Closer to the ground: what's unusual about chefs cooking root vegetables
The gastronomic fashion for local products has significantly contributed to the appearance of dishes with root vegetables in restaurant menus. At the same time, the masters of haute cuisine are increasingly finding rather unobvious options for using these uncomplicated vegetables. The most relevant culinary approaches to root vegetables are described in the Izvestia article.
Experimental base
Root vegetables are very promising products for experiments in restaurant cuisine. They can be used raw, baked, boiled, fermented, and made into mashed potatoes, sauces, or soups. A lot of flavor is contained not only in the root vegetable itself, but also in its peel, experts say.
— Beetroot peel is sometimes used in borscht: it is boiled separately with tomato paste, vinegar, salt and sugar, and then this broth is added to the soup, and it gives a very rich color and additional taste, — the chef of Frantsuza Bistrot, Harvest and Duo Gastrobar restaurants (St. Petersburg) told Izvestia Ivan Frolukhin. — At Harvest, we also used a similar principle with celery peelings. First they were fried, then boiled with cream and a sauce was obtained — this is a simple but very expressive way to work with the product and use it as much as possible.
Celery root with pecorino sauce
Root vegetables are interestingly revealed in different textures, our interlocutor continues. For example, they can be used in cream soups, where, in addition to cream or milk, a little strong alcohol is sometimes added - cognac or rum — to enhance the flavor. Raw root vegetables also work interestingly. They can be very thinly sliced, then soaked in ice water for a short time — this way they become more elastic and retain their beautiful shape. After that, they can be used in salads with lemon dressing and young cheeses or feta. Such techniques allow you to reveal familiar products in a new way, even without complicated culinary techniques.
From parsnips to carrots
A very interesting root vegetable that is increasingly found in restaurant dishes is parsnips. It resembles carrots in shape, but it has a special aroma and taste. According to our expert, it can also be used raw, for example in salads, and to make cream soups or mashed potatoes from it. At home, parsnips are best baked. The root vegetable must be pre-washed well, cut lengthwise into 2-4 parts, pour olive oil or vegetable oil, add a little salt, add a little sugar and aromatic herbs (thyme or sage), and then tightly cover with foil and put in the oven for 30-35 minutes. Baked parsnips can be served as a side dish to meat or fish or used as an independent dish.
Baked parsnips, celery cream, pumpkin
The chefs' appeal to root vegetables is largely due to the increased interest in these products on the part of the guests. The chefs' imagination helps them discover the rich gastronomic potential of these vegetables.
"We use root vegetables in a wide variety of dishes, from appetizers to desserts, and we have already tried hundreds of variations with them," admits Maxim Lyubimov, chef and co—owner of Leo Wine&Kitchen (Rostov—on-Don). — Carpaccio, milfey, ravioli, and even raisins were made from celery root into a paste along with caramel cream made from ordinary raisins. For several years, we had lasagna in the top, where pre—baked and then slightly dried celery was used instead of dough, and as a layer, a sauce based on black chanterelles and gruyere cheese, accompanied by rich onion broth.
Ravioli with celery and truffle
Another favorite of our interlocutor is carrots, with which he prepares various sauces, from vinaigrette to hollandaise. For example, in lamb tartare, a sauce based on boiled fresh carrots with spices and pumpkin oil has become an important link. Chef Lyubimov recommends cooking carrots at temperatures of 130-140 ° C, so that they are slightly dried in parallel and turn out to be a little stringy. In this form, it can be used as an addition to various dishes or as an independent snack. Also, if you marinate carrots in tangerine syrup, in the future it can be used in cupcakes instead of dried fruits.
Dancing from the stove
An important advantage of root vegetables is their accessibility. Restaurants today have the opportunity to receive high-quality local vegetables grown by local farmers and gardeners.
— Root vegetables work great in the textures of mashed potatoes and side dishes for meat, poultry, game: they are very flexible and give a lot of room for gastronomic solutions," says the brand chef of the Zakroma and Skazka restaurants (Yaroslavl) Pavel Trifonov. — And for lean dishes, broths made from baked root vegetables become especially relevant. To prepare them, the vegetables are first baked to a bright color, and then boiled and thickened for a long time. As a result, it turns out almost like demiglas, only completely based on herbal ingredients.
Farm root vegetables with smoked butter sauce,
The Zakromov menu has duck breast with dried beetroot and smoked parsnip cream, which becomes a kind of guide between all the other elements. The root is first steamed, then smoked, baked and then punched with broth and cream into a delicate cream that gives a starch base that helps to assemble the taste of the dish into a single whole. In addition, parsnips have their own very expressive feature — they are fragrant, fragrant, with a lot of essential notes. Its spicy, slightly sweet, warm aromatics also play an important role in this position.
