Culinary Challenge 5 (Cook Another Culture's Food)

Since I am on the road...

I'm going to submit this - which has been seen before.

http://forum.chefsteps.com/discussion/comment/957/#Comment_957

I do that as I'm Swedish, my wife is half mexican and this met with really strong approval from my mother in law. I read very many of Bayless recipes, I think he is a fantastic resource proving that you can learn any cuisine if you listen a little to the "natives" and apply sound technique.

Plated

And with some "Modernist" condiments

And the second, not so much sous-vide but after having lived about 6 months in Japan I can only say that David Chang's lucky peach noodles rock the boat.

Jack_Mayer_85396

@Johan, you just knocked me out of the challenge! Damn, that looks good. The broth on Chang's noodles reminds of a really good hot-n-sour soup! And I'll be traveling starting tomorrow until Sunday. Can't wait to see what the crew comes up with! Great idea for the challenge @Chris!

@Jack it is a veal stock dashi - then add weed, garlic, and onions, more spices, coriander, cumin and you really need to smell the right level - some sesame oil at the end, I prefer prefecture black.

Jack_Mayer_85396

@Johan, you're killing me! I want a bowlful right now! Great job on the challenge! If I was in town, I might try something german or eastern europen ... I have my grandmother's recipes for sauerbraten, leberknodelsuppe, rouladen, schnitzels, etc. Unlike the CS team, they are filled with a pinch of this, a handful of that, cook until it tastes right ...

grant

Looking great so far everyone. The idea here is to try new things and so far we are seeing a lot of great plates of foods. These challenges are a great place to try new things and push yourself to think differently about the ingredients in front of you. Cant wait to see the weeks results!

Grant

Great idea...I'll have to think about where I want to go this week.

This is not my entry but I think it fits the theme. I made this dish last summer (actually the second time I'd ever cooked sous vide, with an improvised set up, and my first time using meat glue and n-Zorbit M). This was a Thai shrimp noodle dish, inspired by a Wylie Dufresne meat glue talk I watched online. I paired the shrimp noodle with a basil foam, pickled daikon and carrot, peanut butter powder, lime and scallions. Plating leaves something to be desired (ok, a lot), but I remember it fondly.

This was an interesting challenge for me. I have a fairly diverse cultural background with Irish, Scottish, Vietnamese, and Chinese in my blood so I felt like it would be cheating to do anything asian even if it wasn't Vietnamese or Chinese. I thought about doing a spin on American food since things like burgers and steaks were foreign to me growing up but that seemed like a cop-out too. So I settled on something I have fallen in love with since moving to America, something that really didn't exist in my culinary mind when I was a kid. Mexican food!

This dish came to me late last night after coming home from my hockey game around 1:30am. I was craving a burrito but I was also cold and wanted some soup and something spicy. I was still pretty wired from the game so I wasn't going to bed anytime soon so I turned on the tv and started watching an episode of "The Mind of a Chef" I had recorded. In this episode Chang and Sean Brock cook hot browns (and drink a lot of bourbon). Chang made a cordon bleu style turkey breast with a molten filling of mornay and country ham, torquing it with Activa RM and SVing it. I was inspired.

My dish for this week is chicken tortilla soup. I took chicken breast and pounded it fairly flat, sprinkled it with Activa RM (meat glue!) and rolled it with a filling of diced poblano peppers, white onion, fresh corn cut from the cob, garlic, and crumbled queso fresco. I torqued it into a nice tight log with plastic wrap and then put that in the chamber vac. I cooked the chicken @55C for 1 hour to speed up the bonding process of the meat glue. In the mean time, I charred some more poblanos and corn and sauteed them quickly with some chipotle powder and salt and pepper. The soup portion was comprised of the chicken bones (browned first) simmered for 2 hours and finished with lime juice and tomatoes that were compressed and infused with a cilantro-lime juice mix.

The chicken roll was pan seared, seasoned, and basted in butter. It was then sliced in 1cm slices and placed on a bed of the charred poblano/corn/onion and topped with more queso fresco, a cilantro-pork fat puree (to add body to the soup on the tongue) and fried corn tortilla strips dusted with chipotle powder. The soup broth was served tableside.

michaelnatkin

I'm excited for this one. I always tell people that the very worst food culture to look to for vegetarian inspiration is American comfort food. I'd have to say 90% of what I cook is rooted internationally. Now if I can just get pry myself away from the keyboard!!

I want to see @Michael do a Midwestern Chinese Buffet

Nor_Eastern_56309

OK, I am totally impressed by the previous dishes. And did you make the Chipolte powder or is it commercially available? I am thinking Japanese for me. While I am a great fan of their food, it seems like a cuisine that needs updating. And I have never cooked a Japanese dish before. Reverse spherification seems like a natural fit.

@nor'eastern it's purchased chipotle powder, i use it all the time, love the flavor and smokiness.

grant

@ Brian Douglas and @ Brendan Lee - those dishes look so awesome!

