Compressed

Well I tried out the Thermal Circulator the other day by cooking my chicken thigh-forcemeat-thigh concoction. The result was quite good and both the forcemeat and the thigh meat were cooked to perfection and retained moistness. But I did have one problem, I seared the pressed meat to crisp up the skin on both sides, the skin shrunk quite a bit. So unfortunately I ended up with the crispy skin being half the size it was and only cover the center portion of the block. I think perhaps next time I will remove all the skin completely, crisp up the skin separately and served in small shards on the finished plate. Learning though doing, in most cases, is the best way to learn.

Flavors

I am a huge fan of compound butters. Fat is a great carrier of flavors and I love making different flavors of compound butters for the pantry. It is something that is so simple to make, yet can add a lot of flavors and moisture to any type of protein out there. It is a great flavor enhancer to have in the fridge.

Nostalgia

This dish was inspired by what i used to eat for breakfast while I was growing up in Thailand. The original dish that I had in Thailand were consisted of a bowl of rice porridge, 3 minute egg, ground pork, scallion and some Maggie sauce. The dish was a staple while growing up since it was so cheap to buy, but it was very filling as well.

The picture above is a 64*C poached egg with soba groats in a shitake broth, scallion and crispy shitake. It was on one of my nightly tasting menus, very simple and very delicious.

Been busy.

So I haven't post anything new on this blog for a while. I think that both Ben and I have been pretty busy with whatever we've got going on in our lives. I think that what I've realized is that having a blog isn't as easy as I thought it was going to be. With that being said, I will try my best to keep the posts coming.

Thanks

Taco

Taco is a great creation in itself, I do not wish to make the taco better than what it already is, but I need to somehow crete one that is my own. So one day I was playing with the wheat starch dough and decided to fry it. The result was this super crispy and light shell. I decided I want to do my take on fish taco with tuna being the protein. I was also influenced by the familiar and fresh flavors of South East Asia. The end result was a Seared Tuna marinated in toast sesame dressing in a crispy wheat starch taco shell with pickled vegetables, a wedge of lime, and chili-garlic dip. The flavor combination worked well together and the finger food factor made it more fun to eat, I could eat like ten of these. I know seared tuna is way overdone in just about every restaurant, but it's what I had to work with at the time. This was just the "first draft" of the dish, next step is to experiment with different type of fish.