Passover Dessert Ideas

It's that time of year again, folks...the time when desserts all begin "flourless..."To ease the pain of a cookie-less cake-less week, I'll share a fantastic post by awesome blogger Deb over at Smitten Kitchen. She offers 17 dessert ideas for Passover -- let's face it, who ever knew there were even that many possibilities? -- and they all look completely scrumptious. Go on, have a look!

Meanwhile, if you're still itching for ideas, be sure to check out Susie Fishbein's new cookbook, Passover by Design -- you can buy it straight from here by clicking the picture in the sidebar right next to this post. I've already given three as pesach/seder presents, and have made three balebustas very happy. Have a wonderful holiday!

Minibar, Part trois (et ultime)

minibar21.jpg Let's see, where did we leave off? Have you already forgotten that more tales of molecular gastronomy and showmanship were in store for you? This is the final installment of the Minibar saga. So as not to reveal all my (their) cards, I'll cover only highlights of the remaining courses, leaving some of the show to your imagination (should you choose to explore this restaurant yourself).

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We begin with what was many folks' favorite course of the night: "sundried" tomato salad. As may at this point be intuitive, there were no actual sundried tomatoes, but rather man-made, sundried-tomato-tasting-and-looking red ovals (??), composed of sundried tomato puree and other unpronounceable ingredients. Accompanying the SDT-like rounds were perfectly shaped tomato hears, their seeds front and center; micro basil; fantastic greek yogurt; aged balsamic vinegar; herbs; and some form of foam whose flavor eludes me at this point. Each element had its own texture and flavor, at once familiar and totally new; while the resulting dish smacked of a familiar tomato-basil salad, the chefs truly recreated the traditional dish, and dare I say it, their recreation was better than the original. For the sake of full disclosure, I have a longstanding love affair with tomato seeds and was delighted to see them take center stage at Minibar.

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Next up was a very cool take on guacamole: paper-thin slices of avocado were chilled, then molded into a long hollow cylinder, which was served with a tomato sorbet inside. This was garnished with some sort of pepper (jalapeno, perhaps?), micro-squares of real, honest-to-god tomato, and -- get this -- crushed Fritos, a surprising favorite ingredient among the folks at Minibar.

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This was another whimsical yet clever dish that was impressively presented. I'll be honest that I prefer real guacamole to the Minibar version - but by any other name, this would have been a great dish.

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A unanimous thumbs up among the group followed the guacamole, in the form of deconstructed potato soup with caramelized onions and clams (for those who'd eat them). The clams were crazy-fresh, only 14 hours old; even the self-proclaimed clam hater among us loved them. The clams were nestled in a whipped potato foam, accompanied by a generous layer of the best caramelized onion puree I've ever tasted. Tiny hashbrown-ed potato cubes added the perfect crunch to this briny, smooth dish -- both the clam eaters and the non-clam eaters agreed that this dish was really memorable.

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I'll mention one last savory dish, only because it was such a shocking success. Had you told me that one of my truly favorite dishes would have contained a layer of jellied zucchini seeds suspended over a rich, sweet puree of caramelized zucchini, I'd have laughed in your face. I pestered the chefs unendingly as I ate this dish -- how did they make caramel out of just zucchini? How did it taste so darn good? How? How? Yea. I still don't know. But it was freakin' amazing.

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Among the dishes I didn't mention: "philly cheesesteak" (with porcinis for the non-meat eaters), cotton-candy coated eel, conch fritters, and more. Want details? Go to Minibar. :)

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I've left room here for dessert, because there were two ridiculous desserts that really blew my mind.

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The first was a seemingly simple combination of yogurt, praline, honey, and olive oil -- only the yogurt was recreated as snow, the honey had the texture of rock salt, and the praline was hardened into logs that sat bellied in a pool of grassy Spanish olive oil and fantastic honey. The combination of frozen, tart, unsweetened kernels of yogurt snow and crunchy bites of honey with the smooth, nutty praline and the olive oil was totally amazing (I know, I've said amazing too much, but this was blow-my-mind good). I've tried to recreate it at home with little success; that snow and the rock-honey really made the dish.

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The other memorable dessert was introduced by the chef as the dessert that blew his mind, and it was indeed special. Eye-squintingly tart tamarind paste and spicy hot chili powder accompanied a spoonful of coconut sorbet cloaked in a layer of frozen pureed peanuts for a thai-inspired sweet. The creamy coconut, sour tamarind, spicy chili powder and nutty peanut combo sounded like something right out of the cookbook Hot Sour Salty Sweet, a beautifully-photographed exploration of Southeast Asian food.

While I won't spoil it for you, the chefs even came back onstage after the final applause for a little encore:

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In all, it's fair to say that Minibar was a surreal gastronomic experience -- a window into a whole world of food-play with which I was (and still am) pretty unfamiliar. I'd highly recommend finding a very special occasion, and celebrating it at Minibar.

