Caviar Wishes

Nope, not contraband gained through mysterious means. Instead, a very kind, incredibly thoughtful, and exceedingly generous gift from a visiting friend - not one, but several jars of the glistening black pearls. I won't go on too much about how much I love the stuff lest one incurs the wrath of caviar emptor vigilantes; suffice to say I will go on eating it even if it means camping out in a closet.

Beluga, osciotr and sevruga distinguish between the three species of sturgeon harvested for caviar. Malossol, on the other hand, is a Russian term referring not to species but to the preservation technique for packing and shipping caviar. Malossol - "little salt" - typically indicates caviar of particular distinction from sturgeon caught at the beginning of the season. Malossol caviar tastes of natural piscine saltiness, of the sea, but does not suffer from the surfeit of salt (added to preserve the delicate eggs in transit) all too often associated with lesser caviar.

Ever had to endure one of those precious, stiff-backed, starched-linen affairs where an entire table of hungry diners is supposed to share one tin or jar of caviar, and everyone self-consciously helps themselves to only a tiny teaspoon or two so as not to appear avaricious? Painful just about sums it up, not to mention pointless. To say the obvious, the only way to eat caviar is to eat plenty of it, preferably with a pearl spoon.

Some ways we enjoyed our windfall:

Scrambled Scallops

Super but also super easy, a puree of scallops and cream gently coddled in a bain marie until it acquires the appearance and texture of scrambled eggs. This egg-free scramble is then served in an emptied eggshell. Michel Richard's Happy in the Kitchen is bursting with such brilliant, mischievous and inventive recipes - food as trompe l'oeil, if you will. Many of the ingenious techniques and ideas in the book had me slapping my forehead and going, as Thomas Keller puts it in his foreword to the book, "Why didn't I think of that?". An awesome book, definitely one of my favourite releases from 2006.

Sweet Corn Madeleines with Caviar & Crème Fraîche

I'm a fan of François Payard's Simply Sensational Desserts, and I do think that small is beautiful, so I didn't hesitate springing for Bite Size, a slender volume on chic canapés for the cocktail hour. If you enjoy the labour-intensiveness of fiddling with and fussing over morsels not much wider than a thumb, it will probably prove a real page-turner. The recipe for these savoury mini madeleines made with fresh corn comes from the book, served warm from the oven with dollops of crème fraîche and caviar.

Prawn Custard with Cauliflower Puree & Caviar

The earthy flavour of cauliflower has a great affinity with fish roe, a signature Joël Robuchon pairing that has inspired many others. This particular number hails from Neil Perry's Rockpool. The quivering custards are made with an intensely flavourful prawn stock and eggs much in the fashion of Japanese chawan-mushi, served chilled in a puddle of cauliflower cream and accompanied by a drizzle of spinach oil and a healthy helping of caviar.

Yukon Gold Potato Blini

My palate hasn't quite acquired the taste for the pukka and authentic article, made solely with buckwheat flour. I much prefer the French-influenced lighter version, still yeast-leavened but using a mixture of buckwheat and wheat flours - in my mind, the definitive recipe is the Taillevent one, which can be found in Lydie Marshall's A Passion for Potatoes.

Then there's Thomas Keller's potato blini (from The French Laundry Cookbook). It does away with the buckwheat flour and yeast entirely, and the result is an incredibly refined pancake, a creamy and ethereal wonder that virtually melts in the mouth, the ultimate showcase for whatever luxurious garnishes you've chosen to use them as rafts for - here, crème fraîche, caviar and chopped hard-cooked eggs. The recipe calls for Yukon Gold potatoes - as the batter is itself enriched with crème fraîche, their greedily absorbent nature allows them to imbibe more cream than other potatoes thus resulting in the loveliest possible texture. Pressing the warm potatoes through a tamis rather than merely mashing them is another refinement to the trad that ensures blini quite in a league of their own.

Sorry, no El Bulli-esque dessert mimicking the look of caviar. But receiving the caviar did remind me that I had yet to open the tins of Kusmi Tea we had picked up from our recent visit to L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Roppongi Hills, Tokyo - I was simply too taken with the divine goûts russes packaging, which at the time, funnily enough, reminded me of caviar tins!