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.