Sea Salt & Bourbon

Posted By admin on June 2, 2011

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Posted By admin on June 2, 2011

So after reading a piece about farm to table today, I got myself all worked up about the term “farm to table” and the even worse newly annointed locavore movement. I have always loved local ingredients, I love it when I see chef using items grown outside their door or on their roof , I love that Americans are becoming more aware of the beauty of cooking seasonally and locally and I love seeing Michelle Obama working and talking about the importance of the White House garden.

What I don’t like is this new self indulged movement that says to be a locavore you need to go to a farmers market, pickle something from the winter to enjoy in the spring, buy from local vendors, go to a farm and meet the man who raises your chickens and make your own vinegar from leftover grapes during harvest. Do I agree with all these?? Yes, of course I do!! But these are things that have been around for centuries, in fact I have several cookbooks in my library at home that date back to the 1800′s that focus on this. So, when I hear someone tell they are a locavore, I have nothing to say. Locavores have good ideas, relevant ideas, but there is nothing new.

I cannot read the New York Times, Eater, SF Gate, Chicago Tribune without reading about a new restaurant that is farm to table.  What makes your farm to table, you go to the farmers market once a week, you use beautiful carrots and english peas at the height of their season or is there more to it. Obviously working and cooking in a place like Northern California, one has access to amazing ingredients whether it be produce, wines, cheeses or meat. Farm to table has become a hype and has  gone the way of “Nouvelle” cuisine of the 70′s, molecular gastronomy (which is a term that was coined up by the media, chefs that do it well, don’t use the term) and New American. But with that said, I feel there are only a few chefs in general that do farm to table cuisine.

David Kinch at Manresa works closely with Love Apple Farm, recieving deliveries daily and working with what he recieves, utilizing all of the garden which is also grown biodynamic. There is also Sean Brock of McRady’s and Husk in Charleston, SC that raises his own hogs, grow their own produce for the restaurant and pickle eveything in sight. That’s farm to table! Noma is farm to table!! But the thing is these restaurants don’t use the term, that is just what they do, they source the best ingredients from the best regions, seasonally and treat them with respect.  Of course, the rest of the world finds locavorism/farm to table nothing more than the first precept of good cooking: Buy the best ingredients you can from the region you are in.

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Posted By admin on February 18, 2011

Marbled Foie Gras Torchon cured with Beet Juice & Earl Grey Tea, blood orange  and campari

I love foie gras, I know all you PETA supporters will get into an uproar over this, but the fact still stands that most American foie gras farms are in kept in higher conditions than most commerically run farms. This is a dish I created for this past weekend’s collaberative Valentine Day dinner with Pajo Bruich. The foie was soaked in milk first overnight, it helps remove any excess blood or bile. The next day, the liver is allowed to come to room temperature and using a butter knife, I removed the veins. It was cured overnight with salt, sugar, white pepper, pink salt, beet juice reduction and ground up earl grey tea. The next morning, I rolled it up in cheesecloth and blanched it in chicken stock, shocked it and wrapped it very tight in a towel (torchon, hence the name)

The dish was served on Saturday & Sunday with pickled red beets, earl grey tea soil (ground up tea cake), blood orange curd, campari fluid gel, blood orange segments, beet powder, shaved raw golden beets and bulls blood greens.

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Posted By admin on January 10, 2011

For those of you that don’t know this about me, there are few things that terrify me more in life than bees, I had an incident when I was younger where I had the privelage of falling into one of their colonies and getting stung all over the place. Needless to say, I still carry that fear in me.  However, I love honey, how can you not!! Recently my brother and I had the privelage of checking Marshal’s Farm Honey in the Napa area, Marshall’s Farm have a hand-crafted approach to traditional honey production. We met Spencer Marshall  at the farm where he harvests small quantities of superior quality gourmet honey in the very special microclimates of the San Francisco Bay Area. They have a variety of honeys ranging from eucalyptus, star thistle and wildflower among many others. It’s an amazing experience to see and it opens your eyes to the amazing work small farmers put into their artisan products. All I can say is their honey is downright amazing……and at least I got to wear one of those swanky bee keeper suits (my brother, not so lucky)

http://www.Marshallshoney.com

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Posted By admin on November 20, 2010

Last week I was invited by my fellow chef Pajo Bruich to join him in a series of harvest workshop dinners that focused on utilizing new, modern techniques. We each did three courses, featuring local seasonal ingredients and various cooking techniques and styles. We had a really great time and put out some kick ass food.

“Lightly smoked hamachi, broccoli stem, yuzu, maitake and local seaweed”

My 1st dish was hamachi that I lightly cured with salt & sugar, smoked with cherrywood. The broccoli stem was cooked sous vide at 85 c for 45 minutes, part of it was made into a puree with some of the florets and the other half was tempura fried. Maitakes were lightly pickled, yuzu juice was foamed in a canister with sugar, lemon juice & gelatin. The local seaweeds came from Mendocino, it was a variety of sea lettuce & wakame, bloomed inwarm water and seasoned with sesame oil, sugar, rice vinegar & fish sauce.

