I had? Not!

Firstly I did not think of one small issue, that would be my one small kitchen, if I thought I had made a mess at work with my ample stainless steel surfacing, my wooden worktops (tiny), and the ins and outs of family life over the Easter holidays certainly didnt mean that I was lessening the mess, quite frankly the opposite, and we will be cleaning that up for some time, a lot of it on the Good Friday hence the title

All that said, quite soon I had all my varying size moulds full of appropriate size chocolate shells, awaiting extraction (the tricky bit), and after trashing the first go of the larger shells had enough chocolate still to keep going.

I am happy not to have had to dash out to a 7-11 at the last minute, and managed to produce exactly what I had aimed for, but I have learned a valuable lesson that my Father always told me, and that was to never ask someone to do a job that I am not capable of doing myself, and from now on I think I will set out to teach myself some of the basics that we chefs can neglect from time to time, especially when we run larger brigades It is fine to utilize someone elses expertize, but not when you have no idea yourself, learn it then delegate, my new kitchen ethos.

note the safety tea-towel holding the egg off its stand at the front, probably the most nerve racking moment was removing this just seconds before presenting the egg

and as you can just see, the middle egg inside. took Mrs. W. 2 days before she would crack this layer

Duck, Rhubarb, Apple

Doesn't matter how many different foods I cook with and discover, I will always revert to duck. I have come to the conclusion that it simply has to be my favourite meat in any guise. I love the tenderness and moisture from a well cooked and rested breast with the fat rendered to nothing but the thinnest crisp skin, to the unctious quality of a superbly confited leg. the fat itself is a great transporter of flavour and handled with care the carcass can be used to make a wonderful deep jus. And finally the liver is just enough for me on toast with a little marmalade whilst contemplating the rest of the bird.

As forced rhubarb is something quite special at the moment thought the pairing would be essential cooking for our menu this week. Wanting to introduce some spice without turning into an asian interpretation so began by making a few pickling liquors, one for the rhubarb, one for the compressed apple, and a dry rub for the duck itself.

The rhubarb was marinated under vacuum for 6 hours then poached in the bag at 70C for 12 minutes until it just starts to give under my fingers

The result was perfectly tender, the strings of the skin were present but break down easily in the mouth and no need to artificially boost the colour. The apple was cubed and soaked in an acidic pickle then compressed at full vacuum, the trim of both with a little of the rhubarb pickle I used to make a simple puree.

The duck breast, I dry rubbed with a combination of spices and left to dry cure overnight, then placed skin side down in a cold pan and brought up to a high heat to render off as much of the fat as possible from the very finely scored skin. this was chilled and bagged, we then cook this sous-vide for 1 hour at 60C, and then allowed to rest for a further 20 minutes.

As this softens the skin, we then return it to a cold pan and bring up again to render the last of the fat and crisp up the skin, it is then carved and the plate arranged.

Duck breast sous-vide

Rhubarb

Compresse apple

Ruhbarb/apple puree

Roasted Bok-choi

Gingerbread puree

Duck and apple reduction

sorrel & coriander

Chicken ballotine, wild mushroom fricasee and foie gras jelly

And the jelly from the previous post is used for...

Ballotine, stuffed with mushrooms, calves liver and spinach

agar triangle of mushroom fricasse

caramelized foie gras jelly

foie gras 'tapioca' rocks

parsley

Foie gras jelly, caramelized just one gram off

just one more gram of Agar, and this one will be ready to go.

Foie gras jelly

next the ballotine to go with it

BITTER TASTE, sideways step not quite off topic

Been a while, with apologies

we have a few posts to deliver, just not a huge amount of time to deliver them, shouldn't moan about being busy really. Also clocked up the BIG 40 last week, so still recovering from that, post party post on its way, Sally put on a great party and spread for me pushing herself something silly, and having never made one in her life attempted a croquembouche as a centrepiece (oddly was my birthday cake, not wedding) but the onlyway she could make something to get that many bloomin' candles into. Absolutely gorgeous it was too.

anyway, digression aside, this post is about a book, written by David Evans, an ex club chef (like myself, just not ex yet) and a cracking read, I felt it really deserved as big a plug as I can give it, so here is a brief excerpt from the book and a link to a blog where it can be picked up at an absolute bargain, if you like stories from the coalface of kitchen life then get off my blog, click the link and get a copy.

normal service will be resumed soon, with the repair of my laptop keyboard nearly complete (only the left hand side keys work) and some dishes and thoughts in the bag, we should be fulfilling our promise of posting what we play very soon.

anyway digressing (AGAIN), the book...........

