Mini-Burger Delux
Sliders I made for Mother’s Day. Includes truffled foie gras, balsamic caramelized onions, chabot white cheddar. Yum.
A chic bakery that serves very specifically sized tarts. Artsy.
I bought Francisco Migoya’s book, Frozen Desserts, awhile back and never knew he kept a blog. Needless to say, it’s pretty fucking awesome.
Invited the guys over for some brunch yesterday to clean out the fridge. I had a bunch of summer produce to play with and one of my favorite things to do is trying to make random ingredients come together and cohesively work in a single meal. Here are some photos of the spread.
beer cocktail - hard cider, peaches, lemongrass, orange juice/zest, cilantro, lemongrass
saturn peaches & anchovy caramel - unripened peaches, fish sauce, poprocks, sea salt
Always wanted to try this combination. It works rather well and it finally gives me a reason for serving unripened stonefruit; it lends a texture similar to an apple. So, apple + caramel…makes sense right? The fish sauce is a traditional condiment for unripened fruits in Vietnam. I grew up with it, so it’s normal to me…
saturn peaches - used these in the previous dish. they look like peaches that have been sat on. growing in popularity and becoming readily available in supermarkets. they are relatively sweet when unripened, which is why i like them.
anchovy caramel - reduced simple syrup, vietnamese fish sauce
quick pickled fresno chilies - fresno chilies, sugarcane vinegar, arbequina olive oil, salt, sugar, cilantro, garlic
heirloom tomato salad - heirloom tomatoes, shaved cucumbers, shaved onions, arbequina olive oil, sea salt
pork shoulder - marinated in fish sauce, olive oil, rice wine, sugar, white pepper, black pepper, cilantro, garlic
sauce - arbequina olive oil, garlic, cilantro
The preferred method of cooking pork shoulder is by braising it, but it’s really good quickly fired off on the grill. It retains a lot of it’s natural pork flavor that’s muted during the braising process. The trick is a super hot grill, good caramelization, and letting the meat rest after the meat firms up slightly (the proteins should be noticeably denatured yet still pink).
black plums - you’ve gotta admit—that’s the smoothest concasse ever.
deconstructed black plum cobbler - black plum concasse, oatmeal crumble, vanilla ice cream, sea salt
I hate the term ‘deconstructed’ as I feel it’s been used to death…but that’s exactly what this is. The quenelles don’t look so great, but it’s hard when you’re trying to do it out of a 3 oz container of haagen-daz.
And that’s our summer brunch. I’m gonna try to do this more often. The bounty of summer is here and I need to seize it while I’ve still got the chance.
"Chao Ga/Goi Ga" : Vietnamese Rice Porridge with Yellow Hen Salad
This is my all-time favorite breakfast food. When me and my sisters come back home, we always hope that mom would fix us some of this porridge and she hardly ever disappoints. My mom is a truly seasoned cook and she’s always giving me the most interesting cooking tips that I would never come across on my own. Hopefully you guys can benefit from them as well.
I can easily take the easy route and give you a bastardized American version of this dish, but it just doesn’t work well unless you have all the components, so I’m gonna have to break this down into several recipes. Be forewarned: it’s gonna be a looong post…
Chicken Stock
Asian chicken stock varies greatly from the European variant. In our house, we never roast the bones. Doing so destroys a lot of the gelatin resulting in a deeper chicken flavor, but you’ll also lose some of that velvety texture. Another main difference is in the aromatics. Instead of mirepoix and herbs, we opt for ginger, onions, a splash of rice wine, and kaffir lime leaves. This yields a very light and rich broth that is very strong in chicken flavor. This is the stock we’re going to be using to poach the hen and make our porridge.
2 gallons of water
3# of chicken backs/bones
3# of chicken feet
1 knob of ginger, cut in half
3 kaffir lime leaves
1/2 cup chinese rice wine
To clean the bones and feet, rub abrasively with iodized table salt (it’s gotta be good for something, right?) and rinse them thoroughly afterward. Place the bones in a large pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and immediately drain the bones, discarding the water. Return the bones to the pot and fill with water until it just covers the bones. Return to a boil and then let the pot simmer for 6 hours. Intermittently, coagulated blood and random scum will surface that will need to be carefully spooned off. When the stock is done, strain, and discard spent bones.
