Creative Greens

I like making salads from a large variety of greens: lettuces, chicories, herbs, all kinds of things. So I'm always happy to find new greens at the market for my salads.

In this photo, you see at the top red-stemmed dandelions and below that, radicchetta, the one that is similar to oak leaf lettuce. Dandelions are fairly bitter so I only use the small leaves raw in salads. The larger leaves I blanch and then sauté with olive oil and garlic, or I add them to braises of mixed greens. Radicchetta is a new green to me. Being a chicory, it has a little bitter note, but it is also nutty enough to be eaten out of hand. I can see it doing really well on a tomato and goat cheese sandwich. Both of these are from Mark Bishop at Master's Touch, Berkeley Springs, WV.

25th Anniversary 9-Course Vegetarian Tasting

Earlier this week, we did a nine-course vegetarian tasting menu for a couple's 25th wedding anniversary. In some respects, the timing was good, this being the last week for local asparagus and sugar snaps, and being the first week for English peas. In other respects, doing vegetarian menus before the onset of the summer vegetables such as squashes, peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants poses its challenges.

This menu is truly a menu of the season and was inspired in large part by what we found at the farmers market and what our growers brought to us: green garlic, garlic scapes, sugar snaps, English peas, fava beans, fennel, asparagus, dandelions, mulberries, morels, and shiitake mushrooms.


Sopa de Ajo. Creamy Soup of Local Green Garlic; Roasted Garlic Scape; Garlic Scape Pesto. This was inspired by the abundance of green garlic and garlic scapes that we have from thinning our garlic and keeping them from blooming so that they will focus on making garlic bulbs. Wine Pairing: Feffiñanes Albariño Rias Baixas 2008.


Fennel. Salad of Fennel Confit, Fennel Latke, and Fennel Slaw; Pernod Cream. We have so much fennel on hand now that we are looking for creative ways to use it. Fennel confit was marinated in herbs, garlic and olive oil then grilled and then poached in olive oil for 10 hours. The greens you see are red-stemmed dandelions. Wine Pairing: White Hall Vineyards Viognier Virginia 2008.


Spring. Sauté of Morels, Peas, Sugar Snaps, Favas, and Garlic Scapes; Achiote Pasta. This was conceived as an open-faced raviolo showing off all the spring vegetables on hand. The morels and veg were cooked in the Tuscan style called trifolati, in the style of truffles, with butter, garlic, and lots of fresh parsley. There's no better spring sauté in the world! Wine Pairing: La Slina Gavi di Gavi 2008.


Napoleon of Local Shiitake Mushrooms. Roasted Shiitakes; Crispy Goat Cheese; Crispy Shiitake Bits; Balsamic Gel. I love shiitakes and goat cheese together (anybody remember my shiitake polenta with herbed goat cheese mousse?) so the napoleon flowed naturally from the disk shape of the mushrooms and the cheese. We wanted some bacon for this dish; the crispy shiitake bits do a great job standing in for the bacon. Balsamic vinegar works really well with shiitakes too. I wanted to use the balsamic as a plate garnish but didn't want to reduce it and get that muddy caramelized balsamic flavor, so I gelled it. Wine Pairing: Swedenburg Pinot Noir Virginia 2008.


Vegetarian Yiouvetsi. Baked Orzo with Tomatoes, Artichokes, Preserved Lemons & Local Goat’s Milk Feta. My Greek friends know that I'm a fairly deft hand with a traditional yiouvetsi, baked orzo with lamb and tomatoes, redolent with olive oil, lemon, and fresh oregano, topped with feta cheese. I had heard of Michael Psilakis doing a vegetarian one, but I never knew what he put in it. That idea has been in the back of my brain for a long time and I am happy to have had the chance to bring it to a menu. This one contains tomatoes, onions, artichokes, house-cured preserved lemons, and garlic scapes. It may not look like much in the photo, but the flavors are intensely amazing. Thanks to Alan at Spriggs Delight Farm for the feta. Wine Pairing: Dupeuble Beaujolais 2008.


Panisse. Fried Chickpea Cake; Smoky Chickpea Salad; Roasted Red Pepper Hummus. For red wine vegetarian courses when tomatoes are not in season, I look to paprika and last year's roasted red peppers. And I love chickpeas. I eat them every day; they are my primary source of protein. This then is a loving homage to the many forms of chickpeas. Note to anyone listening: we tried to make the smoky chickpea salad with fried chickpeas, thinking we could get them crunchy. Instead, they just got leathery and no bueno. Wine Pairing: Borgia Campo de Borja 2008.


