Veronica's Test Kitchen

Meat Glue

Uh...I swear I have not lost my mind. There exist such a thing. An enzyme called transglutaminase acts as a bonding agent for different types of proteins. It is not a new discovery. It's mostly used in industrial applications like improving the binding of sausages or restructured steaks but has recently found usage in restaurants that would like to create more consistent portion sizes. In upscale restaurants, it may be used to create something unusual like this tuna-scallop example from my Harold Mc Gee seminar last year.

I do not really see an application in the home kitchen. But a girl has to try and satisfy her curiosity , right?  I was able to get an Ajinomoto representative  to send me a sample of Activa -its brand name- a couple of months ago since I couldn't find it anywhere( It has since become available at Lepicerie).

I finally found the opportunity to play with this ingredient last weekend as the "Hungry" Hubby was making kebabs again and I had him set aside 4 pieces of tenderloin for me. Activa is in powder form. All you have to do is to sprinkle it liberally at the point where you want to fuse the meat , press it firmly and refrigerate overnight.

 

We salted the chunks of meat before throwing it on the grill. That way , we could make sure that seasoning did not affect the bonds that formed.

I know I did not do a very professional job glueing the pieces together, but at least the chunks held.

The small piece that broke off in the picture was a natural separation of the meat.

There was no weird after-taste that came about from the use of Activa. The meat remained succulent, retained it's texture and beefy taste.

The Ajinomoto rep told me that once the packet is opened , it is important to seal and freeze the remaining powder as it loses its effectivity very quickly once exposed to air. That is another reason I think this will be my first and last experimentation with transglutaminase.

 

I am so not gelling...

So, I’m back! For the first 2 weeks of June, I had to attend to my day job plus an influx of macaron orders. Remember I mentioned some exciting projects? One is underway and won’t be finished until the end of August… I am so psyched about it.   The second was supposed to be a minor kitchen renovation to add a second oven but that fell through because we decided to get one of those stand alone kitchen ovens instead - the ones that restaurants use. You see, when you are an IT person like me - a database administrator- you always think of your backups. I’m always afraid that if my one and only oven fails – what do I do with my orders. We also inquired about a generator from the electric company but got a sticker shock – that’ll have to wait.

I was also busy in the Test kitchen. First, experimenting with a new ingredient called gellan. This is what Pierre Herme uses to make some of his gelée cubes. A question that came up often in class was when to use gellan and when to use gelatin, he said it all depends on the texture you want.

So why am I not gelling...

  

      My passion fruit gelée needs some more work. I don’t like the texture- the graininess in the mouth feel – the gellan probably needs to be cooked some more. My raspberry one did not turn out any better either and acquired the texture of tomato paste … yuck! So, if any molecular gastronomy geek can guide me as to its proper use, I will be eternally grateful :).

But I am most excited experimenting with the macaron au sucre cuit. I think I’m close to getting the results I want. I take back what I said about this method before. It is not any sweeter than the French Meringue way. Now whether I will use this for my business still remains to be seen – I find it more involved but has a better rate of return for big orders with multiple flavors.

     Anyway, here’s a sneak peek:

 

    I will reveal my new flavors for Petites Bouchees towards the end of August. But most of you familiar with PH’s macarons probably could already tell what the cocoa-dusted yellow one is. J

   My grubby little fingers have thoroughly smeared sticky syrup on my PH recipe book - I'm finding some pages stuck together! I’ve also received multiple requests to publish some of the recipes from his class. I am looking to make the Emotion Ispahan soon and maybe… that’ll be the first ;).

   And last but not least, check out this cute watercolor from Cakespy. Isn’t it the most lovable thing to have? I know I had to have it the moment I laid eyes on it. Jessie also has an etsy shop here.

 

 

 

 

 

Pretty in Pink ...

            …at least it was until I baked it. This light and fluffy soufflé is from Sherry Yard’s soon-to-be released book, Desserts by the Yard. I was so excited when I found out from Anita that the lady who introduced me to the concepts of baking via her book, The Secrets of Baking,had a follow up to that classic.

