I was playing with
this recipe by Carlo Cracco, where raw fish is placed on a hot hazelnut crisp (formed by hot sugar).
Image from
Ristorante Cracco One issue is that the amount of sugar, water, butter as per the recipe was not enough to hold the pecans together, I needed over twice the amount to hold the nuts together. The biggest issue was the reheating of the crisp due to the small thermal mass. Heat too high and the sugar soften/melts so you no longer have a solid crisp. Heat too low and you have warmish seafood with no cooking taking place. Ten minutes at 300°F was just too much as the crisp just was melting and difficult to move. A thin crisp cools too quickly in the 10 seconds it takes to move the crisp from the oven, to the hot plate, and getting the seafood on top. The scallop had no noticeable cooking.
My question is, is there a way to build an custom edible thermal mass to cook food on the plate?
- Is there a different "glue" to hold the nuts together that can withstand higher heat?
- Should the plating be in the style of a sizzling platter/hot rock (nuts/crisp placed on a very hot cast iron plate/hot rock, and raw food placed on the nuts. The plate/rock provides the heat)
- Should the crisp be thin enough to eat or should it be so large no one (really not everyone) will eat it. One bite of a nut crisp totally overpowers the fish (as you would expect).
