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.

Chef's Table

Here are more photos from a recent Chef's Table. We had some fun with these dishes. As always, they are a result of collaboration among the cooks and me. In creating these menus, everyone throws in ideas and we see what sticks. Usually some hybrids happen and for the better.



Cucumber Summer Roll. We were kicking around amuse ideas and somehow got onto summer rolls when Tony offered the idea of using cucumber instead of rice paper. I ultimately changed this course from an Asian-inspired one to a more European-flavored one, to bring it in line with the rest of the menu. Inside the roll is cucumber, carrot, parsley stems, and court bouillon-poached shrimp bound with a mayonnaise flavored with lemon zest, dill, and capers. Crunchy with big flavor, yet very refreshing, everything a good amuse should be.



Rockfish. We've been on a fish-in-broth kick for a few tasting menus now (because we love the idea of half soup, half entrée) and so we came quite naturally to rockfish (the local name for striped bass, this from the Chesapeake Bay) with wild mushrooms and a Surry sausage jus. Sometime in the middle of the night before the tasting, I hit me to put the fish on a base of parsnip crème caramel to add some sweetness and richness to the dish. (Don't ask me why I decided this or even how, I don't have a clue. Like most of my food ideas, it just appeared in my brain). The caramel is very dark so it is not very sweet and there is no sugar in the custard. The flavors worked very well and I think the guests were intrigued with the it-looks-like-dessert-but-its-a-fish-dish aspect.



Breakfast. This is just the kind of dish that tickles a lot of chefs and brings out the kid in us. Who doesn't love breakfast for dinner? We've had a version of this dish on the dinner menu for about a week and apparently our customers don't love breakfast for dinner! It seems de rigueur in these parts to order a salad before dinner rather than something that we have put our creative energy into. Sigh. You see down on the plate a pimentón sauce and Virginia maple syrup (yes, we make damn fine maple syrup in Virginia too) and on top of that a napoleon of parsnip latkes and grilled rounds of Alan Benton's country sausage, all topped with a poached quail egg and a dribble of hollandaise: Eggs Benedict gone miniature.



Nest Egg. This dish is the merger of two other ideas, one a Carolina Gold and Sea Island red pea hoppin' john risotto and the other a polenta ball stuffed with oxtail ragù. We ended up stuffing the oxtail into the risotto and forming it into eggs, serving it on a nest of chiffonaded romaine, a nod to the Lenten season. I'm sure this must have been fun to eat, cracking through the crisp panko crust to get at the silky risotto and the liquid ragù.



Shepherd's Pie. What to do with a lamb saddle? Answering that question is how we arrived at this dish. I think it was Tony's idea to stuff it with all the mirepoix and seasoning that we usually put into shepherd's pie. While we were reinterpreting the classic, we decided to put the mash (in this case, parsnip and celery root) on the bottom, down on the plate, to hold the rounds of lamb loin roulade. I boned the saddle such that the tenderloin and the top loin (both sides of the T-bone) were intact and rolled it so that the top loin wrapped the tenderloin, the rare part you see in the center. Quite successful. Travis' stuffing was dynamite.



Apricot Tart. Bad Ed! Bad Chef! This dessert was way too big for a tasting. But I really couldn't help myself. The tart crust is shortbread, heavy on cornstarch so that it is light and crisp. This is topped with lemon curd, light on sugar so that it remains tart, and moistened dried apricots. In the background, you see a phyllo cup with vanilla bean ice cream. Crème anglaise over everything. Too much! I promise I will try harder to come up with smaller dessert courses in the future (not really!).

Root Vegetable Recipes

One Block West is a seasonal restaurant and so our menu changes daily in response to what we find at the market and what our growers bring us. And what we get in the winter is root vegetables, lots and lots of root vegetables. And so we have become quite skilled at incorporating them into our menu, even into desserts such as Parsnip Crème Brûlée and Almond, Cranberry, and Sweet Potato Florentines. In wanting to pass along my love for root vegetables, I chose that as the topic for my first class of my new series of cooking classes. Here then are the recipes from my recent Root Vegetables class. I hope that you find them useful. If something is unclear, feel free to post a comment or send me a direct email and I will clarify it.

