Greetings from the land of long legs, fancy cars and perpetually sunny days!
Can you believe it's been a whole month of school already? My friend and I graduated from Level 1 at Matthew Kenney Academy in Santa Monica on Friday, so... yay for us!
Many skills were acquired at the academy, such as plating food so it doesn't look like the cat rolled around in it and learning to use a knife like a grown-up. We ate like true Americans and learned some fantastic recipes. Our instructor Cristina was an absolute delight and excessively knowledgeable.
Week 4 was super-duper awesome. Each day we worked on our individual final projects - creating a three course menu with the intention of executing two of the courses. Because I'm a keener and I wanted to push myself, I decided to execute all three courses with the theme of "Grandma's Kitchen". Turns out I'm a little old lady trapped inside this super-model body.
Preservation played a major role in the theme. Preserving food (fermenting, pickling, dehydrating), preserving tradition, preserving recipes and preserving memories. Who doesn't love their Grandma's home cooking? Huh? That's right, no one. So in the name of Polish and Dutch home cookin' I fermented cabbage into kraut, dehydrated apples into pie, crafted pierogies out of raw yams and pickled everything in sight. Somehow, a deviled egg appeared. I guess these things just happen when you are in a Grandma frame of mind.
I can't seem to make these photos bigger, sorry about that - just click to enlarge. This is my menu.
I telephoned my better half full of excitement and said "I made a deviled egg!". He said "So, you had a perfectly good egg. You threw it's contents out and created a fake egg?".
Yup.
1st Course "The Delicatessen"
Deviled Egg, House Pickles, Olives, Bread Rolls & Butter.
Mini breads ready for the dehydrator
2nd Course "The Secret Recipe" (because grandmas never share their best recipes)
Three Cheese Pierogies (goat cheese & preserved lemon, goat cheese & fresh dill, red bell pepper cheddar), Smoked Tomato, Sweet Potato, Crispy Kraut, Borscht, "Bacon" Cream.
3rd Course "The Oven"
Pink Apples, Earl Grey Whipped Cream, Orange Muscat Reduction. The whipped cream needs some work. I think Earl Grey ice cream would have been amazing. I was also thinking about white chocolate rosemary ice cream. Next time?
So I guess you probably want a recipe, eh? Ok here is the recipe for the pierogi pastry and mash.
Pierogi Pastry
2 cups roughly chopped garnet yam. Process in food processor or blender until fine. Strain through nut milk bag to
eliminate starchy water. Make sure you squeeze out as much as you can. Discard the water and place pulp in blender (should yeild 1 cup pulp)
Add to blender:
1/2 cup soaked cashews
1/4 tsp Himalayan salt or more to taste
1/4 cup water, increase to 1/2 cup if needed
2 tsp psyllium powder
Blend all ingredients except psyllium until very creamy and smooth. Add psyllium and blend lightly to incorporate or stir in by hand. Spread evenly on two teflex sheets and dry for 2-4 hours, or until the top is pretty dry but not crispy. Flip over onto mesh screens and peel teflex off. Dehydrate for approx. 1/2 hour or until dry enough to handle. Using a 3 - 3.5 inch ring mold, cut circles. You should get about 6 per sheet.
Sweet Potato Mash
2 cups roughly chopped garnet yam. Process in food processor or blender until fine. Strain through nut milk bag to
eliminate starchy water. Make sure you squeeze out as much as you can. Discard the water and place pulp in blender (should yeild 1 cup pulp) - Yes, this is the exact same process as above. Feel free to do these steps together, but it will be more difficult to first process all 4 cups and then squeeze all of the starchy water out of 4 cups at once.
Add to blender:
1/2 cup soaked cashews
1/4 - 1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 - 1/2 garlic clove
1/4 - 1/2 cup homemade almond milk (start with 1/4). To make milk: 2 cups water to 1 cup soaked almonds. Blend, strain.
1/4 tsp nutritional yeast
1 - 2 tbsp olive oil
A few turns of fresh black pepper
Blend until smooth and creamy. Taste for salt and whatnot.
I assume you already have several homemade nut cheeses on hand. Go ahead and separate your mash into a few different bowls and crumble in your favorite cheeses, making each bowl a different flavor. Add herbs and fun stuff. Lightly fold the cheeses with each mash, taking care not to fully combine. You want to taste the bits of cheese when you bite into the pierogi.
Assembly (sorry there aren't any photos for this, but you are smart, I know you'll get it)
Take a round pierogi pastry and lay it flat. Spoon about 1 tbsp of cheese mash onto the pastry starting in the center and to one side. Fold the non-mash side over top to match the edges and seal.
Serve with your favorite tomato sauce and the smoked cream from a previous post on this blog called Tocino Crudo Mexicano (Fat Mexicans).
It's been fun, MK Culinary.
