Another Tasting

With a menu that changes every night and tastings happening all the time, the only way that we can remember what we cooked is to document it here. Sorry if we are boring you with all these pictures!

Tribute to Summer

Tribute to Summer. When squash blooms and tomatoes are in season, we just have to serve them. We have waited patiently all year for them and now is the time to celebrate them. On the left of the plate is a squash bloom stuffed with grated squash that we have cooked down for hours with heavy cream and seasoned with dill, feta, and basil. We beer batter the bloom and lightly fry it. Served with two goat cheese mousses: one with pesto, the other with sun-dried tomatoes.

On the right you see slices of fresh tomato, fried green tomato, and fresh mozzarella that we make in house each day. I still haven't figured out how to photograph these long plates so that they look good. Sorry, I'll stick to my night job.

Rockfish with Corn Chowder

Rockfish with Corn Chowder. Finally, big rock season opened on Long Island and we were able to get the first rock (striped bass) in months. Rockfish is the king of the American table for good reason and although I am very happy that the fishery is so tightly controlled, it means that we go long periods (spawning season in the summer especially) without being able to get any. We used this beautiful 15-pounder to showcase our crop of new fingering potatoes, white corn, and my new batch of house-cured pancetta. I was so disappointed with the commercial pancetta that we have been getting that I started curing my own from Berkshire pork bellies and the end result is so good that we are never going back to commercial pancetta.

Prosciutto-Wrapped Rabbit

Rabbit?!? That doesn't look like rabbit! We're guilty of a little food trompe l'oeil here in that we have taken rabbit and made it look like a steak. Our rabbit farmers are almost drowning us in rabbits this summer and we are constantly looking for ways to use them. In this case, we braise the rabbits in white wine and herbs, debone them, cook the braising liquid down with cream, sauté some mirepoix, and mix the rabbit, sauce, and veg and let it chill in the cooler. Then we form the chilled rabbit into little steak-like patties and wrap all sides with prosciutto. Served on a bed of carrots, leeks, the last of the early peas, and brussels sprouts petals finished with a splash of rabbit stock and cream. Off the hook good!

Scallop-Stuffed Morel, Corn Crème Caramel, Pork Belly Jus

Morel. We're having a weird year this year in that we're able to get beautiful morels all the way up into August when we should have switched over to chanterelles some weeks ago. Don't knock it. Morels have chanterelles beat hands down. This is admittedly a dish that is a little bit out there but I think all the flavors work well together. The morel is stuffed with a scallop and chive mousse, so you get a sweet oniony contrast to the crispy earthy morel, floured, egg washed, floured and lightly fried, then oven-finished. The morel is sitting on a classic crème caramel—that's right, a classic dessert—made from a white corn custard flavored with chives. The custard is totally savory, only the dark caramel on top adds a touch of sweetness, other than the natural sweetness of the corn. The chives echo the chives in the scallop mousse and the caramel contrasts with the naturally salty pork belly jus. The jus is the good stuff left over in the bottom of the roasting pan when we finish cooking the pork bellies for our regular menus. We have thinned it to reduce the salt level and fined it with egg whites to clarify it.

Eggplant Purée, Pork Belly, Quail Egg

Pork Belly. Almost no menu here is complete without pork belly. This dish is a blatant rip-off of the Turkish classic Hünkar Beğendi, eggplant purée topped with lamb. The eggplants were grilled, puréed, and mixed with a classic Mornay sauce made with hard sheep's milk cheese. Topped with crispy pork belly and a poached quail egg. Just sinful!

Lamb Loin, Tomato Salad

Lamb Saddle. While we were over in the Mediterranean, we also took a stop in North Africa. We had just got a lamb in, so I boned out the saddle and marinated the whole loins in ras el hanout, sumac, and touch of smoked paprika. The loins were simply grilled to rare, sliced, and fanned over a salad of fresh cherry tomatoes, house-cured preserved lemons, Niçoise olives, fresh chickpeas, mint, tomato vinaigrette, and a touch of hummus to bind the salad.

Panna Cotta with Blackberries and Anise Hyssop

Panna Cotta. Down on the plate you see a ribbon of three flavors of panna cotta: blackberry, apricot, and blueberry, three of the most abundant fruits right now. The plate is garnished with a little quick blueberry jam, apricot coulis, oat and sunflower seed granola, crème anglaise, honey-lime blackberries, and anise hyssop.

Chef's Tasting

Here are photos from a series of recent tastings. These dishes pretty clearly reflect what is in the farmers market currently. I really like how we were able to incorporate root vegetables in so many dishes. It happened organically as a function of what we have on hand (and on the brain) now rather than as an exercise in making a menu around root vegetables. Organically formed menus tend to be the best and I really like this menu for that very reason.

Squash Cake. Cake of grated yellow and green squashes long-cooked with cream and formed into cakes, garnished with tomato vinaigrette, tzatziki, pesto, and a pecorino tuile. I bought every last squash that Beth had about two weeks ago and we have been keeping them in the cooler and eking them out, trying desperately to hang on to a little bit of summer. We've never had summer squash this late into the year and it is really thanks to the crappy crop we had during the summer that Gene planted a second, late crop of which this is the very bitter end.

Cauliflower Mushrooms with Guanciale and Broccoli. No brainer, really, in that Joe just sent us a 15-pound cauliflower mushroom. With its delightfully woodsy scent, this mushroom is a real crowd pleaser and its resemblance to egg noodles often influences how we prepare it: today, very simply with some Jowciale (smoked hog jowl from our friends at Edwards) and tiny broccoli florets.

Napoleon of Seared Sea Scallops and Parsnip-Leek Latkes. This send up of scallop chowder features crispy sweet parsnip-leek latkes, a warm bacon-inflected leek and potato soup, cubes of roasted butternut squash, puffed wild rice (more addictive than crack) and mâche. After much experimentation, we have found that parsnip latkes benefit from 25% potato, to help them hold together and fry more crisply without burning.

