bluechef

Twitter Kills

2011-05-02T01:34:00.002-04:00

How many blogs has twitter killed besides this one? Sorry for the lack of posts but if you want the daily updates follow me on twiter.

What the F Happened to Feb? & A Day in LA

2011-03-06T00:52:00.009-05:00

It's been a while since my last post so I'm going to ramble. We got crushed in February. Literally. Chef Patrick Sheerin(@chefintheory) joined us during this time, quite possibly on one of our busiest nites. Had to be the night I scheduled myself to expo 2 lines at the same time but as we all know this is how it works. S hits the fan at light speed when it is least expected. Patrick is a great chef from the Signature Room on the 95th floor at the John Hancock Building, Chicago. Not to mention bro of former Blackbird Chef Mike Sheerin who is pursuing his own venture. Of course I gave him the I'll hook it up nod via twitter and managed to be so busy I didn't even pick my phone up the whole day to check and see it was the day he was coming. It was in the back of my mind but just escaped me in the chaos. That's not ok in this world, my apologies to Pat and his family but I hope we made up for it. I did eventually get a chance to talk to him at the end of the night. What a great down to earth person who knows his stuff. Great to see you Pat, wish I could of joined you guys in Charleston.

Now on to LA.

Let's see, I have the opportunity to go to LA, leave at 7:30am my time, arrive 10am LA time, hang out for 12 or so hours, do some business, and haul ass back to Orlando on the red eye, arrive back home at 5:50am the next day, pass out for four hours, and head to work. OK, I'll do it. After attending Star Chefs where else would I go but Red Medicine. Jordan Kahn's presentation was ridiculous. In my opinion, Antoinette should of let him walk off the stage, saying nothing, and pretty much letting everyone in the armory know that he was a badass. That would of been the ultimate response but I know Antoinette's motives, she wants him to talk and tell his story to everyone. I would have been more enamored with him if he would have said nothing and left. His demo was that good. At the end I could feel that all he wanted to do was leave and not talk but I guess if Star Chefs asks you to do a demo you are obligated to talk about yourself. Finally after his OCD via TK was satisfied and his station was clean, he came back and talked to Antoinette about Red Medicine.

I called Red Medicine the night before at 4am eastern, not able to sleep in anticipation of my flight. It was 1am LA time, the hostess answered but I could barely hear her. It sounded like a giant party, awesome!

After arrival and a crappy rent a car, I made my way around The Beverly Center and found myself walking by Bazaar, Jose Andres place at the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills. There were a ton of restaurants, all well known, all in this little area. Santa Monica seafood was delivering to Matsuhisa, I got a glimpse of some of their pristine product and it looked awesome. I wish I had more time!

I managed to go for lunch, not the busiest time, everyone was pretty relaxed but with a sense of intensity, ready to jump on my table with anything I might need. I hit my server up for a homemade squirt, they make all their own sodas in house. Bread is provided by Bouchon, coffee by intelligentsia. You can't go wrong.

After interrogating my server I ordered the green papaya salad, pickled roots, crispy tarro, tree nuts, nuac cham

It was pretty damn good

The server said the pork belly bahn mi was her favorite so I got that. It was good, I thought the pork belly could have had little more presence but it was good. The house made siracha is dangerous.

After lunch it was all business for a couple of hours then off to the 'ole In-N-Out burger. I don't understand how they have 20 cooks making hamburgers and fries when I have 7 on at a time making some ridiculous stuff. Doesn't make sense but it is good and quick. Go animal style on your burger. It's not on the menu, just ask for it.

I will admit I did animal style on the fries and it was too much.

Recap- animal style burger good, animal style fries- too far. Lesson learned.

Pasture Prime Farms

2011-01-22T22:48:00.000-05:00

We have a crazy week coming up so while it was slow we took the crew out to Torm Siverson's Pasture Prime Farm for a little field trip. I took a couple of videos so check it out see what we were up to. I will warn there is some graphic nature to these videos, we don't show any animal being killed but pretty much everything right after that point in on the video. If you have a problem with this then don't watch it. Chicken doesn't just fall out of the sky and land on your plate, someone has to do this.
With this in mind Torm goes above and beyond to provide a comfortable and caring environment while the animals are with us. He has a great pyrenees that was raised with chickens. He now lives with Torm's red ranger and poulet rouge breeds to watch over them and protect agaisnt any predators until they are big enough to fend for themselves. The chickens are rotated like crops from field to field, fertilizing the land to help with grass growth come spring. The grass in turn will feed the 140 head of Wagyu cattle that also inhabit the 400 plus acres here in Summerfield, Florida. There will be more videos to come about Pasture Prime Farms

Sushi Pop

2011-01-17T00:09:00.002-05:00

Check our blog roll and you will see a new site that has just "POP'd" up. Sushi Pop has opened in Oviedo,Fl. One of my former sous chefs, Michael Gleason, is back in town teaming with resident sushi mastermind Chau delivering some really great food. A small operation presenting old school sushi and main courses with a twist. Japanese pop culture is the overall theme complete with anime playing on flatscreens, creative server attire, bonsai trees galore and a cool ass check presenter, oh yeah and the food is good to boot. Modern equipment and technique are in place. Check them out as this budding restaurant makes a name for itself, Oviedo finally has a restaurant that is not corporate, bland B.S. Congrats Mike and Chau, we will be back.

In the works

2011-01-13T23:37:00.002-05:00

2011 so far has been filled with some great opportunities and products that have come our way. Tomorrow we will be in the kitchen prepping for a photo shoot with chef's garden products. Last week we put together some great dishes to shoot but with our resident photographer out on medical leave. With insufficient lighting due to poor weather we lost the natural light that shines throughout our private dining room and really makes the colors pop. We got some good photos but not great so we have one more opportunity to get it right. We hired outside help so in the end we should have some sweet, cleaned up photos of the food that will hopefully make it into the chef's garden mailings and email blasts. Be on the lookout for some bluezoo/Chef's garden inspired dishes headed your way in the near future.

Tuesday, January 18th we are making another homage to Torm Siverson's Pasture Prime Farm with the bluezoo crew. I have also invited some chef friends from around the area to join us on our excursion. We will be touring the farm, checking in on our favorite mangalitsa pigs, some new berkshires, red ranger and poulet rouge chickens that we will be processing on site, as well as the grass fed wagyu cattle that made pasture prime what it is today. I should have a nice post up on it later next week. What's not to enjoy, farm tour, lunch at the farm, some serious education on how farm life really is, history, and of course we Florida boys and girls love our firearms so some target practice and accuracy side bets may come into play. That should fill up just enough time to haul ass back to the restaurant and feel inspired to create some exciting dishes.
We did this last year in April and since then we have a lot of new faces in the front and back of the house. Many of them have never seen how a family run local farm works and hopefully this will provide a much needed break from the monotony as well as invaluable information that will result in higher sales of Torm's product, a story to tell the guests, and ultimately an increased level of respect for our products.

NYE

2010-12-31T00:40:00.002-05:00

The busiest day of the year is hear again, armed with a new video camera I will hopefully be able to share some of the happenings if I can figure out how to post it. The final tasting menu will not be printed until sometime tomorrow afternoon but this is what we have so far

Hamachi....truffle aioli, mangalitsa lardo

From the "chef's garden"....seasonal assortment of organic vegetables in various forms

Monchong....glazed turnip, turnip greens, black trumpet

Duck 3 ways....breast, pressed leg and thigh, sous vide foie, cranberry

Wagyu short rib....jalapeño honey glazed sweet potato, baby collards, sweet dumpling squash

Brilliat savarin....Salted acacia brûlée

Dessert trio....Laurent branlard custom dessert

Our guests have the option of a 5 or 7 course tasting, the full a la carte menu will be available as well. This has been a challenging year for us, lots of new faces in the kitchen still learning and training but doing well. 580 on the books, 1 chef, 1 chef de cuisine, 9 line chefs, 1 butcher, and 2 prep chefs so that only leaves 41.4 covers per person we have worry about. Roughly 2000 plates, it's going to be fun.

the bluezoo boat

2010-12-26T21:50:00.002-05:00

Bill Rovillo and his family loved the restaurant so much they named their boat after us. This happens to be the bluezoo 2, since they sold the original bluezoo boat and upgraded. I thought it was awesome and had to have them send me a picture of it. Here it is.

Those are some loyal guests.

Thanks Bill and family. Come see us again soon.

Charred Mizuna

2010-12-24T02:08:00.002-05:00

It's been a while since my last post but it's been crazy around here. Charlie at hammock Hollows sent us a nice mixed bag of mizuna, spicy and mild. We ended up charring it lightly over the grill. The mizuna mixture seasoned, oiled, and spread over resting racks to get an even char. The we spread it out in the dehydrator and ended up with some great tasting crunchy garnishes.

We used it on our serrano ham wrapped monkfish that was part of our tasting.

Mangalitsa Demo

2010-11-03T23:43:00.002-04:00

Our annual food and wine dinner is approaching and the days are getting long so this will be short and sweet. View Torm's blog for some info about our recent mangalitsa demo at the Epcot Food and Wine Festival.

Andrea Robinson, pairing

2010-10-15T01:38:00.004-04:00

We had the pleasure of Andrea dining with us tonight. She is one of 14 women who have been awarded the title of Master Sommelier. It was an interesting dining experience for both of us. She sent back a glass of some awesome wine for me to taste and left it up to me to make the pairing for her. I chewed the wine for a moment and was hit by a refined earthiness, hint of sweetness, not over the top acid, smooth and a well balanced mouth feel. The next step was pin pointing the elements of that taste to highlight the wine. No pressure, just a master somm leaving her several hundred dollar bottle of wine in your hands. I hit her with some halibut. It's a neutral fish that can support many flavors. Here is the dish.

Halibut, parsley root and coulis, chanterelle, heirloom carrot, braised radish, truffle vinaigrette and air, foie mousse. According to her it was a perfect pairing. I couldn't ask for anything more than that coming from someone of her caliber. She is doing a demo at Epcot Food and Wine tomorrow, be sure to check her out.

Seattle and it's Coffee

2010-10-08T00:15:00.002-04:00

Let's just start off saying these people take their coffee seriously. One of our days in Seattle consisted of hanging with our Orlando tranplant friend Brad and he brought us up to speed on the Seattle coffee scene among other things. On our tour of the city we stopped by Victrola. According to Brad, their are two places to get great coffee in the US, Intelligenstia out of L.A. and Victrola! Stumptown still seems to be a favorite to some in Seattle, but not Brad. Acording to our knowledgable friend stumptown is expanding and the quality has suffered slightly. I can't comment on this considering I did not try stumptown coffee when it was only local. OF course compared to most Fl coffee I would consider Stumptown superior.
I am an espresso advocate but as true with most restaurants/coffee proprietors/and general businesses I base a lot on the simplest thing on the menu or the simplest service that they provide and how well they do it. Can you produce and excellent burger or simple entree, can you make a perfect drip, is your most basic product the best it can be? This usually answers a lot of questions for me in terms of how a company views it's products and how they treat most customers.
I can tell you right now people in Seattle care about their food, wine, beer, and coffee. The level of quality and thought behind what they are willing to intake is right up there with the top cities in the country.
We visited Pegasus, the oldest coffee house in Bainbridge, not a bad showing. The only people going to Starbucks seem to be tourists. Having several coarse ground french presses from various purveyers, Victrola seemed to be superior. Of course taste is subjective, and people have their routines of visiting the same place every day depending on where they are in they are in the city. Some make the extra effort to go to Victrola, some do not. Granted I can't name a place in Orlando that roasts their own beans everyday, has a visible roasting room with a giant black and gold roaster the size of a half ton truck, 100lb canvas sacks of raw beans from all over the world with a staff dedicated to just roasting the coffee beans perfectly. That just doensn't happen here. We have small organic coffee/tea houses that don't come close to the level of what we are talking about. On the Orlando scale they are good, but it's hard to compare. I hear Portland has a good showing with Albina and I'm sure there are many more around the country that do as well but I can't comment on them if I haven't been there.
Coffee is as complex as wine, spirits or food. I'm sure this i why coffee, tea and spirits are part of the Court of Master Sommelier's program. As an introductory level sommelier we focused mainly on wine, beer and sprirts in our training classes. Wine and service of wine above all. The certified somm test incorporates more, as does advanced somm, then of course the master somm goes even further. After talking to one of our master somm instructors who spent a year on tea service, flavor and varieties it was clear that this profession is never ending. Their is never a point where anyone can say "I know Everything". Coffee plays a role in so many individual's everyday lives, whether it's a caffine boost to get you going or the pure enjoyment of a perfect brew. Cupping Coffee is it's own craft. I guess you have to decide what you prefer and nothng else matters.

