Italian

With the onset of summer something Italian seemed fitting. 
 
For starters - bruschetta with:
- tomato jelly and basil (it's just tomato, whizzed, with gelatin)
- anchovy and buffalo mozzarella
- aubergine and chili

 Mushroom ravioli with truffle oil. There’s not much more to say here really.
 

This is a pea puree with a scallop. 

The stuff sprinkled over the scallop is the orange roe from the scallop that’s been dried out in the oven and then ground up to a powder in a pestle and mortar. The green roll is langoustine rolled up in spinach (same technique as described in a previous blog post) and topped with some lumpfish roe. The sauce is made from boiling up the heads and shells of the langoustines in milk and frothing up with some butter and a hand blender. 

This is just a piece of beef, a simple red wine jus and horseradish. The beef is 21 day, dry aged fillet purchased form O’Toole's of Terenure.
 

Most meat is wet aged which means it’s vacuum packed in plastic. This makes the aging process quicker and also retains all the moisture (weight) in the meat both of which are a big plus for the retailer but which don’t benefit the taste or tenderness of the meat. By contrast dry aged beef is hung for much longer. Moisture is evaporated from the meat which concentrates its flavour and the natural enzymes break down the connective tissue in the muscle, which leads to more tender beef. Dry aged meat is more expensive to produce in that it needs to be hung for longer and at near freezing temperatures which results in about a third of the weight being lost. Add to this the fact that it is only those higher grades of meat which are suitable for the process `(such as fillet or sirloin which have a higher proportion of evenly distributed fat). All thing considered its understandable why it costs more to buy this but it’s well worth the extra for a special occasion.

The piece I cooked weighed about 0.8kg. Seasoned and the seared all over in a very hot pan and then straight into a hot oven for 15 mins and then removed from the pan and left to rest wrapped in foil. To make the sauce I just deglaze the pan with red wine and whisked in cold butter to add gloss. For the horseradish just grate the root into crème fraiche and add a little white wine vinegar and seasoning to taste.   
 

Salad and cheese to follow.
 

 

































And for desert  - apricot soufflé.

This was my first attempt at a soufflé. I had a kumquat soufflé recently in the Gordon Ramsey restaurant at Ritz Carlton which was pretty spectacular. It was the highlight of the meal and I've been looking for an excuse to have a crack at producing a soufflé ever since. My effort here was reasonably successful but a little overdone I think and not as light and risen as it might have been. I think my downfall was not sticking with one recipe. I'd started off with the intention of following Julia Child’s supposedly foolproof instructions including her detailed essay on whisking egg whites by hand with a pinch of cream of tartar - but at the last minute I decided to mix it up with another recipe I’d found online and another from Gordon Ramsey's Just Deserts. The base was a creme patisserie and the fruit puree came from dried apricots soaked overnight. For dusting the the buttered molds I made up a praline and blitzed it to a powder. Served up here with a scoop of sweetened mascarpone and a little more of the praline.