Every now and then He Who Will Not Be Ignored surprises me by saying something that proves not only that he does listen to me, but also that he is capable of formulating new ideas. The latest instance of this occurred while we watched the Boston episode of Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods America (although I’m pretty sure the Boston title would be pronounced “b’ZAH”). During his visit to Clio restaurant, Zimmern saw chef Ken Oringer make powdered chorizo by mixing tapioica maltodextrin with rendered chorizo fat. He Who, who has seen me make powders out of caramel, peanut butter, and french toast, said “Dad, we have to make powdered buffalo sauce and serve it with chicken.” I don’t know if the orange color of the chorizo fat reminded him of buffalo sauce or if he just made the connection that fat can be converted to powder, but I agreed the we had to experiment with his idea. What follows is our experiment, with additional commentary from He Who.

Not long after this conversation, The Boston Globe ran an review of Oringer’s newly-reopened sushi bar, Uni. One of the new dishes was his take on tori no kara-age (deep-fried chicken nuggets), which in his presentation were uniform little cubes of chicken – an effect achieved  by gluing chicken thighs together with transglutaminase. That’s where we began, layering boneless skinless thighs in a 8″ x 8″ plastic-lined baking pan. I taught He Who how to season by sprinkling salt from high above the food for more even distribution.

He dusted transglutaminase over the first layer and on the thighs waiting to become the second layer.

We wrapped the chicken in plastic, set a second pan on top, weighed everything down with a brick, and let it sit in the fridge overnight.

We made our own buffalo sauce by combining a half cup of hot sauce (Frank’s Red Hot) with four tablespoons of butter, a tablespoon each of dark brown sugar and cider vinegar, and two tablespoons of Tabasco.

I sneaked in some extra salt and pepper when you weren’t looking.

While the sauce cooled, we made a celery emulsion by juicing and straining six celery ribs which we blended with half a gram of xanthan gum. We also made a blue cheese sauce by blending and straining cheese, cream, milk, and olive oil. We poured the mixture into an ISI canister, incorporated two cream chargers, and refrigerated until needed.

To make the buffalo sauce powder we began with equal volumes of sauce and maltodextrin, half a cup each.

The sauce handily absorbed the powder and showed no signs of thickening. After three more half-cup additons of powder the sauce had thickened to the consistency of ketchup. At this point we halved the working amount, continued to add maltodextrin, and eventually wound up with a coarse powder.

Unfortunately, after five minutes the powder turned into a thick, sticky mass. We set it aside while we worked on the chicken, which was now a solid block.

We cut it into smaller blocks which we dredged in cornstarch seasoned with cayenne and black pepper.

While the chicken spent time in the deep fryer, we returned our attention to the failed powder. This is when He Who had another brilliant idea: “It’s like taffy. Roll it out and cut it with a circle cutter.” Which is exactly what we did.

To plate, we used some of the remaining thickened sauce, striped the celery emulsion next to it, and arranged the fried chicken. Each piece was topped with one of the sauce discs, and we finished by piping out some blue cheese mousse and adding pieces of celery core that resembled miniature stalks.

I wish the chicken looked more like fast-food fried chicken.

The heat from the chicken turned the sauce discs into buffalo caramels, an unexpected texture. Other than that misstep the dish was a hit: all of the taste of buffalo wings without having to worry about the bones and skin. He Who’s final approval was an enthusiastic thumbs up:

We discussed why the sauce had failed to turn into powder. Maltodextrin works best when mixed with something that is almost pure fat like caramel or peanut butter. Our homemade sauce was mostly water from both hot sauces as well as the vinegar.

Maybe we should have started with pre-made buffalo sauce instead.

If we had reduced the sauce down to a syrup before adding the matodextrin, I’m sure we would have succeeded. Of course, there’s only one way to be sure, so look for that result soon.

*It’s a grammatically valid English sentence.

I was recently invited to a “hot foods” party, which is not to be confused with a cold dish supper. Attendees were asked to contribute a spicy dish, either hot or cold. I expected to find chili, various dips, and chocolate-chili dessert combinations, but I wanted to bring something unique. Knowing that our hosts and some of the guests were serious ice cream makers, I decided to contribute a few pints of chocolate cayenne (from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream) as well as an original flavor combination. But what would that flavor be?

After a week of diners that included phở and Hainan chicken rice, I realized we had almost depleted our bottle of sriracha sauce. That’s when I got the idea to make fresh ginger ice cream with a sriracha swirl. Seeing this recipe for homemade sriacha solidified the concept, which would also let me claim the ice cream was completely homemade.

