Smoking Gun

smokedsalmon, originally uploaded by essencecatering.

teasmokedsalmon, originally uploaded by essencecatering.

salmonbite, originally uploaded by essencecatering.

It's about time that we get to play with this thing. We've had it in the kitchen for a couple of weeks now. Just sitting on a shelf taunting us to go and give it a try. Well today that moment arrives. We are going to lightly smoke some salmon sashimi and then roll it up with some carrots and daikon. Then it goes on a stick, like all good food should. The flavor for our smoke will be Lhapsang Souchong (a Chinese black tea), it has a smokey flavor to begin with and should complement our salmon sashimi. The carrots and daikon will be seasoned with some mirin, ginger, shiso, and sesame oil. Top it all off with a sauce of teryaki and balsmic, Hawaiian black salt and grains of paradise. Perfection....maybe not , but tasty all the same. Sorry for the crappy pics, still figuring out how to take good ones.
Whatever will we do with this thing next?
Jay

Cycle Logic

This is one party i really look forward to. A combination of my food and art on the walls. I always feel really goof to put my food into those settings. We try and go the extra mile to compete with the other artists present. This time was no exception. The feedback was great and fun was had (and still being had) by all. I would like to thank all those present and of course my friends from Cycle Logic (who really know how to throw a party). PHG (only those following my triathlon traininng blog will know him) has been a real positive influence in my life lately and for that I make sure he gets the most for his dollar. I thank you as always Ian. I hope you had as much fun as I. And really where do you get all those really great looking bartenders anyways. believe me a total joy to show up again. Till next time.
jason

Ermite, Douanier, Riopelle, oh my.

Really this is quite a pig out of beautiful artisan Quebec cheeses. It just makes me smile to see it. Producers who really care about the product they produce. These are just fantastic cheeses in their own right. In no particular order they are :
Duanier
Riopelle
Ermite
Clos de St Ambroise
Chebrie
Du Village
Le Cendrillon
and Cendre De Lune

Small fortune for a customer's cheese course. I hope they are as happy as I am at the sight of these cheees.

Jay

Pushing Further

After making the Tobacco Blackbery dish by Grant Achatz several times in the past few weeks, I finally found what I wanted out of this dish. To me (and I don't have anything on the originator of this dish), this dish was missing something. It took quite awhile to figure it out. We were discussing how this dish gave you a sense of having just had a glass of red wine and a fine cigar (providing you use a good one for the dish). What more could there be? Well for us it was more about the wine then the cigar. Something to balance that tinge in the back of the throat you get from this dish, much like an actual cigar. What was the elusive idea.
Port.
Really think about. Any cigar (of quality) that I have ever had was accompanied by a fortified wine. Port mainly. Having made the dish again today, I ws struck with the idea of incorporating some port. Some ways we will try tomorrow will include a port foam. This is not my favorite idea, as there is already a foam or air on tomorrow's menu. But also due to the fact that it would possibly obscure the blackberry's visual glory. Another would be to make a port reduction and sweeten slightly to be used as a glaze or sauce to be plated under or squeezed over the disc of tobacco on a chinese soup spoon. And then an idea we won't get to tomorrow, but the one I feel will yeild the best result. Simply a layer of port gelee through the middle of the tobacco. This way the port becomes an intricate visual presence, but also give just the right flavor balance (I hope) to the bite.
We shall see.

Progress

I really liked the idea of the oreo stick, but have come up with a more refined version we will start working on tomorrow. It will start with a dense chocolate brownie. It will be cut into a small cube and topped with a cherry gelee with a creme de cacao cherry set in the middle of it. We can then cut a shape to match the brownie. Not done yet I say. Really if it was just that well who cares, but... We then will make a cream foam incorporating the insides of a dozen oreos. And of course the smoked oreo cookie crumb.
Can't wait.

Smoking Gun

I just got my hands on the "smoking gun". Yes I know what some of you are thinking. But really and truly I won't use it for that. I am though excited to find some time this week to smke everything I can. Starting with chocolate and maybe some tuna belly. Any how stay tuned for fun smoked food.

Jay

Experimentation

So after perusing the pages of Alinea the cookbook for the last month or so, it was time to make some of my own concepts and not just work on Grant Achatz food. TO start with I was going to try and come up with a use for some vanilla vodka we had made some time ago. The regular Smirnoff stuff you can get at the liquor just wasn't vanilla enough for us. So we took all the scraped vanilla beans we had on hand and put them into the vodka. 2-3 weeks later.....voila, a nice brown liquid that is overwhelmingly scented by vanilla.
While passing ideas around I was struck by the idea to make a "screwdriver" with this wonder liquor. And wouldn't you know it, it tasted just like one of those orange julips I got as a kid at that big orange thing in Montreal. Only this one had booze. So the only logical thing for us to do was make an orange julip bite.
We started with setting some vanilla vodka spike OJ with agar. We filled a mold only half way and let this set. We also prepared an orange cream, also set with agar to go over the first layer. Once the two layers had fused we removed them from the mold and finshed the dish with Kumquat jam and orange foam.
Wow. It tasted really great. We will deffinitely be amking this again.

Enjoy.