Sunday, December 30, 2007

Sous Vide Duck Legs

When I first learned about sous vide I thought that the premise was that as long as you cook something at the exact temperature that you want for the internal temperature of the meat you can't overcook anything. However, all of my recent sous vide dishes have been cooked for no more than 1 hour so I didn't know if this really mattered or not. I was fortunate enough to attend a cooking class with Wylie Dufresne who did in fact give a pseudo-sous vide demonstration. During the class I asked Wylie his thoughts on this. He said that even at a low temperature there is still a chemical process going on with the protein and that the timing is essential to the dish. Of course, I am neither a scientist nor a professional, so I will defer to the experts on this.

Sous vide duck legs marked our first experiment with an extended cooking time. We cooked two legs for 8 hours at 178 degrees. Before placing them in the vacuum bag, we removed the skins and excess fat. Any fat that we were easily able to remove from the skin was placed in the bag with the legs, for both flavor and moisture. In addition to some salt and pepper we seasoned the meat with a few sprigs of fresh parsley, thyme and rosemary (whatever is fresh an available will work great). After dropping the legs into the water, we made ourselves comfortable and watched a few movies. Not a very involved process at all.

We decided to save the skin, c'mon it's flavor country, and attempted to make a crispy wafer from each one. We left them in a ziploc bag in the refrigerator until there was about 40 minutes left on the duck. After removing the skin from the refrigerator we salted each side generously and cooked them, one at a time, in a very hot pan. We used a bacon press to keep it flat and press out the excess fat. Between the two pieces of skin we rendered out at least 1 1/2 cups of fat, we saved it for another time. Both skins came out great, although I think the second skin, which was cooked on a medium high heat, was a bit better.

To go with the duck we did a simple dish of roasted root vegetables, perfect for a cold winter night. We used a mixture of potatoes, fennel, celery, red onion and garlic tossed with olive oil, gray salt and fresh ground pepper. Not wanting to waste the fresh herbs, we topped it off with some thyme as well. This was cooked at 450 degrees for about an hour, tossing them periodically.

After removing the duck legs from the water, we gave them a quick sear in the now well oiled pan that we crisped the skin in.


I am starting to think that sous vide is an idiot proof method, assuming you have adequate heat control. Everything came out great, the duck fell right off of the bone and the meat was very tender. The crispy skin made an excellent compliment to the texture of the meat and the root vegetables go great with any kind of meat on a cold night. Next time, and there will be a next time, we have decided to try a lower temperature over the same time period, and maybe in the future we will also try this with a shorter cooking time as well.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Sous Vide Steak

Well, its official. We've finally gone off the deep end. We have not simply dipped our toes into sous vide cooking, we have dived in head first. Anyone who watches Top Chef has probably heard one of the chefs taking mention it, anyone who has ever eaten at a fancy restaurant or even on an airplane has probably had it, but not enough people are doing it. I don't say that because I think it is fancy or trendy, but because it is an amazing way to cook food with an high degree of control over the final product.

I have been cooking for years, and maybe its my lack of formal training, but I almost always cook my proteins to a different level of doneness. I usually get it pretty close to where I want it, but if I turn away for a minute to stir the rice or mash the potatoes, I miss it and end up with dry chicken or well done steak. I've tried using thermometers and take it out at the perfect time, but it always manages to cook more than I ant even after taking it out of the oven. I don't mean to suggest that I am not happy with what I cook, but simply that I have not been happy with my method.

Enter sous vide. Quite simply, it means to cook under vacuum. It is a method that was developed in France in the seventies and has been utilized extensively in commercial cooking. Though it has only slowly been adopted in restaurants and home kitchens. Well now its time has come. Some things were meant to be sauteed to broiled, and some things were meant to be sous vided!

Sous vide allows you to cook anything to a precise internal temperature. Many people who sous vide use very fancy, and expensive, equipment but I don't feel like spending upwards of several thousand dollars for a steak. Call me crazy. If you look on eBay, you can find all sorts of immersion circulating heaters and constant temperature water baths. But between the cost and the fact that those are all second hand items from a hospital or lab, I and a little weary of going down that path. I will admit that not every kitchen has the right equipment, but if you do, this is well worth the effort. I live in a cramped NYC apartment and am just lucky, I guess, that I have a medium sized electric stove. This turns out to be ideal for this type of cooking. The only major requirement for this method is being able to get a pot of water to the temperature that you want and then keep it there for a long time.

