Japanese Cheesecake

I love cheesecake and have been hearing about this trendy light Japanese crustless version, so I tried to make it. On my third attempt, I think I've come up with something that works well: it's fluffy, almost soufflé-like. Everything here is taken from the exquisitely-detailed recipe/technique from Nami at Just One Cookbook, so look there for better photos and descriptions, including a link to a helpful video. Hers looks a lot more professional than mine, but I'm happy with the flavor and texture I've gotten with my too-short pan.

Cheesecake has a muffin top due to my short cake pan

For my first try, I used her parchment lining technique but with a springform pan and was annoyed by the fidgety parchment lining; worse, the water bath seeped through my tin foil lining making the bottom a bit soggy. For my second try, I realized I didn't need to line the springform pan -- it would release fine -- and I put the water bath below the cake pan (for humidity) instead of bathing the pan: it came out dense on the bottom, indicating the cake needed the heat moderated by the bath.  On my third try, I used a solid pan -- as Nami does -- directly in a water bath, and just dealt with the parchment lining; my pan is slope-sided where hers is straight, which makes lining a little more difficult, but it doesn't have to be exact; it worked well enough that I don't think I need to buy another pan with straight sides -- I can live with the muffin-top profile.

Her recipe is long, but very detailed, which I appreciate. First, note that if your pan is smaller than hers/mine, she provides ingredients scaled to a single egg, then she provides the full 6-egg recipe, so you can scale for your pan. 

As an overview, you "melt" the cream cheese and other batter ingredients than whisk in the egg yolks and flour to make a batter. Then you whip the egg whites into a stiff meringue, then gently fold them together.  I follow her advice about dropping the oven temperature twice.

The 6 eggs barely fit my slope-sided pan which is 20 cm at bottom and 23 cm at the top; the parchment lining must be higher than my pan's 4 cm to accommodate the rise, but the parchment lining flexed and created the muffin-top shape. If you have a different sized pan, scale the recipe appropriately, but realize this will rise dramatically before falling while it slowly cools.

Do take her advice to measure the ingredients beforehand: there's plenty of prep work. I'm trying to simplify this a little by combining measuring into cooking vessels.

Prep the Cake Pan

Use a 23 cm / 9 inch solid cake pan, preferably 10 cm / 4 inch high (mine's only about 4 cm).
Butter then pan bottom and sides so the parchment will stick.
Cut parchment strips to make straps long enough to cross the bottom, up the sides, and over the edge; set them in an X-shaped pattern to make a sling to remove the finished cake.
Cut another strip 10 cm high and line the side of the pan.
Cut a disk for the bottom and press into place.
Set aside.

Sling straps, sides and bottom lined

Batter

  6    Eggs, large

300 g  Cream Cheese

 60 g  Unsalted Butter

200 ml Heavy Whipping Cream (about 35% fat)

       Zest from 1/2 Lemon

 30 ml Lemon Juice (from about 1/2 lemon)

 80 g  Cake Flour

Separate the Eggs and chill the Whites for the Meringue below.
Make a double boiler from a pot of water topped by a medium-sized bowl.
Weigh the Cream Cheese, Butter, Cream, Sugar directly in the bowl.
Add to the double boiler and warm to melt the ingredients, combining with spatula or whisk.
When blended, remove from heat.
Sift in the Cake Flour through a strainer, and whisk to blend.
Strain through the strainer into a large bowl.
Whisk in the Lemon Zest and Juice.
Whisk in the Egg Yolks, one by one, with a hand whisk.

Prepare Oven and Water Bath

Put a roasting pan in the oven and preheat to 160C with convection (15C higher without).

Bring 1 Liter of water to boil.

Meringue

  6   Egg Whites from above, cold

100 g Sugar

1.5 g Cream of Tartar (optional to stabilize)

Clean the medium bowl thoroughly for the Meringue: don't leave any fat, soap, or water on it which would interfere with the development of the foam.

Whip the Egg Whites with an electric whisk (stick blender attachment) on medium until opaque, foamy, and just a little bubbly, about 2-4 minutes.

