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Culinary Challenge 5 (Cook Another Culture's Food)

Chris_Young_80640

I love Chinese food. Ditto for Mexican and many other “ethnic” cuisines. Although I've been cooking professionally for quite a while now, when I cook another culture's food, I'm a novice. And being a novice can be awesome — everything is new and inspiring.

This week's objective: In the spirit of being a novice, this week's challenge is to try to cook another culture's cuisine. But do it as a mashup of the traditional with the modernist.

Outline: Take the challenge in your own kitchen then share your results via the ChefSteps forum. Describe the dish you have chosen and techniques used to make it. Describe where your idea or inspiration came from, what your plan of attack was, and finally, post your pictures.

The top 3 posts will get their photos posted on ChefSteps' Pinterest board. Please have your entry posted by Sunday.

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John_Paul_Khoury_17236

I love roasted bone marrow and a classic presentation would be with a parsley salad. I thought why not cross the cultural lines and do a take on tabouleh and also crust the marrow with crunchy wheat berries. The combination worked superbly. https://www.facebook.com/chefjohnpaulkhoury/media_set?set=a.2683528418230.136341.1556952275&type=3

grant

Woah! Seeeexy!

trev_teich

Here's a better picture of the beef and broccoli dish

seijoed

@Chris - I think that is very cool - it shows of a bunch of techniques, builds a recipe / flavor profile that can be very much experimented with and re-used for many types of dishes.

The recipe printing rocks btw with my nice wireless printer

Chris_Young_80640

Sorry that this took so long everyone. The Kung Pao Carnitas recipe is finally up on ChefSteps: http://www.chefsteps.com/activities/kung-pao-carnitas

And you will also find the recipe for the cured and sous vide cooked pork belly that we prepared at The Fat Duck, along with a suggestion for adapting that recipe to equilibrium brining.

Feedback welcome.

Grace_95227

Cheers @jim, will try that out!

jim_53915

@Grace I cooked the octopus for 5hrs @77C, then I quickly grilled it before plating. Enjoy!

Grace_95227

Wow @Jim, now I'm eager to try out octopus. what time/temperature would you recommend to cook it at?

trev_teich

Okay well better late than never I guess. Here's beef and broccoli in oyster sauce.

seijoed

I'll do a late entry since I love abusing cultures

A bit of a culture shock, shrimp, pork and vermicelli with veggies.

Asparagus and shroom sauteed in miso and french herbes brown butter.

Pickled peppers western style.

Vermicelli reduced with Mae Ploy shrimp done sous vide.

Shrimp sous-vide with Mae-Ploy - from frozen and probably shitty quality, ended up one

of the best shrimps I ever had.

Pork - pre-seared and done sous-vide, finished with mae ploy and Majoram.

prince_of_porcelain

@jim - I had the octopus at Blackbird last April and it was revelatory. I'd had octopus before, but never so tender. I've thought about that dish a lot and would love to try my hand at it. I've never considered frozen octopus though. Because the texture seemed so key to the dish, I've been worried that it wouldn't work with previously frozen product. Unfortunately, no Whole Foods anywhere near here, and any quality seafood is hard to come by. One local fishmonger brings in fresh product, but I bet he wouldn't get much interest in octopus. I expect that I could find some frozen at the local Asian markets. They're my go to these days for many items.

crkoller

No worries @brian_douglas , let me know if your yogurt experience went as well as mine did. Unlike that recipe because it is so straight forward

Brendan_Lee_56950

I love baby octopus, simply grilled over charcoal and brushed with fresh olive oil and lemon. Best tapas ever!

jim_53915

@brian I've cooked and eaten octopus many times, but sous vide was an eye opening change of texture that I didn't think was possible with any cephalopod. It was amazingly tender and full flavored not fishy or rubbery. I was lucky enough to happen upon it at shop rite in their seafood freezer section. The store by me carries some pretty unique items because we have a diverse cultural neighborhood. Between Shop Rite and Whole Foods store I always find the most awesome things. Whole Foods stocks duck eggs, quail eggs, and even emu eggs on a regular basis. That's where I found the Buddha's hand.

prince_of_porcelain

@jim - That octopus looks good. I've never made octopus myself...not sure where to source it. I do enjoy it when done right though.

seijoed

I'll add another one, a simple stir fry that never ever touched a wok.

Asparagus, blanched in sesame oil. - In bag.

Snap sugar peas, blanched in sesame oil. In bag.

Compressed peppers with cayenne. In Bag.

Compressed leeks with rice vinegar.

Rice. - Only thing I did "traditional" in that I used a rice cooker.

Sauce from beef dashi, miso paste, red pepper paste, reduced and

bound with some cornstarch, strained and used to heat the shocked veggies.

Strip - 54C 5h, brown sugar, coriander, cumin, cayenne.

From frozen, pre-seared, with above spices, 2h, frozen and post seared.

seijoed

Awesome looking!

Nor_Eastern_56309

@chris Simple and yet just stunning. You hit it out of the park.

