Hito

Maybe it's a local bias, being from Denver, but I've always been fond of the Westword's former critic (who now writes for Seattle Weekly), Jason Sheehan. His reviews have always been filled with delightful adjectives and bursts of humor.

No one has mentioned Opus in downtown Littleton. It's one of my favorite places in the city (I worked there for a couple weeks before the pressure of having two jobs got to me, so maybe I'm biased...). Every meal I've had there has been consistently good and the staff is outstanding. I have to second any mention of Deluxe, but you'll definitely need to call ahead. If you're in the Littleton area in the morning, check out Toast. It's one of the best breakfast places in the metro area. For breakfast in LoDo, I recommend The Corner Office. It's a little expensive, but the food is always good. Check them out at night too for some interesting cocktails. Going back to Littleton, there's a small Japanese restaurant called Kai that almost no one has heard of, let alone been to, run by an adorable Asian lady and her husband, the chef. The service is wonderful, the food fantastic (although the tempura can be a bit bland, I usually get the teriyaki or yakisoba). It's just off of Broadway on Littleton Boulevard going west.

I actually have a related question about oils. I know I have a peanut allergy, so I avoid all things that have peanuts listed in the ingredients, but should or does this include peanut oil? I avoid it out of habit but I would love to have some Chinese food right now...

I did taste it each time and didn't get any sort of additional flavor. I was leaving them in for various amounts of time, from thirty seconds to five minutes. It was almost like the gel never completely formed around the liquid. But, I just got done trying it with the normal method and had considerably more success, probably because the alginate thickened the broth when I dissolved it. I still had trouble getting good spheres out of it, but now I think it's because I need to play around with amounts and time held in the bath. If you're curious, I'm trying to deconstruct pho to serve on a chinese soup spoon for a wedding. I liked the idea of having the broth as a sphere, but I'm starting to think that may not work and I should do a sphere of something else and present the broth in a different way, or forego the broth entirely and just work in the flavors into the rest of the components.

Alright, after some experimenting, I have yet to experience any success making spheres of pho. I tried the reverse spherification method with an alginate bath and no other chemicals added to the broth which did nothing. I tried adding calcium lactate gluconate into the broth and it looked like it was going to work, but when I tried removing it from the alginate bath, it broke and I wound up with a snot-like gel and the rest of the liquid floating around in the alginate. I also tried adding calcium chlorite to the pho and these seemed to give me the best results--the liquid remained in one place once it was dropped in the bath and was spherical while submerged, but I again ran in to the problem of not being able to remove it. The "skin" slipped off the rest of the liquid causing the liquid to again spread through the alginate bath. I haven't yet tried the process with normal spherification. One potential problem with my efforts so far is that my pho wasn't particularly thick. I noticed when I did a mango sphere that the liquid I was using was slightly runnier than uncooked egg whites and I had great success with the resulting spheres. Should I try thickening the pho more?

I just ordered a set of chemicals from Willpowder. I'm going to try the included recipes to get a feel for the process, but I'm wondering if anyone has had any luck trying to make spheres of stocks? I'm going to try my hand at making spheres of pho broth, but I'm worried about the pH and calcium levels in it and, being new to the process, wouldn't really be sure where to begin fixing it if/when a problem arises. I'll post here again after I've tried it, but in the meantime, if anyone has any previous experience with a stock or broth, do you have any pointers?

My most recent boss always said to "make it nice or do it twice" when plating. It got old fast, but it sticks with you.