Chef's Tasting

We've done a lot of tastings recently, but I haven't posted many pictures mostly because the dishes don't have striking color this time of year like they do in the summer. Long gone are the gorgeous reds of ripe tomatoes and peppers, the bright green of peas and snow peas, and the delicate yellows of squash blooms and corn. In now are the browns, rusts, tans, beiges, and whites of our winter vegetables and while they are not as photogenic as their summer cousins, they are equally delicious.

Without further ado then, one of our most recent tastings:

Charcuterie Trio

Charcuterie Trio. In the foreground you see a veal tongue terrine set in aspic with a lot of fresh parsley à la the French classic jambon persillé. In the middle is a swirl of rabbit liver mousse flavored with Cognac and on the far end, a terrine of ground Berkshire pork shoulder flavored with all kinds of delicious bits.

Cauliflower, Maitake Mushrooms, and Leeks

Cauliflower and Leeks. These are two vegetables that many people pass over without a second thought but which are incredibly fun for us chefs to work with. The cauliflower has been roasted to the point of caramelization and then made into the silkiest of sauces: it is really something you just want to wallow in! The leeks have been creamed and then wrapped in phyllo for presentation purposes, and these little triangles are decadently delicious. Crispy maitake mushrooms and dots of truffle-infused balsamic vinegar complete the plate, the earthy mushroomy flavors playing off the rich creamy cauliflower and leeks, and the vinegar delivering the acid that keeps this dish from being cloying.

Scallop, Pork Belly, Sweet Potatoes, and Black Truffles

Scallop and Pork Belly. Not too much original here, but this is a damn fine course that I would be happy to be served at a restaurant. Scallop on top of house-cured pork belly on top of a silky sweet potato purée, all napped with a tart black truffle beurre blanc.

People always ask me how to make pork belly, thinking that they are going to make it at home, but then start wincing about the time I get to the third of the fourth cookings! We cure it for a length of time dependent on the thickness of the belly, then brown/damn near char it in a very hot oven, then braise it, then refrigerate it, then confit it under duck fat, then refrigerate it under duck fat for a long period, then slice it, and pan fry it. Sure, you can do it at home but why would you want to? You can achieve 90 percent of the results with a much simpler process and that it good enough for home. The extra pain that we go through to make it the very best pork belly you've ever eaten, you should leave to us.

Duck, Rabbit, Spätzle, and Brussels Sprouts

Duck and Rabbit. It's winter and for some reason, the cute little brussels sprouts keep making us think of schnitzel. Here, we have taken a tenderloin off of a rabbit and the so-called tenderloin off a duck breast (the little tender piece on the under side of the breast) and pounded them side-by-side, slightly overlapped, so that they form a single piece of schnitzel from two very different meats. They're breaded in a five-spice panko and served with sweet and sour sprout hash and orange spätzle. I thinly sliced the sprouts, some shallots, and some of my house-cured pancetta. After caramelizing the pancetta and shallots, I added the sprouts and cooked them until bright green, just a few seconds. Then into the pan with a tiny bit of butter, a pinch of sugar, and a taste of white balsamic vinegar. Done and delicious! Even so-called sprout haters love them this way!

Pork Cheek, Grits, Gremolata, and Pork Jus

Pork and Grits. We serve a lot of pork and grits in various guises, mostly because how insanely good is the combination of any kind of pork with corn? This is a slow-cooked Berkshire pork cheek, crisped in a black steel pan, on grits, topped with gremolata, and napped with what we call "pork goodness," the juices left in the bottom of the pan after cooking our pork belly.

Venison, Flower Sprouts, Blueberry Salad, and Tasmanian Pepper

Venison. It's venison season once again and we are working our way through a few rear haunches. I seam out the legs into individual muscles and then break those down into steaks which I marinate for a couple of days. Then I grill them, very, very rare. Here you see the grilled and sliced venison plated with a dried blueberry and celery salad, and the first so-called "flower sprouts" that I have ever seen. These are a new (and according to the farmer that grew these, not very stable) cross between brussels sprouts and kale. The resulting plant has a long central stalk like a brussels sprout plant, but instead of miniature cabbages, it has little broccoli-like whorls of leaves without any sign of a bloom. These were deep purple before blanching and now they are very deep forest green. Despite their novelty and interesting appearance, I have already told the grower that they are not worth growing again: the flavor is not as good as either of the parents. She said, "good to know; they are a pain to harvest." And so it goes.

