thoughts on honey

thoughts on honey (not my own - I'm not so eloquent)
It's the epigram for Anne Lamott's novel Crooked Little Heart.

Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt - marvellous error! -
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

----Antonio Machado, from Times Alone

shopping carts

My new obsession is noticing what people have in their shopping carts at the grocery store.

shopping cart # 1:

4 pre-formed ground beef patties
high fiber cereal
box of white Franzia
chex mix
wine bottle labeled (I am not making this up) "Peach Sparkletini"

pushed by:
middle-aged lady, slightly overweight, really shiny brown hair, wearing black capri pants embroidered with pink palmettos. looked like Ina Garten.

Coriander Grapes

My sister-in-law requested this recipe from me, so here it is. It's so simple it can hardly be called a recipe!
Take some grapes, wash and dry them. Pick them off the vine.
Separate 1 or 2 egg whites and whisk a little, just until frothy.
Mix together about 1 cup of sugar and about 1/3 c. ground coriander - use more or less coriander depending on what you like.
Drop the grapes in the egg whites, then fish them out with a fork. Shake off the excess white, then roll them in the coriander sugar, using the fork. Us the fork to lay them out on a cookie sheet covered in wax paper or parchment. Try not to jiggle them around too much .
Let them sit at room temperature for one or two days.

If you're concerned about eating raw eggs, you can pasteurize the whites by whisking them in a metal bowl over simmering water until they reach 140 degrees F.

These are great garnishes for drinks - you can cut a slit in them and set them right onto the rim of the glass. If you want to get really fancy, you could spear them with an herb, like rosemary or lavender.

Enjoy!

Happy Meal (sort of)

We had a cookout the other night, and I decided to finally make the mini burgers I've had on my mind for a month. I've been obsessing about the concept of a mini burger and fries - kind of like a happy meal, but better.
We ended up making mini venison burgers on ciabatta with caramelized onions, balsamic mushrooms, and bleu cheese. Then I made a roasted yellow pepper ketchup and mini fries.


For dessert we had sorbet. I've had an ice cream maker for about 3 years now, and have never used it. We have a lot of honeysuckle growing in our yard, so I decided to make a little duet of sorbets - honeysuckle/peach and blackberry/cabernet. They were pretty good - and super easy! I think I may actually use the ice cream maker again. To make the first one, I just steeped honeysuckle flowers in simple syrup, until it was infused with the flavor, and then aded pureed peaches. Then I pushed it through a sieve to make a smooth texture. For the second, I used some honey from my neighbor, who owns Haw Creek honey. We can just walk down the street to his house, and he has a little honey box with shelves of honey. You take what you want and drop money in the slot. The kind we had in our pantry just happened to be blackberry, so I thought that was perfect. I liked that, although I am not a gardener and live in a somewhat suburban environment, I managed to use 2 ingredients (honeysuckle and honey) from my neighborhood - seriously local food.

Tea Tasting Menu

My capstone menu:



Duck rillette, ladyfinger popcorn tuile, orange confiture, Earl Grey glaze.
Chicken consomme with carrot petals and white tea butterflies.
I laminated white tea into the pasta, then tied them with blanched chives.
Seared tuna "sushi" on sweet tea risotto rolls with mustard greens and prosciutto, a red wine emulsion, chive oil, and a shitake.
Rhubarb-oolong sorbet, with a frosted coriander grape. (One of my judges said it was the best thing he had ever eaten!!)

green tea-smoked duck, lotus chips, strawbery demiglace, leek puree.

And below, endive salad with chamomile-infused mozzarella (which I made myself),

and then a frozen chocolate-hazelnut bombe with chai marshmallows toasted tableside. In the very last picture you can see the cart set up for service. The server used the brulee torch to toast the marshmallows, then plated them individually. It was a big hit, and I think really fun!

My Dinner with President Bailey

Here are some photos of a meal a made at school this Thursday. There were 6 courses in all, and I cooked for one table of five people. I'm only posting 4 of the pictures here. The first is a layered scallop and truffle appetizer, encased in puff pastry, with pea shoots. Next is the sorbet - it was lemon verbena, and I made a blood orange gelee and glaze to go with it. I had to use a frozen puree because we didn't have enough blood oranges, so the color isn't as vibrant as I would have like. But it tasted good.



This is the entree - Chicken grapefruit scallopini with pink peppercorn sauce, and I just made a classic Market Place potato cake (from my old station there) and a warm arugula and jicama salad to accompany it.


Finally we have mint ice cream with a chocolate curl - those were fun to make, and I just dipped a mint leaf in chocolate as a little garnish. For my first classical dinner lab, I think it went pretty well. I had a good time and didn't freak out (even though I was cooking for the president of our school!). Next time, I'll try to be a little more creative on my plate presentations.

jello shots

Last week one of my culinary instructors asked if I would like to do a cooking demo for my class. He said I could put it in my portfolio, and that he thought it would be a good experience for me. We've been doing these exercises in class where we take an old Escoffier recipe , or just any traditional recipe, and rework it for today's table. I suppose some people (Anthony Bourdain springs to mind) would like a plate garnished with coxcombs, but not many people these days would be thrilled with random animal parts served as a garnish on a plate, a la Escoffier. So we revamp them, and try to be creative.

The latest recipe we were given was a caeser salad. Somehow I came up with a hot oyster jello shot. It would be served in a shot glass. The first layer is a hot gelee made from juiced romaine and agar agar (which stays gelatinous when hot, unlike gelatin). Then a cream made with a little anchovy, parmesan, and garlic. Then more hot romaine jello (really, you can't have too much hot lettuce jello). Then a foam made from dijon, cream, a little more agar, and foamed in a whipped cream canister with nitrous. Then a fried oyster to top it all. I also added a balsamic "rose" which consists of making a balsamic reduction, then taking the cut off end of the romaine head, dipping it in it, and stamping it onto the plate. If you've never noticed, if you cut off the end of a romaine head, it's shaped like a rose. I've actually seen it used in craft magazines as a rose stamp for fabric. I thought, why not a food stamp for a plate?

This all really began as a joke, because those of us in my corner of the classroom were joking about molecular gastronomy, foam, and the like. I sort of thought of the most ridiculous thing possible, but my teacher saw it and actually liked it. We'll see how it goes. I do have to say that it's similar to something I saw and really liked at my internship this summer. Forgive me if I mentioned it before - it was a seminal food moment for me. Chef Fleer made a shot with juiced iceberg lettuce, set up with gelatin, a layer of peach puree, and then whipped whey on the top, and titled it simply "iceberg, peaches, cottage cheese." It blew my mind. In a good way.