Chef's Tasting

Here are new photos from a recent tasting.

Shrimp and Mango Seviche; Shrimp and Mango Skewer

Shrimp and Mango. We're planning to do shrimp and mango seviche for a big crowd next week, so this was a test run to get the flavorings down. Served with a shrimp and mango skewer sitting on a bit of mango vinaigrette.

Grilled Opah, Okinawa Sweet Potato, Curry Sauce

Opah. This is opah grilled to about medium sitting on a piece of broccoli and some Okinawa sweet potatoes that we cooked in coconut milk. The now-purple coconut milk was fortified with red curry paste, fish sauce, and lime juice. Topped with a little grilled pineapple salsa.

Lumaconi Stuffed with Pulled Rabbit

Rabbit. The local rabbits are really rolling in now forcing us to get creative in finding ways to serve them. Here we braised them and pulled them off the bones, then created a sauce by reducing the braising liquid and finishing with a little cream and Dijon mustard. The meat and the sauce were combined with sautéed local carrots, leeks, and brussels sprouts, chilled, and stuffed into lumaconi (large snails). We topped the pasta with a touch of béchamel and browned that, then spooned over fresh local peas just barely warmed in butter.

Hummus, Lamb Chops, Phyllo, Olives, Preserved Lemons, Fresh Chickpeas

Hummus with Garnishes. This started as a way to showcase the fresh green chickpeas that a local farmer grows for us. In the center of the plate you see some hummus that we flavored with chile, garlic, and lemon. Sticking out of this is a phyllo crisp that has salt and ras el hanout (a North African spice mix) between the layers. The lamb chops are local and marinated with garlic, more ras el hanout, and ground sumac. Other garnishes are the aforementioned green chickpeas, winy Niçoise olives, and some of our house-cured preserved lemons. Over all is sprinkled a chiffonade of mint from the flowerbed out in front of the restaurant.

Panna Cotta with Black Berries 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 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.

Chef's Table

Each Thursday night we host up to 8 people at a communal table in our back bar for the Chef's Table. It's fun for us because unlike formal tastings where clients give us their likes and dislikes and we build a menu around that, for the Chef's Table we cook what we feel. More than that, we are experimenting with dishes, ingredients, and techniques. It's great way for us to start working on a concept for a new dish and get some immediate feedback. Some dishes work well, some need improvement, and well, some will never grace our table again.

Borage Granita, Sockeye Tartare, Cold Pea Soup with Riesling

What does one do with a surfeit of borage? Granita came to mind for us and we really liked its cucumber flavor as an amuse bouche.

Warm Rabbit "Terrine", Dijon Vichyssoise

Local purple potatoes and garlic chives on the bottom, local rabbit in a Dijon cream in the middle, local snow peas on top, warm cream of leek and potato soup flavored with a hint of Dijon mustard around. Pain in the rear to plate.

Duck, Duck, Goose

On the plate is a slab of sourdough bread French toast made with a goose egg custard and fried in foie gras fat. On top of this is what we call duck bacon, breast tenders that we cure in salt, sugar, and pink salt and then smoke. The next layer is scrambled goose egg with chives, done in the classic French preparation oeufs brouillés, whisked over a water bath until creamy and custardy. On top are threads of house-cured duck confit that we have shredded and deep fried. Maple syrup completes this delicious, over-the-top dish. The duck bacon was killer.

Sockeye Two Ways

Sockeye belly flaps (the really good stuff) confited in duck fat on a salad of tomatoes, Niçoise olives, fresh basil, and sliced caperberries; seared sockeye filet on lentils with bacon. Not much novel here; just letting the first sockeye of the year shine.

Île Flottante; Horchata Crème Anglaise

Playing games with chufa (aka tiger nuts) from Spain, we decided to make a classic horchata and convert that to a crème anglaise. What to do with crème anglaise? Float an almond meringue in it, old school style and top it with some fresh strawberries and a poppyseed tuile. The novelty for us here is that we cooked the meringue in the microwave, just to see if it could be done. Yep, easy enough.

Recent Photos

Here are a couple of recent photos from the restaurant.


Here is one of our flats of blood sorrel, just waiting to be picked for garnish. Blood sorrel has that great lemony oxalic acid zing of any other sorrel and it looks great on the plate too. We only ever use this in raw applications.


And finally after waiting all summer, our first batch of field peas (aka cowpeas, cream peas, crowder peas) is in. These are the traditional purple hulls (the ones with the eyes) and the cream peas called Zipper, the larger ones without the eyes.

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.