Chef's Tasting

And now post-Valentine's Day, we start a whole series of tastings. Winter is seriously the most challenging time to do tastings as the showy summer fruits and vegetables are absent. We had fun with this menu making do with what we had on hand.

Smoked Salmon "Latke"

Smoked Salmon "Latke". Tony came up with the idea of inverting the smoked salmon and the potato, putting whipped potatoes on top of a thin pancake of shredded smoked salmon, capers, and dill. A twist on your mom's salmon croquettes.

Potted Rabbit

Potted Rabbit. We're blessed to have plenty of rabbits on hand and sometimes when we have too many, we conserve the rabbit by curing it and slow-poaching it in duck fat, then shredding the meat, seasoning it, and mixing it with the highly reduced braising liquid and more fat, then sealing it in a container under a layer of fat. Sound like rillettes? It is.

Hedgehog Mushrooms on Goat Grits

Hedgehog Mushrooms on Goat Grits. Recently, I've been on a kick of enriching my grits with goat cheese, especially to serve with a high acid red wine. On top is a mix of hedgehog mushrooms, roasted sweet potatoes, and spinach.



Sweetbreads

Sweetbreads. There may be no finer meat to eat than sweetbreads, these from our friends Bill and Holly at Martin's Angus Beef, our regular beef supplier. After poaching in court bouillon, being pressed overnight, and then cleaned, these labor-intensive nuggets have been hard-seared in pancetta oil after being tossed in Wondra and then finished with a splash each of heavy cream and veal glace. Did I mention a bit of black truffles as well? The green is cavolo nero.

Pork Pâté en Croûte

Pork Pâté en Croûte. I made a freaking awesome pork terrine earlier this week from pork shoulder, pork belly, and pork liver and I wanted to serve it for my tastings this week. But I didn't want to do the cold first course kind of thing with it because it has been so cold this week. Tony came up with the idea of wrapping the slices in pastry and then at some later point, we had made this awesome tart apricot chutney that was just hanging out waiting to be used, and so it went inside as well. Served with a whole-grain mustard vinaigrette to help tame the unctuousness of the terrine and the pastry.

Wild Boar Bobotie

Wild Boar Bobotie. I'm just going to say it right here and right now: feral wild boar is wild for a reason; it's barely worth eating. Domestic pork is so, so, so much tastier, fatter, and easier to work with. These big feral bastards from Texas are lean, stringy, chewy, and taste much more like beef than pork. Your idea of a good time? Not mine. So what can you do with it? Mostly, we grind it and add a hell of a lot of fat. And then we try to figure out what to do with pounds and pounds of ground boar. And bobotie, the unofficial national dish of South Africa, is a great way to use ground meat. More commonly made from lamb and/or beef, bobotie is an Indian-spiced mince pie topped with an egg custard. This one contains golden raisins, diced apricots, and diced apple.

Lime Curd Parfait

Lime Curd Parfait. With most of our dessert wines, something light and citrusy is called for, if we are not doing a savory profile dessert. Lime whip, lime curd, crème anglaise, and shortbread crumbles make this a tart and light finish to a heavy winter menu.

February Tasting

It's been a very long time since I posted anything here, since before the holidays. The holidays are a struggle in themselves and then comes January. Slow month for sure, but filled with paperwork trying to close the prior year, get W-2s to the employees, and get our taxes done. And then starts all the planning for Valentine's Day, which just having passed is giving me the luxury of a little free time to post some photos. So, we've done lots of tastings in the interim, but had no time to blog about them.

And then, it's just smack in the middle of winter with no exciting produce or products to stimulate our creativity. I really don't have anything more to say about parsnips right now, you know?

We didn't do a good job with portion sizes here. This was way too much food for a seven-course dinner, but then in our defense, it was freezing out and we were serving comfort food, stuff that we always seem to serve too much of.

Clam Imperial

Clam Imperial. One good thing about winter is that we seem to get really sweet and tasty clams, when the clammers can get out. And when the ground is not too frozen, we can dig some leeks to go with those clams. Clams in a rich béchamel with smoky Surry sausage and leeks is a wonderful thing, as comforting as the best chowder, only richer and more sinful.

