Keep on Keepin on

Everbody Lies. Except House. Bloggers have cancer.

Sorry I’ve been a little slow with the post recently, but did you see House last night??

BLOGGERS GET CANCER.

Or some crazy disease House figures out at the last second.  TV doesn’t lie.  The news told me so.

Anyway, I got to create another dish for my restaurants Sunday tasting menu.  This time I went with Scallops since we had a lot of them in house.  Then I pretty much just kept playing fuck up and fix it.

Also, on Saturday I messed up a HUGE bowl of potato puree by adding about a gallon of salt, 30 minutes before service.  I blame God.  So I fixed it by making a shit ton (exactly, I measured) more puree.  This left us with plenty of the salted potatoes.  Guess what I got to use?!

So I decided to make Potato Croquettes, which are kinda like deep fried mashed potatoes.  I made these by adding a couple Eggs, minced Parsley and Panko bread crumbs to the Mashed Potatoes.  This game me a more solid consistency which I then balled up and breaded with Panko. To do this I just used the flour, egg wash, breadcrumb technique where you have each in a different vessel and move from flour to egg to breadcrumb.  Try to keep a dry hand that works with the flour and breadcrumbs and a wet that works with the eggs to keep your hands less nasty.  After I breaded them, I squished them down a bit so they kinda looked like little breaded scallops.

I also wanted to make a Mushroom Puree, so I sauteed my Mushrooms in a hot oiled pan until they got a little color, then added Garlic and Shallots for a bit until they got aromatic.  Then I deglazed with some Red Wine and added Water (no stock since it was for veggie option too) to cover and let reduce.

I then tried to puree the mushrooms, by adding the cooking liquid.  Fail. The mushrooms didn’t soak up the liquid and I got finely minced chunks in a soup.  So, on a suggestion by chef Erik, I squeezed out all the liquid and began to make a roux.  I used about 1 to 1 Flour to Butter, with a little more flour since I wanted a thicker gravy and stirred that until it turned a darker shade of brown (remember?).  Then I slowly added the mushroom juice until I got a nice thick mushroom gravy.  I then seasoned with Salt,  Lemon Juice, and a splash of love some people call Truffle Oil.

I also made garlic chips al la Thomas Keller.  He does this by slicing Garlic super thin on a mandolin, then blanching them in Milk 3 times to get rid of the potent garlic taste and then deep fries them at 300 degrees. I did all this, with a few too many cloves of garlic so I had about 1 chip left at the end of service…oops…but I didn’t really get any garlic taste from them.  The milk worked a little too well and they just tasted like little crispy fried things…maybe something to play around with cause they do look pretty cool.

Our Sunday menu. It was so tasty I saw just about every table use their bread to mop up the nom.

I also wanted to make a Parsley Chantilly which essentially would be a savory whipped cream colored and flavored with parsley.  But After blanching the parsley for color, I tried to puree it in the food processor. Fail. So then I tried to chop it super finely with my knife and fold it into whipped cream.  Fail. It tasted like pretty much nothing.  I had to scrap that project since I had about 5 minutes to service.  But I want to try using a blender (ours is broken) to get a nice puree.  We’ll see.  Instead, I added picked parsley and what looked like parsley oil, but was actually chive oil chef Erik had.

So my dish ended up being Scallops and Potato Croquettes with a Mushroom Gravy, Garlic Chips and Parsley.

Hopefully I’ll get to keep makin dishes and eventually will make one without having to fix 75% of it right before service…

Meh. That sounds boring.