Every now and then I crave brunch. About the same amount of time I crave a facial. I decided to combine and see what happens. The result was some very happy guests…

Breakfast Strata with Sausage, Mushrooms & Monterey Jack – Kind of an old standby for breakfast for a crowd. I love the way the bread puffs up and almost becomes fluffy.

Mom’s Blueberry Scones – I swear when my mom makes these they are waaaaayyyy better. I think she’s holding out on a secret ingredient.

Bagels with Gravlax & Tomatoes – My latest cooking craze is making homemade gravlax. It’s so easy (recipe below) and it’s so much better than what you can get at the store.

Sweet & Spicy Bacon – Great for a brunch, as you can bake it in large batches and it can be made a day ahead and reheated. Coating the bacon in flour results in super crisp, crisp, crisp bacon. Did I say crisp?

Fruit Salad with Lime Creme Fraiche – I used winter season fruit (apples, pears, bananas and a crazy cinnamon/persimmon hybrid) and dolled it up with a sweet, lime creme fraiche.

Roasted Asparagus with Mustard Lemon Sauce – I found teeny, tiny, skinny asparagus and quickly roasted them with olive oil and salt.

Stumptown Cold Brew – I am straight-up addicted to this coffee. And I don’t drink coffee. I asked a friend to pick up a few bottles from the restaurant where he works (I don’t know where to get it otherwise) and it was the hit of the party. I am incredibly saddened that it can’t be ordered online, but I’m eying this as a substitute.

Gravlax Recipe
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup kosher salt
1 T cracked white pepper
1.5 pounds skin-on salmon filet
1 large bunch of dill

Combine sugar, salt and pepper in a small bowl and mix well. Coat salmon on both sides with mixture and put in a shallow dish. Pack the remaining mixture on top of and around the fish. Lay dill on top and cover with plastic wrap. Place in fridge for 42 hours, checking daily and draining any excess water that accumulates. After 42 hours, quickly rinse salmon and pat dry. The salmon can be wrapped in saran for up to 7 days. Slice as thinly as possible and serve.

For dessert number three, I found a tea & chocolate recipe in my Sous-Vide Cuisine cookbook. I vacuum sealed a pound of chopped milk chocolate with White Sage & Wild Mint Tea and placed in the water bath for 2 hours to meld. Afterwards, I strained the chocolate, poured into blobs on waxed paper, added a lollipop stick, sandwiched with another sheet of waxed paper and squashed them flat with a heavy atlas.

See Molecular Gastronomy Party for the complete menu.

A bazillion years ago, a fellow foodie sent me ice pop bags from Guam. I decided now was the time to use them. I found a recipe for Vietnamese coffee and carefully funneled the liquid into the bags. The trick was sealing them. For some reason I didn’t think of tying them with string, so resorted to using office binder clips to keep them closed while they froze. (Update: a very smart friend has since suggested sealing the bags with heat: folding over the top of the bag and running a lighter along the edge sealed them perfectly.)

People went nuts for these. My brother called it the “drug course” because they were so laden with caffeine that everyone was buzzing and giddy. Most people had two. A few even considered having three. Recipe here.

See Molecular Gastronomy Party for the complete menu.

Dessert number one was a huge hit and a crazy sugar blast. I made a quick mousse by whipping heavy cream with raspberry jam and spooned it over donut crumbles (glazed donuts pulsed a few seconds in a food processor then toasted until very crunchy).

The “molecular” portion of this course was an effervescent lime sugar, which was a sugar syrup with lime zest heated to a soft candy stage and mixed with fizzy. As soon as the fizzy was added the liquid went crazy and started to foam and harden. I quickly spread it onto a silpat to let it cool, then crumbled the resulting candy into chunks. While it was really cool to make, it tasted a little like lime alka seltzer and I decided to leave it off the dessert.

See Molecular Gastronomy Party for the complete menu.

For the meat course I seared New York strip steaks on Himalayan salt blocks–basically I heated a brick of salt in the oven until it was blazing hot, then tossed the steaks on to sear both sides. As the meat released moisture it made a salty, delicious crust.

I paired it with a chimichurri air–chimichurri liquid mixed with lecithin / lecite and whisked to form a light and airy foam. Unfortunately, at party time I realized my lecithin had moisture in it and had lost its foaming power. However, the chimichurri liquid was fantastic on its own, so we just drizzled it over the steak.

I can no longer find the original recipe online, so I’m including it here. It’s a definite keeper:

Chimichurri Sauce
1 cup chopped parsley
1 cup chopped cilantro
1 medium jalepeno (or more if you like it hot)
8 oz red wine vinegar
3 garlic cloves
Sea salt

Place all ingredients in a food processor and blend until liquefied.
Pour the liquid through a strainer to remove any large pieces.

If you want to turn it into an air, mix 9oz of the liquid with 1.5 grams lecithin using an immersion blender and scoop out the resulting air.

See Molecular Gastronomy Party for the complete menu.

The duck course was next (I know it’s not really a thing, but it should be)…

Of all the recipes I researched for this party the arugula “spaghetti” sounded like the most fun to make. The arugula was pureed with water and agar agar and sucked into a tube with the aid of a syringe. The tube was then put into an ice bath to firm up. Once firm, the syringe was depressed and out shot the most beautiful, brilliant green “spaghetti” (video here).

I wanted to test out my new sous vide machine and make duck confit. Long story short, the machine broke and I had eight duck legs sitting in tepid water overnight. Not good. Amazon to the rescue… I actually bought canned duck confit online (Rougie Confit of Duck Legs, 4 legs, 53oz) and it turned out to be the best confit I’ve ever had!

The spaghetti honestly didn’t taste like much, but guests loved the rich, silken duck meat; even those who didn’t like duck were converts.

See Molecular Gastronomy Party for the complete menu.

For the fish course I found a recipe for quinoa-coated shrimp in A Day at El Bulli. The quinoa was mixed with a solution called metil, but it was difficult to coat each individual shrimp and get the quinoa to stick. It was even harder to fry them without losing the coating entirely, but it was worth the effort.

The shrimp were crisp and crunchy and delicious dipped in sweet chili sauce.

See Molecular Gastronomy Party for the complete menu.

Next up was a “greens” course. I wanted to make the asparagus with the soft poached egg recipe from Momofuku, but with a lemon-based sauce.

For the eggs I used my broken sous vide machine to monitor the water temperature and perform water circulation, but had to use a burner on low with an improvised heat diffuser made out of tinfoil for the heat. With this setup I could keep the eggs at 145° F for 50 minutes to soft-poach them in their shells.

I brought out a platter of asparagus roasted with olive oil and julienned mint and bowl of what looked like raw eggs and had everyone plate their own dish. I got some confused looks from guests wondering about the eggs, and loved the surprised and gleeful looks when they cracked them open to find a perfectly poached egg. Kind of like performing a magic trick.

The final addition was a lemon & mustard emulsion (see recipe below) that used xantana for a thickener. It was a gorgeous, viscous sauce that had body and a great savory lemon flavor. This might have been my favorite dish of the night and I would definitely make it again.

Some of the fire happy people finished off their eggs a bit more with the blow torch.

Lemon & Mustard Emulsion
.5 grams xantana
1 cup olive oil (use a good quality one with a somewhat neutral flavor)
4 T water
1/3 cup mustard (again, use a really nice mustard)
1 T lemon juice (or more to taste)
zest of 1/2 a lemon

Add all ingredients to a bowl and whisk vigorously, or use an immersion blender. Will keep several days in the fridge.

See Molecular Gastronomy Party for the complete menu.