3.10.2009

Torchon 102

After all that work, here is the finished product.




Remove the "torchon", or towel. Warm your slicing knife in hot water then wipe dry and slice through the cheese cloth. Use a ring cutter, same hot water method, and cut the foie. From this point we brush with extra virgin, season with fleur de sel, and pipe on the verjus.



The finished amuse is
foie torchon...strawberry, verjus, brioche
We cut the verjus slightly with water then make a fluid gel with agar. Then we brunoise the outside of the strawberry and season. The inside of the strawberry is cooked down in simple syrup and salt, pureed, strained, mixed with 1% xanthan and 2% versawhip. Then whip until light. The regret here is that I wish we would have added some beet juice to keep a nice dark red color, the flavors would have played.



The acid from the verjus cuts through the fat of the foie, the sweet and salty notes of the two textures of strawberry provide balance. The crisp brioche, well, what is foie without brioche. The crispy, buttery note of the brioche "rounds" out the dish. There are always tweaks, would I do it the same again, no. That is how it works, evolution of our dishes is key. When you come up with something for the first time you always have the initial feeling that this is going to be great. Then hindsight sets in, you produced a good dish, but how can we improve upon it?

2 comments:

  1. The torchon looks good and the strawberry looks like its something between air and light foam , a very interesting application...
    How much does it yield final product wise , in weight?

    ReplyDelete
  2. If you whip it long enough it gets almost meringue like. The final product is very light, 1 quart of base turns into 6 quarts when whipped and it will hold for service. We will be using this on our new menu for our raw bar. Most likely for a chilled maine lobster plate with avocado, whipped lime, jalpeno caramel. Speaking of, new menu change in the works and coming very soon.

    ReplyDelete