Cookout 2: Chicken Cordon Bleu

So this would actually be the first cookout where i had to thoroughly plan a course. Ben and Eric had an idea for a coffee tasting session, followed by a main course and a dessert. This was actually pretty entertaining for me, as it was my first event.

Walnut Biscuits with Coffee

The amount of coffee we had was close to an illegal drug dealing session of caffeine. B**** we got high on coffee. I decided to have some walnut cookies to go with the coffee. I had some walnut pralines which i used in the cookie. But Ben commented it and said it was slightly too sweet and sticky to have it in a coffee tasting session. It makes sense but, Ben, it broke my heart, it really did... Nah jokes, it really did make sense. Next time i'm just using simple butter cookie or a shortbread for this.

Variations of Chicken Cordon Bleu

Chicken Cordon Bleu, AKA chicken blue ribbon. Whut? It's basically a flattened out chicken breast, wrapped around ham and cheese, breaded and then baked or pan fried. A simple dish really, but i tried to play around with it.

 Chicken Cordon Bleu - Chicken, Ham, cheese, Bacon, Bread Crumb Crust,

Cauliflower Puree, Red Wine Jus, Italian Parsley

My first variation was this. It's a crusted version. A simple crust made of herbs, bread crumbs, olive oil, salt and pepper. The chicken, instead of the usual breast, i used the thigh. It's flattened slightly and rolled with parma ham and cheese inside. The outside is wrapped with bacon, which is than wrapped tightly in aluminium foil and poached for 20 minutes. It's left in the fridge to cool slightly for around 5-10 minutes, than coated with the crust and baked for another 10 minutes.

This was slightly too oily, and the saltiness of the bacon was retained by the crust. Rather then using olive oil in the crust, I'll go for eggs next time.

  Chicken Cordon Bleu - Chicken, Ham, cheese, Bacon, Parma Ham,

Cauliflower Puree, Red Wine Jus, Italian Parsley

This was good, the parma ham had just a small amount of saltiness, which went really well with the cauliflower puree. This is pretty much similar to the above, crusted variation, but instead of bacon wraps, its a parma wrap. Taking bacon to another level.

 Chicken Cordon Bleu - Chicken, Ham, cheese, Bacon, Bacon,

Cauliflower Puree, Red Wine Jus, Italian Parsley

And this is the bacon wrapped variation. It'd would have been alot better if the bacon was crispier. Crispy bacon? More like Heaven snaps. Crispy heaven snaps.

 White Chocolate Mousse with Strawberry Compote and Tulie

The chocolate mousse was thick as WOAH. The strawberry compote did little to get any contrast out of it, i should have added some mintiness to it, like perilla or mint. Or maybe a hint of acidity like lemon. The tulip was nice haha. This would've been perfect if the portion wasn't the size of a viking ship.

Left: Tahuna, Hawke's Bay New Zealand, Pinot Noir 2011

Right: Strevi, Piedmont Italy, Moscato d'Asti 2010

Wine pairing this time was slightly disappointing. The saltiness and heaviness of the cordon bleu parade was slightly over whelming, the slightly mellow Pinot Noir was easily over taken by them. Poor, poor little Pinot Noir. The Moscato was a good and refreshing drink on it's own, but yet again, the thick and heavy chocolate mousse, with its creamy sweetness gave the Moscato a good bashing, it didn't go well together. Being a light drink it couldn't stand the weight of the chocolate mousse.
Food 1 : Wine 0. That's not a good thing hahaha The food was too heavy and the fault was on my shoulders. I explained the dish to Ben, but i failed to describe the taste and texture to him. Ben, following his knowledge of how a usual chocolate mousse or cordon bleu would taste, picked what he thought would go best. Miscommunication on my part, I'm sorry Ben, here have a kiss >3<~ <3 hahahahaha

Cook, eat, drink and be merry!

Cookout 3: The Fishy Deal

Our third session starts as a Fishy Deal! Fishy name suggested by our fishy sommelier, BEN TAN! Peace dude.

