Bojana
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Posts posted by Bojana
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Something crispy, crunchy, spicy, salty, fatty...Just been reading through the Momofuku book and the thing that comes to mind is a twist on chicaron.
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Ok, I have to admit that some of the things have made me a bit nervous, which is good. I will make adjustments to my menu to reflect what I can do and deliver on the day and not to forget, I also want to have some fun there.
The general expectation was more BYO food style, so if I offered to bring two 8 person quiches that would have been appreciated as well.
Reading the comments, I do not think that I can handle 80 items of each, as much as I would like to. First decisions:- do only 30-40 of more tricky items that need last minute piping & torching (lemon meringue pies, choux buns, no eclairs and no ganache dipping).
- 80 - 100 macarons (have done 200 macarons for a wedding before)
- will talk to the bride to consider use of disposable cups and if fine, will serve carrot salad in it, if not, will ditch the salad
- fried fish will change to smoked fish + mayo spread for crostini, decorated with sweet soy piped fluid gel
- love gazpacho, if disposable cups are allowed, will do that too
- madelaines 48 chorizo and 48 tomato, frozen and refreshed on the day. I think they will still taste good enough and it is something easy to make and serve. I can bake 24 at the time. May even consider upping the numbers here or adding extra flavours, this will be my easy filler
- I'll add some more on the stick items
Someone asked about the spinach roll. It is the cake type of dough coloured with spinach, just not sweet. Filling is fairly firm goat cheese based with some veggies and ham. It should be firm enough so I do not see much leakage and staining risk here. I'll put it some 15-20 mins in the freezer before slicing, expect to get 30ish units.
Someone else is doing the cured meats platter (groom is Italian, hams will be good)
As said, nobody will come hungry and other people will bring food too. Everyone will do what they can and even if some things turn out sub optimal or fail, we are among friends and there will be no cross faces.
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Something I would add, personally, is something I've cooked (in modified form) from the Alinea cookbook for a group of ~40: the pork belly dish. I suggest not so much the particular dish but the idea of it. The pork belly I cooked sous vide. It came to my workplace still in the bag. The 'salad' element of the dish (apples and cucumber, from memory) I'd sealed in a bag the previous night to protect from oxygen. The sauce I'd already bottled in a squeezy-bottle. I intentionally purchased twice as many Chinese soup spoons (a cliche, yeah, but easy to work with) as I figured I'd need. Serving was simple. I cut the pork belly into cubes before reheating in the microwave. This was very fast. We all know how easy it is to cut cold pork as opposed to hot meat. ~40 portions took all of 5 minutes to knock together by myself. One element of the dish that would've involved some risky last minute work was scribbled altogether, the flavour added into the sauce (yeah, I lost a textural component but I'm not running the Alinea kitchen with a team of lackeys backing me up). I wasn't rushing, even tho' I had a clear (and close) deadline. That's what the 'last few minutes' should look like: not you fussing over a deep-fryer, as that's when you'll have an accident. The efficiency only came about through a great deal of trial and error.
Chris, I have made this dish, the full version including the sugar coating and polenta, and it was amazing, but I would not dare make and serve this for more than 12ish people, it is the keep it warm element that I do not think I can handle without proper help for bigger numbers or more experience under my belt.
Thank you for taking time to help me. Lots of good points.
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Great advice, I really appreciate it, especially the hygiene and throughput points. I should clarify the plan a bit more perhaps.
All cooking, baking and prep will be done in my kitchen, over the coming weeks and also on the day of the party. I can spend few evening every week preparing and I have a large freezer to store the goods.
Wedding party is about 3 min walk from my house. Plan is to take all the components ready (in boxes and piping bags) and only assemble them on trays on location. Everything will be served cold, no reheating nor frying.
I get the point on the rice crackers, think I will replace them by cucumber or carrot rolls. Plan was to serve cold deep fried fish pieces but if that tastes yucky, I'll change it. Polenta holds pretty well after deep frying and will be served cold. Got to go now, but will keep reading your advice
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Thanks for the wonderful tips so far. I will certainly help me.
There was no "no crumbs" requirement. It will all be laid back and relaxed, in a garden setting and no fancy clothes, not even the bride, so that gives more freedom.I have seen some nice crustini canapes at a party yesterday, may do something with that I f I can find crustini to buy. Cater at that party was making them himself but I have no time nor the cutting equipment to do it.
Regarding variety - given my kitchen/oven capacity, i'd have to make in in multiple batches so making a second batch of dough for the tartlets is same effort as making dough for the mini choux buns (at least I see it that way now).
I have a feeling that this will keep evolving and few days before the date all will fall into place. I'll report as I go
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I'd have way more napkins on hand than you think you'll need (cloth, I guess, since usually, when I've come across a 'no plates' thing, it's been intended as a 'green' move): the combination of nice clothing + fried/otherwise potentially messy food + no plates is almost guaranteed to mean that at least some guests will use napkins as plates, and the absence of plates itself increases the chances of accidents requiring napkins.
