Cool Plates features dishes from across the country to help inspire chefs' creativity.
Executive chef Michael Voltaggio makes a Caesar dressing by cooking eggs in an immersion circulator at 63° Celsius, or 145° Fahrenheit, and emulsifying the yolks in a cream sauce with grapeseed oil, anchovy, garlic and Parmesan cheese. Then he adds gellan gum to stabilize it.
“It sounds like a whole elaborate thing, but basically we’re creating a homogenous emulsion that doesn’t break at all when you fry it,” he said.
He cuts the emulsion into cubes, breads them and then fries them.
He serves those croutons on a thinly sliced octopus terrine with raw hiramasa kingfish and romaine lettuce hearts.
Voltaggio says the Caesar dressing and romaine hearts give “a certain level of comfort to the dish” that eases people’s fear at eating octopus and raw fish.
Contact Bret Thorn at bret.thorn@penton.com.
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