Wednesday, October 21, 2009 Chicken

Reduced Tomatoes with Shiitake mushrooms appetizer

Tomato is one of those ingredients that can add so many wonderful things to your dish. It can manifest itself in different ways in a dish through flavor or texture. It can be sweet or sour, pureed or diced, it can be turned into a sauce or a paste and so many more wonderful things. Sometimes i think its hard for one to go wrong with tomato sauce. In this dish i first grilled the tomato to take away as much of the acidity as possible so that i am left with its sweetness alone. Then I diced it and tossed it in a soffritto of garlic and shiitake mushrooms. Once the ingredients were well mixed i started the process of reduction by adding in tomato sauce and a little meat broth. Set fire on a very low simmer until most of the liquid is gone. The last step is tossing in melted mozzarella cheese to give it a surprising texture before setting them on the aluminium rings. The result is a mellow mixture of sweet tomato and shiitake aroma enhanced by the texture provided by the mozzarella cheese.

Fricasseed Chicken with egg and lemon

Chicken to me is a miracel meat. Some people consider chicken as the lesser meat because of its almost neutral flavor but to me it is one of the most flexible meat readily available in the grocery store. It has the ability to carry a variety of flavor making it both challenging and enticing. This is seen in how many chicken dishes there are known to man. In this dish i tried a very classic italian style of cooking chicken- fricasseed. The yellow "thing" you see in the picture here is the egg and lemon that carried the flavor of the entire dish. Cooking this is a little tricky- if you are using different parts of the chicken on this dish, cook the thigh and the breast parts separately due to difference in cooking time. The end result of this dish was a chicken dish with a very summery taste to it. The meat was light and enhanced by the egg and lemon coating.

Rolled Fillets of Chicken Breast with Pork and Rosemary

Making this dish made me realize how important it is to have a good set of knives. Do not ever try to use a regular kitchen knife to fillette anything, you will end up with a lot of wasted meat due to the wrong cut being made- do not throw it away though coz you can use those trimmings for your meat broth. This dish was fairly easy to make but i was a little disappointed about it. For me it just had so little flavor with it- until now i still cant think of a way to enhance this dish to make it more exciting and interesting.

Sunday, October 4, 2009 The scallop experiment

Scallops...oh so small, so white, so elusive...i have heard so much about it...that it is sweet and very delicate. I have tasted it before but it never left an impression. It is one of those simple ingredients that characterizes Italian cooking- simple ingredients cooked well can create a great dish. This is the principle that I wanted to test in this experiment. I know that scallops have a sweetness in its taste and that was an important consideration in this experiment. I also read that scallops when exposed to too much heat can lose its distinct texture...I also had to keep that in mind during the experiment. In this experiment I made scallops in four ways; i. Plain Pan seared Scallops with tomato butter sauce, ii. Scallops with water and flour batter, iii. Scallops sauteed with bacon, ham and onion sofritto, and iv. Baked Scallops and shrimp bacon bundle.

These 4 dishes allowed me to explore the range of flavor and texture that can be achieved with scallops. The variety of texture and flavor achieved by these dishes are as follows; soft and sweet (plain pan seared), crusted and sweet (Scallops with water and flour batter), tender and flavor full (sauteed in ham and bacon) and soft and flavor full (Baked Scallops and shrimp bacon bundle).

The first method was fairly simple, the key to achieving the desired effect was to know when the right time was to put the scallops in the pan. The pan should be hot enough to cook the side of the scallop that touches the pan quickly, once one side is cooked (color turned a pale gold) turn it over and cook the other side. The scallop should have a top and bottom layer discolored to a pale gold and the middle part should be white. Cooking it this way allows you to trap the sweetness inside the meat.

The second method was also fairly simple, the key to achieving the desired effect was again to know when to put the scallops in the pan. While inside the pan toss the scallops to make sure no one side of it is exposed too long to the heat. Take the scallops out once you see it turning golden.

The third method is the most savory, it is also easy to make but takes a little more time than the others. The key is knowing when your sofritto of onion, ham and bacon is ready for your scallops. Do not allow your onions to lose too much of its color before adding the bacon and ham and do not allow your ham and bacon to be crispy at all. Only add the scallops when your onion, bacon and ham have bonded their flavor together. When tossing the scallops into your sofritto, turn the heat to low and make sure that each scallop is coated well with your sofritto components. Once each scallop is properly coated cover the pan and keep it covered for 2 minutes. The end result is scallop that is tender due to the mount of time it was exposed to heat but the meat is relaly savoury and full of flavor from the sofritto.

The fourth method also creates a savoury scallop but unlike the third method the scallop from this one is soft. Wrapping the scallop with bacon allows the scallop to absorb the fat from the bacon adding strength to the scallops sweetnes. The best thing about this method is the texture of the dish...the softness of the scallop, the brittle edges of the bacon, and the nut like texture of the garlic.

I learned a lot of things today about scallops but the most important thing I learned is the fact that this very unassuming and simple ingredient can creat so many joys in the kitchen. Scallops can also be used in many ways as appetizer or main dish. It is one of those ingredients that allows you to be very creative and adventurous.