Char with Caramelized Fennel

Char with Caramelized Fennel. We lucked into some really nice fennel and the char was merely the vehicle for serving the sinfully unctuous braised and caramelized fennel. Served with a round of fennel and orange butter.

Mushrooms and Grits

Mushrooms and Grits. Nothing more comforting in my book than crispy mushrooms on a pile of warm, creamy grits. This dish has hedgehogs, bluets, and both white and brown clamshells (aka beech mushrooms).



Ballotine of Rabbit and Boar

Ballotine of Rabbit and Boar. Our rabbit guy walked in the door with five rabbits the afternoon of this tasting, so I boned out an entire loin with flaps and stuffed it with a sausage that I made from wild boar, blanched strips of carrots, and blanched rapini stems. In another season I would have used haricots verts or asparagus, but being February, the only thing long, skinny, and green that I could find was the tender stems of some baby rapini from a local greenhouse. I might have wrapped this ballotine in crépine/caul fat, but I didn't have any, so I used prosciutto. Served with a little cavolo nero.

Piccadillo Dulce of Lamb Shank

Picadillo Dulce of Lamb Shank. This was actually a dish built around the pimentón aïoli that you see on the plate. In the south of France, they would call this mayonnaise a rouille (rust). I like the smoky flavor that comes from the smoked peppers in the pimentón. I had a lamb shank in the cooler that was just aching to become a sweet and sour dish, flavored with olives, almonds, golden raisins, garlic, sweet red and yellow peppers, onions, poblano peppers, pimentón, cumin, oregano, brown sugar, and Sherry vinegar. You also see a smoky chickpea salad with roasted red pepper and raw red onion, dressed with olive oil, Sherry vinegar, and more pimentón.



Smoked Duck, Sweet Potatoes, and Beluga Lentils

Smoked Duck with Sweet Potatoes and Beluga Lentils. This is a dish that I conceived as a one-biter on top of a water biscuit for a local winery to pair with their newly released Syrah. And so I upsized it and served it with Syrah for our tasting. The particular Syrahs that I paired with this have an earthiness that I echoed in the sweet potatoes but more so in the lentils. The lentils have bacon in them and they, along with the smoked Moulard breast, help enhance the smoky quality of the wine. To pull out the inherent pepperiness of the Syrah grape, I used a syrup of Tasmanian pepper.

Cranberry-Apricot Fregotto with Maple-Glazed Pork Belly

Cranberry-Apricot Fregotto with Maple-Glazed Pork Belly. This dish aims for an almost savory finish, though we may have got carried away with the maple syrup on the candied pork belly. The fregotto, a neologism of my own concoction from fregola and risotto, indicating fregola sarda cooked in the style of a risotto, is quite tart and bright, having been cooked with unsweetened cranberry purée. We sweetened it a touch at service by adding dried apricots, dried cranberries, and a touch of maple syrup.

OBW Company Christmas Dinner

We closed early on Friday night the 23rd to all sit down to Christmas dinner together. Although we are often together, the whole crew sits down to dinner together once a year. The planning started a couple weeks out with me canvassing the crew about what they wanted to eat.

We all still had visions of last year's dinner dancing in our heads: ossobuco of pork, risotto milanese, and kick-ass collard greens braised with smoked turkey necks. You can see from last year's menu what we like to eat: hearty braised comfort food with no frou-frou. Keep your lobsters and caviar, bring on the braised meat.

Everyone except me would have been satisfied with the same menu as last year; I always want to do something different. This year, after much soul searching, it finally came to me while watching the Food Network; this would be the year for porchetta, that crackling piggy delight of Italian heritage. Add some gnocchi with pancetta and black truffles and a reprising of the braised collard greens and the menu was set.

Wild Boar-Stuffed Porchetta

Porchetta is a stuffed pork roast that probably originated in central Italy. Often you will see a whole pig stuffed and spit-roasted. Here we imitate that with pork belly that I prepped by butterflying it and curing it for 48 hours with ground fennel, ground coriander, salt, and sugar.

After rinsing the cured belly, I covered it with a wild boar forcemeat flavored with orange zest, black olive purée, ground fennel, and minced garlic. You see the belly here rolled and tied, ready for the oven, and then once it is cooked, all crispy and brown.