About the Book: With a reputation forged in France, Jack Kennedy was the pick of the new crop of British-born chefs, and when he teamed up with a Mayfair socialite intent on establishing a restaurant to rival the world’s finest, the prospect of becoming a rich man was overshadowed by his yearning for international stardom.

But the dream turned into a nightmare when the owner decided to turn the restaurant into a private members club.

Maybe if Jack hadn’t invested his life savings he would never have risked life and limb to escape the golden handcuffs, but when his scam to recoup his stake backfired so unexpectedly, he resorted to extortion.

It would prove to be the biggest mistake he ever made

you can read up more on the Author HERE

Happy reading.

Valentines Day, the one that got away.

For a while back I had been working on the Valentines Day Dessert Menu (and this post as you can see by the date) we were having at the Club on the Friday before the 14th but sadly no one booked in and we had to pull the plug on the Special 'Aphrodisiac' based menu.

I had done a bit of back ground and ‘in the field’ ;-) research on aphrodisiac foods and herbs before the cancellation had happened.

It really is quite interesting all the little things that surround us day to day and the from far off distant lands witch doctor remedies which all have special properties that have interesting effects on our bodys. One that caught my attention was Maca Root from up in the Andes in Peru. It is meant to have quite stimulating qualities from libido, balancing hormones and a tasting quite good on my morning porridge! 

It tasted quite ‘malty’ and pleasant-ish, so I mixed it up with some Bananas and made a Banana and Maca Root ice-cream to go with liquid chocolate and nutmeg sponge. Quite happy with the result.

I also come across Horny Goat Weed, supposedly a poor mans Viagra. Now that’s what I was looking for in an aphrodisiac based menu! Hmmm…Something that actually kind of did something. So off to Holland and Barrett and picked some up. Well one small taste and I couldn’t get this leafy burnt ash flavour out of my mouth. I don’t think anything could make it taste nice. Gonna have to use that one at home….

After going off into unfamiliar territory I thought I better come back to some not so customer scary ingredients.  I planed to incorporate every day Aphrodisiac foods Sweet Basil, Nutmeg, Coffee, Chocolate, Almond, Banana, Passion Fruit, Champagne and Maca Root into the different desserts I had planned.

For one of the special desserts the challenge of pulling off the liquid chocolate from the almighty Alinea cook book was put in front of me and thought it would be fun to do.

After banging out the mix word for word from the book at the end of the day so it would be good to go for the morning the next day.

The morning after....

I was quite excited to pull out a square to defrost and see the chocolate ooze out and cover the plate. 1 1/2 hrs later I gently probed the centre of the block of chocolate to see if it had defrosted completely. 3c, it was ready. I carefully broke off the corner and..... 

a soft solid block of chocolate was waiting for me.

Not exactly what I was expecting but should’ve seen it coming, seemed all too easy. Previously I have had quite a bit of success with the recipes from the Alinea cook book with only minor adjustments to correct slight changes between different ingredients and my personal taste.

The recipe does have a few issues you could say, which will show up in the final result.

First up the recipe calls for “bittersweet chocolate, 75 percent cacao, chopped” and the same for the milk chocolate but 33%.

Just from the top of my head I can think of several different brands of chocolate that have the same percent chocolates in their range. The thing is not all chocolate is the same even though the percentage may be. Some have a higher sugar content or higher cacao butter content, for example Valhrona tend to have a higher percentage of cacao butter content which gives them a lower viscosity or thinner consistency than most other brands which helps with enrobing, dipping and of course taste.  Most decent chocolate companies have different couvertures (32-39% cacao butter) for different purposes and tastes, all featuring their own individual characteristics to that company’s specifications, which gives a few variables which could impact on the finial result.

Well with the result from the first test I had, I went about making the recipe 'wetter' with more honey, milk and cream so it would be liquid upon defrosting.

Six test batches later and numerous cleanings of the chocolate spray gun (which is the worst part of the job and takes two times longer to clean than the time your actually using it) all for 1 or 2 little squares at a time….  I finally got want we wanted all along. A good flow and stability with out the sides giving away under there own weight during transit from the fridge to the plate to the table.