CEVICHE:

I have to admit, this was pretty fun to make. Ceviche involves "searing" the raw fish using an acid, normally from a citrus fruit like lemon or lime. The protein denatures as it is soaked in the acid. This causes the fish to firm up in texture and change its color. The longer you soak, the firmer and tougher it gets. A thin sear is something you want. we did it for 20 mins, it had a pretty good yield of results!

After cooking salmon for 20 mins in acid (lemon juice) 

I tried to be a little bit Asian in this ceviche. Additions of ginger juice and chili padi was to attain a slight kick for this dish. Though Ben mentioned it might have been a bad choice.

Ceviche of salmon with lemon and orange juice, ginger juice,

orange segments, chilli, basil, red onions

Which actually was. (The bad decision I mean). The ginger juice gave it a rather heavy, dull form of spiciness, as opposed to a lighter more refreshing feel (Ben's description). It was supposed to be VERY sour, enough to give you goose bumps, said Ben. But Gordon had never tasted a ceviche before, and he knows not of how it tastes. "I thought it would've been a good idea to add sweet orange juice in!" exclaimed Gordon. "Well, it sucks, and now due to that it lacks the OOMPH." Ben rebuked. The end.

Well if i ever do it once more I think i know just how it should be!

EN PAPILLOTE:

En Pappillote is basically wrapping the fish in a bag, filled with herbs and other fruits or onions to perfume the fish while its baked. Its basically steaming the fish in the bag, so its vital to make sure its wrapped up tightly. A short 15 mins at a 180 deg oven should give you a moist result.

Salmon en Papillote with lemon, basil, red onions, salt, pepper

I was trying to play it safe and baked it for another 5-7 mins, which gave me a rather disappointing fish. Slightly dry, overcooked, lost some of its sheen....just like my life. The proper one should have a glistening contrast to it, nice juices seeping out of it and slides off, rather then flaking. If you see white substances piercing through the flesh it's a sign that it's pretty much over done.

Salmon en papillote

We chose to serve this on a chopping board to give it a warm, rustic feeling. 

Ratatouille - Red, orange, green peppers, aubergines, courgrettes, onion, tomato

I wanted to give the ratatouille more texture. Instead of stewing it along with the tomato sauce, i sauteed the vegetables first. Peppers were roasted before hand in the oven to remove the skin, then sauteed for a while in olive oil. Once the vegetables are done thrashing around in a hot pan, i spooned in the tomato sauce and allowed the vegetables to to coat themselves lavishly in the rich tomato sauce.

Salmon en papillote on a bed of ratatouille topped with pickled cucumbers

I think this went pretty well together. The rich salmon gave the palate a nice coat of flavors, then the ratatouille, with its crisp and slightly tangy flavor gave it a lift. Due to the fact that the vegetables were not stewed in the tomato sauce, they all retained their original flavors, and gave the ratatouille a very complex but yet crisp feel.

EN CROUTE DE SEL:

In crust of salt, i think that's what it means. Basically creating a salt crust oven, to both marinate the fish and to bake it in its own moisture. The salt draws the moisture out due to its hydroscopic attribute, and serves to intensify the flavor of the fish. Lemon and herbs are filled in the cavities of the fish so as to generate desirable flavors and steam.

Preparing salt bake

Basically you need a lot of salt. For this small sized sea bass which was approximately 7-800 grams? It needed around the same weight of salt to fully coat it, which was around 800 grams. You can choose to flavor the salt however you like. I chose rosemary, pepper and nutmeg. It does give the fish a slightly more appealing aroma, but taste wise it does little. Mix the salt with egg whites from 1 and a 1/2 egg. This allows the crust to harden and encase the fish to retain the heat while it bakes. Bake it in an oven 200 deg for around 15 mins. Depending on the size of the fish.

 After baking

The crust should form into a hardened cocoon of salt. It is not advisable to keep the crust encasing the fish for too long as it continues to bake inside, and the salt is also continously extracting moisture from the fish. Now that you are done marvelling at this mysterious cocoon of fishy goodness, time to smash it.

Cracking the salt crust 

Salt shall fly. Grab a vacuum cleaner. And also, hot as hell. Be careful when you're doing this or you'll end up squealing like a wuss like i did.