Buyout Dinner

2010-10-06T00:13:00.005-04:00

This is a post about a dinner we did on 9-23-10. Fresh off a plane from star chefs I had a couple hours to get my self together then walk into this 125pp buyout dinner in bluezoo. These were mostly meeting planner from around the country who come to the resort then we wine and dine them into sending future business the hotel's way. Not a bad gig being a CMP(certified meeting planner).
We started off with some menu training for the evening. The servers got the low down from our Executive Sous Chef Arnaud Violtat on the platings and components.

Every execution starts with mise en place.

Amuse for the night was a crispy oyster with "rockefeller flavors"

Of course we plan for the occasional shelfish dislike or allergy with a vegetarian amuse option

1st Course hawaiian tuna, dashi noodles, avocado, sesame

Poussin and lobster terrine followed

3rd is Loup de mer, artichoke barigoule, chanterelle duxelle

4thd course was veal tenderloin, veal tail croquette, porcini

Here we are getting ready to plate the amuse

We lined the halls with our standard plating set up for VIP events

The FOH had a huge set up. Once our guests had finished dining in the restaurant the we directed to our version of a speakeasy. Here is Adam Bagwell in the weeds prepping for the speak easy bar.

The guest were led through a series of back, underbelly hallways of the hotel that had some deliberate grafitti art, trash, and street perfomrers about. The came to a door, knock, small peep hole opens, give the password, and enter a kitchen converted into a faux chinese laundry. Pastry Chef Wes Mayton was setting up his display of desserts in black light cooler.

Here is the bar that was set up behind the laundry entrance.

The first thing the guest sees when entering into the speak easy. This was staffed with some of our asian associates.

Shot of the sign.

As the guests ventured further into the speakeasy there is a bar and high top tables to belly up to. Some jazz musicians playing very low toned sets.

Setting up the bar was no simple task.

Something fun for all of us to be a part of.

Sante, Vitamix

2010-10-04T23:56:00.003-04:00

It's been a crazy last couple of weeks around here and it's not slowing down. We're marching into season with a new menu and tons of special events lined up. I attended Star Chefs ICC this year with a little more on my mind than usual. I competed in the VitaMix Challenge this year and we took home 2nd place. Not a bad showing. Here is a picture of our dish that was presented. Loup de mer steamed in the blender. I poured in a hot aromatic fume using the bones of the fish into the base of the blender, then suspended the fish at the rim of the blender top using plastic wrap, poked a couple holes, oiled the surface, placed the lid on top and wrapped the top in plastic wrap. Turned on the blender and let it work it's magic forcing hot steam up through the holes cooking the fish. Later I added some peeled baby tomatoes, touch of xanthan, and mounted the sauce with some house cured lardo. Other components consisted of carrot and espellete noodles, pickled squash, anise hyssop blossoms, compressed malabar spinach two ways, purslane, carrot powder and various herb garnishes and flowers that tied into my theme of summer and fall coming together.

I don't like losing so much but I had to step back and look at it as a learning experience and in the end I did learn a thing or two as well as had the opportunity to cook with some great chefs. I missed the announcement of the winners as I was gathering all my equipment and getting ready to hop on a plane home. Just before I left the armory I got a call letting me know the outcome. I don't enter many competitions but this was a way for me to be a part of star chefs after learning and networking with great chefs in the past years of attendance. I felt obligated to at least enter and maybe provide some level of entertainment and participation after what they have done for me. A big thanks goes out to the staff at Star Chefs, VitaMix, multivac, and my bros Tony, Kevin and Mac from Olives for letting me ship a bunch of stuff to their NYC kitchen and taking care of it until I got their.

On to the next bit of exciting news we received today. Sante Magazine awarded bluezoo with a award in Culinary Innovation representing the Southeast US. This award really belongs to all the cooks at bluezoo. Throwing out ideas and plating techniques for our menu changes and daily chef's tasting. I can write menus all day and tell people what to do but that's not how I like this place to run. We are a group of young cooks in the business with a passion for what we do and hats off to my guys and gals for their hard work to make this happen. Bluezoo would be nothing without our dedicated culinary professionals.

Seattle and Bainbridge

2010-10-04T00:06:00.007-04:00

Seattle is awesome! I love the west coast laid back approach. After spending 4 years in Flagstaff, Az studying forestry at NAU I have been hooked ever since. This was my summer/fall vacation that I needed. We are headed into some really busy times and this little getaway helped me get my head straight and I brought a slew of ideas back with me for future dishes. Immediately we hit Garagiste and filled the back of my cousin's truck with cases of wine. Next off to the tourist capitol of Seattle, Public Market. This is where the fish are thrown, not saying I want my fish thrown but this is where it happens with tons of people taking pictures and enjoying the super fresh seafood fare. Dungeness crab as far as the eye can see, salmon, shellfish, butcher counters, Beecher's cheese shop, bakeries, you name it and it's here.

We were brought to Matt's in the Market for lunch. Lamb burger with a Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA did me right.

Gas Works park with a stunning view of Seattle followed.

Our friend Brad, an Orlando transplant, took us over to Capital Hill where he lives and showed us around. Literally across the street from his apartment was a restaurant called Monsoon. Heath Putnam of Wooly Pigs told me we should check this place out and see what they are doing with the mangalitsa that he provides. It was a great lunch and a small world we live in that a random recommendation and our original path landed us in the same place. Heath was their with his crew just the day before and I wish I could have caught up with him but it just didn't work out. We did however enjoy some conversation with our server and she knew well of him. Next time HP. We hit Elysian Brewery afterwards for an Immortal IPA that was awesome, what can I say, can't refuse a good IPA. Also toured around The Comet where Nirvana played before they were big. Lots of history here.

Jason, one of my line chefs knew I was in Seattle and text me to check out the Maximus and Minimus pig shaped food truck but it was closed as we went by. Next time for sure. Salumi was on the list as well, but every time we went by it was a 2 hour wait so Salumi will have to wait but I did score some Salumi bacon at Pegasus Coffee in Bainbridge that was part of one of their breakfast sandwiches.

Next we headed over to Bainbridge where my cousin lives off of Agate Point. The ferry ride over showed off some of the views.

Can't beat this driveway to their house if you tried.

Here is a picture of their house from the beach of the Puget Sound. Yes, I'm jealous.

Views from their property. Relaxing and beautiful, don't really need any other words to describe the view.

Getting the canoe ready for some "sound" exploration.

Here is our canoe access point, doesn't suck.

We had the awesome opportunity to visit the local CSA(community supported agriculture) at Butter Bean Farms. Our cousin provides an initial donation that is spread amongst several farms in the area that helps with seed and feed money. The farms then grow and produce their products. At certain times during their harvest goods are available here in Butter Bean Farms garage. It's an honor system, drive up their property, go in the garage, pick what you want, write it down and it is subtracted from your initial investment. Awesome to say the least.

Onions hanging from the rafters are just one thing on hand this visit.

Here is only part of the vegetable layout for todays harvest. Local wine, pickles, fresh eggs, pork sausage, meats of all kinds grown locally.

Back to the house and hit up the wood fired hot tub.

Some hammocks near the canoe landing to chill in.

Taking in the local plant life.

Wild berries growing everywhere.

Grand firs and cedars rule this area. This is a second or third growth grand fir, hard to tell. Most of Bainbridge was clear cut at the turn of the century and before to support San Francisco's growth. A natural area to harvest with it's sea faring ports. Now is a different story and preservation is key.

Wild flowers were popping everywhere just before the winter sets in.

This our pre-canoeing debacle in the sound picture. Yes, it's fuzzy. As is our memory at the time. What doesn't sound good about hauling a canoe across the tide flats at 1am and taking a ride to play glow in the dark bocee ball somewhere we shouldn't be. Needless to say we lost some wine, cava, and various other equipment, saved the bourbon though. Let's just say it was a good idea at the time, bad in retrospect, and walked away with a story to tell. You just won't hear it here.

Off to Poulsbo, a unique Norwegian fishing community just minutes north of Agate Point. The norwegians settled here because it reminded them of the fjords in Norway and I can see why.

The Central Market in Poulsbo is ridiculous! The most intense shopping experience period. Live dungeness in river like flowing tanks, huge oysters from hood canal and totten inlet harvested just minutes away. This is a shot of the produce section that set me back a minute. Everything is perfect! They really take care of their products. An in house bakery, butcher, cooking demos, cooked to order take away, you name it this is the greatest grocery store I've ever seen. It's hard to come back to Florida and compare what we have to this place.

When I say they have everything I mean it. Fresh cactus, aloe branches, you name it.

For our last endevour we headed off to Tilth, the 95% organic restaurant on the out skirts of Seattle. 95% only because the wild foraged foods they use are not regulated by the FDA so it's pretty safe to say that everything they use is organic. We had an awesome meal and met with Sous Chef Jason afterwards and exchanged some stories. They are doing great things here and if you are ever in Seattle you should take some time out to witness it.

Star Chefs 2010

2010-09-24T00:05:00.004-04:00

Another great year at Star Chefs has passed. I look forward to it every year. I missed 2006 and 2008 but I now make it a point to attend no matter what. It is invaluable the amount of knowledge that is free flowing from the presenters and attendees. i was fortunate enough to meet Linda from Playing with Fire and Water, great blog, personality, photography, and an inspiriation to hang with her for a short time. Kurtis, Chad, Alberto and Jeremiah from Miami are always great to hang with. Pablo from NYC. Sweet bahn mi tacos from Gastropod. Kevin, Mac and new exec chef of Olives NY Tony Susi were a pleasure and very hospitable considering I mailed a bunch of mise en place and equipment to their restaurant for my competition. KOSTA, the mad greek and his chef Pete were as awesome as ever. Can't forget the first the people I saw in the Armory, Aki and Maya greeting me with big smiles then Alex coming along after checking in. It's always a pleasure to see them, you can't help but feed off their energy. Kevin, Amy, and Winbird. Doc Sconz shooting pictures like a mad man between the workshops and the list goes on for days. Brian Baxter, one of my employees, joined me this year. Being his first star chef experience I'm sure he took a lot away from it. Meeting tons of people, networking, talking food, and free flowing Stella doesn't ever hurt. I'm interested to see what he comes up with over the next couple of weeks through his experience at the congress. I knew it was going to be an interesting year when I got off the plane, got in the cab line at Laguardia, turned around and was next to Ron Jeremy. From there it was on, what a crazy 4 days.

My first day started with a workshop hosted by Brad Fermerie of Public and Double Crown. "There Will Be Blood" was the topic of his workshop, and there was plenty of it. Venison blood to be exact. He went over the basics of working with lifes essential liquid, then we all pitched in and put together some boudin noir. Simple and delicious, all about technique, personal interpretation, and execution. Here is the boudin noir that we made, then we tasted some of chef's blood creations. Outstanding to say the least.