Céleri Rémoulade. This is my take on the French classic. Often in France, cooks grind the celery root with a Mouli, which gives a very soft and flaccid feel to the dish. I prefer to julienne the celery root which gives it a lot more texture. This salad is best prepared several hours ahead of time or even the day before to give the celery root a chance to soften. I love this slaw as a garnish for pulled pork. I love the mustardy quality of this dressing; feel free to modify to your taste.

2 pounds celery root, peeled and julienned
1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Make the dressing by whisking the egg, lemon juice, vinegar, mustard, and salt together. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil while whisking, making a loose mayonnaise. Add the celery root and toss well. Adjust to taste. You could certainly add some fresh herbs to this for both color and flavor.

Parsnip Latkes. We make so many latkes at the restaurant. They make great bases on which to display other foods and more importantly, who doesn't love a good latke? Parsnips are our favorite right now, but we make latkes from almost all root vegetables including potatoes, carrots, celery root, and sweet potatoes. Hint: if you're using sweet potatoes, use a lower flame. The sugar in the potatoes wants to burn before the latke is cooked.

4 large parsnips
1/2 small onion
2 tablespoons minced parsley
2 tablespoons flour
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
pinch black pepper
canola oil

Peel the parsnips and grate them using the coarse side of a box grater into a large bowl. Unlike potatoes, you do not need to squeeze the water out of the parsnips. Grate the onion into the bowl. Add the parsley, flour, egg, salt, and pepper. Mix well. Heat a sauté pan over medium high heat and film with oil. Drop a bit of the parsnip mixture into your pan and flatten into a pancake. A heaping tablespoon yields silver dollar size latkes; three tablespoons yields a 4-inch latke. Cook until golden brown on the bottom and flip. Finish cooking and remove to paper toweling. Sprinkle with kosher salt. Eat one and congratulate yourself on a job well done!

Turnip Bacon Purée. I don't understand why people frown on turnips so much. They're sweet and they're excellent anywhere from raw to puréed. I developed this dish as a silky accompaniment to roast heirloom pork. The sweetness of the turnips and the smokiness of the slab bacon meld deliciously with pork.

4 ounces slab bacon, in small dice
1 pound small turnips, peeled and diced
2 tablespoons heavy cream, optional
salt and pepper

Start cooking the diced bacon in a small sauce pan over medium flame to render some bacon grease, but do not cook the bacon through. Turn up the flame and add the turnips. Brown the turnips slightly. Then cover with water, reduce the flame to medium, and cook until the turnips are soft. Transfer to the food processor and purée. Add heavy cream if you like for richness (I did not do this in the class as I am lactose intolerant) and season to taste.

Fennel Orange Salad. I figure a lot of people have seen fennel in the grocery store and have no clue what to do with it. I wanted to show how friendly and easy this vegetable is. This salad combines oranges, fennel, roasted olives, and a touch of feta cheese.

1 large fennel bulb, julienned
2 tablespoons fennel greens, finely sliced
zest of one orange
3 seedless oranges, sectioned
1/2 cup roasted olives (recipe follows)
1/4 cup feta cheese crumbles
2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Season to taste. I covered how to section citrus fruit some years ago. See this post if you are unfamiliar with how to do it.

Roasted Olives

1/2 cup mixed olives, pitted
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 pinch red pepper flakes
4-5 fresh rosemary needles, minced
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 pinch black pepper

Toss all ingredients and place on a sheet tray. Heat in a hot oven (400F) until sizzling, about 10 minutes. You can also do this on the stove top over a low flame (which is what I did in the class).



Bourbon Flambéed Sweet Potato Hash. This is a quick and fun take on hash that is wonderful with game and it sure wouldn't be bad for Thanksgiving either.

4 ounces slab bacon, diced
1 medium sweet potato, about a pound, diced
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 ounce bourbon
1/2 cup sweetened dried cranberries
1/2 cup toasted pecans
salt and pepper to taste

Heat a sauté pan over high heat and add the bacon and sweet potatoes. Cook 2-3 minutes, stirring to keep from sticking. Add the onions and cook until translucent 2-3 minutes. Add the garlic and cook another minute. Add the bourbon and let it burn off. Check a sweet potato for doneness. If it needs to cook a bit more, add a couple tablespoons of water to the pan to help the sweet potatoe steam. When the sweet potatoes are done, add the cranberries and pecans, mix well and season to taste.