Pork & Grits. In our mission to convert the world to the Pork Belly Legion™, it seems that no tasting menu can omit at least one pork belly course. Here you see our house-cured pork belly fried to a crispy turn atop creamy Anson Mills grits coarse grits with a splash of local hickory bark syrup and a red grape “olivada.” The olivada is a condiment that we made for a big Italian-themed dinner back in October, a condiment that we liked so much that we keep on making it. It is son of the Cherry Tapenade that I created back in the spring and consists of red grapes, olives, capers, anchovies, lemon juice, oregano, and olive oil.

More Pork. Seriously, what to follow pork belly but more pork? This dish was inspired by an incredibly beautiful savoy cabbage that I scored at the market and what you see is the answer to the question, "How shall we honor this beautiful cabbage?" What you see is a most non-traditional cabbage roll, stuffed with pulled pork shank and raw turnip julienne, then coated in Dijon mustard and rolled in panko and fried. It sits in a pool of pork gravy from braising the shanks and is garnished with a few chanterelles. I like to think of this as a very Western reimagining of a spring roll.

Grilled Five-Spice Venison Loin. This dish screams late fall to me. You see a five spice-rubbed grilled loin of venison with butternut cream, a root vegetable hash, maple syrup, and a fresh fig compote made with the last of this year's figs. The star of this dish is not the venison but rather the humble hash, made from cubes of guanciale, parsnips, celery root, butternut squash, and fingerling potato along with dried cranberries and onions, all flambéed in bourbon. This hash is insanely good!

Maple-Butternut Flan with Milk Chocolate Cremoso. What does a non-sweet eating chef use for dessert when there's precious little fruit about? Root veg, of course! Here you see a killer flan made of butternut purée, maple syrup, and cinnamon. The garnishes are a rich fudgy curl of milk chocolate cremoso (stolen shamelessly from pastry chef Hedy Goldsmith via Michael Schwartz, a chef whom I have never met, but who is clearly a fellow spirit), maple syrup, crème anglaise, gianduia (chocolate-hazelnut) powder, and a wicked good sunflower seed brittle that I made with sea salt and smoky pimentón.

Seafood and Root Vegetables

Root Vegetables. They're just not that cool, but that's pretty much what is in our cooler right now, it being the middle of winter. And when a couple from Warrenton engaged us to do a tasting menu for them last week, that is all we had in house to work with. They also requested no meat for their menu, but they love all manner of seafood, so we used that as our starting point for their custom menu.

While planning their menu, I had this slightly whack idea: why not pair a different seafood with a different winter root vegetable for each course, except for dessert? So we randomly paired each of six seafoods with six winter root vegetables used this as the basis for our menu. Doing the menu this way proved to be a great intellectual challenge: pairing seafood with root vegetables is rarely ever done. Here are the results of our brainstorming.


Scallops and Parsnips. We took our cue for this dish from brandade de morue from the south of France. The modern interpretation of brandade is a silky paste of salt cod, potatoes, olive oil, and garlic. We decided to try it with salted scallops and parsnips instead. And topped with a seared scallop, it worked extremely well. We're very pleased with this dish.


Crab and Sweet Potatoes. This is a complexly flavored sweet potato bisque seasoned with kaffir lime, green curry paste, Thai basil, and coconut milk. I no longer remember the genesis of this soup, but I think we have done similar sauces in the past. The bisque is topped with crabmeat marinated in a kaffir lime vinaigrette. We liked this so much that it went directly on to our nightly menu as an appetizer.


Oysters and Celery Root. We've done a lot of celery root purées this winter already and were looking for different ways to showcase this delicious vegetable, especially for a way to highlight it in its raw form. Immediately springing to mind was a celery root rémoulade that I had at Tujague's in New Orleans about 20 years ago. From here, it was an easy leap to an oyster Po Boy topped with celery rémoulade. The celery root fries were a last minute addition and the answer to the question to my cooks, "Does celery root make good fries?" Indeed, it does not. It makes outstanding fries. Live and learn.


Lobster and Leeks. This is what happens when we take our shrimp and grits from the lunch menu and amp it up with lobster, leeks, and truffles. The grits are Anson Mills as usual, but amended with a lot of creamed leeks. Truly decadent grits. The lobster is just along for the ride when compared to these grits.


Mussels and Red Onions. I confess that I went really overboard here. I am the one chef that you can generally count on not to mess with the form of an ingredient and here I go making mussels into a musselwurst. I have done every form of fried, stuffed, baked, and steamed mussel imaginable over the years and for some reason, I decided to just go crazy. So we have a mussel and caramelized red onion sausage on a bun with caramelized red onion mustard, caramelized red onions, and pickled red onions. It was a damned good seafood sausage if I say so myself, but my bun, to be polite, sucked.


Fish and Daikon. And finally, we deal with daikon. There's a ton of daikon at the farmers market now and I've been using a lot of it. Daikon led me to free associate with sablefish because sablefish is very highly prized in Japan. The natural application for daikon is raw and done in an Asian theme, so I wanted to stay away from that. I kept saying to the cooks, "Let's do something classic and French." We tried a bunch of things from grilled daikon, OK, to red wine-braised daikon, horrible, when Chris said, "Daikon Pommes Anna!" So we have seared sablefish on a daikon "pommes Anna" with wild mushrooms and a beurre rouge. The daikon pommes Anna was very tricky to pull off; daikon does not have the starch that potatoes do, so getting the cake to hold together was a problem. Once the technical issue was resolved, the result is a beautiful and classically European take on ingredients that are typically treated in an Asian style. Mission accomplished!