TGRWT 19 Tomato and Black Tea announcement

While we're still expecting the news from Trig, the announcement for the next round of TGRWT is already out!

Pablo, from Medellitin is our host this time and his choice of ingredients are: Tomato and Black Tea. His words are the best to say what this is all about:

But, maybe, just maybe, you can use this to get your creative juices going, and find your way back into your poor, neglected kitchen. I wanted to choose common ingredients that were familiar, seasonal and could still be exciting for people to riff on. I also wanted to choose things that would let our vegetarian/vegan friends contribute.

So there we have it... Let's cook!

TGRWT #18: Plum and Blue cheese.

So as I'd announced previously, TGRWT #18 is being hosted this time by Aidan Brooks. As usual, I had a bunch of ideas as to what to do in this round. But thanks to the extra push by Mr. Brooks, I decided to tackle dessert.

I had ideas swimming around for a while, but it wasn't until I received a dinner invitation that the planning process really got started. The ingredient list was there: Plums (Pluots), Blue Cheese, some nut and something bacon.

We have an awesome bread puveyor that had brought over some samples of pecan bread. Since it wasn't quite fresh (Frozen) I decided to use it to make French Toast. This made me think of adding spices to the mix, but since we were going to taste this with Sparkling Riesling Icewine, I decided to skip on them. I also refrained from making a candied bacon crisp and opted to make Bacon fat Pecans (just like making butter pecans). Finally, I had to skip on adding some blue cheese crumbs because I didn't have the time.

For the pluots, I used part of them fresh and made a gastrique-like sauce with the rest. I didn't cook it too long to keep the wonderful flavor of the plum.

Here's what it ended up looking like:

Pecan Bread French Toast, Danish Blue Ice Cream, Pluots fresh and gastrique, Bacon Fat Pecans

Taste wise, the flavors were pretty much spot on as I had imagined. I had thought that the Ice Cream could be too sweet and overpowering, but it when placed in the context of the whole dish, it was balanced out with the sweet tartness of the gastrique. I would've liked a bit more presence of the salty element (pecans or the crumble, perhaps). While the dessert was pretty good on it's own. The Pilliteri ended up being even sweeter and overpowered the whole dish. Still it was a very good way to end our sunday Meal.

TGRWT #18: Plum and Blue cheese.

It's back! Although I don't know why I get so excited seeing how I am really a terrible blogger and I've participated in little of these awesome events. Still, they're tons of fun and it helps getting the thinking hats on. Sooo...

As we all surely know by now, TGRWT is a blogging event created by Marin Lersch over at Khymos. Using the principle of aroma pairing, we're challenged to create dishes incorporating ingredients that are seemingly an odd match, but that should go well together because of common aroma compounds.

This round is being hosted by Aidan Brooks. To make things even more fun, Aidan is challenging us to go the extra mile with an optional competition. Be sure to scroll all the way down when you read his post to get the scoop!

My only regret is that I didn't get to see good Pluots this year...

Duck in Rose Petal Sauce (Sort of TGRWT #16)

Duck in Rose Petal Sauce
Originally uploaded by cookiejesus

I didn't get to make an entry for TGRWT #16, which was about chicken and rose. All I did was translate a recipe from a book.

Last weekend, I got the chance to dine at El Sacromonte, in Guadalajara and had a couple of dishes that incorporated Rose Petals.

First up were the Quesadillas with rose petals and strawberry aioli. They weren't really as good as they may sound. The rose petal was overpowered by the strawberries and the aioli didn't resemble anything but a jam or a coulis. 

On the other hand. We did get the roast duck in rose petal sauce. Since it was such a huge dish, my wife and I shared. She got the leg and I got the breast. The sauce was really good, nicely sweet and it went really well with the duck. My only problem is that the duck was a tad dry. I believe my wife got the better end of this issue.

Quail in Rose Petal Sauce (Translation)

TGRWT #16 is about chicken and roses. I had mentioned a recipe from "Like Water for Chocolate". I looked up the recipe and here’s the translation. The recipe came from here.

