Lardo plus liquid nitrogen plus the ever campy culinary term blitzing produces one of our favorite powders to date: powdered lardo. The process enables us to create an extremely light and airy product which adds richness to dishes in a delicate manner. We have also just spooned the powdered lardo high on grilled toast and indulged in the decadence. When summer returns we may add some tomatoes to the toast though for now the lardo paired with Nantucket Bay scallops is a match we thankfully found.

We have received a number of questions about the dinner we prepared for New Years Eve and some of the components on the menu. The ingredient or item which happened to stand out was the puffed cilantro. We paired it with a chicken liver and kimchee terrine. The cilantro acted as a fine vehicle for transporting the terrine to the mouth. It was also quite tasty and not overpowering.

Feeding a baby makes you look at food in a whole new way. Babies eat when they're hungry and understand how to listen to their instincts because there are no outside influences to distract them. It's hard to believe that once we were all purely instinctual because as we grow older we listen more and more to others and let a variety of different influences affect the way we look at the world. Imagine if we could recapture a bit of that original instinctiveness today. Today as I watched and listened to the baby try to communicate her needs I considered the fact that we often second guess our ideas and temper our natural inclinations to avoid censure. All she knows is how she feels and what she needs and her only goal in life is figuring out how to communicate those things to us. Communication is rarely easy under the best of circumstances. On the other hand, the rewards for putting in the effort are great. Our goal for the new year is to learn how to communicate better with her and with each other and to recapture some of that innocence in our approach to food and cooking.

We first smoked lobster when we were in Maine. In fact, that is where we picked up the smoking bug. We used to use old linen to make a tent over a barrel smoker to create a larger space to smoke in. It must have looked pretty funny watching me duck under this table cloth with smoke billowing out for guests to see. Since these first days smoking lobsters and working with makeshift smokers we have tried numerous methods to produce a delicious smoked lobster. Recently we started brining lobsters in smoked water, then bonding the meat with Activa and finally cooking the meat sous vide at 51.5 degrees for thirty minutes. The end result is the smoked lobster I was chasing under my make shift smoking tent. We paired the lobster with nutmeg seasoned papaya, lime-peanut puree, celery leaves and a charred grenada pepper viniaigrette.

New Year's Eve 2008

Popcorn Gelato
smoked wild char roe, lime crisps


Quail Spring Roll
date-onion, mango pickle


Cold Smoked Lobster
peanuts, Grenada pepper vinaigrette, papaya


Nantucket Bay Scallops
powdered lardo, celery root, onion syrup


Walnut Soup
pickled kasha, Japanese eel, marjoram


Parsnip Porridge
black truffles


Ricotta Dumplings
shrimp bolognese


Octopus
sweet and sour potato noodles, pear puree, blis elixer


Chicken Liver and Kimchi Terrine
puffed cilantro


Skirt Steak
butter pecans, eggplant-treacle, consomme


Fourme d’Ambert
red grapes, smoked port syrup, arugula


Sliced Chocolate
cherry-olive compote, white chocolate-beer ice cream

The egg yolk encased in a gellan skin cooked up wonderfully. The yolk is easily handled and in this form it allows us to cook an extremely runny egg yolk and not have to worry about it breaking during plating. The next evolution is encasing the egg yolks in a smoked skin. Those should be ready by the new year.

John Sconzo has shared the organized chaos and whirlwind of a weekend where slow food was the theme and a search for delicious was the mantra. Aki and I were captivated by the ingredients (people and environments are also ingredients in cooking) and not only did we drink the kool-aid we started handing it out. The weekend has greatly influenced us as cooks and people.

Two words, two syllables, mountains of meaning. We would like to utter these words to those we know and those that know us and take the time to visit with us and share ideas. Happy Holidays and thank you.

I was immediately inspired by Linda's work with brioche macaroons to explore new forms for familiar flavors. We were already working with a number of flours so her post proved timely. My first idea involved pretzels. I made a few mistakes in our initial evolution. These mistakes detracted from the exact replication of a French macaroon rather than the flavor and texture of the delicate cookie. I planned on a beer ganache for the filling though some miscalculations led to a delicious ice cream base instead. For now I am happily eating these tender pretzel bites and searching for other applications: parsnip, onion, ginger, carrot to name a few.

If you know a bit of French the combination of apples and potatoes makes all kinds of sense. We thinly slice apples and potatoes and layer them brushed with a pecorino and garlic seasoned cream. We then place the mix in a vacuum bag and cook the gratin base sous vide for an hour at 84 degrees C. Once the base is cooked we cool it down, press it and then slice and portion it into planks. The planks of gratin may then be seared or broiled to serve. Initially we planned to pair this gratin with braised short ribs. In actual eating of the complete dish we have restructured the idea. Now we are working on seeing if we may find a home for this earthy and tart gratin.

Realizing that anything can be flour and looking at your cooking with the hopes of producing and creating useable flours is the difference between an idea and execution. We were making onion syrup and a bi-product of juicing a kilogram of onions is five hundred grams of onion pulp. We spread the pulp out and placed it in a low oven to dry out. It turned bright pink, a result of oxidation. The flavor of the onion is intense and rich. We ground the dried onion pulp in the blender to create a fine powder and then added some cornstarch to give it stucture and dilute the bold onion flavor. The initial plan is to use it in a tempura batter for onion rings, though it might be nice in a fish and chip batter or even in an onion brioche.

