Nutella – Sour Cherry Tart

When Pierre Hermé calls a recipe “Nutella tart” you can assume it’s a little bit more involved than just scooping Nutella out of a jar and into a tart crust.  His version consists of a layer of Nutella topped with a chocolate ganache and toasted hazelnuts in a rich tart shell. The tart is then baked until the ganache is barely set.

In this version, I omitted the hazelnuts and added some sour cherries in syrup I made a few summers ago to make room in the refrigerator cut through the richness of these little devils, and I strategically sandwiched them between the Nutella and the chocolate ganache to keep those two from getting into a fistfight. It’s really delicious this way but you could also substitute the sour cherry with bananas or raspberries. I didn’t use Hermé’s recipe for the crust but my own “go to” recipe for pâte sucrée. It works everytime and allows you to make it in smaller batches.

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72 hours Sous-Vide Short Ribs

I wanted to take a “Modernist” approach to short ribs but while keeping the robust flavors of a traditional braisé. So this recipe is a mix of Nathan Myrhvold 72 hours sous-vide short ribs and my own concoction. I normally would soak the short ribs overnight in a mixture of aromatic vegetables, herbs and red wine but I skipped that step because I figured that with the gentle cooking process over a 3 days period in the Sous Vide Supremethe short ribs and the “braising liquid” would have plenty of time to get to know each other.

I have a vivid memory of the best short ribs I ever made. I used this exact same recipe in a traditional braisé but the difference is that they were made at high altitude, in the Colorado mountains. As you may or may not know the braising process is slowed down at high altitude and it has to do with the smaller vapor pressure and lower boiling temperatures – and as a result I had to braise the wine-soaked short ribs for 8 hours straight. They were beyond incredible.

I had high hopes using sous-vide because I thought it would recreate and even surpass the ultimate environment I remembered from this experience. So how did it go?

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Introducing Zenspotting

 

Does the world really need another food gallery site? The answer is YES! of course.

If you’re a regular visitor of this site you probably noticed a little icon on the top left corner that says “Check Out Zenspotting”. I decided to create Zenspotting because I thought it would be fun to have a space for chefs and adventurous cooks, where they could publish or view photos linking to interesting recipes. The selection is of course purely subjective. I appreciate everybody’s efforts in their kitchens, but my focus is on recipes with an edge, visual appeal and the ones that makes you want to say: cool!

Sign up, submit or simply go and take a look! I appreciate your support.

ZC


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Thai Curry Chicken Pot Pie

This is where Thai curry meets chicken pot pie to create one of my most favorite comfort food. I always thought of the flavor combination of lemongrass, galangal and Kaffir lime – the building blocks of Thai cooking – as a concoction made in heaven. It’s simply perfect. When you add chicken to it and gently simmer it with coconut milk, Thai curry paste and chicken stock, and finish it up with fish sauce, Thai basil and lime juice to make the flavors sparkle, you end up with one of the most satisfying meal known to mankind. Or at least to me. You could stop right there and be happy, but it’s all about never being satisfied, isn’t it?

So we top it with a golden, buttery crown of puff pastry to make something so delicious that you’ll fall on your knees, look to the sky, and wonder what have you done for attracting so much goodness into your life. It’s okay. Take it all in. It’s all yours.

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Pork Belly Sliders with Pickled Cabbage & Maple Mustard

Don’t you love to find leftovers in the refrigerator and turn them into tasty little bites? That’s what happened a few days after I made the sous-vide pork belly. There was a nice chunk of it I forgot all about hidden between a quart of milk, a head of lettuce, and some brioche dough from a prior failed experiment. My inner Indiana Jones encouraged me to dig deeper in that jungle so I also found some cabbage in urgent need of attention, some Dijon mustard and a little ramequin of maple syrup from breakfast. I don’t know about you but that sounds like lunch to me.

I know that not everyone has a 36 hours sous-vide pork belly in their refrigerator so you should check out this recipe I posted almost two years ago. It’s based on a David Chang technique that consist of curing it overnight and slow-roasting it. It’s delicious and would work great here as well.

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