Ingredients
6 Quails
12 Roses (Red, preferrably)
12 Almonds, toasted
Butter
2 Tablespoons Cornstarch
2 Drops Rose Esence
2 Tablespoons anise
2 Tablespoons Honey
2 Cloves of Garlic
Salt and Pepper

Carefully separate the rose petals. Grind them in a mortar with the anise. Cook the almonds in water and purée them. Mince the garlic and sweat them in butter. Add the almond purée, honey, rose petal mixture and salt. If necesary, add the cornstarch to adjust thickness. Add the rose esence.

Place the quails in the sauce and simmer them for a maximum of ten minutes so they'll take the flavor.

According to the book, they're to be served in a platter with a whole rose in the center and petals scattered around.

 Might be worth a try…

TGRWT #16: Chicken and Rose

Markus from Supernova Condensate is the host for round #16 of TGRWT. As you all probably know by now, TGRWT is a blogging event where we're challenged to come up with dishes that combine ingredients that may not seem like a good match, but should match according to their OAV's. 

It may sound a little complicated, but once you get past the previous ideas you may have about ingredients going together with others, it can be quite fun. 

For this round, Markus is inviting us to combine Chicken and Rose.  As he states, rose is an ingredient that is used fairly often in Middle Eastern and Oriental cuisines. Mexican cuisine also has a few recipes using roses. Some of them made famous by Laura Esquivel's Book: Like Water for Chocolate. 

So there you go, stop by Markus' blog to get the details on how to join in this time. Deadline is April 1st!

TGRWT #15 - Dark Chocolate and Smoked Salmon

As usual, I'm a bit late with my posting. However, this time it's really because we've been very busy as of lately. Deadlines for the restaurant's opening are approaching and we're all on fifth gear to get things ready on time. 

Off the bat, I had thought of making something involving mole. However this idea quickly got scratched because one of the contributions had mole in it, so back to the drawing board. I felt that this combination really called for the ingredients to be left pretty much alone. But some of us can't really do that. So I had to go and complicate things a little bit. 

One of my favorite pastry blogs, Cannelle et Vanille just posted a recipe to the latest daring bakers challenge. Funny, it was just what I had been thinking about. Flourless cake and Ice cream. You could say that this post would fit both TGRWT and Daring Bakers...

So here it is: Smoked Salmon and Chocolate Ice Cream Sandwiches. 

First up: The flourless cake. 

I had been thinking about flourless cake for the restaurant. We have a mousse dessert that needed something texturally different. For this idea, I initially considered the double chocolate cookie from demolition desserts. But when I saw Aran's recipe, I decided to try it. It is good. The valentino's texture is really nice and dense and the taste is quite intense (we used dark chocolate of unspecified percentage).

The Ice Cream:

For the ice cream, we used a pretty straightforward custard recipe. We infused the smoked salmon in milk. Cooked it like a Creme Anglaise, then while churning we added bits of extra salmon. I ended up piping the Ice Cream into cilinders with a valentino bottom, topped it with another piece of valentino. Overall, there was about 75g of salmon in 500ml of liquid (50g in the infusion and the rest folded into the ice cream).

While it was hardening, we tested the ice cream on it's own. It was quite good. Tasting really sweet and creamy at first then yielding to the smoked salmon taste. A bit later, when it was colder. We tasted it again. The flavors were a bit more integrated, and the feeling of it was strangely reminiscent of the sensation of eating smoked salmon and cream cheese, only sweet. I could eat a lot of this. I believe it'd be a hard sell because of the psychological block that the idea would propose. 

Tasting them together, the combination was very GOOD! The only problem is that the valentino was a bit too thin for the amount of Ice Cream. The cooks, one of the owners tasted it and they were all captivated. I don't know if the'yd order it from a menu.

I'll save one for my wife to taste tomorrow when she gets back...

