A la Carte Kitchen Week 5

A la Carte Kitchen Week 5 Menu:

Amuse: Deviled Quail Eggs
Bread: Brazilian Cheese Puffs
Soup: Artichoke-Mint
Salad: Radish Trio
Pasta: Goat Cheese-Sage Gnocchi
Entree: Seared Scallops
Dessert: Taste & Textures of Rice and Sesame

This week will be my official 'entrance' into the Back of the House. The (very) tentative syllabus said that the dessert for this week is "Taste & Textures of Rice and Sesame". I perked upon seeing that--there are so many Asian desserts using those two ingredients! Over the weekend, I brainstormed on possible ideas and components for the dessert, and the amuse idea I've been thinking about. Eggs are considered a seasonal spring ingredient; how about a traditional Japanese New Year's dish Nishikitamago (錦卵)? It's unusual, pretty, and delicious. But for those less adventurous palate, maybe a deviled egg--but an ordinary egg is too big for an amuse. Quail eggs on the other hand, are perfect for a one-bite-size amuse! For the dessert, I made a list of possible components:

Cake: Black sesame cake
Creamy component: rice pudding,
Frozen Component: Tahini ice cream, black sesame ice cream, ginger ice cream
Sauce: Orange-honey sauce
Garnish/Crunchy component: puffed rice, orange/citrus chip, sesame cookie

... and I emailed Chef my ideas. She loved both the deviled quail egg and the dessert ideas!
Upon coming to class, she immediately assigned the dessert section to me. I was psyched!

That's the lemon glass I made. Other than this one, most of them unfortunately turned out chewy, so we dried them out in the oven and pulverized them into citrus powder.
As for the Amuse...

Amuse: Deviled Quail Eggs. With crispy fried green onions, micro wasabi, and smoked paprika. They were visually very appealing and oh-so-cute looking...but the taste? Yuck. Chef unfortunately gave us the canned crap, and while the yolk filling tasted decent (we made those out of fresh chicken eggs) the whites were disgusting. Had we used the fresh ones, these would've tasted much better.

Bread: Brazilian Cheese Puffs. With Cheddar, Fontina, and rosemary. It's the same gluten-free bread I made last week, but with different cheeses. It was served with Parmesan-lemon butter and limoncello-wheatgrass-radish salsa.

Soup: Artichoke-Mint. Chocolate Mint Foam, micro wasabi, crispy phyllo ribbons brushed with butter, white wine, and saffron. The soup is artichoke-tomato-leek and parmesan broth. Never got to taste the soup unfortunately. The thing about working in the BOH is that each of us get so busy in our station that we often end up not tasting other station's products.

Salad: Radish Trio. Arugula with French Breakfast Radish done three ways--grilled, baked, carpaccio (thinly sliced and raw), roasted red beet paint, radish chip, cara cara oranges, ricotta cheese, sunchoke chips, and orange foam. We had a lot of salad leftover, which made me happy. I LOVE salads, so after service, I sat there eating a huge bowlful--never mind my gum still ached from wisdom teeth extraction.

Pasta: Goat Cheese-Sage Gnocchi. Also with Parmesan. Cheese and flour mixture breaded and deep fried, kinda like croquettes. Served with Date-Bacon cream (which was delicious--courtesy of Jeff J.), figs, and lemon olive oil. Didn't get to taste the gnocchi themselves though :(

Entree: Seared Scallops. With roasted sunchoke, sauteed baby cauliflower, shoe-string potatoes, shiso, and pickled rhubarb on the side; served with rhubarb-stout sauce. We seared the leftover scallops for everyone, which were quickly devoured. I managed to snag two pieces. They were indeed, tender and juicy (but only if cooked correctly, which can be tricky to do), but the rhubarb sauce was...too tangy for my taste. Jeff gave me some of the Bacon cream sauce from his pasta dish, and it was a much better alternative for the scallops.

....And last, but not the least...
Dessert: Taste & Textures of Rice and Sesame. Black sesame-almond cake, Aloe-Honey ice cream, Tahini ice cream, puffed peanut rice, rhubarb-blue mallow sauce, Forbidden rice pudding, citrus powder, Black sesame rice cookie. With the exception of the cookie, this was a gluten-free dessert. And on days we serve gluten-free desserts, people with Celiac choose not to dine at the restaurant...
I found the gluten-free recipe for the cake online. My partner Owen baked it, and it turned out pretty moist. I made the forbidden rice pudding and both ice creams. The forbidden rice was like sweet rice--very glutinous, absorbed a LOT of water, and took 3 hours to cook! Even then, it was still pretty chewy. But it softened up over the following couple of days, so it turned out delicious in the end. The pudding was very thick, so I lightened it with whipped cream before serving. The rice is very nutty with an interesting flavor--it's very hard to describe. Both ice creams turned out delicious! I used the aloe jelly Chef found at a Chinese market (that's also where she got the cookies and the puffed rice from). Very refreshing...actually, it tasted just like muscat grape. Everyone complimented on the aloe ice cream! The tahini ice cream was also delicious, very nutty. Overall, we did very well, despite the fact we were very busy and ended up serving about 45 people in one night!