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the bitter -- no, the bland taste of failure
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November 28, 2002
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Dramatic Failures
I'm having some people over on Saturday for a post-Thanksgiving dinner. I had some great ideas for the menu, but I've been experimenting with them one by one over the past month and most have been dramatic failures. Here's one example:
Lobster Mashed Potatoes
Sounds like a great idea, right? I like lobster. I like mashed potatoes. Two great tastes that taste great together! What's not to love?
(In all fairness, I must point out that I didn't come up with the concept. It's been done plenty of times before; see for example here and here.)
Here's what I did:
- Steam lobster for 4 minutes using 1/2 bottle of dry white wine. - Put lobster in a bowl of ice water to stop it from cooking further. - Remove tail meat, body meat and put in the fridge. Remove tomalley and set aside. Remove evil stomach sac and throw away. - Make "lobster butter": put some shells, some of the tomalley, some herbes de provence and two sticks of butter in a small pan and put in a 350 degree oven for 45 minutes or so. - Meanwhile, boil the potatoes. - Make lobster stock: put some other shells and herbs along with the drained lobster juices in with the steaming liquid, along with more white wine if necessary, and reduce. - Cook the lobster meat briefly in some of the lobster butter. - Mash the potatoes. Use the stock, the lobster butter, some cream, and some truffle oil in the potatoes.
When I first tasted them, I thought not bad; this could work. The lobster flavor stood out just enough to make it interesting. But by the time we had them with dinner, they'd changed. They tasted bland, bland, bland. The lobster was overcooked and the potatoes had no trace of lobster flavor. Worse yet, they tasted grainy. I think this is because I'd substituted the lobster stock for much of the cream.
I made several mistakes during preparation, but even though I could possibly do things a bit better, I decided not to serve it at my Thanksgiving dinner. It just didn't show enough promise.
Beet-cream sauce
The lobster dish had one saving grace: the sauce served with it. Ironically, the sauce was thrown together as an afterthought and was the product of several mistakes and poor choices.
I'd intended to create something along the lines of Keller's Red Beet Essence, which I'd had at the French Laundry. But that sauce begins with beet juice, which my local store does not carry. So I just bought some beets, sure that I could make something similar using the raw materials.
I decided to start by roasting the beets. (To do so, just coat them liberally in olive oil, salt and pepper, and put them in a pan in the oven at 350 degrees for about an hour or until a knife slides easily through them.)
I then peeled them and ran them through the blender. It seemed like the right thing to do.
I peered into the blender. I saw beet mush. Far too thick to be a sauce. "Fine," I thought. "I'll strain it."
I poured the contents of the blender into a strainer. The beet mush just sat there, defiantly, refusing to strain.
I used the back of a ladle to lightly work the beet puree through the strainer, taking care not to force it through. I threw away the remaining beet matter, about 1/4 of the original volume. But the puree that remained was still far too thick to be a sauce.
What could I thin it with? White wine seemed like a good choice. I combined equal parts beet puree and white wine in a saucepan and left it over medium heat for a few minutes; just long enough for the alcohol to burn away. I added salt and pepper to taste. It wasn't bad. Pretty good, actually. But it was still a bit too rough-edged.
So I took it off the heat and stirred in a few tablespoons of heavy cream to mellow it out. The sauce turned a bright fuscha. I wasn't sure how to take that.
The resulting sauce is very flavorful. The color is quite distinctive, so it can be a powerful element in the presentation of a dish. It's easy to make, and I imagine it can be prepared well in advance. (Just don't stir in the cream until just before serving.)
I'm glad to be able to add this sauce to my small but growing arsenal.
Seafood and the Circus
So, tonight: dinner at Waterfront, and then Cirque Du Soleil. Seafood and the circus -- call it a non-traditional Thanksgiving. I'm looking forward to it. Have a great holiday.
November 28, 2002 in old_site, recipes, side_dishes | Permalink
