I finally got around to trying out some ideas I've had for a bit for dinner last night. Platings aren't perfect, but not bad for 'first drafts'.
Opener: Crusty bread (no-knead dough fermented for 4 days in the fridge) with an edible tea light. (Seasoned olive oil.) I've been trying to find kosher glycerin flakes to thicken the oil to make this, but without success. Sent out a bunch of emails, but noone even got back to me to say no. Oh well, chilling it (and the holder) worked as well.
App: Filbert, walnut, and young-ginger crusted salmon over spring mix, butter lettuce, and persian cuke with a pomegranate-blueberry vinaigrette.
Soup: Cream of zucchini-fennel with crispy fennel. Originally I was thinking to serve it in bread-bowls, but I decided it was too much bread, we'd fill up before we got to the main.
Main: When talking about cheek meat with someone a couple weeks ago I got the idea to cook it sous vide and then smoke it. So thats what I did here. Cooked sous vide at 133F for 72 hours. Then I rubbed it down with salt (oops, shoulda left that out), pepper, smoked paprika, coriander, and mustard powder and smoked it for 3 hours with apple wood. Other than being slightly too salty (but only slightly) it melted in your mouth, moist and delicious. I thought it tasted a bit like a really beefy pastrami, but my wife said that was an injustice to it.
Accompanying it were celeriac puree, red wine reduction, crispy fennel, green apple skin flakes (microplaned; if I had liquid nitro I would've used that to make a powder, but alas I have none.), arrowhead chips, pumpernickel crumbs, rye crumbs. The plate got a little crowded as its got a huge rim leaving only a small space in the middle for the food. Oops.
I plated again on a larger plate, but misjudged where to put the puree and reduction, so those are still too close, tho.
