Preserved Lemon Gimlet

preserved lemon

simple syrup

Hendrick's Gin

shaken & served over ice

thai basil garnish

summer is here

Sunchoke Powder

made from the peels and trimmings of sunchokes oven-dried at 200ºF then pulverized

why not season our food with vegetables?

Pulled Tripe

Crispy Pulled Tripe

Mashed Chickpeas

Mustard Green

Leeks

Fermented Eggplant Brine

Burnt Corn Husk Oil

My new favorite technique with tripe is to pressure cook it (for at least 30 min.), pull it into strands while it is still warm and then pan fry. The strands, I find, make for an interesting texture that is wonderful in soups, but in efforts to give tripe a starring role I decided to pair it with a quick mash of chickpeas with herbs and roasted garlic, raw and spicy mustard greens and the tender part of leeks that were dressed in my own fermented eggplant brine and burnt corn husk oil. I also poured some more of the dressing around the plate.

Burnt Toast

What can be learned from mistakes?

Often we try to not make them again.

But what if the mistake is a blessing in disguise?

What can we do to turn that mistake into the opposite?

Do we even try?

Do we just assume it's a mistake from what we've been taught or because it strayed from our original plan?

Perhaps every mistake is a discovery.

Cinnamon-Smoked Bacalao

The best part of waking up, is smoking the fish you were curing the day before (I know that had you singing in your head). That christmas morning-like anticipation that also occurs when grilling marinated meats, fermenting vegetables and braising stews. Letting the flavors permeate and the texture of flesh transform. 


This anticipation is coupled with that nervous feeling predicting potential failure after all of that work and patience. Lately I've been trying more indoor smoking techniques and all the trials have turned out successful. I found a sushi mat I got as a gift years ago, still wrapped in it's clearance-rack make-your-own-sushi kit. Once I finally thought of a real use for it, I opened it up and used it as the smoking platform for the cod.


I seasoned the cod filet generously with salt the day before. I rinsed it off this morning and wok-smoked it over applewood and vietnamese cinnamon bark for 15 minutes (it was a small filet, though I don't think smoking longer would've resulted negatively; in fact, I wish I had smoked it longer and next time I will). 


It is reminiscent of a fresh bacalao, which is an oxymoron, I know; but the over-saltiness allows it be used in similar preparations with a more delicate approach and result. 
I flaked the meat carefully by hand into fairly large chunks and have it ready in my arsenal for a quick cold appetizer or a delicious sandwich.

Fermented Cocktails: The Good & Plenty

There's a lot of preservation in my house right now. Finding various cool and dark spots to store jars of lemons, eggplant, cabbage, cauliflower stems and the like to allow lactobacillus to work it's magic. That magic results in a complex, yet simple, fermentation process where a quick pickle or marination has no match. Complex in it's science, simple in it's preparation. I'll hopefully get into more detail on preserved vegetables and fermentation in a future post.


Though the star of fermentation is the vegetable, the workhorse and liaison is the brine or juice in which it  sits. It's a great salty addition to braised greens or in a vinaigrette. And, of course, to re-use for your next batch of preserved such and such.


 Salt and/or vinegar can play a subtle yet effective role in a cocktail. Which led me to the idea of using the fermentation brine.


The following was mixed in a cocktail shaker and served up:


red cabbage sauerkraut brine
simple syrup
Absolut vodka
Sambuca
ice


First of all, it tasted exactly like a Good & Plenty. Unfortunately, I don't like Good & Plenty's, so I had a negative bias towards this drink. The most fascinating thing about it though, was the texture. It had a more viscous texture that I really enjoyed. Now, I only tried this cocktail served up, so I wonder how the dilution of ice would react with the viscosity. It might cut it back for better balance.


Also, it came out cloudier than I'd like. I worry if the brine could be clarified that it'll lose that beautiful purple hue.


All in all, fermented cocktail is not the correct term for this, as that alludes to the whole beverage being fermented (another interesting idea, on the heels of barrel-aging) but I don't know what else to call it.


