Northern Italian Tasting

We're generally not in the habit of having customers dictate the direction of our tasting menus, preferring instead to take the best ingredients we have on hand at the time and shape them into a menu based on our own whims. But our customer for this dinner was insistent that we do a tasting of the foods from the provinces of Northern Italy. OK. I would have gone to a Northern Italian restaurant for this, but never mind, we can cook pretty much anything.

The hardest part of this whole exercise was deciding the order of the courses; for example, would the Piemontese course be primo, a secondo, a dolce? Once we got the ordering of the courses, progressing from first courses to seafood to meat to sweets, then it was easy enough to draw inspiration from each region to fill in the details.


Chicken Liver "Crostino"

Toscana: Chicken Liver Crostino. Chicken liver crostini are some of the best known appetizers in Tuscany and since we had chicken livers on hand, we decided to do a take on this well known primo, but reinvent the form. We cooked the livers in the traditional manner with onions, sage, rosemary, capers, anchovies, and Cognac. Then we formed the liver mousse into truffles and rolled them finely powdered crostini, cocoa powder, and espresso powder. The bitter cocoa and espresso worked with the liver very nicely.

Speck Knödel/Canederli Tirolese

Alto Adige: Speck Knödel/Canederli Tirolese. We went back and forth on a soup course, but the weather by turning cold and nasty made the decision easy for us. I have always loved the bread dumpling soups of Bavaria, Austria, and the Südtirol and wanted to reprise them for this menu, to show the Germanic influences in the cuisine of Alpine Italy. I made a classic brown stock from both pork and chicken necks and then poached quenelles of knödel batter in it. The batter is white bread soaked in milk, garlic chives, sage, minced speck, and eggs.

Gambero al Prosecco

Veneto: Gambero al Prosecco. I wouldn't argue if you wanted to call this Shrimp and Grits because that is basically what it is. This is our take on the classic Venetian dish of Schie con Polenta, tiny head-on shrimp in a garlic butter sauce over creamy polenta. Making the sauce with Prosecco is a nod to the famous sparking wine of the Veneto.

Trofie al Pesto

Liguria: Trofie al Pesto. You just can't think of Liguria and Genoa without thinking of basil and that most famous of sauces, pesto. What snaps immediately into my mind is a big plate of the local pasta, trofie, in pesto sauce. Plates of pasta just don't look all that pretty on tastings, so we mixed the trofie and pesto with some ricotta and eggs and baked them in little molds so serve as a base for mussels steamed with pesto.

Grilled Trout with Fennel, Chestnuts, and Lardo

Val d’Aosta: Grilled Trout with Fennel, Chestnuts, and Lardo. Moving right up next to France and Switzerland, the next course took its cues from regional products. This dish has no basis in classic Italian cooking: it is one of my own invention, but I daresay that it would feel at home in a modern restaurant in the Val d'Aosta. We grilled trout and then served it with a sauce made from caramelized fennel, shallots, and peeled chestnuts, splashed at the last second with a touch of anisette and bound with a splash of cream. On top is a very thin sliver of house-cured lardo. This dish is a keeper and I look forward to reprising it at some future time in the main dining room.

Radicchio, Wild Mushroom, and Sausage Strudel

Friuli/Venezia Giulia: Radicchio, Wild Mushroom, and Sausage Strudel. As a student of culinary history, I am always amazed at how cuisine pays no heed to political boundaries. For example, strudel, ignoring modern country borders, can be found all over the former Austro-Hungarian empire, including the far northeast corner of Italy. We made our strudel of radicchio, wild mushrooms, and a house-made sage sausage. Although it is very tasty, radicchio goes nearly black when cooked and does not necessarily make the prettiest strudel filling.

"Osso Buco" Milanese

Lombardia: "Osso Buco" Milanese. What is more representative of the cooking of Lombardia than osso buco milanese, succulent veal shank over saffron risotto? Nothing. How do you serve it for a nine-course tasting? We like the arrancino form.

