Do-ahead dinner” brings to mind Sandra Lee’s “skills” with a microwave and a can opener, but a true do-ahhead diner can require at least a day of advance planning to execute. The idea is to get everything ready for a short, intense period of a la minute cooking to produce a plate of tasty food that isn’t just an assemblage of reheated components.

I had to work out just such a meal for last Saturday evening. Our friend Maggie, she of the marvelous macarons, was flying in on Saturday morning to catch the Tim Minchin concert with us that evening. From her arrival until our return from the show I would have no time to do any kitchen prep, so everything had to be ready before she landed. In addition, we would be returning very late in the evening, so the meal couldn’t take too long to prepare.

I knew that the Ideas in Food six minute risotto would be one of the components. While reviewing the recipe, I saw their recipe for twice-cooked scallops, and realized that the two would make the perfect dish for the occasion.

I bought a dozen U10 scallops the day before.

I soaked them in a 5% brine for ten minutes, patted them dry, and rolled then in plastic wrap, four to a bundle.

I put each log in a vacuum seal bag and cooked them for half an hour at 50 °C.

After chilling them in an ice bath, I let them rest in the fridge until needed. I also shelled, blanched, and peeled about a cup of fava beans and stored them in the fridge in lightly salted ice water.

Lastly, I weighed out 300 grams of arborio rice and soaked it overnight in 900 grams of lobster stock with two cloves of garlic, a sprig of thyme, and a bay leaf for some extra aromatic emphasis. Everything was ready for the next night.

When we returned from the concert I took care of the most important order of business first, pouring a glass of riesling for everyone. I strained the stock off the rice, adding it to a pan to heat up and tossing the aromatics. While a skillet and saucepan heated up, I minced a large shallot and a bunch of chives. I sweated the shallots in some olive oil, added the rice and stirred to coat, then dumped in the now-boiling stock.

While I gave the rice an occasional stir, I seared the scallops in olive oil on one side, flipped them over, and poached them in two tablespoons of butter.

While the scallops rested, I finished the risotto by stirring in the favas until they were heated through, added a splash of saffron water, then stirred in a big glug of lemon-infused Sicilian olive oil. I plated the risotto in the center, sprinkled some chives over the top, and added the scallops.

The scallops were sweet and perfectly cooked, the lemony risotto was the ideal accompaniment. And the whole meal came together in less than twenty minutes. I’ve never served in the military, but this was a classic example of “prior proper preparation prevents piss poor performance.”

And Tim Minchin? Were you there? He killed.

Sources:

Scallops, fava beans: Savenor’s Market
Arborio rice: Capone Foods
Lobster stock: Belm Utility Research Kitchen Deep Storage Facility

After reading this post about homemade cheddar cheese, I decided I should try my hand at home cheese making. There’s a one-stop shop here in Massachusetts that sells the most popular book on the subject as well as starter kits with everything I’d need to become a fromager, so I ordered a few kits and the book.

Rather than dive right into making hard cheeses, I thought a test run of the basic techniques would be prudent, so I assembled the ingredients I’d need to make a simple mozzarella: a gallon of pasteurized milk (not ultrapasteurized, which contains degraded proteins), a teaspoon and a half of citric acid, a teaspoon of fine salt, and a quarter of a rennet tablet. (Note: I am not related to the owner of the dairy, nor am I an heir to the Shaw’s supermarket dynasty.)

I dissolved the citric acid in a cup of chlorine-free filtered water, and the rennet in a quarter cup of the same. Working with clean pots and spoons (second nature after years of working in cell culture laboratories), I added the milk to a pot set over medium heat, stirred in the citric acid, and let the milk come up to 90° F.

After removing the pot from the heat, I stirred in the rennet solution, then covered the pot and let it sit for about eight minutes, until the curd cleanly separated from the whey.

Using a curd knife (actually a long icing spatula) I cut the curd mass into half-inch cubes.

I put the pot back on the stove and slowly heated it to 105° F, stirring slowly with a slotted spoon. Once at temperature, I killed the heat and continued to stir for another five minutes. The curds sank to the bottom of the pot.