Potato Gnocchi with Black Truffles and Pancetta

I took this opportunity to show Tony and Travis how to make traditional potato gnocchi, without eggs. Anyone can add eggs and make gnocchi. It takes some practice to make gnocchi without eggs and the practice is worth it. With eggs, you get lumps. Without eggs, you get light pillows of goodness.

Tony, peeling the potatoes for the gnocchi. Travis in the background. We generally don't serve potatoes at the restaurant and when we do, they are not the russets that make the best gnocchi. You may notice the retail bag of tiny russets that I had to run out to the grocery store to fetch.










Travis, ricing the potatoes.
















Gnocchi on the hoof, awaiting their turn in the pot of simmering water.









The finished product, mixed with butter and truffles and pancetta, topped with grated cheese, and baked.

Collard Greens Braised with Smoked Pork Neck

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).

You Say Pâté; I Say Terrine

Last evening, after eating a couple of slices of my lamb terrine flavored with dried pears and red wine, a customer asked me exactly what a terrine is. I'm afraid that may have launched me into a mini-lesson on charcuterie at his table. I hope I didn't overwhelm him with details. Some people love to bake breads, others love to do desserts, me, my passion is for charcuterie. I'm not a big meat eater, so go figure.

Charcuterie (from the French chair cuit, cooked meat) is that branch of cooking that in modern times embraces sausages, meat pies, hams, smoked and cured meats, terrines, pâtés, galantines, ballotines, and so forth. These are dishes that I love to cook from the humblest Cornish pasty or albóndigas to the most elegant truffled pheasant galantine, and you will see them on the appetizer menu from time to time.

Like the customer last evening, most customers and my staff are really confused about the terminology. They are not alone: most professional chefs have no clue either. And a lot of the information that I read on the web is just wrong.

The basis for most (but certainly not all) charcuterie is a forcemeat (farce in French from farcir, to stuff), a mixture of ground meat and fat. When cooked, this forcemeat is called pâté, from the French pâte (paste). There are further subdivisions of pâté based on how you make the forcemeat, but that's a subject for a technical book and not a blog post.

In this post, I want to examine four different ways of cooking a pâté that form the basis for the nomenclature on my menus.

If I encase the pâté in pastry (called, oddly enough, pâte à pâté, pastry for pâté) and bake it, and then fill the voids between the pastry and the cooked farce with aspic, I have made a classic pâté en croûte, pâté in a crust. If I call something a pâté, that means in my lexicon that I have encased it in a crust.

If I cook the pâté in a mold called a terrine, from the French terre via the Latin terra, earth, formerly an earthenware baking dish, I have made a pâté en terrine. This form has been shortened to simply terrine. Here is a photo of one of my terrines, the industry standard cast iron model from Le Creuset. I own many more terrines in various shapes, but they are earthenware models and I keep them at home, lest my dishwasher beat them up.

Both pâtés and terrines are chilled, unmolded, and served cold. Beyond this similarity, I think many of us chefs make a distinction in terminology based on the fineness of the forcemeat. When I make a pâté en croûte, I use a very finely ground or mousseline forcemeat. When I make my workaday terrines, I use fairly roughly ground forcemeat. So there is a tendency in the industry to reserve the term pâté for fancy presentation work and terrine for quotidian work.

If I take a whole bird (usually a chicken, pheasant, or guinea hen), skin it, bone it, stuff it with forcemeat, and roll it back in its own skin, I have created a galantine. I would then poach it and cover it in an aspic or aspic-based sauce such as a chaudfroid (French, literally hot-cold: you pour it on hot and it solidifies as the gelatin cools). Then I would decorate the opaque chaudfroid with designs made from vegetables such as leek leaves and poached carrots and seal the deal with aspic. This is a major work of art, perhaps the epitome of showpieces, and if I ever make one for you, I like you a lot!

More often, I will bone out a bird and prepare it as for a galantine. Then I will bake it so that the skin browns very prettily and serve it warm, without further decoration. This is a ballotine.

That's enough for one blog post. Certainly this is only the tip of a very large iceberg: I have dozens of books on the subject. Maybe someday I will get up the energy to talk about mousses, mousseline pâtés, quenelles, and so forth.

