"Climbing the tree again"
It started out with stewed tomatoes in dashi, a sort of familiar dish in Japan. (I enjoy all kinds of variations on the stewed tomato.) Then it was on to trying to create a new kind of Maui onion soup for Amasia. Well, I grabbed the dashi with tomatoes in it and proceeded to "umami" the soup. I know that parmesan, katsuo, tomatoes, and soy all have some umami in them. So, guess what happened? Dashi with tomatoes, Maui onions sautéed a little bit (to keep the color and flavor lighter, I didn’t want to caramelize them as much as you normally do), parmesan cheese, parmesan crisps, garlic croutons, some mozzarella cheese, then into the salamander and topped off with micro celery and micro carrots. Every ingredient in a mirepoix -- onions, carrots, celery, and tomato -- are in this soup, and it's headed to Maui, for Alan Wong's Amasia Restaurant at the Grand Wailea Resort, opening sometime in late May gang.
~AW