Using a flat perforated ladle, I scooped out all of the curds into a clean glass bowl. This took longer than I thought because much of the curd was small enough to fall through the ladle, so I resorted to using a small strainer to scoop out the remaining curds.

The weight of the mass of curds pushed out more whey, which I drained off before microwaving the bowl for about a minute and a half, until the curds reached 135° F. I added the salt, and stretched the curds until they were smooth and shiny, splitting the mass in two and forming a ball out of each (a skill I mastered as a Silly Putty-obsessed child). I rinsed the balls in cold water, then dropped them in an ice bath to chill.

My first attempt was certainly better than anything I could find in a supermarket, but lacked the creaminess and depth of flavor I’ve come to expect from small-batch mozzarella. Part of that is due to the method I used, which is quick but doesn’t allow for any flavor development from enzymatic action. I probably could have stirred the curds for less time, and stretched less vigorously, both of which produce a softer end product. I cut up one chunk and tossed it into a salad; the other piece will probably end up as pizza topping.

I claim victory: the process was disaster-free and edible. Now that I’m familiar with the basic steps, I plan on making a simple cheddar very soon. And I wound up with a bonus:

That’s two quarts of filtered whey, which I will use in the place of water in this week’s batch of bread dough.

As I worked through the process, this scene came immediately to mind:

Sources:

Milk: Shaw Farm
Rennet, citric acid: New England Cheesemaking Supply Company

Having successfully manipulated our guests’ expectations with the orange and beet jellies, I wanted to end the meal with a playful dessert, something less formal that what I have served in the past. This recipe – a “grown-up” version of a peanut butter cup – is from Eric Ripert’s On the Line, his account of life at his restaurant Le Bernardin, but is a creation of Michael Laiskonis, his genius pastry chef. The quantities here (with the exception of the garnishes) are doubled to serve eight instead of four.

Even after making the decision to omit the malted milk chocolate rum ice cream accompaniment (I had already served two ice creams – even I have my limits), I had multiple components to assemble. Fortunately, everything was a do-ahead, so I began with the peanut butter powder garnish. I needed a tablespoon and a half of creamy peanut butter, a tablespoon of peanut oil, and a cup of tapioca maltodextrin (the same dehydrating agent used in the dry caramel, salt).

I blended the oil and peanut butter in a food processor, then added the maltodextrin a quarter cup at a time, making sure it was fully incorporated each time. I stored the powder in an airtight container until plating.

To make the tart shells, I used a cup and a half of flour, a cup of confectioner’s sugar, six tablespoons of cocoa powder, six egg yolks, and eight tablespoons of butter.

While I creamed the butter and sugar, I sifted the cocoa and flour together and beat the eggs. I added the dry ingredients to the butter, followed by the eggs, mixing until just incorporated. I wrapped the dough in plastic wrap and let it refrigerate for an hour.

While the dough chilled, I mad a chocolate ganache from four ounces of dark chocolate (55%), a half cup of heavy cream, a tablespoon of light corn syrup, and a tablespoon of butter. I heated the cream and corn syrup, poured it over the chopped chocolate, stirred until smooth, then finished with the butter. I kept the ganache warm to fill the shells.

I also made a batch of caramel sauce (sugar, corn syrup, cream, butter) and kept it warm.

I rolled out the chilled tart dough until it was about an eighth of an inch thick, then cut eight four and a quarter inch rounds.

I pressed the dough into individual tartlet molds, which is when I discovered that the molds were larger than my rounds. I wound up using the dough scraps to build up the sides of the shells.

I baked the shells for about fifteen minutes at 300°F, then let them cool to room temperature. I spread a tablespoon of chopped, roasted, salted peanuts across the bottoms, then added about two tablespoons of the warm caramel.

I froze the tarts for fifteen minutes to set the caramel, then layered the warm ganache on top. I let the tarts rest at room temperature until served, which gave the ganache time to set.

To plate, I ran a stripe of caramel across the plate, set down the tart, dusted the caramel with more chopped peanuts and a few pieces of candied citron peel, added a few drops of chocolate ganache, and finished with a dusting of peanut butter powder on the tart. (Same photo as above, but it’s pretty.)

I served a coffeehouse porter, knowing that the coffee bitterness would balance the tart’s sweetness.