I was a little hesitant going into my first sous vide dish, but I like a challenge and am drawn to the scientific. I ran across a posting on another blog that convinced me that I can do it without any special equipment. This first dish I attempted was a very simple steak.

I took the steak and put it into a ziploc bag. Ok, so I did use a little bit of equipment, Reynolds makes a device called the Handi-Vac (pictured below), which sells for about $10, and a box of bags is less than $5. It is basically a standard ziploc bag, except it has a little hole in one corner. So I put the steak into the bag with a pinch pf salt and pepper, sealed it up, and then used the Handi-Vac to suck the air out. This cheap little device works great and give you a very satisfying vacuum seal. The one downside to this is that it was clearly not made with the at-home sous-vider in mind (I know what your thinking, how dare they!), so unfortunately the area that you suck the air out of is not fully water tight. So to get around this I just placed this vacuum bag inside of a regular gallon ziploc bag and pushed the air out. While this may seem counterintuitive that I would use another non-vacuumed bag, trust me when I say that it does make a difference. By having the meat in the vacuum sealed bag any seasoning that you use is spread very evenly and pulled into the meat with a combination of the vacuum environment and the pressure of the water. So you only need a small amount of seasoning or sauce to impart a great deal of flavor to the meat.

So back to the steak. I took the steak with a pinch of salt and pepper and placed it into my water bath. For this I used a large stock pot filled with hot water. As you can see in the accompanying picture, I have a cabinet door above my stove, so I hung a thermometer from that door and used a rubber band to secure it to a wooden spoon placed across the top of the pot. I know it sounds crazy, but it works and is actually pretty easy to set up. In order to get the water to the proper temperature, for this steak I was aiming for 135 degrees (medium rare), I put my stove top on one if its lowest settings and watched my thermometer until it hit the sweet spot. Making my life a little easier, I have a thermometer with a remote sensor so I can watch the temperature from another room. You certainly don't need this, you just need to watch the water closely. It took a little experimentation for me but once I was found the right setting on my stove top I was on my way.

When the water got the to right temperature I dropped my bag of steak in. If the steak floats to the surface, you may need to push some more air out of your bag or you can use something like a ramekin to weight it down. I cooked my steak about 135 degrees for about 45 minutes. I won't lie, my set up is not perfect and so the temperature fluctuated between 133-137 degrees over the course of cooking. I did not notice that this caused and problem and I think that a few degrees here or there is probably not going to be a big deal. After taking out the steak, I did notice that it had the appearance of a boiled steak. Which if you've ever seen one is simply not appetizing. So to finish it off I quickly seared it on both sides on a grill pan to give it some color and texture. And that is it.


I hope I haven't made it seem too involved, it really isn't. In fact I think it is actually easier than many other types of cooking, because once it is going you can just walk away. As you can see from the pictures, the steak ended up perfectly cooked and was delicious. I didn't make any kind of sauce or anything fancy, but it truly ended up being one of the most tender steaks I have ever had - and this was no filet mignon. I have since tried this method with both chicken and a rack of lamb. Both of which also turned out perfectly. I can't think of a better way to cook a steak or a chicken breast, and wonder how I went all these years with dry over cooked meat.

Socca

Socca, one of my favorite snack foods, is a quick and easy crepe-like dish from the south of France. We actually use a crepe pan to make this dish, but with a little practice I'm sure that any oven safe pan will work. This is dish great if you follow the basic recipe (below), but it also can be flavored with any of a number of different things. We have tried both thinly sliced onions and fresh rosemary - the rosemary is my favorite.

What makes this dish unique is that it uses chickpea flour, which has a great flavor. For a while I had a hard time finding chickpea flour, but recently I have been seeing it in just about every gourmet store that I am in, including some everyday grocery stores as well. So, I hope you don't get discouraged if you can't find it right away it is out there, but unfortunately I don't think that this would work with regular flour at all. Although, I have also recently seen things like 50/50 chickpea flour and fava bean flour. I don't know what that is like but if you are feeling bold something like that might be worth a try as well.

Socca
1 cup chickpea flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon, at least, ground black pepper
4-6 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup lukewarm water

Heat your oven to 450 degrees and your stove-top to medium-high. Get your crepe pan, well seasoned cast iron, or non-stick pan hot enough on the stove top that a drop of water will lightly bounce off of the surface. Sift chickpea flour into a bowl and add salt and pepper. Slowly add water, whisking to eliminate lumps. Stir in 2 tablespoons of oil. Let the mixture sit covered while the oven and pan heat up, or up to 12 hours. The batter should be about the consistency of a thin sour cream.