Nor_Eastern_56309

Well, I chose to do Japanese cuisine this week. Let me begin by saying that even though I have sat at many of a sushi bar in my time, I have never ever cooked anything Japanese. Nor have I used spherification in any of its forms. I guess it is just the masochist in me.

First job - find sashimi grade fish. A number of places are online that will ship you fish next day. I chose frozen only, figuring my chances to receive a quality product were best there. Salmon, from a sustainable organic fish farm in Australia sounded good. Long line caught yellow fin tuna. Salmon eggs. Everything arrived perfectly frozen, but the carton of salmon eggs had a crack, and when it thawed in my refrigerator it took out everything on that shelf.

Spherification. Order a variety pack of chemicals. Wasabi was relatively easy using spherification. Of course it helps that the stuff is so darn think. However with the soy sauce I wanted the "Pop" and the feeling of warm soy sauce in the mouth. Reverse spherification it was then. Late Friday evening. Should be a piece of cake.

Three hours labor, almost a half of a bottle of soy, and no spheres. I gave up and took the fish out of the freezer to thaw, had a stiff drink and went to bed.

Saturday at noon. Another two hours attempting reverse spherification. No spheres. Started soaking 5 cups of sushi rice, many water changes ahead. Went to the local top end grocery store and bought more soy sauce, and some seaweed salad and divers scallops.

Back to the reverse spherification. Three hours. Must have thinker soy sauce! More chemicals. Finally one out of every 4 spheres is surviving the collision with the algimate and sinking. Not exploding. Not floating. One and three quarters bottles of soy sauce and 1/3 of a cup of soy caviar. Personally I have never spent more time on a recipe than this one. Would have waving a black cat over my head under a full moon have helped?

Saturday night. Fish is thawed, almost. Sharpen knife. Breeze through 4 pounds of tuna and salmon in 2.5 mm slices. Sous vide scallops at 118 for 40 minutes. To long, but I was frazzled. Make radicchio salmon rolls. Sous vide for 40 minutes at 114. Slice scallops into 2.0 mm slices. Ready for the sashimi plate. Sushi rice ready to go after 4 water baths, cooking and adding rice wine vinegar, concentrated kelp liquid, sugar, etc. No sushi roll bamboo thing a ma jigger? No problem. Saran wrap. Real men use saran wrap. No problem.

Sunday, people due over for Japanese at 1 pm and 6 pm. Now a picture of the 1 pm event. There are several easily identifiable problems. They were repeated at the other plate served at lunch also. Fixed for dinner.

The only problems is that none of the rolls are tight enough. Impossible to handle with chopsticks. Easily fixed for dinner by re-rolling as is in another sheet of sushi wrapper.

With this post folks I am calling it a night. But basically I spent all of my time making soy caviar and no time actually interjecting any new ideas. Frustrating.

jim_53915

For this weeks challenge I made a Mediterranean inspired salad with an Asian twist. I took 1g coriander, 1g thyme, .5g red pepper flakes, .5 g Buddha's hand zest, 2 kafir lime leaves, EVO, and vacuum sealed with the octopus. I braised the octopus for 5 hours, then quickly grilled it. I accompanied it with Mache, oranges, olives, oven roasted cherry tomatoes, and marinated feta.

Brendan_Lee_56950

don't you dare speak ill of PBR! haha

seijoed

@Brian we moved there in 2001, left in 2003-4 I think.

Right as the PAC was being finished. We used to go there a couple of times a month,

I never did find the Friday fish-fry places and pabst that awesome

prince_of_porcelain

@chris_koller - Thanks for the yogurt recipe. That's something I've been wanting to try sous vide. My wife's been urging me to get going on that one too. I wondered if anyone would take this challenge and make a cultured cheese or yogurt.

prince_of_porcelain

The Seasons closed down. I liked that place, but it never seemed to get the support it needed here. They closed up maybe 3 years ago. The owners opened a slightly more casual place but it only made it about a year. The restaurant business is tough here. Supper clubs and steakhouses still rule. Il Angolo does a good job, but the chef just left to start his own place. I haven't been there since, but looking forward to seeing what he does at this next spot. When were you living here?

seijoed

@Brian is the seasons still one of the better places to dine?

prince_of_porcelain

We have a great food truck here in Appleton (Wisconsin). Unfortunately, they spend a lot of time and energy in city council meetings fighting just to maintain the operating freedoms they had when they started. It's my favorite place to eat locally and they support local farms and food purveyors religiously. They try to park in an accessible but inauspicious place as much as possible. Never in front of another restaurant. Many of the brick and mortar restaurants would like nothing better than to shut them down.

Brendan_Lee_56950

I looked into it here locally out of curiosity and it seems to be designed to make it as difficult as possible and with no clear reason as to why.

Jack_Mayer_85396

@Brendan, you are soooo right! I know a couple of talented young chefs who got so frustrated trying to start a food truck that they gave up ... These guys could cook too! One was the sous chef to the guy who exposed me to SV cooking.

crkoller

I would completely agree with that @Brendan_Lee, its a good start but its nothing like other places in the world...