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Minibar, Part Deux

(For those who haven't been following, a bunch of friends and I went out to dinner last week at Minibar and had a $$delightful$$ meal; I'm documenting our adventure, course by course, on NDP. You can see part one here.) minibar10.jpg

Our story resumes with one of the evening's most whimsical dishes: "dragon's breath" popcorn. We were each handed a ball of popcorn (kettle corn, actually -- sweet and salty and delicious all over) submerged in liquid nitrogen. We were instructed to exhale when we ate it, so that upon chewing and breathing, we actually exhaled, um, smoke. What DB popcorn lacked in actual culinary innovation, it made up for in giggle factor. D literally couldn't keep a straight face as I tried to photograph, so I ended up with a bunch of blurry pictures in which the smoke is visible only because I know it's there.

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All silliness aside, the next course was one of my favorites of the evening. Simply titled "blue cheese and almond," what actually arrived at our places was a semi-spherical golf-ball-sized bowl made entirely of pureed, frozen, and molded marcona almonds, filled with blue cheese and topped with maybe some honey? and some bread crumbs shaved toasted almonds (thanks, E), I think?..argggh I'm totally empathizing with food critics right now; I claim to have loved a dish but the ingredients are somewhat a blur? Sounds fishy, I know. But get this: the dish was freezing. Literally, it was so cold that it almost stung the teeth. Which was unexpected, and wonderful. See, blue cheese is very sharp, and very rich; it needs something to cut the richness, to mitigate the intensity. Usually, that something is either acidic or sweet. But in Minibar's take on blue cheese, the temperature was the mitigating element, and it worked perfectly. The almond dish -- made of pure marcona almonds, blended, then frozen to hold their shape -- was also served frozen, and its texture was delightful, both smooth from the natural fat and coarse from the bits of almonds. To my palate, the dish was a smashing success.

This dish really revolutionized the way I tend to think about how flavors and textures work together. Instead of simply assuming that certain foods, dishes, and courses should automatically be served hot or cold, try switching up the temperature of a dish in unconventional ways. For example, I've typically served pea soup hot; with summer steadily approaching, I'm going to omit the chicken broth, opt for a mirepoix base instead (carrots, onions, and celery), add some nutmeg, and try serving it cold. How will you manipulate temperature creatively? Leave a comment and let me know...

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I'll end this post with a nod to Minibar's flexibility. When our group reserved seats (exactly 30 days in advance, at exactly 10 9 am, per Minibar's rules), the restaurant contacted us for a detailed description of our eating restrictions. This flexibility may have bit them in the butt, as half of our group kept kosher, another segment ate no pork and selected seafood, and one lonely diner was game for anything. But Minibar kindly obliged by sometimes serving the different groups entirely different foods for a particular course. This next dish was one such example.

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The kosh folks ate a man-made olive, created using the same sodium alginate as was used to make the contained mojito. The olive was served with a small sliver of orange, and tasted distinctly of green olive (which I love). It was actually reminiscent of a virgin dirty martini (which sounds like a total oxymoron), tasting strongly of fresh olive juice. Meanwhile, the other folks ate a conch fritter with a liquid conch chowder center, which was a very innovative take on a typical fritter.

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My mind's a-brewin' with ways to employ this technique. For example, when making risotto fritters (aka supplí or arancini), stuff them with a bit of mozzarella cheese and some marinara sauce (as they do at one of my fave pizza joints, Two Amys) which will ooze and drip deliciously when you bite into them.

'Til next time, keep that drool in your mouth :)

Meal of the Century: Minibar

minibar1.jpg If I had my way, I'd have many more dinners like Thursday night's feast at Minibar; that said, it's safe to assume that food that memorable won't pass my lips again for quite a long time. I know it's not my usual tune to do restaurant reviews, but Thursday night was truly revolutionary, and I'd be remiss not to share it with my readers, who surely appreciate the value of a spectacular meal.

Two friends, E and J, recently celebrated their birthdays; E impressively convinced J and four other rational people to shell out an arm and a few legs to eat what rarely consisted in things we'd call "food." Main ingredients in many of the dishes included liquid nitrogen; agar agar; sodium alginate; calcium chloride; and other lip-smacking ingredients. Odd chemicals notwithstanding, each course was both tasty and fun to eat. In fact, fun was pretty much the theme of Thursday night's feast. Minibar is a restaurant that doesn't take itself too seriously; there's a fair amount of silliness involved when you're eating things that make you exhale smoke. Minibar is owned and run by the formidable DC restauranteur Jose Andres (also of Jaleo, Oyamel, Cafe Atlantico, and Zaytinya); it comprises -- yep, you guessed it -- a bar (and a short one at that) on the second-and-a-half floor of Cafe Atlantico. Six seats across, the "restaurant" is designed to serve three groups of two a 28-course dinner, spanning two hours, of "snacks," "savories," and "sweet endings." The chefs behind the bar (Brad and Ryan were ours, but the team is six in total) take great care in assembling each course, and the results are both whimsical and clever.

