Friday, April 15, 2005

Fun with Frushi
posted by snekse

Okay, it wasn't really all that fun. In fact it was kind of a pain. Worth it? Not from a taste perspective. I mean come on, it's just fruit and rice, how good can it get? Not good enough for the work to out do the reward, unless you're a sushi making fool, or just a fool in general. It certainly has that "Wow!" factor though.

For those of you who don't live in my little world, Frushi is simply fruit and rice made to look like sushi. The idea was popularized by a small restaurant called Orange in Chicago. They're also known for their pancake flights which feature four stacks of silver dollar pancakes dressed completely different with one common weekly-changing theme.

Anyway, my office department decided to have a food day with a little competition for the best breakfast dish. Since they had multiple categories, I figured Frushi was a shoe-in for the "most original" prize. Since it won the prize, I figure that makes it GFC worthy (ignoring the fact that I was the only one to enter that category :-] ).

So what did I learn?

Well first off, you might need to experiment. I attempted the rice on Monday and Thursday night and still made modifications on Friday morning (the actual day of the competition). The recipe I found was a good starting point, but it had *way* to much liquid in it. The rice just didn't want to stay together. Also, a sushi mat is pretty much a necessity. We didn't have one, so I had to rig up a box like device out of cardboard and parchment paper. Very tough.

Nigiri is very hard to make. It was surprisingly difficult to get the rice to stay together for something that looks so simple.

Cantaloupe looks like pickled ginger when sliced paper thin and Blackberries look like fish roe when cored and quartered. You can filet a strawberry (kinda) to look like fish (kinda). A 2-to-1 ratio of a flavored honey and apple cider vinegar makes a nice "glaze" that you can put on stuff to sweeten it up with a little something extra. Ginger Ale works to keep rice from sticking to your hands and knife. Asian Apple Pears are yummy.

*** UPDATE ***
So what does the real deal taste like? Take a peek - Frushi at Orange!

RELATED LINKS:
Frushi Pictures

Labels: FRUSHI, RECIPES

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Heitz Cellar Dinner
posted by snekse

Heitz Cellar Dinner at The Tasting Room.

Tasting notes coming soon.

This was basically a practice session for my wife and I to take pictures and notes while dining. We're going to Chicago in June and want to have a moderate idea of what works and what doesn't to chronicle our culinary adventures.

The pictures were surprisingly the easy part. Granted our first dish was poorly captured, but after I figured out that the focus needed to be manually adjusted (using the Macro mode on our digital camera), the rest of the pictures turned out pretty well. Granted they don't have the style and composition that's going to land me in Gourmet anytime soon.

Taking notes and documenting the experience, however, was surprisingly difficult. I'll be leaving this task to my wife who has a far better vocabulary and an uncanny ability to nail down exactly what she's tasting in a precise and descript manner. Do you know how hard it is to pick out the subtle taste of nutmeg in a dish heavily spiced with cinnamon? Plus the fact that I can't read my own handwriting....

So without further ado, we present our very first photo journalistic submission to Gastronomic Fight Club.