March 6, 2015 The Greenhouse Bistro’s New Lenten Menu Amazing Food, Chemistry and Price

March 6, 2015 The Greenhouse Bistro’s New Lenten Menu   Amazing Food, Chemistry and Price

I was amazed tonight by the quality of food, prices and creative culinary chemistry at The Greenhouse Bistro.  Chef Derren’s food is an undiscovered gem that merits close attention.

I chose the three course prix fixe Lenten Special menu priced at $19.95, which will be served until through the first week of April.

The meal started nicely with wine service.  I chose a glass of Cline Vineyard’s Viognier; fruity, light, and with a hint of acidity, perfect for seafood.  Soon after our glasses of wine were filled a bowl of New England Clam Chowder arrived. 

I love clam chowder, but am usually disappointed because so often it has a caustic chemical flavor due to the use of a pre-packaged soup mix or is cloyingly thick with the addition of flour and salt to stabilize the milk or cream and "enhance" its natural flavor, probably so it can be held in thick suspension for days in the kitchen.

This soup was neither; it was a true fresh New England Chowder made by the sous chef, who grew up in New England, with a milk, minced fresh celery and onion and hand cut pieces of potato and clams in a deliciously light milk broth flavored only with a bit of salt and fresh thyme leaves grown in the Bistro’s kitchen garden. The interplay of the clam juice and the milk and thyme was Amazing!

New England Clam Chowder

 The next course was even better; Seafood in Croute or a fresh salmon filet and sautéed shrimp baked in the largest, most incredibly flaky, freshly baked puff pastry shell I have ever seen.

The Seafood Croute was cut in half diagonally, revealing the pink fish filet and sautéed shrimp inside and set beside a puddle of locally grown Jerusalem artichoke heart cream sauce that was slightly tangy and divinely smooth.  The cream sauce was decorated with a swirl of bright red chemically created tomato vermicelli. Wow and Wow again.  

Seafood en Croute with sauteed asparagus and Jerusalem artichoke cream sauce and Tomato Vermicelli 

I cannot describe how delicious this dish was; the warm pastry and fish and shrimp dipped in the warm tangy cream sauce was delicious beyond words.  The portion of fish, shrimp and pastry was so generous I had to request another glass of Viognier and a heated container of cream sauce in order to wash it down in style. 

After being blown away a second time I was ready to be disappointed by dessert but when the chef and the waitress appeared with small rectangular plates streaked with red raspberry coulis garnished with two sprigs of baby thyme in the middle and a small tall cup containing a column of strawberry panna cotta on one side and a sphere of liquid strawberry balanced delicately in the well of an ice tea spoon leaning on the tall cup of strawberry panna cotta on the other side of the plate both garnished with baby thyme leaves, I was blow away a third time.  

The strawberry liquid sphere shimmered in the light and, when placed in the mouth and allowed to rest against one’s upper palate as Chef Derren recommended, the delicate membrane surrounding the liquid evaporated filling one’s mouth with a rush of fresh fragrant strawberry liquid. Amazing!

The chef told us the strawberry sphere was made with reverse spherification.  According to Wikipedia, Spherification is the culinary process of shaping a liquid into spheres which visually and texturally resemble roe. The technique was originally discovered by Unilever in the 1950s (Potter 2010, p. 305) and brought to the modernist cuisine by the creative team at elBulli under the direction of executive chef Ferran Adrià.

There are two main methods for creating such spheres, which differ based on the calcium content of the liquid product to be spherified.

For flavored liquids (such as fruit juices) containing no calcium, the liquid is thoroughly mixed with a small quantity of powdered sodium alginate, then dripped into a bowl filled with a cold solution of calcium chloride, or other soluble calcium salt.

Just as a teaspoonful of water dropped into a bowl of vegetable oil forms a little bubble of water in the oil, each drop of the alginated liquid tends to form into a small sphere in the calcium solution. Then, during a reaction time of a few seconds to a few minutes, the calcium solution causes the outer layer of each alginated liquid sphere to form a thin, flexible skin. The resulting "popping boba" or artificial "caviar" balls are removed from the calcium-containing liquid bath, rinsed in a bowl of ordinary water, removed from the water and saved for later use in food or beverages.

Reverse spherification, for use with substances which contain calcium or have high acid/alcohol content, requires dripping the substance (containing calcium lactate or calcium lactate gluconate) into an alginate bath. A more recent technique is frozen reverse spherification, which involves pre-freezing spheres containing calcium lactate gluconate and then submerging them in a sodium alginate bath. All three methods give the same result: a sphere of liquid held by a thin gel membrane, texturally similar to roe.

Strawberry reverse spherifiction spheres stored in apple juice

Chef Derren said he can make liquid filled spheres with almost any liquid, even with Coca Cola. As I enjoyed the delightful fresh strawberry dessert and we conversed, I discovered that Executive Chef Derren Ridder has been experimenting with culinary chemistry and when he invited me into the kitchen, I gladly followed.  He showed me his culinary chemistry kit that is quite extensive, including a culinary chemistry instruction manual.

He let me take pictures of the manual and several of the chemistry ingredients and let us taste small balsamic pearls also made with reverse spherification and showed us a bowl of green basil vermicelli.

This incredible restaurant, 25 miles south of Albuquerque, deserves to be discovered.  We were the only one’s eating on this Friday evening in a 30 seat restaurant that should have been full of foodies, relishing its amazing food quality, creativity, and prices. I guess foodies find it hard to imagine that the same modernist culinary wonders served at elBulli are being served in a small bistro in Las Lunas or that the Greenhouse Bistro is preparing dishes at the cutting edge of the world's most innovative cuisine. This bistro deserves its five star rating.  

Bon Appétit