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!