Tastefully Overcaramelized

Abe says

For me as a fan of good food, sometime-neurotic person, and maintainer of multiple chronically-behind to-do lists, it is important to periodically develop grand plans for a multicourse dinner party and then make frantic attempts to execute on them. As personal milestones they are markers of my culinary progress and opportunities to completely focus on something I love. In college I made a couple five course dinners for eight, but that was honestly a long time ago, and while our new year’s party and Valentine’s day menus were complicated affairs they really didn’t have enough intensity to qualify.

So having found ourselves in the midst of a biweekly dinner ring it was only in due time that a suitable occasion would come.

Of the eight of us, two are vegetarian, and while I wouldn’t personally do that Ann and I have been trying to eat a little more healthily and a little more sustainably and cutting the meat here and there certainly helps. How to make a really satisfying, haute vegetarian menu has also, probably due to my own biases, baffled me in the gaping emptiness usually filled with delicious meat, seafood, and poultry.

So I planned a menu, below. I’d figured I could do six courses, plus mignardises, with some planning and make-ahead. Later, scheduling placed dinner square on a Friday evening, which would later pose problems, but we’re not there yet.

A Vegetarian Tasting Menu

Warm orange and thyme-marinated Castelveltrano olives, inspired by a favorite at Licorous.

An appetizer trio of Tellicherry peppercorn gougères, strawberry gelées, and fried herbed goat cheese rounds.

Spring pea soup, with oyster mushrooms and garlic chips, actually made with frozen peas since they’re not in season yet. I’d been thinking of a vegetarian “fish and chips” with oyster mushrooms, taking inspiration from The French Laundry cookbook.

Truffled white bean salad, with mâche, green beans, roasted tomato vinaigrette, and Pecorino Romano. Truffle and romano was a flavor combination I learned from Chef Jaime at the cafeteria at work, and the roasted tomato vinaigrette was an approximate reproduction of one she served with ahi tuna.

Grapefruit tarragon sorbet, our first adventure with xanthan gum. The recipe was from Epicurious but since it would need to sit in the freezer for a day to make room for the ice cream we blended the sorbet with half a teaspoon of the stuff on the advice of Herbivoracious.

Beet gnocchi with pine nuts, Parmigiano-Reggiano, balsamic beet purée, and beet greens. I had quite nearly been angsting for a week over what to serve with the gnocchi, as I’d become fixated on presenting the gnocchi and greens as looking kind of, sort of, like a beet. I took inspiration from a very simple plating from Lampreia, and from pickled beets for the purée.

Vanilla bean ice cream with ghost chili caramel and pink flake salt. Steve had given us some smoked ghost chilis from World Spice, and I’d been neglecting them. No longer.

Dark chocolate truffles and candied grapefruit peel.

Ann says

Did you guys catch Abe’s use of the word “haute”?  Goodness.

In any case, all of the food turned out really tasty and fun.  I ate the leftovers this morning.  My favorite thing was the salad.  I would put that vinaigrette on anything.

Abe says

So I under-budgeted time-wise, and Ann picked up the slack, but as a general rule I come from a mindset where I frequently plan more than I can do, but prioritize, keep contingencies, and do what I can. Ann, however, stayed completely calm throughout the whole ordeal. A-hem.

The gougères had no substantial pepper, the Mornay didn’t make it into most of their centers, the goat cheese started melting in the oil and ended up spread on Triscuits, and the gelée didn’t gel and ended up as jam. Two people had to cancel at the last minute. There was no time to strain the soup. The garlic chips got overcaramelized, but were good that way. I also forgot the pine nuts in the gnocchi. The grapefruit peel also didn’t dry and crystallize, and there was simply no time to finish the chocolate truffles.

But, everything tasted good. Flavors that had before only danced in my head actually danced on their plates. The xanthan gum worked, thankfully. All the gnocchi angst paid off, and the pasta itself had good beet color and flavor. The soup and salad were awesome. You can’t go wrong with infused caramel sauces, either. The wines, generally inexpensive and picked with different flavors in mind, all paired pretty well. And everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

Below I’ve summarized the (successful) recipes I created for the dinner. I could, certainly, generate more precise versions, though, so leave a comment if you’d like to see any.

Spring Pea Soup

Sauté a diced shallot in butter, add 2 cups of vegetable stock and bring to a boil. Purée a thawed bag of frozen peas, then add stock and purée further. Adjust seasoning and strain.

Slice a few cloves of garlic as thin as possible. Blanch in milk. Fry in oil at 300ºF until lightly brown or the bubbles have stopped.

Serve soup in bowls with a drizzle of heavy cream, topped with mushrooms and garlic. Wedges of levain bread would also be appropriate.

Truffled White Bean Salad

Soak dried white beans for six to eight hours. Simmer with sautéed onion for an hour, add salt, pepper, and a bay leaf and simmer for another hour. Cool to room temperature then stir in truffle oil to taste.

Roast a shallot with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Purée with some canned Muir Glen fire roasted crushed tomatoes and olive oil, then with sherry vinegar, a touch of dijon mustard, salt, and pepper. (Adapted from Jaime Mullins)

Blanch green beans in salted water for 4-5 minutes then shock in an ice water bath. They should be tender but not floppy.

Toss mâche with a little dressing and green beans with a lot of dressing. Plate mâche, green beans, and white beans and top with shaved Pecorino Romano.

Beet Gnocchi with Balsamic Beet Puree and Beet Greens

Roast a pound of potatoes and a pound of beets. Put the potatoes through a ricer and grate the beets. Make into gnocchi with one and a half cups of flour, three egg yolks, salt, and pepper, combining the dough quickly so it doesn’t get tough. When it is barely moist, form into a ball, then into long 1/2 inch rolls. Cut off a single gnocchi. Test it in boiling salted water for about two minutes, until it floats to the top. If needed add more flour then make the rest, a handful at a time. (Adapted from The French Laundry Cookbook)

Purée about a cup roasted beet with salt, pepper, splashes of balsamic vinegar and olive oil, and a sprig of fresh or frozen tarragon. It should be savory and a bit thick, but thin with olive oil if desired.

Sauté two bunches of beet greens with butter, add a splash of apple cider vinegar, then cover and cook for 10-15 minutes until tender.

Grate some Parmigiano-Reggiano in a food processor to get that fresh-from-the-green-plastic-container look. Sauté gnocchi in butter to give them a little bit of texture, and serve.

Ghost Chili Caramel Sauce

Bring 4/3 cups sugar, 1/3 cup water, and two crushed, medium, smoked ghost chilis to boil, and boil for a while, periodically (a) brushing down the sides with a wet brush (b) swirling gently and (c) tasting. When it’s far too spicy for you, strain out the chilis, but remember that once cooled and caramelized a lot of the heat will go away. When it reaches a caramel color, pour in 2/3 cup heavy cream. It will boil vigorously. Stir in a couple tablespoons of butter, and cool. Caramel will keep for a couple weeks in the refrigerator. (Adapted from Bon Appétit)

Filed under: Desserts, Main Courses, Recipes, Sauces, Side Dishes, Soups and Stews, Vegetables by Abe on April 19, 2009. Tagged with: balsamic vinegar, beet greens, beets, caramel, cheese, dinner group, garlic, ghost chili, gnocchi, gougeres, grapefruit, ice cream, mache, mushrooms, parmesan, peas, romano, shallots, tarragon, tasting menu, the french laundry, truffles, vanilla, vegetarian, vinaigrette, white beans, xanthan gum.