Goals for the Interesting Cuisine Blog

My decision to start a blog was fairly abrupt and suprised myself and the people arround me. Now that I have done a couple posts, I am starting to realize that a piece of work like this either begins to take on a personality and direction or it just stays as a random collection of pictures. To me, this means that I need to examine the reasons, the inspirations, and the goals for interstingcuisine.com

#1: To document my current ideas and discoveries so I don't forget them.

#2: To gain practical experience in food photography and with visual asthetics of dishs and products.

#3: To create a structure that supports and drives my creativity and my exploration of food.

#4: To inspire and educate other professionals and enthusists with my work and hopefully create a dialog with these viewers that in turn inspires and educates me.

I was never an avid follower of blogs until a friend told me about Laurent Gras' L2O blog. I was instantly hooked. I feel that I learned something from every post I read and was deeply saddened when it went offline.

Arepas con Queso Fresca

Arepas are the traditional Venezuelan flat bread that are made from finely milled white corn flour and eaten with every meal. When they are fried, the outside is crispy and the inside is moist and dense. I mixed crumbled queso fresca into the masa and served it with a green chili sauce.

Lamb Trio with Carrots and Soy Beans

Roasted Lamb Loin, Glazed Lamb Neck, Crispy Lamb Sweetbread, Carrots, Edamame, Lamb Jus

Tairagai (pen shell clam)

Today we got some pen shell clams in. Their Japanese name is tairagai. The part of these big bivalves that you eat is the muscle that holds the shell closed. Its great raw or lightly seared but gets tough and rubbery when cooked.





I thinly sliced them and did a compossed salad with some locally foraged miner's lettuce and chickweed.

Lamb Belly Salad

Kellan cured and confited the meat from frenching some lamb racks. It has a really delicate lamb flavor.

We made the salad with fennel, lemon confiture, black olive oil, and spring garlic in brik dough.

King Crab Okonomiyaki

Jun-san did this take on a traditional Japanese street food as a special one night with some extra king crab we had. It is rustic, messy, and delicious.

 It's savory pancake that is made from a mixture of julienne scallions, sliced jalepenos, crab meat, pickled ginger, and just enough batter to hold it together. It is topped with worchestershire like sauce, QP mayo, bonito flakes, and nori.

Staff Meal

Roasted a whole bone in pork leg for staff meal. Made a spice rub with salt and brown sugar, wrapped the leg in foil, dropped it in a pan with a couple inches of water, and roasted it for sixteen hours at 250 degrees F. It came out tender and decently moist. I think next time I am going to brine it for a couple days and cut back on the salt in the rub. 

The meat was great, but I can't see any way to sell it in a restaurant setting except by slicing it thin for a sandwich or doing it like you would a plate of BBQ.

Dishes I am playing with right now.



A Korean Style Chirashi made by Jun Hiroshima. Mixed raw fish and other seafood in a kochujan sauce with a poached egg, various japanese pickled vegetables and lettuce over rice. The crackers sheets of tiny fish (called tatami iwashi) that have been dried then fried.

Seared California Abelone with Turnip, Ginger, Dashi, and an Umeboshi Bloop

The abelone is sitting on top of a turnip disk. The disk and the abelone are seared together in brown butter. The baby turnip turns are picked up in the broth. 



 Good shot of the Umeboshi Bloop and the Salad of Raw Turnip, Pickled Young Ginger, and Myoga (ginger flower).



The broth is a traditional Ichiban Dashi infused with the trim from the Turnip and Ginger components of the dish. I really feel that the small amount of broth ties together the different componentsof the dish and adds to the mouth feel.

The umeboshi bloop is a fluid gel made from ume paste, gellan, and honey

Suckling Pig Shoulder just out of the oven.

Suckling Pig Shoulder, Apple Tatin, Compressed Apples and Wasabi Shoot Salad

The shoulder is deboned all the way to the lower leg, sewn shut, cured in salt for 2.5 hours, then confited in a bag for 2.5 hours at 75 degrees Celsius. On pickup it is dropped in hot water to melt the fat that is stuck to it then roasted in a hot oven for 20 to 30 minutes ideally with 20% steam. This gets the skin crispy while the flesh stays moist and tender.



The tatin is made by grating apples and cooking them down with butter, caramel, apple cider vinegar, and vanilla bean. It is then preesed into a hotel pan and baked. When it comes out of the oven you place slices of  spice bread on top and press it with a heavy weight. Then freeze the whole thing so you can cut nice portions. Pick up is done in the oven.