Spring Tasting

Finally, after a long, long winter, we finally have some spring ingredients to feature in a tasting! This tasting features mint, ramps, green garlic, and asparagus.

Tilefish Mojito Seviche

Tilefile Mojito Seviche. Finally we have some fresh mint to work with and this is an experiment in making it work in a savory application. The seviche contains diced tilefish, brunoise of red onion and jalapeño, green onions, grape tomato, cilantro, mint, lime zest, red pepper flakes, and lime juice. The glass, we rimmed in Hawaiian black sea salt, and the garnishes are lime, mint, and a scoop of mojito sorbet (lime, mint, simple syrup).

Smoked Bluefish

Smoked Bluefish. Bluefish, like most oily fish, takes to brine and smoke, well, like a fish takes to water. And smoky fish loves mild, creamy cheeses. So it didn't take too much to put together a crostino topped with lemon-black pepper goat cheese, ramp pesto, and smoked blue fish. And then pair it with a napoleon of cucumber and smoked bluefish-cream cheese mousse. A little lemon oil brings some citrus brightness to the plate.

Rabbit, Asparagus, and Green Garlic

Rabbit, Asparagus, and Green Garlic. I love green garlic in risotto, ditto asparagus. Here the risotto has both green garlic and asparagus stems. The asparagus tips are grilled for a smoky char that will help the dish pair with a Pinot Noir. On top is a bit of our pulled rabbit wrapped in prosciutto.

Pork and Ramps

Pork and Ramps. I bet you didn't know that I stood there and cleaned ramps for three $%#^&! hours the other day. The tops I made into a classic sopa de ajo (roasted garlic soup with bread, pimentón, and a splash of cream) and the greens Tony made into a classic cream of greens soup. These two soups are yin-yanged on the plate and garnished with grilled ramps and chorizo oil. I made some pork scraps into an awesome chorizo and this is what is in the beggars purse.

Carrots and Ginger

Carrots and Ginger. We still don't have any fruit to work with for desserts so we are still playing games with winter storage vegetables. This is a carrot and ginger upside down cake. The cake is made with polenta to give it some tooth. Crème anglaise, lemon cream cheese, crystallized ginger, and maple syrup-candied carrot comprise the garnishes.

Chef's Tasting

Friends came by recently for a tasting and here is what they ate. Although it wasn't intentional, there's a bit of an egg theme going on here, with quail, duck, and goose eggs featured. It's just a good thing that the birds are laying again!

Salmon Three Ways

Salmon Three Ways. We were just looking for something bright and fresh to start the meal with and we just happen to have some beautiful salmon on hand now. I made a quasi tartare sauce with cornichons, capers, dill, and finely minced gravlax that I topped with a nice piece of fatty belly and then that with a brined, pepper-crusted, and smoked piece of salmon.

Duck and Maitake Mushroom Frittata

Duck and Maitake Mushroom Frittata. We made a simple frittata of duck confit, maitake mushrooms, and duck eggs and then paired it with a daikon and cucumber kimchee, to have something bright to offset the richness of the frittata. This dish sounded fine on paper, but it seems an incomplete thought to me.

Breakfast

Breakfast. There have been many breakfast variations on our tasting menus over the years, because it is just such a damned good dish. This version was designed to show off my latest sausage: ground pork shoulder, Mangalitsa pork belly, and prune purée. The maple syrup is now local from Gene Nowak at Mayfair Farm.



Rabbit Loin with Fennel-Chestnut Sauce

Rabbit Loin. This dish doesn't look all that bright, but I guarantee it was the best dish of the meal. The loin is rolled in fennel pollen before seeing the grill for just long enough to mark it up. Rabbit and fennel is a sublime combination and this sauce that I created last week with caramelized fennel and chestnuts is simply amazing. Note the rabbit loin cooked only to medium; that's how you have to do it.

Lamb Sausage, Moroccan Carrot Slaw, Chickpea Cake

Lamb Sausage. I like the vibrant spices and flavors from northern Africa and tried to bring them together here on a plate. The herbaceous and garlicky lamb sausage is mixed with a carrot slaw made from a fiery harissa and julienned carrots. I made this harissa rather heavier with caraway and fennel than I usually do. The chickpea cake is flavored with sun-dried tomatoes, olives, and some of the preserved lemons that we put up last fall.

"Duck à l'Orange"

Duck à l'Orange. When we break down ducks, legs for confit and breasts for grilling or roasting, we collect the so-called breast tenders, the little muscle that sits atop the breast bone beneath the breast itself. These we pounded out and schnitzled in a crust of panko and five-spice powder. Garnished with orange brown butter, orange suprêmes, and a little salad of micro arugula and tiny mint leaves from our bed outside the restaurant.

Chocolate Peanut Cake, Cayenne Peanut Brittle, Goose Egg Anglaise

Chocolate-Peanut Cake. This is merely chocolate ganache, peanut butter, and goose eggs baked in a water bath until somewhat set, then gently rewarmed so that the center is very gooey and nearly runny. Garnishes are a goose egg crème anglaise, cassis jam, and a peanut brittle that I have made with a lot of salt (salty caramel, yum!) and cayenne pepper. Surprise!

Chef's Tasting

Here's a quick synopsis of a menu that we had fun with.