Pour 2 tablespoons of oil into the pan, coating the entire surface evenly - I like to use a silicone brush to make sure everything is well coated on all sides. The next part can be a little tricky because there is no solid way to measure, but you want to pour just enough batter to cover the bottom with a even, thin coating. You accomplish this by pouring some into the middle of the pan and then quickly rolling around your wrist to dip and twist the pan so that the batter rolls all around. You will learn after a few tries how much is enough to just coat the bottom for a paper thin layer - it is pretty common for us to ruin the first one in a "practice round" as well. Place the pan to the oven and bake until the socca is firm and the edges have set, about 12-15 minutes. Finish the socca under the broiler, brushing the surface with a little oil, until the surface begins to brown.

Place the finished socca on a plate (or curled inside of a paper cone as they do in France), garnish with some fresh black pepper to taste, set it to the side and begin the next round. Unless you have several pans, it is difficult to do more than one at a time, and you definitely want to eat it hot. If you are serving them for guests, it is best served during an informal gathering in the kitchen in which each person can take their turn or share as they come out of the oven. Pepper is one of the secrets to this simple dish. If you like things spicy, then add a little more, or if you want a cleaner chickpea flavor you can add less.

If you choose to flavor with batter with onions or rosemary or anything else, you should add it to the batter at the very end. Remember when preparing the onion or rosemary that the finished pancakes will thin, so you don't want big hunks of onion or rosemary. Thin slices or a fine chop is the way to go.

I hope you enjoy this as much as we have, and look forward to hearing more about what other flavors people try.


Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Codfish Brandade

After many months of back and forth, we have finally decided to attempt an interesting recipe that I saw Jacques Pepin cook on TV - Codfish Brandade. Of course he made it look both easy and delicious, which being an artisinal French dish I knew it could only be one and not the other. Much to my amazement, this surprisingly easy dish was perfect. The recipe that I found for it did not have the finishing touch that Jacques demonstrated on his show, and thank goodness I saw that as it made the entire dish.

The dish is little more than a fancy version of pureed potatoes with boiled codfish, which I will admit sounds pretty bad, but it is a wonderful combination of creamy and salty potatoes with a distinct hint of the ocean.

The salted codfish must soak in cold water in order to wash away the saltiness of it. We used about 2/3 pound of codfish. For this recipe we put the codfish in a tupperware container overnight and didn't change the water until the next morning. At about 6pm the second night I rinsed the codfish and set it in a sauce pan with enough fresh cold water to cover it. Bring the water to a boil and turn the temperature to low for about five minutes. Begin preheating the oven to 475 degrees. Strain the fish and allow it to cool. While the fish is cooling, chop one large potato into roughly one inch cubes and place in the saucepan with six-eight whole smashed cloves of garlic. Add 1 1/2 cups of milk (we used skim) and a pinch of fennel seeds. After the fish is cool enough to handle, cut into one inch pieces and add to the saucepan. Bring the pan to a boil and then turn to low for about 20-25 minutes. Add more milk if needed and cook until both the potatoes and fish are tender.

Put the entire mixture in the food processor and add pepper. You probably won't need any salt, for obvious reasons. Puree the mixture until the chunks of potato start to blend. Begin drizzling about 1/4 cup of olive oil while blending. Continue to puree until the mixture is very smooth. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish. Sprinkle the top with grated parmesan cheese and bake for 20-25 minutes.

Here is the secret: soft-boiled egg. The trick is to get the entire egg white cooked while leaving as much of the yolk runny as possible. I used an egg timer that you put in the pot with the egg, it took a bit of experimentation but trust me that when you get the timing down it makes the difference between a fancy dip or hors d'oeuvre topping and a magnificent dinner. Begin to cook the eggs about eight minutes before the brandade is finished in the oven. When the eggs are cooked run them under cold water until they are cool enough to handle. Remove from their shells and set the eggs to the side. Serve the brandade in a bowl with an egg on top. Before bringing to the table, cut each egg so that the yolk pours out onto the brandade. Serve with a sliced French baguette and enjoy.

This recipe served enough for three to four people, we were hungry so there wasn't much left over but with another side or a dessert it can easily serve four.


