Pierre Michel in Denver (Highlands Ranch)

If you've been looking for authentic French Croissants and pastry delights, your long wait is over. Pierre Michel is a total gift to the South Suburban restaurant scene. Nothing too fancy, just laboriously exacting craftsmanship in pastries, sandwiches, and quiche that will make you a regular after one visit. The croissants are perfect, better than anything I had in Paris. The quiches routinely disappear early. The Croque Monsieur is hearty and generously portioned. The staff are a husband / wife team originally from outside Lyon, France. They apparently worked for 6 months on perfecting the recipes for the high altitude before opening. All the food is spot on, not-so-simple pleasures that evoke the deep culinary traditions of France. Some evenings they offer savory crepes among other traditional French country preparations. You will surely delight everyone in the office with a bag of the croissants. The service is always extremely inviting, courteous, and friendly. Highly recommended.

kindageeky´s # of visits: 6

Sausage with Sweet & Hot Peppers, Carmelized Onions, & Balsamic Ketchup

So those of you who've been reading for a while or who know me personally might be shocked to see Ketchup in one of my recipes. No doubt, my disdain for ketchup is no secret. But since my little ones like dunking and there was a little bit of spice in the sausage here, I thought this might be a good addition to encourage them to eat.

From gastronomic guesswork

There are only a few notes on preparation worth mentioning. First, to emphasize the contrast between the sweet orange peppers and the hot anaheim peppers (very hot for anaheim, but maybe only slightly hotter than the sausage), these were separately sauteed. The sausage was hot italian sausage (medium heat really). The ketchup was just Muir Glen Fire roasted tomatoes reduced with cheap balsamic vinegar, then pureed with a little honey for 5 minutes (lots of agitation of that fruit pectin) to make sure we got the thixotropic consistency (more here, who knew you needed directions to pour ketchup). Throw in a few hashbrowns and you have some serious comfort food.

A Day at El Bulli Digested

First let me say that as much as I wanted to devour the book, A Day at El Bulli, in one helping, after two deep dives into this sprawling culinary documentary, I realized the depth and complexity of what Ferran Adria, Albert Adria, and the crew at El Bulli take on in a single day was scribed herein as the literary equivalent of a tasting menu. It may take months of analysis and introspection, and years more of learning in the kitchen for me to fully grasp the weight of El Bulli in the culinary world. But after a cover to cover reading, and re-reading of many of the carefully crafted exposées on such topics as Creative Methods employed at El Bulli, I felt it was time to provide at least a visceral reaction to both the book and its content.

El Bulli is other-worldly, a restaurant without peer, strange, influential, misunderstood, controversial, and by many accounts simply the best. It employs technique, service, and flavour that is provactive, experiential, ground-breaking and operates on a level so apart from anything else calling itself a restaurant that it demands to be considered as art. Ferran and Albert Adria are indefatigable in their pursuit of discovering knowledge, and without question in my mind are the icons of this culinary age of knowledge producers. As a knowledge consumer of the flavor wisdom, patterns, and techniques coming of El Bulli, I'm more than a little overwhelmed by the intricacy of the recipes; really in reading this tome, the recipes are almost a distraction from the book's apparent main objective: providing a treatise on how to best pursue culinary perfection.

It is exhausting to witness a day at El Bulli, the creative process, the symphony in the kitchen, the dialogue between the chefs and the customers. But mostly, the book is an inspiration, the format by Phaidon is gorgeous, methodical, completely absorbing. The content is insightful, obsessive in its detail on what it really takes to create and maintain an El Bulli, day in and day out. While other sites have quoted El Bulli by the numbers, the points that stood out to me the most were as follows:

• For 50 guests a night, there are 1500 dishes served by 40 chefs


• Annually, 5000 chefs apply to be part of the El Bulli crew


• At the end of the evening, 4 staff members wash 2500 pieces of dishware, cookware, and cutlery


• All 40 chefs participate in the cleanup, and hauling of the trash offsite


• El Bulli is too remote to have gas lines, so all cooking is performed with electric equipment


• During the 160 days of service, El Bulli devotes 9 hours a day toward the creation of new dishes, on top of the 6 months of dedicated time devoted in the off season; all this work is documented in notebooks, complete with pictures