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!

Chef's Table

For what will be most likely my final blog post of 2010, I wanted to post some photos of a recent Chef's Table. We hold these each Thursday at 6pm at the table in our back bar next to the kitchen. We only seat a maximum of 8 diners each week. Five to six courses paired with wines for $60: a deal no matter how you slice it and even more of a deal once you consider the labor.


Arancino of Porcini Risotto. Isn't this a gorgeous photo? First, thanks to Billie Clifton of Sunflower Cottage for all the beautiful herbs, greens, and flowers this winter. We made balls of wickedly good and creamy porcini risotto, rolled them in panko, and deep fried them for an addictively good amuse bouche. We made some extras for chef snackies. I loved the contrast between the crunchy crust and the sinfully creamy interior.



Fall Salad. This is a salad I came up with several years ago and it has featured on our late fall and early winter menus ever since, such a hit with customers it is. I don't like to repeat dishes that are on our dinner menu on our tasting menus, but this salad is so good that I want everyone to try it. This salad popped into my head at the farmers market one bleak Saturday when I needed a salad for that night's menu and nothing green was to be found. In classic Asian fashion, this salad has sweet and crunch from the Asian pears, salt and spice from the pecans, and earthy creaminess from the butternut squash. It's all bound with an apple cider reduction and topped with earthy Bull's Blood beets. I love this salad.



Winter Bounty. There may not be a vast selection of items at the farmers market in December, but we can do some cool things with what there is. This is a napoleon featuring three layers of parsnip latkes sandwiching layers of mustard greens and cavolo nero, standing in a pool of butternut squash cream. This dish is enough to make me turn vegetarian. All the flavors play together so well.



Cassoulet. This menu so far has been tamely vegetarian. Time to turn on the meat! This is pork and beans amped up with copious quantities of duck fat and house-cured duck confit. We made this cassoulet with Steuben Yellow Eye Beans, an heirloom variety that keeps it shape while becoming sinfully creamy inside. The French only wish they had this bean for their cassoulets. We make our cassoulet with amazing Virginia sausages and smoked slab bacon, keeping it as local as we can and keeping the local cardiologists in funds.



Pork, Pork, Pork. Did I mention that I could happily be a vegetarian except for one small problem? Pork products. Yep, I'd walk five miles for a taste of pork confit. This is a mini-homage to my friend the pig and one that hopped into my mind a couple of days ago while eyeing the pan of leftover ossobuco of pork from our company Christmas party. What if we debone the osso, reshape it into disks, wrap it in prosciutto, crisp it in a pan, and serve it in a bowl of smoky pork jus? What if indeed! This is one sexy pork dish, with its crown of sausage and duck fat-roasted brussels sprouts!



Apple Crumble. I'm not a dessert guy. Give me another glass of wine and a piece of cheese and some fruit after dinner and I'm really happy. So my desserts tend to be more savory, less sweet, and fruit-driven. And I guess 2010 has been the year of deconstructed, scattered desserts for me. If you look back at my dessert photos over the year, there seems to be a theme. Traditional apple crumble has been selling like hotcakes this fall and winter. This is a reworking in which the apples, the apple cider glaze, the crumble topping, and the vanilla bean gelato have all been pulled apart and reassembled. The crumble topping is in the form of a cookie, the result of another what-if. What if we bake the crumble topping too long? Sometimes good things come of curiosity!

Burning Questions: Vegetables and Grains

This whole series of "Burning Questions" posts originated as a somewhat amusing troll through the One Block West Restaurant web site server logs, to see what search phrases were bringing people to the web site. As I went through the logs, the search topics seemed to fall into several broad categories, each dealt with in a separate post in this series. This post deals with vegetables and grains.

Parsnip Tastes Like. Parsnips taste a bit like the green tops of carrots smell when you bruise them. They're sweet like carrots with a bit of an herbal edge to them. I love them.

Cooking Filet Beans/Cooking Fin de Bagnols Beans. You can cook the little filet beans any way that you would cook the larger green beans: steam, fry, tempura, roast, boil, stir fry, etc. Try tossing them with a little extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic and roasting them in a very hot oven, turning every five minutes for fifteen minutes until they become brown and wrinkled.