Sunday, August 19, 2007

Sushi Dinner at Home

We thought that there would be no better way to indulge in some gourmet Japanese food than to invite a few friends over for an overindulgent Japanese feast at home. Our menu consisted of six courses, though to be fair nobody had room for dessert, and three different drinks. We had a cheese (three types) and olive (two types) hors d'oeuvre course followed by miso soup for the starter, tempura shrimp with an orange sauce for the first course, the entree was miso marinated black cod and finally there was a sushi course of yellowfin tuna and salmon. We served lychee martinis, saketinis, and cold sake throughout the night. This might sound like a lot of food, and it was, but it wasn't too much of an effort for two of us to have all of this ready by the time our friends arrived. The first thing we did was marinate the black cod 48 hours in advance, which helped us minimize the amount of prep to do the night of the dinner.

Miso Marinated Black Cod

6 1/2 tablespoons sake
6 1/2 tablespoons mirin
3/4 cup of sugar
10 oz white miso paste
4 4 oz. Fresh Black Cod fillets, with the skin on but any pin bones removed

1. In a non reactive saucepan, bring the sake and mirin to a boil, continue to boil for about two or three minutes to let the alcohol evaporate.

2. Using a wooden spoon, stir in the sugar until it dissolves, then slowly mix in the miso paste, a little at a time. Cook over a medium heat, stirring constantly so as not to let the mixture burn for about ten - fifteen minutes.

3. Strain the mixture through a strainer to remove any
lumps, then let cool and then refrigerate until very cold.

4. Line the bottom of a non-reactive container with the miso marinade. Lay black cod on top of the marinade, pour the remaining marinade over each fillet, and let it marinate for about 1-2 days in a refrigerator.

5. When you are ready to cook the fish, heat a broiler or oven to 400 degrees. Scrape marinade off of the fillets into a pot. Wash remaining marinade off of fillets. Thin the reserved marinade with enough water to achieve the consistency of warm maple syrup and heat on low until ready to serve. Place the fillets in the broiler pan or a non-stick baking sheet and cook for 10-12 minutes, turning once if broiling, until cooked through and golden on the outside.

6. Place on a plate and drizzle the thinned miso marinade over it and serve.



The night before our dinner I made the lychee puree for the martinis.

Lychee Martini
3/4 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
3 cups drained canned lychees in syrup (1 3/4 8 oz. cans)
Juice from 1 whole lemon
2 1/4 cup vodka
4 1/2 oz (9 Tbsp) Cointreau

The lychee puree has enough flavor that there is no need to use a top shelf vodka. I prefer Svedka, but anything that you have on had will work just fine. We also thought that this recipe was very sweet, depending on your tolerance I would suggest using less sugar.

Begin by making simple syrup by dissolving the sugar and water in a saucepan over high heat. Pour into a medium bowl inside of a large bowl filled with ice water.

Puree the lychees with the syrup and lemon juice in a blender until smooth, strain through a sieve, discarding solids. Fill cocktail shaker half-way with ice cubes and add lychee puree, vodka and Cointreau. Shake and strain into Martini glasses.

Since I made the puree the night before, I refrigerated it in a bowl until I was ready to mix the drinks.

The first thing that I did the night of the dinner (about an hour in advance) was cook the rice (instructions are listed below) and prepare the orange sauce.

Orange Sauce
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tbsp Cornstarch
1 1/2 cup Orange Juice
1 Tbsp Butter

In a medium saucepan combine the dry ingredients. Stir in orange juice. Bring to a simmer, stirring until slightly reduced and thickened. Remove from heat. Stir in butter or margarine.

The orange sauce was pretty simple, but be careful. For some reason the sauce was very prone to splattering and was also very hot. I kept the sauce warm in the saucepan until I was ready to serve the shrimp.

Shortly before our guests arrived I made the tempura batter for the shrimp. The batter recipe consists of equal parts of club soda and rice flour. I was only able to find brown rice flour, which worked out great, but I don't know if it would have been any different with white rice flour. Since this was an appetizer for four we used 1/2 pound of shrimp with 2 cups each of the club soda and brown rice flour. I mixed the batter in a large bowl and let it sit covered with plastic wrap. This recipe made more than enough batter for the shrimp, and could possibly work for twice as many shrimp.

After preparing the tempura batter I took the cheese out of the fridge to get to room temperature. Fortunately for us, we live in NYC and have access to great affordable food, if you know where to look. East Village Cheese is possibly on of the greatest hidden gems of Manhattan; the catch is that the minimum purchase is 1/2 pound. The three cheeses that we served were a semi-soft French double cream cheese with walnuts, a garlic Gouda, and a Spanish Manchego. In addition to the cheese we also bought a half pound each of green and kalamata olives.

