4.20.2009

Four Story Goodie Bag

The executive chef of the hotel walked into my kitchen and dropped of a box random goodies. Included were some great poularde and poussin from four story hill farm. A nice giant two bone cote de boeuf bonus as well. The milk fed poularde, a hen which has been spayed for fattening, was delivered whole, all the guts intact, and not yet bled out. Super fresh.





The poussin, also referred to as the "veal" of the chicken world, was also whole, not yet eviscerated, and about half the size of the poularde. The poussin was boned, then we removed all the meat keeping the skin intact. Then carefully scraped the skin making it paper thin, this way when we go to sear it the skin will get super crispy. Activa the breasts into a nice uniform cylinder, season and wrap in blanched and squeezed spinach. The legs and thighs were diced and then pushed through the tamis, no robot coupe here. If you overwork your forcemeat then you just wasted a whole lot of time. Added super fine shallot brunoise, chives, egg yolk, and truffle oil. Then we spread the mix over the skin, place the spinach wrapped breasts in the center and then cinch in plastic wrap and tie. Put in the freezer for 15 minutes to get it a little stiff but not frozen and then cryovac. Sous vide with thermocoupler probe at 66C until it reaches 62C then pull and into an ice bath. We'll warm it and sear it before serving. A little old school meets new school.

5 comments:

  1. sounds tasty. sounds like more than a goody bag. with you on the tamis, i try not to use a lot of very fast electric items for everything, they chop too much to quick and are too violent for some applications.

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  2. I agree, sometimes there is no way around using the robot coupe but these products were raised with such care I had no choice but to show proper respect and handle them as delicately as possible. We marinated, seared, brown butter basted the cote de boeuf to a nice MR. Ridiculous. Then we sous vide and seared the poularde, so clean and the flavor of the skin and fat is unlike any other. We are working on a Four Story Salt and Pepper menu insert to run on Friday and Saturday nights. The concept is minimal processing, only using salt and pepper, and providing the highest quality proteins we can get. The price tag will have to reflect the quality but doing everything old school, just roasted potatoes and haricot verts, and a super light stock of the trimmings to moisten. Rustic, frenchy, tasty, awesome. We'll see what happens.

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  3. hell yeah. thats the best though. when you get insanely good product it is just too hard for me to want to add anything to it. it slike you want everyone who eats it to "get it". thats awesome. its just little things that can make the difference like straining things like tomatoes through a food mill as opposed to throwing them into a blender makes all the difference. a tomato in a blender with the seeds breaking apart making the tomatoes taste off and oniony as opposed to the tomatoes tasting like sweet tomatoes. when you get good product its awesome to just serve it up like, "here you go, this shit is banging and i didn't need to use the next "it" spice that you have never heard to make you think its awesome, it just is"

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  4. exactly, now I just need to make our guests realize it. I know there will only be a handfull that truly "get it" but I'm willng to take on the expense, the risk, and the effort to get through to those who do get it. It would be my rules only, your not ordering the cote de boeuf medium well, I'm sorry. I do what ever I can to make our guests happy but just because you have a corporate credit card that doesn't make it ok. This will be a challenge. It's ironic that something so simple has the potential to cause so many problems. What would I say if I was in David Chang's shoes and someone asked for a vegan option on the menu, "oh yeah, fuck off". It's going to take a lot of patience and training on the servers part to realize what actually goes into the food they will be serving. Maybe its time for a server trip to the farm.

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  5. Does anyone know the price of a Four Story Hill Farm squealer?
    I do not want to call first. I would like to get an idea of the price before I make a complete fool of myself. You see, I am not accustomed to exquisite dining.

    Thank You

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