49. Nitro-Scrambled Egg and Bacon Ice Cream

Nitro-Scrambled Egg and Bacon Ice Cream, Pain Perdu, Tea Jelly
Specialty Equipment: electric slicer, syringe, vacuum machine, fine digital scale
Specialty Ingredients: skimmed milk powder, malic acid, gelatin 170 Bloom, liquid nitrogen
Days: 2
Dish as in The Fat Duck:

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Liquid nitrogen part 2. Egg and bacon ice cream. Possibly the most famous dish of the Fat Duck. Known around the world. I can understand why. Here’s an at home version.

Two things had to be made 24 hours in advance of eating the dish: (part of) the custard base for the ice cream and the candied bacon. The latter needed to be very thin slices, made by cutting a frozen block of bacon on an electric slicer. I’m sort of done with stepping into a shop, making a ‘strange’ request and have eyes stare back at me in amazement. Luckily my friend, the guy cooking the liquid nitrogen recipes with me, owner of three burger joints in Amsterdam, could slice bacon for me. It was not frozen prior to cutting, but still very thin.

With bacon slices at hand you have to vacuum pack them for a few hours with either a sugar syrup or maple syrup (see the rest of the paragraph), unpack them, brush them with maple syrup and dry them for 24 hours. I put it in the (possible) discrepancies post, because reading the recipe, it is unclear if you have to vacuum pack the bacon with sugar syrup or maple syrup. Prior to the vacuum pack instruction the recipe asks to make a sugar syrup, but later on there is no mentioning what to do with it. I read the first maple syrup as sugar syrup, hoping they made a typo.

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46. Chocolate Wine

Chocolate Wine, Millionaire Shortbread
Specialty Equipment: centrifuge, water bath, pH meter
Specialty Ingredients: whey powder, glucose, gold powder
Days: 2
Dish as in The Fat Duck:

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Look at this baby. It’s a Dewar flask with liquid nitrogen! I’ve been searching for liquid nitrogen for ages, calling restaurants and cookery schools, to ask if they used liquid nitrogen and if I could possibly visit them to complete two recipes from the book. Every request was turned down with either a ‘no’ or a ‘we don’t use that stuff’. I got to talk about it with my dad, and what do you know, the solution to my problem was close to home all along. He has contacts at the University of Utrecht, who use liquid nitrogen by the truckload. It was absolutely no problem to pick some up. Funny how some things play out.

A (possible) problem is the type of Dewar flask the liquid nitrogen is stored in (not one for long term storage) and its ability to ‘hold on to’ the liquid nitrogen. It was picked up Wednesday and I’m planning on using it Saturday to make the lime mouse and bacon & egg ice cream recipes with some friends, so I hope it will make it until then. Fingers crossed.

Not really related to liquid nitrogen, but related to the search of ingredients, does anyone have any knowledge on procuring fresh hearts of palm? I’ve found some suppliers in the States and contacted them, but didn’t get any responses. Has anyone ever bought hearts of palm and/or knows where you can get some?

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41. Apple Pie Caramel

Apple Pie Caramel, ‘Edible Wrapper’
Specialty Equipment: petri dishes
Specialty Ingredients: spray-dried apple granules, glucose, malic acid, powdered gelatine 200 Bloom, glycerine
Days: 2
Dish as in The Fat Duck:

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As a welcome relief there are a couple of ‘easy’ dishes in The Fat Duck Cookbook. The ‘Apple Pie Caramel’ is one of those dishes. I saved these ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ cards for the ‘ I Can’t Take it No More’ moments. In the past I’ve pushed on when this came up, leading to mistakes and therefore more frustration.

The search for short ribs, plus cooking them for 3 days took a big chunk out of my spirit, wich made the caramels a perfect reminder of the light at the end of the tunnel. Service announcement: whining will stop.

Making the caramel is as straightforward as the Fat Duck recipes get. You have to mix spray-dried apple granules with cream and bring it to the boil. In another pan you have to boil sugar, glucose, apple juice, salt, malic acid and butter to 150˚C. When the latter comes to that temperature the former has to be added in three stages. I had some problems with the granules and cream, because the spray-dried apple soaked up all the cream, making it impossible to dissolve the granules in the cream. To make sure it was all well mixed I used a hand-held blender to incorporate the granules/cream mixture in the caramel.

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39. Beef Royal, Third Course

Beef Royal (1723), Third Course
Specialty Equipment: water bath, digital thermometer, steamer, thermomix, pressure cooker
Specialty Ingredients: gellan F
Days: 2
Dish as in The Fat Duck (can’t find any photos of the dish as served in The Fat Duck):

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Last week I had to cook a meal for family. For the main course I bought a big piece (2kg) of Côte de Boeuf and at home started working on it. While scraping the meat from the bones I realized the cap surrounding the eye of the meat was probably the spinalis dorsi, the cut of meat needed for the third course of the Beef Royal recipe. So with the purchase of the meat I, unknowingly, killed two birds with one stone. I’m not sure if the spinalis dorsi runs along the entire rib eye or is limited to a section of the entire rib.

When I detached the spinalis dorsi from the rest meat it didn’t have the best of shapes, serving wise, so I put it in a cardboard box and vacuum packed it. After a few hours the piece was straightened out.

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38. Beef Royal, First Course

Beef Royal (1723), First Course
Specialty Equipment: water bath
Specialty Ingredients: black truffle, truffle juice
Days: 2
Dish as in The Fat Duck (can’t find any photos of the dish as served in The Fat Duck):

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What’s not to like in this recipe? Sweetbreads, black truffle and frying action! The recipe had me at sweetbreads and secured a place in my heart with the other two words. I was thinking I would really have to fuck it up in the kitchen to end up with an unsatisfactory result. Fortunately disasters didn’t make it around the corner and we had the most delicious upscale beer snack.

I started with the sweetbreads. I’ve ordered it from restaurant menus without thinking the last couple of years, but only started to cook it myself about a year ago. It is often seen as something difficult to cook, like octopus, quail, steak or aerated chocolate (ok that can be difficult, haha), but in fact isn’t.

The two main methods of preparing sweetbreads are: poaching them, then remove the outer fat and membrane and pan-fry them or remove the membrane before cooking and then pan-fry them until cooked (without poaching). In this recipe they have to be cooked at 65˚C for 2 hours, chilled, cleaned, breaded and fried. If you’ve never tried to cook it at home, change the situation. It may not look appetizing in its raw state, but you can go eat yourself silly instead of nibbling on a few small pieces in a restaurant. I do the same with lobster. I can get it for 17,5€/per kg, so I feast on it at home instead of eating half a lobster for 20 to 30€ at a restaurant.

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