“Veal roasted in charcoal ash, textures of carrots, hay, tallegio, chamomile”

Local veal from St. Johns’ Farm was cooked sous vide then glazed in an ash made from leeks that I pretty much threw in the oven and forgot about for 5 hours. Young carrots from Faurot Farms were roasted with hay, hay stock and butter. The various textures were a gel, a carrot pudding, carrot tops, carrot pasta and shaved raw. I made a pasta dough using freeze dried carrots and a cannelloni using the tallegio cheese. Chamomile tea was formed into tiny bubbles and a jus made from veal bones and veal fat.

“Kabocha squash, tobacco, warm persimmon, whole wheat, bourbon”

Beautiful Japanese kabocha squash was made into a dense pudding like cake with spice notes. The tobacco was actually a cigar of mine, broken up and infused into cream and made into a panna cotta. Whole wheat was in 2 seperate forms, there was a soil made from brown butter, b. sugar, whole wheat flour and course salt. Second part was an ice cream utilizing toasted cracked whole wheat and milk. Persimmon was in two parts as well, persimmon-vanilla pudding on the plate, persimmon confit carmaelized in brown butter. To finish the dish, Woodford Reserve Bourbon (personal collection) with kelco gel.

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Posted By admin on September 13, 2010

Anyone that has worked professionally for some time knows that it is not cool to no call, no show. This is why it’s usually on the list of  things an employees can get terminated for on the spot without prior notice. In the kitchen, it is a team effort, if someone doesn’t show up for their shift, it affects the entire kitchen, the entire service. If you don’t like your job or you hate the chef, give notice and move on. If you can’t stand working another two weeks, then grow some bollucks and walk in and tell them you quit, regardless, don’t cuddle up into a ball at home, crying to your mom on the phone and just disappear! Chances are you are going to run into some of those peers you left high and dry and guess what, they don’t want talk to you. My advice, if you see us at a bar drinking, don’t come over, pretty sure  we’ll tell you to fuck off. Better yet, how about next time, don’t no call, no show.

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Posted By admin on July 26, 2010

Pickled maitake mushrooms: maitakes, vinegar, spices, herbs, garlic, honey.

Known to the western world as Hen-of-the-Woods, Ram’s Head or Sheep’s Head, these beautiful mushrooms are prized in Japanese and Chinease herbal medicine for their help in the immune system, blood pressure and even weight loss.  But lets face it, I am neither Japanese or Chinease and I like these mushrooms for the following reasons: they have fabulous flavor, firm texture that lends itself to almost any culinary application and they generally are clean, free of bugs, leaves and worms.

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Posted By admin on July 19, 2010

Agnolotti (pronounced anneeolottee) are Piemontese stuffed pasta, and come in a great many different varieties, some filled with cheese, others meat, and others still meatless. They are, in any case square and small, about 3/4 of an inch to an inch on a side, and are made using very thin sheets of pasta. There are two shapes I prefer, the small rectangular which are usually called agnolotti del plin and filled with meat. The shape I made here was made popular by the French Laundry and is easy and fast to make with little pockets to hold the sauce. This dish is white bean agnolotti with chorizo & peppers, espelette with saffron emulsion.

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Posted By admin on July 1, 2010

Sac. Magazine Porchetta Video 

What exactly is porchetta? 

Porchetta (pronounced “porketta”) is a savory, fatty, and moist boneless pork roast of Italian  culinary tradition. The body of the pig is gutted, deboned, arranged carefully with layers of stuffing, meat, fat, and skin, then rolled, spitted, and roasted, traditionally over wood. Porchetta is usually heavily salted in addition to being stuffed with garlic, rosemary, fennel, or other herbs, often wild. Although popular in the whole country, porchetta originated in central Italy, with Rome being the town most closely associated with it. Elsewhere, it is considered a celebratory dish. It is also eaten as a meat dish in many households or as part of a picnic

We had an amazing class last week, boned out two suckling pigs and made porchetta two different ways. One was just boned out, cut in half and rubbed with rosemary, garlic, fennel seed and lemon, roasted and served with kumquat preserves. The second pig, we made sausage with the leg meat and stuffed it back into the boned out pig, left intact. Either way, they both are tasty.

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Posted By admin on June 12, 2010

I’m sure you have heard the ol tale that you should never wash mushrooms, well unless you like to eat gritty morels by all means listen to that advice. Morels have to be soaked several times in cold water to remove all the grit, dirt, worms and other shit that they sometimes come with. Morels mushrooms are one of my favorite out there, not only for it’s complex meaty flavor but also it’s chewy texture. It’s the quitessential spring time mushroom and while they can be notoriously expensive, lets just face the fact that they taste delicious.

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