TGRWT #15 Round-up

The fifteenth round of TGRWT invited us to pair dark chocolate and smoked salmon. While it may have initially come off as a completely weird match, it seems to have given good results along the contributions. Hopefully, some of the participants will like to add this combination into their repertoires.

Here are the contributions:

Travis used some Tim Tam biscuits to give this combination an Australian twist on his Black Forest Salmon skewers. Apparently, the flavor and texture of his creation was a success since he barely managed to snap a picture of the last two.  You can read his post here.

Grant, from Charlie Weis and the Chocolate Factory created Smoked Salmon Cigars with Dark Chocolate Mole. Again, the flavors combined in a very pleasing manner. Grant's recipe can be found here.

Erik from Fooducation  joined this TGRWT with his Smoked salmon-goat's cheese-chocolate ganache-tortilla roll-ups .  Read his post here.

Markus, from Supernova Condensate also joined the cooking with his Hot Chocolate Salmon Pancakes, which seem to have left him thinking about adding chocolate to his salmon breakfast toast. Apparently, they were so good, that the pictures couldn't be taken.

Josh, from Silk Experience decided to put the flavor combination to the test on his Oscars Party and he created a black sesame cracker topped with a sriracha ricotta, smoked salmon, ginger syrup and shaved chocolate.  Sounds quite good and it looks good too. Click here for the post.

Alex, from Cooking Sideways also put the flavor combination to the test creating a Spinach and Aubergine Salad with Dark Chocolate and Smoked Salmon Dressing for a romantic dinner. He highly recommends it. Picture will come later. 

Daniel, from What's Cookin', Good Lookin' also took advantage of a social event to play with the Dark Chocolate and Smoked Salmon Combo. Daniel approached the ingredients just as they are in making his Chocolox. These bites were all eaten by his collaborators, so again, the flavor combination was good, albeit a bit too strong on the chocolate. The story's here.

Yannik and his friend Robert created two dishes for TGRWT. Robert made an Salmon Praline with Sauce à L'Orange for appetizer and Yannik made a dessert: Dark Chocolate Brownie with Smoked Salmon Honey Topping and Mango Dill Sauce. Check their dishes out at Yannick's Blog.

From Portugal, Ana sent her recipe for a Smoked Salmon Millefeuille with Chocolate Sauce and Pepper Caviar. The recipe's at Céu da Boca, her blog and it's worth a look. The dish is beautiful.

Rob, from The Curious Blogquat, and host to the previous round of TGRWT decided to try both sweet and savory versions of Hot Chocolate with Salmon Marshmallow. Rob's customers seem to have enjoyed samplings of this, and it appears that enjoy they did. Read about it.

Papin, from Flavor Alchemy, and host to round #7 created a Smoked Salmon Salad with Chocolate Dressing that looks quite interesting. It's over at his blog.

Martin, who practically needs no introduction to TGRWT people, also contributed to this round with his Smoked Salmon in Cocoa Gel with Lime. 

Finally, I would be a terrible host if I didn't join into the fray. So I made Ice Cream Sandwiches... I'll put the pictures up sometime later because, quite frankly, they were awful... But they did taste nice. 

Thanks everyone who participated in this edition of TGRWT, to Martin for allowing me to be the host and, well, if anyone's still reading after this long post... thank you too.

Stay tuned for Round 16!

Addendum (23/03/09)

I casually found this Entry from Aitorevolution. It's all in Spanish, but it's worth a look.

TGRWT #15 Dark Chocolate and Smoked Salmon by Travis

Travis from Australia has sent in his submission for this edition of TGRWT. Since he hasn't got a blog of his own, I'm uploading his submission here.

Not wanting to over-complicate things, and in the midst of party planning, I decided to make a salmon and dark chocolate canapé - and, since I live in Australia, I thought I'd give it an auzzie twist.

We have a biscuit here which is gaining in notoriety - it's called a tim-tam, and is basically 2 layers of chocolate biscuit, with a chocolate-cream filling, and then coated in a layer of chocolate..