That's what late night munchy cravings get me! haha

Thanks @Grant, I think it ended up looking somewhat intestinal and couldn't quite make up it's mind to be Thai or Vietnamese, but it was delicious and a lot of fun.

So I am a huge fan of Szechuan cuisine, and I love the many cuisines of Mexico. So I decided to do a Westernized mashup that I'll call Kung Pao Carnitas. There are some nice techniques I used for this dish, such as the crispy pressure-braised pork shoulder and the cryo-milled chorizo. I'm writing up the recipes for the various components now and will get them up on ChefSteps quickly. But for now, here are some photos of what we ate yesterday.

The components are deep-fried sous vide pork belly, crispy pressure-braised pork shoulder, dry-cured chorizo, cryo-milled chorizo trimmings, chipotle and achiote paste pork sauce, Szechuan roast peanuts, green onions, radish, and lime juice, lot's of lime juice.

Oh My! That recipe can't come soon enough I need to make this! Looks so good!

Jack_Mayer_85396

@Chris, Yowzer, that looks great! I too love szechuan cuisine and mexican food. Living in Texas, mexican is one of the 4 food groups, along with BBQ, steak and beer!

michaelnatkin

Well, this wasn't my finest work. The idea I had in mind was a modern update to good ol' mattar paneer. I made the paneer from scratch then pan-fried it, smoked the tomato-cream sauce using coriander seeds, and did the peas three ways: blanched and popped out of the seed coats, seed coats deep fried with spices, and whole peas blanched and deep fried with spices. It was definitely good enough to eat, but none of the components were spot-on.

@chris - Those look awesome! Give me a plate of those and a couple of beers and I'd be happy indeed.

Nor_Eastern_56309

So, I have to ask, would specification and reverse specification tied to traditional Japanese sushi and sashimi cuisine be to weird? With a couple of modernistic takes on sushi of course. The low hanging fruit ...

Go for it

Nor_Eastern_56309

Jsus, specification??? spherification!! Damn auto correct.

Ok, entry time.

The challenge this week was to choose something from another culture to prepare. Cultured is not necessarily a word used to describe me, so it shouldn't have been too hard. I wanted to make something that I was completely unfamiliar with. I ruled out Asian and European cuisines and the Carribbean. I considered South America, but decided on Africa. Further, since my creative cooking time would be scheduled for Saturday morning, I wanted something that could work for breakfast, which meant most stews were out. I will confess I know almost nothing about this dish and little about the culture of the specific region, other than what I was able to glean from the internet for this challenge. So, I apologize if I get anything wrong, but this is my interpretation. Anyway, enough preface.

My dish this week is Groudnut Porridge with Plum and Kashata. From what I read, the porridge is a dish from the Central African Republic, though I expect it may travel farther than that. I'm not entirely sure of the proper name for the porridge. I've seen it referred to as Bambara, though I believe that is actually the name for the specific groundnut, not the porridge itself. I chose yellow plum because the wild plum is indigeneous to Africa and I couldn't find any horned melon which was my first choice. The Kashata is a cookie/candy of Swahili origin.

For the porridge, I used sushi rice that I cooked until it had absorbed about 75% of the water. Then I added Peanut Butter (unsalted) and Sugar and finished cooking.

The plums were sliced and cooked sous vide with a little bit of honey at 63C just until they started to soften up a bit.

The Kashata was sugar that was melted in the skillet, then added roasted peanuts, coconut, cinnamon and salt. The I poured it out onto a silpat and let harden to a brickle.

I plated the porridge with an improvised ring mold (mason jar ring) topped with the plum and a dusting of sugar. I did a light brulee over the top and presented with a piece of Kashata. I did 2 different takes on the plating, and was actually pleased with the final result for once. Anyway, I hope I did justice to the dish.

I like the char and the plating, really clean looking. Interesting dish and I have to say a cool direction to take, I don't know much at all about african foods. I do have a some african chefs I follow, very interesting combinations.

Here are quite a few West African ideas for those interested;

https://plus.google.com/communities/110805726740728173776

I wasn't so sure about the combination of plum with the peanut. My wife thought it worked. I thought everything tasted good on it's own, but not a 1+1=3 situation. I was happy with the texture of the porridge. Using the sushi rice made it stickier than a long grain rice (which I believe is more typical of African cuisines) would have. The final plating really matched what I visualized last night, which is a rarity. All that said, I don't think the combination of peanut and plum is one I'll reach for again soon.

@Brian - Heh

Noted. No peanut and plum.

The recipe for the crispy pressure-braised pork shoulder is up:

http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/crispy-pressure-braised-pork

This is a great technique that you can use with any tough cut of meat.

Other recipes will be up early next week, we're just editing photos.

Whats bonfire salt @chris?

Bonfire salt is made by a local company called SaltWorks. It smells amazing, like a campfire.

You can get it here: http://www.saltworks.us/bonfire-smoked-sea-salt.html

I'll add this detail to the recipe.