My Blueberry Rice

I was in the mood for peaches, and wanted to construct a dinner around them. Pork seemed a pretty obvious choice, but what could serve as a side dish? Well, blueberries play nicely with pork and peaches. I ended up with a damn tasty meal of pork in peaches and cream, with blueberry rice. And yes, the title of this post is a reference to Wong Kar-Wai's film, My Blueberry Nights.

Better Late Than Never

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

I Forgot To Mention...

in all my *ahem* years of existence, tonight was the first time I've ever come across a maraschino cherry pit.

Act of Desperation or Stroke of Genius?

Why not both? Wanting a cocktail, but out of ice, I decided to use some frozen peaches that as an ice substitute. It added a nice taste to my Manhattan, and now I have some lovely bourbon-soaked peaches to make ice cream with.

Spring Fling Experiment

This was really tasty, though not yet in its final form. It's a mango gel sheet, pineapple coconut pearl tapioca, raspberries, maraschino brulee, and lime sugar. Wild Sweets Chocolate has a recipe for a hot fruit gelee using agar and gelatin. When warm, it should make a wonderful wrap. The pineapple and coconut may end up as separate components as I'm not particularly happy with how the tapioca turned out. More than likely I'll end up doing a coconut jelly and just brunoise some pineapple. Over all, a pretty successful experiment that I'll be trying again soon.

It Feels A Little Like Christmas

Martin Lersch at Khymos has updated his hydrocolloid recipe collection. It's a wonderful resource for learning how to use the chemicals commonly associated with molecular cuisine. Download it and start playing with your food today.

Smoking In Manhattan

...is illegal, but smoking a Manhattan is perfectly acceptable. To make sure some of the smokiness made it to the drink, I first placed the ice in a Mason jar, laid it on its side, and smoked the jar with cherry wood. Then I placed it in the refrigerator to absorb some of the smoke. I went ahead and measured out my liquor, some wonderful Maker's Mark bourbon (as an ambassador, I say unto you, when drinking bourbon, drink Maker's Mark) and sweet vermouth, trying to minimize smoke loss when it came time to open the jar.

Since I didn't have any maraschino cherries, but I did have the juice, I mixed it with some sodium alginate, and decorated the glass. I also bruleed a bit of the mixture and used it to rim the glass. The maraschino brulee was pretty damn tasty on its own. I'll have to find another application for it sometime.

Next I popped the lid to the jar, poured in the liquor, then tilted the jar and smoked it one more time. An appropriate shake time, and then sweet inebriation. It's a little more work than I care to put into every cocktail, but the smokiness and the maraschino brulee added a little extra something to the first Manhattan of the evening.

Smoked Salad

Sometimes you just can't help playing with your toys. In this case I made a fairly simple spinach salad with bacon, mushroom, and cheddar cheese. I usually add pecans, but since I didn't have any, I decided to smoke the whole thing with pecan wood. I let the smoke infuse for about ten minutes. The smokiness was pretty subtle, though a little more pronounced when I took a bite with mushroom. The bacon was cooked on the stove top on medium heat so as to render the fat. I deglazed the pan with an appropriate amount of apple cider vinegar so that I had a nice warm vinaigrette. While not ready for fine dining, still a damn fine dinner.

Smoked French Fries, The Second Time Around

So I was feeling lazy and hungry and succumbed to the temptation of fast food, in this case Mcdonald's. Since I got some fries, I thought I may as well smoke 'em. I dumped them in a bowl, covered in plastic wrap, and smoked them with applewood. They were even better than normal. Now to figure out if it worked this time because the fries are thin, because they're actually fried as opposed to baked, because I used a different smoke, some combination of all these, or none of them.

Pesce & Peche

Orange roughy, peaches, tea caviar & spaetzle. I cooked the fish & peaches sous-vide, 15 minutes at 125 degrees. The tea caviar is the tea/alginate mixture left over from the other night, dropped into a 1% calcium chloride solution for a minute, then fished out and rinsed with cold tap water. The spaetzle is just a basic spaetzle recipe. It's garnished with a little chili oil and mint oil. I'll have to try this again, but low roast the fish & peaches instead, perhaps adding a bit more liquid. That's the problem with having to use a FoodSaver instead of a fancy commercial vacuum sealer. Sure, I could freeze any liquid before adding it to the bag, but I don't always have that kind of prep time.