Two final thoughts in my, admittedly, cursory evaluation of a Day at El Bulli:

• El Bulli works to impart an experience to the diner, via not only the 5 senses, but intentionally working on a 6th sense, an intellectual recognition of the chef's intent or the diner's lifes experiences, be it irony, a wink to something in their past, a prodding to make one experience something familiar very differently or in a completely new context


• A Day at El Bulli is historical both in the acute scope of the book devoting itself to such a small moment in the culinary history of this landmark restaurant, but also in the level of insight it reveals of the inner workings of El Bulli, the code of Ferran Adria (worthy of a post unto itself), its dichomatic sense of history and devotion to the future of gastronomy.

As influential as Ferran Adria already is, the fervor of all things El Bulli will eventually fade from the short-term memories of comtemporary food enthusiasts, but this book may well be studied by gourmands and culinary students for decades to come.

Brick Butter Mushroom Crostini wtih Rosemary

This is a seemingly slight, but important and very adventurous variation on past recipes [1] [2]. What is "Brick Butter"? Let us just say "Brown Butter ++". Ruhlman turned me onto brown butter, but the trickiest beast in the "things with butter" chef's repertoire seems to be brick roux. So herein, I attempted (and luckily succeeded) with making a brick butter to impart the most nuttiness and aroma to the mushrooms.

Making a brick roux is like tightrope walking, just ask any chef; you're perilously close to burning the milk solids, so heat control and attention are critical. Knowing this, I armed myself with three tools up to the task: a thick copper saute pan and a mesh strainer, and a very fine mesh mini sieve. The technique is as follows:

• On low heat, begin to melt two stick of organic AA quality butter, one unsalted, one salted


• add 1/4 cup dried non-fat milk, stir


• continue over low heat, allowing the water to evaporate


• as the butter begins to froth, start stirring, keepin the heat very low


• if the froth is clouding your view from keeping an eye on the color of the milk solids, occasionally remove from heat and return


• scrape down the side of the pan for any lingering or crusted milk solids


• as the milk solid turn golden brown, you're now in the zone


• keep stirring constantly, removing from heat every few seconds to widen the window to catch the change to brick


• as brick redness begins to surface, remove from heat


• quickly use the mesh strainer to recover as much of the milk solids from the now clarified butter as possible


• repeat this process with the fine sieve and drain of any of the hot butter from the solids


• reserve the solids separately from the clarified (though now nutty) butter

The whole straining process took 15-20 seconds, you have to move quickly or you will burn the milk solids. The taste is superior to brown butter, more concentrated, more complex, very memorable.

For this preparation, I sauteed the mushrooms in the clarified butter, added finely chopped fresh rosemary near the end, and at the last second incorporated the milk solids after removing the pan from the heat. The crostini were sliced on a bias, sprayed with olive oil, and toasted in a 350F oven for 12-15 minutes.


Guests devoured the mushroom crostini, and I did not make mention of the technique, but many complements were given so I must infer that brick butter is actually better than brown butter. On a cautionary note, I would not attempt making a brick butter without a thick copper pan; copper requires and yields extreme precision.

Diamonds in the Rough

Ok, these are posts that have had low traffic but are things that I really wish people were reading instead of "Simply Estupido" ...

Restaurants You Don't Want to Miss
Cafe Juanita
Second Home
Chianti
Flying Fish
Brooks

Recipes
Pasta Charlotte
Pasta Genevieve
Grilled Tuna with Sudachi

Funny or educational
Golden Clog Nominees
Extreme Knife Skills
Magic of Ferran Adria & El Bulli

Mirepoix Risotto with Mirepoix, Soy Sauce Glazed Figs, Roasted Fennel with Grapefruit Supremes

The emphasis here in on New American / Nouvelle Cuisine preparation, simple fresh flavors with straightforward flavor complements, and a neo-classic interpretation on the risotto. Ok, that sounded fancy, but really all I was going for was making mirepoix, a truly foundational element in classic cuisine, a standout player in the course and the meal. The risotto was the centerpiece of the meal, which entailed cooking arborio rice in chicken broth with mirepoix, and separately preparing a mirepoix to top the risotto. So we have both mirepoix as foundation and mirepoix as accoutrement; and but of course, mirepoix will go with mirepoix.

