VEGETABLE STATION: ENTREMETIER

Tonight is our first night at Entremetier where we will prepare vegetarian dishes that get served in the restaurant. Entremetier prepares two dishes a night but unlike the other stations in the restaurant there isn't a Level Four contingency to this station, it's all Level Three. While not many of the dishes are ordered by the customers it's a chance for us to come up with our own recipes, to use what we've learned in school and combine it with our outside food interests and to get some feedback from our colleagues and our instructors. Tonight we'll be doing a roasted tomato with sorrel pesto and a thai green curry. More to come after class...

DISH #1: Thai Green Cury With Basmati Rice, Asparagus, Pommes Parisennes, Cherry Tomatoes

RECIPE: First we minced ginger, green chili peppers and minced garlic with coconut milk and reduced it by half. We cooked the potatos and asparagus a l'anglaise and plated the rice in the center of the bowl with the curry and the vegetables around the rice.

BREAKDOWN: It was a relatively simple dish to make, the biggest challenge being not touching anything else (especially the eyes and face) after mincing the chopped chili peppers.

DISH: Tomato Bruschetta With Sorrel and Walnut Pesto and Honey Balsamic Reduction

RECIPE: Mince garlic cloves, sorrel and parmesan cheese in food processor with olive oil and crushed walnuts until the pesto is mostly soft with small bits. Slice baguette on bias and lightly toast in oven until crisp. On medium heat, reduce balsamic vinegar and honey until slightly syrupy. Slice tomatoes 1/2 inch thick, pat dry with paper towel and grill. Garnish plate with honey-balsamic reduction and rinsed micro-greens. Place tomato slices on two or three toasted baguette slice and spread pesto on top. For sorrel 'jus' finely chop a bunch of sorrel with a few ice chips and salt. Bloom gelatin in cold water and warm sorrel puree on low heat. Add soft gelatin to sorrel puree and cool then transfer to squeeze bottle.

We placed some thin slices of parmesan on top of the pesto atop the baguette and tomato slices. While tasty in the future I'm loath to serve a dish which consists of bread slices. My philosophy is that stuffing is one thing but when there are bread slices on the table the customers don't need more served to them.

The most interesting and frustrating thing about today's experimenting was the sorrel jus. I was hoping to create something that would be similar to the berry compote with which we garnish pastry plates. Another group had done an asparagus jus previously which started running soon after being put on the plate so I hoped to learn from this and create something a little thicker. The gelatin helped and the flavor of the sorrel jus was an interesting contrast but even with the thickener the jus began to run after a minute on the plate. It might have helped had the plates been colder but another solution might be to use xantham gum. Next time.

Even though we were responsible for making, cooling and cleaning up the stocks we didn't get any orders for the dishes we'd created and we had some time on our hands. I had brought two recipes to try, the Butter Chicken recipe the Washington Post had run last week and a recipe for Golub Jamun, one of my childhood favorite desserts.

The Butter Chicken calls for a spice mixture which we didn't have called garam masala. While further investigation reveals that it's not terribly difficult to make I was too tempted by the syrupy sweetness of Golub Jamun. I'd looked at several recipes which strangely seemed to be fond of using Bisquick:

I Love India.com

I rushed out of the house on the way to school with a recipe that uses Bisquick that I'd gotten from Wikipedia. I subsituted the cup of Bisquick with a cup of flour and a teaspoon of baking powder. Unfortunately the storeroom didn't seem to have dry milk powder either and we were given dry egg whites. We also substituted orange-water for cardomom.

The results weren't fantastic. We had to reduce all ingredients because we only had a cup of the dry egg whites and the recipe called for three cups of dry milk. Substitutions, substitutions, substitutions...too many. The balls were too small and cooked very quickly. Even soaking in the syrup overnight, they were too dry. Next time I'll make sure to have everything on hand first.

The following recipes which use ghee (clarified butter) and flour (!) seem more promising:

Recipecottage.com
ivcooking.com
Allrecipes.com