I bought a variation on this one - which was a black-forest style, containing a dark, sweet cherry centre.

I also picked up a beautiful tray of sliced, smoked Tasmanian salmon, which is very lucky to have survived long enough to make it to the next step!

At home, in my mad-science lab of a kitchen, I merrily chopped a tim tam in two, and then cut a square of soft cheddar to roughly the same size.

I sandwiched the salmon and cheddar between the two biscuits, skewered them with a long wooden stick, and then cut the shape into rounds with an apple corer.

Now - on to the important bit... The taste! Oh. My. God. So GOOD!

The first sense one gets is of the biscuit, as you crunch through it. The dark chocolate clings to your tongue a bit - with bittersweet intensity, but then gives way to the soft, buttery texture of the salmon, and it's delicate smoky-fishy flavour.

The cheddar added a more complicated salty note, that really helped to round out the whole experience. I was utterly delighted, and proceeded to make several more. Unfortunately, all but two were harmed before I could take any photos..

This flavour combo is lovely, and my only regret is the finish on my little 'nibblies' - I think I'll try to turn them into petite fours next time, using chocolate biscuit, a small amount of cherry jelly / jam, cheddar and smoked salmon, and then dipping it all into melted dark chocolate.

It's not exactly 'cookery' - but it certainly is a quick way to get this flavour pairing into your mouth ;)

TGRWT #15 Dark Chocolate and Smoked Salmon

Martin, from Khymos is letting me host round 15 of "They go really well together" or TGRWT. If you don't know TGRWT, it's the food blogging event that has us put together seemingly strange pairs of ingredients that share a certain number of chemical components, thus, making them "compatible".

After spending whatever free time I had trying to come up with some flavor pairing that would be interesting to work with. Thanks to the foodpairing website, I've come up with a couple of ingredients that might be interesting to play with: Dark Chocolate and Smoked Salmon. Since we're in a bit of a rush, and I'm not much of a chemist, I'll leave the Chemistry for later.

Here's how to participate in this event:

1. Prepare a dish that combines dark chocolate and smoked salmon.
   
2. Write a entry in your blog by March first with TGRWT #15 in the subject and make sure to include a link to the header of this post for trackback links. Readers will probably be particularily interested in how the flavour pairing worked out, so make an attempt at describing it.
3. Deadline for submissions is March first. A round-up will be posted by me here some days later with pictures.
4. Please send me an email at jrnavlag (at) gmail (dot) com with the following details: Your name, URL of blog and URL of the TGRWT #15 post and a picture for your entry in the round-up.
5. If you don’t have a blog, email me your recipe, name and location and I’ll be glad to include it in the final round-up.

Have fun!

TGRWT #14 Malt and Soy Sauce

It's on again! This edition of TGRWT is being hosted by Rob at The Curious Blogquat. The ingredients this time are, as previously stated. Malt and Soy Sauce. Any form of malt will do for this so because of the difficulty that some ingredients may present, I'll use beer. A bunch of ideas are coming. I just hope to make the time in order to actually get to cook something.

Deadline's February the 1st. Get cookin'!

TGRWT #12 Chanterelle and Apricot.

We're just starting to relax from the last event and next one's already up. This time it's being hosted by Tri-2-cook. The challenge: Apricot and Chanterelle.

Martin has already posted a bit on the chemical information involved in the pairing and I did some searching of my own. A word of warning though, on the Good Scents people don't list "chanterelle" specifically so the search is for component matches between mushrooms and apricots. This comes somewhat handy as I believe chanterelles are a bit tough to come by in this area.

I'm already cooking up some ideas...

TGRWT #11 The late one.

I had the ideas, the ingredients ready, and all of a sudden all hell breaks loose and I didn't have the time to get this one done on time.