Whisk in the Sugar and Cream of Tartar, a bit at a time, then increase whisk speed to high; whip until quite dense and it forms stiff peaks.

Gently fold in a third of the Batter with a hand whisk, then repeat with another third, then finally mix it back into the Batter and gently combine with the whisk.

Pour into the lined cake pan.

Place cake pan in water bath and bake 70-75 minutes at 160C convection.

Reduce temperature to 145C convection and bake another 10 minutes.

Check for doneness: a skewer should come out clean.

Turn off the oven and open the door a crack but let the cake cool very slowly to minimize collapse.

After 20 minutes, remove from the oven.

Use the straps as a sling and move the cake to a plate.

Remove the parchment around the sides. 

Let cool and serve.

Bacalao Stuffed Piquillos in Basque Sauce: richer, for two

We've been making this for years based on the book by Teresa Barrenechea: The Basque Table. Irene said the sauce overwhelmed the dish and that she wanted more fish with larger chunks in the peppers. This revised recipe addresses those desires, and scales it for a dinner for two. 

We're scaling some of the proportions based on ingredients we can find here. For example, instead of the dried salt cod at 24@€/Kg, we can use half a bag of frozen Bacalao de Punto de Sal which is just 6€/Kg and doesn't require hydration to de-salt. The Pequillos come in 220 mg jar and ours contained 11 peppers. I had one Choricero pepper, not enough, so I added a Ñora. A pastry bag really simplifies stuffing the peppers, but a zip-top bag with corner cut off should work, or you can use a spoon if you're a masochist.

Stuffed and sauced, before baking

Bacalao Béchamel

250 g      Bacalao del Punto de Sal, froze

 40 ml     Olive Oil

 20 g      Flour

175 g      Milk

Chop the Bacalao into pea-sized chunks, this is easier while it's still frozen.

Sauté on high heat in 40 ml Olive Oil to drive off water, about 5 minutes.

Add Flour and cook off the raw edge on medium, about 5 minutes.

Add Milk and continue cooking until it's noticeably thicker; you don't want it pour-able when hot.

Load a pastry bag with the filling, making sure its snout is big enough to accommodate the Bacalao chunks; let cool while you make the Sauce in the same skillet.

Basque Sauce

 14 g      Coricero and Ñora Peppers, seeded, hydrated

165 g      Onion, small to medium, diced

 30 ml     Olive Oil

  2 clove  Garlic

 15 g      Tomato (1/4 small)

           Salt

Seed the Chili Peppers and hydrate 8 hours; you can also simmer in hot water for about 30-60 minutes if needed. Keep the hydrating water. Roughly chop the Chilis.

Sauté the Onion in the 30 ml Olive Oil until soft.

Add the Garlic, Chilis, and Tomato, and continue to cook until the Garlic is soft; it's fine if the Onions take on a bit of color.

Transfer to the jar of a stick blender and whiz to make a sauce. You'll probably need to add some of the reserved Chili hydration water to thin it enough -- that's fine, it has flavor.

Return the Sauce to the skillet and cook down to thicken; you're looking for a ketchup-like consistency.

Taste and add Salt to taste.

Assembly

10-12  Pequillo Peppers, whole, from 290 g gross / 220 g net jar

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Drain the Pequillos and arrange on a plate; I find it handy to put a shot glass in the center to hold the Pequillos as I'm stuffing them.

Fill the Pequillos with the Bacalao Bechemel using the pastry bag.

Spoon about a third of the Sauce into an oven proof baking dish.

Arrange the stuffed Pequillos around the dish and top with the remaining Sauce.

Bake for 15-30 minutes so everything's hot.

Serve.

"King of Carbonara" sauce: rich and indulgent

We saw this video of "The King of Carbonara" in Rome and new we had to try it: the technique of using the fat from the Guanciale and gently cooking the sauce in a bain-marie appealed to us.

