Jon Cogburn's Blog

My first genuinely philosophical thoughts about food and other distressing artforms

One of the anonymous posters (729) at Philosophers Anonymous notes that in gastronomy, the locution "deconstruct" refers to a chef's separating out taste components of a classic dish into distinct components, and then putting the separated ingredients together in a visually stunning way that recovers the flavor of the original dish. This is one of the basic tropes of molecular gastronomy following Ferran Adria's el Bulli (in the U.S. most famed with Grant Achez at Alinea in Chicago).

So here's one question. What makes a deconstructed dish different from the original dish. Certainly they look radically different. And the textures can be quite different too. But another difference is that when you are eating a deconstructed dish you more vividly simultaneously taste the separated components as well as the flavor of their combination (the original dish). The deconstructed dish ends up being something like a meta-commentary on the way distinct flavors achieve aesthetic balance in traditional gastronomy.

This is a really interesting case for the metaphysics of emergence in a lot of ways. I think haute cuisine has always had this norm of creating emergent flavors out of flavors that the discerning palate can differentiate. It's sort of a game to be able to guess what the ingredients are, but a major part of the gastronomic thrill is experiencing the new properties that are created by their skillful combination.
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Since I've been reading Noel Carroll's excellent The Philosophy of Horror, this has particular salience. Carroll's final view is that the paradox of horror is solved in a "co-existentialist" way, where the pleasure qualia (innate fascination with the repulsive and metaphysically peculiar, the play of curiosity from plotting devices) and pain qualia (unpleasant emotions) are distinct and added up so that the pleasure outweighs the pain. He notes that in some instances one might want to think of the paradox being solved in an "integrationist" way, where the kind of pain is part of the pleasure, but the only example he comes up with are teenage boys who watch particularly gory horror for the meta-pleasure of finding themselves to be able to take it without being scared or sickened.

But if you look at the phenomena of the delicacy, you often see the repulsive and the pleasant combined in ways that I think can only be accounted for in an integrationist manner. Take the humble Durian fruit, whose custard-like interior is both deliciously sweet and smells nauseatingly like decaying dead mammal. I don't think there is an innate fascination with tasting road kill. So you don't get the analog to our innate fascination with viewing the repulsive. But at the same time, if you could separate out the custardy sweetness and get rid of the repulsive aspect, it would no longer be a delicacy and epicures would not be interested in it. The same holds for stinky cheese, such as Epoisses [And one can't say that Epoisses just seems stinky to Americans because we weren't acculturated (maybe the repulsiveness of fermented bean curd to Americans can be accounted for this way?). In France you are absolutely not supposed to carry this cheese on the train because the smell is so awful.]

Somehow the repulsive and non-repulsive combine in many delicacies to give rise to emergent taste profiles in a thoroughly integrationist manner.

Two questions- (1) Are delicacies analogous enough to horror films to undermine Carroll's co-extistentialist response to the paradox of horror? I do think it's clear that the paradox of repulsive delicacies requires an integrationist response. (2) Why don't skilled chef's ever deconstruct these kinds of delicacies? Clearly people couldn't eat them if you managed to separate out the flavors. Imagine a little piece of delicious custard with a tiny piece of a vomitously smelly part of a rotted dead animal in the middle, set out in a visually beautiful way. No chef does this. Somehow repulsive delicacies are the limit of deconstructed cuisine. I think this is because if they were deconstructed we would immediately go into co-existentialist mode and the pain qualia would win out. Part of the aesthetic appeal of such dishes then is I think just this tension. The integrationist mode wins out. Again, I wonder if horror movies and other kinds of distressing art are analogous. If they are, then Carroll's theory needs to be expanded significantly.

3 weird surf and turf

I just got the fantastic Amuse Bouche, by Rick Tramonto (chef of Chicago's Tru), Mary Goodbody, and Tim Turner.  What makes the book so great is that Tramonto is able to translate some of the newer cutting edge cooking styles to a home kitchen, in particular smart uses of purees, juices, and foam (nobody's done this yet for liquid nitrogen and kelp derived congealing agents).  While the recipes for this dish are not in his book, the soup technique is derived from him.