            “Desserts by the Yard” is a compendium of recipes Sherry had perfected throughout her years as a pastry chef. It begins with her childhood memories growing up in Brooklyn. Inspirations like her mom’s no-bake cheesecake or the Brooklyn Black Out Cake from the neighborhood bakery provides insight into the early years of a budding pastry chef. Then it continues with her stint in various New York city establishments as she finished her studies at the Culinary Institute of America’s Pastry program. In this chapter, she shares recipes like Baked Alaska and the grand-domed creation known as the Chocolate Velvet Cake.

              But it was in California where she finally blossomed in her craft. Armed with just $500, she headed west to San Francisco. There, she found a job at the Campton Place Hotel where she would soon develop her own style of pastry, drawing inspiration from the bounty of San Francisco Farmer’s markets. After four years at Campton Place she moved to Catahoula in Calistoga, Napa Valley where she learned to pair food and wine and develop comfort desserts like the buttermilk pie that I can’t wait to make!

It was after one long day at Catahoula that she received that fateful phone call from Wolfgang Puck of Spago fame. She was flown down to LA for a leisurely afternoon interview with the great man himself - and they hit it off immediately. And the rest, as they say, is history! This is where you start to see the sophistication start to evolve in Sherry’s desserts: raspberry soufflé, upside-down cheesecake flan, and final baos (chocolate-filled beignets).

Also included in the book is a carefully developed recipe for Sachertorte (which Wolfgang initially called nothing but a dry chocolate cake until he had a taste of Sherry’s version) and the most popular dessert at the new Spago Beverly Hills menu, the Kaiserschmarren (soufflé crème fraiche pancakes with strawberry sauce – can’t wait to try this too). All these were based from her inspired recollection stemming from her trip to Vienna - a trip that came about at Wolfgang’s prodding. And yes, there is a recipe for Apple Strudel.

From there, her journey continued to different Wolfgang Puck-owned establishments.  There is even a chapter on her Academy Awards – read Oscar- desserts like the Chocolate Truffle Tarts with Chocolate Crème Brulee Diamonds and Seventy-Five Bean Vanilla Ice Cream (what a mouthful - and no it didn’t look like she used 75 vanilla beans, it was more like 7).

            This book simply had a dessert for everyone. Want chocolate, try the Twelve-Layer Flourless Chocolate Dobos Torte.  If you are a cheesecake fan, try the Passion Fruit Cheesecake. Now, if you want something as homey as muffins, pancakes, cookies and ice cream, there’s an assortment of that too. She also has a section of the basics where she includes the recipe of what she calls her 10-year chocolate sauce (because it took her 10 years to perfect it).

            I can’t make a comment about the photography at the present time since this is an advance reading copy with no colored photographs yet. Heck, it does not even have the index (all it says in the back of the book is “Index goes here”)!

            I will not list the recipe for the soufflé because my source is an uncorrected proof – even some desserts I mentioned above might not be included in the final copy. I’ll just give you a rough idea of what I did for the soufflé.

Cooking Notes

            I halved the recipe because the hubby and I didn’t fancy finishing all 8 souffles by ourselves and they were not something I would try for the first time in front of guests either. So I used around 8 ounces of raspberries. To ¾ cup of these raspberries I added 1/8 cup sugar,1.5 tsp lemon juice and about 1 tbs. Grand Marnier (the recipe called for Chambord but I did not have any) and boiled it down to a jammy consistency. I whipped 4 egg whites with ¼ cup sugar to stiff peaks and then folded it into ½ cup of the cooled raspberry mixture. I divided the rest of the jammy mixture and fresh raspberries among 4 “buttered and sugared” ramekins. The recipe specified to spoon the soufflé base onto the dishes but I decided a piping bag would be easier to achieve that swirly form reminiscent of cotton candy. I baked the soufflé in a pre-heated 425 °F oven for 12 minutes (recipe said 15 -20 minutes but my ramekins were smaller than the required 8-ounce dishes)

            This soufflé was a fluffy delight! Starting from it’s browned crusty surface, to its silken interior, to the pudding like consistency of its warm raspberry filling. If you love raspberries like I do, you are sure to love this!

            Beating egg whites. There are different methods for beating egg whites. For the longest time, I would beat the egg whites at the highest speed on my mixer while streaming in the sugar. My egg whites never broke (okay, maybe sometimes), but I had a suspicion I was not producing the optimal foam.

Then I had recently learned from Harold Mc Gee that you should add the cream of tartar right away – not to wait for the egg white to foam as I always did. Alice Medrich also did this in her class and she produced an impeccable meringue each time. I also observed her technique of adding sugar to the egg whites and the speed at which she beat them.