Rabbit Bolognese

Emilia Romagna: Rabbit Bolognese. Emilia Romagna, among others, has two very famous exports: prosciutto di Parma and salsa bolognese from Bologna. We decided to marry a classic salsa bolognese made of rabbit with prosciutto, by wrapping the salsa in prosciutto, to give the salsa form on the plate. It is plated with saffron aïoli and a touch of sun-dried tomato pesto.

Chestnut and Red Wine Panna Cotta

Piemonte: Chestnut and Red Wine Panna Cotta. Panna cotta is a classic dish that I associate most closely with the Piemonte. This is a two-layer panna cotta of jellified Nebbiolo wine and a chestnut cream. I have gently reheated the panna cotta so that the red wine layer has just about melted, forming a sauce à la crème caramel. Topped with candied pine nuts.

Another Tasting

And the fall dishes keep coming. This tasting is all about two things: comfort and flavor. No boundary pushing, no fancy food, just pure flavors, simple presentations, and awesomeness of ingredients.

Chowder/Lentil Shoots/Scallop/Black Truffle Beurre Blanc

Duck Confit Pupusa/Orange Salad

Crispy Cavolo Nero/Grits/Quail Stuffed with Cannellini, Smoked Sausage, and Sage/Cacciatore Sauce

Corn-Thyme Crème Caramel/Pickled Figs/Duck Breast/Tiny Green Beans/Tasmanian Pepper Syrup

Orange Polenta Upside Down Cake/Coconut Sorbet/Crème Anglaise

Early March Tastings

Here are photos from a series of tastings we've done this week, playing games with what we have on hand.

Salmon Tartare. There's [sc]eviche, tartare, crudo, poke and all manner of other names for raw fish dishes. I'm calling this tartare and not seviche because the citrus juice goes on seconds before the dish hits the table so that there is no discoloration/firming of the flesh. Any time that we have a fatty fish belly, you can rest assured we're making a similar dish, whether or not it appears on the menu. It makes a great chef snack. This one contains red and yellow peppers, capers, green and red onions, Meyer lemon juice, and extra virgin olive oil. And as an accidental metaphor for the list of ingredients, note kitchen sink in background.

Mussels with Coconut-Yuzu Sauce. Finally, some good lighting in a kitchen picture! Sure I'd love to have a reflector behind this, but the quality of light on my cutting board versus on the main plating line is much nicer. Note to self. This is mussels steamed in coconut milk with yuzu juice and the sauce finished with a touch of fish sauce, lime leaves, and sugar. Grated lime zest and green onions over.

Grilled Shrimp. This all started early in the week when a customer inspired us to create a Provençale style pasta sauce. On the plate are two tiny wedges of a duck egg frittata made with roasted red peppers and goat cheese. These are the sops for a sauce of grilled peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, caperberries, black olives, fennel fronds, and orange zest. Propped up on all this is a grilled shrimp, marinated in black olive, garlic, and orange zest paste.

Duck Salad. This dish was really an exercise in how to use a new bottle of butternut seed oil. We're experimenting with it and naturally, it crossed our minds to make a dressing from it and Meyer lemon juice. The dressing is delicious. From there it's just a matter of building a salad around the dressing: local mesclun tied with Meyer lemon rind, duck confit, duck cracklings, duck fat croutons, orange segments, and toasted pumpkin seeds.

Rabbit Loin. Rabbit and fennel were made to go with each other: it's a magical combo. We've pounded out rabbit loin, dusted it with fennel pollen, and stuffed it with goat cheese mixed with fennel fronds and confit of fennel. Then it's rolled and wrapped in prosciutto, seared and finished in the oven. Purée of fennel and celery root down with a few cubes of fennel confit. We made the fennel confit in duck fat rather than olive oil.

Mushrooms and Bacon. We received a lot of brown beech, white beech, and pioppini mushrooms this week; you see them here featured with slab bacon on top of polenta. Nothing earth shattering or fancy about this, just plain old comfort food.