After the show we hauled ass to one of the best meals I've ever had. Corton is amazing because of Paul Leibrandt and his staff. Kosta had staged with Chef Leibrandt when he did a dinner at McCrady's hosted by Sean Brock so our meal turned from 3 courses into something extra. Even the three course pre fixe at corton is essentially a 10 course menu. 2 amuse, one was a pea sponge with a pea cornbread of sorts, then whipped foie gras with cucumber gelee. Baxter ordered the foie as his first course so he recieved and entirely different amuse which was very thoughtful. I ordered "from the garden" which had so many components, textures, flavors, and varying temperatures that every bite was something different. Truly awesome. Kosta had the tomato course which consisted of 3 different platings of tomato, each to be enjoyed on their own, separate from the main plating. Baxter's foie was served with fresh brioche, homemade butter and too many other components that I am drawing a blank. This continued for several hours. Baxter and I shared the "mangalitsa pork for two", being a proponent of this rare breed I had to have Leibrandt's version. Needless to say it was awesome, served with a black meringue that when the smoked pork jus was poured around melted into the sauce, f'ing awesome. Koasta's Elysian Fields lamb tasting was ridiculous as well, smoked neck, sweetbreads, loin, tartare! This was a great experience. I knew I was in the right place when the sous chef of Public walked in and gave me "the nod" as we were finishing to have dinner with some friends of his own.

Off to Eataly for lunch. This place is insane, 45 minute wait for pizza and pasta seating at 2:00pm on a Tuesday. There was so much to see, you just have to experience it. A little bit of a cluster F' when it coms to service, I \'m sure that has something to do with the 2,000 people all trying to eat a the same time but overall a great experience. The fish counter was full of fresh fish at decent prices.

The charcuterie was amazing. There is only about $10,000 of proscuitto di parma hanging from the ceiling and another $10,000 worth of parmesan wheels acting as a wall to the left of the meat counter. I got 1/2lb of speck and pete got 1/4lb of sweet sopresatta. Amazing on all counts.

Kind of a shame this awesome Berkel slicer is just for show.

On to some more of the ridiculous.Pastry Chef Dominique Persoone and Food Scientist Bernard Lahousse of Food Pairings released a new chocolate pairings site. After their vibrant demo we ended up snorting chocolate, yes snorting it. This has not yet been released to head super models(which baxter pointed out) but I'm sure is on it's way and will be well recieved but probably not for the intended use. They developed an acrylic piece that they place infused cocoa on, then basicaly shoot it up into your nasil cavity while you inhale. The ginger infused cocoa powder went straight to my brain, then you get the drip sensation in the back of your throat that really brings the flavors up over your tongue. After hearing some of their outrageous demo ideas that were denied by star chefs I can see how this mild version was the safest bet to go with. Really great chefs and entertaining as well. Here is there creation to shoot cocoa. Put the powder on the end of the two prongs, they count to three and flick the switch which shoots the powder into the air under your nose and you inhale. sure they could make a pretty penny selling this to head shops.

Alberto giving it a shot.

Not last and certainly not least, jordan Kahn gave the best presentation of the congress. An awesome interpretation of art comprising of film, music and brush strokes that put everyone on edge. The guy walked on to the stage, didn't say a word, played a video and plated some desserts. Doesn't sound like much but words cannot explain the depth of this yong pastry chef with experience at Per Se and Alinea. I wish he would have walked off stage and not said a word when the video finished. It would have been the shit, and I know that he would have done it if Antoinette hadn't forced him into taking questions. This guy knows he nailed this demo and is a badass in the eyes of everyone that watched it but he seems shy and humble. Appreciative of where he came from and not what you expect. Watch out for this guy. Here is a picture of the hoards of people trying to get an up close glimpse of his desserts.

Fall Menu

2010-09-17T23:38:00.002-04:00

The time is here and we rolled out the fall menu at bluezoo tonight. It was pretty quiet in the dining room but we had a ton of prep to do for some special events coming up and stocking up on new menu components. It's a little stressful knowing that we have a new menu running and I will be leaving to go to star chefs on sunday, back wednesday night(missing albert's inopia presentation so i can make the plane) for a function on Thursday, and leave Saturday morning for Seattle, but we have a lot of talented people that have my back and I'm confident they will get the job done.
There is always a lot that goes into a menu change. Tasting, testing, consistent sourcing, producing, re-writing prep sheets, station sheets, costing, butcher tasks, ordering guides, new purveyors and accounts, delivery schedules, and most importantly is the training of the foh and boh. You try to make the shift as smooth as possible but there are so many factors and components that you don't really know what will happen until it does. Trying to predict what modifications will pop up and how to prepare for them is always interesting. Allergy mods, which we deal with on a frequent basis can throw you off if you are not prepared.
Determining what you can get away with is another thing. There is always one or two dishes that chefs prepare for chefs and experienced foodies, not everyone will get thought behind it or the time and effort that goes into it. It may not be the best selling item on the menu but those are the ones you pay special attention to. Appealing to the masses in our environment is a must. In the end of the day bills have to be paid appropriately to be successful. Pick up times have to be sensible, adequate equipment must be in place. Then again five pan pick ups of an awesome dish may make you a culinary god on a good day and a schmuck on a bad one. Sometimes you just have to roll the dice, be flexible, and make adjustments on the fly. The ability, training and knowledge of your team will determine much of this. The "guiding light" has been our tasting menu. We get training, feedback and execution information on a daily basis. Without that this would have made things much more hectic. Hats off to the ladies and gentlemen of the zoo for making this happen without incident. Granted, we have our staples on the menu that never die, this is a half menu change that will enable us to perform during peak season. Here are our fall menu additions, come check them out.

apps
broken rockefeller....spinach, house bacon, mornay, egg yolk

beet salad....pickled beet paint, candied walnut, goat cheese fondue

entrees
miso glazed mero....hawaiian seabass, black garlic, shitake-ginger rice

ahi tuna....parsnip, glazaed seasonal root vegetable, olive soil

heritage chicken....fingerling macaire, porcini, charred watercress

beef tenderloin....chestnut, butternut squash, mushroom in various forms

king salmon....espelette infused carolina gold rice, heirloom carrot, parsley root

side
sea island red peas....ham bone braised, sherry vinegar

Of course our descriptions are vague and left to the imagination so we may entertain new presentations, cure boredom of producing the same thing everyday, and pretend we are not a restaurant within a giant corporate establishment.

VitaMix Challenge

2010-09-13T22:41:00.002-04:00

I'm at a point where I needed some good news and today was the day. Caitlin from Star Chefs informed me I will be one of six chefs competing in the VitaMix Challenge at Star Chef 2010 International Chefs Congress. I will be representing the Southeast division of the United States. No complaints here. Judges are Marcus Samuelsson, who I've had the honor of cooking for before whether he knows it or not, Michael Anthony of Gramercy Tavern, and Harold Dieterle of Perilla who beat out a former colleague in the finals of the inaugural season of Top Chef but deserved the win. By the way, not kissing up to the judges, just the way it is.
The competition, display "a unique application of a VitaMix blender". We are in desperate need of the VitaMix XL at bluezoo and it happens to be one of the 3 blenders we will receive if the competition is won. Our variable speed Vita-Prep 3 is amazing and I can only imagine what could be done with the addition of the XL. Almost every plate in the restaurant has a puree, powder or fluid gel and blender time has to be split between our 15 cooks and 5 bartenders. This is my third year attending and truly an honor to be more than just an observer.
New fall menu tastings and roll out by Friday, leave for Star Chefs on Sunday, Competition on Wednesday, haul ass back to the restaurant Wednesday night, VIP restaurant buyout on Thursday, leave Saturday at 5am for a five day trip to Seattle, red eye arrives at 7am on the 1st then straight to the restaurant for another 125pp party, no pressure. This is what we do and just what I needed to rejuvenate myself.
I've done competitions with ACF judges, won gold but hated it. No offense, but it's old school. This will be another story. I respect the ACF and what they do but this is truly in my arena of thought and execution. I hate to lose, as do most chefs, but I'm sure their will be lots to learn no matter what the outcome. I'm anxiously looking forward to this. So if you would like to see how to cook loup de mer in a blender, come see me at Star Chefs ICC.

Tweak

2010-09-08T00:06:00.002-04:00

We've been working on the fall menu the last couple of days trying new recipes, techniques, and platings. Here is the first version of our "Broken Rockefeller". I can't tell you how many requests we get for this. I guess it makes sense, we have different selections of east and west coast oysters nightly and with all the requests for it why not put it on the menu but at least we can do it our way. We took all the components and broke them down then give the diner a version of the original for reference.

We start with mornay sauce that is gelled and pureed for a pudding effect. Next was the spinach and bacon. We start with a reduced garlic cream, emulsify in some bacon fat, then finish with spinach and blend until smooth. We breaded the oysters in corn flour from Anson Mills, some bacon powder and we're almost there.

Since plating this I have some more ideas to tighten up the plate, a parmesan component and a little more of the spinach bacon puree is needed for the fried oysters to be able to get the full effect. Some dots of the spinach puree around the fried oysters will help break that section of the plate up a little. We'll keep playing with it and see what happens, so far so good.

Meet the Chef's Chefs

2010-09-01T02:11:00.003-04:00

I couldn't snap pictures of everyone but here is their food. Diana came up with a nice harissa puree with king salmon, curied carolina gold rice, zahtaar carrot salad and micro carrot tops that we have been featuring on our tasting menu.

Chris Spaulding did a nice job with this brined, smoked, sous vide, then finally grilled berkshire belly. Tomato and lardo emulsion, heirloom tomatoes, crispy wheat berries.

Lupe rolls the s@#t out of some pasta and had some nice "envelopes" filled with braised pasture prime chicken.

Brian Baxter finished the pasta with celery root puree, fiscalini, and malabar spinach.

With a new menu on the horizon we will be utilizing our tasting menu to test new dishes for the fall. It's a great way for us to tweek the dishes, have the line chefs contribute, and let them develop a sense of ownership in the menu.

the bluezoo team

2010-08-25T01:24:00.005-04:00

It's great to see my guys really pushing everyday. Wanting to share what they do and create plays a factor in their food. We have a tasting menu that is open to our cooks interpretation. I step in and tell them what they have to work with and provide some on hand flavor profiles and direction if needed but these guys and gals are the ones that are making it happen. Many of my posts are about what they are doing everyday on top of their already hectic workload.
I am thouroughly impressed by their passion amd commitment everyday. They are what makes bluezoo a great restaurant to be a part of and they should be recognized. This is our team, and over the next couple of weeks you will be able to become familiar with them and the food they put out every night.

chef de cuisine
aaron christian

sous chefs
daniel de la rosa
erich seig

line chefs
Guadalupe Rangel
Andre Robberts
Brittany Hatch
Ashley Monteiro
Nathan Howey
Diana Saulibio
Brian Baxter
Jason Rodriguez
Chris Spaulding
Keola Dietz

Stay tuned.........

Chicken and Lobster terrine

2010-08-12T23:54:00.007-04:00

Chef Rob designed a terrine mold with our plexi glass guy from Ice Magic for a dinner we will be working on in bluezoo in September. He wanted something like the terrine molds he was familiar working with during his stint in France. Traditionallly it would be a wooden box with a sliding top and removable sides to unmold the terrine. we went a step further and created this.

Here is a shot of the whole deal from the side.

Of course the commissioned piece was personalized for chef. We will have 12 more in the works as we will need 125 portions for the dinner we are preparing for. This was a test run for us and it worked great.

The first step is to line the mold with plastic, then layer your terrine, press until set, and remove the top of the mold.

Each wall of the terrine is equiped with a hinge to easily remove the finished product.