Huy Fong “rooster” brand sriracha – the version we all know and love – is made from red jalapeños, which are easily found year-round in California. I had to settle for a pound and a half of red fresno peppers instead.

After snipping off the stems but still leaving the green crowns, I tossed them whole into my food processor, along with six peeled garlic cloves, four tablespoons of light brown sugar, and a tablespoon of kosher salt.

I pulsed the peppers until they were finely chopped, then transferred them to a clean one-quart mason jar. I loosely screwed on a lid and set the jar in a warm place for a few days.

I stirred the peppers every day, and after the third day I noticed bubbles forming near the bottom, a sign of fermentation.

After a few more days, I noticed that the pepper pulp was floating on top of clear red liquid. I continued to stir each day until the level of the peppers in the jar stopped rising. I added the peppers to a blender along with half a cup of white vinegar and puréed the mixture until it was smooth.

I pushed the purée through a fine-meshed strainer, making sure to force through as much pulp as possible, leaving only seeds and pith behind.

I brought the purée to a boil, reduced the heat, and simmered for about ten minutes until it thickened. Although the reducing sauce lends an amazing smell to the kitchen, I advise against inhaling the fumes. I poured the sauce into a pint jar, let it cool, and stored it in the fridge. It has a six-month shelf life, but it never lasts that long at Chez Belm.

My homemade version tasted different than the canonical original. It was brighter and spicier, with a thinner texture. After examining the Huy Fong ingredient list, I see that I can improve the texture with the judicious addition of xanthan gum. I might be able to correct the taste if I can get my hands on some red jalapeños.

Why bother making the same thing that’s available in a plastic bottle? Because I can.

And what about the ginger-sriracha swirl ice cream? Were you at the party? It killed.

There’s nothing like a database crash to make you appreciate automated blog backups. I spent the beginning of the week elbows deep in SQL tables and WordPress documentation, and am happy to report that I was able to bring the blog back to life without  having to sell my soul to a UNIX geek.

I made a survey of the Deep Storage Facility to figure out what I could turn into stews and heartier dishes before the weather got too warm. I found two rock-solid ribeye steaks, which I decided to cook with a new technique instead of my usual sous vide. Just as I was about to go with the method recommended by a national charcuterie champion, I saw this article featuring Nathan Myhrvold, author of Modernist Cuisine (MC). His method involves blowtorching the frozen steak to give it a crust, then cooking it in a 180°F oven for about an hour. It looked easy enough, but when I consulted volume 5 of MC I saw that the beef rib steak recipe featured a half dozen accompaniments. I had the ingredients for all of them, the recipes didn’t look too difficult, and if I spaced out the tasks over two days I could work at a leisurely pace.

Salt Gel

I boiled salt and agar in water until the gel hydrated, then poured the solution into a mold which set in the fridge.

Beef Jus

I cheated. I couldn’t bring myself to cook a pound and a half of aged beef and bromelain (an enzyme) sous vide, squeeze all of the juice out of the cooked meat, and then centrifuge the juice at 27,500g. Okay, I didn’t have a centrifuge, either. Instead, I reduced homemade beef stock by half and continued with the recipe, which called for the addition of xanthan gum, guar gum, and MSG.

Shiitake Marmalade

Again, I was supposed to centrifuge tomato puree to separate out the clear, tomato-flavored “water,” but this time I achieved the same results with a different method: gel clarification. I combined the puree with gelatin, froze the mixture, then let it thaw in a cheesecloth-lined sieve.

All for 40 grams of liquid, which was added to a sweat of shiitakes, shallots, and garlic, all cooked in rendered beef marrow (which I actually had at hand in the Belm Utility Research Kitchen).

I added the mixture to some of the beef jus, thickened it with gelatin and xanthan, then corrected the seasoning with sherry vinegar, salt, and pepper.

Suet Mousseline

After reducing white beef stock, white wine, shallots, and white wine vinegar, I added heavy cream and low-acyl gellan.

Day one’s work was completed, with the marmalade, jus, and mousseline components waiting in the fridge.

Butternut Squash Purée

The MC recipe for the potato purée that accompanies the steak includes potato juice passed though – you guessed it – a centrifuge, which I suppose is Myhrvold’s implementation of Maslow’s hammer. The Times article had a sidebar for pressure-cooked squash purée, which became my substitution (at least until I get that centrifuge that’s been on my xmas list for two years…).