Roulade of Wild Boar Rack

I really enjoy working with wild boar. It's as easy to use as domestic pork and as long as you remember that it is considerably leaner than domestic pork, you can treat it in any manner that you would domestic pork. Here is a recipe that I designed as an autumn show piece. It's a lot of work, but it wows customers.

Overview

This dish is a bone-in roulade of an entire rack of wild boar, stuffed with a wild boar farce which would make a terrific terrine, if baked separately in a mold. A portion is two chops cut off the rack, seared and roasted à la minute, and cut into individual chops at plating.

I have selected garnishes which reinforce the essential earthiness and gaminess of boar. The farce gets some earthiness from a porcini mushroom syrup, whose flavor I chose to echo in the porcini risotto under the chops.

While the chops are resting, we add chanterelle mushrooms to the roasting pan. We certainly could have used fresh porcini, but we have gorgeous golden chanterelles on hand now. From the scraps from fabricating the racks, we make a boar jus with which we deglaze the pan containing the mushrooms. We mount the pan sauce with sweet butter. The mushrooms and pan sauce become the second garnish.

Finally, the dish needs some bitterness to balance the richness of the meat, risotto, and pan sauce. I chose to briefly braise escarole and then finish it in olive oil, garlic, and hot pepper flakes. Any bitter green would serve admirably in this role.

You can see that this dish is not for the faint of heart—considering the labor in fabricating the racks and making the jus, not to mention the attention that the dish takes on the line with three à la minute garnishes—but it sure makes a great statement in the dining room.

For a wine to accompany this dish, I would work with the essential sweetness of the boar by choosing a fruity, modern-style Syrah that also has peppery aspects to echo the green peppercorns in the stuffing. From our wine list, I would choose the Thorn-Clarke "William Randell" Shiraz Barossa 2004. With its dark fruit, white pepper, cedar, and eucalyptus notes, it will pair outstandingly with this dish.

Roulade of Wild Boar Rack

1 double cut* roulade boar chop
salt and pepper
12 small chanterelle mushrooms
1 tablespoon minced shallots
fresh thyme leaves
4 fluid ounces boar jus
soft unsalted butter
8 fluid ounces porcini risotto
6 escarole leaves, blanched and braised

*We use double cut chops because they hold together much better than single chops and they do not overcook nearly as easily.

Season the double boar chop with salt and pepper and sear on all surfaces in a hot, oven proof pan. Transfer the pan to a hot oven and roast to 130 degrees Fahrenheit*. Remove the chop from the roasting pan and let it rest. The internal temperature will come up to about 135-140 in 4-5 minutes.

Meanwhile, add the chanterelles, shallots, and thyme to the roasting pan and sauté for a couple of minutes. Deglaze the pan with the boar jus and reduce until syrupy. Swirl in the butter.

Mound the porcini risotto in the well of a large soup plate. Slice the boar chops in half and lay them against the risotto mound, crossing the bones. Garnish with the braised escarole. Spoon the chanterelles and pan sauce around. Garnish with variegated sage.

*Because the roulade contains comminuted (ground) meat, the Food Code says you should cook it to an internal temperature of 165F. Naturally, you don't want to ruin your wild boar by doing this, so depending on your local code, you may have to place a warning on your menu.

Fabricating the Rack

Working with racks takes a little practice, but once you get the hang of it, the racks of all animals are pretty much the same. It takes me about 20 minutes to clean, french, butterfly, and roll each 8-bone rack. Here is a brief pictorial essay on fabricating a wild boar rack into a roulade.

If you examine a rack, you'll see that it has an upper layer of meat and fat, the cap, separated from the ribeye by a tough layer of silverskin. This photo is of a rack as it comes out of the box, cap on.

The first step is to remove this cap and silverskin carefully with a boning knife. Reserve all the trimmings from the rack to use to make boar jus.

After removing the cap, deep french the bones. The tips of the racks are minimally frenched when you receive them. Once you remove the cap, you'll see a line of fat running horizontally along the base of the bones. Cut in between the bones down to this line of fat with a sharp knife to remove any meat between the bones. Reserve this trim for the jus. With a utility knife, scrape all the tissue off the bones from the line of fat to the tip of the bone on all sides. Here is the fully cleaned rack, ready for stuffing.

