Piquillo paper

One of my favourite components from last weekend’s dinner party was the piquillo paper from the octopus dish in VOLT ink. The first time I saw this technique of taking a puree, dehydrating it as a sheet, then punching holes in it to add some visual texture was during my very first stage at Marc Lepine’s Atelier restaurant. That time, I was working with caramelized onion puree, which was dried out to very thin, crispy, fragile sheet. I’ve also used the same technique with both blanched and roasted garlic, though sans hole punch.

This piquillo paper simply involved taking a can of piquillo peppers, pureeing them with a little salt, sugar, sherry vinegar and olive oil, and spreading it out on a dehydrator mat. It wasn’t dried out quite as far as the papers I’d made before, so it was still leathery and slightly flexible, allowing it to be cut into more-or-less regular shapes. Even when they’re completely dried, though, these papers tend to wilt fairly quickly in the presence of moisture in the dish. (Don’t do what I did and drop them in a puddle of water on the counter; I had to re-dehydrate one piece of the sheet!) And, of course, by removing a lot of the water from the ingredients, the flavour becomes much more intense: in this case, a slightly sweet-and-sour punch, with the fruitiness and slight smokiness of the peppers shining through.

On a separate note, I want to wish the best of luck to Chef Lepine and his team this weekend at the Canadian Culinary Championships in Kelowna. Bring home the gold, Marc!