Retrieve seabass from salt crust 

Remove the skin from the fish, it lost all its moisture and is just chewy and dry, very bad for your kidneys as well because, it's gonna be hell of a salty skin. The skin should peel of very easily from the fish. Simply remove the head, make a cut on the fish at the part just before the meat ends near the tail, and peel off the skin. Slide your knife gently down the spine of the fish, and slowly tease the flesh out.

Seabass en croute de sel served on a bed of warm potato and mushroom salad

The warm potato salad dried up while we were having the shoot T_T I should have made the cream sauce separately and had it poured over when we wanted to eat it. The fish was slightly over done sadly, playing it safe for fish caused me a huge mistake, I should have more confidence in my timing next time. The salad was supposed to moisten up the fish with its cream sauce, but due to the fact that the potatoes actually sucked them all up like sponges made it all dry. The mushrooms were still juicy which was the good part. The flavor of the fish was also intense, I wouldn't say it was a total failure, but not a good enough effort.

WINE PAIRING:

Left: Pooley, Coal River Tasmania Australia, Riesling 2011

Right: Ashbrook, Magaret River Australia, Chardonnay 2009

The riesling had a slightly more acidic tang to it, it was a refreshing choice and went pretty well with the salt baked sea bass. The Chardonnay was a confusing one. It didn't really compliment the salmon, nor the sea bass. But it complimented the potato salad hahaha! But, yet when we had the sea bass together with the potato salad it gave us another dimension. Wine really is confusing to me. I feel this was a rather complicated wine pairing session, this wine went with this part but didn't in another part. I thought it was pretty enjoyable and fun though. "I" am Gordon, nice to meet you, and i know little about wine. -_-

Cook, eat, drink and be merry!

Cookout 1: Goose Liver

Braised Goose Liver. From China. Provided generously by one of our member, Eric. This was seriously good. It came to us in a vacuum packed packaging, sealed in together with some form of fats in it. It was nice and smooth, not like the grainy, rough textured livers you might find off a typical braised duck store in Singapore. I'm not even sure if Singapore has a store that sells braised goose. If you do know of one that sells amazing braised geese (or the liver at least), do recommend it to us!

Braised Goose Liver

Ben, our in-house sommelier in training, suggested to have a little bruschetta made using the braised goose liver. The little cook wannabe in my mind immediately pictured something i THOUGHT would be nice.

Goose Liver rendered in Duck Fat, topped with Tomato, Macerated Orange,

Alfafa, Spring Onion, Olive Oil, Vinegar, served on freshly baked Baguette 

Aaaaaaaand this was it. I was thinking of giving the goose liver a more refreshing feel to it, as it was pretty thick and heavy. Macerated oranges marinated in cloves, sugar, cinnamon and some nutmeg. A raw tomato, alfafa and spring onion salad tossed together with the oranges and a balsamic vinaigrette. It gave a nice texture and a juicy bite as well as a good tang of acidity. All of that topped with a slice of goose liver, riding proudly on a slice of toasted home made baguette.

Proudly munched down by who ever took this photo. I can't remember who. I'm old.

 Home-made Foccacia with Oven-Roasted Tomato and Rosemary

Next on sampling was this. Picked up this recipe while studying under a magnificent baker. Previously the Head Baker of the Bread Project Singapore, Hafizh tweaked the Foccacia to suit the Singaporean palate. Nice and fluffy, with a gummy,moist crumb, topped with oven roasted tomatoes and rosemary. Sprinkled with a touch of salt and pepper just before baking. Served rustically here, with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Left: Hugel et Fils, Alsace France, Riesling 2008

Right: Marios, Sutherland Estate, Yarra Valley Victoria Australia, Shiraz 2007

The Riesling was fantastic. In my opinion it was very good with the goose liver as it didn't over power it, but it gave the pair a very clean and crisp feel. The Shiraz was good as well. The characteristic spice which i was taught was a profile that most Shiraz has, came through pretty well with this one.

 This was a pretty good session. The pairing didn't seem to disappoint, and we found a very good Riesling.

Cook, eat, drink and be merry!