Mushroom Dusted Meringue Mushrooms

In an attempt to follow a nature theme with my petits fours selection, I thought mushrooms would make a fun end to the meal. 
I started with just a plain espresso meringue mushroom with a little ground espresso on top.  Although tasty, I was looking for something with more of a flavor twist.  Using the same espresso meringue base, I sprinkled powdered black trumpets over the caps, and voila! 
Held together with dark chocolate, and stuck to the board with a dab of salted caramel, the whole bite is all at once sweet, bitter, salty and earthy.
Below is our winter trio of mignardises, including chocolate dipped crystallized anise hyssop leaves, hiding in a shrub of fennel fronds and carrot tops.

My Way To Sorbet

Most restaurants will offer a sorbet selection for that rare breed who doesn't like dessert.  For those with lactose intolerance, it is almost always (and sadly) the only option.  And most restaurants will serve their sorbet with a reluctance that shows in the presentation, normally a couple of scoops dropped in a bowl or individual cups.  Unfortunately, I cannot claim innocence to such vapid presentations, but I can assure you that I've sworn them off for life now!
I am now trying to treat the sorbet plate less like a thorny step-sister, and more like my new b.f.f.  In keeping with the non-dairy parameters, a bed of grapefruit granite plays host to three complimenting sorbet flavors.  Each flavor has its signature scoop: a perfect sphere, a rough coil, and a quenelle.  Topped with a little sour sorrel and an apple glass spiral, the simple yet elegant composition elevates the humble sorbet plate into a real dish.
For my next (sorbet) act, I'm thinking of just focusing on a single flavor, like pear, and building the dish around a solitary scoop.  Pear granite, poached pear, pickled pear, pear brulee, pear glass, pear espuma, oh, and fresh pear. What do you think?

Would You Eat A Stone?

Okay, so it's been done before... the rock thing, I mean.  I'VE never done it.. until now!!  And I'm loving the results!  A couple months ago, I was fiddling around with a black sesame mochi ice cream for the dessert menu (another thing I hadn't done before) in the shape of a small rock.  It took me and two of my cooks two hours (!!) to individually wrap 'stones' of black sesame ice cream with sheets of black sesame mochi in the walk-in FREEZER.  The finished product was truly amazing, with their matte grey skins dusted & mottled with cornstarch.  My idea was to serve it with a tahini gel, toasted sesame streusel and poached apricots.  Although completely awesome, the practicality of producing these on a larger scale would be too painful, too time-consuming, and really not worth all the effort for just a single component on a dish.  So I left it, knowing that one day I would come around again to the same concept, but in a different format.

Round 2:  Chocolate.  My previous job post afforded me the luxury of a temperature controlled chocolate room.  I think I put it to pretty good use (see some of my older blog posts).  I don't have that luxury anymore.  You can call me spoiled, but I don't feel altogether comfortable working with chocolate in a room that's warmer than 67 degrees.  My current kitchen is a bit warmer and I haven't really done much with chocolate outside the simple realm of mendients and a round of peanut butter cups.  That said, I do feel it's important in a restaurant of our caliber to showcase chocolate work in some form.  So what about a rock petit four?!?

I wanted to keep the black sesame flavor 1) because I love sesame, 2) because I love the natural slate grey hue the black sesame paste creates.  The interior is a simple butter & white chocolate ganache, flavored and colored with said paste and a touch of salt.  The ganache is then piped into random rock shapes and chilled to harden.  Once cold, any sharp edges are dulled by rolling between gloved hands.  The interiors are then dipped (by hand, ugh) into tempered 70%, then dropped into a sifted mixture of 10X & black cocoa powder.  Once the enrobage hardens, the dust is shaken off to reveal the most precious and delicious stones you will ever put in your mouth!  Still a lot of work, but much more practical to produce.. and no risk of frost bite.

A simple presentation of resting the stones on a 'knoll' of pistachio powder and garnishing with a twig and some gai lan flowers keeps it all zen-like, and does not deter the attention away from the star of show.

The Grape That Concord All

 

A perfect fall dessert.  Chilled concord grape consomme with fromage blanc mousse.  Garnishes include crystallized anise hyssop, pumpernickel soil, pumpernickel lace, and fresh red grapes.  Light & refreshing yet full of flavor, color, & texture.

On Chocolate & Plating

  

Chocolate:
Okay, I admit it.  I don't really like chocolate.  When out to dinner, I'll always opt for a fruit or ice cream based dessert; never the rich chocolate ganache or molten cake.  Of course, my profession requires me to provide the public with what they want.. and that is almost inevitably, Chocolate!  This is my version of a non-chocolate lover's chocolate dessert, and it uses no less than four types of said ingredient.  I think my gripe about most chocolate desserts is that they end up being a gut bomb of too bitter, too sweet, and too heavy.  In this dish, I've aimed to obliterate everything I hate about chocolate desserts.
I heart Valrhona, and it is well exploited here.  "Caramelia" panna cotta, dehydrated "Coeur de Guanaja" mousse, caramelized "Ivoire" ganache, and a super light "Guanaja" sponge.  The whole shebang is offset with a refreshing and tangy quenelle of buttermilk sorbet.  Nothing in this dish is overly creamy, overly rich, nor overly dense.


Plating:
One more thing to admit:  I don't care for ring molds, or most things molded for that matter.  This is not to say I like to see a mess on a plate.  Food in general lately has become much more free flowing and organic in presentation, and I consider my plating style to be in the same frame of thought.  For example, the panna cotta, instead of being set into a mold and plopped onto the plate, is gently quenelled into a wobbly & shiny mound.  The dehydrated mousse is roughly chopped into a dark rubble.  The Guanaja sponge is hand torn to naturally expose those beautiful air pockets.  What you can't see is the caramelized Ivoire ganache (professionally known as "nemalaka") that's hidden under all of the above.  The whole composition is then condensed onto one third of the plate.  As with Valrhona, I heart negative space.  I am one of those freaks who has absolutely no qualms about using a huge piece of porcelain to hold four bites of food.  No apologies.