Three Citrus Shrimp Seviche with Chipotle-Lime Cancha

Three Citrus Shrimp Seviche with Chipotle-Lime Cancha. With this dish, we are trying to will spring here. Unfortunately, it's still cold and not quite seviche weather, but a guy can dream, right? Shrimp, three colors of sweet peppers, celery, red onions, green onions, and cilantro, spiced with chipotle, garlic, and cumin, along with the zest and juice of Meyer lemons, blood oranges, and limes. The blood oranges and Meyer lemons don't have enough acidity to make me happy, so we ended up with about three times as much lime juice to get the acidity where it needs to be. The cancha is a toasted dried corn from Peru tossed in a chipotle-lime zest butter; it supplies great texture to the seviche.

Bánh Mì, Our Favorite Sandwich

Bánh Mì. I'm not kidding when I say we love these sandwiches. Thank you Vietnam for one of our most favorite chef snacks of all time! We most often make bánh mì when I have lots of meat scraps from butchering and I get in the mood to make some sausage. This sausage I made from pork belly, pork rack trimmings and cap, rabbit hearts, and rabbit livers. The seasonings are kaffir lime, fish sauce, black pepper, lots of garlic, and red chile flakes. Garnishes are a tangy slaw, nước chắm, slabs of pickling cucumber, carrot threads, and cilantro.

Allspice-Smoked Pork Terrine; "Pickle and Mustard"

Allspice-Smoked Pork Terrine; "Pickle and Mustard". Let me just say up front that I don't like this presentation at all, but we had 60 seconds to get it on the plate, photographed, and on its way to the dining room. There are two cubes of pork terrine that we skewered and smoked over allspice berries, just to see what the hell would happen. We knew the terrine would really take the smoke because it is high in pork liver content and the fat in the liver really binds the smoke. The flavor of the smoke starts a bit herbaceous (infer from that what you will) and finishes a touch floral. There was definitely a hint of je n'sais quoi. The "pickle and mustard" is a bit of a pun in that we almost always serve charcuterie with whole grain mustard and cornichons, but this time, with a pickled mustard plant.

Balsamic-Braised Merino Lamb Spareribs; Risotto Milanese; Fave

Balsamic-Braised Merino Lamb Spareribs; Risotto Milanese; Fave. We're playing with a new high altitude (above the cloud line) Merino lamb from New Zealand and putting it through the paces to see what it is best suited for. Here the spareribs are braised with balsamic vinegar, chilled, and grilled and plated atop a risotto milanese and topped with fresh fava beans. This new lamb is very silky in texture, very fine grained, and very mild.

Carrot-Ginger-Polenta Tatin with Sambuca Crème Anglaise

Carrot-Ginger-Polenta Tatin with Sambuca Crème Anglaise. Dessert is not something that a bunch of line cooks really thinks about, gives a damn about, or even, really wants to eat. So, we end up with more savory desserts without a whole lot of sugar. Somehow, Tarte Tatin popped up during menu discussions only to be followed by "we don't have any fruit" and my reminding the guys that there are lots of vegetables we can treat as fruits for this purpose. Carrots popped up, and then ginger to bring a freshness to the cake, then polenta to give it some mouthfeel, and finally Sambuca as a complementary flavor. The result: customers and cooks alike loved it.

Zanahorias en Escabeche

I've been fond of pickles my entire life. My mother, her mother, her mother, my aunts, all the women in my family, were accomplished pickle makers. When I was growing up, making pickles was what you did to put the summer bounty by for the winter.

I remember dipping peaches in a gigantic pot of boiling water in the already steamy August kitchen and peeling them until I was sick of them. They'd be loaded into canning jars, topped off with a heavily spiced syrup, and processed to seal the jars, adding yet more steam to the kitchen. Likewise for all manner of other things: figs in lemon syrup, hundreds and hundreds of jars of dill pickles, lime (sweet) pickles, okra, pepper relish, green beans, tomatoes and tomato juice, beets, and so forth and so on. Hardly anyone puts things by any longer, but I still remember the hot and sweaty labor with some fondness and a lot of nostalgia.

I still like to put up things for my customers; well, if the truth be told, it's probably for me, to reconnect me to the generations of my family who have done so. I try not to dwell on the idea that I will probably be the last of my family and the last generation to do so. My children seem to have little interest in the kitchen.

Last August, I put up a bushel of pickled peaches using my mother's recipe, which was certainly her mother's and her mother's before her. The peaches were outstanding and we managed to eke them out with roasted duck breast into the new year. I often make quick cucumber pickles for same day use. I put up half a bushel of lemons just recently to use in my tagines, something that the women in my family might look askance at. I can just hear the hens now, "Whoever heard of pickled lemons?" But they'd be proud that I am carrying the torch, no matter that it is foreordained to sputter out in the not terribly distant future.

My latest endeavor involves a style of pickle that I first encountered when I moved to Texas in my early 20s. As I have written previously, I was pretty desperately poor in those days, and when I could eat out, it was alongside the Mexican laborers in the local tacqueria/dive. Señora would always bring a dish of pickled jalapeños to the table with the beans and tortillas or menudo (tripe, if I was feeling particularly flush) and tortillas. And I always counted myself fortunate if I found some sliced carrots and onions in the jalapeños. I came to love the spicy carrots in red wine or cider vinegar brine.

I love them so much that this time, I dispensed altogether with the jalapeños and just pickled the carrots. I also kept the spice level down so that I could share them with my customers. I wonder if they will sense the history behind these carrots?