No plates is because they are using another's friend house and garden as party location so they want to minimise the mess. Paper towels will be perfectly acceptable, thank you for the tip
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Just my thoughts:
I would not serve deep fried fish segments cold myself as they start to lose there appeal in my opinion.
What about blinis or crustini for the salad?
Why do you need to freeze the tarts - they will keep a couple of days then just finish them as you were going to.
Good luck.
I work full time (office job) so I need to spread the prep over several weeks, that is why I will freeze tartlets. Even the day before the wedding I have to work so I only have Saturday 8AM to 7PM to finish all, and I will have one helper.
Crustini sounds like an idea, I think the dish needs something crunchy since the salad is not that crunchy. However, I could never reconcile bread and asian food in my head but may be mistaken.
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MY main question is why are you working at a "friends'" wedding?
Because it is a dear friend that does not have much funds to pay for the wedding and because it will be my gift to her. She'd be happy with half of this menu and 1/10 of the quality - the main driver behind wanting to have things perfect is me.
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I will make finger food for my friend's wedding end of August. While I am very comfortable in tke kitchen with both sweet and savoury side, I have questions on how to ensure that food will stay crispy and in optimal condition, and there you could maybe advise if changes of components are necessary. Also, I'd like to prepare anything I can upfront and store in the freezer, there will be questions there too.
It will be post dinner elegant finger food and the bride has requested that no plates shoud be used, really pick it up with hand and eat. There will be ~80 guests. I will make about 40-50 pieces of each dish.
This is the list with my preliminary ideas:- Panko breaded deep fried fish segments with wasabi mayonnaise and sweet soy fluid gel
- Deep fried polenta triangles with tomato basil sauce and parmesan shavings
- Spinach cheese roll
- Chorizo madelaines
- Sun dried tomato madelaines
- Kroepoek/rice crackers with asian salad topping (carrot salad a la green papaya spiced, with and without peanuts)
- Lemon meringue tartlets
- Macarons (raspberry)
- Eclairs or choux buns with flavoured pastry cream (spices, asian maybe, passion fruit..)
Questions:
- What is good sort of white fish to use, that will not fall apart while deep fired. I have easy access to Tilapia, pangasius but could search for more if those are not optimal. This will be served cold, with probably a skewer through the fish. Any issues here? Will it be ok served luke warm/cold?
- Chorizo and sun dried tomato madelaines, can I bake and freeze them, then just refresh on the wedding day? Alternatively, can I make and freeze the batter?
- Rice crackers and carrot salad (dressed with lime juice, fish sauce, chilli, peanuts, dried shrim floss and coriander). Will the rice crackers go soggy from the salad? Can I brush them with a thin layer of mayonnaise? Can you suggest some alternative vessels for this salad?
- Lemon meringue tartlets I will bake and freeze, then refresh in the oven. I will assemble them on location, including the blowtorching of the swiss meringue.
- Choux buns I am planning to freeze dough and bake on the day, fill on location. Will they stay crisp for a couple of hours? Any tips there?
Also, if you have some additional ideas for me, I'd love to hear.
Thanks!
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I play with scallops a lot. Just few combinations I enjoyed them:
-Home made mayo flavoured with smoked paprika and pickled mosterd seeds and simple salad (celery, something leafy, some pine nuts)
-Maple syrup caramelized bacon, pickled apple concasse, potato puree
-shrimp bisque froth
- deep fried oysters and poached rhubarb and small salsd
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I am sure you are aware of it but just wanted to add - with this type of "simple" desserts, the quality of chocolate is of paramount importance, so use the best one you can get. Also, I read in one of the pastry books (cannot recall which one, could be Migoya) that cacao % between 55% and 66% works best for chocolate cakes that should taste of dark chocolate.
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Can you make baba in a different shape and what would be downsides of that? I was thinking brioche metal moulds, would that work?
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There is a recipe (that I did not try) in Every grain of rice book. The books is great otherwise, so imagine wrappers would work too.
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I have mentioned it somewhere earlier in the thread, the carrot soup does need any butter for caramelization to work, so use butter to taste. I don't put any, use small amount of oil to coat the bottom of the PC and add a splash of water (15-20 ml)
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Here are leslie's instructions, can be found on his blog page 5 i believe:
For the six egg whites one from yesterday), add 30ml of cold water after the initial beat, and keep beating. Pour in 425g of caster sugar (normal sugar may not dissolve properly and you'll get a different result). Slow down the mixer - or stop it - and add 30ml each of vinegar and vanilla extract, and 20g cornflour (cornstarch). Cook at 150°C for an hour, turn the oven off and leave the pav in there to cool. All the measurements above were simply doubled from the three egg original with no science applied, but it works. As does tripling for a nine egg whopper. Good luck - let us all see the results.
