Tasting menu 77

It looks like it should finally calm down a little this week. I have been so caught up with keeping prep levels up that I have had no time to play or work on anything new. I am finalizing a class that I will be teaching at Cookstreet in Denver. It looks like we are shooting for a April 1st class. The weather has been nothing short of bizarre this year. It has been 70 degrees in Denver for the past 3 days. We have had no snow fall this year. Cold weather reminds us to cook in different ways. It's hard to be in the mood for a good casoulet when it is so hot out.

Carbonated grapefruit
Palm sugar cured line caught tuna, tarragon, taro

Duck prosciutto
Fried risotto, black olive jell, black trumpet mushrooms

Passion fruit and sage sorbet
Poached grapes, blue champagne

Spicy shrimp blanket
Artichoke dirt, corn gnocchi, shallot

Mexican vanilla ice cream with frozen caramel apple crunch
Made tableside with liquid nitrogen

The Sausage Experiment

I have not done a lot of charcuterie since culinary school. I wanted to make a sausage using some new ingredients that I have been playing with. In this recipe dry milk has been replaced with butter powder. Eggs have been replaced with methocel and I am using Tasmanian peppercorns to achieve a earthy spicy quality. These sausages will cure for 48 hours and then we will smoke them in Cherry wood.

Recipe

2 lb Lean beef trimmings ground

1.5 lb Lean pork ground

1.5 lb Pork trimmings ground

1.4 oz Salt

2 oz Butter powder

1 oz Sugar

.05 oz Nutmeg

.3 oz Tasmanian black pepper ground

.05 oz Cardamon ground

2 oz Elephant garlic roasted and pureed

100 g Water

12 g Methocel SGA7C

1/16 tsp Sodium nitrite

3/4 tsp Sodium nitrate

Sheep casings

Heat the water and add the methocel. Pulse with a buerre mixer for 3 minutes. Let it stand for 5 minutes and pulse again. Add all ingredients in a mixer and mix on low speed for 3 minutes. Place in a bowl over another bowl of ice to keep mixture cold. Fill the casings and leave them to cure in the walk-in for 2 days. To finish, poach the sausages for 20 minutes and then cold smoke them for 1 hour