Duck breast with dried beetroot, smoked parsnip cream and lingonberry sauce
Another interesting example is the beetroot lad dessert, in which the familiar root vegetable is revealed in several techniques and textures at once. First, the vegetable is steamed in a cast iron pot in the oven with a small amount of water, then peeled, sliced and slightly dried. Due to this, beetroot becomes more concentrated in taste, sugars are activated in it, it becomes sweeter, and the texture begins to resemble dried fruit — something close to prunes. In addition, fresh beetroot is squeezed out, and salted caramel is made on its basis by boiling the juice with sugar and salt — caramel with a characteristic beetroot flavor is obtained. The third component is beetroot ice cream with raspberry puree.
The power lies in simplicity
Roman Chistov, the chef of the Beluga restaurant (Moscow), is convinced that the root crops growing in central Russia are especially suitable for gastronomic experiments: horseradish, carrots, turnips, radishes, celery, beets.
— Freshly squeezed beetroot juice makes an interesting kvass for okroshka, and horseradish can be used to make ice cream and serve it with jelly, — he says.
Beetroot kvass okroshka, sturgeon sausage, seasonal vegetables
This spring, our interlocutor decided to experiment with fried radishes. He cooks it with coconut oil, which slightly negates the bright aroma of the radish and saturates it with its taste. The root vegetable is fried until medium cooked and turns out to be both textured, crispy, and at the same time soft. Sour cream with coconut oil, lots of spicy herbs and flakes of food yeast are added to the dish, which not only add flavor to umami, but are also very useful because they are rich in B vitamins.
"Root vegetables reveal themselves very well in dishes such as gratin," Ilya Blagoveshchensky, brand chef of Sapiens restaurant (Moscow), told our publication. — This year we cooked beets in this format: we cut them into thin strips on a special Japanese machine, carefully rolled them and baked them with olive oil and spices. Due to this technology, a very interesting texture is obtained, a strong visual effect is obtained, and at the same time the natural taste of beetroot is preserved.
Rice-free daikon rolls with avocado, shiitake and Kizami wasabi
Another popular root vegetable that came to the attention of our interlocutor is daikon, which is primarily associated with Asian cuisine, which is why he uses it to make lean rolls without rice. The root is cut into very thin slices, which are carefully wrapped in avocado filling with shiitake and wasabi sauce.
Before working with daikon, brand chef Blagoveshchensky recommends that you pre-soak the root in cold water with ice for about 20 minutes. This helps to remove the bitterness and too pungent odor that this product sometimes has. In addition, it takes on some water and becomes very crispy and more pleasant in texture. For pickling daikon, the expert advises using vinegar, sugar, sesame oil and mirin. The resulting product will work well in salads or as a side dish — it will refresh the dish and add extra acidity.
Rarely, but accurately
The chefs' gastronomic experiments arouse the guests' interest in undeservedly forgotten root vegetables, which once included turnips, which were very common in Russian cuisine.
— Turnips have a unique taste profile, — says Andrey Fedoseev, brand chef of Björn restaurant (Moscow). — In its raw form, it gives a light, almost mustard-like sharpness and crunch, and when heat-treated it reveals a deep, enveloping earthy sweetness. It's a blank canvas for working with textures and flavors.
In his new set "Landscapes", our interlocutor included turnips in the course "Vegetable Garden", where she acts as a guide to the idea of terroir and soil. The root vegetable is baked in edible white clay — kaolin. The outer shell works like a perfect capsule: it retains all the moisture and essential oils inside the product, concentrating the taste, and gives the dish a subtle mineral aroma of earth. Turnips are served with chervil cream and parsley leaves, lingonberry jam and fried herbs (mizuna).
Turnip baked in clay with herb cream, lingonberry jam and fried herbs
Speaking of non-obvious turnip cooking formats, brand chef Fedoseev primarily mentions lactofermentation. If you cut it into thin layers and ferment it in saline solution, it will acquire a powerful umami profile and bright acidity, becoming an ideal match for dense fish. Another promising area is desserts. Baked before caramelization, turnips lose their bitterness and become an excellent base for ice cream. Its earthy sweetness goes well with malt, burnt butter or honey. Finally, turnips, dried and ground into dust, are a powerful natural seasoning. It can be sprinkled on dishes to give them a light aroma of moist earth.
In order to reveal the turnip in a new way in the home kitchen, the expert advises to get away from the usual boiling, which makes it watery. As a good alternative, he suggests baking in a salt crust. To do this, mix coarse salt with egg white, cover the whole unpeeled turnip and place it in a hot oven. The salt will draw out excess moisture, and the flesh inside will become dense, sweet and fragrant. If you boil the turnips for a couple, and then punch them in a blender with butter heated to a nutty flavor and caramel color, then you will get a wonderful restaurant-level mashed potatoes. Finally, raw turnips can be cut into as thin slices as possible on a mandolin, seasoned with good unrefined oil, apple or wine vinegar, coarse salt and add some fresh herbs or berries (the same currant or lingonberry). As a result, you will get an interesting version of carpaccio, which will become a real decoration for any family dinner.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
