Chef's Tasting

Here are photos from last night's Chef's Tasting. Appearing for the first time this year are cherries, summer squash, sockeye salmon, new potatoes, and red raspberries. This is likely the very last tasting of the year to feature strawberries and asparagus: only the weather knows for sure.

Deviled Egg

This dish is the happy coincidence of foie gras and duck eggs. You know, the late afternoon, between shifts conversation on the deck that goes like, "What happens if we mix foie gras into a deviled egg?" The result is so rich that it can only be eaten in tiny quantities. Notice the relative size of the cornichon fan to the egg-foie mousse. We kept adding more and more pickle brine to the mousse to balance the fat and the acid. The olive-looking critter in the center is a truffled pickled immature peach.

Sockeye Salmon

Over the years, I have done many takes on a dish of salmon and Thai curry and this is another. The sauce is a green Thai curry and the green dots are a curried avocado mousse. In the center of the plate are cubes of deep-fried salmon and avocado, topped with some tobiko for crunch and a little Thai basil.

Soft Shell Crab

Not much to say here except the salad is awesome. It's a mix of Beth's mesclun, bean sprouts, carrots, Thai basil, cilantro, and green onions tossed in a dressing of vinegar, sugar, lime juice, fish sauce, chile paste, and garlic. Very Vietnamese and very cooling and refreshing.

June Salad

Gorgeous! The first new potatoes of the year down in a ring with grilled asparagus over and then topped with a sauté of peas, asparagus, and morels in a white wine and shallot butter sauce. A quail egg gilds the lily. These peas are so amazingly sweet that we probably ate more than half of what we shelled. They are addictive!

Squash and Goat Cheese

This is a quick taste of summer in an otherwise late spring menu. Because of our crazy spring, everything is running 2-3 weeks early, including these awesome pattypan squash that we sliced, grilled, and stacked with rounds of fried goat cheese. The goat cheese is an amazingly creamy product that was made locally on Wednesday (and served on Friday). We mixed it with roasted red pepper before forming it into rounds and breading it. A drizzle of pesto and some borage blossoms complete the garnishes.

Pork and Cherries

We love cherry season! Sorry this photo is so dark. All hell was breaking loose in the kitchen at the time: the dining room was full and our ticket rail was overflowing onto the counter. We were in hyperdrive, which lends itself not at all to decent photography. On the left there is a pork cheek, braised, chilled, sliced, and crisped in a steel pan, topped with a cherry-celery salsa. Cherries and celery, sweet and bitter, yin and yang, awesome! In the center on top of the grits is a piece of our pork belly topped with the remains of our dried cherry olivada, a tapenade-like relish. On the right is a salad of microgreens and pork confit threads. We cure the pork confit and age it under duck fat. For this dish, we shredded it and deep fried it, then mixed it with greens and tossed it in a cherry vinaigrette. All our pork is certified Berkshire.

Berries

This is a fun and light way to celebrate the end of strawberries and the beginning of raspberries. Their seasons only ever overlap for a week or two. I baked some oatmeal tuiles and layered them with a lemon meringue and fresh berries. Simple, light, and a fitting ending to a late spring menu.

Guajes and Smoked Octopus

We keep on playing games with food here and some things work and are worth repeating and others get relegated to the it-was-interesting-but-not-that-interesting file. Here are photos from our latest Chef's Table, our regular 6pm 6-course tasting that we hold every Thursday evening.

California Roll Salad. We decided to deconstruct a California roll and present it as a salad. Honestly, though I am sure that the flavors are all fine, I'm underwhelmed by the result in the sense that it is probably not as good as a straight up California roll. I think there is too much going on here, something that I am not often guilty of: avocado, sesame seeds, wasabi, guaje seeds, yellow tomato, puffed wild rice, crab marinated in yuzu vinaigrette, tobiko, and slivers of nori. All fine ingredients but fails to adhere to less-is-more and I'm not wild about the presentation either. Minor fail.



Skate Cheeks. Everyone who eats seafood should try skate cheeks at least once. They are such wonderful morsels of pillowy goodness. You see them here in a sautée of artichokes hearts and pancetta, finished with white wine, herbs, and butter. Life is very good after you eat this dish.



Rosemary-Smoked Octopus. For me, this was the highlight of the dinner. I have never had smoked octopus before and not sure what prompted me to smoke it this time, but I am hooked. This is a really good dish. We poached the octopus in court bouillon until it was tender and chilled it overnight, then I cold smoked it lightly over cherry wood and fresh rosemary. At service, I tossed the octopus in unfiltered extra virgin olive oil and fleur de sel and warmed it on the grill. You see it sitting on an orzo, feta, and oregano custard. The dish is garnished with more olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice, and the tiniest of sprigs of oregano that are just now popping up outside the restaurant. This dish is a winner, hands down: well conceived, well executed, nicely presented, and outstandingly delicious.



Grilled Brined Pork Tenderloin. We had some leftover trimmings from a pork tenderloin entrée, so we decided to brine and grill them to show off our dried cherry olivada and amarena cherry mosto cotto. The brine is salt, brown sugar, allspice, and pepper. The "olivada" is a tapenade-like condiment consisting of dried cherries, olives, anchovies, capers, garlic, thyme, oregano, lemon juice, and extra virgin olive oil. We colored a parsnip purée with spinach for contrast on the plate. Very tasty.



Local Lamb Rack Roulade. I removed every other bone from a large lamb rack and then butterflied and stuffed the rib-eye with a mixture of brunoise of sunchoke (Jerusalem artichoke), rosemary, Dijon mustard, panko, and goat cheese. Then I rolled the rib-eye back up, tied, seared, and roasted it. Here you see it with a wild watercress pesto and a glazed lozenge of celery root.



Baked Alaska. How often do you see Baked Alaska at a restaurant? When made correctly, it's a light and whimsical ending to a meal. On a base of sliced pineapple, we mounded our jackfruit and Meyer lemon granita and then piped on a layer of coconut Italian meringue made from the whites of all the local duck eggs that go into our pastries.