Our terrine has finished pressing and the top of the mold is removed.

Here is our buttermilk brined, sous vide poussin, slow poached maine lobster, savoy cabbage, and truffle cream terrine.

You don't see these around much any more but our last executive chef of the hotel was austrian so having one of these electric knives on hand was neccesity. It's the first time I've ever seen one or even seen one used and it actually worked pretty well. It's novelty with an actual purpose. We all laughed at it but ole' bessie did it's job.

Chef Dan Herman did the honors. I think he might be the only one in the hotel who has used one of these before but that is still yet to be confirmed.

Nice slices of layered poussin, barely poached sweet maine lobster, tender savoy cabbage, and the richness of the truffle cream. It's hard to go wrong with that combination.

This is the finished dish. Warm porcini cream, grape fluid gel, pickled fennel, micro chickweed, parisienne buternut squash, armando manni per me olive oil.

Kelp Rubbed Mero

2010-08-10T22:30:00.003-04:00

We picked up some kelp powder from Terra Spice and we toying with the applications. We ended up using it as a rub for our Mero bass from hawaii. The kelp powder has a salty vegetal flavor that when well with the fatty mero.

Some cleaned and marinated mussels along with key west littlenecks, brunoise veg, j. le blanc olive oil, scallion, and sea cress(my new favorite garnish from chefs garden). The servers finished the dish tableside with a sauce of reduced cooking liquid from the mussels with a hint of cream. Clean and simple, quality ingredients exploding with flavor.

Kappa Carrageenan

2010-08-09T08:59:00.004-04:00

We have been playing with some kappa over the last week. It started with Cody glazing mini cuke blossoms with saltwater to season them and give them a nice shine. I started thinking about what else we could do and threw out the idea of an oyster coated with mignonette. So here it is

2 versions, one traditional and one finished with miso both, evo,samphire, and sea cress.

We seasoned FORVM 8yr Cabernet Vinegar mignonette style then did a .75% ratio of the kappa. Bring the FORVM to a simmer, whisk in kappa then hold at a low simmer, preferably in a water bath or more easily on our cook tek induction. We dip the shucked oyster and the gel sets up immediately upon removing it. We had to play with the temperature a bit, too hot and it won't glaze, too cold and it will start to set up in the pan. We served this as amuse and got some good feedback.

Now we are looking at glazing more vegetables and this week we will be playing with the idea of glazing whole pieces of cooked fish just before it goes on the plate. I will most likely start with spice infused liquids or maybe ocean water if we can get our hands on some of the really good stuff that is coming out of Fiji and Hawaii, Mike Mina uses it at American fish and the flavor is amazing. That's a whole other post by itself but hopefully we can get the appearence of a shining jewel on the plate.

NYC

2010-08-03T01:26:00.007-04:00

We took a couple days for family vacation in NYC to get away. Usually my visits consist of food, drink, and more food, then more drink. This time I had the family in tow so we hit the sites and I managed to still incorporate food. So here you go For some reason the first few picture descriptions are off, just scroll down, I'm sure you can figure it out.

Empire state building right off the bat.

Caeden is checking out the view.

Caeden's first MLB game and my first in a while MLB game. Mets vs. Cardinals, 3rd game of series after a tough 13th inning loss the night before. Mets 4, Cardinals 0, good game.

He might be a mets fan

Shake Shack @ citi field, only a 3 inning wait.

Union Square Farmers Market, patty pan squash the size of your head and just about everything else. Wednesdays and Saturdays, check it out.

rick's picks hooked me up with some smokra.

Caden's version of the Statue of Liberty, buy your tickets on line, if you want to go to the crown or monument plant at least 3 months in advance. Get to battery park by 8:30am, otherwise I hope you like 2 hour lines.

Central Park zoo, buy tickets ahead on line as well. Lines suck!

Some seals up close

Snow leopard

I work for Todd English and we did the official NYC Todd Tour. Olives for dinner the first night(Wed). Friends and family at Ca Va Friday night, then Food Hall at the Plazs Saturday for lunch. All were really good. I love the creativity and seasonality at Olives, Ca Va is delicious frenchy french all the way with the return of Victor LaPlaca to the TE crew, Food Hall is a monster to be reckoned with. Take the Todd tour, hit all three eateries in NYC, it's worth it.

Shake Shack is in the Intercontinental with Ca Va, get a perfect slice of foie torchon at the bar in Ca Va while your friend waits in line at Shack shack then join him for burger madness.

Food Hall burger is awesome.

Mike, just letting you know i'M STEALING this flatbread for the zoo, it was ridiculous! BLT flatbread, charred romaine, cabot cheddar, lardons, heirloom tomato, garlic aioli.

Some cool places we just happened to walk by. Aquavit.

a voce in Time warner

Some awesome China.

Columbus Circle, from here you can throw a rock in pretty much any direction and hit something with a michelin star, or two, or three.

The best meal I've had in NYC period!

Heads up, Kitchen Arts and Letters is closed on saturdays during July and August. Sucked, didn't get a chance to go in but I'll be back during Star Chefs ICC in september.

The entrance to all that is holy, JB Prince.

Favas

2010-07-22T00:30:00.003-04:00

We had some really nice fava beans from Chef's Garden delivered to us and based our one of our tasting items on it. The executive chef of the hotel, Robert Ciborowski, recently returned from the Chef Garden Food and Wine event and he was blown away by the farm tour and claims that the tour made the whole trip for him. The attention to detail and the passion that everyone who works their has for the product is second to none. With that in mind we shuck and tediously peel the favas while they are raw and remove the germ. Our agnolotti filling was a straight up simply seasoned fava puree. We reserved some of the puree and heat it to order to retain the color. The agnolotti are arranged on top of the puree and garnished with more chef garden goodies. Bacon braised mixed mustard greens, micro parsley and baby squash with blossom play a part.

Our finishing touch of Manni "Per Me" olive oil sealed the deal. If you are not familiar with Armando Manni's olive oil grown from a rare variety of olive that grows only in the Tuscany Region in Italy on the edge of the highest known altitude an olive tree can survive then follow the link and read up.

A little home gardening

2010-07-15T08:06:00.005-04:00

It's hot as hell here in Orlando and I've given up on my tomato plants, they just can't hold up to the 95F temps anymore. On the other hand my watermelon has conquered just about everything.

It just started pumping our little melons about 10 days ago. Before that the plant was just as big with nothing on it and I was wondering if it was goin to happen or not. It did, now I have to decide whether or not I want grass or more melons as it has taken off over the railroad ties into my St. Augustine grass.

It has completely taken over my tomato plants and melons are hanging from my tomato support structure.

Everyday I find a couple more

This one still has the blossom attached, I guess I can skip ordering baby watermelons from Sid Wainer for a while.

Eggplant blossom, I'm hoping to start seeing some production from these guys but for now I just have to wait.

After having some production issues with my tomatoes early in the season we visited our Native Plant nursery. We had a ton of blossoms, but no good bugs to pollinate them. I picked up a couple flowering native plants and after they bloomed we started seeing a lot more butterflies, bees, and lady bugs. Pretty soon after our tomatoes started to produce some fruit, now it seems they have turned their attention to the melons.

Check in your area for a Native Plant Society, we have one here in central Florida. I can go to their website, plug in the conditions in my yard and even go as far as what plant will do best for the soil ph levels I have and figure out what I should plant. Find out about host plants, passion vines are host plants for butterflies, the caterpillars will be drawn to these vines so you can get butterflies to pollinate your garden without the caterpillars destroying all your other vegetation. As a bonus, you get some passion fruit out of it as well. So plant some native plants, some veg, and some fruit in your yard. It's gives me something to pick at, inspect, and admire while I'm having my morning coffee before the rest of the day takes over.

Halibut a la gastrovac

2010-06-24T01:12:00.003-04:00

We are trying to utilize our gastrovac more than we have been. We infused a bunch of hammock hollows tomatoes with j. leblanc olive oil, crushed garlic and opal basil in the gastrovac. Then we used the oil to poach the halibut and served it with the tomatoes. We cooked the halibut for 10 minutes at 54C and it came out great. It literally melts. Next time we are going to cure the halibut a little before low pressure poaching it, hopefully this will firm it up a bit so it will hold together better.

It gets a little challenging trying to time our courses on the tasting menu with the gastrovac. Some tables move faster than others and when you have multiple tables on different courses we have to time it just right so we can go straight from the gastrovac to the plate. With each cycle running for 10 minutes per table it's up to the FOH to control the flow so the halibut course from another table doesn't fire while we are in the middle running the cycle on another table. It takes a lot of communication and luck doesn't hurt. So far no issues, hopefully we can continue like this.

a little home cooking

2010-06-24T01:03:00.003-04:00

I don't get to cook too much when I'm home but when I do it's mostly simple and quick. We grilled the night before and had a bunch of leftovers so we did some breakfast "pizza" the next day. Some charred veggies, mahon, eggs and home made bread is what we had to work with.

Like I said, simple.

Can't go wrong with egg yolk.

Chanterais Melons

2010-06-15T00:41:00.003-04:00

We are officially in the dead center of chanterais melon season here. The heirloom french melon, a true cantaloupe species, dating back to the 17th century is the highlight of our tasting menu this week. The french would suspend glass above the growing chanterais to magnify and increase soil temperature to produce the super sweet melon. Here in Florida with the summer temperatures ranging in the high 80's to mid 90's the melons mature quickly. Traditionally in the south of France they would halve the melon and fill it with sweet wine and indulge. This was the basis of our chanterais theme last year. This year we are serving the iconic melon with serrano ham, lychee sorbet, fig, and basil.

Some of the melon is compressed with fleur de sel, olive oil, a touch of acacia honey, and some Forvm vinegar. Some is compressed with opal basil that grows next to the melons at hammock hollows. We shaved a bit, compressed with an envision solution to tame the sweetness and dehydrated it. Orange and meyer lemon fluid gel provide acid, the sweetness of the fig and melon work well with the salty ham.

An overall cooling sensation to start our tasting menu. We also have a chanterais mignonette addition to our raw bar until they are no more. Laurent has even developed a dessert around the melon that is killer. Come and get it while it's here, hammock hollows is due to shut down for the next couple of months after this growing season. We look forward to his return in the fall with some more beautiful and inspiring product.

Mangalitsa Country Ham

2010-06-13T00:30:00.005-04:00

We started curing our mangalitsa country ham at the end of May, we went with 1.5 days of curing time per pound. After the curing process we hung the ham to dry and form a pelicle.

We have an electric smoker at the hotel that automatically feeds itself hickory pellets. You can set the time, temp, and hold time if you like. The only issue is it doesn't produce a lot of smoke if you set it below 140F. Our country ham required 2 days of smoking @ 100F so I took it home and used my smoker which is much more time consuming but runs on good old Florida oak. I've been working with it for long enough that I know how to control the temperature for long periods of time.

I soaked some oak logs and trim to quell the fire when necessary. The one benefit of having a huge smoker in this case it takes a long time to heat but requires a lot of attention when it comes to keeping a low flame going for such a long period of time.

This is the ham that has already gone for a day in the smoker. I removed it until I had time to give it one more run.

You can see the smoke already at work after the first day but we wanted more.

This is after the second round of smoking. We have a really nice crust on the meat, The skin is hard as a rock and we are ready to begin the aging process.

Here it is back at home in our cooler where it will stay for the next 12 months or so. We ended up rubing the exposed meat with a mixture of lard, curing spices, and corn flour for added protection which you do not see here.

Wagyu Cheeks

2010-06-09T00:42:00.003-04:00

We received some well marbled wagyu cheeks 3 days ago. They were bagged with veal stock, fresh laurel, thyme, peppercorn, and a garlic clove. We sous vide @ 65C for 72hrs, actually 71hrs. We were about to get hit and I didn't want to forget about them so really 71hrs. Super tender and literally melt in the mouth.

