January 18, 2010

The weather in Boston this morning was terrible so there is no good seafood to report. We will let you know on Wednesday if we can get any goodies in.

But in the mean time I will fill you in on our chocolate challenge. One of our suppliers sent us a sample of Cordillera, a premium dark chocolate from Columbia to try for our famous warm chocolate cake. We substituted the Cordillera for Callebaut, our Belgium chocolate to compare the two. For this particular dessert and the way we prepare it the Cordillera didn't compare to our Callebaut. Because of the richness of cocoa the Cordillera plateaued and didn't have enough depth and finish. So at least for now our warm chocolate cake will stay the same.

Last week was a big prep week for us. The Red Balloon our newest dessert has been so popular we have had to triple its prep. We have to use a whole ten gallon tank of liquid nitrogen to make enough. We fill a balloon with raspberry puree then roll it in liquid nitrogen at negative 321°F rotating it to make a hollow sphere. It's a scary technique but its all worth it! The sphere is the placed on top of an almond cake filled with lemon and rose-lychee mousse and garnished with raspberry caviar.

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Lastly, over the weekend we sampled some dungeness crab. It was fantastic! We ate it chilled served with chili coulis sauce. It was so good we ate all three. If you would like a copy of the recipe please email ali@lemongrasscny.com It's never too early to start experimenting with menu items for the summer. We will order more this week to check the consistency of the product.