Kitchen Experiments: 2 out of 3 ain't bad

I was feeling experimental tonight and had a few ideas kicking around in my head so I tried some out:

1) Rosemary candy - we've been garnishing our pain perdu with a sprig of rosemary, but I've been wanting to change to an edible garnish so I made some caramel, mixed in a bunch of rosemary, let it set on a silpat, and sprinkled on fleur de sel. It had great rosemary flavor but I realized it would be impossible to eat on the dish, hard candy stuffed with rosemary sprigs, what was I thinking? I smashed it up, threw it in the food processor and ground it to a powder. Sprinkled on top of brown butter ice cream it is delicious.

2) Speaking of brown butter...Chef has been talking about a brown butter sauce for our agnolotti for a few days trying to figure out a makeover for this dish. It got me wondering if I could make brown butter pasta. So between tickets tonight, Tyler, Sean, and I made a fresh pasta dough (3 parts flour, 2 parts egg. Thanks Michael Ruhlman). We browned a pound of delicious Mooville butter, strained it through a cone filter, and mixed all the solids into the pasta dough. I have to say I'm proud of this one, it turned out really well.

3) Another experiment inspired by Chef Millar...He mentioned one day that American country hams like the Benton's that we serve at our charcuterie bar were developed purely for preservation purposes. The dry aging process allowed the ham to be put up for a long time, but unlike their European cousins, American country hams were usually re-hydrated by soaking in several changes of water and then baked just like a wet-cured ham. So, I figured I'd try that out. I took a leftover chunk too small for our slicer and soaked it for about a week, changing the water once a day. All that really has to be said is that it may be a great method for preservation, but I'd rather eat my Benton's sliced paper-thin on our hand cranked Berkel than re-hydrated and baked.