Difference between Poblano and Piquillo. A Poblano is a large, dark black-green, triangular fresh pepper. A Piquillo is a small red triangular pepper that you will only find canned or jarred here in the US. Both are mild and have excellent flavor. See also my Chile Primer.

Torpedo Onion Difference between Shallot. The torpedo onions that I am familiar with are red onions that take shape of an elongated football. The ones that I get from the farmers market are about 4 inches long and about an inch and a half in diameter, but I've seen much, much larger ones from the produce company. Torpedo onions are very mild and work great for raw applications. Some shallots are light purple like torpedo onions while others are yellow and some are white. While torpedo onions have a mild onion flavor, shallots have a different flavor, a delicately garlic flavor. For torpedo onions, substitute any red onion. For shallots, nothing else will do. See also the Cook's Thesaurus onion page.

Best Rice for Paella. Paella rice is a medium-grained rice that separates well when cooked and does not release as much starch as risotto rice. From Calasparra in the Murcia region of Spain, these rices were at one point almost extinct. Bomba is the premium variety. Anything labelled simply Calasparra is likely to be the Sollana variety. All the paella rices produce a very dry grain at harvest, allowing them to absorb a lot more liquid than most rice. You can substitute Arborio or other risotto rice for paella rice in a pinch. See also my rice primer.

Chef's Tasting

One of my favorite things to do is create tasting menus for customers. I like it because I get to create things that people ought to taste, but which would never sell on the dinner menu.

Here's the menu from the latest tasting. I will follow up this post with another one discussing the development of this menu from a list of ideas to dishes on the plate.

Creamy Parsnip-Leek Soup with Chive Oil and Parsnip Latke

Five-Spice Duck Soup Wonton with Green Onions, Soy- and Ginger-Braised Black Mushrooms, and House-Cured Duck Confit

Lemon-Oil Poached Filet of Idiot Fish
on Lemon and Thai Basil “Risotto” of Fregola Sarda; Blood Sorrel

Tartiflette—Rose Fingerling Potatoes, Virginia Slab Bacon, and Onions Baked under Réblochon Cheese

Trio of Rabbit Preparations:
Prosciutto-Wrapped Brined Loin with Pan Sauce
Crispy Raviolo of Juniper-Cured Confit with Juniper Salt and Gin Beurre Blanc
Rillettes with Asian Pear and Blood Orange Marmalade

Trio of Goat Cheese Truffles:
Pickled Peach and Cajun-Spiced Pecans
Cranberry and Walnut
Blood Orange and Candied Fennel Seed

Sour Cherry Granita; Cherry-Chocolate Mousse with Kriek Sabayon

Creamy Parsnip-Leek Soup with Chive Oil and Parsnip Latke. I love soup all the time, but never more so than when it is cold and last night, as expected, was really cold for November, in the low 20s. I decided on parsnips because they're in the market now, they are so good, and so few Americans have ever tasted them. Except for the parsnips, this was a classic leek and potato soup. I decided to highlight the versatility of the parsnip by garnishing the soup with a latke. Parsnip latkes are even better than potato latkes.

Five-Spice Duck Soup Wonton with Green Onions, Soy- and Ginger-Braised Black Mushrooms, and House-Cured Duck Confit. I love Chinese comfort food, especially the red-cooked dishes, long slow braises with soy sauce, rice wine, star anise, ginger, garlic, and green onions. I also adore Chinese noodle soups, especially hand-pulled noodles in duck broth with roast duck. This dish then pays homage to Chinese tradition, but as I like to play with dishes and make people think about what they're eating, I took the traditional duck soup and put it inside the noodles, making duck soup wontons.

Technically, this is trivially done by letting the broth congeal and then using that solid form to stuff the wontons—no big secret there. Naturally, the broth melts as you cook the wontons. The garnishes are pulled duck confit, dried black mushrooms slowly braised with soy sauce and ginger, hoisin sauce, white sesame seeds, and green onions.

It's kind of fun for customers to cut into the wontons and have the soup bowl fill up with the soup that was missing just moments before.

