Featuring: Maria Hines, chef/owner at Tilth, Seattle, James Beard '09 award winner, Top Chef Masters contestant.
It was a thrill when Maria Hines accepted the invitation to collaborate with Theo to create the first of many 'chef inspired confections' we’re crafting. We’ll be sharing stories and pictures from this project along with other kitchen sessions -- but you’ll have to wait a while for the unveiling of the confectionary “fruits” of our labor!
Our mouths were watering when Maria shared her ideas, writing “I'd love to explore savory caramels: white truffle, spot prawn-anise-hyssop, triple lemon, sumac-marcona. I love cardamom, olives, onion jam, dried strawberries, those tamarind-chili-lime dried mangos, Woodford Reserve..." The Theo team, lead by chef-in-residence Chad Fuhreck, assembled a variety of ingredients for her to play with. The processes for caramel vs ganache making (chocolate + cream) are quite different, so before she arrived, we agreed we would focus on developing savory caramels.
Upon arrival, we shared our basic caramel recipe with Maria and started exploring ingredients. She is a fierce advocate of local food and as things got underway, she shared a couple of exceptional local ingredient sources with our team. Chocolate and caramel highlight flavors in distinctive ways, so Chef Hines and chef-in-resident Fuhreck talked through ideas.Then the real fun began... the sumac was flying, various dried fruits were tossed and macerated in bourbon, and tamarind paste and lime zest got to know each other intimately...
For the first round of tasting, the caramel was “naked” without its chocolate coating. The truffle oil caramel made a few of us weak in the knees. Maria also wanted to pursue a traditional 'Manhattan' combo of ingredients - bourbon and cherries. Flavors transform once you enrobe caramels with chocolate, so we sent our 5-6 experiments through our chocolate waterfall for coating in 70% dark. Decorations are the final opportunity to add an extra zing of flavor, and Maria selected white truffle salt, pink Himalayan salt and Marcona almonds as possible adornments. Of course, tasting again was required.
Our work is not done! We need to finesse, and Maria will no doubt offer brilliant insights on how to further these delicious experiments.For now, feast your eyes, whet your palates and stay tuned for what comes out of our kitchen next…
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