Continuing the thought process of encapsulation we did a bit of research on egg yolks. There is a good amount of calcium in egg yolks. This bit of information presented the question about whether we would be able to encapsulate an egg yolk. It took a bit longer for the calcium in the yolk to react with the gellan bath though the end result is a thin skin which allows the yolk to be handled and moved and in theory to be poached in its new skin. The next steps are flavoring the skin and seeing if we may make smaller egg yolks, perhaps the size of small gnocchi.

Why is mozzarella elastic?

Where do ideas come from?

At what temperature does collagen begin to denature and turn into gelatin?

Is it delicious?

What allows for balance?

If we have a better understanding of the ingredients and the process can we make better food?

What does your gut say?

Did you smile?

What is necessary?

What is extraneous?

Do you you know why?

Can you say yes?

What is our philosophy? What do we go about every day? We are looking for delicious. Anything and everything to support delicious. Delicious is about aesthetics, delicious is about taste, delicious is about emotions, delicious is about the ability to produce the food. Now we are getting somewhere. Our efforts, our creative attempts, our scientific approach is to allow for delicious, to highlight and elevate delicious. Without delicious there is no point.

Two words, two syllables, mountains of meaning. We would like to utter these words to those we know and those that know us and take the time to visit with us and share ideas. Happy Holidays and thank you. Aki Kamozawa & H. Alexander Talbot

 Growing up I was lucky enough to have a Mom, an Aunt Marie and an Uncle Steve. Three parents instead of one or two, which was difficult to explain to the other kids at school and incredibly lucky for me. Through all of the ups and downs of the last 35 years they have always been there for me, constants in an ever changing life. This past Monday, December 15, 2008, Aunt Marie passed away. It was sudden and very quick, which would have made her happy and she got to spend time with Whitney Amaya before it happened, which is a comfort to us all. She was incredibly excited about her new grand daughter, bubbling over with joy and excitement. She will be greatly missed although per her instructions we will do our best not to mourn and instead celebrate the life she had and the person she was.

Auntie was adopted as a child and because of this she understood better than most that family is as much a choice as it is an inheritance. She had love and good will enough for everyone and was gifted at listening to people and finding ways to give them what they needed. It was amazing to see the number of people from her past who came to the wake last evening and hear their stories about how she touched their lives with her willingness to share a smile or a helping hand. Aunt Marie was the kind of woman who willingly went without in order to share with someone else and she firmly believed that happiness and laughter were meant to be shared at every opportunity. 

She was an easy woman to love and a very difficult one to say goodbye to. We will remember her always and she will live on in hearts. Whitney Amaya may not remember knowing her Aunt Marie, she will always know that she was loved by her, as were we all. Marie's stories will live on for as long as we do.

To cry

A beautiful woman passes away.

Our lives are framed with tears: tears of joy, tears of sorrow, tears of pain, tears of pleasure.

Today we shed tears to celebrate your life and happiness.

I felt afraid when you died. I felt angry your life was too short. I felt sad and a hollow void appeared. The void was large, larger than life, a giant cavern of emptiness. I started to think of you: your smile, your laugh, and your ability to light up a room.

I felt joy when I began to let your beautiful memories flow through me. The space in our hearts for you is large. It needs to be this big to hold all the memories you helped create.

You changed our lives with love.

Thank you Marie, these words only scratch the surface of your radiance, your strength, your love, your passion, your joy, and your happiness, which you gave to us openly. We can only hope to live up to the example you have set and with your memories, your teachings and lessons we have a fighting chance.

This is not good-bye it is the awkward introduction to a new place, which your love has decorated for us and turned on the lights so we feel welcome and at ease.

We love you and miss you.

Learning about how taste works may help us become better cooks. I know it certainly makes me think more about the combination of flavors and how they are received. In looking at umami and its reception some new paths may... Aki Kamozawa & H. Alexander Talbot

Learning about how taste works may help us become better cooks. I know it certainly makes me think more about the combination of flavors and how they are received. In looking at umami and its reception some new paths may open up. Understanding allows for more questions to be asked and hopefully more delicious food.

Realizing that anything can be flour and looking at your cooking with the hopes of producing and creating useable flours is the difference between an idea and execution. We were making onion syrup and a bi-product of juicing a kilogram... Aki Kamozawa & H. Alexander Talbot

In an extension of the idea that most anything can be flour, we have added parsnip porridge to our repertoire. We have worked with non-traditional grits in the past and our recent questions combined with a glut of parsnips led to the evolution of parsnip porridge. The parsnip flour is coarsely ground to resemble stone ground  cornmeal in order to bring texture and substance to the porridge. Alternatively we could grind the flour extremely fine and use it in breads, cakes, pastas, and even macaroons. The porridge is made by infusing cream with parsnip peels then adding the juice of parsnips and reducing until the mixture is nape. The liquid is strained and reserved. The pulp left from the juicing is dehydrated in a low oven until it is dry and crumbly with a light blond color. The dried parsnip pulp is then cooled and ground into the rough consistency of Cream of Wheat. We then combine the parsnip cream and the parsnip flour, adding a bit of half and half and water to adjust the consistency. Today we ate it with a drizzle of olive oil and some ground Tasmanian pepper. Tomorrow I am being sent out for Nantucket Bay scallops to see how they pair together. Aki is counting on a good match.