While I was preparing the cheese plate, my wife was working on the miso soup. We thought that this would be a good way to use the remaining miso paste that we bought but didn't need for the black cod marinade. The soup recipe made us as we went along - miso soup is about as simple as it gets. We put several cups of water in a large pot with the miso paste and brought it to a simmer. I can't tell you how much water or miso, but I can say that we did use too much water and had to boil it down until the flavor was right. It's a dish with a lot of room for variation, which is always good when there is so much else going on in the kitchen. After the water boiled down enough, we added the tofu. We used regular firm tofu cut into quarter inch cubes. This continued to simmer until it was served. We added some chopped scallion as a garnish when serving.

After preparing the soup, my wife finished preparing the black cod to be cooked. The only thing to do at this point was to rinse the fillets and make the sauce s described above.

To finish making the lychee martinis I poured equal parts of the puree and vodka Cointreau mixture into a cocktail shaker and shook it over ice, pouring the combination into a pitcher. I repeated three times until all of the puree and vodka mixture was mixed and refrigerated until it was served.

We served the cheese and olives first followed by the miso soup. While my wife cleared the table, I started on the shrimp. Our original inspiration for this dish was an appetizer from Nobu that has fried rock shrimp with an orange sauce. I guess rock shrimp isn't in season right now, so we were left with regular shrimp. Instead, we used 1/2 pound of regular shrimp, cleaned and de-veined. I heated a pot, filled less than half way with vegetable oil, on a medium-high heat. The tempura batter had a tendency to cause the shrimp to stick to each other while cooking so I had to cook them in small batches. I lightly salted each batch after taking them out of the oil. The whole process only took a few minutes and they were served immediately. Before serving I drizzled a little of the warm orange sauce on top of the shrimp and also filled a small ramekin of the sauce for dipping on the table.

The end of the shrimp course also marked the end of the lychee martinis. The flavors of the lychee and the orange went together perfectly and I would definitely recommend a sweet drink like this with this shrimp recipe.

After putting the black cod in the oven, my wife mixed up a batch of the saketinis.

The black cod was paired with the saketinis, much like the miso soup this was done more to use the leftover sake that was part of the black cod marinade than by design. Also, much like the miso soup, this ended up being a great addition to the meal. Saketinis are a wonderfully light and refreshing drink that, if made properly, also act as a palette cleanser. The danger is in how easily you can loose count of them… The flavor was not overpowering and was a great compliment for the black cod.

We finished the night with the cold sake. I picked up a great sake pitcher that has a separate internal ice compartment that allows you to keep the sake cold without watering it down.

The final course of the evening was also the main event - sushi. We bought a half pound each of yellowfin tuna and salmon. We found that making our own sushi wasn't nearly as complicated as we originally thought, I guess it is the whole mystic of a sushi bar that is so intimidating. By far the most important thing about sushi is the fish. My wife was able to find some exceptional sushi-grade fish at the Chelsea Fish Market. Aside from that, the only tricky part is the rice.

Instead of buying specific sushi rice, I used risotto. I think that any good short grain white rice will be just fine for this. I used 3 cups of rice and 8 cups of water with no salt or other seasoning; that comes later. Cover the pot and bring the water and rice to a boil. After 1 minute, reduce to medium high. After the top of the rice is visible reduce to low until all of the water is absorbed. Turn the heat to high. Remove from the heat after 15 seconds. Keep covered so that the rice can steam for 15 minutes.

Vinegar Dressing
75 ml mirin
45 gm sugar
15 gm salt

Dissolve the salt and sugar into the mirin over low heat. Remove from heat and cool until the rice is prepared.

After the rice is finished cooking spread it out onto a large surface as thinly as possibly. Pour the vinegar dressing onto the rice over the back of a spoon to help spread it evenly. Toss the rice to make sure that the dressing is evenly incorporated and allow time to cool. Periodically turn the rice so that it can properly cool and does not get mushy. I was surprised at how long it took for the rice to cool, and even resorted to resting it on top of our air conditioner for a while.

When the rice is completely cooled, you are ready to begin working on the sushi. Everyone has their preference with sushi and that is why it is such a great thing to make at home. We used a very sharp knife to cut the fish, it was actually Japanese but I don't think it mattered. A sharp knife is important for this because a dull blade will not give as clean of a cut through the fish, or later through the rolls.

We made basic sushi, also called Chirashi Sushi, which consists of thin slices of raw fish and no rice. Using the rice, we made Nigiri Sushi, which is simply a small ball of rice squeezed in your hand with a thin slice of fish placed on top. Some people put a dab of wasabi between the fish and rice. The wasabi powder that you buy at a store is not real wasabi (it is apparently quite rare and expensive), it is colored horseradish with a lot of kick - so be careful. The last type that we made was Maki Sushi and was made with nori. Nori is a thin sheet of smoked seaweed that is wrapped around the rice to make a roll.

