pumpkin noodles - fried chicken - walnut sauce - parsley puree - olive oil
This months TGRWT (they go really well together), hosted by Docsconz, is pumpkin and cooked chicken. Cooked chicken, in this case, refers to chicken cooked any way other than roasting. I don't have actual recipes to share for this round because I was running late on getting my entry together and was pretty much winging it. The noodles are roasted pumpkin puree, water, a little sugar, salt, pepper, cayenne and agar. The chicken was simply cut into cubes, brined, very lightly breaded and pan fried in a little olive oil. The walnut sauce is chicken stock, toasted walnuts, toasted bread, roasted garlic and pecorino romano that was pureed, sieved, seasoned with walnut oil, salt and pepper then thickened with ultratex. Parsley puree and olive oil are pretty much self-explanatory. The goal was to get all of the components of a traditional pasta noci on the plate with the pumpkin and chicken. I enjoyed the combination and may even take the time to refine this dish a bit for future use. Mainly by making actual pumpkin pasta rather than the agar noodles. They were really pure in flavor which was appropriate for the purposes of this challenge, keeping the key ingredients forward, but I missed the texture of a traditional noodle.
3 comments:
Fun grouping of stuff. Can I offer an observation (not that you can stop me at this point)? You tend to plate horizontally instead of vertically. Is this a conscious choice? I mostly try to go up, and I only do it for the dramatic effect, but it punishes the eater who has to destroy the sculpture. Just curious since we're very different in this way.
Yes and no. Usually (though definitely not always) a basic plating idea shows up in my head very soon after the dish concept and I tend to go with it when that happens. I figure somewhere in my mind something connects that plating with that dish for whatever reason so why fight it? As far as why they tend to be biased towards the horizontal, I have no idea. It's never occured to me until you pointed it out but I just looked at 20 pictures of my own platings and only 3 were more vertical than horizontal. I'm not sure that makes us all that different though. Sort of a painter and a sculptor thing maybe? Hmmmm...
I hear you about the agar noodles; eggs and flour make for a better pasta texture in general.
I try to plate things according to the nature of the dish, going so far as to make my own plates recently to help me get it the way I want. (It's a painter AND sculptor thing). That, and OCD.
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