We first had Bucatini alla Carbonara at A. V. Restaurante Italiano (RIP) in Washington DC years ago; it is one of our "go to" dishes at home when we want some easy comfort food. Irene and I have slightly different approaches: she adds the hot pasta to the sauce and relies on the retained heat to cook the sauce, while I find that a bit too raw and add a bit of heat when combining in a pan. Either way, it's fast and satisfying: you can prep the sauce in the time it takes the pasta to cook.

With another practice or two, I should be able to prep the sauce while the pasta cooks for chef Chef Monosilio's more careful technique. In the video, he cuts a large slab of Guanciale into cubes, fries them to render the fat and crisp the meat, and uses some of that fat in the sauce -- that's what hooked us. We can readily find 100 g packages of sliced Guanciale here in Barcelona: it's not cubed, but sliced like thick American bacon; it does have a good piggy funk to it. He uses a mix of Pecorino and Grana Padano because he said that folks now don't like the high salt level of Pecorino; the version of that cheese we get here isn't as dry and salty as what we found in the States, but we'll use his mix.  The proportions below are for two, and it's quite rich; here, I'm backing out the cheese a bit from my first attempt which was just too much.

133 g Long Pasta: Bucatini, Spaghetti, etc

100 g Guanciale, sliced 1-2 mm x 2 cm (or 1 cm cubes)

 25 g Grana Padano (a good aged Parmesan should work)

 25 g Pecorino Romana

  2   Egg Yolks

      Black Pepper

Get a pot of salted water boiling and find a pan that sits on top to create a bain-marie. 

Cook the pasta until its fully done (not al dente), probably 10-12 minutes.

While it's cooking, prepare the sauce.

Sauté the Guanciale with fairly high heat: you want to render fat and crisp the pork. When the meat's crispy and just browned, reserve it and let the fat cool down.

Finely grate the Cheeses and add most of it to the pan; reserve some for the garnish.

Separate the Eggs and add the Yolks to the pan (save the whites to make Chocolate Angel Food cake).

Add the Fat from the Guanciale; I used all of it (maybe 30 ml / 2 Tbs) but you might not be so gluttonous.

Add plenty of coarse freshly ground Black Pepper.

Whisk to combine, and add a little of the Pasta Water so it's a thick liquid rather than a paste.

When the Pasta is done, transfer it with tongs to the sauce pan; it's OK if some water clings to it. 

Put the Pan on the water Pot and stir the sauce over the gentle heat; after a while, it should start to thicken a bit.

Add the crispy Guanciale and stir some more; you probably will have to add some more of the Pasta Water to thin the sauce a little so it coats well. Continue stirring until the sauce is creamy and everything is well coated. (Take a look at the video to see the texture you're looking for.)

Plate the Pasta and garnish with the reserved grated Cheese and a healthy grind of Pepper.

Sopa de Ajo a la Castellana (Garlic Soup)

This recipe is based on our first use of Penelope Casas' recipe from ¡Delicioso! The Regional Cooking of Spain. It sounds like the flavor might be scary, but the garlic is cooked so long that it loses its vehemence. It's a very traditional soup here in Barcelona, especially around Christmastime.

She claims the secret is "the order in which the ingredients were combined" but I found it needlessly complex so I'm simplifying it here. I don't see any reason to create the water-garlic broth separately from adding the beef stock. Heating bowls of stock with the eggs in a hot oven to cook the eggs is a time/energy-waste and makes the bowls too hot to touch. I doubt it's critical to use 4.5 Cup of water but 4.0 Cup of stock, so I'm rounding to convenient metric units. Maybe it makes sense in the restaurant kitchen where she got the recipe, but it's unnecessary work for a home cook.

I also question whether we need water and stock: why not just use all stock for more flavor? Perhaps it would have too much mouth feel and get sticky with a good-quality homemade beef stock. I used a good Spanish boxed chicken stock because it's what I had, and I've seen many other recipes (including other Casas books) that use chicken stock. 

Overview: make a garlic broth, toast the bread in garlic-infused oil to make croutons, serve in bowls filled with an egg, ham, broth, and croutons. There's a lot of broth so make sure your pot can hold 2 Liters.

Servings: 6; with the egg, ham, and croutons, it's a filling lunch.
Duration: 1 hour.

