A La Cuisine!

Smoked Bacon and Egg Ice Cream, Pain Perdu, and Tea Jelly

I have long been an advocate of having dessert for breakfast, but at England’s The Fat Duck, breakfast is the new dessert.  Amidst the restaurant’s menu of Snail Porridge and Sardine on Toast Sorbet, a finale of Smoked Bacon and Egg Ice Cream seems to fit right in.  After reading rave reviews about this dish, I simply had to try it myself.  But since my chances of dining at The Fat Duck in the foreseeable future are next to zero, I spent last weekend trying to recreate it at home.

As you may have guessed, this dessert is Chef Heston Blumenthal’s whimsical take on a traditional English breakfast.  In addition to the Smoked Bacon and Egg Ice Cream, the dish also includes a sweet and slightly sour Tomato and Red Pepper Jam, caramelized French Toast (or Pain Perdu), a rich and creamy Salted Butter Caramel, and a refreshing glass of Tea Jelly.  The complete recipes for the dessert can be found here and here.

Chocolate Sous Vide Soufflé (IMBB 20)

By Boyle's Law: Pressure ∝ 1/Volume at constant temperature.  So by placing the soufflé under vacuum, we decrease pressure and increase volume!  In the fridge, the chocolate solidifies and stabilizes the soufflé, so that it doesn't collapse when the vacuum is removed. 

Before:

After:

Tagged with: IMBB # 20 + Souffle

Miss Gla'Gla, you’re so fine and delicious (IMBB 16)

It was love at first sight.  Her slim, gorgeous figure set against her flowing raspberry highlights.  And everyone simply knew her as “Miss Gla'Gla.”   

Okay, so I haven't fallen for a girl with a funny name, but I am smitten with Pierre Hermé's macaron ice cream sandwich that’s called Miss Gla’Gla.   The first time I saw it on Pim's blog, I just knew I had to make it.  I love macarons and I love ice cream sandwiches.  So Pierre Hermé, if you’re reading this, I think you’re a genius for combining the two.  (And seriously M. Hermé, if you actually do read my blog, I would be more than happy to share my thoughts on your other creations, if you would kindly send me some samples.)

Today marks the 16th edition of Is My Blog Burning? hosted by the ever stylish Viv of Seattle Bon Vivant.  The theme is eggs, which is perfect, because yolks are essential for making rich and smooth ice cream, and whites are responsible for the volume and shape of macarons.  Seeing that I didn’t have an actual recipe for the Miss Gla’Gla, I decided to use three flavours that I’ve come to love.

SHF 9: A Pair of Pears and a Chocolate Disaster

Whether I fail or succeed, I've come to think of food blogging events as opportunities to experiment.  Besides forcing me to try preparations and ingredients that I otherwise wouldn’t use, events like Sugar High Fridays and Is My Blog Burning? also give me an excuse to attempt recipes that are too complex and time-consuming for everyday cooking.  Unlike dinner parties, the time constraints for blogging events are more flexible, and the pressure to present something that’s both perfect and impressive just isn’t there.  That's not to say that I won't 'try' to make something that’s impressive and perfect, but I’d much rather fail at making something ambitious, than succeed at something that’s easy and uninspiring.

One of the things I like most about food blogs is that they’re driven more by process and content, than results and audience.  If you want to read about someone’s triumphs and failures in hosting an elaborate dinner party, food blogs are the place to go.  But if you want to read an article about throwing the 'Perfect Christmas Dinner Party' that’s aimed at middle-income North American households with standard kitchen equipment, who are most comfortable with ‘safe’ recipes that use easy-to-find ingredients, then food magazines would probably be a better fit.

Roasted Pineapple with Passion Fruit Caramel and Caramel Dust (SHF 6)

As much as I like caramel, I prefer to have it in small doses.  A little goes a long way when it's paired with nuts or chocolate, while a tart or cake filled only with caramel would probably be too sweet for my liking.  Because the theme of this month’s Sugar High Fridays event, hosted by Debbie of Words to Eat By is caramel, I thought I would try to use this deep and decadent confection in a few different ways.

A quick check of my cookbooks turned up a few ideas.  I had really liked the passion fruit caramel sauce from my previous post, and I’ve always enjoyed the deep, complex flavours of roasted pineapple when its sugars become caramelized.  Add a touch of caramel dust, and here was a dish that was caramel, without being overly rich or sweet.

Dessert Caviar

Somehow during my last year of university, I became addicted to cookbooks. I ordered a couple and then I ordered some more. By the end of year, my cookbooks outnumbered my textbooks 15 to 5. Whenever I needed to distract myself from the realities of school, I looked for dishes I wanted to make, and spent countless hours researching things like how to get those colourful stripes in joconde, and how to grill the perfect steak. Unfortunately at the time I lived in a residence where I shared a limited kitchen with a dozen other students. So instead of experimenting and driving all my floormates crazy, I made a list of dishes that I planned to someday prepare.

