While contemplating what to pick for my final project for a course on the science of food that I'm doing, I narrowed it down to 2 bites- macarons and brownies. Macarons, regardless of how much I love them, are far too sweet, and so I'm left wondering, how can the inherent chewy character be retained without being cloying sweet? Brownies, though had a lot of parameters to play with, would have given an extremely subjective viewpoint on the ideal texture;
I started with a 'desi' chicken- a brownish bird with black patches with slightly darker meat. The flavor it had to offer was significantly better than the generic chicken I get everywhere, except the skin turned ridiculously rubbery on cooking. Ridiculous rubbery as in you could smack it for days and you'd have no success (exaggeration). I still cant get over the wings that I cooked in the skin; the skin was so tough that the meat was 'trapped' in it. On a side note, I gutted the chicken too. Great excuse to learn some biology I say.
Harnessing flavors off the desi chicken, I made a nice rich stock, rested it overnight and reduced it the next day for the caramel. I've never completely understood resting things overnight, except that they enunciate the flavors and make them more integral.
I decided to stick to the apparently generic chicken for the crispy skin. Some of it was baked till crisp, a part was fried in rendered chicken fat and the remainder was poached in some milk and yogurt till soft and then fried off. The baked skin gave the lightest texture of the three, although the poached and fried skin had a distinct flavor from its poaching liquid. I mixed it up with some dehydrated brownie bits and made a little croustilliant out of it.
The remaining brownie was added to the ganache. Now its a nice trick to add some bakes and blit them in if you're running low on chocolate- they provide a lot of structure for the ganache and its a nice change of texture too occasionally.
It certainly isn't the perfect sort of brownie that I had in mind when I started this because it isn't really a brownie anymore; its a chocolate bar. The hiatus from my bonbons is over (I hear summer saying goodbye in the distance mostly).
A bar of Chicken Skin (baked, fried in its own fat and poached and fried) with dried brownie bits, cocoa nibs, Brownie Inaya Ganache and a salted caramel of reduced chicken stock
I started with a 'desi' chicken- a brownish bird with black patches with slightly darker meat. The flavor it had to offer was significantly better than the generic chicken I get everywhere, except the skin turned ridiculously rubbery on cooking. Ridiculous rubbery as in you could smack it for days and you'd have no success (exaggeration). I still cant get over the wings that I cooked in the skin; the skin was so tough that the meat was 'trapped' in it. On a side note, I gutted the chicken too. Great excuse to learn some biology I say.
Harnessing flavors off the desi chicken, I made a nice rich stock, rested it overnight and reduced it the next day for the caramel. I've never completely understood resting things overnight, except that they enunciate the flavors and make them more integral.
I decided to stick to the apparently generic chicken for the crispy skin. Some of it was baked till crisp, a part was fried in rendered chicken fat and the remainder was poached in some milk and yogurt till soft and then fried off. The baked skin gave the lightest texture of the three, although the poached and fried skin had a distinct flavor from its poaching liquid. I mixed it up with some dehydrated brownie bits and made a little croustilliant out of it.
The remaining brownie was added to the ganache. Now its a nice trick to add some bakes and blit them in if you're running low on chocolate- they provide a lot of structure for the ganache and its a nice change of texture too occasionally.
It certainly isn't the perfect sort of brownie that I had in mind when I started this because it isn't really a brownie anymore; its a chocolate bar. The hiatus from my bonbons is over (I hear summer saying goodbye in the distance mostly).
A bar of Chicken Skin (baked, fried in its own fat and poached and fried) with dried brownie bits, cocoa nibs, Brownie Inaya Ganache and a salted caramel of reduced chicken stock
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