For the risotto I started off with the arborio in a little olive oil to ... hmmm, what is the name for what I did? I put some olive oil in a hot pan (high heat) and added the arborio, tossing it in the hot oil until the tooth of the risotto grains become mostly translucent through about 2/3's of the volume of each grain. What do you call that? ... Well there's a great discussion of the science involved in cooking risotto that reveals there are two rice starches in play: Amylopectin and Amylose.

The trick to cooking risotto in my opinion, is getting the amylose to soften enough, while keeping the amylopectin intact long enough. It seems to me (and this is strictly a cook's observation rather than a scientific analysis) that the amylopectin needs to be either shielded from the hot cooking liquid that will be added, or that by permeating the amylopectin with oil early in the process, it's temporarily suspended with the oil (as in an emulsion of a fat and starch) which keep the risotto from becoming too creamy too quickly. If you get too creamy too quickly, you seem to end up with either undercooked kernels or cement-like risotto. By getting the creaminess to coincide with the right level of cooking of the amylose (which makes up most of the final grain of cooked risotto), you help to ensure an elegant texture.

Again this is observational, but one thing that the experts say about cooking risotto is to add the liquid gradually to ensure success. I've found this annoying, time consuming, and impractical in a commercial kitchen.  So with some experimentation, I've found success with cooking the risotto first in olive oil until mostly translucent (there will be a kernel of opaque white in the center of each grain) and then adding all the liquid in which I intend to cook the risotto.

Many recipes will advocate sweating the aromatics first, then adding the risotto to toast or saute, then the liquid gradually. I also take exception to this. If you want to flavor anything, flavor the liquid directly before adding it to the risotto, don't bother with sweating onions along with the rice. I've actually had some inconsistent results with sweating the rice with the onion, specifically it just seems that risotto requires more work to get it right when you do this. One hypothesis I have is that the water and other compounds that sweat from the onion inhibit the saturation of the oil with the rice. I suppose if you fully sweat the onion first, then add the rice, you don't have this problem, but then you will likely brown the onion and end up with sharp flavor components that tend to really not play well with risotto. So back to what to call this, well the jury is out, and I've pinged Martin at khymos for an expert food science opinion, but for now I'll propose to call this either "mounting the amylopectin", or more simply "tempering the risotto".

And now back to the risotto preparation, after tempering the arborio rice, I added chicken broth roughly equal to 3 times the volume of the rice, added two bay leaves and set the burner on high. When the mixture reached a boil, I reduced to a strong simmer and added a cup of diced white onion. About 10-15 minutes later I removed the bay leaves, added strips of carrot, and after another 10 minutes I added sliced celery. I only periodically stirred this maybe 4 times in 35-40 minutes. Two piece of advice from the experts are worth heeding: use a wooden spoon as a metal spoon will tend to cause more damage to the rice when stirring, and use a stainless or stainless lined pan to avoid interaction with acids in the preparation (white wine is common flavor element in risotto recipes); I always just use a stainless chef's pan for risotto. You may need to add additional broth, or water. After the first 20 minutes, you will want to periodically taste the liquid and test the doneness of the risotto. I prefer just a little bite, but not al dente or toothy risotto, at least usually.

The second mirepoix preparation involved steaming some sliced carrots in the microwave, a quick saute of onions and celery in a small amount of olive oil, and then combining the carrots with the other aromatics and mounting the mixture with a little high grade organic butter and kosher salt. After 2 more minutes, remove from the heat and top the plated risotto with this mixture. For a more visually stimulating presentation, I think I would go to the trouble of creating a brunoise of the carrots and celery to match a uniform small dice of onions. The flavor was really fresh, light, nuanced (high praise for what is typically a foundational element to many, many, many other dishes ... yes mirepoix in this case was the star. Everyone needed a second helping.