Sugar hinders and aids the making of the foam. Added too early it will interfere with the bonding of the protein strands that trap your air bubbles, which will then result in reduced volume.

So when do you add sugar?

Add the sugar when the egg whites have started to foam and the lines of the whisk are starting to hold. Here, sugar adds stability to the bubble walls preventing the deflation of your foam. In Alice’s class she added the sugar slowly – and I mean SLOWLY – at medium speed for a long time. Her resulting foam was perfectly shiny and moist and made the creamiest soufflé.

            The first experiments I did when I got home were to beat egg whites with different amounts of sugar, with different whisks at different speeds. After going through two dozen eggs, I have come up with an interesting conclusion: you can beat the egg whites indefinitely at medium speed as long as you’ve added the sugar very slowly – they never broke – at least not for the 15 minutes I  beat them. For my last experiment, I used my new 11-wire whisk, which was notorious for breaking my egg white foams. At medium speed, I could beat my egg whites for a long agonizing time and maintain medium to stiff peaks. Impatient to see them break, I increased my speed to max and even then it took a while for the egg whites to break. In fact, I don’t think I ever broke them, the foam just turned into a really stiff dense mixture hat you could probably sit an egg on.   

            I could probably go on and on about whipping egg whites, but I’ll reserve that for another day. Suffice it to say that for your soufflé, beat the egg whites to stiff glossy peaks. At this stage, there is just enough lubrication for the foam to remain creamy and be easily folded into other ingredients.

            Here is a picture of the soufflé in the oven…see how much it puffed! J

A Cross-Cultural Affair

            I think marriages that span cultural boundaries have several issues that arise from following one’s own customs and traditions. For the “Hungry” hubby and I, this is not the case for we conveniently ignore them. For our part, the dilemma has more to do with the culture of food. The “Hungry” hubby forbids (okay, that is too strong a word, but it is dramatic, yes?) the cooking or even the presence of two things in the house. One is shrimp paste. The other is star anise. In the case of shrimp paste, he could not understand how I find something so “smelly”, so gloriously appetizing. As for star anise, there seems to be an aroma and flavor component to it that he detests with a passion.  He griped for days about the smell that permeated throughout the house when I braised some pork tongue that had it. Somehow I think his “perceived” nausea was more from the idea of the pork tongue rather than the star anise itself.

            I somewhat gave in on the shrimp paste prohibition. I do agree that the smell that pervades the kitchen when this seafood anchovy is a prime ingredient of a dish, could be seemingly repulsive to the un-acclimated nose or palate - what I couldn’t understand was the star anise.

I know that if you have not grown up eating a certain spice/ingredient it is most likely that you will not be predisposed to develop the amiable savory receptors for it or related flavors. As with the case when I had my former boss sample straight fish sauce (not the sweetened, watered down kind) he could have sworn me off the face of earth for offering him something that he called “the nastiest thing he had ever tasted” (sniff, sniff …I do love my fish sauce…I think it’s a miracle ingredient really).

            So I totally understand how HH, who grew up eating only his mother’s cooking, who grew up eating plain yoghurt and rice when he was in someone else’s house, who ate ice cream, chocolate and cereal when he WAS IN PARIS (okay, this was 21 years ago…but still …hello...Paris!…there is so much more to eat in Paris - especially if you stayed for 8 freaking months!), be easily converted to eating all the things I ate.

             But how could our marriage work if I was deprived of star anise? So, I decided to get sneaky … sneaky as you would in making a child eat his vegetables. Bwahahaha.

             I made duck confit using the recipe from The Balthazar Cookbook which uses star anise, cinnamon, clove and garlic and conveniently not informing HH what was in it.  Besides, all this abhorrence to star anise might be mental.

            And guess what? HH loved the duck confit! It was after that admission that I finally revealed to him that it contained his despised spice. He did not believe me. So I made it a second time and he still liked it. Good. That was one hurdle we had crossed.

            Could I take this development in our relationship further?  I found a perfect opportunity when I came across several pork belly recipes that utilized this star-shaped ingredient. I wanted to make the braised pork belly roll from The Cook's book but I had another beautiful tome which until now has remained more as a coffee table volume with phenomenal food photography than a bona fide cookbook: Justin Quek's Passion and Inspiration(besides this book had to cross oceans to get here so I better use it).