Next, butterfly the rack. You want to slice the meat so that it unrolls into a thin, even layer as in this photo. With practice, this becomes easier. If you are not confident in your knife skills, you might want to practice butterflying cheap pork loin before attempting an expensive rack. Note that each rack has a small end and a large end. You will have to make the meat thinner on the small end than on the large end so that it rolls out into a neat rectangle.

To stuff each rack, you'll need about 3/4 pound of wild boar farce. Spread the farce on the butterflied rack, with a thicker layer on the small eye end such that the roulade is uniformly sized when you roll it. Leave a margin all the way around the edges; the stuffing will spread as you roll the roulade.

Start rolling the roulade as shown here by rolling just a little bit of the meat back on itself. The smaller and tighter this first bit, the tighter the spiral and the nicer the roulade will look.

Continue rolling all the way back to the bone. Notice that the meat is even in diameter all the way across the rack, so that each customer gets an equal portion of product by weight. The small end will contain more stuffing and the larger end will contain less, but all chops will be the same size.

Next, using butchers twine, tie the roulade. There are all manner of techniques that will work. I just make a loop in the end of the twine, slide it over one of the end bones, and wrap between each bone, making a hitch around the bone before moving on. The hitch helps hold the chop together when you slice it off the rack.

Wild Boar Farce

This is a classic forcemeat. Mix thoroughly all the ingredients except the boar in a large bowl to ensure even distribution, then add the boar. The best way that I have found to mix the forcemeat is to glove up and do it by hand. The paddle blade of the mixer tends to heat the forcemeat and can make it tough.

1 fluid ounce porcini broth reduction
2 large eggs
1/2 cup/4 fluid ounces heavy cream
1/4 cup/2 fluid ounces tawny Port
1 cup/4.5 ounces shelled pistachios
2 tablespoons/1 ounce green peppercorns
1 cup/4 ounces shallots, minced and sweated
1 cup/4 ounces diced pancetta
3 teaspoons kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons dried basil
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon pimentón agridulce
5 pounds ground wild boar

Porcini Broth Reduction

1.5 ounces dried porcini
16 fluid ounces hot water

Pour hot water over porcini and allow to rehydrate in a warm place for twenty minutes. Pour 8 fluid ounces of the resulting broth into a sauce pan and reduce until syrupy, yielding about one fluid ounce of porcini broth reduction. Reserve the rehydrated porcini for another use.

Boar Jus

Dice all boar scraps. Brown the boar and half its weight of mirepoix in a hot pan. Continue until all surfaces are browned. Add water to cover, deglaze the pan, and simmer for 60 minutes or until you have a well flavored jus. Pass through a chinois and defat. Reserve for service.

Terrific Tapas Dinner

Last night, we hosted our monthly wine dinner, this month featuring the wines of Spain along with tapas. I've never worked on such a short deadline before. I finally tasted the wines two days before the event and then threw together a really quick menu, one that customers were apparently pretty happy with. It's a shame that we were too slammed—we were full, in addition to the wine dinner—to get photos of the plates.


Mussels with Parsley and Garlic; Mayonesa Verde
Shrimp in Escabeche on Rustic Olive Bread
Cavas Castillo de Perelada Blanc Pescador NV

The Blanc Pescador is a delicious, slightly sparkling vino de aguja that is a slam dunk with shellfish. I cannot eat tapas without eating mussels, so I made this dish of marinated steamed mussels for me. After steaming the mussels, I reduced the mussel liquor with garlic and parsley, then used it as a base for a light vinaigrette. The green mayonnaise brought a fresh herbal quality to the dish.

Tapas, at least here in America, are no longer totally the province of Spain, witnessed by this classic Peruvian escabeche of shrimp, shrimp poached in a court bouillon and marinated in a red wine vinaigrette with sweated carrots and onions, oregano and parsley. I love cold seafood salads when the weather turns warm and the weather just turned warm.

Wild Mushroom Canapés
Tortilla Española with Porcini Mushrooms; Herbed Goat Cheese Mousse
Cavas Castillo de Perelada Tinto Crianza Empordà 2004

Originally, the wine distributor wanted to place this wine near the end of the tasting, but it is a very light-bodied red with black and red cherry fruit, reminding me of a Burgundy or Sangiovese in weight and texture. I detected a slight smoky note in the wine and thought to amplify this by pairing it with mushrooms.