I first peeled eight tomatillos and boiled them for about five minutes.  Then I placed them first in a strainer and then in ice water for about a minute, and then cut them in half, removing the stem and some of the white core.  Then I put each half back in the ice water for another minute, at which point I put them in a food processor.  I cooked a decent amount some split peas in water for 45 minutes.  A couple of times I dumped them into a strainer and then moved them into another pan of boiling water.  When they were edible, I dumped them in a strainer and into ice water, leaving them there for a few minutes, before I strained them again.  The cold cooked peas were placed with the tomatillos in the food processor.  I then pureed (mixing on high until very, very liquidy) the two together, adding some olive oil and  water during the process.  Then I added a little bit of orange juice to help bring out the tangyness of the tomatillos.  Then I pushed the whole thing through a very, very fine strainer into a storage bowl, added salt to flavor (you absolutely have to do this or else the flavors are too muted), and put the storage bowl in the fridge.  At this point the soup tasted amazing.

To make these green beans you put some tin-foil on a cookie sheet, put the uncooked beans on the tinfoil, drizzle olive oil and sprinkle salt on the beans, and then throw the sheet in the oven.  Cook for about fifteen minutes (I think at around 375), and then take it out and turn the beans over (using some kind of utensil) and salt a bit again, before cooking for another ten to fifteen minutes.  They are the best green beans you've ever eaten in your life.  Ideally they should be just a little bit burned in places and served hot.

I also cut some red, orange, and yellow bell peppers to put on the plate.

Then I cut some steak into little cubes, salted and peppered them lightly, and fried them up on each side (but not so much that the inside wasn't still reddish-pink; and if you like meat well-done I have nothing to say to you about food) in a little olive oil.  I removed the pieces of beef to a plate, scraped the bottom of the pan, adding a lot of cabernet, stirred it up, and then added a tiny bit of flour for thickening.   

I moved the beef cubes to people's plates, arranging green beans and bell peppers around them.  Then I put some of the reduced sauce on top of each beef cube.  Then I put some orange zest on top of that (to go with the soup).

Then, following Tramonto, I lightly some sea scallops.  I put the cold puree into each small bowl and placed the warm sea scallop on that, and then added a small piece of bacon, some goat cheese, a little caviar, and some orange zest.

Conclusions:  The soup good but was too busy!  When I do this again I'll just garnish it with caviar and orange zest, and I may or may not do the Tramonto sea scallop.  If I still want to include bacon, I'll put a small piece on top of each beef cube maybe.  Goat cheese is hereby banished from this meal (I thought it would go well with the tangyness of the tomatillos and orange juice and zest).  Also, if I'm going to use different types of bell peppers for colors, I've got to dress them somehow.  I'm thinking some kind of vinegarette anchovy paste.  Finally, I served this with a really heavy Cabernet, which was a bad mistake.  While the goat cheese made too much tangyness, a tangyer wine is an imperative for this.

Next week:  More Tramonto methods- the main thing will be some kind of braised meat on tartelettes.  I might do this around a soup like I did with the above.

slightly less hideous food photography (my take on salad nicoise)

If you click on this photo, a bigger version comes up.

This meal was meant to be a weird take on salad nicoise (sorry for lack of diacritical marks there).  I wanted to make a version you could eat with one hand.  So I did the hard boiled eggs separate, and I used Jacques Pepin's method of first making deviled eggs and then frying them on their top in peanut oil for a few minutes.  That worked well (the dressing you see over the eggs is made of leftover cooked yolks, olive oil, diced garlic, and mustard).   Note that no mayonnaise was used at any point in the making of those eggs!  The filling is just cooked egg yolk, garlic, parsley, milk, salt, and pepper.   