            The recipe required the pork belly be braised in star anise, cinnamon, five-spice and red wine. The sauce for it was a ruby port glaze. Sounds promising. I announced to HH that I was making this dish and he should keep an open-mind – after all he did like the duck confit. Besides, we now have a 900 cfm vent that could surely exhaust any undesirable odors that my cooking may produce.

Braised Pork Belly with Oriental Spices and Port Wine Sauce

From Justin Quek’s Passion and Inspiration

Serves 6

·         1.1 kg pork belly  (~ 2.5 lbs)

·         50 ml olive oil (~ 1/4 cup olive oil)

·         200 g mirepoix (~ 7 oz)

·         2 star anise

·         2 cinnamon quills ( I assume this means sticks)

·         10 g five-spice powder (~2 tsp)

·         1 bottle red wine (750 ml)

·         1.5 l veal jus  (~6 1/3 cups)

·         500 ml port wine (~2 cups)

·         40 g unsalted butter cube  (~1.4 oz)

Cut the pork belly into six pieces weighing approximately 180g each. Season them with some salt and pepper. Heat the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed pan and sear the pieces of pork over medium heat until they turn light brown. Add the mirepoix, star anise, cinnamon quills and five-spice powder. Continue to cook until the pork pieces are evenly coloured. Remove the pieces of pork.

Deglaze the pan with red wine and let it reduce by half before you add the veal jus and bring it to a boil. Remove any scum that rises to the surface before adding the pieces of pork. Cover with a lid and braise for 1 ½ hours or until the pork is tender. Let the meat cool in the braising liquid before you remove it. Strain the liquid and discard mirepoix.

In a saucepan, reduce the port wine down to a syrupy glaze. (It should lightly coat the back of a spoon). Add some of the reduced braising liquid to make a port wine sauce. Keep stirring it until it achieves a smooth consistency then whisk in the butter and sauce aside.

Cooking Notes:

            Most of Justin Quek’s recipes have a very short ingredient list. However, this is with the understanding that you had made some of the basic pantry items that he had listed in the beginning of the book. In the case of this recipe, it needed veal jus which is his version of veal stock. I did not have time to make this but I got some from Belmont Butchery who makes their own veal stock. I also skipped the potato puree because I wanted to have my pork belly with a scoop of aromatic steamed white rice.

            For mirepoix, I cubed equal amounts of carrots, celery and onions. It is important to factor in the amount of time required for reducing the red wine and the port wine so plan for a leisurely afternoon to make this. Even better, have a glass of wine as you go about its production.

            My sauce turned out runnier than I preferred. I think I got too ladle-happy in adding the braising liquid to the reduced port wine. Remember to use cold butter when making the sauce; you will achieve a better emulsion this way.

            The verdict :

            Chef Quek was right in pairing this with potato puree. Taste-wise,especially with the port wine sauce, the farinaceous tuber would have been a better choice. I am very pleased with the port glaze – it had a pleasing sweet and tart flavor that would make it a versatile sauce to be used for duck and foie gras.

            Best of all, HH did not even taste the star anise – or what he thought was the unpleasant “anisy” taste! This got me thinking. What does the duck confit and this pork belly braise have in common besides star anise? Cinnamon! Could it be that cinnamon cancels out the undesirable taste and smell receptors that HH had towards star anise? I did a google on star anise and cinnamon and they appear to be a very classic combination.

I am so excited with this theory. But before I rejoice, I must perform another test. The way I have cooked star anise before that initially spurred HH’s displeasure was with soy sauce. Could it be the combination of these two ingredients that produced the odor/taste contention in the first place?

           All I know now is that I can use my hidden stash of star anise again – with utmost prudence of course! Don’t want to rock the boat too much now, do I?

Me and McGee

Okay, it probably sounds more like McGee and 20 other people. Anyway, I just finished the first day of the "The Harold McGee lecture series" . My head is full and exploding with countless ideas for new experiments. The "hungry" hubby is fearful that I might come home with a microscope and some form of hydrocolloids. I was also specially surprised and excited to run into someone I only knew from the blogosphere.

Update: 07/15/07

To check out who the mystery blogger is, check out his account of our meeting here .