Yellow-Feathered Chicken
This is essentially a free-range chicken. If you ever question the real difference between mass-produced chicken and free-range, you really need to try this chicken for yourself. Since the chicken is allowed more physical activity, it inherits a lower fat and higher muscle content. The skin is tougher, and the meat is almost rubbery, and though that may not sound appetizing, the flavor is so much better than your average chicken. It’s much more suited for Asian cuisines than Western so it wouldn’t necessarily be a good replacement for every poultry dish, but if you’re going to replicate this recipe then finding this chicken is a must.
First, be sure to let the chicken sit out to come to room temperature before cooking. Using a pot that would fit a whole 4 to 5 lb yellow-feathered chicken, heat up the chicken stock so that it is around 160 degrees. Slowly descend the chicken into the broth and cover for 15 minutes. Remove the chicken, place into a bowl, and immediately wrap tightly with plastic wrap. What you’re doing is letting the chicken cook off it’s own heat, gently and slowly. After an hour, unwrap the chicken and let it cool completely in the fridge.
When the chicken is cool, filet the entire bird and remove the meat from the bone. Try your best to keep all the parts with skin attached. Chop chicken into strips and set aside for the salad.
"Goi Ga" : Vietnamese Chicken Salad
I’m more confident asking you to eyeball this one than giving you a recipe…so, really, that’s what you should do with the following list of ingredients:
(in order of weight)
green cabbage
red cabbage
shredded yellow feathered chicken
red onions
laska leaves
grapeseed oil
freshly squeezed lemon juice
salt
pepper
The cabbage and onions should be shaved very thinly on a mandolin and soaked in an ice water bath for 15 minutes before draining. This takes the sulfuric edge off of the onions and gives the cabbage a crispier texture. As for all of the other ingredients…I think you can figure it out yourselves. Just toss everything in a bowl and season generously with salt and pepper.
"Yao Tiew" : Chinese Doughnuts
I just buy them. They’re available at your local Asian bakery or deli. If you don’t have one and you’re feeling hardcore, here’s a good recipe :
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/20311/doughnuts-and-油条chinese-doughnuts-twist-yes-there039s-always-twist (see under “the Asian Twist”)
The trick is to cook them twice. After you fry them and let them cool. Cut the doughnuts into 1 inch medallions and toast for about 5 minutes at 350 or until the doughnut is almost completely dry with little browning.
"Nuoc Cham" : Vietnamese Dipping Sauce
The nuoc cham we use for this dish is slightly different from the standard sauce that you’ve likely seen. The main difference is the inclusion of ginger and kaffir lime leaves. Exclude the ginger and kaffir lime leaves and you have a perfect nuoc cham recipe that my mom and I have tweaked to perfection.
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 Thai bird chiles, finely chopped
1 fresno chilie, finely chopped
2/3 cup Coco Rico soda (7up works as well)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup fish sauce (Three Crabs brand preferred)
1 tbs ginger, minced
1 tsp kaffir lime leaves, stemmed and minced
2 tbs fresh key lime juice
1 tbs Datu Puti sugarcane vinegar
Whisk ingredients together until sugar is fully dissolved.
And finally…
The Porridge
Porridge is a dish that is prominent in Asia in poor households. Plain white rice porridge consists of 1 part rice and about 6 parts water, creating a thick glutenous paste that goes great with pickles, and salted fish & meats—also common dishes of the poor. The idea is to eat a tiny bit of something that’s extremely salty, and then stuff your face with a crapload of porridge. This way you get full off of the rice (which is mostly water anyway) without having to eat very much meat (which is expensive). It’s amazing how tasty dishes like this are bore from the mere necessity of survival.
This particular porridge stretches the rice/water ratio to the extreme—about 1 cup per gallon of liquid, in this case chicken stock.
