AGAR AGAR, You Are Not So Scary!

A Homage to Early Citrus

“Hot Grapefruit and Yuzu Gels, “Unpickled” Cardamom Blood Oranges,

Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette, and Local Basil”

I have been wairy of working with agar agar, why? I dont know, but definetly not anymore. I was working pantry station today so I had to make an amuse and in the cooler I saw several differnt kinds of citrus which was very tempting to work with. I made the gels with agar agar. Sometimes blood oranges especially early blood oranges are a little too tart to eat on their own.

I thought about the fact that some people just put them in simple syrup and hope for the best but I decided to concentrate the flavor of the orange by dehydrating them some and then adding them to cardamom and crystallized ginger syrup. The syrup rehydrated the rest of the orange and kept the strong flavor of the fruit. The meyer lemon vin. accented all of the other components and the basil was a finishing addition.

Why Not Make Another Soup!

Tableside Golden Chanterelle Soup

with

“Treviso and Truffled Ricotta “Crepe”, Smoked Fingerling Potato,

Blue Chanterelle and Golden Chanterelle “Confit”

and Honey Lavander Froth”

On Mondays I work the fish station which is responsible for the soup of the day. I was in the cooler for at least fifteen minutes just looking at my prep and what I should make for the soup. My co-worker came in to grab some mushrooms and said I should do a golden chanterelle soup. This was kind of wierd for me since the mushrooms that we usually have in the mushroom box are very expensive and the last thing you think of using them with is a soup but we are between menus right now and we were not using the chanterelles even though we had at least four pounds.  

I looked at him and said alright “I’ll do it”. I made the soup completley vegan (I mounted them to order with butter of course) and it needed something else, I added meyer lemon juice and it just was not enough. So I decided to add the honey to the garnish. Also the smokyness of the potato was a wonderful addition to the flavor of the soup.

Basil, Lavander, And Mint Are More Than Friends

 

“Jamison Farms Lamb Tartare, Yuzu and Chocolate Mint gel,

 

Lavander and Basil “Air”, and Rice Vinegar and Mirin Gelee” 

 

I have been wanting to do a lamb tartare with mint for a while (actually I want eucalyptus too). Since the cut that I used was the tenderloin from the saddle (we serve the strip), there was little fat in the meat which means the flavor of the tartare was light. The problem was that I really wanted the dish to work off of the gameyness (is that a word).

In order to achieve this I let the meat temper near room temperature before serving it. I really wanted to bring out the flavor of the chocolate mint with the gamey flavor of the lamb so I accented it with other ingredients from the lamiacae or labiatoe family, basil and lavender. While I was making the base for the basil and lavender foam I kept adding lavender thinking that It was not showing up and then I noticed that it was really strong but how much a strong basil flavor is so similar to lavender (completely amazintg!) The addition of the rice vinegar gelee is to open the palate and made to be eaten sparingly with the dish.

?How Rude-abaga?

Tableside Rutabaga Soup

with

‘Butter Poached Lobster, Roasted Avacado,

and Grapefruit-Kaffir Lime “Air”

On mondays I work the fish station that is responsible for the soup of the day. We got some avacados in on saturday and they were not even close to ripe yet. I just do not understand why someone would like to order food that would not be ready to use for a couple days. Whay do they send us this stuff? Today some of the avacados were close to ready but not good enough for a puree so I decided to throw them in the 650F oven that we have under our french flat top.

This oven did a great job on the avacado and if you were wondering the black part tasted better than the rest and roasting it like this really takes an underripe avacado and makes it able to be served. The sweet citrus air definetly gave a neccessary acid and sweetnes that accented the creamy soup very well.

New Pages

I have put up new pages on my blog that have catagorized some of my dishes on separated links. On the top of my blog you can see some of my amuses and soups is no paticular order with only pictures and plate descriptions.