The plan was to have the nicoise olives and tomatoes loose and grabbable too.  That would have worked, but I forgot to get the olives at the store today.  Then I wanted to build a finger food nicoise tower.  The base is a piece of romaine lettuce, covered first with julienned red, yellow, and orange bell pepper, and then with three or four green beans (boiled in water, strained, then fried in olive oil, then strained again and soused with lemon juice while in the strainer, then shaken vigorously to get them dry).  I put just a bit of dressing (mostly olive oil, with some red wine vinegar, and a bit of mustard; I should have added finely chopped shallots) on that.  Then, over the top I put a slice of seared ahi tuna, and on top of that an oil packed anchovi.  It did taste great, but didn't work as finger food because: (1) the whole thing was too big, and (2) the dressing made the lettuce too greasy to be handled easily.  I can fix the greasiness by just dipping the tuna in the dressing prior to adding it, and not dripping it on the first layer of vegetables.  For the other problem, I'll not only julienne the bell pepper, but also cut the pieces in half.  I might try to go ahead and make the lettuce in a wrap instead of doing the nouveau tower of food thing.  I don't know how I could get it to stay in a little circle though.  Toothpicks?  I want towers of food you can eat with one hand though. . .

The other thing on the plate is a more successful version of potatoes matafam (see previous Food and Drink posts).  This worked really well.  For starters, I made them smaller than last time, and they look a lot better as a result.  When I turned them over the first time, I put just a little bit of cheese spread (which you get by putting different kinds of cheese, a little garlic, and some red wine in a food processor and blending it up).  The cheese spread cooked very nicely on them.  Then, when done I put some rolled up pancetta on each one.  It was yummy and surprisingly went very well with nicoise.

I served it with a Vino Verde, which (this bottle at least) is a very light, slightly sweet, kind of spritzy Portuguese wine (I got a case of this for seven bucks a bottle),  It rocks, but is probably better suited to being an aperitif than to go with this meal.  The problem is, no wine really goes with salad well at all.  Wine people would probably recommend some kind of grassy Australian Sauvingon Blanc (the principle grape in most white Bordeaux wines, and with Pinot Noir, all the rage now that people are down on Chardonnay and Merlot), but I think a Chablis would have been best.  Note: don't confuse real Chablis (named after the area in France) with the often disgusting California plonk sold as "Chablis."  Real Chablis is a white wine from the Burgundy region of France.  As such, the principle grape (it may be the only grape, I don't know) is Chardonnay, but in common with all good French white burgundies, you don't get hit over the head with the nasty buttery flavor of cheaper American Chardonnays.  Real Chablis is fantastic because it has a really unique kind of minerally flavor that makes it incredibly versatile in terms of food pairing for a Chardonnay.  In addition, it's very, very cheap for how good it is, just because so many Americans confuse it with the crap sold as Chablis for so many years over here.  Note: it's not hard to tell the difference.  If the wine is from France and it's called Chablis, it's the real thing, and given quality controls almost certain not to disappoint.  If it is not from France and it's called Chablis, it is not the real thing, and almost certainly some of the worst wine you could ever buy.

I gave everyone a serving platter instead of a plate, so that I could do something a little nicer with the layout (which still has miles of improvement to go; even with my current skills I could have done better here, but we were in a hurry).  I also served the leftover ingredients in bowls or plates with the meal, so there was another plate of matafam without the pancetta, a bowl of the eggs, and a bowl of anchovies.  People did feel free to grab these with their fingers, so the meal was at least progress towards my elusive goal of achieving haute cuisine without utensils.

Next week I'm going to try to pair some kind of soup to be consumed from a cup, with some kind of deconstructed main course.  It will be fun.

1b- more repulsive food photography

Here's how I used the Basque Chicken Matefam ingredients to do some leftovers.

I added mayonnaise to the leftover diced chicken and spooned it cold onto some just out of the oven matefam pancakes.  I tasted better than the original. 

The next time I make this I'm going to figure out how to get the matefam pancakes thinner, more chiplike, and more round.  The thinness and roundness can be achieved by messing with them right after I turn them over (the first side being cooked).  The chiplike aspect can probably be achieved by upping the heat a bit over 400 degrees and liberally applying olive oil and conservatively applying salt when they first go in the oven on the buttered cookie sheet, and after I turn them over.