 15 ml      1 Tbs     Olive Oil

  4 cloves  4 cloves  Garlic, lightly crushed and peeled

  3 g       1   tsp   Pimenton dulce (sweet smoked paprika)

                      Pepper

  1 L       4   C     Stock, beef or chicken

  1 L       4.5 C     Water

                      Salt

 75 ml      5 Tbs     Olive Oil

  4 cloves  4 cloves  Garlic, minced

  1 L       4.5 C     stale/dry Bread, sliced/torn into crouton sizes

  3 g       1 tsp     Pimenton dulce (sweet smoked paprika)

  6         6         Eggs

 30 g       6 Tbs     Jamon Serrano, cut small for a spoon

In a large pot, add the Oil and crushed Garlic. Sauté slowly until lightly browned and beginning to soften.
Add the Pimenton and Pepper to bloom briefly, then the Stock and Water.
Simmer slowly, covered, for 45 minutes to extract the Garlic flavor.
Taste and add Salt as needed.

Meanwhile, put the Oil and minced Garlic in a large wide skillet and slowly cook until the Garlic begin to take on just a little color; don't darken too much as you'll be heating it more with the bread. 
Add the Bread pieces and sauté until they are crisp and golden, about 15 minutes; stop if the Garlic is getting too dark and acrid.
Remove from heat and add the Pimenton, stir to coat and bloom flavor.

To serve, crack an egg and slide whole into each bowl.
Top with Jamon.
Bring Broth to vigorous boil and pour over Egg and Jamon; the Egg should poach a little.
Top with Garlic Croutons.
Serve.

Fabada Asturiana rehearsal

We watched a video of Jose Andres with chefs  preparing a Fabada Asturiana and wanted to give this iconic dish a try. At the market, we looked for the (domain-protected) Asturian fabes de la Granja, but the closest we could find were Catalan Mongetes Ganxet. We also found a butcher with a bundle of the meats appropriate for a fabada.  Today's cold, and I didn't think to soak the beans last night, so today I'll treat this as a rehearsal for when I have the correct beans and time to soak them. 

Despite the compromised time and beans, this came out quite well: rich, intense, but not thick and sticky. The beans -- the star of the show -- held together and were creamy with a delicate skin. The sausages were intense. A simple recipe with quality ingredients treated with respect.

Fabada, pan catalana, Basque cider

The Cookful suggests cooking dried beans for about 25 minutes in an Instantpot, but I wanted to be careful with the texture -- I don't want the beans to explode. Here, I'm doing a high-heat fast soak from The Spruce Eats fabada recipe. Ingredients and techniques come from there, plus Saveur, Spanish Sabores, and the Guardian. The recipes, scaled for for 2 people, range from 140 to 300g dried beans, so I'll use 200g. Quantities of the ingredients aren't critical. 

Simple: beans, onion, pimenton, garlic, saffron, oil

Serves 2 hungry shepherds or 3 sedentary adults

200 g      dried Mongetes Ganxet ("crochet beans" due to their curve)

           Olive Oil, Spanish

150 g      small Onion

  1 clove  Garlic, minced

  1 g      Pimenton Dulce

150 g      Tocino (pork belly, slab pancetta)

115 g      Spanish Chorizo (1 link)

120 g      Morcillo (1 link)

pinch      Saffron

 ~4 g      Salt

Put the Beans into a large pot, cover generously with water, bring to boil for 1 minute, then turn off and cover, and let sit for 1 hour.

Meanwhile, cut the Onion into large chunks you can fish out later, then sauté in Olive Oil until soft but not browned. Add the Garlic and Pimenton and sauté a few minutes more to bloom the flavors.

Drain the beans, add back to the large pot with the Tocino, sautéed Onions, Garlic, and Pimenton; add water to cover.

Bring to boil over high heat and skim any scum. 

Reduce to medium, add Saffron and Salt; simmer covered until Beans are slightly al dente in the center; check after an hour, but it might take 90 minutes.

Do not stir as it will break the delicate beans.

Make sure the water just covers the beans, add some if needed.

