Workbook

Just Yolks

 

In the process of taking a closer look at the composition and structure of our everyday ingredients, the hopeful goal is that we’ll arrive at a better understanding of their functionality, both on their own and in concert with others. A fringe benefit of this research is when such information aids the chef in thinking outside of the box, linking functionality with an actual application.

 

It was through my friend Cesar that I discovered a novel approach to pasta being explored by Carlo Cracco in Milan. In essence, Cracco’s innovation was to subtract from the already short list of pasta’s traditional ingredients; but what he decided to take away may come as a surprise. If we were to take away the flour (or rather, the proteins and starch it contains), what’s left? Eggs? Water? How can that alone give us a reasonable facsimile of a noodle?

 

Cracco’s  egg pasta is the result of whole egg yolks that are individually packed into a ‘crust’ of salt, sugar, and a bulking agent, such as a bean purée. As the yolk ‘cures’, a good deal of the yolk’s water is extracted (remember, water makes up 50% of an egg yolk), passing through its permeable membrane. The liquid yolk has suddenly transformed into a workable dough-like consistency, behaving much like pasta- it can be rolled, shaped, dried further, if desired, and finally cooked. The method allows us to bypass the potential drawbacks a flour-based dough may present.

 

 

Such a realization affords us an opportunity to immediately make connections to similar techniques we’ve already seen, or to think outside the box altogether. That’s where constant reading and research pays off too; Cracco’s pasta instantly led me to take another look at Alinea’s butter-poached egg drops, dried egg sheets, and egg yolk truffles. And sometimes chance and luck have a way of bringing ideas together even if they experienced separately.

 

The technique employed by Cracco is time-intensive; the curing process can take several hours. But a different approach- a shortcut, if you will- can yield similar results in mere minutes. I first saw this variation while just hanging out in someone else’s kitchen; granted, it wasn’t an ordinary service, rather they happened to be testing possible techniques to employ in an upcoming episode of Iron Chef. Here, unadulterated egg yolks were spread into a thin film and gently steamed: instant egg noodles. What emerges has the look and feel of perfectly cooked pasta. And always wanting to track such an idea back to its original source, I’ve since learned the inspiration can be traced as far as Pedro Subijana of Akelarre in San Sebastien.

 

     
 

While I haven’t exactly come to any specific sweet application (though I instantly saw it as a possible wrapper for our recent corn ‘canneloni’ custard), there is certainly enough fertile ground for this component to grow upon. And there’s no real recipe to share, though I’d concede there is still room to explore and tweak in search of a pastry-relevant outcome.

 

That said, I couldn’t help myself- pictured below is an unabashedly savory interpretation: the inner line cook in me took one recent batch of fettucine-sized noodles, simply heated and dressed them with a touch of cream, butter, Parmigianino, smoke paprika, black pepper, and chive. In my own play, I’ve used both fresh yolks and a pasteurized liquid product. No doubt, this may be a great way to showcase the color and flavor some very special farm-raised eggs, but one early conclusion I came to was that I prefer the consistency of the pasteurized yolks.

 

 

I don’t have it in front of me, but also of interest is another technique (from Cracco as well, if I recall) detailed in a recent English issue of Apicius. Treating the egg yolk much like a ready-made spherification, he extracts a fair amount of its bulk, which is then replaced by another liquid, of course, with the aid of a syringe. All the while, the contents remain encased with the yolk’s own membrane. Definitely worth a look, and a moment to reconsider and redefine the role of our ingredients in low-tech ways...

 

 

 

Michigan Banana

 

That sounds like the punch line to a joke, but it’s just one colorful alias among many for a curious fruit. The paw paw also goes by Hoosier banana, poorman's banana, etc. I say curious, because it seems out place, as if it should come from the tropics. Yet this is truly an unique American specimen, its growing range covering the Great Lakes down to the Gulf, and from Texas east to the coast. It tends to thrive in the Midwest; the individual varieties themselves evoke visions of the heartland: Shenandoah, Allegheny, Taytwo, and Pa. Golden. 

 

     

 

Though I hail from Michigan myself, this year brought my first encounter with the paw paw. Visually, it could be mistaken for a small green mango, the size varying from three to six inches in length. On slicing it open, a soft white to yellow flesh is revealed, with a central grouping of hard, brown seeds. The fragrance hits you immediately- notes of banana, mango, and melon all combined. The appearance, texture, and flavor all call to mind the exotic cherimoya, or guanabana- indeed it is a distant relative, the only member of the Annonaceae family that thrives in a temperate climate.

 

     

 

Our first delivery of paw paws would be our only one. The season is ridiculously short, straddling the last weeks of September into the first of October. Due to its fragility and quick ripening, commercial viability is limited. They don’t ship well; each of our samples arrived carefully nestled in foam packaging and bubble-wrap. To preserve what we didn’t eat immediately, I figured the best test was to incorporate them into a sorbet. And without any other guideline to follow, we moved ahead by referencing its tropical cousins.

 

     
 

 

Download: Paw Paw Sorbet- Workbook 23.10.09

 

Keep these in mind when the season rolls in again next year; the best source for fresh paw paws (and more) is Earthy Delights.

