I was screwing around in the kitchen last weekend, trying to think of more fun things to do with scallops... and fava beans. I wanted to incorporate a ham-y flavor, and I had been reading a few posts of people making the ham powder from the Alinea cookbook... but I didn't have any ham. I did, however, have some prosciutto in the freezer, so I decided to see if I could make it work. Turns out it does work... And it's awesome.
This starts either using a big hunk of prosciutto or doing what I did and rolling up the sliced prosciutto you have. (This is discount, domestic prosciutto, not the good stuff. I didn't want to gamble with the good stuff until I was sure it would work, but the cheap stuff turned out amazing enough that I think I'll use it again next time...) 
The roll is wrapped up and tossed in the freezer. Once it's frozen solid, you can break out your microplane and grate it nice and fine. (My roll started to soften a bit halfway through, so I had to toss it back in the freezer before continuing...)
This is supposed to go on parchment or something, but I have a non-stick thingy that came with my food dehydrator that is apparently for making fruit roll-ups(?) and it did the trick.
The grated prosciutto goes into the dehydrator for a couple hours or until crispy. This should ideally be done at 170°F according to the Alinea recipe, but my dehydrator only goes up to 160°F, so that's what I used. The benefit of using ham would be that it would be completely dry when it's done, whereas there's a little melted pork fat hanging around when you use prosciutto... but the benefit of using prosciutto is that the finished product is insanely delicious. You can decide which you prefer.
I've used this on a couple things so far and am already thinking I need to make some more, but the first thing I tried it on was a seared diver scallop with mint, fava bean pesto, and preserved lemon.
Not the prettiest thing ever, but damned tasty. (There's a layer of crushed bacon in the middle of that round of fava bean pesto...) I'll show you another use in my next post...
This starts either using a big hunk of prosciutto or doing what I did and rolling up the sliced prosciutto you have. (This is discount, domestic prosciutto, not the good stuff. I didn't want to gamble with the good stuff until I was sure it would work, but the cheap stuff turned out amazing enough that I think I'll use it again next time...) 
The roll is wrapped up and tossed in the freezer. Once it's frozen solid, you can break out your microplane and grate it nice and fine. (My roll started to soften a bit halfway through, so I had to toss it back in the freezer before continuing...)
This is supposed to go on parchment or something, but I have a non-stick thingy that came with my food dehydrator that is apparently for making fruit roll-ups(?) and it did the trick.
The grated prosciutto goes into the dehydrator for a couple hours or until crispy. This should ideally be done at 170°F according to the Alinea recipe, but my dehydrator only goes up to 160°F, so that's what I used. The benefit of using ham would be that it would be completely dry when it's done, whereas there's a little melted pork fat hanging around when you use prosciutto... but the benefit of using prosciutto is that the finished product is insanely delicious. You can decide which you prefer.
I've used this on a couple things so far and am already thinking I need to make some more, but the first thing I tried it on was a seared diver scallop with mint, fava bean pesto, and preserved lemon.
Not the prettiest thing ever, but damned tasty. (There's a layer of crushed bacon in the middle of that round of fava bean pesto...) I'll show you another use in my next post...
2 comments:
Not the prettiest thing in the world? That looks awesome to me....
I second what Stanley said! You definitely just earned yourself a follow from this recipe.
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