Teriyaki Royal Trumpet Mushrooms. In with the rest of our mushrooms this week were a few large royal trumpets, a mushroom that I like best when grilled and glazed with teriyaki sauce.

"Arancino." Here's a little play on food. When you hear arancino, you expect the deep-fried Sicilian risotto ball, perhaps stuffed with cheese or maybe even a ragù. But I doubt you expect our Northern Chinese Style pulled lamb stuffed into a fried rice ball. A little local bok choy to complete the dish.

Pork Belly. We were playing with the idea of Chinese steam buns stuffed with pork belly. But I'm not big on the texture of steamed dough, so I grilled it. There is something magical about tucking into a slab of pork belly with freshly cooked bread!

Here you see two different presentations. I'm not super happy with either presentation. The flavor was excellent, but the presentation is still lacking.

Jackfruit and Meyer Lemon Granita. This is a dish that had customers raving. The combination of the hyper-tropical flavors of the jackfruit with the lemon-orange tartness of the Meyer lemon yielded the best sorbet/granita I have ever tasted. Topped with a touch of amarena cherry mosto cotto and set on a piece of sinful coconut French toast.

Truffles. So every now and again, we make truffles. They're a fun way to end the evening. These are rolled in toasted coconut and in crushed candied walnuts. Plated with raspberry coulis and fried salted rice paper for a little texture.

Polenta 101

Why do so many people have an entirely nonsensical approach to making polenta (or grits or mealie pap or cornmeal mush or mămăligă or whatever you call it in your culture)? Why? Why, each time I have a new cook start working for me, do I have to unlearn him of bad habits? Why are recipes from Food Network, Washington Post, and the New York Times (respectable institutions all) just so nuts?

This comes to mind because I just stumbled upon these words of wisdom in The Virginia Housewife from 1824 which shows that somewhere along the line, somebody had common sense:

When along the way did we forget to mix the cornmeal into cold water to prevent it from lumping so that we didn't have to stand over the hot pot whisking constantly and vigorously while slowly dribbling the meal into the boiling water?

Cooks everywhere, if you don't know this technique, here is my Christmas gift to you.

Chef's Tasting

We just did a tasting for Phil and Deirdre Armstrong of Harvest Thyme Herb Farm in Staunton, VA, suppliers of herbs and vegetables to fine restaurants in the Staunton and Charlottesville area, as well as fellow bloggers. We wish we lived closer together so that we could work together.



Gravlax of Brook Trout. I'm a sucker for all kinds of cured and smoked fish, so when I got a delivery of way too many brookies, I decided to do a traditional salmon cure on some of them, hence the appropriation of the term gravlax. Garnishes are caperberries, dilled sour cream, red ribbon (aka blood) sorrel from the flats growing in our kitchen, and chervil which overwintered outside on the deck. I especially like the deep red color that the overwintered chervil takes on.

The crispy brown bits are parsnip crisps, something that we arrived at serendipitously. I love to serve smoked fish with latkes and we have been doing a lot of parnsip latkes lately. The night before the tasting, one of the cooks made a latke that was too big to fit onto the komatsuna garnish that I had already laid out on a plate, so I had him cut the latke down with a round cutter. That left all the crispy edge bits on the cutting board for chef snackies. The crispy edge bits were so good that we decided to do all crispy bits for the tasting.



Guinea Breast. We had a couple of guinea breasts laying around with no other use in mind, so we did a little ghetto sous vide on them and served them in a bowl of Surry sausage jus, with blanched Kentucky Wonder bean sprouts. Who knew you could eat baby bean plants? I sure as hell didn't think of it until Billie Clifton of Sunflower Cottage, our local microgreen supplier, brought some in a couple weeks back. To answer your question, they taste just like green beans. Go figure.