I won't be able to cook this Thursday, because Emily's folks are in town, but next Thursday expect a fantastic take on salad nicoise.  The week after I'll probably redo the potatoes matafam, but with a cold version of Pepin's cheese stuff on top (you get it by blending leftover cheeses, garlic, and white wine).

1- Basque Chicken Matefam

I realize that this picture looks horrific.  It's not as bad as it looks; Emily's massive culinary skills have rubbed off on me a little bit and as a result I'm a decent cook.  I've never heard anybody say, "it's not as bad as it tastes," after eating food I make (reference- writing from the great big Nietzsche-hated, Hitler-loved Bayreuth festival, Mark Twain introduced Wagner's music by saying, "it's not as bad as it sounds").  Basically, I'm a bad photographer and my presentation skills are also supbar.

I'm cooking every Thursday night now that we've got a baby.  My goal is to make good food that can be eaten with one hand, so that the other hand can hold Thomas.

To make this dish I first made poulet basquaise (basque chicken).  To make this you first rub salt, pepper, and cayenne on some skin on chicken parts and then fry them up in butter and olive oil skin down just until the skin is brown.  You remove the chicken and then add bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, and a dab of tomato paste, and then a dry white wine and chicken stock.  After that cooks down you lower the heat, put the chicken back, and then cover everything  for twenty-five or so minutes.  Normally you just serve the stuff over rice and under some parsley at that point.  What I did instead was remove the chicken, debone it, and then dice it and some of the cooked bell pepper until it had a hamburger meat level of fineness. 

Then I made some matafaim (potato matafam), which is sort of a combination of twice cooked potatoes and potato pancakes.  You cook a pound and a half of potatos for about an hour at 400 degrees on a cookie sheet covered in salt.  Then you scoop the insides into a bowl (discarding the skins) adding two whipped egg whites, three eggs, three tablespoons heavy cream, and half a cup of flower.  This is all whisked together (if you cooked the potatoes enough, there will be no problem whisking by hand).

During this whole time the basque chicken sauce has still been reducing.  Right before I took the potatos out, I strained this through a very, very fine strainer to end up with a very smooth sauce of uniform consistency (tossing out the onion, etc. bits). 

Then you cover a baking sheet with melted butter, and then put big-spoon sized dollops of the potato stuff on it as if one were making cookies, but flattening them down a bit.  Throw the sheet in oven for two or three minutes.  Then remove the cookie sheet from the oven and flip the little potato things with a spatula.  Then I  made little balls of the diced chicken stuff (sorry I'm going back and forth with the tense and person here) dipped them in olive oil, and then placed them on top of the turned over potato patty.  I returned that to the oven for four or five minutes until it looked done. 

Then I moved the little guys over to a serving platter and dripped a few drops of the reduced sauce onto each one, ending up with what you see in the picture.

Assessment: The potato matafam tasted fantastic, and the goal of using it for finger food worked much better than I had expected.  The chopped up and reheated Basque chicken was just O.K. though, a bit salty and overpowering when reduced in volume that way.  I'm still strongly committed to taking other main courses and messing with them to get small parts on top of the matafam pancakes.  I can do better though.  Next time I attempt this I'm going to do something with chicken breasts and then lay very small strips across the pancakes with the reduced sauce on top of that.  If I can do something with a heavy cream sauce, then I will be approaching finger food perfection.  I'm also going to try putting the mushroom filling from artichoke duxelles on top, and maybe dripping a lemon-butter sauce over that.

Next recipe: I'm going to do weird salad nicoise sort of brochettes  with the eggs being deviled and then cooked upside down in oil for a few minutes, and the bell pepper marinated for three days ahead of time instead of using any dressing.  If the anchovy lays diagonally across the tuna on the brochette, which lay on a mix of juilienned lettuce and marinated pepers, and the eggs, olives, and plum tomatoes sit on the side, this could be very beautiful as well as eatable with one hand.  I might also try this served on wedges of cabbage (so you could eat it like larb is eaten in Thai places) rather than on bits of cooked bread.  It should be fun.  Since Emily's parent will be here next Thursday, it will be two weeks from now.