It’s the start of a new season of Hell’s Kitchen, and already I have to remind myself that chef Gordon Ramsay is an accomplished cook and restaurateur, not just some ex-footballer who yells at slack-jawed “executive chefs” with delusions of adequacy. What better antidote to endless cries of “Move your arse, you donkey!” than to cook a Ramsay recipe.

My choice of this particular recipe, from In The Heat Of The Kitchen, was inspired by a lucky find in the Belm Utility Research Kitchen Deep Storage Facility: a rolled and tied pork butt that reminded me of the rolled and tied pork belly that the recipe requires. I had prepared this dish once before, for She Who Must Be Obeyed’s Third Annual Birthday Dinner, and was all too happy to skip the painstaking rolling and trimming steps.

In addition to the rolled butt (heh), I needed one each of a chopped carrot, onion, leek, and celery stalk, six large peeled garlic cloves, a half cup of sherry vinegar, seven ounces of soy sauce, six cups of chicken stock, five star anise, twenty coriander seeds, ten white peppercorns, and ten black peppercorns.

I browned the pork in a dutch oven with olive oil over medium-high heat, turning the roll until all sides and both ends were deep brown.

I removed the pork and sweated the vegetables for five minutes before deglazing with the sherry vinegar.

I placed the pork on the bed of vegetables, then added the stock, soy sauce, and spices. I brought the mixture to a boil before partially covering the pan and placing it in a 325 °F oven.

After two and a half hours I removed the pork from the oven. It had reduced in size due to the fat rendering out into the braising liquid.

I strained the vegetables and spices out of the braising liquid, skimmed off a considerable amount of fat, and set it to boil and reduce.

During the last half hour of braising I prepared truffle-scented pommes pureé, then during the reduction I steamed some asparagus and wilted some spinach. I removed the string from the pork, sliced it into three sections, and placed each on a plate. I surrounded the pork with the spinach and asparagus, made a giant quenelle of the potatoes, and finished with the sauce.

I could have let the sauce reduce more to thicken it, but we were all hungry and impatient. (If I had used a parchment lid, the sauce would have been partially reduced when the braising was done.)

How did it taste? In the time between the first and second preparations of the dish, I had become much more familiar with Asian flavor profiles. Star anise, pepper, coriander, sherry vinegar, soy – these are all classic ingredients, and, in fact, what we ate was a very refined char siu pork. Substitute bok choy for the spinach and asparagus and the dish wouldn’t have been out of place on any Asian/French fusion menu.

The memory of this dish will carry me through a few more weeks of manufactured kitchen drama, but I’m already looking ahead to preparing Ramsay’s shrimp risotto and spaghetti with lobster, just to prove that any competent cook can make them. As long as someone isn’t screaming at me.

At long last, we come to the dessert for the Fifth Annual Birthday Dinner. I knew that it would have to be something with components that I could prepare in advance, requiring only a final plating before service. I also knew that it should be chocolate, especially after asking my guests to try something as unusual as the Dry Caramel, Salt transition from savory to sweet. I found the Marquis au Chocolat, Crème Anglaise et Pistaches in the Bouchon cookbook; it met all of my requirements and gave me an excuse to buy a fancy terrine mold I had my eye on.

I made the crème anglaise first, starting with a cup of heavy cream, a cup of milk, seven tablespoons of sugar, a split vanilla bean, and five large egg yolks.

I combined the cream, milk, and four tablespoons of the sugar in a saucepan, adding the vanilla bean dn the seeds scraped from the bean’s interior.

I brought the mixture to a simmer, then covered and removed it from the heat, letting it infuse for half an hour.

I whisked the yolks and remaining sugar until the mixture thickened and lightened in color.

I whisked some of the hot cream into the yolks to temper them, returned the mixture to the pan with the rest of the cream, and cooked over low heat for about ten minutes until the custard thickened and coated the back of a spoon. I poured it into a bowl set over ice and stirred until the custard had cooled.

I stored the crème anglaise in the fridge until final plating, and moved on to the terrine. Once again, ingredients were assembled: twelve ounces of bittersweet chocolate (Valrhona Manjari 64%), eight and a half ounces of unsalted butter, four large eggs (separated), four additional egg yolks, one and a third cups of confectioner’s sugar, a third of a cup of cocoa powder, a half cup plus one tablespoon of heavy cream, and two teaspoons of granulated sugar.