Chocolate and Cranberries

Chocolate and Cranberries. Being just after Thanksgiving, we have lots of cranberries in the cooler, looking for ways to get on plates. I made a bunch of them into a delicious whole berry jelly (or jam, if you are so inclined to call it that). This dessert starts with a simple disk of flourless chocolate torte, then a layer of orange cream cheese, a layer of jelly, and finally a swirl of cream cheese. This rich but not very sweet dessert I designed to go with a glass of Malbec. I liked the pairing a lot.

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 Autumn Tasting

I know that it's not fall yet and won't be officially for another couple of weeks, but mentally, Tony and I are off creating fall menus already. As much as we love tomatoes, squash, squash blooms, and peppers, we are ready for the change to game, mushrooms, braised dishes, conserved pork products, and bacon, bacon, bacon.

Grilled Prosciutto-Wrapped Goat Cheese-Stuffed Figs

Grilled Prosciutto-Wrapped Goat Cheese-Stuffed Figs. This is not an earth shattering new dish, but it is wonderful nonetheless for having been made with local figs and local goat cheese. Next up, we're already scheming to make our own prosciutto when it gets cold enough. Served with a glass of prosecco, these are a great start to any meal.

Sausage and Eggs

Breakfast. Yet another in the long list of dishes that we have so titled, this one starts with a bed of chanterelle buttons cooked up with our bison and our venison sausages. On top is a spoonful of oeufs brouillés, duck eggs with chives and a splash of cream that have been whisked over a water bath until just set, more like a heavy sauce than traditional scrambled eggs and so, so much more sinful. Maple syrup around the edge adds a sweet note.

Truffled Steuben Yellow Eye Bean Soup; Potted Confit

Beans. Definitely my favorite dish of this whole tasting, and for being a soup, the most complex to make. My guests for this tasting are frequent diners and lovers of cassoulet, and so I worded the menu in such a way as to make them think that this course was going to be cassoulet. The beans are my favorites, Steuben Yellow Eyes, soaked overnight, drained, cooked to tender, and recooked with the juice that comes from roasting our pork belly (what we call "goodness"), mirepoix, smoked Surry sausage, garlic, thyme, bay, rosemary, and sage. It's all blitzed in the big Vita-Mix and passed through our finest chinois for an ultra-silky texture. Thinned, splashed with a touch of cream, seasoned, and lavished with a big spoonful of chopped black truffles, this is a soup for the culinary gods. Served with a croustade topped with potted confit. We finely chopped some of our duck confit and pork shoulder confit, then mixed it with softened butter, nutmeg, mace, and fresh thyme.

Braaied Skilpadjies

Skilpadjies. You South Africans might recognize the minature skilpadjies that we braaied on a skewer and served with geelrys. The rest of you see small tortoise-shaped patties of minced lamb and rabbit liver wrapped in caul fat, which have been grilled and served with a fragrant yellow rice and a green tomato ketchup. Somebody brought us a bunch of green cherry tomatoes from a field that needed to be tilled under for fall crops and so we made a big batch of spicy green tomato ketchup from them.

Corn Crème Caramel with Duck Breast

Duck. Here's another savory crème caramel. I just love the silky texture that it brings to a dish. This one is made from fresh corn flavored with thyme. You also see grilled Moulard duck breast, baby brussels sprouts, and a fresh fig. I made a jus (almost a consommé but I didn't technically clarify it) from more pork belly goodness, defatted Surry sausage jus, and star anise. This jus I spooned over so that its salty essence could marry with the caramel giving a delicious sweet-salty contrast with a haunting star anise note to bring out the spice in the accompanying Barossa Shiraz.

Pawpaw Panna Cotta

Pawpaw. We've been fortunate this year to have a local forager supply us wild pawpaws which have a banana-melon-mango flavor very similar to jackfruit. But pawpaws are a gigantic pain in the ass to prepare, unlike jackfruit. Here you see a plate with pawpaw purée, crème anglaise, and maple syrup on the plate, with miniature pawpaw panna cottas scattered about. Though it's hard tell, the large ball is a ball of coconut sorbet rolled in crushed black walnuts, with an oatmeal lace cookie sticking out of it.

Alien Ingredient #1: Dwarf Truffle Peaches

Dwarf truffle peaches. The name was enough to get me to order a jar of these sight unseen. I mean seriously WTF do peaches, truffles, and dwarves have to do with each other?

These come from Italy where they pickle the immature green fruit that they thin to reduce the fruit load on the trees so as to increase the size and flavor of the remaining peaches and/or so as not to overload the branches to the point where they might snap.* After pickling, they are packed in a truffle oil. This jar contains a full kilogram of product and a good liter of nice tasting truffle oil. In fact, the biggest win of this product may be using the truffle oil to flavor dishes long after the peaches are gone. I can already imagine browning spätzle in it or dressing green beans in it.