Stuffed Piquillo. Sweet Red Piquillo Pepper Stuffed with Israeli Couscous in the Style of Paella. You may have seen me make this couscous on WVPT. It is a customer and staff favorite because the flavors are so amazing. The couscous is flavored with sweet yellow and red peppers, artichoke hearts, yellow onions, green onions, tomatoes, saffron, garlic, and pimentón. And piquillos are the best tasting red pepper in the world. All in all, a terrific dish. Wine Pairing: Finca Sobreño Toro 2005.


Cheese Plate. Artisanal Cheeses; Mulberries; Caerphilly-Pecorino Crackers. I don't eat sweets after a meal; they just don't appeal to me. But I love to finish dinner with cheese and a glass of wine so when the customer told me he'd like to finish dinner with cheese, he was talking my language. I foraged some mulberries and made some crackers to accompany the three artisanal cheeses, one each from New York, Wisconsin, and Virginia. Wine Pairing: Linden Claret Virginia 2006.


Gorgonzola Cheesecake. Candied Walnuts; Port Reduction. Another riff on the cheese theme to end dinner is my subtle gorgonzola cheesecake made with Gorgonzola Dolce. This is my kind of way to finish a meal: all the classic port accompaniments reworked into a dessert. Wine Pairing: Warre’s Otima 10-year old Tawny Port.

Crab Cakes

Several years ago, we had a spate of complaints about our crab cakes. They were all along the lines that our crab cakes have no flavor, that they're tasteless. After several years of no complaints, we've had another recent rash of similar complaints.

Our crab cakes are made from the best blue crab we can buy, mayonnaise, celery, parsley, panko, salt, and white pepper. That's it. Over the years, I've tried every binder known to man for holding crab cakes together (béchamel, fish mousse, scallop mousse, egg whites, sour cream, etc.) and the best binder hands down is a mayonnaise made with a neutral oil.

Crab meat has a very delicate flavor that is easily overpowered by other flavors. This is why I especially despise crab cakes containing any form of assertive bell pepper or, God forbid, Old Bay seasoning, which reeks of celery seed. Some people actually like to taste bell pepper or celery seed rather than the $18 per pound crab. If that's your preference, fine; it's not mine though.

The complaints come from one of two kinds of people. The first is someone who actually prefers to taste bell pepper and celery seed to crab. I don't understand their point of view, but they're entitled to it. I just wish they'd allow that my crab cakes are well made, just not to their taste.

The second complainant is one who does not perceive the value of expensive fresh blue crab bound with just as few additives as are necessary to hold the crab meat in a cake. These are the ones who tell me that the frozen crab cakes (that are short on crab and long on filler) at Costco are as good or better than mine. I wish these people, rather than pick on my crab cakes, would just say that mine are too expensive for them. That's really what their gripe is, so why not just say it?

In any case, the complaints are few and far between and for each, we have served thousands of other customers who have loved the crab cakes. And I'm not changing my recipe regardless of what anyone says.

When Local is Not Better

Yesterday, one of my long-time local suppliers and I parted company.

From his perspective, the economy has hurt his sales to the point where my restaurant was the only one in this small town still to buy his product and the economy has severely reduced the amount of his product that I can sell before it goes bad. Moreover, it was a long drive for him to deliver to me. From my perspective, the quality of his product has been slipping to the point where I had refused to accept or pay for an increasing number of deliveries.

So really it came as no surprise yesterday to get a phone call from him saying that he couldn't afford to deliver to me any longer. I was at the point of making the call myself. I'm also sure that he didn't want to deliver any longer because it had to sting when I had to reject his product, even though I was very nice about it.

When we had discussed the quality of the product, he would say over and over, "But none of my other chefs have a problem with it." Unfortunately, because his other customers are not nearly so quality focused as I am, my entreaties to him to improve the quality of his product fell on deaf ears. It happens.

Fortunately, I have another supplier who is 100% attuned to delivering the highest quality product possible. And I can get this extraordinary quality product for the same price that I have been paying to my now former supplier. The downside: my backup supplier is not local.

I really do want to buy locally. It's been a hallmark of my restaurant for the better part of a decade, long before it became fashionable to fly the local flag, and so it pains me to have to part company with a longstanding local supplier. But when local is not better, I don't have a choice.

Chef's Tasting

"Shrimp Provençale"—Pernod-poached shrimp; salad of oranges, oven-dried black olives, fennel confit, and fennel fronds.



"Cream of Arugula Soup"—Last of the bolting arugula with watercress stems, yellow onion, potato, splash of cream.



"Bouillabaisse"—fish and shellfish poached in classic bouillabaisse stock; stock reduced and gelled; pansy, microradish, and poached shrimp garnish.


"Poussin and Veal Galantine"—boned poussin stuffed with local free range veal, porcini, pistachios, madeira, pancetta, bacon, and green peppercorns; one and a half quarts brown poussin stock reduced to four teaspoons; micro squash with blooms.