Remove the Onion.

Add Chorizo and Morcilla, and continue simmering until beans are velvety and cooked through, about 15-45 minutes more; it's OK if a few beans break apart.

Remove the Sausages and Tocino, slice into thick coins.

Adjust Salt. 

Ladle stew into bowls, top with Sausages and Tocino.

Serve with crusty bread and an good quality Asturian, Basque or other Spanish cider. Ours was Basque, and not expensive.

I'd make this again, even with my unsoaked Catalan beans. The chorizo was intensely flavored -- salty, vinegar-y, full of pimenton --  definitely an ingredient rather than something you'd put on a bun. This particular morcilla (blood sausage) was not to our liking: Chris found it too coarse and scary, Irene said it was too heavy on the vinegar; next time I'd seek out a more smooth morcilla. The 1 g of Pimenton was probably not necessary, given how much the chorizo contributed.

Chicken Sous Vide with Miso, Mushrooms, Aubergine Sail (a la Restaurant Jules Verne)

We're trying to recreate Irene's favorite dish from Restaurant Jules Verne in the Eiffel Tower, but without doing a lot of research or going to too much trouble: just improvise, we can tweak later. It was a little fussy but not difficult; the Aubergine Sail was the most finicky part. I think we'll make it again with some improvements described below. 

Chicken, mushrooms, miso, aubergine sail; with roast potatoes

The restaurant dish was called "La Volaille Fermière: Pochée au Miso, Champignons, Aubergine et Jus gras": free-range chicken poached in miso, mushrooms, aubergine, and "jus gras". Jus gras is a traditional fat-enriched, stock-based sauce, reduced to intensify and emulsify; it had a few tiny mushrooms in the pooled sauce, hidden under the "aubergine caviar" sail.  The dark sauce was miso-based, rich, and quite salty. The chicken was cut with dramatic angles, and set down on the intersection of the two sauces. In the photo, the chicken seems to be coated with the jus gras, glossy.

Restaurant Jules Verne is more refined; dark miso sauce, tan jus gras; the sail hides the mushrooms

I made up the chicken and sauces from what we had on hand, plus seasonal mushrooms from La Boqueria. Irene did a lot of research for the sail in our Modernist Cuisine books. The marinading is overnight; the sous vide cooking, making the sauces, and final prep is about 2 hours. Quantities below aren't critical. 

Serves two.

230  g    Chicken Breast, boneless, skinless, almost frozen

100  g    Miso paste, white

100 ml    Chicken Stock, frozen

 75  g    Cooked Aubergine Puree (see below)

  1       Egg White, beaten

          Salt

100  g    Rossinyol Mushrooms (girolle, chanterelle), cleaned

100  g    Butter

200 ml    Chicken Stock

The day before

Cut the Chicken into 4 pieces while still a little frozen in order to get distinct edges;  add to a sous vide bag.

Add Miso Paste and frozen Chicken Stock to the bag.

Vacuum and seal. 

Freezing the Chicken preserves the shape (but see below), while freezing the Stock prevents it from being sucked into the machine.

Let marinade in the fridge overnight, massaging once or twice to ensure the Miso and Stock are well distributed. This ruined the well-defined shape of the Chicken, but it's just visual.

The day of the meal...

Sous Vide the Chicken at 60C/140F for 1.5 hours.

At this temperature, the Chicken is gently firm and not at all stringy, a texture that's unusual with traditional techniques; higher temperatures will create a more stringy, conventionally-textured chicken.

While it's cooking, prepare the Aubergine sail and Mushroom sauce.

The Aubergine (eggplant) we got was a striped reddish variety, probably Rosa Bianca, not the usual deep purple Globe/American or Italian Eggplant. When cut, the inside was pure white, not yellowish and spongy like the deep purple ones we usually get.

Cut the Aubergine in half and pressure cook with steam 5 minutes.

Puree with stick blender: with skin on because this variety can't really be peeled.

This variety blended very smooth, despite the skin and seeds it didn't need to be sieved.

The result was very wet.

Combine 75 g of the puree with the beaten Egg White.