Canapés are a classic tapas form. I sautéed a big batch of Yellowfoot Chanterelles with shallots and thyme and topped grilled slices of baguette. For the tortilla, I riffed on the traditional potato tortilla that you will find in every tapas bar in the world. In my reworking of the dish, I rehydrated dried porcini, then strained and reduced the porcini broth to a few tablespoonfuls. I mixed this broth in with the eggs and lots of fresh thyme. I built the tortillas by layering potatoes, porcini, thinly sliced yellow onion, and local Everona Dairy Piedmont sheep cheese.

Paella Cake; Pimentón Sauce
Piquillo Pepper Stuffed with Spicy Chickpea and Olive Salad
Finca El Paso Monastrell Jumilla 2005

This Monastrell is a full-bodied, fruity red that can stand up to pretty much any red wine food that you can throw at it. I thought that the fruit would like a little spice to play against, so I spiced up the Piquillos del Lodoso just a bit.

The best part of a paella is the socarrat, the crust at the bottom of the pan, so I devised a way many years ago to get lots more crust. I make a basic paella, without the large meat ingredients, bind it with eggs and grated sheep cheese, form it into cakes, and crisp both sides in a pan. The inside is creamy and the outside is crunchy: irresistible.

We are well known for stuffing piquillos—I say they are the world's best sweet red peppers—with just about everything imaginable. Customers had requested bacalao, salt cod, picadillo dulce de cordero, sweet and sour lamb, and just about everything in our repertoire. I wanted to do something that none of the regulars had tasted before and I needed to keep this course vegetarian, so I made a salad of chickpeas, red onion, and green olives dressed with pimentón, olive oil, garlic, and chile paste.

Grilled Banderilla of Potato, Olive & Chorizo; Picada
Albóndigas of Wild Boar Picadillo Dulce in Romesco Sauce
Ribas del Cúa Adras Roble 2004

The Adras is another full-bodied red, so I decided to throw some flavor its way. I've been making banderillas (anything on a small skewer, designed mainly to be eaten as a single bite) for years, but have only recently been designing banderillas to be grilled. These were a tiny local fingerling potato, a large queen olive, and a round of chorizo. The picada is a green sauce that I associate with the Basque regions of Spain (as opposed to France).

And here's the picadillo dulce that customers were clamoring for. The twist this time, wild boar rather than lamb, and rather than stuff it into piquillos, I formed it into traditional meatballs and slow-cooked them in romesco sauce, a roasted red pepper sauce. I wing my picadillo each time that I make it, but the basic idea is that ground meat is seasoned with garlic, herbs, onions, Poblano (green) chiles, sweet spices, almonds, white raisins, and made sweet and sour with brown sugar and apple cider vinegar.

Pinchitos Morunos of Wild Boar; Blood Orange Picada
Smoked Duck with Rioja Blood Orange Risotto
Finca La Emperatriz Rioja Crianza 2003

My first impression on tasting this Rioja was of orange peel, so I decided to emphasize that in the tapas. I boned out a boar shoulder, cut it into bite-sized cubes (pinchitos), and marinated it in various herbs, spices, blood orange zest, and olive oil. We then grilled little skewers of the pinchitos and drizzled them with a green sauce augmented with blood orange juice and zest.

The smoky flavors in the duck were a natural for this elegant and restrained wine. I used the same wine to make a risotto (yes, once very Italian, but increasingly well known throughout Spain) flavored with blood orange juice and zest. I actually had to add just a touch of sugar to tame the acid in the wine and orange juice. To serve, we placed a fan of duck breast down on the plate with a quenelle of risotto over.

Local Everona Dairy Piedmont Sheep Cheese; Dried Cherries; Membrillo
Cavas Castillo de Perelada Cava NV

With a sparkling wine coming last, I had to keep the sweetness down or the wine would come across sour. Here, I riffed on the classic French Basque brébis (sheep cheese) with black cherry jam. I didn't want the sweetness of the jam, so I substituted some perfectly balanced dried sour cherries, and then added a slice of quince paste for just a touch of earthy sweetness.