experiment #8

This was my first full meal (well, 2 courses anyway).  There were a number of new things here for me; the powdered items being the main one.

Let me break it down; for main we have slowly smoked duck breast on a bed of parmesan spaghetti with crispy duck skin crumbs.  Smashed smoked chat potatoes with smoked butter; served with powdered truffle oil.  Spinach foam.

For those close (particularly my neighbours) it’s no surprise that I’m enjoying smoking foods.  My darling bride gave me a smoker as a Christmas gift, and we have enjoyed some amazing smoked treats since.  One of my favourite things from the smoker is duck breast.  Cooked and smoked for a lot of hours on quite low heat, these duck breasts are moist, tender and very delectable.  Once out of the smoker, I removed the skins and crisped them in the oven, then blitzed in the blender.  I also smoked some chat potatoes which I smashed with some cold smoked butter.

The parmesan spaghetti was not a real success – more work on this one.  Basically it should be parmesan cheese boiled with water to extract the whey, separated and a gelling agent added to the liquid then spaghetti is made.  My consistency was a little off and the spaghetti didn’t set as well as I hoped.  On the side was a very tasty spinach foam – fresh organic spinach boiled in some stock, a little cream added then cooled, blitzed, strained and added to creamer, gassed and chilled.

Dessert was powdered Nutella, powdered salted caramel with caramelised banana & mud cream.  Making powdered things the first time was interesting to say the least.  I started with Nutella – now this is the easiest thing ever!  The salted caramel; well this was a little more detailed.  It’s been a while since I’ve made salted caramel, but it turned out quite nicely, then making into a powder was not as easy as the Nutella, but not too bad.  (What I did find a little more challenging was the powered truffle oil – getting the right combination of ingredients was fun.)  A quick note on the bananas; I rolled a halved lady finger banana in coconut sugar and caramelised in a hot dry pan.  I mention this as the coconut sugar added a nice touch with it’s slightly nutty flavour.  And that insanely superb mud cream with a couple of Saffron strands; Ivyhome organic mud cream from Kingaroy – I’ve been a fan of this product from a number of years, it played a massive roll in a lot of my pralines and truffles.

This meal served 4 people – it was a lot of work – but worth it I think.

Leftover Challenge:  dessert take two.  Pink Lady apple caramelised with coconut sugar on a bed of salted caramel, with powdered Nutella and mud cream.

Categories: combination , Gelification , texture