The idea I had was to make caramelized bananas sprinked with clove. For some reason I couldn't let it rest there and had to go and make things complicated. Thus I came with the idea for making a Roquefort 40-second cake. I had read about this in a few blogs and finally took the recipe from Linda at playing with fire and water (which y'all should read if you aren't already).

I followed her recipe verbatim just substituting the chocolate for melted Roquefort cheese. Speaking of the technique itself, it really is all that and more. It's quite interesting to see the batter rise in the microwave. I believe that roquefort was a little bit too fatty for the recipe because the final product was not as spongy as the ones in Linda's blog.

Tasting it was a whole different experience. Just out of the microwave the cake appeared almost salty and with a lot of cheese aroma. It wasn't the taste I was looking for. Colder however, the sweetness came out and it was just what I had in mind. Unfortunately, the texture also changed rendering it a little chewy.

The caramelized bananas, due to my time constraint had to become a purée. The bananas had become incredibly soft during the couple of extra resting days they had (I had bought them pretty much ready to use on the same day). It was quite a straighforward thing: I ground some cloves, heated some butter, added muscovado sugar, ground clove and let it come together; I then added the bananas and cooked until soft; the whole thing was then processed to a smooth paste (with some speckles of clove there). The purée tasted quite good, with the aroma of the cloves really coming forward and marrying itself with the banana.



I tasted the whole dish twice, once with the hot cake and a second one with a colder one. The first one wasn't too enjoyable, because of the aformentioned reasons (cake). Colder, it was very good. I believe the taste combination has potential to develop some other desserts, perhaps using more traditional means.

A final Head's up: The next TGRWT is already up!

It's BACK!

Martin from Khymos is back with TGRWT! Since it's been a while, I'll re-cap it briefly. TGRWT or "They go really well together" is a blogging event where two items are paired into a probably unsual combination, based on flavor pairings via volatile compound similarities... Sounds complicated. Basically it means that those two items have similar chemical compounds and thus, should be able to be paired with good results.

This time, it's banana and cloves. While it doesn't sound too alien for me to have these two together, it's now up to me to "play"...

TGRWT #9 - Revisited

Since I had been left with lingering ideas from TGRWT #9, I took the chance to revisit the a dessert idea. A bit of baking, and some anglaises later, I had a Mexican chocolate tartlet with parmesan cream and a balsamic-raspberry condiment.

... and it was good.

I even think this one was better than the risotto.

TGRWT #10: Dirty Pineapple Martini

I should feel guilty or something. This time I've "neglected" the TGRWT. Usually I'd really work up my mind to come up with some convoluted ideas that eventually I wouldn't cook. At the least, I'd make a post referring to the host.

This time I only had a couple of ideas and none too complicated. Still I went for the easiest one.

#10 is about combining Pineapple and Blue Cheese. Heston Blumenthal seems to have pointed this one out at a list at eGullet sometime back. My Ideas were:

a) Meat Course: Involving Pork, coconut and blue cheese... somehow.
b) Dessert: Pineapple Crisp Millefeuille with Blue Cheese cream and a "liquid" pineapple center. Caramel sauce or Ice Cream.

I really don't know when the thought for the drink came up. Probably a flashback to the college days when Vodka and Pineapple juice were sometimes quaffed at clubs. Vodka led to the Cheesecake Factory's Dirty Martini, which involves blue cheese stuffed olives.

So I came up with the idea of mixing Vodka, pineapple juice and brine. It went roughly like this:

1 Part Pineapple Juice
1 Part Vodka
1 Dash Olive Brine.

After a bit of shaking I dropped it into a glass and went for the taste. I loved the almost spicy combination of the vodka, brine and pineapple juice, and I think it was very good with the blue cheese stuffed olives. While my wife decided she'd rather have it sweetened, I would rather opt for a dash of dry vermouth... and more olives.

I re-made the concoction for the post and hit a roadblock... I forgot my martini glasses. So I improvised using a quadruple shot glass:

I encourage you few readers to go ahead and try this drink... I'm sure I will repeat it.