Add a bit of Salt.

Use an offset spatula to spread as thinly as possible on a Silpat nonstick baking sheet.

Microwave 5 times at full power for 1 minute to try and dry out.

This didn't work terribly well, so Irene placed it in the sun, and later finished baking in a hot oven (200C) until it started to crisp up and become toasty color.

This was a very delicate crisp.

While that's cooking,  clean the Mushrooms. 

We used Rossinyols because they're in season here, and had an attractive color; Irene chose small ones from the market.

Sauté slowly in Butter to soften.

Add the Chicken Stock, warm through so the Butter is released from the Mushrooms into the Stock, then remove the Mushrooms for later so they don't overcook.

Reduce the sauce, whisking occasionally to emulsify the Butter in the Stock; it should thicken a bit and turn a little sticky, but not as dense as a glaze.

Hold on very low heat for service.

Just before serving...

Add the Mushrooms to the reduced Stock sauce to warm through.

Remove the Chicken from the sous vide bag, and squeeze out the Miso/Stock juices and paste into a bowl.

Wipe off any paste from the Chicken into the bowl, and return the Chicken to the bag and place in the sous vide bath to keep warm for service.

Press the Miso sauce through a small sieve into a pan to get a smooth sauce; heat and reduce a little to thicken. 

Plating...

Spoon out the Miso sauce onto two plates.

Add the Chicken pieces.

We had a lot more mushrooms than the restaurant, so we couldn't put the chicken on top; just spoon it out next to the Chicken.

Top with a piece broken off the Aubergine sail.

The result

The Chicken was an excellent texture, firm and moist, not at all stringy. But it lost its well-defined edges so wasn't as dramatic as hoped. The Miso sauce was intense, salty, and felt rich; the amount was about right. The Stock/Butter Sauce barely coated the amount of Mushrooms we had, so it doesn't really qualify as a sauce, but it tasted good -- ours was more about the mushrooms. We didn't sauce the Chicken with the Butter/Stock sauce like the restaurant, so the Chicken looked a little naked.

The Aubergine Sail wouldn't dry and crisp in some areas, soft and a bit gummy in others. It required much too much effort to dry and crisp.

Everything on the plate was the same color palate, it needed some color

Next time

Don't cut the breast into 4 pieces, only 2; it may not be necessary to cut almost frozen to get clean edges.

The vacuum of the sous vide bag deformed the edges of the chicken. If we want to preserve the sharp edges, seal the Chicken with Stock and Miso in a bag without vacuuming; sous vide as normal, but ensure the chicken is submerged for good heat transfer. Or just poach in a lot more Chicken Stock conventionally, at the same temperature, until cooked. Or cook the entire breast sous vide, then carefully slice at a dramatic angle. Or don't worry about the shape and just use the sous vide!

The speckled aubergine we used didn't have a lot of flavor; use a conventional fat purple one.

Use red miso instead of white, for color contrast. Will this color the chicken? No problem if we nap it with the jus gras sauce.

To better approximate the restaurant, use just a few mushrooms and use more sauce so we can coat the chicken. We enjoyed the mushrooms, so maybe just make more Stock/Butter sauce, coat the chicken and serve the Mushrooms next to it.

For the Sail, don't beat the Egg White. Use a drier Aubergine, like the usual dark purple variety. Make individual schmears so we don't have to break a monolithic sheet.

Serve with something a contrasting color instead of the same-color roasted potatoes.

Variations

The Stock/Butter sauce approximated the restaurant's "jus gras". The Modernist Cuisine books synthesizes a "cream" sauce from stock (71%) and chicken fat (29%), emulsified and reduced. This sounds like a fun thing to try and should be ridiculously flavorful.

We could make the same but with a firm fish (sous vide at a lower temperature and time), with miso and fish stock, enoki mushrooms, and a toasted sushi nori sheets.

Leek Stuffed with Chicken Mouse, Garlic Cream Espuma (not successful)

This was an experiment which was not successful, for a variety of reasons. It tasted fine enough, but the textures and shapes were all wrong. It's a learning experience and provides clues to things we can improve.