"Porcini Gnocchi Trifolati"—classic potato gnocchi augmented with porcini powder (very tricky dough, very light on gluten); morel mushrooms cooked in the style of truffles (trifolati) with butter, brunoise of pancetta, garlic, and lots of fresh parsley; shaved asparagus. Sorry for the crappy photo, camera would not focus.



"Prickly Pear Cheesecake"—prickly pear purée; candied hibiscus bloom; hibiscus syrup; borage blooms

On Bread Pudding

Bread pudding: I woke up thinking about it this morning. Call it a gift or call it a curse: we professional chefs seem to be preternaturally prone to ponder food at all hours of the day. And today, my first waking thoughts were of bread pudding, no doubt in large part because I must make another one today. The current dulce de leche pudding has found such favor with customers that we cannot keep it in stock. In fact, I've never seen a dessert fly so fast.

It seems unusual that bread pudding would be hugely popular at a fine dining restaurant because it is a quintessentially homey, comfort dessert. Part of its appeal no doubt is that once you tuck into a dish of ultra-creamy bread pudding, there is no doubt that you're eating dessert. There's no feeling of guilt in destroying the post-modern composition on your plate, no wistfulness at pulling down that sculpture in chocolate that some pastry chef slaved over, no, no remorse at all about digging deep into that bowl of warm, cozy goodness. Except perhaps that fleeting remorse about one's ever increasing waistline. But that can wait until tomorrow, this bread pudding is so damned good that there's no stopping until the bowl is clean!

Bread pudding is also probably so popular because it is somehow deeply rooted in our psyche. In my case, there is no doubt of it. Every time I think about bread pudding, I think about my maternal grandmother. Near the end of her life when I was nearing the end of college, I would make the three-hour drive to spend the odd weekend with her. I loved these visits and she loved them too. She would slave away cooking for me and being no slouch at the table, I would eat all she fixed for me. Toward the end of her life, I could see how much of an effort, how painful it really was to cook for me, but how much pleasure she took in seeing me eat.

The meal that she would cook for me was ritualized by my final year in college: fried rabbit (technically smothered rabbit, first browned then cooked in gravy), turnip salad (the greens of turnips cooked slowly with side meat, cured but not smoked pork belly), crackling corn pone (white cornmeal, lard, crispy cracklings of pork skin, and hot water, shaped into submarine shapes and baked), and for dessert, bread pudding.

My grandmother's bread pudding was not like mine. Hers was a very quick dessert made of store-bought sliced white bread buttered and spread with jelly or jam, strawberry being my favorite, the slices overlapping one another in the bottom of a flat pan, with a custard of milk, sugar, vanilla, and eggs poured over. Twenty minutes later and I was a very, very happy young man.

My bread pudding today is an amazingly rich and decadent affair that bears scant resemblance to hers. I've taken her concept of bread pudding and tweaked it over decades and although the familial resemblance is still there, my pudding is a very different beast, but not so different that it doesn't resonate with customers the way that my grandmother's resonated with me.

My grandmother died before I could return the favor by cooking for her. How I wish I could share a bowl of bread pudding with her! She'd be tickled!

Chef's Tasting

"Cockles and Chorizo", Wine Pairing: Broadbent Vinho Verde 2008


"Shrimp Cocktail"—pickled shrimp, caperberry, baby cucumber with bloom, glass rimmed with cumin salt, cocktail: tomato juice, mussel broth, lime juice, cilantro juice, cumin, sherry vinegar, gold tequila


"Piquillos and White Beans"—parfait layers of brunoise of piquillo pepper and Tuscan "refried beans," green layer flavored with pesto, tan layer flavored with rosemary, Wine Pairing: La Slina Gavi di Gavi "Giorgio Cichero" 2008


"Morel Risotto"—onion and Carr Valley Shepherd's Blend cheese risotto napping a hidden poached quail egg (surprise!), crispy morel mushroom, Parmesan tuile, fresh thyme leaves, Wine Pairing: Clifton Springs Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast 2007


"Duck and Veal Ravioli"—raviolo stuffed with Moulard duck and local veal ragù, roasted romanesco, romanesco brown butter mousse (killer!), Wine Pairing: Cristom Syrah Willamette Valley 2005


"Oxtail Empanada"—chimichurri down on the plate, shredded oxtail, crispy polenta, radishes, pickled cipollini, pea shoots, johnny jump ups, Wine Pairing: Boxwood Winery "Boxwood" Virginia 2007


"New York-Style Cheesecake"—mini cheesecakes, poached dried apricots, almond brittle, Moscato d'Asti sabayon, crumbled amaretti, Wine Pairing: Vietti Moscato d'Asti "Cascinetta" 2008