Cornbread

Motivation
I like to buy blue cornmeal so I can make purple cornbread (obviously).  Recently the cornmeal bag has changed the cornbread recipe from the awesome bare-bones recipe to a fancy-smancy recipe with sugar and such.  My stance is that cornbread shouldn't have sugar in it because you're going to slather it with butter and honey eventually anyway.

Ingredients
1 cup Cornmeal (blue preferably)
1/2 cup Flour
1 tsp Salt
1/8 tsp Baking Soda
1 cup Milk

Method
Place cast iron skillet in oven and preheat to 425 degrees F.  Whisk all the dry ingredients together.  When oven is preheated add milk to dry ingredients and mix until incorporated.  Spread batter into hot cast iron skillet and bake for 20-25 minutes.  Serve hot.

Mocha Gel Scallops with Coffee-Mole Sauce

Motivation
I got the idea for this recipe from one of Heston Blumenthal's recipes in the Fat Duck Cookbook.  He poaches a salmon in a black licorice gel.  I love licorice but hate salmon.  Everyone else I know loves salmon but hates licorice.  I thought the idea was cool, but the ingredients could be made more palatable, so this is what I came up with.  I knew scallops and coffee chocolate worked well together.... so I put a new spin on it.

Ingredients
For Scallops
Seas Scallops
27oz Water
4 tbsp Cocoa Powder
3 tbsp Instant Coffee
1 tbsp Sugar
1 tbsp Brown Sugar
1/4 tsp Vanilla Extract
7g Gellan Gum
1.5g Gellan Gum Low Acyl

For Coffee-Mole Sauce
Mole Sauce
Black Coffee

Mise en Place
For Scallops
Mix all the ingredients except for gellan gums (and scallops) in a medium sauce pan and heat.  When mixture comes to simmer, turn off heat and add gellan gums.  Blend with an immersion blender to ensure that gums are well incorporated.  The gums will begin to set when the mocha mixture reaches about body temperature.  While mocha mixture is cooling skewer each scallop with a toothpick to help dip it in the mocha mixture.  Continually text mocha mixture by dipping a finger in it.  When your finger comes out well coated dip each scallop in the mixture for 5-10 seconds.  Scallops should be coated with 1-2 mm of gel.  Place coated scallops on a chilled plate.  Timing is important, once mixture gets too cool it will set and you won't be able to coat scallops.

Immediately transfer coated scallops to the fridge to let gel finish setting.  Later transfer to a zip-lock bag and  suck as much of the air out of the bag as possible (I use a drink straw to remove air).  Don't vacuum seal because it will smash the scallops and ruin the gel coating.

For Coffee-Mole Sauce
I bought the mole sauce that comes in a paste.  I basically brew a pot of coffee (French press in my case) then slowly add and incorporate coffee into a bowl with a lump of mole paste in it until I get a thick sauce consistency.  Transfer to a zip-lock bag and chill until needed.  Right before I use it, I warm it up a bit in the microwave, then cut the corner off the zip-lock bag and treat like a pastry bag and pipe the sauce onto the plate where I need it.

Method
Set sous vide for 132 degrees F.  Once water reach temperature, place scallop zip-lock bags in sous vide and cook for 20 minutes.   Carefully remove cooked scallops from bag (the gel is delicate) and plate.  I place a small dollop of the coffee-mole sauce on the place first and put the scallop on top of it to keep the scallops from sliding around on the plate.  I garnish the scallops with a bit of espresso powder and some sea salt.  They kind of look like chocolate truffles on the plate.

Thai Chicken Salad

Motivation
This is a recipe from the October 2010 issue of Cuisine at Home ever-so-slightly tweaked.  We've had it in both lettuce wraps and sandwiches.  I'm in love with the sauce and thinking of new ways to re-purpose it into other dishes.

Ingredients
For peanut sauce:
3 tbsp Peanut Butter
2 tbsp Soy-Sauce
2 cloves Garlic minced (or 3-4 through garlic press)
1 tbsp Lime Juice
1 tbsp Water
2 tsp Honey
1 tsp Fish Sauce
1 tsp Sriracha sauce (or more if you please)

For Chicken Salad:
1/2 - 1 Rotisserie Chicken, stripped for meat
2 cups Broccoli Slaw Mix (Publix often has this)
2 tbsp Peanuts, crushed
Large Lettuce Leaves

Method
Whisk together ingredients for peanut sauce.

Toss chicken salad ingredients with peanut sauce.  Served chilled.