Thursday, June 10, 2010

Agar Shots

850g juice
200g vodka
juice from two limes (not much)
6g agar (around .6%)

boiled part of the juice with zest of 2 limes, dispersed agar (not all of it dissolved, since I have the flake kind - I think the powder would work better). Strained and combined with the vodka and the remaining juice. Only partially gelled; was edible, but will use slightly more agar next time.

Developments at Work

Experimented with cooking some chicken sous-vide for the next. We have abandoned that for lack of knowledge and equipment.

Pork Belly is definitely going on the summer menu. My original idea was an app with a corn juice reduction and a mini spicy-sweet salad. Connor's (pretty much genius) idea was to put the belly on sliders with a bit of fruit-based BBQ sauce and some sort of tropical-tasting slaw. Right now we are putting the belly on a bed of garlic and shallots and a few vanilla beans, pouring in a bit of water or wine or stock, drizzling the fat (skin) side with some oil, and baking covered for about 4 hours. Super unbelievably delicious. The BBQ sauce will probably be peach and maybe whiskey, and the slaw right now is pineapple. We served the sliders as an app special on Tuesday, and they were absolutely delicious, though it seems like we're going to have to educate the front of the house on what pork belly is and how to sell it.

Katie has started us growing our own sprouts from a bunch of different seeds - alfalfa, chickpea, dill, lentil, and a few more. They are absolutely delicious and fast and easy to grow, but they unfortunately require attention several times a day, every day. I hope we can find the discipline to put the process into full production.

Still haven't made our own cheese, but I left my rennet supply at work, so hopefully we'll do it some day soon.

Today I'm going to start some mini burger bun recipes at home and bake them at work tomorrow. The commercial one's we've gotten so far are absurdly expensive, though also quite good.