To make the maki rolls we placed a piece of nori on a Makisu (a bamboo mat used to make the rolls - it is cheap and pretty easy to find) and spread the rice over it, covering all but a small portion of two ends of the nori. We took small strips of the fish and layed them over the center of the nori going from end to end. Using the Makisu we rolled the nori tightly, dabbing water on the ends without rice to help secure it.

The great thing about this is that you can make any kind of roll or sushi that you want. We made some that were either tuna or salmon as well as some that were a mixture.

The night was a blast and we all had a great time. One thing that worked out surprisingly well was the drink pairings. The different courses of food progressed from the stronger to subtler flavors which made the proper pairing all the more essential. Finishing the night with a crisp cold sake was the perfect compliment to the fresh flavor of the sushi.

We look forward to having more friends over and doing this again soon. There wasn't anything that we wouldn't make again and we hope that has inspired you as much as it has us.

Enjoy!

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Welcome to Idiots with Knives!

This modest blog is the beginning of what I hope to be a chronicle of the ongoing culinary adventures of my friends, my family and myself. I chose this name as an honest description of how I perceive myself. None of the regular posters on this blog have any formal training or work in the culinary industry, but we all still love to cook.

Many of us are dedicated 'foodies' -- we love to eat, we love to cook and most importantly we love to share our stories with each other. Over time we have grown more experimental, sometimes the results are more successful than others. Recently, as you will see below, some of us have even begun to dip our toes into the tasty waters of molecular gastronomy.

This first posting was prompted by a recent dinner that included an attempt at spherification.

The first course was a take on peas and carrots:








Pea mixture
260 grams of fresh peas
325 grams of water
3 grams of sodium alginate

Chemical Bath
1500 grams cold water
10 grams calcium chloride in flat dish. Chill.

Boil the peas in water for 4 minutes. Add a small bunch of mint leaves at the end. Drain and pour into cool in cold water. Drain again.

In a pot mix 325 grams of water with 3 grams of sodium alginate with an immersion blender until smooth. Bring to a boil while stirring. Remove from heat, cool, add peas. Mix with immersion blender until smooth. Chill.

Mix 1500 grams cold water with 10 grams calcium chloride in flat dish. Chill. When ready to serve, fill syringes with pea mixture, drop into calcium chloride bath. Let sit for 1 minute. Scoop out, dip in rinse water bowel. Drain. Serve with mint sprig and Yuzu Carrots.

Yuzu Carrots

Cook carrots until tender, puree with butter and yuzu.

The mint added a wonderful fresh taste to the peas. Next time, I think we would salt the mixture before making the spheres and also use more peas and less water for a stronger flavor. The Yuzu Carrot puree made a perfect compliment to the minty peas.

For the main course we had an amazing cassoulet, that was not quite photogenic enough for us, although with plenty of duck confit and several varieties of pork it would be a crime to not mention it.

For dessert we were treated to an amazing array of tidbits.

First, we each had a plate with a mini crème brulee (my favorite), a curly lemon cookie, a dark chocolate cake and finally a 'soft boiled egg'.





Egg Yolk
200 grams of fresh mango puree (1 large mango-peeled and pureed in the blender)
0.65 grams of citric
1050 grams of water
0.75 grams of algin
5 grams of calcic

Blend the citric with 50 grams of water. Then blend the algin into the citric water with an immersion blender. Bring to a boil, cool and add it to the mango puree. Chill.

Blend 1000 grams of water with calcic in a shallow pan. Chill until ready to serve.

Egg White

250 grams coconut milk
80 grams of half and half
1 heaping tablespoon of powdered sugar

Put above ingredients in a cream whipper. Charge it. Chill in fridge until ready.

When ready to serve, fill egg cups with coconut foam. Carefully lay down spoons of mango in the calcic bath. Let them sit for 2 minutes. Scoop them out to the rinse water, drain. Place on top of the foam. Sprinkled with coconut dust.

If that wasn't enough, we also had a mix of fruits and nuts.



The fruits were candied cranberries, candied figs with Port and candied apricots, flambéed with apricot brandy.

The next picture was actually from breakfast the following morning. It might not belong, but I had to mention it. These are herb-baked eggs with a generous amount of parmagiano reggiano sprinkled on top.



What a weekend!