A little over a month ago, our amuse bouche changed from a wonderfully light squash "consomme" to a horridly heavy warm lobster custard.
On a busy night, we do somewhere between 350-400 covers. Even on a slow night, more than a couple hundred people share one single dish in common at the restaurant- the amuse bouche. No matter what they choose off the menu, their meal start with the same thick lobster custard garnished with four different pickled vegetables, chives, and olive oil.
Since all 300+ have to be baked off and cooled before service, this amouse ends up consuming one person’s entire, right down to the hour it takes to add the final 6 garnishes. Just to garnish the custard, one cook has to use their hands 2,100 times. On a Saturday night, there's about 1,000 other things I need to get done before service besides hover over trays of baked lobster custard dropping mini pickled vegetables into them. At some point, being mildly annoyed turned to full fledged frustration, and the wheels started turning in my head- I was going to change this stupid thing.
It began with an idea, a drawing:
I had to create something easier to prep, more simple to execute, and less obnoxious to garnish and an amuse that was actually representative of the season…basically something totally opposite of the lobster custard. Unfortunately, I’m bound by the small shot glass, but I knew there had to be a better fill. With spring just around the corner, the ingredient options are endless- but my favorite sign of spring is peas, what better to start off a meal than the sweetest, brightest spring veggie.
Peas…pea soup….pea panna cotta!!
I pulled out my favorite reference book, The Flavor Bible to help me get some ideas of what to pair with this panna cotta.
I started writing down flavors I wanted to utilize:
Citrus
Prosciutto
Tarragon
Cream
Mushroom
Garlic
I wanted the panna cotta to be pea and pea only, so the rest of the flavors would have to come into play as garnishes.
My idea forked into two directions- an earthy amuse with crispy prosciutto and a mushroom crema or a bright amuse with citrus marinated crab and a tarragon foam. I bounced the ideas off a handful of people at work, almost everyone agreeing that if the amuse was going to change for the better, it had to be bright.
So the idea was set:
Pea Panna Cotta, Citrus Marinated Crab and Tarragon Foam.
And once it was set…it was never the same. Since this project started during the first few days of April, it has been tweaked every single day, and March is just around the corner. At one point in my pea-driven delirium I even started to sprout peas in a perforated half hotel-pan on a shelf in pastry…I take off my apron at work and peas fall out. I started out not knowing how to make any sort of foam and now I’ve memorized the ratios for using VersaWhip and Xanthan to hold a steady foam and shaken the ISI gun around the kitchen one too many times.
The first two were created at home with frozen peas. I took one, brought it to work and had my sous chef Ben try it. When he liked it, I handed it to Chef. Chef liked it too and offered a few suggestions and gave me the go-ahead to start working on it. In pursuit of the perfect texture, I took 4 different sous chef’s ideas and made panna cotta 6 different ways and let them set during service one night. After work, a few of the cooks sampled each one and we finally landed on the two we liked most for the texture, flavor and color. The first was a technique offered by our newest sous chef who comes from The Modern.
He makes panna cotta by juicing whatever it is for the base. The other one we liked was a simple method the pastry sous chef offered up from the way they used to make sweet pea ice cream at Jean-George. The overall favorite texture came from juicing peas.
The next step was presenting the product to the chefs. Again. And Again. And Again…and then a few more times. My month went something like this:
Crab is too expensive.
What’s in the mixture?
Let’s make it vegetarian.
Tarragon foam is weird…Why not basil foam?
How’d you make this?No herb foam…how about lemon?
This tastes like Mr. Clean.
I can’t picture it all together….let me try it with the panna cotta…tomorrow.
Ricotta foam? I thought I said lemon.
This is nice. More sugar.
Try citric acid.
How’d you make this?
This one’s good. I really like this but what's in the pea salad?
Pickled ramps are too strong to start a meal.
I like this. It’s good…It’s light. I like this. How did you make everything? How many peas does it take to get this amount? Let’s run with this.Wait, I don’t really like the texture of this panna cotta.
Do you know what a sformato is?
Beware of Lactards…Don’t use cream.
Let’s make it totally vegan. Have you ever worked with agar agar?
Here I am in the pea hell that I created. All I think about is my 840 g of base set with 3 sheets of gelatin and how I can manipulate those two things to come up with something different. Running? Thinkin about peas. Reading? Thinkin about peas. Sleeping? PEAS. A tiny little shot glass filled with ¾ of an inch of spring pea delight is consuming my life. But the end is near.
Pea Panna Cotta with a spring pea salad, preserved lemon, and lemon foam has been approved and will be served to well over 300 patrons tomorrow. Hundreds of people every night will begin their meal with something I created. Every little shot glass will be filled with the countless hours I spent eating peas, sampling pea puree and measuring out 2.6 g of Versa Whip and .4 g of Xanthan every day for a month.
In a place where I was concerned about being a cog in the wheel of a machine that is this restaurant- I’ve been fully encouraged to explore my idea, coached into a more solid dish and pushed to get it out in the dining room.
My amuse's debut : )