Figs appear to be just coming into season as they magically appeared at Sunflower today, and on a whim I decided to roast these and then glaze with a mixture of brown sugar, water, and soy sauce. Scrumptious, soy sauce and figs, that's one to remember. The brown sugar and water muted the strong flavor of the soy sauce and as a player in the flavor, soy sauce greatly complemented the wonderfully fresh figs.

For the fennel, I simply play with the classic Italian pairing of fennel and orange by substituting supremes of grapefruit. My wife inquired, "What is the dressing on the fennel", to which I replied, "Nothing". She countered, "Really?!!", to which I said, "Yah, nothing". So apparently grapefruit and orange share enough similar volatile flavor components to make this pairing nearly as successful. I'm not about to say it's as good, but it was good; if you haven't had fennel and orange, go try that first and then try this. Certainly good enough in this instance to add it to my repertoire.

Lastly, we find the protein. At this point I think the flavor pairing of shallots, rosemary, and red meat qualifies as a personal classic. It yields consistently good results with beef and lamb (though good spring lamb seems to also like a little touch of garlic), so time for a tougher red meat challenge with rosemary + shallots + sea salt: let's see if it works with a little ostrich (to be continued).

Ahi Poke with Chorizo Crumbles

My wife and I love ahi tuna, but only occasionally indulge due to the concerns around mercury content. This approach yielded what my wife called "maybe the best tuna I've ever eaten". Recently I became enamored with the magical flavor pairing of sudachi and very high quality soy sauce. In this application the sudachi is less pronounced, but marries very well with the addition of cilantro. The chorizo addes a gentle heat and a great textural contrast.

1 lb Thick sliced Ahi steak
Juice of 6 limes
1/4 cup sudachi juice
1/4 cup organic 100% soy sauce
kosher salt TT
1/4 cup red onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely sliced
1/3 lb chorizo sausage

Just cube the tuna into 1" pieces, toss for 30 seconds in the lime juice (obviously you'll need high quality and very fresh tuna for this near raw preparation), then incorporate the other ingredients (minus the chorizo) and toss for another 30 seconds. I let this rest for 5 minutes before plating with the chorizo (which was cooked on low heat for 25 minutes and pulverized until evenly browned). This was my first attempt at poke, and as far as I can tell, it is extremely close to ceviche in preparation as both incorporate a very low pH citrus acid to denature the protein of the fish; I'll categorize recipes like this under "raw preparation" but think this dish is a fusion of Latin American and Japanese flavors.



On a side note, when I say evenly browned above, we're talking about the maillard reaction, not caramelization. I've read a few recipes recently which talk about caramelization of meats. This is incorrect technically, as proteins coagulate, starches gelatinize, and sugars caramelize (per On Cooking). The "caramelization" I believe these recipes refer to is actually the maillard reaction. I'm sure I've made the same mistake in my recipe descriptions at some point, and while coagulation might not sound as sexy, in the end I'd prefer to be technically accurate rather than propogate erroneous descriptions for the sake of marketing. Goodness knows I can't stand it when I see that the Olive Garden bastardizes the meaning of carbonara, so hopefully you'll appreciate the attention to accuracy and look past my limited marketing skills.



 

Thanks

Gastronomic Guesswork ... yah this is my blog, my culinary journal, the record of my successes and failures in the kitchen ... 97 posts, 50 Recipes so far ... a good ratio I think ... So I'm still figuring out what this blogging thing is all about. This blog has thus far been about cooking adventures, frequent experimentation, some interesting things going on in the culinary world, and a few rants. After a little over 6 months, I've accumulated 50 recipes ... When I think about it, I'm kind of proud to have put out that many different things ... not everything has been completely successful, but there's some really good food in there ... the remarkable / lucky part of this is that most of these are inspired things I haven't cooked before, more often than not these are just conceived on my feet at the store ... the inspirations come from all manner of media: blogs, magazines, books, tv, a memory ... sometimes there's a spin on something else I've seen, sometimes I'm dancing on the wire without a net ... all of it though is a labor of love, I like cooking and learning about cooking, and really like entertaining friends and family ... anyway, thanks to all you (friends, family, the curious gastronomes, and the simply curious) for reading! ... with a couple new mandolines in hand, I'm looking forward to lots more gastronomic guesswork.