Cookbook Adventures: Mission Street Food (Updated)

Mission Street Food is another one of those books that I couldn't wait to get my hands on, but then didn't manage to play with until now...  

Now that I've tried a few recipes, I think it may be a while before I break it out again... Everything was sort of in that "good... but not as great as I'd hoped..." category.

I love the philosophy of the book, and I love the ideas behind the recipes, but it may end up being one of those books that I turn to more for inspiration than for guidance...
Starting with the simplest recipe, I had some fresh mozzarella left over from Pizza Fest that wasn't going to be fresh much longer, so I decided to break out my whipping siphon and make the Mission Street Food Mozzarella Mousse.  The philosophy behind this is cool: stracciatella and burrata are expensive, while fresh mozzarella can be quite affordable... Combining that cheaper mozzarella with cream can give you the burrata flavor without the burrata price tag...

It's crazy-easy... You combine some cream, salt, olive oil, and tempered diced mozzarella in a blender, load up your siphon, charge, and...

Super-cute, yeah?  I played with a couple different ways to serve this, but what I really envision is something like the prosciutto, peach, and basil crostini we had Sommelier Smackdown back in the day.  I still like this idea, but the execution is a little weird.  The recipe calls for use of a CO2 charger with your siphon, and that ends up making your cheese taste kind of... fizzy?  Delicious... but fizzy.  I'll have to play with this concept more to perfect it (which is kind of the theme that ended up surfacing whenever I used this book...).  The thing I got most excited about when I first flipped through this book was the PB&J.

Gorgeous, yeah?  (PB&J stand for Pork Belly, Jicama, and Jalapeño, which is all served on buttery flatbread with cilantro aioli...)  There's a blog post that breaks down the whole flatbread recipe here, so I won't go too detailed into that...  They turned out... pretty good?

 

My issue here, I think, is that the picture in the book had me setting my palate for something along the lines of Roti Canai that I've made in the past (and am now craving so will have to make again soon)... Those Roti were easier to make, cheaper to make, and contained less butter, but still managed to be more supple and buttery and amazing... so I don't know why I would come back to this particular recipe.  As for the other components, the pickled jalapeño and marinated jicama components rocked... I'll definitely make those again to use on flatbreads.

The cilantro aoli is... something that I would tweak next time.  It's a great flavor, but way too rich for me, so you're stuck either not getting enough of the yummy flavor or getting too much of the overpowering richness...

Finally, I feel like the pork belly was kind of over the top, too.  It's just so rich... A couple slices of pork belly in a steamed bun with hoisin, sriracha, cucumber, and scallion is heaven... the simple bun and sharp bright flavors contrasting with the fatty, delicious pork belly... Here, though, you have buttery flatbread topped with rich aioli and then fatty pork belly...  That's too much for a kid like me.  Anyway, here was my prep station:

A few slices of sous vide-cooked pork belly and accompanying garnish to follow the book's recipe, and some duck confit, crispy duck skin, hoisin, sriracha, and scallion to try something different...  I seared up the meat in a skillet... (Clockwise from top, that's the pork belly, some smoky braised pork shoulder, and the duck confit.)

Then assembled...

Like I said, this one was too much for me...  Maybe with some 36-hour sous vide pork shoulder instead of the belly? ...and with my preferred flatbread? ...and with a more herbacious and less mayo-y aioli?  The flavors and concept were good, it just didn't work for me as a dish.

 

The duck confit was much more successful.  The duck is less fatty than the pork belly, and the hoisin, sriracha, and scallion gave me the bite and freshness I was looking for... (I would have added cucumbers, too, if I'd planned ahead to make this, but it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment audible...)

This is one of the more disappointing cookbook adventures I've had in quite a while, which I realize is a bit odd since I still ended up with assorted delicious food... I guess I just like it when I finish cooking from a book and find myself eager to dive back in and make something else that's as amazing as the thing I just made, and that just didn't happen here...

UPDATE: OK... I made a few modifications with leftovers, and things were yummier.  I had rolled out all the flatbreads the first night and stored them, separated by parchment, in a sealed bag in the fridge. I think cooking them from cold like this and also allowing the gluten to hydrate longer resulted in a nicer flatbread... (Still not as good as my Roti Canai, but quite good).  I also moved my cilantro aioli to a squeeze bottle, so instead of the slathering above (meant to imitate the quantity shown in the book) I did more of a drizzle (plus a little Sriracha)...

 

This was much more balanced.  I would still probably like more cilantro flavor from a more-herb-less-oil aioli, but the pork belly really shined.  I also served up some duck confit and smoky pork shoulder in my new and improved flatbreads...

 

Both of these were fantastic... The pork shoulder is definitely a good less-intense substitute for pork belly... I will definitely keep tweaking these recipes, since I do love the concept, and I'm glad to have made them... This was definitely a meal, though, that I was glad to test out a few times before serving to guests...