Set the pot of chicken stock on high so that it can boil. Take two cups of raw jasmine rice and toast it on low heat in a dry sautee pan. Keep it moving to avoid hot spots. When it’s ready, the rice should have expanded slightly and its edges toasty. Drop the rice into the boiling pot of stock and stir occasionally until the rice is fully cooked. You can tell when it’s done when the rice breaks up and puffs. The soup should be very thin. Season with rock sugar, salt, and fish sauce to taste. Garnish with chopped cilantro and scallions. Bean sprouts are optional.
And there you have it. This is the ultimate soup and salad combo. So how do you eat it? Drop a couple chinese doughnuts into your soup at a time and let the outside get soft and eat it while it’s still crispy. Grab a chopstick full of the goi and dip it in the nuoc cham. Slurp some of the porridge to wash it all down. Repeat until bowl is empty.
You will not find a more authentic recipe anywhere on the internet. If you’re willing to go through all the steps, you’ll be rewarded with a true Vietnamese household dining experience.
Chicken & Waffles
I got this technique from fellow Chef, Scott Sasaki. I started doing it as an excuse to serve fried chicken as a healthy option at Google, but I’ve really come to prefer this over deep-fried chicken. It’s much lighter and less greasy, yet it still looks and tastes exactly like fried chicken.
Brine
A brine can be as simple as salt, sugar, and water. I’m actually not a firm believer in aromatics so much since I want the chicken to be the vehicle for whatever sauce that is going to accompany it instead of overpowering it. But, for fried chicken an aromatic brine helps. This is good for a whole chicken cut into 8 pieces.
1 cup kosher salt
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 gallon vegetable stock, boiled
1 tablespoon white peppercorns
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1 1/2 tablespoons of juniper berries
Peel and juice of one orange sans pith
2 bay leaves
1 bunch of thyme
1 head of crushed garlic
2 roughly chopped shallots
1 gallon of crushed ice
Place all ingredients, except for the ice into a large container. Whisk until the vegetable stock dissolves all of the sugar and salt. Add the ice to cool. Make sure the brine is completely chilled before adding the chicken. Let the chicken brine overnight.
Oven-Fried Chicken
Preheat oven to 350 F. If you have a convection oven, set the fan to high; it’ll turn out much better. Drain chicken from the brine and discard spent brine. Dredge chicken pieces in seasoned flour (flour, garlic powder, onion powder, touch of cayenne, touch of white pepper, touch of salt). Place chicken on a sheet pan fitted with a rack and bake for 12 minutes. After 12 minutes, pull the chicken from the oven and drizzle heavily with olive oil until the chicken is completely drenched. Bake chicken for another 12 minutes or until chicken is golden brown.
Best Waffle Recipe
This is my favorite waffle recipe. Until I can come up with a recipe that is better, I’m going to redirect you:
http://orangette.blogspot.com/2010/05/you-deserve-waffle.html
Serve chicken & waffles with pure maple syrup or even some honey (I prefer orange blossom for this one). Pop open a forty and some orange juice and enjoy.
Torched Mackerel with Orange Marshmallow & Pickled Ginger Caviar
Here’s something fun…
Garlic Bread & Spaghetti Roll
Crusty, garlic bread + spaghetti with chopped hot dogs. It’s nostalgic of those elementary school lunches where I’d stuff the shitty spaghetti into these small rubbery dinner rolls hoping the combination would somehow achieve greater results. IT DID.
Sometimes you don’t have to get fancy to make good food…you just gotta get high.
Vanilla Bean & Arbequina Olive Oil Gummies
I just recently learned how to make gummy bears from scratch. And when I say scratch, what I really mean is sodium citrate, citric acid, glucose, and etc…
You can flavor it with almost anything, so why not something weird like vanilla and olive oil. Arbequina olive oil is my favorite. It has a very buttery and fruitful flavor, great for desserts. The gummies shown here were used for a wine & cheese pairing.
You can buy Arbequina olive oil here : http://www.californiaoliveranch.com/default.aspx
Support local farms!
Chicken Butt Pho
Try saying that ten times fast.