The idea was to take a leek (ha!), pull out the individual cylinders, stuff them with a chicken mousse, and cook both to soften the leek and set the mouse. I wanted a hot foam of whip cream with a garlic flavor on top. It was based on two dishes we'd done before: Cannelloni of Chicken Mousse (2007) and Bacalao Espuma. 

The Espuma is pretty nerdy and requires some unusual gear. I'll give the ingredients and procedure, then discuss what went wrong, and some ideas for future experiments.

Leeks, Espuma, red peppers, zuchinni

Garlic Cream Espuma

 100 ml    Cream (35% fat)

   4 clove Garlic

   1 g     Agar Agar (powder from Tienda Parami)

  30 ml    Water

Leek and Chicken Mousse

   1 large  Leek

 230 g      Chicken Breast

  35 ml     Cream (35% fat)

  70 g      Egg White

0.75 g      Salt

Use a garlic press or mince the Garlic and add to the Cream.

Simmer very low for 30 minutes; we want to extract the flavor.

Hydrate the Agar Agar in Water and whiz to disburse.

Add to the Garlic Cream and bring to bubbling simmer for 5 minutes to fully dissolve the Agar Agar.

Whiz to disburse the Agar gel in the cream.

Chill until it gels.

Whiz the gel to create a "fluid gel" and return to heat at 65C / 150F; don't go too high because it will denature the fluid gel.

Load into an iSi Whipper and charge with two N2O cylinders.

Hold in water bath at 65C / 150F serving temperature

Cut the root and dark green end from the Leek. Separate the cylindrical layers -- this turned out to be much more difficult than I expected. Keep the good cylinders for stuffing, reserve the rest for something else.

Whiz the Chicken Breast in a food processor or blender until pretty smooth, without heating so you don't cook it. Add the Cream, Egg White, and Salt, and process a bit more until as smooth as you can get.

Fill a pastry bag with the Chicken Mousse and then stuff the Leek cylinders: you'll probably have to fill from both ends if you have a long leek.

Steam for 45 minutes.

Remove the cooked Leeks and Chicken, and plate.

Invert the iSi and dispense the Garlic Espuma on top.

Serve.

What went wrong

The Egg Whites in the Chicken Mouse caused them to expand and blow out the Leeks.

The Leeks split along their fiber lines. In retrospect: totally obvious. They're tough fibers across the grain but with the grain they tear easily.

The texture of the Chicken was not mousse-y enough, it was rubbery: too much Egg White and perhaps overcooked.

The Chicken Breast was mono-dimensional in flavor. 

The fluid gel set up well but never returned to a ketchup-like viscous liquid after whizzing. This thickness prevented the iSi from being able to express a foam.  The meager amount may not have been enough for the iSi vessel size anyway; the previous Bacalao Espuma used a larger volume. The two person serving size was probably too small to be workable in the iSi.

Future guidance

Leeks are a pain in the butt to separate: the inter-layer film grips strongly. I'm not sure what I could do to reduce the friction. Maybe I shouldn't use Leeks. What then? Restaurant Alinea (Chicago) fills Palm Hearts, but that's not as large as I was looking for.

Leeks will always split along their fibers: we can't have any filling which expands. Perhaps skip the Egg White and increase the Cream to ensure it's soft enough to pipe into the Leeks.

The Cannelloni Mousse we based this on used a mixture of light and dark meat as well as chicken liver to provide a rich flavor. Do that again, or just use dark meat chicken and liver.

The fluid gel needed to be fluid before going in the iSi. There are different strengths of Agar, even at the store I got this from, Parami. Perhaps this one was too strong, that others would be softer. Try halving the Agar. If you have different Agar, try gelling and whizzing and see if it creates a saucy texture. I think there are a lot of opportunities for warm/hot foams -- "espumas" -- with Cream so it might be worth spending a few bucks on Cream and N2O to find out what proportions work, before worrying about flavors.

Perhaps increase the amount of the Garlic Cream, even if we don't use it all, so the iSi Whipper has enough to work with.