I first saw the play on soap and bubbles as a dessert by Andoni of Mugaritz. Inspired by this, for some time now I had been meaning to work on a rubber ducky and bubbles dessert. I finally got around to putting something together the other day. The resulting dish was nostalgic and playful — and it gave me the chance to try out a fun application of an aquarium air pump.
Mango Pate de Fruit (Recipe Adapted from Chef Migoya)
8.4g Pectin
160g Sugar (1)
200g Mango puree
320g Sugar (2)
200g Guava juice
20g lemon juice
85g Glucose powder
6.3g Citric Acid (l)
1. Whisk together the pectin and sugar (1).
2. Place the pectin/sugar mixture in a pot and whisk in mango puree, guava juice and lemon juice.
3. Combine sugar (2) and glucose powder in separate bowl.
4. Bring mixture to a boil.
5. Add sugar/ glucose mixture and bring mixture to 107˚C/.255˚F
6. Remove from heat and stir in citric acid.
7. Pour into a prepared frame of 9″ x 9″.
8. Let it set overnight.
9. Cut and toss in citric acid sugar mixture (1/2 cup sugar: 1 tsp citric acid).
It was Megan’s birthday a couple of days ago, and everyone was expecting me to cook a multi-course meal, do some kind of binge-eating, or travel downtown for a fine-dining experience (ending with a visit to Roselle for desserts, obviously!). But these days, Megan and I really enjoy a good night in: trying a new recipe or an old faithful, opening a bottle of wine and relaxing in our PJs.
We tried making pizza in the cast iron last week and were so thrilled with the results, that we decided we had to make it again for Megan’s birthday. This recipe could still use a little tweaking, but delicious nonetheless. Continue reading
At the end of last year, Royce and I welcomed the latest (and possibly heaviest) addition to our library: Modernist Bread. We had been looking forward to this moment for more than a year, and thankfully we were not disappointed! The breadth and depth of this thing is overwhelming! We weren’t quite sure how to begin — for now, the plan of attack is to make at least one recipe per week and meander our way through the recipes and techniques. While the size is intimidating, the content – thankfully – is not. Currently, we’re in the sourdough section and we’ve been having a ton of fun with the variations!
In my cooking program, students typically have the freedom to explore whatever recipes they want, with a budget and a final consumer in mind of course. When students create a savoury dish, it normally goes to a catering gig or to clients of the food bank. On the other hand, sweets often end up in the stomachs of hungry teenagers. If you know teenagers like I do, it won’t come as a surprise that each year there are requests for a few common items: cookies, brownies and a molten lava cake.
A major challenge of giving students freedom with their recipe choices is consistency. If we want to be able to sell the product, and avoid wasting ingredients, we need to have some confidence in the results. One goal of mine is to come up with a reliable set of recipes for some of these favourites. First up: the brownie. Continue reading
Isn’t he cute?
A fun approach to this recipe would be to make two batches – one coke gummy mixture and one rum gummy mixture and pipe them into two separate layers for some nice colour/flavour contrast. This would work for other drinks as well…Moscow mule anyone? With enough planning, our next party may have a gummy bar. Continue reading
Dragees. Dragees or panned products have been made popular for the past couple of years. Pastry chefs around the world are trying to enrobe, tumble, anything and everything. No longer will your chocolate covered just almonds, peanuts, and raisins and come in small confectionery packages called Glosettes. Nowadays, pastry chefs and chocolatier will try to pan cereal, puffed grains, toffee, gummies with various flavour combinations and finishing them with different colours making them very attractive and appealing. In many instances, taking something that is done in the commercial world and trying to refine it usually have a few issues:
1) Public perception. Why would I pay $12/ jar for chocolate covered raisins when I Glosettes
2) Time. There are limitations to the batch size since we are using small tabletop panners
3) Money. Nuts are expensive, and unless you’re buying hundreds of kilos
4) Lack of knowledge. We are still missing some trade secrets to get the ultimate shine.
5) Exposure to resources. Glazes and polish are sold by the 10s of gallons.
6) Co-packing. But there lies an issues of – is it artisan any more? Continue reading
For some time now, I have been debating whether or not it’s worthwhile to polish panned products. The approach of making your chocolate panned items shine is becoming more and more popular recently. This process is sometimes finicky, the final shine is very much dependent on time, temperature, relative humidity, and even batch size – many variables as you can see. I guess it comes down to a preference, what do you prefer?
Before polish and shellac
We love ramen. Sure, who doesn’t? But homemade ramen is not something that is part of our usual repertoire. In fact, it would likely not have come about were it not for a certain friend of mine. This particular food adventure was set in motion by a long overdue pig roast. Continue reading