I had to sacrifice one for all the cooks to try. Tomorrow we will slice,season, cryovac once more with truffles and warm them slowly for service.

Lower East Side Pickles and a delivery straight from Tallahassee

2010-06-06T23:30:00.002-04:00

Charlie from Hammock Hollows once again has given us some amazing product. We have an abundance of mini white cucumbers on hand and what better than some full sour pickles. I recently picked up The Joy of Pickling after reading through and researching many pickling books. This one has it all. You want asian, low country, fermented, sweet or quick pickles this is a great book. They cover everything and leave lots of room for interpretation. Our F&B Director is a born and bred New Yorker who is fanatic and vocal about his pickles and what he believes is a good or bad representation of basically his childhood. The Lower East Side pickle recipe is one I hope he will be fond of. I had our very own New York native pickle aficionado, F&B Assistant Director Luciano Sperduto, try the pickle brine and immediately he was on board. The author Linda Ziedrich comments in the book on all the New Yorkers requesting a pickle recipe that they could relate to. She went to all the corner delis, inspected the barrels and their contents and came up with the recipe that we based our pickles on.

After a few modifications from my own experience coming from a family that grew up in New York we came to our own recipe. We stuck the pickles in our back bar where we have a constant 58F for our which happens to be a perfect pickle arena for us in the kitchen. The humidity and the temperature in this room duplicates the environment of that northern east coast basement. I cryovac'd some water in a large bag and placed it on top of the pickles to hold them under the brine, every day we will wash the bag and skim any scum that develops. In a couple weeks we should have a good representation of some classic NY pickles. Of course you can't compete with the aged barrels or the mineral rich water of NY but I feel we can come close and provide our guest something akin to the original. It's a waiting game now, we'll have to just wait and see.

The second part of this post is a fresh delivery of squash and eggplant from my grandmother in law's garden in Tallahassee. They have a perfect summer climate to grow some amazing stuff. Her garden was recently ravaged by deer eating all her cherry tomatoes, okra and peas. I guess they don't care for squash or eggplant which is fine by me. She is old school, well educated in traditional preparation and always teaches me something about food.

Encouraging Words from the Mangalitsa Master

2010-06-06T00:46:00.002-04:00

Heath from Wooly Pigs hit us with some flattering words recently. See his post here about our use of the local mangalitsa we have on hand. I don't know if I can consider us as being "probably the restaurant in the USA that uses Mangalitsa pork in the most experimental ways" but it is a very nice gesture. I have had many conversations with Heath via email and facebook about this breed of pork. Really for us it comes down to local product and the utilization of everything we get. Heath sent me an email about a year ago letting me know Torm of Pasture Prime Wagyu had just recently purchased some mangalitsa and we would have some local product to work with. Had it not been for that bit of information I'm sure it would have taken us a bit to catch on and embrace the great product that was right in our backyard.
We are mainly a seafood restaurant but we look to our pork as a major flavor enhancer. House cured and smoked bacon brings our chowder to another level. Bacon and clam ragout over wild king salmon, cured and smoked head diced with sea island red peas, bacon wrapped tuna, the earthiness of brined-braised-and pressed shoulder is out of this world. We have a dish called "Dirty South Swordfish" where we start our risotto with house made tasso. Who doesn't like fresh pork rinds still popping and cracking on the way to the table? It may never be listed on the menu but its there. It's what we have when we have it.
This is not your normal pork, you have to have other creative outlets besides pork loin on your menu to sustain this product. When we get a loin in it has a 2-3 in layer of fat cap on it! Half the weight is fat. If your any kind of chef you know you can't just chalk it up as waste. Make lardo! Our first batch of lardo is finally done, most people just slice it and put it on the plate and there is nothing wrong with that. We cubed and rendered a bit until it was crispy. The beauty of mangalitsa fat is lower moisture content from most kinds of pork. When you render it surely it loses some weight but not even close to he norm. If you could describe fat as being meaty then this would be it. After it was rendered we all tried a single piece and it was ridiculous, well seasoned from the months of curing and hanging, but light as air, crispy on the outside and molten goodness on the center. In the end, thanks for the words Heath. It just gives us more fuel to push the envelope on our future pig projects.

Hulled Hemp Seeds

2010-06-04T20:50:00.003-04:00

I picked up some organic hulled hemp seeds from whole foods to play with. They look similair to sesame seeds and taste almost like pine nuts but less intense. We roasted them first.

Pureed them wth a touch of H2O, lemon juice and extra virgin.

Then served them as the base of our baby artichoke barigoule on our tasting tonight. A little fennel frond that has been compressed with envision and dehydrated.

Beef and Mangalitsa togarashi dogs

2010-05-30T15:07:00.004-04:00

It's gonna be a bbq/pool party at my house for memorial day. Lots of people and lots of food. I threw together some togarashi spiked hot dogs using some well marbled chuck, a mangalitsa picinc ham, and a bunch of mangalitsa fat. At least I'll be able to say I know exactly what's in my dogs. If you haven't made them before here is a quick how to. Grind the fat first,

grind the meat

emulsify in 3 steps, start with meat, ice and seasonings, process until 40F, add the fat and process until 45f, add the nonfat milk powder and process until 58F. emulsified!

supposed to use sheep casings for dogs but all we had was hog casings so looks like we are have extra large dogs for tomorrow. They are on paper towels forming a pelicle so they will smoke nicely tomorrow and be finished on the grill. I might take a little kohlrabi kimchi we have working to really take it up a notch.

have a safe memorial day.

Hammock Hollows Squash

2010-05-26T22:44:00.004-04:00

We've been getting some great squash from Charlie at Hammock Hollows. His farm is about an hour from the restaurant and every week we get a shipment of whatever he has. Lately it's been a lot of dragon tongue beans, yellow romanos, squash, mini white cucumbers, about 5 varieties of potato, and lots of sweet basil. No doubt he has some of the best stuff around. His lettuces are epic but the season has ended here. Tomatoes are right around the corner here and we're looking forward to receiving his 10 or so varieties as well.
Tonight we are highlighting his squash. Tiger eyes, giant patty pans, and rounds.

We hit them on the mandolin, salted them, rinsed, patted dry, and gave them a bath in heavy creamy and egg white. Then shingled them, baked in a water bath while being pressed with cast iron pans. After they came out we put it in the blast chiller with a bucket of water on top of them to press it as the squash was cooling. Pressing is key, there is so much water in the squash if you don't get it out then the terrine will never hold.

After removing from the pan we portion it then roast. Tonight we served it on our tasting menu with wild king salmon, some local swiss chard, then Cody made a puree of sweet basil that we added to some brown butter a la minute and finish with lemon. With great ingredients there is not much else you need to put on the plate.

On the tasting Menu Tonight

2010-05-24T22:53:00.002-04:00

Fourth Course on our tasting tonight, wagyu strip, silky potatoes, baby beets, beet greens, purplette onion, pea tendril tops, micro red oak, and a "roaring 40's" blanket.

The "roaring 40's" blanket was done with 1.25% methocel A4-C. Nice plating by Baxter.

Chef Gala

2010-05-16T10:40:00.003-04:00

Last night was the Epcot Chef Gala to benefit The United Way. We always push the envelope on this event and this year was no different. We started with some A1+ ahi from Koko at Honolulu Fish Co., this stuff is amazing.

Here is our set up.

Another shot of the set up, used the oval faux slate plates from JB Prince.

Mise en place is key for an event like this, and beer is on our mise en place list. We had a nice sampling of Bruery Saison de Lente, Orchard White, and the straight up Saison Farmahouse Ale. We serve these to our friends that show up and we of course sample as well. It also didn't hurt to be next to the Raglan Road booth that was stocked with kegs of guiness. We made a deal with them at the beginning of the night, they needed a wine key, we needed regular deliveries of delicious guiness, deal of the century.

We broke out the Cook Tek induction burner for the event. There is not a better induction system out there.

Our delis were full of some great herbs that Michele from Chef's Garden hooked us up with. Red ribbon sorrel, micro chickweed, and micro parsley all went on the dish.

Here is our nicoise fluid gel, came out nice. Basically made an olive stock, pureed the olives into it, strain it a million times to get the pulp out, then standard fluid gel ratios.

Shaved red onion and fennel were blanched in a salt, sugar, H2O solution and then dehydrated.

I wanted an element of sauteed garlic and spinach, instead of going traditional we made them into noodles. Shock, blanch, shock spinach, squeeze, puree with a little H2O, strain. Cook garlic in milk 3 times, rinse, puree. Agar 400g water, bring to a boil and add 1000g spinach liquid and 125g of garlic puree. Pump into tubing. It's one way to turn $20 worth of spinach into enough for 1000pp, I can't imagine how much we would have needed if we went with the traditional method. We ran into an issue with getting them out since we did 25ft section of tubing, I had run them all over to the bakeshop and use Laurant's air compressor to get them out. LB saved the day.

Here is the finished dish with all 13 components
espelette polenta, tuna, nicoise fluid gel, idiazabal, garlic spinach noodle, dehydrated onion, dehydrated fennel, fennel pollen, fleur de sel, j. leblanc olive oil, micro parsley, micro chickweed, and red ribbon sorrel. I was doing it in my head before the event and thought it was only 11 but turned out to be 13 when we started plating. A lot for 3 people to do and serve to 1000pp but we rocked it out, our somm Doug even got in the mix with some tweezer work for garnishing. Good job Brian and Brittany, we rocked it out, never fell behind or ran out of anything. Good job.

Massive Mangalitsa Bacon

2010-04-21T23:07:00.003-04:00

These guys are getting big! These mangalitsa are coming in around 300lbs and the slabs of belly we are getting from Torm barely fit in our smoker. We hung out with this blondie along with the rest of Torm's swallow bellies and reds recently on our farm trip.

We had these two bellies in a dry box cure(basic 1:1:.25 ratio of dextrose, salt, and cure 1) for 13 days then I spent the last two days running to the smoker every 2 hours to check on them. The first day they got some cold mesquite smoke for 12 hours. Today we ran them another 12 hours with some hickory since the mesquite ran out.

I was walking out to the smoker which is in a public area of the hotel by the pool and had people coming up to me every time I went out to check on it to see what we were doing. I had guys coming up asking me all kinds of questions from how to do this at home to where they needed to go tonight to get a taste. BBQ and smokers seem to bring everyone together, I had guys from Montana, England and Germany all standing there admiring the bacon. We talked about the pigs, their recipes, and what we had in store for all of this. With the volcano in Iceland and a big issue with getting flights home for the people overseas we have had a lot of repeat guests and the Pasture Prime Pork is selling! Most people see us as just a fish restaurant which we primarily are but we do meat! I like to think that if you only have 1 beef option, 1 chicken option and 1 pork option that your will do them well.

More bacon just went into a brine of soy, molasses, honey, sugar, salt, and cure 1. In 10 days we will be smoking another round of bacon. Our Lardo d'Arnad is working as well. We used Jason Molinari's base formula of salt, water and cure 1 but changed some components with the hope that we will end up with a truly unique product. We took his ratios and added black garlic for that fermented molasses flavor and our herbs of choice instead of going traditional with sage and rosemary. Hopefully this will carry through and provide us with a more southern theme for our lardo. Funny how we end up using a japanese product to achieve a "southern" flavor profile.

I didn't have my phone with me today or you would have seen a lot more twitpics of the pepperoni Baxter and Cody put together. They got the smoke treatment as well. We also have some going into the chamber for a longer cure. We have lots of pig floating around and we are getting slammed everyday with business but these guys still find a way to keep our charcuterie going. The dedication is amazing and it doesn't just stop at bacon. There are endless elements being worked on constantly. This site is called bluechefs, not bluechef, everyone brings something to the table. I just don't want everyone who visits this site to think that it's what I do, it's what we do.