Over the next few posts, I'll provide some highlights of this meal, along with some tips for recreating the dishes in your own kitchen. I asked how to make almost all of the 28 courses we had on Thursday night; however, many of them required a pacojet, a cotton candy maker, and other kitchen tools and appliances whose names I don't even know. With that in mind, my caveat to providing some of their methods is that when you go home to make these dishes, aim to replicate the tastes, but accept that some of the textures will be impossible to recreate without some specialty kitchen items.

Ok, here we go: (SPOILER ALERT: if you're going to minibar sometime soon, do yourself the favor of refraining from reading this. Better to be surprised onsite!)

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Course #1: Caipirinha "Nitro": picture a martini glass filled with a nice, strong caipirinha, and topped with what amounted to shards of caipirinha sorbet. I'm not 100% sure how they managed to freeze the alcohol, but I think dry ice may have been involved; in any event, the idea was that the "ice" in the drink was made of more drink, so that when it melted it didn't dilute the drink at all. Clever, but not one of my favorites. This was likely because at that point, we had glasses of champagne sent by a friend, and glasses of the white wine we had ordered, both in front of us already; it was a bit of alcohol overkill, especially on an empty stomach.

The idea of making drink flavored ice cubes is clever and useful; I often do it when making a pitcher of iced coffee, so that people can keep their coffee both cold and strong.

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Course#2: Parmesan "Pringle" (yea, almost every course has at least one word in quotations): paper-thin sheets of toasted parmesan were shaped to resemble pringles, and were served with a delightful dip made of greek yogurt, lemon, and some herbs. This course was really delicious; the salty parmesan chips went perfectly with the creamy and acidic dip. Perhaps the best part was that while the so-called pringles were incredibly thin and delicate, the yogurt dip was so light and fluffy that you could scoop it onto a pringle without the chip breaking into a million shards the way you might expect it to. Very cool.

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When I was younger, I used to make pita pizza for dinner at least once a week. Parmesan was my preferred pizza cheese, and I'd always make sure to grate extra cheese onto the pan so that along with my pita pizza, I could eat small sheets of browned parmesan cheese. These days, I don't bother with the pita pizza; I just grate parmesan onto a baking sheet lined with foil in a 350-degree oven for 15 minutes or so, until the cheese is fully browned. I remove it from the oven, let it cool slightly, and then crack it into "chips," to be eaten with a dip of your choice, if not plain.

As for the dip, it is relatively easy to make a fluffy greek yogurt dip at home: simply whip the yogurt with a hand or stand mixer, and add salt, pepper, a few squeezes of lemon and some fresh parsley, mint, chili pepper, or other herbs and spices.

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Course#3: Beet "Tumbleweed." If there was a throwaway course, this was it. The tumbleweed was essentially a bunch of terra sticks made into a tangled ball. It was good, but it tasted no more interesting or flavorful than terra chips. I suppose that to make these at home, you would slice a beet into matchsticks, season with salt and pepper, bake, and then fry. Or maybe just fry raw. Anyhow, buy Terra chips or sticks and avoid the hassle.

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Course#4: Olive Oil "bon bon:" Do you watch Top Chef? If you recall the final episode of season 2, when Marcel and Ilan cooked in Hawaii, Marcel attempted making something just like this, but the humidity foiled his plans. Essentially, the olive oil bon bon consisted in a fantastic Spanish olive oil and a hit of salt held together with sodium alginate inside a thin layer of sugar, such that it formed a glassy marble-like bottom with a long, slender pipette at the top. We were instructed to lift by the bulb, as the shard of sugar was very delicate. Cracking the sugar released a small rush of wonderfully-flavored olive oil, which blended nicely with the salt and sugar.

Not surprisingly, I can't tell you how to make this at home.

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Course#5: "Mojito:" this was in quotations because it was prepared using some agar agar so that the outside gelled to resemble an egg yolk, with a thin mojito-flavored membrane surrounding the sweet, rum-y, limey innards. There was just a bit of lime zest on top. Once in your mouth, the membrane burst and the mojito went down easily; this mouthfeel would recur several times during the meal.

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No tips for this one, either -- sorry, folks.

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Course#6: "Bagles and Lox:" A clever twist on the original, this was deep-fried Greek pastry filled with tobiko ikura (salmon roe) and home-made (I think) herbed cream cheese. The bite contained perfect proportions of each (read: lots of roe, little cream cheese) and the crispy pastry, neither sweet nor salty, was the perfect vehicle for the creamy and salty filling. Most of us really enjoyed this.

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I actually plan on making this at home at some point, and here's how I'll be doing it: I'll buy wanton wrappers, and slice them into thin isosceles triangle, wrap them around themselves into a cone shape, stick together with a bit of water, and deep fry. You may have to set them around something structured so that they hold their shape. After they've been fried and cooled, make the cheese: mix equal parts cream cheese and either Alouette or Boursin cheese. You only need like 1/2 a tsp. total for each cone. Put half the cheese mix in; top with a couple tsp. of tobiko and a bit more cheese. And maybe a bit of lemon zest would go nicely with it as well.

That's enough for now, but hang around for more courses during the next couple weeks. What a meal this was!