Lemon-Oil Poached Filet of Idiot Fish
on Lemon and Thai Basil “Risotto” of Fregola Sarda; Blood Sorrel. After the strong earthy flavors of the previous dish, I felt the need to go light in flavor. Idiot Fish is a delicate, high oil content fish mainly from the Gulf of Alaska. Because it is so delicate, you must handle it gently especially if it is in filets. I decided to seal the fish in a vacuum bag with a lemon-infused oil and gently poach it. I find that lemon (any citrus, actually) works wonderfully with high oil fish. I decided to echo the lemon flavor in the "risotto" of fregola sarda, but to give it a little punch with Thai basil, which adds mint and white pepper notes. Tangy blood sorrel poses its oxalic acid notes against the richness of both the fish and the risotto. We avoided cheese in the risotto: often cheese makes fish taste fishier.

Tartiflette—Rose Fingerling Potatoes, Virginia Slab Bacon, and Onions Baked under Réblochon Cheese. Tartiflette is a modern French classic comfort dish from the Savoie. This rendition is fairly faithful to the original, save that I used rose-colored fingerling potatoes instead of yellow potatoes and that I used Picpoul rather than a local wine from the Savoie. Because of the cold weather, I wanted to do an instantly recognizable comfort dish. And what American doesn't recognize highfalutin home fries with cheese?

Trio of Rabbit Preparations: Prosciutto-Wrapped Brined Loin with Pan Sauce, Crispy Raviolo of Juniper-Cured Confit with Juniper Salt and Gin Beurre Blanc, Rillettes with Asian Pear and Blood Orange Marmalade. After the comfort food of the middle course, I wanted once again to push the customers' boundaries with the next dish. Rabbit shouldn't push anyone's boundaries, but it's not something many Americans have tried or would willingly try, which is why I like to include it on tasting menus: to show people that rabbit is indeed versatile and tasty.

From left to right in the photo, you see classic rabbit rillettes, brined and prosciutto-wrapped loin, and a crispy raviolo filled with rabbit confit. The goal of this tasting was to make use of the entire rabbit.

Rillettes is a classic French charcuterie and what we and the English would most likely call potted meat. It consists of finely shredded or chopped meat mixed with fat (as a preservative) and is typically used as a spread for bread. I braised all the random bits of the rabbit (forelegs, back, breast and side meat, etc.) with thyme, shallots, and white wine. Then I picked and finely shredded the meat and reduced the strained braising liquid to a syrup. Mixing the braising liquid, meat, nutmeg, mace, thyme, juniper salt, rosemary, and a bit of congealed duck fat yielded my version of rabbit rillettes. We served the rillettes at room temperature with a marmalade of blood orange rind and Asian pear.

I trimmed the two loin halves and brined them with salt, sugar, and white pepper for about six hours. Then I wrapped them in prosciutto and seared them. We served them with a pan sauce from deglazing the pan with guinea hen stock (because that's the stock we have on hand right now) and a quick mounting with sweet butter.

To confit the rabbit, I rubbed the rear legs in salt, sugar, juniper berries, garlic, thyme, and allspice and put them in the cooler for several days to cure. Then I slowly poached them in duck fat for about six hours. Finely minced confit seasoned with juniper salt went into the ravioli, which we crisped by frying after they cooked in boiling water. We garnished the ravioli with a gin beurre blanc (like a traditional beurre blanc except that we substituted gin for a portion of the white wine).

Juniper salt is just juniper berries that I ground in the spice mill and mixed with fleur de sel.

Trio of Goat Cheese Truffles: Pickled Peach and Cajun-Spiced Pecans, Cranberry and Walnut, Blood Orange and Candied Fennel Seed. I am a huge fan of cheese. A formal dinner just doesn't seem right to me without a cheese course. And while I rarely eat dessert when I am dining out, I will often order cheese to finish my meal. I used this cheese course to segue between the last savory course and the sweet dessert course by making each of the truffles successively sweeter.

Sour Cherry Granita; Cherry-Chocolate Mousse with Kriek Sabayon. This dessert is about temperature and texture contrast. I wanted to play the crunchy texture of the granita against the smoothness of the mousse and I wanted to contrast the warm kriek sabayon (egg yolks and wine, or in this case, beer whisked over a steam bath until foamy) with the cool mousse. Also, I've never been a fan of sweets, so my desserts tend to be low in sugar. The granita, the mousse, and the sabayon were all barely sweetened.