Scallion Noodle

2010-04-21T09:24:00.003-04:00

We had a chef's table dinner upstairs last night and one of the components was scallion noodle. We did the shock, blanch, shock in heavily salted\sugar water, then squeezed the scallion tops, puree with a little H2O, then strain. We used a standard ratio for agar(.8%). We served them on our tasting menu last night as well with wagyu tenderloin, short rib, pickled beat puree, and a sourdough-horseradish sauce.

scallion noodle
-860g scallion puree
-400g water
-45g house creme fraiche
-10.4g agar

mix agar with water and bring to a boil, put in the blender while still hot, add the scallion puree while the blender is running, add the creme fraiche, season with fleur de sel, hot hold this while quickly filling tubes submerged in ice. Use a syringe full of air to pump out the noodles into a pan. Done.

Our Little Field Trip

2010-04-16T23:58:00.007-04:00

We all met early at the restaurant and took off over to Summerfield, Fl and Pasture Prime Wagyu. We were met by Torm and his father who welcomed us and gave us a little introduction and background on the farm. It was a dairy farm until the government regulations forced them to make a choice of rebuild and go into enormous debt or close the dairy. At that point Torm explained that it had already become a soulless production, pumping milk 24\7 just to keep up with the bills. He ended up hating it and what it had become.
Torm left for a while then returned to the farm to start Pasture Prime Wagyu. He began with a high ratio wagyu, a 15/16 breed where as most are 50/50 wagyu and black angus. This high ratio breed of wagyu has a better temperament than the BA mix, almost no issues when calving, high fat ratio, and has a very different long legged look from the BA mix. He raises them on grass alone until they reach around 30 months.

Here is some of the wagyu he brought up by the house for us to look at.

Here is Torm telling us all the benefits of raising these guys on grass alone, no antibiotics, no hormones, nothing.

We moved on to Torms newest acquisition, naked neck chickens. Here the chicks are about 2 weeks, they will require some extra growing time as it takes them a little longer to mature. Instead of 8 weeks these little guys are looking at being around for the next 15 weeks to get them up to weight.

Turkeys!!!!

Along with the naked necks Torm picked up some red bourbon turkeys just in time to get them ready by thanksgiving. In the end these guys should be around 12-13lbs.

ok now on to the pigs. Here is a big blondie, this guy probably comes in around 300lbs and will hang around 220lbs when dressed.

With a simple "here pig" call they all came running. We started pulling up all the grass on our side and feeding them. These mangalitsa are awesome.

Torm continued educating the group and answering all our questions.

We all got in with the pigs and hung out for a while until they all decided to make a run for the mud hole and chase everyone around after they got out.

Here is one of the chase scenes.

The bluezoo crew with Torm on the far right. We can't thank Torm enough for the hospitality and the experience. Everyone is looking at our products differently now. The level of respect for the ingredients just went up ten fold around here. I reccomend taking your crew on similar excursions, it's the best thing we could have done.

Afterward Torm cooked us up some fine wagyu burgers, we had lunch and then broke out the firearms. What's a trip to the farm with out a little target practice.

This one is not mine, just letting everyone know that.

Our marine was up first, you can tell this guy has done this a couple times before.

Everyone had a good time, nothin' like letting off a few rounds to relieve stress.

A good day for the zoo. Come see us and get some of Torm's mangalitsa that is now featured on our menu. We are also curing lots of lardo and gonna get some hams going for the fall.

some pics

2010-04-08T22:58:00.005-04:00

View from our room in the bahamas.

I wish it would of been warmer but the water was still pretty cold when we were there so no diving this time around.

nice sunset at the wedding we attended, The Cove Atlantis is a sick hotel.

Have to eat from a food truck, 4 bucks for conch fritters, can't beat that.

can't go wrong with some chefs garden ramps. Tonight we used them on our first course of the tasting menu which was mero seabass from honolulu fish co., celery root puree, and then the prestine ramps from our friends at chefs garden. By the way, thanks to chefs garden for the nod in the "visit these chefs blogs" section of their spring menu planner.

We just put a new round of bacon in the cure, this time we are going with Kutas' dry box cure ratio of 1c powdered dextrose, 1c salt and 1/4c cure 1 for every 25lbs. it will be intersting to see the difference from our previous cures.

our little mangalitsa friends are coming in on the regular.

Guanciale is curing, we cured and smoked the rest of the head and have been cooking our sea island red peas with generous chunks of smoked face, manga fat back and Col. Bill Newsome ham bones.

Baxter is dreaming of some 18 month country ham here. He's staging at McCrady's right now with Sean. hopefully he had a chance to pick Travis' brain for future charcuterie projects.

The manga belly is ridiculous. So much flavorful fat. It's almost too much to use as fresh belly so we have moved on to curing and smoking our own bacon. I had the best blt of my life with some comte, truffle aioli, manga bacon, tomato, arugula, and some super crusty sourdough.

After curing I smoked it at 130F for 12 hours. It's awesome.

Here is the first manga loin we recieved, you have to cook it with the fat. For an animal with so much fat on it the loin is not very well marbled so it must be treated with care. We do a honey based brine that really helps. The flavor of the meat itself is really earthy. Sous vide works well on tough cuts but a trial run on a loin wrapped in fat back was a failure. Good old high heat and served medium is the way to go for the loin and tenders.

Here is the cooked loin. The fat is super flavorful and very light. It makes me sad when I see plates come back with luscious fat left carved away from the meat. EMBRACE THE FAT PEOPLE! It does take some education in terms of our guests, we let them know what to expect but we have been so conditioned to believe that fat is bad that it's a slow process. Mass consumption pork in America has had the fat bred out of it for the last 40 years and now we are throwing fat in their face so yes it may take a while.

our poussin from palmetto farms in S.C., a great product, 28 days old. we bone the whole bird and stuff a nice chunk of comte in the center. I activa the edges so there is no cheese blowout and we keep a nice creamy center after then are seared between two cast iron pans. We have added leek to our macaire potatoes which has become a staple starch for our chicken dishes and then finish with whatever veg is on hand from chefs garden to hammock hollows. A little english pea puree and jus finish the dish.

Where to Start

2010-03-30T23:54:00.002-04:00

First off it's been a while since my last post and I apologize. We have all these great pictures, videos to post, new menu items, new charcuterie with the addition of our local mangalitsa, and there is just not enough time in the day to spend blogging. Since getting back from the bahamas we have been doing 300 cover a night consistently, throw in a menu change, special dinners, personal issues and some unfortunate recent events it will still be a while before I can really get back into sharing all that we do.
The new menu was postponed but is finally rolling out Thursday 4-1-10, a little late but with the weather so cold we haven't really missed much of the spring veggies. Just in time for consistent english peas, fiddleheads, nettles, morels, and so on. It's been a tough couple weeks with ridiculous business levels, short on cooks, and now even shorter with the absence of Aaron from the kitchen.
For those of you who don't know Aaron he is the chef de cuisine of the restaurant and an integral part of how this kitchen functions. He is the comic relief, a seasoned manager, creative culinarian, spec enforcer, a friend above all and truly dedicated to the restaurant. He was hit by a drunk driver early Saturday morning after a punk show here in Orlando and has been in the hospital since. He's banged up but still in good spirits, cracking jokes even as the fire department and paramedics freed him from being pinned between a car and his motorcycle. I have it on good report that he was giving the Evil Knievil thumbs up on the stretcher as he was being loaded into the ambulance to a crowd of cheering friends that were present. We got a chance to visit with him today and wish him a speedy recovery. After meeting with the chefs on property we figure that we will only need 3 hourly employees to try to replace the work load that Aaron carried day to day. So as you can see this blog will be taking a back seat to the job at hand. We wish Aaron all the best. It's going to be a long road for both he and I in different respects but I would do it a hundred times over for someone in his position. Good luck Aaron, I think a little death metal playing in the kitchen while we prep for the new menu is in order.

Delayed

2010-03-03T23:22:00.002-05:00

Going to be a bit of a delay on the Mangalitsa video. Had some editing and format issues and not enoigh time before I have to go on this trip to get it done. It will be done next week when I get back from my buddy's wedding in the Bahamas.
Other than that our little friend was delivered to the restaurant today. The head alone almost takes up a whole hotel pan. The jowls are ridiculous, the loin has been cleaned, tenderloin removed and was used for an amuse earlier. The ham is giant, skin has been scraped and will be getting an 82c bath for 24 hours then scraped again and dehydrated for cracklin's, the fat back will enter the cure for lardo, belly going into cure as well for a smoked house bacon. Have pics but no time to post, gotta to find my passport which apparently has grown some legs and is not in the usual spot, awesome.

Wooly/Pasture Prime Pigs

2010-03-01T21:38:00.004-05:00

We had the honor of being present for the slaughter of the first ever Florida raised Mangalitsa pig yesterday. We met Torm at South Marion Meats in Summerfield, Fl. This is one of the only USDA certified slaughter houses left in Florida and it just so happens it's about 10 minutes from Torm's farm, Pasture Prime Wagyu. He said he was coming here when he was a kid with his father to have their cows processed and the original owner is still in and out but leaves the everyday operation to his trusted employees, some of who have been there 20 years+.

The proximity of Torm's farm to South Marion Meats reduces the stress on the animals when they are brought in to be processed. There is a staging area where the Mangalitsa had a chance to relax and get one last wallow in the mud. He was then moved into the chute where a .22 caliber round ended it quick and clean. Here is Torm with his Mangalitsa.

This is us lining the wall in the slaughter house watching the hair removal process after being bled, washed, then steeped in a hot water bath @ 150F for 7 minutes, then put into the hair removal machine that rolls the pig around and the hair falls off. Then it's the blow torch treatment, and a final touch up for the feet, ears, and any other bits of hair that need to be removed. Heath Putnam from Wooly Pigs, basically the father of the american mangalitsa movement, let me know what Torm was doing a couple of months ago and we have been looking forward this ever since. Check out Heath's blog and there is a picture of us with the pig, of course Heath is ragging on us for going to this place with our clogs on, really could have used some rain boots. Notice Torm on the end, the only one with boots and a butcher apron, I think he's done this a couple times before. Next time we will be prepared.

The pig started out at 300lbs and ended up at 223lbs after being processed. We moved on to the cold storage area where we got a peak at South marion Meats inventory. There were rows of split cattle, racks of offal, basic production pigs, and lots of curing pork belly and hams waiting to be smoked. When you put 4 chefs in a meat locker this is usually what happens. And yes, Aaron's crappy mustache is back.

We took a lot of video as well that we are in the process of editing. For those of you interested in where your food really comes form this will be posted in the next day or so. Other than the kill shot you will see the entire process from start to finish.

Hawaiian Tuna

2010-02-19T23:19:00.004-05:00

Koko from Honolulu Fish Co. sent us some awesome tuna. The color was a deep purple, it was difficult to see where the blood line ended and the super fresh flesh began. It reminded me of the black bass that Dave Arnold and Nils prepared at Star Chefs after using the Ike Jime method, the texture was almost crunchy. We cut it into blocks, season it heavily, and give it a good cast iron sear. Right out of the pan I covered it with a cilantro\parsley and garlic marinade then wrapped it tight with plastic wrap and let it cool in the fridge. This method really allows the marinade to penetrate the tuna.
I paired this with scallion cream, miso caviar, golden pea tendrils, nasturtium, and a touch of lemon balm from chefs garden that was tossed in J. LeBlanc evo with finger lime cells and murray river salt.

At the table the servers frenched nitro siracha aioli that was aereated in an ISI.