This is literally what it’s called on the menu @ Pho Ga An Nam. Granted, it’s delicious. The butt of the chicken is a very underrated piece of meat and is often discarded. It has lots of fat and juicy meat, and is best when grilled.
Hey, if chicken butts aren’t for you, you can try the “Beef Noodle Soup with Bull Penis” just next door. Same owners, of course.
Coffee & Donuts
Bacon Beignets with Red-Eye Gravy
A savory take on donuts and coffee. I played around with some maltodextrin to create a bacon powdered sugar. Maltodextrin is a chemical that can create powder out of fats or oils. In this case, the fat used was bacon drippings. Yes.
I am equally disgusted as I am amazed; aside from probably being terribly unhealthy for you, being able to create a hamburger that doesn’t mold in open air is kind of impressive. Also, I actually kind of like McDonald’s shitty burgers. The shittiness is what keeps me coming back for more.
CHICAGO: Alinea, Part 2
The second wave of courses was the desserts, some of the most whimsical culinary imaginings, plated and edible. If Willy Wonka was a pastry chef, he would have worked at Alinea.
The first three were a play on childhood favorites and required some guessing to figure them out, but we eventually got ‘em through nostalgic recognition. This is where the real fun began.
BUBBLEGUM STRAW. A giant straw layered with Balinese long pepper, hibiscus, and creme fraiche. Somehow, when slrupped all at once through the tube, these flavors tasted miraculously reminiscent of bubble gum. I’m not big on bubble-gum flavored food, but this was refined.
And I could totally see Nestle stealing and mass-producing something like this. It’ll be the hot-new craze until someone’s kid inevitably chokes on it and the media fallout forces them to remove it from the shelves.
BACON FRUIT ROLL UP. I’m not sure if it was intentional, but this tasted exactly like a fruit roll-up. Not a bacon flavored fruit roll-up, but a genuine, out of aluminum sleeve packaging, Betty Crocker Fruit Roll-Up. The listed ingredients are bacon, butterscoth, apples, and thyme. What the fuck, right?
RHUBARB DESGUSTATION. Beautiful presentation; otherworldly. The plate arrived on a pillow injected with juniper air. As the plate sunk into the pillow, it deflated and released pure juniper aroma. My first thought was, ‘I need to get me one of these for home!’ My second thought was, ‘damn, this goat cheesecake is fuckin’ good.’
CHOCOLATE & TOBACCO. This presentation seemed like some sort of alien landscape which was fit for the earthy flavors present in this dessert. The gels in the picture are filled with liquid blueberry and maple that ooze out when broken.
SWEET POTATO CHURRO. this tasted like a churro, except times ten.
It’s not everyday that I get to eat like this, but it’s nice every now and then (maybe once a year). And it’s totally worth it. If anyone is willing to pay an upwards of $100 for a Broadway show there’s no reason to avoid fine-dining; it’s just as entertaining except it plays to all of your senses at once. So, if you’re ever in Chicago, treat you and your love out. Eat at Alinea.
CHICAGO : Alinea, Part 1
'A linea' is latin for 'pilcrow' which is that backwards 'P' used to indicate the beginning of a paragrah. But, in the Middle Ages, this symbol was used to indicate a new train of thought, and in the case of Chef Grant Achatz, a new concept of cuisine.
Achatz’s menu at Alinea offers some of the most radical ideas ever to hit the plate. You can see for yourself here. In my opinion, his presentation skills are rivaled only by El Bulli, which was rated the best restaurant in the world by Michelin…Alinea was ranked 10—that’s still pretty good.
Incidentally, during his first years at Alinea, Achatz was diagnosed with cancer that effected his tongue, preventing him from tasting his own food—a chef’s worst and most ironical nightmare. He eventually overcame it, but during his treatment, Achatz continued to work full-time and even developed new recipes, saying that the inability to taste forced him to think outside the box and create a dish through pure and mental conception.
I had the opportunity to eat at Alinea during my vacation in Chicago. We had the prix fixe menu which consisted of a whopping 14 courses, and it was unforgettable.
ROES. It was salty, sweet, very briny, but refreshing. It felt like I was eating something straight off the ocean floor.