Porcini Carolina Gold Risotto with Wild Mushrooms, Guanciale, and Sage. We just had to do a wild mushroom course because we have wild mushrooms coming out of our ears now. It's been a great winter season for both black trumpets and hedgehogs. This is a really simple risotto of Anson Mills Carolina Gold rice, dried porcini, fresh sage from my home garden, and spectacular guanciale from La Quercia in Iowa. This is the last of my supply from La Quercia but even as good as it is, I'm looking forward to trying the guanciale from the home team in Manakin, VA, Olli Salumeria Americana. How cool is it to have two great suppliers of guanciale?

Garnishes are black trumpet mushrooms, hedgehog mushrooms, prosciutto crsips, fresh sage, and a cheese crisp made from porcini powder and pecorino Sardo. What you don't see in the photo is the barely poached quail egg beneath the robe of risotto. I love this trick. The egg yolk really enriches the risotto.



Pork Confit with Polenta Poblano Spoonbread and Salsa Verde. Ordinarily we don't do tomatillos out of season, but they were already in house from a very specific tasting that we did last weekend. I like to think of this dish as something you would get if your Southern grandma were of Mexican descent. It combines Southern classics spoonbread and fried green tomatoes with poblanos and salsa verde. And the crispy pork confit evokes carnitas, but the flavor is different because we used some orange zest and cognac in seasoning the pork before we cured it.

So what you see on the plate from left to right is a swoosh of salsa verde (poblanos, onions, tomatillos, cilantro, garlic), a fried green tomatillo, crispy pork confit threads, pimentón sauce (the orange sauce), and a cube of pork confit sitting on top of the spoonbread (leftover polenta, roasted poblano purée, cream, and eggs).



Bestilla of Border Springs Lamb. We get lambs in on a regular basis and tend to use the primary cuts (racks, loin chops, and legs) first. Then we end up with a lot of tiny foreshanks and necks in freezer after several months. That's when I get to braising, because braising is my favorite cooking technique and the neck and shank meat is the best meat on the lamb. This time, Craig's wonderful lamb ended up in a classic Moroccan tagine, a stew redolent of spices. I have made hundreds of tagines in my career and this was one of the best; I'm really honing in on just about the perfect spicing to showcase the lamb without overwhelming it. After braising, the lamb gets separated from the vegetables and the sauce. The lamb gets pulled and mixed back with the vegetables and the defatted and reduced sauce.

I wanted to showcase this beautiful pulled lamb, so I came pretty quickly to a classic bestilla. Rather than scramble eggs into the filling in the classic manner, I packed the pastries with lamb and buried a raw quail egg in the center, which then baked into a solid egg in the oven. We generally accompany our lamb tagine with chizu, a spicy carrot slaw. I wanted to use the chizu as a sauce and so we made a vinaigrette of it like we do with kimchee à la David Chang of Momofuku. Because of the high water content in the carrots, we had to use a touch of xanthan to bind the water and keep the vinaigrette from bleeding. The other sauce is a mixture of ras al hanout (an Arab spice mix) and Greek yogurt.

The salad garnish we called a winter salad. It consists of everything green that we could find, dressed with a preserved lemon vinaigrette. From what I remember, the salad contains brussels sprouts petals, tiny broccoli leaves, micro arugula, micro bulls blood beets, and chervil.



White Chocolate Goat Cheese Cheesecake with Sweet Potato, Almond, and Cranberry Florentine. I wanted to use sweet potatoes in the dessert course and it struck me to substitute them for the candied orange peel in a classic florentine, a crunchy cookie containing nuts and candied fruit glued together with honey, cream, and sugar. Florentines are often coated or drizzled with chocolate. We coated ours entirely with white chocolate and then used the Florentine as a crust for a white chocolate and goat cheese cheesecake. I've made hundreds if not thousands of cheesecakes in my life, but never with goat cheese, although that seems a pretty obvious thing to do. I enjoyed the goat cheese flavor; it reminded me of a panna cotta made with yogurt in which the acidity of the cheese/yogurt plays off the sugar to give a well balanced end result. Garnish is a drizzle of blueberry crème anglaise.