A version of this will be coming to our new spring menu that will debut mid-march. Spring is by far my favorite time for menu change. We are also looking forward to adding Torm Siverson's mangalitsa to the menu. He has about 30 head and we will be making a trip out to the farm later in the month to see our little friends.

Kurobuta Lonzino

2010-02-12T09:47:00.004-05:00

We had some kurobuta tenders laying around so we gave them the lonzino treatment for 10 days, rinsed, and let dry for 3 hours before putting them in the casings.

The only issue was our casings mysteriously disappeared from our cooler and all we had was over sized synthetic so we tried to make do. We tried rolling and tying them like torchons but we couldn't get all the air out of the casing so that was a no go.
In the end we put the casings in the vac machine and sucked out the air. The casings don't seal in the vac machine but they hold the vacuum for a minute you just have to work fast and tie them off. It worked pretty well, we'll see how it comes out.

We left them to ferment for 12 hours and hung them in our curing chamber. Hopefully they turn out alright as this is the first time we have used synthetic casings for this application. The tenders are small and we only need a 35% weight loss so we should have some results in 4-6 weeks at the most.

Vermont-Pittsburgh

2010-02-09T00:31:00.009-05:00

We're back from our trip and I walked straight into a crazy week with the American Bar Association hitting us hard. Now that business has fizzled out a bit I can finally post. We flew into Burlington, Vermont late Sunday night and headed straight for the hotel. Coming from some nice 60F weather we were hit with some 6F weather right off the plane. Not as bad as expected. My human resources associate and I made a mad dash for Montpelier early in the morning. Of course I was on time for the cab to pick us up and my associate was about 15 minutes behind. Good thing the cab drivers in Vt are patient, any where else and we'd be on the meter or possibly left behind. A nice 30 mile drive through the mountains and we were in Montpelier. I will say the sunrise in Vt is awesome when your driving through the mountains. It's been a while since I've been in a small town but it seemed like everywhere in Vt was a small town. People were actually nice!

We arrived at NECI and found our contact.

After we found where the job fair was located I also found out that I would be prepping our passed apps across campus. See the building just to the right of the bigger building. Yeah, that's where I was cooking. So haul ass over there, get in the kitchen which was the cafeteria for Vermont College where the NECU students worked and prepared breakfast, lunch and dinner for the College. i'm pretty sure this wasn't a class but I could be wrong. Hats off to Chef Dave who showed me around and ran a full kitchen with students. They all worked throughout the morning with me jumping in the middle of there 8 burner line taking up space. I was told 300 students would be attending so lots of work to do right off the bat.

I got everything prepped then ran it over to this building, an old basketball gym where the job fair was being held. Note to self, carrying lots of shit and running through the snow in clogs, not a good idea. I forgot for a second we were in a small town, actually the smallest capital city in the US. I was trying to cross the road with an arm full of prep, freezing and cars were actually stopping, waiting for me to cross. Not the norm for where we are from. I can see why having a hospitality institution makes sense here. We hit the job fair, mostly local or nearby hotels and resorts were there. It's hard to convince people to move 1500 miles away with no promise of housing to do an externship but most were receptive and appreciated the apps we provided as we were the only with food offerings. i actually was approached by a former TE cook that worked at Kingfish Hall and new me from when I was training in Todd's restaurants to take over bluezoo. it's a small world being in this business and I try to make an effort to remind my guys that when they are working with us.

Finished with the job fair, we took off back to Burlington to catch a glimpse of the Magic Hat Brewery. They do a good job of making the place look weathered and run down but it is neither of those.

This is a full scale operation, brewing nonstop. They just recently entered our market at the hotel about a year ago but we we had a pretty limited amount to distribute. Now they are coming full swing. Oddly enough the day I was visiting the brew house the Owners were dining in bluezoo! They met with our F&B execs at the hotel and we're are expected to carry Magic Hat No. 9 (their signature brew) pool side for the upcoming months.

The brewery itself is based on the Mardi Gras theme and what we were told is that their Mardi Gras festival generates the largest F&B revenue in Vermont. There is Mardi Gras art posted throughout the brew house.

We took the self guided walking tour since they only offer the guided on Fridays and Saturdays, on top of the fact we had a cab waiting outside for 20 minutes. It was like walking into a bakery, that yeasty, sourdough, wet goodness filled the air. They happened to be bottling that day so there was some action. This time of year they bottle about 4 times a week and during the warmer months it's a nonstop process. "As long as there is beer, it will be put in a bottle" is what I was told. These signs are placed aling the brew line to tell you what is going on.

Out of the filler, the bottlers are shot down the line.

Here they get labeled and while another machine builds the boxes and the line workers fill, seal, stack, and ship.

Now off to the airport on our awesome prop plane to LGA then on to PITT. Same deal, get to the hotel, sleep, get to the school and start cooking. I had 3 demos set up and Tammy was my go to all around you need it I can get it assistant. She was great and is looking at doing here externship at the white house. She deserves it!

PCI was great. Everything prep to a T. Chef Will Hunt did a great job setting me up. I had a full demo kitchen so we got started right away. If there is anything I hate it's public speaking but I love teaching and they made us feel very welcomed so it was easy. I'm not a big fan of formal, I'd rather be a little outside of the box an engaging with the students so sitting classroom style didn't last very long.

We got them so up they could get a first hand look at what we were doing and it seemed much more comfortable for all.

All in all a good trip. There are some bright culinarians coming our way. Some interesting questions were asked by the students and I learned a lot about what they really want out of the education that they are getting. I don't sugar coat anything when it comes to what we do and the dedication that it takes to make it happen and they were very receptive to someone being up front and honest. When I went to school they asked us this question, "where do you see yourself in five years?", most of the responses were along the lines of owning a restaurant. I think reality has set in a bit more and these culinarians have a better grasp of their future in the business. I'm not saying that it can't be done, I'm just saying that most of the people I talked to realize that they will be working their way up, letting their actions in the kitchen speak rather than their diploma.

The Beer List

2010-02-03T22:49:00.005-05:00

Doug, Adam and I have been doing beer tastings on and off for the last 2 months sifting through tons of micro brews. There are so many good ones, or at least what we think is good but we also have to think about our guests. So here is the new beer list that is going into effect. The Allagash Curieux is one of my personal favorites and the Omegang Rare VOS is another that I will be sampling quite often. Can't go wrong with contributions by rogue, oskar blues, lagunitas and stone. All of them are great and as they are now on the list we will be planning a beer dinner to go with it, I'll keep you informed as we get closer.

suds to share….
(all bottles are 750ml)

southampton cuvee des fleurs, sasion
"cuvèe des fleurs" roughly translates to "batch of the flowers". This most distinctive ale is flavored with a variety of edible flowers including lavender, chamomile and hops.

the breuery, saison rue, belgian/french-style farmhouse ale
malted rye, spicy, fruity and a biscuit-like malt backbone. With age, this beer will dry out and will become more complex with rustic notes of leather.

allagash, curieux, triple ale
Curieux, french for "curious", aged in jim beam barrels for 8 weeks and many new flavors and aromas. Most notably, the beer picks up soft coconut and vanilla characteristics...and also a hint of bourbon flavor!

suds to sip.....

lagunitas, indian pale ale
raging hoppy character and imperial qualities of the 65 various types of malt

ommegang, rare vos, amber ale
coppery-amber color with the aroma of spicy orange blossoms and taste of caramel malt

oskar blues, mama’s little yella pils, czech-style pilsner
“hand canned” with pale hops and bavarian malt

oskar blues, old chub, “hand canned” scottish-style ale semi-sweet with cocoa, coffee and a hint of smoke

rogue, dead guy ale, german-style maibock ale
deep honey in color with a malty aroma and a rich hearty flavor

stone, levitation, american amber ale
big hoppy character with rich malt flavors and citric overtones

NECI, PCI

2010-01-30T20:41:00.002-05:00

Leaving tomorrow for the NECI and PCI job fairs. I haven't been to either before so it will at least be a change of scenery. I don't like standing in one spot for 5 hours handing out pieces of paper so I called the schools and asked if I could cook instead. So I'll be doing some passed apps for the NECI students at the table on Monday and have 3 demos back to back at PCI the next day.
Its more work for me but at least I'll have something more to say than "Are you interested in an externship with us?" 100 times in a row. I'll leave that to the human resources people that will be there with me.
There won't be much time to do anything, I have about 3 hours of free time after each job fair before it's back to the airport but it just so happens that the Magic Hat Brewery is only 10 minutes from the Burlington Airport so a quick tasting and tour couldn't be a bad thing. Hopefully after the PCI demos we'll have time to hit Primanti Bros for some ridiculous sandwich that's usually best enjoyed at midnight after some libations but 2pm will have to do.
It's going to be a crazy, quick trip. 6 planes in 3 days, who booked these flights anyway, I don't think HR has ever heard of nonstop. On top of that going from 80 degrees today to 8 degrees tomorrow is not top on my to do list but I get a free trip out of it so I shouldn't complain. I'll try to snap some pictures and let you future culinary students know what I think of the schools.

Nantuckets and Fluke

2010-01-23T02:02:00.003-05:00

We received some really great fluke from George at Gary's Seafood, Gary's is the best all around in CFL but what's up with the video when you check their website? Looks like everyone in O-Town likes the balsamic redux 1970's squiggle on the plate. If the video doesn't come up you may have to scroll to the bottom of the homepage and hit replay intro video, but it's worth watching. Not so much for the dishes presented but the facility itself. They actually care about their product and communicate with us everyday all the fish available. Our order is all over the place everyday, it's hard to decide what you want. Almost like standing in the beer isle of a grocery store on the west coast.
Back to the fluke, I sliced it and tossed it with acacia honey, meyer lemon juice, meyer lemon oil, fleur de sel and finger lime cells. The unexpected pop and acidity of the finger lime cells really set the dish off. We rolled the slices up, added some blood orange segments, then garnished with luna lentil from chef's garden, Florida orange air and fluid gel. Nothing more to say than clean and delicious.

We also pumped out some Nantucket bay scallops, "snowball cheddar cauliflower" puree, some of the "purp"(that's kitchen talk for purple cauliflower), sous vide beet, borage, and carrot noodle with a little harissa spice thrown in to cut through all the sweetness of the scallop and beet in the dish.

Former cook George Aviles made an appearance in the dining room with family, good to see him and glad they all enjoyed the meal.

To Brine or Not to Brine, the polyscience question

2010-01-18T00:26:00.005-05:00

Christoph at polyscience posed the question to us in response to comments on our recent New Years Eve post that was attached to the polyscience facebook page. The results were surprising after a few tests. Stephen Weiner ask a question of whether or not anyone had any knowledge regarding brining prior to sous vide cooking. I'm not the world's foremost expert on the subject but the question was pushed in my direction by Christoph so here we go. Before we start, everyone does everything differently. These results are not the end all be all but they are precise and through our sous vide technique using the polyscience thermal bath(insert gratuitous promotional plug here) this is what we found.

We used confit chicken thighs as the example. We took several approaches, one being plain chicken thighs bagged with duck fat. One cured in kosher salt for 30min then rinsed, patted dry and bagged with duck fat. The last one was brined for 2 hours, then patted dry and bagged with duck fat as well. The thighs were cooked at 80C for 2 hours, left to cool at room temp for 1 hour, and weighed at all stages of the experiment. Here are our interesting results

plain thigh, overall 24.73% weight loss after cooking
cured thigh, 4.56% weight loss after cured and an overall 41.66% total weight loss after cooking
brined thigh, 5.01% weight loss after brined and an overall 38.5% total weight loss after cooking

In terms of the finished product's taste and texture the plain sous vide thigh was pretty boring in terms of taste. I am a firm believer of season as you go. The texture was good though, still moist, and shredded easily like a traditional confit.

