Crazy stuff. No recipe sabotage, and everything was great. Just great.
For the soup, still no dashi powder available, so I went with a “Clear Japanese Stock” packets (with seaweed, mushroom, and fish powder) ground them up in the spice mill, and made up a weakish stock before adding the miso. It literally tasted, after adding the steamer clams and tofu, like cream of mushroom soup. The kids were completely sold, and then some — even after doing search-and-destroy to the clams.
Next, I had procured some whole frozen Mackerel from New Sagaya in Anchorage, and went from there. Pretty straightforward, except instead of frying all the fish, I grilled half of the fillets (at -13 below) and served it up. Again, a great combination of the funky tendencies of the Mackerel against the vinaigrette. It worked — and everyone was nearly full going into dessert.
Dessert has one recipe caveat: “ground Almonds” in this book means “almond flour.” Don’t be confused. I blanched and peeled almonds, then ground them into a roughish meal and folded that into the meringue. It did not look like the recipe pictures, but despite the George Jetson shiny robot pet droppings aesthetic, they tasted great, and didn’t melt into puddles. I had used almond four for the Santiago cake in Meal #1, and I’d imagine the cookies would have been even better.
Pretty good.
Cooking Ferran Adriá’s The Family Meal
For the soup, still no dashi powder available, so I went with a “Clear Japanese Stock” packets (with seaweed, mushroom, and fish powder) ground them up in the spice mill, and made up a weakish stock before adding the miso. It literally tasted, after adding the steamer clams and tofu, like cream of mushroom soup. The kids were completely sold, and then some — even after doing search-and-destroy to the clams.
Next, I had procured some whole frozen Mackerel from New Sagaya in Anchorage, and went from there. Pretty straightforward, except instead of frying all the fish, I grilled half of the fillets (at -13 below) and served it up. Again, a great combination of the funky tendencies of the Mackerel against the vinaigrette. It worked — and everyone was nearly full going into dessert.
Dessert has one recipe caveat: “ground Almonds” in this book means “almond flour.” Don’t be confused. I blanched and peeled almonds, then ground them into a roughish meal and folded that into the meringue. It did not look like the recipe pictures, but despite the George Jetson shiny robot pet droppings aesthetic, they tasted great, and didn’t melt into puddles. I had used almond four for the Santiago cake in Meal #1, and I’d imagine the cookies would have been even better.
Pretty good.
Cooking Ferran Adriá’s The Family Meal