P.S. New camera is in order... finally!

TGRWT #9: Risotto

A while back I ran into a book by French Pastry Chef Frédéric Bau. Chocolat Fusion's quite an interesting book since it's all about chocolate in savory recipes. I haven't gotten around to buying the book yet, but one of it's recipes, or what I recalled of it, was the inspiration for this TGRWT's theme.

In the book, Bau marries anise-smoked rack of pork with milk chocolate in a risotto. I wasn't quite sure of what it included except for basic risotto ingredients, pork and chocolate. So I set out to make my version of this risotto.

I started out by rendering bacon fat, and letting it cook in it until crispy. I used that same fat to sweat my onions. Added the rice, then I changed the white wine for cream sherry. After that it was pretty much a regular cooking until the moment of mantecare. I replaced the butter for dark chocolate (my bad), and added the parmesan. Served in bowls and topped with the bacon.

I didn't have a nice bowl at hand since I did this at a cousin's place. I also have to excuse myself for the terrible picture. Our camera is broken and I had to resort to the nasty cellphone camera.

The tasting could be classified as a success since both my cousin and his wife completely ate their bowls, and seemed to have enjoyed it. Personally I think it could've used some improvements such as an older Parmiggiano in order to get a sharper cheese note. It was so delicate that it seemed like an afterthought in comparison with the powerful chocolate. Probably a stronger, spicier stock as Bau's would've made another difference, but since this was about chocolate and parmesan, I kept it simple. It was good, but not perfect... and I couldn't help thinking about Cocoa Krispies.

I also wanted to experiment with a Parmesan cheesecake and a chocolate-balsamic-berry sauce, or a Mexican Chocolate Tartlet with Parmesan Ice Cream, but those only stayed as Ideas for future play.

Edit: This event was hosted by Robert @ lamiacucina. Final roundup's here

TGRWT #8 - The one I didn't do...

So the deadline's long gone, and I didn't do it. I came up with a couple of ideas but time and economic constraints stopped me from doing it. Here's the one I was almost sure I was going to do.

At first I had thought up of a fish dish that would be a spin-off of Alain Senderens' Homard a la vanille. I have it written down somewhere. Sometime later, the idea for an "edible cocktail" came to mind, based on the idea that vodka and caviar also go well together. So, without further ado here it is:

White Chocolate and Caviar "Martini"

250 mL White Chocolate Liqueur
250mL Vanilla infused Vodka
10 g gelatin sheets (4.7%)

The idea is to set the different liquids in layers, then cut into bite-sized pieces. Top with a small quenelle of caviar.

I hope to actually get to make this one sometime...

TGRWT 8 - Roadblock

I'm a bit upset that I haven't found Caviar, the real deal, in this town... There's got to be a bit somewhere.

As for ideas, I had been thinking of making something like a white chocolate "beurre blanc". It's still on the drawing board...

Volatile Compounds for TGRWT #8

M. pointed out that there's a third component in the TGRWT pairing: trimethyl amine. A quick google search showed that it's a compound associated with some utterly nasty smells:

"Trimethylamine is a product of decomposition of plants and animals. It is the substance mainly responsible for the fishy odor often associated with fouling fish, bacterial vagina infections, and bad breath." (From wikipedia)

According to our trusted Good Scents Company trimethyl amine occurs naturaly in cocoa and caviar. As do the previously mentioned substances. As for other ingredients that share the components, the list has been drastically reduced to five other foodstuffs: beer, cheese, fish, cofee and whiskey.

Just in case anyone was wondering about the previous list, it included: apple, arctic bramble, banana, beans, beef, beer, bilberry, brandy, bread, cabbage, carrot, caviar, cheeses, chicken, cider, clary sage, coffee, cranberry, currant, eucalyptus, fish, grape, guava, honey, hop oil, milk, peanut, peas, pecan, pork, potato, potato chip, soya bean, tea, tomato, turkey, whiskey and wine.