Food is the New Lego

I spent most of my childhood in my bedroom building stuff with Lego. Sometimes by myself; sometimes with friends. Sometimes following the directions that came with the sets; sometimes making stuff up. Often building my own version of something I had seen in the real world (an interesting house, car, etc) and wanted to process a bit.

It occurred to me the other day that, though I no longer play with Lego very much, food now plays a very similar role in my life. I've hopefully demonstrated by now that I really like to play with food, and that it affords a similar sort of creativity: using existing recipes, improvising, and trying to replicate stuff I've seen in the world.

One aspect of this that I find particularly fun is the dinner party. Some of my favorite experiences over the past several years have involved elaborate, fascinating meals with friends at exceptional restaurants. I will save specific details for other posts, but the key point here is that these meals are something I very much enjoy trying to replicate.

That said, I will never be able to replicate any of these meals. I don't have the skills, staff of sous chefs, fancy equipment, or access to extreme ingredients. In the same way, though, I could never really replicate stuff in the real world with Lego. But I could come up with my own approximation that had some similar properties. That was fun in and of itself.

That's exactly what I try to do with dinner parties. I like my dinner parties to be elaborate enough to replicate what I consider to be key elements of my favorite meals: lots of courses (which gives a meal a certain sense of decadence and means you'll spend a long time together), interesting ingredients (stuff you don't eat every day makes a meal special, even if the ingredient is not expensive or rare), and creative technique (ditto the previous explanation).

I hosted one of these parties the other night (actually hosted it at a friend's place, who has a much cooler and larger apartment than I do). It was rather ambitious for a mostly solo effort, but it was lots of fun. Here is a rundown of the menu, with thanks to my friend Mike for taking photos all evening.

Amuse Bouche: Sweet potato smoothie with cinnamon and cumin. A few years ago I began starting all dinners with a savory smoothie. It's a fun way to start. This one was rich, creamy and featured warm flavors.









Soup: Butternut squash with roasted tomatillos and chipotles. This is out of Moosewood's New Classics (a _great_ book). Hearty, warming and spicy soup. Garnished with cilantro.






Salad: Spicy cabbage with coconut. This one is based on a recipe from Alford & Duguid's Mangoes and Curry Leaves (also a great book). The cabbage cooks in the water from rinsing. Curry leaves, onions and lots of chilies give it flavor. Coconut gives it a bit of richness and absorbs some of the water. Tasty.




Palate Cleanser: Lemongrass sorbet. Simple and refreshing. Just lemongrass steeped in a simple syrup. Should probably have added some stabilizer to prevent iciness.






Entree: Chicken breasts marinated in a ginger & galangal yogurt sauce, plus carrots cooked in coconut milk with chilies and curry leaves. Chicken based on a chicken kiev recipe, filled with yogurt sauce and roasted. Carrots based on a South Asian recipe for beets.





"Cheese": Not really cheese, but it was dairy and at that point in the meal. Olive oil ice cream, lemon zest, capers, walnuts, sea salt. I've been wanting to do a savory ice cream sundae for a while. Olive oil ice cream (from the Perfect Scoop) seemed a good place to start, and these ingredients mostly worked. Some felt the capers were too strong. it was interesting, in any event.



Pre-Dessert: Caramel apple, one bite (see previous blog post). These suffered from the classic problem of very fragile spheres. Might not make it again; too much stress.






Dessert: Dehydrated key lime pie, mango powder, blackberry coulis, chocolate soda (powder).
Pie is a crumbled pie crust (graham cracker, butter, sugar, cinnamon) plus a dehydrated key lime curd (based on a recipe from Achatz's Alinea cookbook; butter, eggs, sugar, key lime juice, agar gelled in the fridge and then dehydrated on acetate sheets for 15 hours).

Chocolate soda powder was cocoa powder, sugar, citric acid, baking soda, and maltodextrin. The acid and baking soda make it fizz. The maltodextrin tames it a bit. The acid also makes it sour, unfortunately. I don't think people liked this a lot.

The coulis was fairly straightforward. The mango powder was purchased.

Mango Icing with Coconut Cupcakes

Ok…raise your hand if you don't adore buttercream icing. Sweet, rich, creamy deliciousness. Reason to angle for a corner piece of birthday cake. Good enough to scrape off the plate with a fork. I'm betting not many hands are up right now.

And yet…sometimes buttercream can overwhelm. Maybe it's too much richness for an already rich cupcake that needs some sort of topping. Or the sugary sweetness overwhelms the intended flavor of the icing. Sometimes flavor matters more than sweetness and richness. What's a baker to do?

I have no doubt that purists will throw up their hands when I say this, but one answer is a really interesting set of modified food starches with cryptic names like "Ultra Tex 3" and "Ultra Sperse." The interesting thing about these starches is that they have been modified to swell in basically any liquid. Unlike corn starch, which needs to be cooked to thicken a custard, these powders will thicken anything you can put in a blender without any heating. And the texture is smooth, consistent and creamy.

I'm finding that "custards" made with these starches make a really nice, light icing for baked goods. Say you want apple icing. Put some apples through a juicer (or just buy some cider). Put the juice in a blender. Turn on the blender. Add a couple teaspoons of Ultra-Tex while it spins. Done. And it tastes like apple. Maybe add a little powdered sugar to boost the flavor.

So that's what I did this week. Many of you know that I love mangoes. I wanted to make an icing that screamed mango, and would complement some sort of tropically flavored cupcake.

Decent mangoes really aren't available at this time of year. Happily, however, one can always get delicious canned Kesar mango puree from India. "Canned mango?" you may be asking, "really?" Yes, really. Mangoes from India are so good that the canned ones are still way better than the best supermarket mango in December. So my first stop was one of the little Indian groceries on Parliament in Toronto.

Then I poured a cup or so of mango puree into the blender, along with 2 tsp of powdered sugar (to make the flavor pop a bit) and a splash of milk (to thin the pulp just a tiny bit). I turned the blender on, and dropped in about 5 tsp of Ultra-Sperse 3 while the motor was running, letting it blend quite a bit between spoonfuls.

The result was a creamy, pudding-like concoction that did indeed scream mango. I put it atop these cupcakes from Epicurious, which I made last night (and to which I added a pinch of cayenne):

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Vanilla-Bean-Coconut-Cupcakes-with-Coconut-Frosting-352095