While the chocolate and butter melted in a double boiler set over hot water, I sifted together the confectioner’s sugar and cocoa powder.

I let the chocolate mixture cool slightly, then stirred in the egg yolks and the sugar/cocoa mixture.

I whipped the cream to soft peaks,

and put it in the fridge while I whipped the egg whites and granulated sugar into soft peaks.

I folded the whites, and then the cream, into the chocolate mixture.

I poured the chocolate into the plastic-lined terrine mold, covered the top with plastic, and stored it in the fridge with the heavy lid in place. At this point there was absolutely no room left in the fridge for anything else — the entire dinner menu was in there.

While the chocolate chilled, I prepared a cup of raw shelled pistachios by blanching them in boiling water to loosen the skins, then spent the next hour slipping skins off of about a hundred pistachios. I toasted them on a sheet pan in a 350 °F oven for about seven minutes, let them cool, set aside thirty six whole nuts, and roughly chopped the rest.

For the final assembly, I sauced each plate with the crème anglaise, unmolded the terrine and cut it into quarter-inch slices (using a meat slicer heated in hot water), arranged them over the custard, topped with three whole pistachios, and garnished the edges with chopped nuts.

I served a Taylor Fladgate twenty year old tawny port with the terrine, not wanting to mess with the classic chocolate/port combination.

I don’t need to tell you how it tasted: you already know, because it’s chocolate. A very dense, deep, velvety chocolate that absolutely needed the lightness of the crème and the astringency of the port to keep it from overwhelming the palate.

I basked in the glow of another successfully (for the most part) executed dinner for about a minute, when, to my utter horror, I found my self thinking: What will I serve next year?

Sources:

Chocolate, pistachios, cream, butter: Whole Foods

Vanilla: Penzey’s

Eggs: Feather Ridge Farms

Port: The Wine and Cheese Cask

It would be cool if you could figure out a way to use these,” said She Who Must Be Obeyed, dropping a package of sterile culture tubes on top of my Bouchon cookbook. I was still in the planning stages for her Fifth Annual Birthday Dinner, and now she had made her first — and only — suggestion about the menu.

I had used tubes like those every day during my biotech research career, so I immediately thought of using them as serving pieces for a transitional dish between the main course and dessert. I remembered a recipe from the Alinea cookbook that I thought would be appropriate, something that looked strange but tasted very familiar.

To make the caramel base, I measured out 375 grams of sugar, 350 grams of glucose, 50 grams of heavy cream, and 100 grams of butter.

I combined everything in a pan set over medium heat and cooked it until it reached 230 °F.

The mixture was at the correct temperature, but clearly not at the caramel stage, so I turned up the heat a bit and eyeballed it until it was the correct color.

I poured the liquid napalm (don’t ever get that stuff on your skin!) onto a sheet tray lined with a silicone mat, and let it cool to room temperature.

To make the “dry caramel,” I weighed out 210 grams of cooled caramel chunks. I also weighed out 65 grams of tapioca maltodextrin, which produced another science flashback, this one to my research position at General Foods. The chemical is a very light fluffy powder that gets everywhere as you try to weigh it out. I also measured out 15 grams of Maldon sea salt.

I combined the caramel and maltodextrin in a food processor and whizzed it until the caramel was “completely absorbed” — at least that whet the recipe said. In reality, I still had tiny caramel bits that wouldn’t get any smaller.

I spooned the powder into a dozen tubes, sprinkled the salt on the top, capped them tightly and returned them to the styrofoam rack in which they were originally packaged. As I offered a tube to each guest, I recommended that they tip the contents into their mouths.

How did it taste? The dish is supposed to be served in a glass with a much wider mouth than my tubes, so there was a very concentrated salt hit at the beginning. Once past the salt, however, the powder reacted with the moisture in my mouth and reconstituted what was obviously a very buttery salted caramel. It was a culinary magic trick that made everyone laugh.

I still have a container full of unused caramel as well as a pint of the caramel powder. Now I need some new unsuspecting guests.

Sources:

Glucose, tapioca maltodextrin: L’Epicerie

Butter, cream, salt: Whole Foods