After his first bite, one of the guests said “It’s like a cross between a peanut butter cup and a chocolate turtle, but for adults.” Exactly.

Sources:

Chocolate, cream, butter: Whole Foods
Peanuts: Trader Joe’s
Candied citron peel: Belm Utility Research Kitchen
Tapioca maltodextrin: L’Epicerie
Berkshire Brewing Co. coffeehouse porter: Central Bottle

She Who Must Be Obeyed and I honeymooned in Italy, a ten-day package tour that began in Rome and ended in Venice at the Hotel des Bains, one of the shooting locations for the 1971 film adaptation of Death in Venice. We were the only two Bostonians in a tour group of New Yorkers, which meant separate departure arrangements had to be made on the last day. We had to get up so early that we would miss the breakfast service, but the hotel kindly provided a “meager snack” of fruit and pastries, enough to fill a large lunch bag for each of us. After a James Bond-esque speedboat trip across the lagoon at dawn, we settled in for the long flight home and happily consumed croissants, cheese, and blood oranges – the sweetest, most perfect examples of the fruit we had ever tasted. No domestic orange has ever approached our memory of that morning.

As I planned the menu for this year’s diner, I had a few ideas I wanted to incorporate:

1. Use a taste or flavor combination that She Who likes. It was her dinner, after all.
2. Make a pre-dessert amuse – like last year’s “dry caramel, salt” – that had an element of surprise.
3. Know your audience: If possible, throw in a bit of science geekery.

This dish, which had been rattling around inside my head since I first read about it in Heston Blumenthal’s The Big Fat Duck Cookbook, met all three requirements. In addition, it would be simple to make once a few technical and timing difficulties were overcome.

I had to begin this dish in March, while blood oranges were still in season.

I wound up halving nine pounds of oranges in preparation for juicing.

I finally made use of the citrus juicer attachment of my food processor, which made short work of extracting a kilo of juice, which I strained and froze until needed.

The next step – extracting juice from golden beets – had the potential for disaster, especially after I read another blogger’s attempt to make the same dish. He had problems with this beet juice turning green, a result of heat generated during the juicing process. I had a problem in that I didn’t have a juicer, and didn’t know anyone who could lend me one. I discovered solutions to both problems while leafing through my recently-arrived copy of Modernist Cuisine. I would cut golden beets into half-inch chunks and toss them with a combination of citric and ascorbic acids, which would prevent discoloration. Then I would vacuum seal and freeze the beets before allowing them to thaw out slowly in the fridge, relying on syneresis (liquid weeping out of thawed food)  to create the juice I needed.

It was a good idea, and it almost worked. Unfortunately, beets are very fibrous and don’t break down when thawed the way softer fruits and vegetables do. I went to plan B, which was borrowing a Vita-Prep blender and reducing the beets to loose pulp.

I forced the pulp through a china cap and wound up with 600 grams of bright orange juice.

I added 80 grams of sugar to the kilo of blood orange juice, then boiled and reduced the mixture to 600 grams. Making the jellies was as simple as adding softened gelatin sheets to each of the juices: 20 grams in the beet juice, 15 grams in the orange juice (less because of the sugar-activated pectin content). Still paranoid about discoloring the beet juice, I warmed up about a quarter of the volume and dissolved the gelatin before adding it to the remainder.

I passed each solution through a sieve and into nine inch square silicone molds.

After chilling in the fridge overnight, I cut each jelly into squares – much easier said than done – and plated them diagonally so as not to imply an order in which they should be eaten.

In order to preserve the surprise, I said “These are orange and beet jellies. I suggest you start with the orange.” Everyone ate the orange colored jelly first, and I could see the confusion on their faces until they followed with the purple jelly. It’s a clever trick, based solely on how our taste can be influenced by visual cues. One of our guests had seen me preparing the beets weeks earlier, so I figured he would catch on instantly, but even he said “This is just plain weird.”

Blumenthal sums up the effect with a quote from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:

“Why, you might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see’!”

I still have plenty of the jellies left; I hope I can find some more unsuspecting victims.

Sources:

Blood oranges, golden beets: Whole Foods