Paper Chef: MacGyver Edition

  You know how MacGyver was always making stuff out of the most unlikely things? For example: a car bomb from a stick of gum, some dental floss and an old size 14 tennis shoe? Well, that's a little bit like how I feel after having done this month's paper chef. My feeling like a small time action hero has absolutely nothing to do with the nice bottle of red sitting emptily on my table.

My first thought when I read the ingredients (chocolate, pomegranate, stale bread, eggplant) was "?". I toyed with the idea of some sort of bread pudding or eggplant cake (like zucchini cake). I sat on a paint tin on the floor in the basement watching Cakes paint and mulling it all over. I called out ideas to him and he said the most encouraging things like, "Yum." Bear in mind y'all that Cakes eats raw pie dough.

After the millionth bizarre take on the mole cornbread pudding idea, Cakes just turned to me and said, "just ask yourself, What would George do?" Well, actually he didn't say exactly that. What he said was " What would that guy...you know the Reserve Guy. What would he do?"

The "Reserve Guy" is George Calombaris. I love George. He is one of my top ten things to miss about Melbourne and coincidentally, I was reading about his plight on Friday. Apparently, Reserve is in a smidge of financial trouble and George, his gorgeous staff and, most importantly, George's gorgeous food, will be out on the street. Sniff. So I took this as a sign that I ought to turn this month's "Paper Chef - 4 very odd ingredients" into a tribute to George's Reserve!

For those not familiar with the culinary stylings of George and of Reserve, a bit of background: George is (was?) the bright young chef at Reserve, a fanstastic restaurant at Melbourne's much maligned but magnificent Federation Square. The menu at Reserve was all about molecular gastronomy - pairing textures and flavours in striking ways. His food was always challenging and always good. Among my favourite dishes at Reserve: raspberry ice-cream and venison carpaccio, seasoned tuna with a banana-caper sauce, banana ice cream, banana beignet and banana foam, crispy skin pork with gin and tonic jelly and champagne foam, and battered fish fingers with tartar sauce ice cream. Also among my favourites was the chocolate risotto with crayfish.

...So I asked myself what George would do when asked to make something out of this month's Paper Chef ingredients. George would use the chocolate and pomegranate to turn a traditional comfort food on its head. George would pair crispy with creamy and crunchy with delicate. George would make...

... Chocolate Eggplant "Parmigiana" topped with warm buttered crab and a bitter chocolate-pomegranate syrup....

George would serve this gastronomic challenge along side a beautiful salad of crisp baby greens, roasted hazelnuts, thinly sliced Asian pears, bitter chocolate shavings and pomegranate dressing!

That is what George would do!

Without further delay, I give you my tribute to George C, may he find a home for his food soon...."Bitter Chocolate Eggplant Parmigiana with Blue Swimmer Crab"

For the "Parmigiana":

• one large eggplant, sliced into 1/2 in thick rounds, peel removed
• 1/2 cup sea salt
• 1 cup bread crumbs
• 1/3 cup cocoa
• 3 egg whites
• 1 cup flour
• corn or vegetable oil

For the crab:

• 2.5 cups cooked, shelled crab (if your crabs are small, as mine were, you'll get about 3 cups of meat out of 1 kilo of crab legs and backs)
• butter
• salt

For the sauce:

• 1 cup pomegrante juice simmered slowly until reduced to 1/3 to 1/4 of a cup and is quite syrupy (or you could use pomegranate molasses)
• 1 ounce shaved bittersweet chocolate
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 Tbsp butter

For the Salad:

• 3 cups mixed, washed baby greens including frisee and red endive
• 1/2 cup cracked toasted hazelnuts
• 1 medium asian pear, thinly sliced, coated in the juice of 1/2 lemon
• shavings of bittersweet chocolate

For the salad dressing:

• 1/4 cup pomegranate juice
• 1 Tbsp lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp good balsamic vinegar
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• salt

Rub both sides of each slice of eggplant with salt and place in a colander in the sink. Let sit for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile set out three shallow soup plates. Fill the first with plain flour, the second with the egg whites, which have been mixed and broken up, but not whipped. Fill the third soup plate with the thoroughly combined breadcrumbs and cocoa.  Set a deep pan (I use a non stick stirfry pan) on a large burner and fill it 3 inches deep with oil, but don't turn it on yet.

Meanwhile, warm the reduced pomegranate syrup in a pan and add the salt, butter and chocolate shavings to it. Stir to blend smoothly and set aside.

Mix dressing ingredients together and set aside. Assemble salads on plates.

Preheat the oven to 375 farenheit. Set a coolling or roasting rack into a cookie sheet of similar size.

Rinse the eggplant slices under running water and pat dry with a towel. Coat each slice first in flour (shaking the excess off), then in egg white and finally in the chocolate breadcrumbs, using your hands to press the breadcrumbs into the eggplant firmly. Stack the coated eggplants on a plate.

Heat the oil on high heat until the smoking point and use tongs to place slices of eggplant in. Fry 1 minute each side, or until browned and crisp. Place immediately onto rack on cookie sheet. When all slices are finished frying, place eggplant covered cookie sheet into oven. Bake for 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, soften the butter in a small frying pan and add the crab meat. Saute until heated through. Return bittersweet chocolate-pomegranate sauce to stove to heat through if necessary.

Drizzle salad dressing onto salads.

