old sayings

unfortunatley i am announcing the end of component.   

 it has been a little over a month since i left my job and during this time i have given great thought to the future of this blog.  i have been asking myself what direction i want to take it and what role would it play in my next position.  i have come to the conclusion that component was guided by the day to day work of our kitchen and without that kitchen there can be no component.  with that in mind i am closing the doors.

now is when i would say thank you to everyone for your support, instead….

as we all know the saying about doors opening and closing it is time to walk through the one that is opening…..   CLICK HERE

pause

sorry to say but component will be put on pause for a short time.  i am currently relocating and pursuing a new project.  once i am settled i will continue this blog as there will be much to tell.

thank you to all of you that have been following, commenting and emailing.  i greatly apprecitate it and will be back soon

tgrwt 18

blue cheese has never been my favorite dessert flavor. i have seen it in desserts before, namely ice cream and flan, but using it has not been one of my successes. for that reason this tgrwt, hosted by aidan brooks was love/hate from the start. the rules were simple: use the two flavors together in a dish and see how the flavors pair. now to add my rules: no ice cream, no custard, no walnuts, pears or nut/fruit bread. use “local” (english) victoria plums and local nanny williams blue goat cheese.

i did not really know where to go with this so i started by tasting the plum and cheese together to see what the combination was like. right away i could see how they fit together and complemented each other. the more challenging part was to make the two work with a sweet element. i wanted to keep the flavors simple and try to stay as close as possible to just plum and blue cheese but after tasting the two with normal white sugar muscovado sugar made a better contribution.

the flavors were decided, now for the textures. natural and minimally altered textures were the goal. the plums were peeled and vacuum infused with acacia honey. raw muscovado was sprinkled on and muscovado syrup set with gelatin for the jelly. the nannay williams was grated and used unaltered. for a little additional crunch powdered croquant was used with a little cheese to make a caramelized cheese. a little whipped muscovado jelly and plum puree was added to finish off the dessert.

i did enjoy the combination of the plum and the blue cheese. nanny williams is relatively mild but it still has the astringency of blue cheese, the plums were quite bitter and acidic but when the muscovado was added the three made an interesting combination of sweet, sour and astringent.

powder day

 

when we did the mojito a couple months ago we played with the idea of using balloons to mould sugar. it made a great sugar cup that was very pretty…. but not very nice to eat. the challenge was to make the ball more edible. the answer was croquant. we would use croquant ground into a powder and dusted onto a balloon, heat in the oven (150C), let cool and take out the balloon.

 

the next step was to flavor it; we used matcha and added it to the croquant powder.

the powder can get a little messy if you’re not careful. it will stick to anything and it absorbs moisture quite easily. that was when we realized that you can dust a sheet of acetate, leave it to sit about 5 minutes (allowing the humidity to turn it into a sheet of sugar), then cut the shape you like and melt. Another option is to put the shapes that you cut into a dehydrator and have a different texture.

curd

using rennet to set milk. the idea is not new. yann duytsche and jordi cruz both make desserts featuring this technique. cheese makers have been setting, or should i say coagulating, milk with rennet for thousands of years. i guess it is one of those ideas that was sat on a shelf in the back in a corner of my brain, collecting dust until for some reason it came into play this week.

rennet is an enzyme that was originally found in the stomach of calves. the discovery took place when someone tried to store milk and found curds/cheese when they opened the stomach. this became the original technique for cheese making.

today rennet is made from either animal or vegetable products. pure rennet from the stomachs of mammals is available however the demand for animal rennet exceeds the number of stomachs available to supply this demand. the results have been a genetically manufactured version that is readily available.

no matter which type of rennet you use the idea behind how it works is the same.  protease (animal), pepsin (vegetable) or chymosin (genetically engineered) is the enzyme that causes milk to coagulate. milk is made up of water (88%), lactose (4.5 – 5.5%), protein (3.5% in cows), fat (3.5-5%) and trace amounts of minerals and enzymes. when rennet is added to the milk it interacts with the protein (casein). a molecule of casein is covered by little hairs. casein is naturally attracted to itself but these hairs prevent the molecules from touching each other and clumping together. rennet removes a potion of these hairs thus allowing the casein to clump together. these clumps are the curds used to make cheese.

the idea that i would like to explore is using flavored curds or using casein and rennet to set other liquids, but first we need to be able to make simple curds. that was the goal this week – to use a local buffalo milk, sweeten it slightly and set it using rennet.

the first test was with normal milk, sugar and vanilla bean. a small amount of acid was added to help in the curdling process (as i do more research i am not sure that this was necessary). a few drops of rennet and the milk curdled in about 20 minutes. this made very delicate curds that when cut to make a portion bled out their whey immediately. this was one of those duhhh moments. when making cheese, once the curd is set they are cut…. to drain the whey. due to the very delicate nature of the curd any trauma will cause the whey to bleed out and i don’t want bleeding curds. the solutions was to make individual portions. i did not get the product i wanted but i did try another experiment – to process the curd similar to cheese.

test 2 – buffalo milk, sugar, acid and rennet. this batch went a lot better except it set a lot faster and there was not enough time to put the milk into the moulds before it set so on to test 2.1- add the rennet to the individual mould then pour the milk on top. perfect. nice, simple cubes of sweet buffalo milk curds.

• sweet buffalo milk curds
• cherry meringue
• almond crumble
• apricot sorbet

buffalo milk curds

750g     buffalo milk

100g     sugar

.2g       powder rennet

.2g      citric acid

8g       water

1. dissolve rennet and acid in water
2. place five drops of rennet in each mould
3. heat milk and sugar to 37C and pour on  top of rennet
4. leave to set for 20min – 1 h