So there.

Pickled Zucchini Tops

Whenever preparing zucchini, I usually cut the tops and bottoms off to be discarded before slicing in half to grill or in rounds to sauté. Lately, instead of discarding the top, I have been slicing it thin and pickling it in my cucumber brine. It's got a snappier texture, not unlike celery. A simple and sustainable addition to sandwiches, salads and pretty much anything.

Comfort

Smoked Vegetable Broth

Pearl Barley [Soft & Crispy]

Grilled Zucchini

Wilted Swiss Chard

Grape Tomatoes

Radish

Thai Basil Flowers

How is comfort defined in terms of cuisine?

Everyone seeks comfort in different flavors, preparations and ingredients; often tied to ethnicity and upbringing.

Cue the grandmother laboring over the stovetop ladling spoonfuls of hearty such and such in the dead white of a suburban winter or the third floor of a Queens apartment building or the back porch of a Bible-Belt Brownstone. At least that's what marketing has taught us. Comfort Food™: The opposite of molecular, complex cooking. Nostalgia via rusticity and down-to-earth soulful food made with love. Not that stuffy high-end, white tablecloth fine dining.

Unless you're pumping out corn chips for Nabisco, all food should be made with love. It can be complex and comforting all the same. It seems as there is a disconnect created when we apply terms to food (farm-to-table, molecular gastronomy, fusion, etc.). As much as we feel like it helps us understand it more by giving it a definition, it can create false and unnecessary expectations.

If you care about what you're serving, it should be made with fresh ingredients of great quality hopefully from a farm or local market. Therefore, 'farm-to-table' is unnecessary. If you employ new technology in your kitchen because you want the food to taste better or be economically more efficient, should you be stamped with such a bludgeoning term as 'molecular gastronomy'? We're wasting our time trying to pigeon-hole the food we eat and should keep our mouths shut until we taste it.

It's one thing for the consumer ('foodie' [ouch]) to use these terms to fulfill their need to genre-fy everything, but when the restaurants and businesses start masturbating these terms as an attractive point of sale, I really start to turn red with anger. Whenever I see 'Molecular Cocktails' advertised as such because they learned how to make caviar out of anything and put it in everything, my brain begins to vomit.

But I'm not bitter...

We should be thankful for the amount of knowledge we have access to nowadays. It should be utilized towards the greater good of being progressive, not reducing the food we love (or hate) to terms that, in the end, really don't mean much.

Here, I made a broth by juicing vegetables and then simmering the juice in garlic, peppercorns, coriander, salt and the same vegetables: grilled. After letting it marinate overnight, I then strained and smoked the broth with cherrywood using the Smoking Gun. The pearl barley was cooked simply in water and once dried, I deep fried a few grains till they puffed up and got crispy. The tomato and radish are raw. The zucchini is grilled and diced. The swiss chard is wilted in chicken schmaltz and charred lemon.

Many techniques, complex and simple, were used to achieve a comforting restaurant-level dish that is still made with great care.

Huancaina

A Peruvian staple, Huancaina is one of my favorite sauces. Typically served cold with potatoes, olives and a hard boiled egg it is absolutely addictive and redefines what a potato salad could be with great simplicity. The sauce is typically made with:

aji amarillo

queso fresco

evaporated milk

soda crackers

garlic

Everything is blended together to make a sauce worthy of putting atop almost anything. My variation involves toasting the soda crackers and steeping it in warm fresh milk, straining it and using that instead of evaporated milk. I also roast the garlic and add cumin and turmeric to the final blend. I'll often loosen the sauce with coconut milk before serving.

Besides laying over cold potatoes, I love tossing it with pasta or having it on the side with breakfast. Oh, and it makes for a killer eggs benedict! (replacing the Hollandaise) [By the way, I never use the word 'killer'. Here it felt appropriate]. An easy and delicious sauce that I think everyone should have in their fridge at all times.

Baked Beans Natto

natto in the style of baked beans