TGRWT #14: Malt and Soy

Malt and Soy was a fun challenge. No weirdness to get the head around, no overpowering element to try to get the other ingredient to stand up to. They really do "go really well together".


So my entry is inspired by Rob's admonition at the beginning that "drinking a beer while eating Chinese take-out doesn't count!". What I did was melt some soy marshmallow with a little butter. Then I stirred in some puffed barley (made by overcooking barley, drying it and flashing it in a fryer) and toasted sesame seeds and rolled it into a thin sheet. I brushed the sheet with a malt gastrique made by cooking malt syrup, malt vinegar, sugar and lemon juice to a thick syrup. I cooked a piece of salmon sous vide at 104 f. for 20 minutes, cut a block and rolled it in the gastrique-brushed barley sheet and sliced it into cubes. A nice malty beer finished the dish.

The Johnny Iuzzini Chocolate Doughnut

This recipe was a lesson in missing the obvious. I play with sodium alginate and methocel fairly often, I have a basic working knowledge of what they do. Why the heck did this idea never occur to me? I guess that's part of why he's a top-level pastry chef and I'm some guy blogging about doing one of his recipes.
It's actually a pretty simple process. You heat water and cream, sheer in sugar and methocel, emulsify it into chocolate then mix in a sodium alginate solution and a bit of salt. This forms a fairly thick ganache that you then pipe into mini savarin molds and freeze. The fozen ganache rings are given a soak in a calcium lactate bath, air dried, dipped in an egg and flour batter and breaded with panko and salt. They're given a few hours on a rack in the fridge to set the breading then deep fried.
What you get at the end is almost exactly what you see in the picture that accompanies the recipe. Why almost? Because in the picture they look like actual mini doughnuts. What you end up with by following the instructions as written is mini half doughnuts. Nice and rounded where the ganache was in the mold, flat on the back. So, in the interest of obtaining the nice symetrical doughnuts in Chef Iuzzini's picture, I decided to bond two of the half doughnuts to form one nicely shaped doughnut. Much better, worth the extra effort. I simply took two doughnuts, heated the flat surface of one with a torch, pressed them together and tossed them back in the freezer for a bit. It didn't take long to do all of them and I've already thought of an easier way to do it that I'll try next time. I'm wondering if this was a step that was unintentionally omitted from the recipe because the ganache made exactly double the number the recipe says it will. I did a half batch and got 60 of the half doughnuts, the full recipe is supposed to make 60 total.
Anyway, here they are.

Breaded and ready to fry:


Fried, crispy on the outside...


...and creamy on the inside...


...just as Chef Iuzzini promised. He delivered with these. They're fun and tasty and they made me smile. Finally, just for a little more fun, I decided to plate them. So here they are with coffee ice cream, toasted cinnamon caramel and chocolate mousse powder.

TGRWT #11: Banana and Cloves

khymos.org is doing another installment in the "they go really well together" series. Bananas and cloves. I've been following the series with great interest for a long time but I've never participated. This time I decided to join the fun so this is my entry...


pork - banana - clove
Pork tenderloin brined in water, salt, sucanat, cloves and peppercorns then pan fried. Banana slices pickled in vinegar, sucanat, cloves and salt then breaded and deep fried. The pork and banana are skewered on a vanilla bean and plated with a clove gastrique.
I liked the banana and clove as a flavor pairing and thought it worked really well with the pork. The dish needs a little refining but I was happy with the result. Thanks for the inspiration Martin!

Campfire

Toasted marshmallow ice cream. That was the idea. Simple enough. Brown some marshmallows in the oven or over a burner and off you go, right? Well, it works that way. But it's not right. There's something missing.
The campfire.
That's what's missing.
A marshmallow toasted over the stove is good but it's just not the same. The smoky smell. The ash floating around. It has it's influence on the marshmallow eating experience.
So a campfire was needed but not practical (at least not in my kitchen, if you have a fireplace in yours then you're set). How about a mini campfire? This was the solution I went with. I smoked the marshmallows for a bit in a stovetop smoker then toasted them over a small fire built in an old pan. Now they taste like a toasted marshmallow should taste. From there it was easy. I plated it in a s'mores theme to stay with the campfire idea by adding a graham cracker puree, a chocolate-graham crumb and a cube of aerated smoked chocolate.

Toasted Marshmallow Ice Cream

300 g toasted smoked marshmallows (I cold smoke the marshmallows then toast them over a wood fire)
500 ml whole milk
500 ml heavy cream
5 ml vanilla extract
pinch salt

Heat the milk and salt. Add the marshmallows and stir until dissolved. Add the vanilla, pour through a sieve into the cold cream, stir and chill in an ice bath. Age overnight in the fridge and freeze in whatever you usually use to make your ice cream.

Savory Cake

My first post on my first-ever blog and I don't have a clue how to go about doing this so I'm just going to make it up as I go.
The problem: someone wanted to do a mousse roulade. A simple task. Make a biscuit roulade, fill it with mousse and roll it up.
Problem solved.
Problem not solved... they want a mushroom mousse rolled in a not-sweet "cake".
Ok, leave out the sugar. Oh, you don't want a rubber cake.
Hmmm.
Well, after some thinking, some guessing (of both the educated and not-so-educated variety) and a late night experimenting I came up with a solution. I'm not claiming it's the only solution or even the best solution but a solution nonetheless. The result is a completely neutral "cake" that is not at all sweet and can be flavored as required for the task at hand. Fold in some chopped herbs, some minced sun dried tomato, lemon zest, minced olives, vegetable powder, whatever makes you happy. The result is flexible, rolls easily without cracking and is not rubbery. Is it as tender as the sweet versions? Maybe not... but it's pretty close.
I plan to continue to refine this recipe in the future and welcome anyone else interested to join in or make suggestions but, for now, I'm pretty happy with it.


Savory Biscuit Roulade

180g egg white
120g egg yolk
40g flour
60ml warm water
30g melted butter (brown butter would probably be nice, didn't try it)
7g salt
14 g sugar
1.4g xanthan
2.5g methylcellulose, SGA-7C

Mix water, salt, butter and flour to just smooth. Whip whites to frothy, add combined sugar, methylcellulose and xanthan and whip on high to almost stiff. Beat egg yolks to pale. Mix in flour paste. Mix in part of the whites. Fold in remaining whites and spread on lined, sprayed and floured pan. Bake 220c (425f) 'til done (just under 15 minutes in my oven on an 18"x12" pan). Cool in pan covered with damp cloth. Trim edges and have fun.

Now to my theories, which I confess were based on my own ideas and experiences and have no scientific value whatsoever...

Theory 1: methylcellulose would help stabilize the meringue during whipping and even more so as it heated until the structure set enough to support itself.

Theory 2: xanthan is commonly used in gluten-free baking to help with texture which led me to believe that it may help with texture here, which would take a hit from the loss of sugar, as well.

I have nothing scientific to offer as to whether either theory is correct, all I can point to is the results.