Over the past two years I've made quite a few of the dishes on my list including butter-poached lobster, Grand Marnier soufflés, and Plaisir Sucré. There are still many dishes that I've yet to cook, including a plethora of truffle and foie gras preparations that I'll only make if I win the lottery or if someone (maybe you) sends me money.

About a month ago, I found myself with the perfect opportunity to prepare a dish that's long been on my list. I had been asked to make a dessert for a Chinese New Year potluck, and I immediately thought of Claudia Fleming's Coconut Tapioca with Coconut Sorbet, Passion Fruit-Pineapple Sorbet, Passion Fruit Caramel, Cilantro Syrup, and a Coconut Tuile. Otherwise known as "Dessert Caviar", this was one of Fleming's signature desserts when she was the pastry chef at New York's Gramercy Tavern.

Puff Pastry with Peanut Ice Cream, Chocolate Leaves, Praline Ganache and Condensed Milk Cappuccino (SHF 5)

I recently noticed that puff pastry is everywhere.  It's great by itself, or for enclosing meat, fish, fruits, and chocolate.  It can be used in either sweet and savoury preparations, or as a garnish for desserts.  While its rich but neutral flavour certainly makes it appealing to use, puff pastry’s versatility seems to have much to do with its light and flaky texture.  In my opinion, just about everything goes well with something that’s light and flaky, and thus the reason for puff pastry’s universal appeal.

So what would happen if I were to combine puff pastry with a myriad flavours and textures in the same dish?  That was certainly what I wanted to find out when I adapted a recipe by Jean-Paul Bonnet of New York’s Atelier Restaurant for my entry in the fifth edition of Sugar High Fridays.

Trials and Tribulations in Puff Pastry (Pre-SHF 5)

There’s something enormously satisfying about jumping off a cliff, and figuring things out as you’re falling down.  Such was the case when I chose puff pastry as the theme for February’s Sugar High Fridays event.  I had never made or used puff pastry before, but I had read so much about the wonders of this legendary dough that I couldn’t wait to try it out.  And so I chose it as the theme for SHF 5 on the basis that it would be fun and challenging, and with the belief that I would be better off jumping from this cliff alongside everyone else.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been slowly learning the intricacies of puff pastry by trying out three basic recipes.  My first attempt involved a classic puff pastry preparation from Sherry Yard’s The Secrets of Baking.  As with all puff pastry recipes, this one began by making the détrempe (the dough) and the beurrage (the butter block) separately, before enclosing the beurrage inside the détrempe, and proceeding through a series of six turns.

Tarte au Citron Meringuée

At 4 o’clock on Sunday morning, I couldn’t go to sleep.  I was in the midst of making puff pastry for the first time, and if everything went as planned, I would be done by seven, and only then would I take a nap.  In the time between turns, I found myself with nothing to do.  I had read all my favourite food blogs, Rachael Ray was on Food TV, and every other station was showing infomercials.  So what else could I do but cook?  Since my fridge was mostly empty except for two lemons, a few eggs, and butter, I decided to try out Maury Rubin’s Manhattan Style Lemon Meringue Tart, essentially a lemon tart topped with a cylindrical dollop of meringue.

I started by making the pate sablée – the delicate, cookie-like pastry that would be used for the crust.  It was actually because of this pastry that I bought Maury Rubin’s Book of Tarts last summer.  In Jeffrey Steingarten’s It Must’ve Been Something I Ate, Steingarten searches New York for the perfect tart pastry, and Rubin’s is one of only two that he finds to be acceptable.  To emphasize his point, Steingarten warns that:

“If a baker, at home or in commerce, cannot make better pastry than Maury’s, he or she should simply follow Maury’s recipe or throw in the towel and find other work.”

IMBB 11: Fried Azuki Bean Ice Cream

Before I had even started, I knew that this dish could easily turn into an absolute disaster.  On Saturday I made azuki bean ice cream, and today my plan was to coat scoops of the ice cream with panko (Japanese bread crumbs) and deep fry them in hot oil.  Two outcomes seemed likely.  Either the ice cream would instantly melt into a puddle of purplish muck and cause the oil to pop and explode, or the panko would insulate the ice cream enough to form a shell, and keep the scoop of ice cream intact.

As it turns out, my results were somewhere in between the two.  While I waited for the panko to brown, the ice cream began to melt, and everything barely remained in one piece.  It did, however, taste quite good - good enough to use it as my entry for the eleventh edition of Is My Blog Burning? hosted by Cathy of My Little Kitchen.  The theme for the event is Beans, Beans, the musical fruit.