 

 

 

Minor Revelations

 

It's true, we don't typically start out on something with expectations that it will fail. But nor do we assume we'll knock it out of the park on the first swing. This corn custard, however, began as a simple exercise yet yielded a beautiful, near-perfect result.

It’s just such a minor revelation that can turn a dull, normal day into a great one.

 

 

     
 

The original idea was actually a voluntary act of kindness, troubleshooting for someone else- a similar approach that lacked refinement. Now I hope I can find a place for it myself.

 

The goal was to create a heat-stable, yet soft, corn custard. Corn was briefly simmered in milk, then drained. Agar agar and locust bean gum were hydrated into the milk, while the corn was puréed and strained. Iliked the idea of adding some richness via a bit of egg yolk- its function was less about thickening and more about flavor. The two mixtures were put back together and seasoned before dispensing into cylinder molds.

 

 

To balance the salty/savory aspect, I sprinkled the custard with sugar and applied the torch. Pictured here is a plating scheme with some other components we normally within arm’s reach: hazelnut praline cream, popcorn, orange peel, and piment d’espelette.  

Download Corn Custard- Workbook 22.10.09

 

 

 

Celebrated Summer

I have a small pile of bits that, for whatever reason, never came together over the last few months. But the sudden shift of the weather has got me thinking about discoveries that quickly came and went this year.

One of these brief encounters was with fresh angelica. I've always been curious about this plant, ever since my first taste of one sweet and unnaturally neon green stalk ten years ago. Not too much later (and surprisingly, not too much since), I had been introduced to angelica in its fresh form, through Ken Oringer at Clio. More recently, I've been playing with angelica seed- a common aromatic used in gin. Perhaps because of its relative obscurity, this vegetal component has always been on my radar.

   
 

Back in early June, I stumbled upon a source from a small farm. The five pounds I excitedly ordered nearly filled a small garbage bag- it was a tangle of thick and slender stalks, of tiny shoots and tough, palm-sized leaves. We set to work breaking down the angelica, separating the hollow stalks from the leaves, and then further sorting the stalks into their different sizes. The leaves went into a few different infusions; the stalks were cleaned, blanched, and simply candied.

 

I noticed only one other pastry chef in town who'd been using it: Alex at WD-50. He, coincidentally, also became familiar with angelica while working with Oringer. Among his desserts I tasted over the summer, Stupak incorporated an angelica ice cream and thin rings of candied stalk into one with pistachio and meyer lemon. Our stab at giving it a prominent role was in a clafoutis-like cherry tart with mahleb ice cream- infused with cherry pits to lend a bitter almond and vanilla flavor, not unlike that of tonka bean. It seemed intuitive that, as it emerged during peak cherry season, the two would have an affinity for each other. 

I'm keeping on hand a small stash of preserved angelica to snack on, but I look forward to seeing it again next summer...

Giving It Some English

 

A bit of a detour from our normal work here. A few months back, a slow circulator-cooked egg was added to the menu. While the dish was being developed, it was decided that we come up with an English muffin-esque toast to accompany the egg. At any given time, we provide a handful of various doughs, tuiles, chips, and bases for the savory side of the kitchen. Truth be told, we're not always excited about this stuff, yet we manage to easily absorb the extra work with little hassle. The English muffin, however, was actually fun to develop, and months later, I still enjoy making them. Perhaps it’s that part of me that will always miss my first love, bread.

 

 

   
 

In addition to adapting the traditional to restaurant production, the real challenge came on two fronts: in order to produce a long, thin slice that could be toasted for the egg dish, we had to first make a rectangular-shaped muffin, and second, the crumb- or nooks and crannies, if you will- had to be a bit tighter than the classic, in order to get a clean look. The conventional English muffin is wrought from a fairly loose dough, nearly a batter. The griddling then takes place within rings to contain the dough, the looseness of it partially contributing that wonderful open and irregular crumb.

 

 

   
  

Surprisingly, we nailed down both our recipe and method quite quickly. The dough was just tight enough to manipulate, and the texture and flavor was achieved by utilizing a fair amount of dry milk in the formula. The result gave us a familiar look and flavor of an English muffin, though in a form that we could tailor to our specific use.

 

 

 

The funny thing is, not having had too many English muffins over the years, I now crave them, and must have them in the house at all times. Store-bought, of course. Who knows, there may be some bagel-making experiments in my future, too.

 

 

Download: English Muffin- Workbook.3.10.09

 

A side note on the low-temp egg. Earlier this year, I collaborated with Dr. Cesar Vega, a food scientist at Mars, on an intense presentation covering many of modern cooking’s ‘greatest hits’. The centerpiece of Cesar’s demo was his extensive research on an egg’s texture in relation to its cooking time and temperature. Using common textural analogies, his goal has been to create a tool that chefs could use to pinpoint specific, predictable results- and debunking the myth that time doesn't really matter, even at a constant temperature. He also presented this ongoing project in May at the Experimental Cuisine Collective's daylong symposium here in NYC. I know a lot of us are looking forward to the eventual published work! Cesar also introduced me to the fun egg cooking calculator created by some folks in Oslo, which has since been linked to by Martin and others.