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Harvard lecture on youtube "Many faces of chocolate" has a recipe for molten chocolate cake that is great. Lecture 3 from 2011 series. It gives precise temperatures of products in various mixing stages as well as the final center temperature (35C)
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Finally success! I made crema catalana ice cream (with 6 yolks in it!) over the weekend, using 2 gr of my stabiliser per 1000g mix and the texture is amazing. However, I rarely make ice cream using yolk so before declaring victory, I'll have to make my general, egg free version to be fully sure that I got this right. But no elastic texture problem at least.
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Ok, I have to come clean... the photos I promised never had a chance to be made. I took my pavlova's to a beach picnic that included 5 toddlers (of which 2 were mine) and they disappeared before I could say cheese.
Feeling guilty, I made another batch, using the same recipe. However, I made them neater (piping) and smaller (8 instead of 6) and played with baking temp. I started at 130C to get somewhat thinner crust, after 30 mins they were still wet in the center so I gave them 20 more mins. That was apparently way too much, they ended being cardboard dry throughout and I did not like them at all. They look pretty though, served with mascarpone creme freche vanilla cream and side of home made crema catalana ice cream.
Will just have to make another batch soon to get it right. Anyone has advice how to check for when pavs are done, for any given size? Sticking Thermapen in? What should be the temperature?
Photos of the second batch:
The only photo of the great first batch:
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Leslie! Your recipe is fantastic! I was too eager to taste so I cracked one (of the 6 mini pav's made from half the recipe) and it is great. Soft interior but not wet or sticky, only slightly chewy. I want ahead and ate it without any cream or fruit - that requires a 5 min supermarket trip and I just could not contain myself.
Few changes I made:
- Halved the batch
- used apple cider honey flavoured vinegar
- baked 30 mins at 150C and 30 mins at 100C.
- made 6 small ones
I am happy to test other recipes if people would be so kind to share. For the sake of good old rivalry, at least one Ozzie would have to take on the challenge.
Off to buy mascarpone and fruit, will post some pics later.
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I have recently tried (for me) new meringue recipe where you mix egg white with sugar and when it's at hard peaks, fold some icing sugar in it. I'll play with this and some acids to see if I can get this to work in Pavlova. And I second the mascarpone topping, also with some vanilla seed in the cream, raspberries and some mint (or basil, for variation)
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I had an amazing Pavlova at a restaurant yesterday which inspired me to make again this lovely summer dessert. It was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside but not wet soft, more creamy soft with only a touch of chewiness.
I was surprised to discover that there is no topic dedicated to Pavlova, so thought of starting one.
How do you like and make your Pavlovas? Can you share your winning recipes and tricks that make a difference?
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I have found some interesting data on the usage of gums in ice cream.
http://www.lucidcolloids.com/pdf/775854685_stabilizer.pdf
Next to using too much of it, it seems that my mix has too much xantan as well, which caused the elastic texture.
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What may also help you is to know the exact formulations of my ice cream in which the stabilizer was used. Here is a screenshot from my excel:Bojana - please do keep on reporting about your mix - and if you decide to change it.
As someone who is starting out on this line with ice creams, reading about your tests are helpful to let me plan how to do my own mix.
I have steeped 5gr of green cardemom pods in hot water for 10 mins, then weighted 484 gr of that and mixed with cream, added powdered milk and dextrose to it and heated to 40C, then added a mix of sugar and stabilizer and heated it to 85C while mixing.
You see that my ice cream ended having higher fat % that Corvitto guideline but still lower than 10% of his upper limit. It is also slightly sweeter (fine for my taste) and the out of freezer texture was very scoopable. Where it failed was this elasticity in the mouth, for which I should reduce stabilizer next time. Worth mentioning that I am using powdered milk whihc is not fat free but has 28% fat - I could not find the fat free version.
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I made a mix of 10g xantan, 10 g kappa carrageenan and 17 gr of guar gum. Used 5 gr of that mix in 1000gr mix, or 0.5% of stabilizer of which 0.14% is carrageenan, not counting the one in cream. Next time i was thinking to reduce stabilizer to 3 gr per kg. Do you know what should be the max % of carrageenan? I have precision scale so should be able to measure small quantities (0.1 gr) but I may need to redo my stabilizer mix.Is there carrageenan in it? That will work much more powerfully if there's calcium around.
Gums in general are really powerful, especially in certain combinations. It can be a challenge mixing in small enough quantities for home-sized batches.
Help – amateur catering for friends' wedding
in Cooking
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We are in Amsterdam, so high probability of rain but luckily no other nasty flying things. Backup plan is to go back in house, large livingroom so no issues there.
I did a test batch of mini chorizo madelaines and I can easily make 100 of that. Will test gougeres soon. All the other items I'll go one by one to see how much I can handle on the day. I got another helper in the mean time, and with all the great advice I got here, I am confident we'll pull something good off.