The Chef: Ryan McCaskey (Acadia)The Challenger:Thai Dang (Embeya)The Ingredient: Pandan leaf
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“I can’t even describe what the extract tastes like,” he said. “Not funky, but more—musty. I tasted it and immediately thought of grandma’s attic.” The leaf, on the other hand, has a toasted-rice-like aroma and flavor that McCaskey compared to genmaicha tea (Japanese green tea combined with toasted brown rice). In fact, it contains 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, an aroma compound that’s also present in white bread, basmati rice, and jasmine rice.
“You’d think the leaf would have a more aloe-y kind of fragrance, a flowery smell. But it doesn’t,” McCaskey said. “It’s very earthy, like a reed. Like a cattail—that’s kind of what it smells like. The flavor is mild, toasted, and that’s really it. It’s a little bit one-note. As I heated it, I found there are tannins that come out of it, much like tea. You actually get a little tannic quality out of the flavor as well.”
Thomas Rice of the yet-to-open West Loop restaurant Tete Charcuterie, working with monkfish liver. McCaskey has cooked with the ingredient before, and said he’s a fan. “It has a rich fattiness to it, much like a foie. It’s not liver like from an animal. It doesn’t have that copper iron-y flavor to it, it’s not like blood. It’s an oceany fattiness to it that I think is great.”