Still even after the relief to getting it right, I also had another potential problem which I noticed around test 3 or 4 that the defrost time also played an important part in the finial result.

The longer it was left in the fridge in its defrosted state the firmer it would get eventually seizing up the flow and becoming just goo. Seems like the chocolate was doing its best to crystallize and annoy me again.

This could have been solved by looking at the bookings and pulling out portions in intervals through out the night and guessing how well it would’ve sold to get the best result…..

Then I had the idea how to completely solve all my dilemmas. Which sadly I didn’t get to put to use.

The easy way -

Make up a tasty chocolate liquor / sauce with a very thin consistency and freeze in gastro tray.

Cut to desired size, place back in freezer. Place a couple of needles into block.

When making up chocolate spray mix, set aside some and then take the frozen block and dip up to the top of the sides evenly along the edges. Place back in freezer.

Set up chocolate spray gun. Spray blocks well and evenly on all sides. Refreeze.

Defrost and you should have a very liquid and manageable liquid block of chocolate.

Technically cheating but allows quite a few more possibilities to be achieved with a bit less trial and error.

Have fun with it!

Basil tapioca, tomato jelly and rock oyster

Been skimming through Johnny Iuzzuni's dessert fourplay book this week, visually stunning however sad to say whilst the ideas and inspiration come thick and fast in this book, the ability to try a recipe and it work are impossible. I have tried a few this week and it has taken all my cooking savvy to stop horrific errors due to incorrect quantities, sorry but this book is off my birthday list.

however, there is one lovely looking 1/4 on a strawberry page, had to see where this could go in the savoury world

Tomato fluid gel, rock oyster, basil tapioca

Got it!! the Anything molten cake

In my last post I showed a celeriac fondant, made primarliy from the vegetable only. from this continued the technique through carrot, fennel and a most excellent banoffee fondant, thought I would show the last one though as it is probably the most visually contrasting one from the original, Beetroot.

am happy with the technique now, and am pretty happy that with minor alterations to the ratios on each can produce a molten cake out of absolutely anything!

and the moment of truth...again

this one is cast from a different mould to above, but my poor phone camera had a real moment and lost a number of snaps from today

Classic Fondant well nearly.........

I love it when a thought becomes something lovely at the first attempt

especially when that is so rare

CELERIAC FONDANT

and the proof of the pudding is..........

as Hannibal would say, I love it when a plan comes together. now just the beet jus and the beef elements left to go

Roast quail, puy lentil and parsnip consomme

Woke up a couple of days ago with a need to cook parnsip

humble vegetable adaptable for so many different methods, boiled, roasted, puree, even cereal at a certain favourite restaurant.

sat on the end of the bed thinking if it would consomme, so went downstairs and googled it, found a couple of references where a puree is added to the egg white to create flavour from the 'pack'

recently I have abandoned egg white clarification in favour of agar filtering, firstly with accurate scales it is so much easier, no more stove watching and that small possibility of fried egg running through your stock. secondly I feel the flavour is purer with not so much taste and flavour lost to the clarification, but with picture perfect clarity every time.

during preparation was not sure of the parsnip as the starch contained could affect the final dish, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, I started by roasting.

this was to draw out the flavours, I de-glazed the pan with some simple chicken stock and blast chilled.

Then moved on to vac-packing the parsnips and stock and finished cooking in a pan of boiling water until quite tender, didn't want to stew the parsnips, but was using the veg as a puree.

For the puree, I took all the washed parsnip trim (peelings, tops&tails) and cooked in a bag with full fat milk.

Once tender, passed the stock off and chilled, pureed the veg with a bit of the parsnip milk

Once the liquid had cooled, weighed it and whizzed in 0.2% of agar for the clarification, heated up to >90C and chilled to set in the chiller once more. once chilled cut into rough chunks and froze overnight.

following day, laid the frozen stock cubes to defrost on a holy gastro tray, with a solid one underneath, left to drip through, this took most of the day to get the maximum yield.

Once this was complete, season to taste and heat for each order, We are serving with roast quail breasts, confit quail leg, puy lentils and vegetables bound in a little parsnip puree, thus:-

Great flavour, nice dish but a bit brown. need to sort some colour.....next time!