Friday, April 20, 2007

Trial and Error

Upon arriving for my second shift of the day I began to piece together what I wanted to do for the Amuse.

I prepared a Broccoli soup as well as a red pepper coulis. I also prepared some Creme Fraiche with fresh tarragon.

In the end I am really glad I tasted each seperatly then together before plating up.

The result was an overpowering pepper and tarragon flavor which covered the main subject, Broccoli.

I spent some time toiling over what to do to fix the situation, I couldnt very well serve shots of Broccoli soup now could I?

So after a few minutes I swallowed my pride and approached one of the chef de cuisines and asked him for his take.

We tasted all the parts together and discussed why they werent working and what could be done.

What we settled on was plain creme fraiche and a hand puree of tomato concasse with taragon and rice wine vinegar. In the end it was the better choice. The tomatoes neutral flavor left the broccoli soup to shine through while adding tang and coolness to the dish.

So what did we learn today?

Pay attention to your main ingredient. A concept I had neglected to remember. Also, sometimes you have to swallow your pride and ask for a second opinion because as hard as it may be to do so, sometimes it can get you on the right path.

2 comments:

The O said...

Rice wine vinegar? That's a new one to me. There are so many frickin' kinds of vinegar out there. We already have 3 types of vinegar here, then I wanna make this marinade for some pork chops and the recipe calls for cider vinegar....::sigh::

The Foodist said...

Well you can cheat with cider vinegar if you want.. just split it 3:1 Vinegar to Apple Juice.

Rice wine is used mostly in asian cooking (obviously) try marinating strips of chicken, beef, or pork in a rice wine vinegar and soy mix next time you do a stir fry or something of the sort.

Alot of the vinegars you see today are "Fusion" types, Raspberry and the like. Not really needed for alot basicly a short cut when you want one.