Pumpkin risotto with feta cheese

Ever since I began in this business there are a few jobs that have eluded me to get 'just so'

Bavoirs, since college where my lecturer would give me the same bavoirs recipe time and time again, only to be startled as to what it had turned into by the end of the day, sometimes even he could not explain what I had managed to do to it.

Turning mushrooms, thankfully a pretty much dead art, sorry I cannot get to grips with the sharpest of turning knives, my mushrooms just seem to resemble over zealous road-kill after I have tried.

and then this, cubing or slicing Feta cheese evenly, I have had chef after chef show me different tricks with hot knives to no avail, I simply end up with a pile of usually 'OK' cheesy bits. that is until now

a while ago I wanted to put a risotto dish on with feta cheese, simple, seasonal and quite lovely. I wanted it to look like we tried so the cheesy bits had to be sorted, so I thought if it was possible to make a cheese gel, without losing the trademark flavour elements to the cheese, so off I went.

I took a blind guess at a 2:1 ration of water to cheese and set about melting it.

Sitting on the edge of the solid top, I watched eagerly, hoping it would melt smoothly and not curdle and go grainy

It quickly arrived to the boil, hanging it nearly off the solid, I held my breath as things were not looking particularly good.

but hey presto, it melted into a silky liquid. stage 1 complete

I then weighed the resulting liquid and mixed in .19% xanthan (to restrict syneresis) and 1.1% Agar for the gelling. these ratios are what I commonly use for my fluid gels so don't set very firm, as I didn't want it to be small solid cubes, it still had to have the same mouthfeel as a cheese when warm

I brought the cheese and agar mix to just over 90C (to fully hydrate the agar) and poured into my chosen container, placed into the blast chiller and waited eagerly.

soon it was set, and as is usual with agar gels, came out of the container without any hassle, I had to prompltly chop some up

Result, perfectly clean no crumbling shows up any knife skill errors but hey, perfect diced feta. woo hoo. stick some in my mouth as a well done treat and......................

Mild cheesy gel, bother, bother and other words unpublishable.

but look at how clean,

left is normal cheese, not bad but wouldnt like to handle it much more, and you can juggle with the gel, BUT it doesnt taste like feta.

Anyway, I got busy for the rest of the day and resigned my cheese gel to the fridge whilst I actually did some work. 2 days passed..................

That afternoon, I had a bit of time to kill and was sorting the fridge, I came accross the gel and still cross that I had a failed product I started to think along the lines of increasing the feta and lowering the water. as I did this I stuck a couple of cubes in my mouth as thought fodder, and low and behold, the gel had started to take on a dry acidic flavour synominous with the feta and thought what will another day do. I re-wrapped and left it, and on day 4, perfect feta cheese, but gelled. The Agar had firmed slightly, as it does, and the flavours were much more pronounced and most acceptable for the dish. All's well that ends well, we now use 1.5 water to 1 feta to intensify the flavour and so it can be prepared closer to the time, any lower a ration to this and the cheese wont melt properly and is unpleasantly grainy.

But happy me, pumpkin risotto, feta cheese

risotto

flavoured with roasted pumpkin puree

pumpkin gel sheet over

pumpkin fluid gel

microplaned feta gel

amaranth

Next post will be a short photo journal of 2009 and my last post for the year, we close on the 23rd for the christmas break and return on the 4th of Jan, lucky us. To all other cooks out there having to work the holidays, have a great time and hope that business doesn't always get in the way of festivities, just remember 'all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy'

Seasons Greetings