Fine tuning recipes

[asil]

A friend of mine, whose a fabulous chef, and worked at the Four Seasons for many years, recently gave me some ideas on fine tuning some raw recipes. I haven't tried them yet, but will when I get around to it.

1. Clean corn silk from ears but do not remove shucks. Coat corn ears with olive oil, a bit of salt, chili if you like. Then wrap shucks back around ear, tie with twine, dehydrate to warm. He does this for grilling corn and says the oil and spices soak into the corn better.

2. Lots of starchy foods get gummy when blended too vigorously. For example, for cooked mashed potatoes, he learned never to use an electric mixer. (he studied at the CIA.) The startch releases too fast. He suggests this might also be true for raw recipes. So rather than use a blender or food processor on bananas and avocadoes, mash with hand potato masher or fork, gently. Also, for nut crusts, he suggests soaking and blending dates, then hand chopping nuts, then mixing the two together. (I'm definitely going to try this -- I've always thought nut crusts tasted a little gummy.)

He hasn't tried these ideas -- he's not a raw type. But he thought these ideas might help, so I'm passing them along. :)

[sailaway]

Great idea about the corn. We always did that on the BBQ now I'll try it with the dehydrator. Have you done the corn yet? If so how long did it heat for. I have noticed that things like s and pizza take 6-10 hours. So maybe 8-10 because the corn is so dense????

[asil]

I haven't done the thing with the shucks on yet, but I do heat my corn on the cob in the dehydrator sometimes. I just did it for 15 minutes or so, until the corn was warm but still crunchy. If you like a softer corn I'm sure you could do it longer. :)