When you are constantly searching for new techniques you often encounter some collateral damage in the form of techniques which you cannot find a use for and who get left behind.

It is not because they are bad or unattractive but instead from not being able to make them fit into what you are doing.

Very often you can reincorporate them back into your menu at some point when they may work a little better with the surrounding plates, but then again there are occasions when they are simply a “one hit wonder” and sadly never make a comeback.

This technique above I designed and created while we were coaching the Spanish team for the Bocuse d’Or 2008. I created this “Rubiks Cube” because 2 of the ingredients were Scallops with their roe and Foie Gras. So as a combination I personally love scallops and Goose foie gras, but the only thing is I needed to make it stable when hot as cold scallops and cold foie Gras is not very appealing.

So I made a parfait terrine with the scallop roe which I lightly steamed until it had a core temp of 65 degrees then chilled it very fast so it could be cut. With the scallop meat I stuck them end to end with TG and lightly steamed them at 40 degrees Celsius (to speed up the enzyme activation), Then also chilled this. For the Foie Gras I pre-made a Foie Gras terrine which you can find in an earlier posting.

The trick with this Rubiks cube is the texture of each item and also of course the cutting. All the items are fused together with Transglutaminase and pressed lightly in a rectangular terrine mold which has a height and width of 6cm. I made 2 different terrine’s as the cube is made up of 3 slices and the middle slice has to be different to the 2 outer slices so it makes a believable pattern.

It can be heated to very high temperatures without loosing the bond between the ingredients, the only thing is when you make it too hot it twists and looks unattractive, so around 60-70 degrees Celsius is perfect.

Maybe one of the reasons I didn’t continue with this is because when you have something so labor intensive as this the guest can often “Feel the Fingers” or basically they can feel how many people have touched their food.

It’s a shame as I love the technique and it is an amazing snack as when the foie gras is heated it sauces the rest and makes it a very flavorful little bite.

Maybe it might come back one day?

This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 15:54 and is filed under Food, Techniques, Wisdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.