Place a slice or two of eggplant on each plate and top with hot crab. Drizzle over some of the chocolate-pomegranate sauce and grate chocloate shavings over both salad and eggplant.

"How did it turn out?" Excellent question. The appearance and textures for both the salad and the "Parma" were fantastic.

The sweet, salty and bitter flavours in the eggplant dish really come out at you in with such an unusual combination and the texture of the crispy skinned eggplant and the velvetty sauce is amazing! The chocolate crust on the eggplant was perfectly thin and crispy and contrasted amazingly well with the soft insides. The cocoa gave the crust a slightly bitter flavour and a hint of cocoa, but was actually quite subtle and good. The resulting colour was spectacular.  I don't know if I'd make this again though, at least not without a bit of tweaking. I honestly don't know if I achieved the same dizzying complexity that I love so much about George's cooking - it may have missed the mark somewhat. But it was darn fun to do, damnit.

If I had to do this over I would make the following changes to the eggplant dish:

• Re: the sauce - I'd leave the chocolate out (or seriously tone it down - it was a bit too much of a muchness) and add a little lemon juice or white wine instead to cut through the sweet molasses.

           -OR-

• I'd leave the syrup/sauce more or less the way it is (maybe a smidge less pomegrante and a smidge more bitter chocolate, and maybe a tiny dollop of a good veal glace), and I'd do the dish with ultra thin slices of seared but very rare, very good beef, which would stand up better than the delicate crab to the rich sauce.

Either way, I reckon it would be worth doing and would result in a potentially amazing dish.

The salad was unbelievably, amazingly good. If you're afraid of the eggplant dish, do try the salad. I don't think I've ever made (or eaten) a better salad in my life! The crispy greens and tangy dressing perfectly complement the juicy pear and warm toasty nuts! The little shavings of bittersweet chocolate were a perfect, if somewhat unexpected, complement to the salad.

 

Comments

[Fatemeh]

FABULOUS!

I think it's really interesting that you say you'd do something similar with beef - that's very much how I felt with my chicken.

As a matter of fact, I would have loved to do that dish with duck, but simply didn't have time.

You plating skills, by the way, are simply stunning.

[Lyn]

Thanks for the compliment!

I think you're on to something about the beef. I think the bitter chcolate taste and the pomegranate are both so intense that you really do need a "bigger" more robust meat to go with it. Beef, certainly, maybe venison or bison. Duck would be a great choice. I might try something with bison this weekend given my husband's current bison cravings.

[Lyn]

Maybe bitter chocolate crusted duck fingers (like the way i did the breading on the eggplant - which turned out totally light, and very crispy/crunchy) and a pomegranate dipping sauce?

[raspberry sour]

an eggplant cake!? you mean i could have made the zucchini muffins a la pomegranate and been done with it?! sigh. sounds like you had a fabulous meal- my mouth is watering for salad and crab.

[Barbara]

I agree with the comments on using pomegranate and chocolate with duck. I used chicken for my paper chef entry and was happy with the result but felt duck would give it a little more complexity in the flavours.

[Sam]

Wow! this is amazing and your photograph is a stunner. It just amazes me - all the different things people come up with! Just to let you know, the results have just been posted .

[Niki]

Lol! Would you believe I was reading the round up on Domestic Goddess and when I saw yours I thought "but that's exactly the dish I had when I was at Reserve!" (not knowing you had anything to do with Australia) and then I come here and find you know Reserve intimately! I had a spectacular lunch there about a year ago, of the tasting menu. We were about the only people in the place and I worried then how long it could last. I'm glad I experienced it; it was certainly the most spectacular meal I've ever had.
One of the dishes was the crab sitting on a puck of bitter chocolate and eggplant, with a blue cheese dressing; sounds vile, but was amazing!

[Lyn]

That's amazing! I have been to reserve twice. But the REALLY freaky thing is that I never saw the eggplant-chocolate and crab dish there. The dish that inspired this one was their chocolate ristotto with crayfish! We can't get crayfish here (well, not the same anyway) so I thought I'd use crab. I don't know whether to be disappointed that my dish was not as original as I thought, or chuffed (if totally freaked out) because I managed to create something similar to George Calombaris without knowing! I think I'll take the second option.

[Owen]

Wow! Another stunning entry. I loved the idea of crab and wished I had thought of it immediately I saw it. Wish I had had the chance to go to Reserve, too. oh well.

Bison stewed in a pomegranate and chocolate sauce with lots of caramelised onions would be lovely I think - I may have to try that out.

Anyway, I too wish I had you plating and photography skills. I always end up taking my pictures at about midnight and I don't have fancy lighting just a weak and pathetic flash on my camera.

[Lyn]

Stop it. You're making me blush.

Thanks for the compliment re: plating. I honestly don't think it's any better than anyone else's though, every one of the food blogs I've seen always looks fabulous to me. It's amazing all the foodie talent lurking out there in blogdom.

Believe me, there's nothing fancy going on with the lighting. It's a combination of my husband's 1000 watt halogen work light which makes for VERY yellow photos (you can get them for $20 at any Home Despot type store) and Picassa2 (free!), which Sam at Becks'n'Posh put me on to and which helps to de-jaundice the photos. The camera's nothing special either, just a 3 year old canon digital. I got some serious gear envy when I read the Chronicle article on Bay Area bloggers and saw what sort of setup Guy Prince of Meathenge has!

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2005/03/09/FDG00BJAGE1.DTL