[*The original text, quoted from manufacturer's web site read: "any unripe tiny green peaches off the trees at the end of the season". There aren't unripe green peaches on trees at the end of the season.]

The peaches are the size of very large olives and are very crisp all the way through. The pit is undeveloped as you can see in the photo, so the whole thing is edible. The pickle cure is a bit vinegary but also a bit sweet. The peaches themselves are very crispy crunchy in a pleasant way. You wouldn't want to eat more than a couple of them (nor most other pickles) but they will make neat garnishes for charcuterie plates and would definitely make quite the upscale martini garnish.

You gotta love the label that looks like it was cooked up on somebody's home computer and printed on his ink jet printer. How sketchy!

Vote: pretty cool product packed in an oil that may be more useful than the product itself. We like these cute little guys.

Chef's Table

Here are the photos from our last Chef's Table of 2010. These dishes characterize my cooking mood right now: simple, classic, elegant, comforting, and a little playful. This menu was not about pushing boundaries or exploring techniques; it was merely about taking the best of what we had in house, cooking it well, and presenting it nicely.


Roulade of Smoked Salmon. I do all manner of charcuterie and cold meat dishes through the year. Towards New Year's Eve, I always start thinking of smoked salmon or gravlax. Rather than make a square- or rectangular-shaped terrine, I like to do a roulade. I think the presentation possibilities are nicer with the round form. Stuffed with a simple herbed cream cheese and capers.


Oyster "Stew". I wanted to do a traditional oyster stew, another dish that I always gravitate to for New Year's. Tony wanted to do fried oysters. This then is the compromise. I love to serve dishes up in martini glasses: it's often unexpected and it shows off the food well. I wish I had the time to photograph this well. Alas, there's no time on the line to fuss with lighting and backgrounds.


Truffled Blackeyed Pea Risotto with Duck Confit. This is a dish that hopped (pun intended) into my mind about three weeks ago. In the South, for good luck at New Year's, we always serve blackeyed peas and collard greens, both cooked with liberal amounts of pork products. This is my homage to that tradition and the tradition of Hoppin' John, substituting our house-cured duck confit for the traditional pork. You should have smelled the kitchen when I scattered the truffles over the hot risotto. Amazing!

In hindsight, I should have used Carolina Gold rice instead of arborio to further the metaphor. Oh well, next time. And damn, wouldn't a poached quail egg sitting on top of this, all ready to break open and ooze into the risotto, be super sexy? Ach! I can't be at the top of my game all the time.


Duck Schnitzel with Orange Spätzle. Here's a dish that I came up with some years ago just for a different way of presenting our Moulard duck breasts. We split duck breasts and pound them like schnitzel, then bread and fry them. The breading is panko, pecans, and pecorino. Garnished with a little red wine syrup and orange spätzle. It's a great dish but never seems to sell when on the menu. Something, I don't know what, scares diners. Maybe they don't know what schnitzel is.


Lamb Shank Puttanesca. If you're a lunch regular at the restaurant and a foodie, you'll recognize the origins of Ed's Pasta in Salsa Puttanesca, a classic sauce of tomatoes, red pepper flakes, anchovies, olives, and capers. With its vibrant and bold flavors, this sauce appeals greatly to me and I was just in the mood for some puttanesca when we were brainstorming this menu. Put that together with the bag of tiny lamb foreshanks that we have been collecting in the freezer because they are too small for a standard dinner entrée and you come up with this dish. Paired with a little roasted garlic rosemary polenta, you have full-flavored classic comfort food.


Chocolate Soufflé. In reading through the draft menu trying to figure out what to do for dessert, it occurred to me to keep it simple, classic, and comforting. Soufflés are so classic that you never see them offered on dessert menus any longer; pastry chefs consider them beneath their dignity. Pity, because this chocolate soufflé is as good a gooey, runny chocolate extravagance as you will ever find.

Chef's Tasting, October 2009

Chris and I did a tasting last night that was incredibly ingredients-driven (as opposed to thematically driven or technique-driven). We literally threw this tasting together in the course of a couple of hours as most of the proteins were arriving late into the afternoon.

Tuna Flower—Sashimi of Hawaiian Pink Tombo. It's not often that I luck into a piece of 1+ Tombo (Albacore), especially the pink-fleshed kind. It was obvious on looking at the loin that we were going to do sashimi with it; to cook it would have been to dishonor the fish from which it came. We had a ball eating all the trimmings for lunch. The flower petal arrangement of Tombo is topped with lemon zest, green onions, and fleur de sel. And the center of the flower is a quick salad of orange and cucamelon, topped with a micro red Russian kale leaf. I didn't serve any soy with this because I didn't want to mask the fish and I didn't want the soy to fight with the Alsatian Pinot Blanc that I paired with the dish.

