Taking another shot at a recipe out of Eleven Madison Park, with some minor ingredient alterations due to unavailability. I absolutely love this cookbook, despite the fact that I seem to be producing more failures than successes out of it. But, since I am not satisfied with my current .333 batting average, I decided to step up to the plate again and have a crack at this recipe out of the summer section of Eleven Madison Park. Was it a hit? Or did I strike out and now face relegation down to the minor leagues of cookbooks? Is this baseball metaphor becoming too much? Read on for the exciting conclusion, I promise 100% fewer sports metaphors!
The core of this dish is a poached prawn salad, which is easy enough to make. First you make a court bouillon out of white wine, aromatics, spices and citrus by combining all the ingredients in a pot with about a quart of water and simmering it for 20 minutes. I really enjoyed this preparation of the prawns. The classic combination of anise and citrus never lets me down, and with the broth containing fennel, fennel seed, star anise, orange zest and orange juice, the prawns had a fantastic depth of flavor.
After poaching the prawns for a few minutes, they were chilled in the court bouillon over ice, and then finely diced. The diced prawns were then mixed with avocado, lime juice, diced granny smith apple, tarragon, greek yogurt, crème fraîche, mayonnaise and a dash of cayenne pepper. Really would love to know why THREE different fats were necessary in this preparation. I don't know if I would be able to tell the difference if only crème fraîche was used. I'm sure Chef Humm has tested the prawn salad a variety of ways and has a good reason why this is the perfect balance. I'll take his word for it.
Next up is the tricky part. In order to get that beautiful tube of avocado, you have to thinly slice a quartered avocado, and layer the pieces one-by-one on a sheet of parchment paper. This took a few tries. Avocado is not the most forgiving medium to work with, especially when sliced thinly. It has a tendency to tear quite easily. Also, the instructions were unclear as to how much of the avocado was to be used. When you quarter and slice an avocado, you're going to get some pieces that are much smaller than the others. On my first attempt, I tried using these without success. The roulade was uneven and didn't roll properly. Using only those slices that spanned the length of the avocado produced much better results.
Also, the recipe calls for 1 avocado per person, which has to be a typo. If you make a roulade out of one whole avocado, it's going to be about 2 feet long. I used about a half of an avocado in the above pictures, and I think those are even bigger than what is shown in the book.
Once the avocado slices are layered1, the prawn salad is spooned down the center of the slices, and then the whole thing is rolled up like a cigar. Again, this was challenging. Making sure that the roulade did not tear or fall apart was tricky and took a few attempts. Unfortunately, I didn't see this video until after I made the dish. It certainly would have helped. A good demonstration of the proper technique.
The dish is then plated by brushing the roulade with a lemon oil2, sprinkling with fleur de sel and garnishing with some micro greens. A greek yogurt sauce3 is then swooshed onto the plate (mine need work), and filled with a few drops of lemon oil, and a sprinkling of togarashi spice.4
A fantastic dish, and it felt great to have some success making a recipe out of Eleven Madison Park. It wasn't perfect, I certainly could use a little more roulade practice to make them perfectly even. But the flavor was amazing. Avocado and shellfish are a classic pair, and this recipe showed them both off brilliantly. The tang of the greek yogurt and the heat of the cayenne compliment the dish as well. Really everything was in balance. Great stuff.
1 I omitted a step where the avocado slices are vacuum sealed in a sous vide bag because I don't have a vacuum sealer.
2 Made by steeping lemon zest in canola oil.
3 A mixture of greek yogurt, lime juice and cayenne.
4 My edit, I wanted something to bring a little red color to the plate in lieu of the lobster roe oil and powder.
Due to my avocado aversion, I couldn't realistically come within sniffing distance. But that is such a beautiful preparation it makes me wish I could!
Posted by: Julie Munroe | 2012.12.10 at 10:40 AM
Joseph,
It really is a wonderful book. Even if you don't make a single recipe out of it, it's still worth getting just for the photography.
Posted by: Fork & Spoon | 2012.10.13 at 08:20 AM
Nice. The Eleven park Madison's book is beautiful. I need that one!
Posted by: Joseph | 2012.10.07 at 11:20 PM