PORK BELLY W/ THAI DISTILLATION. House-made Sriracha, cucumber-infused lettuce, and braised pork belly. But the real star of the show was the thai distillation. It had all the aroma of a thai bird chili with none of the heat.
WHITE ASPARAGUS PARFAIT. Served in a cylinder that, when removed, dropped the entire parfait onto your plate. Very interesting textures happening here.
BLACK TRUFFLE EXPLOSION. One of the most flavorful spoonfuls of food I’ve ever had. It was a literal explosion of truffle juice condensed into a pasta cup. I stole this idea and used it in one of my dinners mimicking a ‘xiao long bao’ (a Shangahai-nese dumpling filled with soup).
WAYGU BEEF W/ POWDERED A1. Pretty much like eating beef-flavored butter—it was so soft. It was served with a simple, but ingenious potato-chip crusted potato puree. It also came with a cellophane packet of powdered A-1…which was honestly more gimmicky than tasty, but it did taste exactly like A-1.
The kicker was the black urn centerpiece, which was sitting on our table the whole time. Water was poured into the urn and barbecue-scented smoke began to waft toward and engulf our entire party. A great end to the savory courses.
Stay tuned for Part 2: Desserts.
Frozen and Fresh From the Can: The Beer Popsicle
The folks at the Diablo Royale Este saloon in New York are busy injecting cans of Tecate with simple syrup and lime juice and putting them in the freezer (not before jamming a stick through it of course) for four days to create delicious beer flavored popsicles.
(via: deleteyourself: thekitchn)
Cool beans.
My roommate, Dan, and his girlfriend, Christina, cook waffles all the time. She bought him the waffle-maker as a gift awhile ago and they’ve played with many different recipes since, but they could never get it evenly brown and risen. I even busted out my Robuchon cookbook and tried, what I thought would be, fool-proof waffle recipes, but they turned out to be a fail, too. We always blamed the fact that it was a non-rotating waffle maker and it just wasn’t meant to make the perfect waffle.
Then I woke up one morning to the all too familiar smell of waffles, but arrived at the kitchen to find the difference in this recipe almost instantly. It was a pristine-gold waffle. Crispy, salty, airy. Amazing.
So, a big thanks to Dan and Christina for sharing it with me. Now you try.
Summertime = Grilling
I love oysters. Raw, especially, but if they’re way too big for my taste I’ll throw them on the grill. To me, they’re just as good; just don’t leave them on for too long or else they’ll taste very metallic, something akin to sucking on a nickel.
I realize the picture of the black garlic is random, but it’s interesting, no? That’s how I felt when it caught my eye at the Asian supermarket. I thought I could make good use of it…but no—it tasted like shit. Actually, it reminded me a lot of vegemite…which also tastes like shit. Hm.
Anyway, summer’s almost over, so get yer grill on.
WARNING : grilled twinkies are deadlicious.
Christmas Dinner 2008
I honestly didn’t know what I was doing here. The food turned out fine, but it was nothing to write home about. The Frozen Citrus Pulp & Lemon Yogurt is still one of my favorite palate cleansers, though.
I appreciate my family and friends who supported me and allowed me to practice using their palates during my first years out of culinary school.
“…if we reached past ‘tradition’ to create the truest and best version of a dish for our own palates, then what we were doing wasn’t bullshit.”
This is my entire philosophy on food and cooking. A dish is just a compilation of ingredients and flavors; often times we get so attached to their traditional and cultural origins, that when used in atypical fashion, it is met with negativity. Get over it. There is no use in denying good food.
Thanksgiving
This is a small collection of recipes I’ve done for Thanksgiving parties over the years.
The natural Heritage turkey was a gift from my bosses at work. They’re more flavorful and fatty than the mass-bred industrial turkeys that comprise more than 99% of the market. You can read more about them here: http://heritageturkeyfoundation.org/
We purchased all the heritage turkey from a local farm and ran it on our menus in all kinds of variations until our customers got sick of it.
I’m pretty sure we ruined Thanksgiving dinner for everyone that year.