Hot Hollandaise Sheets
In the crazy Wonka-world of McCrady’s, sauces become solids. These sheets of hollandaise sauce often come draped across small orbs of potatoes cooked “sous vide” until meltingly tender. Although the sauce tastes as authentic as the finest French method, one can “melt” it with a blowtorch without breaking the emulsion of eggs and butter. Each sheet then takes the shape of its underlying food in an elegant blanket of delicious flavor. Chef Brock uses this technique with other mixtures as well, recently turning out sheets of braised cauliflower. The possibilities are endless.
For hollandaise base:
208 grams butter
30 grams lemon juice
30 grams lime juice
14 grams hot sauce
8 grams salt
54 grams egg yolk
50 grams eggs whole
For sheets:
394 grams hollandaise base
98.5 grams water
4.93 grams SGA 150 methocel (1%) (available from Gastrotek)
Melt the butter over medium heat until well browned. Place the lemon and lime juice in a blender. Process with the eggs, hot sauce, and salt and drizzle the butter into the blender.
In a separate pot, boil water and whisk in the methocel. Remove this from the heat and emulsify the hollandaise with a stick blender. This can now be manipulated into any shape.
Bacon Consommé
100 ml sweet vermouth
4000 ml water
1500 grams slab bacon, sliced
.5 percent gelatin
25 grams Bliss maple
Salt and Pepper to taste
10 grams banyuls vinegar
Bloom the gelatin in warm water and brown the bacon on a sheet pan in a medium oven. Add all the ingredients except the gelatin to a pot and simmer for 20 minutes. Place the mixture in a blender and purée. Stir in the gelatin and freeze the mixture in a shallow casserole. Suspend the frozen block in a colander or perforated pan lined with cheesecloth and allow it to drain for several days in the refrigerator. The collected liquid will be clear and intensely flavored; you can discard the solids.
Sous Vide Rack of Lamb
The sous vide technique has hit the mainstream, which means people on the Food Network are playing around with it. The process involves vacuum-sealing ingredients in plastic bags and slowly cooking them in water baths held at a constant temperature. Specialized equipment, originally conceived for medical laboratories, can run into the thousands of dollars, but the chef on a budget can get by with a FoodSaver and a steady stovetop. Your results might not be as perfectly tuned as the big boys’, but the tenderness of your next lamb shank will blow you away.
1 lamb rack
2 sprigs of thyme
salt
1 tsp. unsalted butter
Debone the lamb loin from the rack and reserve the bones for stock preparations. Remove any sinew or silverskin adhering to the loin, keeping the fat cap intact. Season the loin with salt and place in a vacuum sealable bag with a sprig of thyme and seal using a vacuum sealer. Place the bag in water circulating at 136˚ F for at least 20 minutes. When ready, remove the lamb from the bag and quickly sear it in a hot pan, fat side down, until golden brown. Remove the pan from the heat, add the butter and remaining thyme, and baste until well caramelized and deep brown. Let rest for two minutes and enjoy.
Scallop Noodles
In this brave new world of food, surprising shapes and forms abound. Cordavi’s David Szlam and Corey Elliott often make their noodles out of proteins rather than starches. The long thin strands are extruded from a piping bag or syringe and served as a mere component, rather than focus, of a dish. This process marries beautifully at Cordavi with a fresh morel and corn consommé, but one could easily imagine other shapes and applications. Shrimp grits, anyone?
1 lb scallops
1 tsp porcini powder
2 egg whites
1 tsp kosher salt
Place all ingredients in a food processor except for the egg whites. Process until a smooth texture is acquired. Add the egg whites one at a time until fully incorporated. Pass this mixture through a sieve and place in a piping bag with a small tip. Pipe into a water bath set at 160˚ F. Cook for one minute and remove to an ice bath. Reheat them in simmering water immediately before serving.
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