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lemons = lemonade
times are a little crazy. we have our buffet restaurant up and running as well as room service, brunch and our lobby lounge. word is spreading that we are here and the numbers are starting to go up. this week may be the crux, we have four restaurants to open, one of them being our chocolate boutique. it is safe to say that we are pretty busy. a hectic schedule combined with menus that were written long before i arrived has cut the experimenting out of my day to day routine. this is why most of my posts have been more about the opening and less about the food. ….well i guess not completely.
before leaving england i had started playing with a roasted white chocolate quenelle. nothing to crazy just a nice, creamy custard like quenelle. we needed one more item for our brunch so i decided to bring this project back to life. the formula is simple, roasted white chocolate, crème anglaise, cocoa butter and maybe a little gel. the hard part has been balancing the ingredients to get a nice flavor and just the right consistency. this batch was a little to gummy for a quenelle but turned out to make a nice pallet. it was layered with a caramel and orange (pectin nh) jelly and a vanilla crumble. the final pallet had great feedback and laid the ground work for its next incarnation, a larger entremet with rwc, caramel, citrus confit, smoked salt and sherry vinegar.
the next project was to have a little fun with panna cotta. strawberry panna cotta with white balsamic reduction was the menu description i was given. hmmm….. how do we make this fun? i recently tried building an eton mess sideways and thought i would apply it to this panna cotta.
vanilla bean panna cotta.strawberry balsamic jelly,strawberries in white balsamic, white balsamic reduction gummy