For the final push, I set the oven to 180°F, set up a water bath at 62°C, and put the pressure to the squash. I cooked four eggs in the water bath for about half an hour, then separated out the yolks, which I mixed with the stock/wine gel. I vacuum sealed 200 grams of beef suet and cooked it in the water bath until it liquefied.

While things cooked in the bath, I took a blowtorch to the frozen steaks.

I set the pan with the steaks in the oven, where it sat for 70 minutes. I blended the liquid beef fat into the egg fluid gel.

I poured this mixture into a siphon, charged it with nitrous oxide, and let it stay warm in the water bath. While the steaks finished cooking, I pureed the squash and warmed up the jus and shiitake marmalade.

I sliced and plated the steak, added the garnishes to separate dishes (including foaming the suet mousseline), then finished with some of the grated salt gel and a few dehydrated garlic chips.

The steak was as expected: perfectly rare out to the edges, with a caramelized crust. The salt gel, which came off my microplane grater looking like rice noodles, stayed solid even wen exposed to the heat of the steak. With the exception of the sweet squash puree (and I’ll never cook it any other way ever again), we treated the other garnishes like dipping sauces. The jus had a clean beef flavor, the marmalade provided the requisite deep onion/mushroom background, but the mousseline stole the show. I should have realized what it would taste like as I was preparing it – wine and shallot reduction, egg yolks, added fat – I had made a sauce béarnaise without the tarragon. We all mopped that cup completely clean.

The advantage to this steak cooking method was being able to use the water bath at one temperature and cook the steak at another, a problem easily solved with two sous vide rigs running simultaneously. I may not go through the trouble of making he jus and marmalade again, but that mousseline is a keeper.

If the story of Momofuku is David Chang turning a ramen obsession into a series of wildly successful restaurants, then the story of Momofuku Milk Bar is Christina Tosi turning whatever she could find in the Momofuku kitchen into delicious desserts. I bought the book with the intent of correcting my cereal milk panna cotta disaster, but I was quickly sidetracked by the other recipes. My first foray, cornflake-chocolate-chip-marshmallow cookies, was a huge hit  with the family holiday cookie exchange. I had intended on continuing through the book, moving from cookies to cakes, but there was a recipe at the end that kept calling to me: crack pie. How could I not make  something with that name?

Crack pie is a variation on traditional chess pie, which is best described as pecan pie without the nuts. That description would lead you to believe that the final product would be a crust full of goo, but the addition of milk and corn powders provide extra thickening. The filling is poured into a crust made from oatmeal cookie, which is where I began.

Rolled oats, butter, light brown sugar, flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and an egg yolk made enough batter to almost fill a quarter sheet pan. I had to restrain myself from nibbling at the cookie, which was much tastier than the oatmeal cookies I usually ignore. (Perhaps it has something to do with the absence of raisins.)

I pulsed the cookie with some additional salt and brown sugar, then mixed the crumbs with melted butter and divided the mix between two pie tins to make the crusts. I turned my attention to the filling, which was made from egg yolks, melted butter, heavy cream, light brown sugar, granulated sugar, salt, vanilla extract, powdered milk, and corn powder (made by pulverizing freeze dried corn kernels.)

I combined all of the dry ingredients in my mixer, then added the butter, cream & vanilla, and finally the eggs, beating at each step until the mixture was homogeneous.

I divided the filling between the two pie shells. I’ve given up on trying to eyeball equal amounts, relying on my scale to measure out equal weights instead.

After baking for 15 minutes at 350°F, I dropped the temperature to 325°F and continued to bake until just the center was still loose. After cooling the pies to room temperature, I froze them overnight, which Tosi describes as “the signature technique and result of a perfectly executed crack pie.” I transferred one of my perfectly executed pies to the fridge for an hour before serving with a scoop of chocolate cayenne ice cream, some whipped cream, and a spoonful of peanut butter powder.

Tosi mentions more than once in her book that she has a sweet tooth. I should have been tipped off by the sweetness of the cookies I had made, but I was not prepared for the sugar hit I got from the pie. It’s very sweet, a level of sweetness that made the ice cream act as the dessert’s savory component. Still, I couldn’t stop eating the pie – it was delicious, with perfect contrast between the crunchy and slightly salty crust and the firm, chewy filling. I had to force myself not to eat another piece, a testimony to the pie’s name. I purposely kept the second pie in the freezer to avoid wanting “just one more piece.”

But I’m okay, I can handle it. I’ve got it under control, really. I may be buying more eggs and butter this weekend, but it’s for breakfast, so back off.