Truffled Day Boat Scallop in its Own Shell. Our FedEx driver delivered a huge sack of just harvested scallops from Massachusetts late in the afternoon. I like fresh scallops as sashimi, but I wanted a transition in this course from the raw first course to the cooked third course, so I seared the scallop on one side only and topped it quickly with a little black truffle butter refreshed with a couple drops of lemon juice. I paired this with a local Chardonnay that is amazingly Burgundian in style, high in lemony acidity with a round mid-palate.

Chesapeake Bay Sea Squab Meunière. I was fortunate enough to get some Northern Puffer (Sphoeroides maculatus) which I grew up calling Sea Squab from a dealer down on the Chesapeake Bay. These fish have always been regarded as trash fish on the Bay, but as a kid, I always enjoyed eating them. They have tenderly sweet white meat that is high in gelatin and they're definitely finger food. Whenever I see a batch of cleaned puffers, they remind me so of frog's legs that it always strikes me to cook them in my favorite manner as frog's legs: à la meunière, dredged in flour, sautéed in butter, finished with lemon and parsley. No, your eyes are not deceiving you. There are two whole fish in that tiny crème brûlée dish. I paired the lemony sauce with a lemony and crisp Albariño from Rias Baixas.

Terrine of Foie Gras with Calvados and Truffles. The one thing that the customer requested for this tasting was foie and what better way to do it than as a terrine? The great and frightening thing about a terrine is that there is no place to hide: it's all about the quality of the foie. Not a problem: I have the best supplier in North America. Five ingredients make up this terrine: foie, Kosher salt, white pepper, Calvados, and black truffles, all mixed and jammed into a terrine and slowly cooked in a just barely warm oven, then weighted and refrigerated. Terribly old school and amazingly delicious! Here is the terrine on a slice of savory pain perdu (French toast); cropped out of the photo is a dab of our Asian pear-Kaffir lime confit. I confess to handling the quality control of this terrine personally (and I saw Chris doing likewise). As a chef, I have to ensure that everything going to the table is fit to serve, no? Earlier in the menu, I would have paired this with a sweet wine; here at mid-menu, I treated it as the first meat course and so paired it with a local Pinot Noir, high on acid to work against the fat and smoky to complement the liver.

Veal Cheek en Diable. This dish was an exercise in finding a protein to pair with our amazing local bird egg beans and organic cavolo nero (lacinato, black Tuscan kale). I cooked the huge bird eggs until just tender, then started trying some pancetta in a sauté pan, to which I added the bird eggs and some of their juice. Once this started to come down, I added a bit more juice and a lot of chiffonaded cavolo nero. Once the kale had wilted, I swirled in a touch of butter to mount the sauce and seasoned the beans. On top of this, I plated a veal cheek, the most unctuous and best part of the cow. We braised the veal cheeks in white wine, leeks, and celery root until tender, then firmed them up in the cooler overnight. "En diable" refers to mustard: we rolled the cheeks in Dijon mustard and then in panko and browned them all over, then finished heating them through in the oven. I paired this ensemble with a deliciously fruity local Chambourcin.

Wild Boar Chop. The last few boar that we have got in from Texas have been really tiny, so we have a bunch of small racks on hand. I lollipopped a couple of nice chops and grilled them. They're plated with some peach butter that we made out of self defense when we were given a couple of bushels of local and not terribly ripe peaches, a swirl of celery root purée stiffened with a little local gold potato, chanterelle mushrooms, and some veal demiglace that we augmented with pounded black truffle, local elderberry syrup, white pepper, and lemon juice. I really like Syrah and Nebbiolo with wild boar. I would buy a bottle of Hermitage or Barolo if I were dining out, but to keep costs under control, I found a reasonably priced Australian Shiraz that lets the Syrah shine through, Rhône-style.

Apple Pie-Calvados Martini. The customers for whom we created this tasting have a very strong preference for fruit desserts and now being prime apple season, we have about a dozen varieties on hand in the cooler. This is a simple granita of apples that we cooked down with the barest touch of sugar and a cinnamon stick, then passed through a chinois. The trick to this very simple dish, as for the terrine de foie, is quality of the apples. The bulk are Empires for their tartness along with Grimes Golden for body and a couple of Staymans for flavor. We rimmed the martini glasses with cinnamon sugar, then filmed them with Calvados, added the granita, and drizzled over a bit of highly reduced local apple cider syrup. The remaining garnishes are a cinnamon stick and apple slices. Served with a double espresso and cantucci (tiny almond biscotti).