Food/Drink – Page 4 – Adam Szczecina P.Eng

Sea Buckthorn Puree

This is a particular favourite of my brothers which we first tried at one of my favourite restaurants. Naturally I tried to recreate it and fortunately allowed me to brush up on some of my food chemistry. The general process here is to juice the fruit, sweeten to taste, thicken with agar and puree to the desired consistency.

Pureeing Sea Buckthorn into a thin juice.

Juice is sweetened, topped with 0.5% agar agar and heater to 95c.

Juice is cooled until gelled and then pureed into a “sauce”.

Samples sauce trials with different textures. First from the left is a pomegranate chunky puree which textually is closer to a marmalade. Center is the sea buckthorn which is a more “goopy” texture and right is a thin lime sauce. Different agar concentrations and puree times allowed for the control over the texture of the final product. More agar led to a thicker product and less puree time created a more chunky texture.

Chocolate Mouse with Sea Buckthorn Puree

Drawing inspiration from a personal favourite desert of mine, I wanted to take a crack at my own chocolate/Sea Buckthorn recipe. I went with a decadent chocolate mouse and tart sea buckthorn puree that came together to make a complex explosion of flavour. Since both components are similar in texture they mixed together fairly well and made for an amazing experience.

Chocolate Tart with Sea Buckthorn Puree

An exceedingly decadent desert with a perfectly tart (sweetened) sea buckthorn puree. This was prepared by an amazing restaurant and is a personal favourite.

Tuna Poke Bowls

A lovely classic, tuna poke bowls are both incredibly complex and simple at the same time. Tuna was seasoned in a soy/honey marinade (with a bit of ginger, sake, mirin) that makes it pop in the mouth. Spicy cucumbers, avocado and other basic additions as well as some caviar to fancy up the dish. Timeless classic.

Enchiladas

I got a new Staub baking dish for Christmas and it was finally time to break it in with no other dish than enchiladas.

I made 2 varieties, the first a little bit more authentic with seasoned chicken thighs with queso fresco the other a bit more American with pulled pork. Both gently drizzled with a nice enchilada sauce. May not be the most visually appealing dish but had a phenomenal taste.

Spherification and food Chemistry

I have been playing around with more advanced food chemistry and have started to get into spherification. The theory behind it is fairly simple sodium alignate is dissolved in whatever liquid you want to spherify and this is then bubbled into a calcium ion bath (calcium lactate in my case) which causes the alignate to polymerize and make pearls.

For now I am still playing around but I have some plans for the future with actual dishes using this.

Pasta “Volcano” (AKA Cool Spaghetti and Meat Balls)

This has been a fun idea to make a “volcano” spaghetti and meat balls where a volcano would be made from black pasta, a bright red vodka sauce as the lava and meatballs as exploded rocks.

The idea I think is really good but I have issues with giving the volcano height and so it just looks a bit flat… Tasted really good so I guess the rest doesn’t matter.

Homemade Pasta

Though saying “handmade pasta” brings to mind exclusivity and perfection I personally find dried pasta to be more than good enough. The only 2 considerations are that handmade pasta taste like “Angle hair” and is much softer (and therefore lacks the Al-Dente feel) which can be a plus or negative depending on the dish and the other consideration being you can add additional ingredients such as spinach or ink to color the pasta.

It is relatively easy to make just takes time and effort which may be hard to justify when dried pasta is just a couple dollars.

Below is my squid ink pasta used in a separate dish where I use cuttlefish ink to dye to pasta black.

Simple recipe, egg, EVOO, flour and salt.

Avocado Salad and Salmon Risotto

A Valentines classic, my avocado salad followed by salmon risotto never fail to impress.

Not much to note but rolling up avocado slices and making tomato roses give a wow factor. I also add a garlic dill sauce that amps it up. Seared salmon on a seafood risotto is classic.