Archives for July 2009
Off Site Dish Up.
30 July 2009 | Ten 01, blueberries, delicious, dessert, plated dessert | 2 Responses
We found ourselves perched precariously with too tall speed racks in the back of a pick up. As the truck’s engine revved ready to pop the curb my mind flashes through this pasts weeks events. Moving tons of product, slaving mad and crazy hours. Tarts. Shit tons of little tartlettes. Cookies. Over five hundred; twenty some odd pounds of dough. White Chocolate Panna Cotta. Four hundred of them, forty eight at a time. Cleaning and processing six flats of blueberies. The truck struggling to summit the curb forces me from my reverie, the speed rack tilting, threatening to spill its payload. Perez and I look at each other, shaking heads. Wham!! The truck nails a huge rock and we almost lose our shit. The shits were up on two wheels, I dropped and tucked against our stacks of plates and dug in , gripping. In that split second I knew I’d lost the load, that I’d blew the mission. We braced against the rocking and steadied the racks, cussing and kicking and carrying on. I felt in that instant…peace. I’d known it was out of my hands, beyond me. I couldn’t be more prepared for this event than I was. I had my product, I had my boy, I knew we had this. Right until it all was about to fly out of the back of this fucking truck, out of my control. Thankfully, none of that happened. The truck rocked back level, the speed racks clunked upright. We rolled silently over the grass to the plating area. We had a few hours earlier spread the custards out onto about a dozen sheet pans, each on a little square of acetate; easy to slide off onto chilled plates. They thawed slowly in the fridge for about three hours, and finished perfectly in the spanking afternoon sun. The entire plating, 275 plates in the end, took about eighteen minutes. We had so many hands helping, I just poked around, answering questions and pulling fucked up plates off to be replaced with perfect ones. All said and done, we nailed it. The silky custards were ice cold but not frozen, the compote thick and rich, the simple essence of blueberry. We retreated from the heat to the cool of our dorm room to pound tall boys and take a nap. I slumbered happily elated, stoked to be a chef that day.
Simple Bacon Cornbread.
28 July 2009 | bacon, delicious, faithful readers, recipe | 6 Responses
This is based on a polenta cake recipe I found on the web somewhere. The oil from the original recipe is substituted with rendered bacon fat, then the bits are mixed into the batter and it’s baked. I like to buy the bacon scraps from the meat counter at New Seasons for this; it’s already cut up. I’ve been tweaking and working this recipe for a bit, it’s almost ready. Ready enough to share with my faithful readers. It still evolves, however. My friends ask me to make this for picnics and such, this one here was for an Independence Day party at my neighbor Damien’s house. I’m glad I made it that day; it caught the attention of someone who wanted the recipe for something awesome. As i started to put the recipe together; rendering the bacon and sifting the dry ingredients, I realized I wasn’t going to have enough fat. Fortunately, I had some pork belly scraps in the freezer, also a deli cup of the rendered fat. Hooray for melted pig flesh!
- Cut most the bacon into small dice. Leave some bigger chunks for chewy treats throughout.
- Render the bacon in your 10 inch cast iron skillet. I recently learned to put some water in the bottom of the pan and cover it, steaming the bacon some to get at that delicious fat. Remove the lid after about 8 minutes, and brown the bacon. If you use a 10 inch cast iron skillet like I do, bake the cornbread right in that pan without washing it.
- Weigh the dry ingredients into a bowl and whisk to combine.
- In a separate bowl, weigh the liquid ingredients and whisk to combine.
- Whisk the wet into the dry and mix to a smooth batter. Stir in the canned corn. Stir in the bacon.
- Bake in desired form at 325 until golden brown and springy, about 12-15 minutes
That’s Fucking Delicious.
22 July 2009 | Ten 01, creative presentation of the week, delicious, dessert, plated dessert | 10 Responses
Why is this dessert going nowhere? I love this dessert. It’s a tasty refreshing and interesting treat. I love this. I love it almost as much as some other complete flops I’ve created. We all know what a float is; a frothy icy treat, simply ice cream and soda. It’s just got a little twist, a little refreshing surprise. It’s blackberries, and corn. That’s right I said fucking corn. Sweet corn ice cream to be exact, I learned it from a recent mentor. It pairs great with the blackberries, the little corpuscles bursting and adding their juice. Corn and berries, who new? So yeah you plop some of the corn ice cream in a frosty glass, cover it with fresh blackberries and homemade blackberry syrup, cover it with club soda or sprite, and Robert’s your father’s brother. I garnish with caramel corn and white chocolate polenta cookies. A good stir with a long spoon will froth it up and blend the flavors. It’s not rocket scientist, it’s just good. I thing people get turned off by corn in ice cream. People want one flavor: vanilla. I bet if I changed the ice cream to that specky pod I’d have a frenzy on my hands. Maybe next week.
Sweet Corn Ice Cream
Design Process.
12 July 2009 | Ten 01, dessert, faithful readers, pastries, plated dessert | 5 Responses
I’m a bit of a hack, I must admit. I mean sure, I got skills. I’ve got brains. I have a strong undestanding of proper technique, yeah I’ve baked some shit. I know custards, cookies, cakes, and muffins, I’m sure I could puzzle out a turkey stuffins. The chessecake hand is strong, the bread pudding, people don’t shut up about it. What I’m trying to say here kids is I’ve cooked a bit, I’ve spent some time baking. Having said all that, I’m kind of a hack. I hack my way through plated desserts. I’m like a blunt instrument swung lamely; a dull machete rampage in a chandelier shop. When it comes to innovation, creativity, style, I’ve got a lot to learn. I don’t have an original bone in my body. Most of the things I do are bit off someone else, twisted and forced through the filter of someone in the one to five years of experience demographic. I’m getting better, I think I might be starting to figure it out. I Google ideas. I read cookbooks, magazines. I try and eat dessert when I go out. I write shit down a lot. Well these days, I just tap it in. I’ll be on the bus or my bike or whatever and suddenly I’ll think: Grilled Zucchini Bread with Root Beer Ice Cream!! Into myPhone it goes. I’ve always drawn plates, shapes and squiggles sometimes reverse engineering shapes into flavors. I like to bounce my ideas off Kate because she has a keen eye for design. She taught me “plan view;” brilliant!. I try to come up with something that looks cool and eats well. I shoot for ninety percent Damn That’s Good and ten percent How’d He Do That? Most times, it works. I’ve been hammering out a new summer menu, and I think these are some bad-assed desserts. I’ve been working with a consultant who asked to remain anonymous, suffice to say this person is a also bad-assed. One of the best pastry chef’s I have worked with, this person has forced me to create outside my comfort zone, deviate from my normal menu formula. Oregon produce is so good right now, fruit is everywhere on this one. Changing desserts this week; stay tuned for more my faithful readers.