The cured thigh was a disappointment. It didn't carry the salt for some reason as a traditional confit in the oven does. The texture was drier than the plain and more dense. This had the highest weight loss of after the cooking process was complete.

Now this is where it gets interesting. The brined thigh had the highest initial weight loss after brining but a lower percentage of weight loss than the cured thigh after it was cooked. One of the comments left stated that brining prior to sous vide does not improve the flavor and this is where I disagree. You can add so many different flavor components to the brine and they DO carry throughout the cooking process. I used my go to, all purpose brine which consists of molasses, honey, sugar, kosher salt, soy sauce, water, and orange slices. This is great for chicken and pork, the background flavors really come through in the finished product. This brined thigh had the best flavor, the texture was a little bit more dense than the plain but still super moist. You can really see the difference in the appearance.

All the samples were patted dry with c-folds after cooking, then weighed completely intact and shredded. There are variables here, would the results differ if we used a straight up 10% saltwater brine? Probably, but the flavor wouldn't be as good.

We used this same technique with our berkshire pork belly. We brine it for 24 hours in a Tucher Helles Hefeweizen beer brine, smoke it for 4 hours, then sous vide for 10 hours. You can still smell and taste the "yeasty" flavor of the wheat beer that has permeated the pork. Even with the addition of the smoke it still comes through. It's the basis of what we do, layering flavors, complexity in something very simple.

So in terms of brine or not to brine, I say brine. You can manipulate the flavor in so many ways with a good brine to really compliment the rest of your dish. That is if your thinking that far ahead, and you should be.

Eat Local Week for Orlando

2010-01-15T21:44:00.004-05:00

Our friends over at Slow Food Orlando have organized an eat local week January 25th to the 31st. Bluezoo will be participating in the event and we are offering a $39 prixe fixe menu

1st

Cape Canaveral White Shrimp…
3 way hammock hollows cauliflower, pickled flambeau radish, meyer lemon vinaigrette
Hammock hollows herb co. cauliflower, radish, and meyer lemon,
Gary's seafood fresh florida shrimp

or

Rabbit confit…
maitake mushroom, truffle beurre noisette
Seely Farm, Dunnellon, Fl

2nd

Rosas Farms Grass Fed ribeye…
hammock hollows glazed turnips, baby sweet potatoes
Rosas farms beef, hammock hollows turnips
or

Florida black boar…
smoked shoulder, beer braised belly, celery root
Rosas farms boar, Orlando brewery beer

3rd
florida citrus pavlova…orange ice cream, citrus filled meringue, grapefruit gel, orange caramel
hammock hollows sunburst tangerines, Chinese honey oranges

We regularly load up on our hammock hollows veg from Charlie, I would've liked to incorporate more of his awesome lettuce varieties but most were recently lost to the freeze here in CFL. It's hard write a menu when you don't know what your going to get from the farm, it just shows up and we take it. We get about 30 or 40 cases of mixed veg every wednesday, it's like christmas around here when we get the delivery.
So even though we don't write menus with 15 word descriptions on them you will have much more on the plate than what is listed above.

Part of Charlies delivery was 2 cases of Gallberry Thomas Honey from some of his friends in Lake City. This stuff is good!

Al Rosas will be providing us with some tasty florida black boar, some of which he raises and some of which he has captured. Other farmers in the area call Al when then have a boar problem and he comes in and traps them adds them to his lot. He will also be hooking us up with some grass fed ribeyes.

Heath Putnam from Wooly Pigs pointed me in the direction of Torm at Pasture Prime Wagyu who is raising grass fed wagyu along with mangalitsa. He's only about an hour down the road but he won't have any product avilable until spring. I can't wait.

There are a lot of local producers out there and I'm sure we will be adding more farms to the list. It's a good thing to be a part of and hopefully we will have enough veg and variety from our own farm next year to sustain ourselves through eat local week.

Taco Quest

2010-01-06T21:22:00.002-05:00

Check out Aaron Christian's Year of the Taco blog on all things taco. Follow him on his 2010 taco quest for the best taco finds in Central Florida and wherever his travels take him. I'm sure we will be having a lot more taco based family meals in the restaurant with Aaron on the great taco hunt. Try to keep track of his tpd(tacos per day) intake as he has put himself down for a 1.5 tpd average. He's off to a good start. I'll be keeping track of all the off the beaten path places he finds around Orlando serving the best tacos to be had. I'm always up for a taco.

Methocel Cannelloni

2010-01-06T01:06:00.004-05:00

What do you get when you order cannelloni? You know at one point the pasta was wrapped around some hopefully delicious filling usually containing ricotta, covered in red or white sauce, cheese, then baked in those cheesy oval dishes. And 9 times out of 10, 40-60% of the filling becomes part of the sauce when it oozes out of the pasta. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with grandma's home style cannelloni but when we serve it we need to refine it a bit and bring it up to date. I really wanted to produce a nontraditional cannelloni, no ricotta, not drowned in red sauce, and a filling that actually holds so it looks decent on the plate. I started with some braised wagyu shortrib scrap that was cooked down with chive, shallot, and braising liquid. I could have easily made ravioli and called it a day but was focused on cannelloni for some reason. I took some shallot and garlic, sweat that, add thyme, add truffle juice and reduce, add chicken jus and reduce, then cream
and reduce again. The truffle cream was pureed and passed then I proceeded to add the methocel

16g SGA 7M methocel
205g water
1000g truffle cream

after hydrating the methocel in the water and adding it to the truffle cream I cooled it in an ice bath. You can see the consistency below.

I folded the cooled truffle cream into the braised short rib.

Rolled it out in plastic wrap then put it in the freezer for 20 minutes so I could slice portions.

I rolled out pasta, blanched and oiled long sheets, then laid them out on the table. I cut them the same width of the shortrib filling, brushed them with a little egg yolk, then cut the pasta and rolled up the filling.

Instead of drowning the pasta in sauce we put a ladle full of chicken stock on a sizzle platter then microplaned alot of tarentaise cheese over the top and baked them, pulling the cannelloni out midway to baste with the stock. Here is the result. Just enough methocel to hold the filling, a rich dish but the texture was light and complimented the pasta nicely. I ended up double rolling the cannelloni with pasta for a higher pasta to filling ratio that I thought was necessary.

Here is a close up of the sous vide scallop and cannelloni that completed the dish.

In the end it was
wagyu shortrib cannelloni...scallop, parsnip, tarentaise, foraged mushroom viniagrette, blue tuscan kale

It doesn't get much colder than it is right now in Orlando so this dish was designed to be hearty, filling, and comfort food with a twist.

Next 2010 Trend, finger limes

2010-01-02T12:49:00.003-05:00

Bryce from Sid Wainer stopped by about two weeks ago with some finger limes for us to check out. I have seen them popping up on menus all over and some big chefs adding them to their daily mise en place. I first saw Curtis Duffy of Avenues using them and Sean had them on a recent post for his geoduck dish from NYE. They have been around for a while but I think we will see more chefs picking them up in 2010. They range in color from light green to almost black-brown and the spherical cells from a light green to pink. Not cheap at around $37 for a half pint but a cool product.

One of the main draws are the spherical cells, basically instant lime caviar. They have a good pop and acidity. So put the lime juice, the alginate, xanthan gum, and the calcium away and go natural with Australian finger limes.

It's over, now do it all over again

2010-01-01T20:34:00.002-05:00

Service was awesome last night. I can say that it was the best NYE service we have ever had and the best I have ever seen out of all the kitchens I've worked in. We prepped like mad for days and it paid off. We were crushing it, knocking down full rails of tickets in no time, turning the room, no issues on tables, servers actually running food, and clean plates coming back. Even stewards were on the ball, polishing copper pots nonstop, running plates, pots, pans, silver and never getting behind. With the last table hitting the window at the stroke of midnight we were done. The last report I saw was 578 covers and raking in $42,000. I wish I had stopped and snapped a couple pictures but all I had time for was a quick shot of John Dory to tweet so look for it on twitter to catch a glimpse if you like.

All in all it was a good way to end the year, now time to focus on this yearand what we are going to do better.

One More Day

2009-12-31T00:38:00.002-05:00

We ended up doing a little 0ver 350 covers tonight and the boys and girls did good! Just one more 16 hour shift and we can put this year behind us. I will admit at one point Aaron, chef de cuisine, and I looked at each other and it was questionable if we were going to make it through today and tomorrow with smooth services but everyone stepped up and put some really nice food out tonight.
The multivac and the berkel got a workout today along with the two polyscience thermal baths. We sous vide all our fish for tomorrow starting with super nice John Dory from Gary's Seafood, Black Grouper, Corvina, Mahi, Mero sustainable sea bass from Koko @ Honolulu Fish Co., and then moved on to the LaBelle Farms foie gras. We use Bruno Goussault spec for most of our sous vide, brining in a 10% salt water solution for 10min, then into a freshwater ice bath then patted dry and bagged with evo. Aaron made the brine yesterday and put it in the freezer overnight. The salinity is high enough so it won't freeze but gives you a nice slushy consistency that holds at about 20F. It keeps your proteins super cold while your processing it so there are no temperature issues to worry about. Then we use a thermocoupler with the hypodermic probe and sponge tape to cook the fish in batches at 56C until they reach 54C. The portions are removed and we let them sit at room temp for 5 minutes, the put them in room temp water for 5 minutes then in an ice bath for 15 minutes. The cooling procedure helps the fish retain moisture so when we sear the skin side and reheat tomorrow they will be perfectly cooked, moist and seasoned throughout. We do season the skin side when searing because we love salty crispy skin, who doesn't? The only issue to worry about is that sous vide fish skins likes to stick so we butter and oil our flat top excessively when searing and let the skin sit until crisp otherwise your portions won't look so hot.
Some people may frown upon cooking ahead of time but this is the way to go when you have 550+ on the books and your are trying to do some nice food. We are working twice as hard to provide our guests consistency and speed of service. We know that in the end our fish will be seasoned, cooked properly, executed in a timely manner, and will provide us that cushion we need to do the numbers. Not to mention it gives us more time to focus on our garnishes.
You can prep all day and all night but that doesn't mean a damn thing if you can't put the food on the plate. We have a good crew, and they are dedicated and focused. As long as the wheels don't fall once we hit 500 covers we will be able to walk away feeling good about service and enjoy the first couple hours of 2010 with some drinks in our hands and some friends to hang with.

New Years Eve

2009-12-29T00:19:00.002-05:00

It's been pretty busy around here for the last 3 weeks and the busiest night of the year is fast approaching. Last year we pushed out 597 covers for NYE and we are on the way to do the same with 550 covers on the books. We have tried tasting menus in the past but for some reason around here they don't sell so we are running some specials on top of the a la carte menu this year.
We have a great deal on our Champagne and caviar using Tsar Nicoulai California Estate Osetra by the ounce paired with an awesome array of champagnes. If you wish to go to the russian route we will also be pairing our sustainable american caviar with 2 Stoli Elite martinis if you opt out of the champagne for no additional charge on top of the caviar. You get to choose from an array of champagnes, Mumm Cordon Rouge a mere $6 for two glasses on top of the caviar, Pierre Jouet Fleur de champagne, Tattinger Comtes Rose, or Louis Roederer Cristal(all at a considerable discount from our listed price when you pair it with the caviar).
The entree specials are
John Dory...hammock hollow root vegetables, parsnip butter, root spinach, FORVM glazed pearl onions
Wagyu Shortrib...horseradish creme fraiche, charred chicory, fingerling potatoes

We wanted to do something old school "special occasion" for the pasta this year so I figured why not put the two things that are ordered on special occasions in one dish. So this is what we came up with, foie and truffles. There may have been some inspiration from my "save the foie" stove monkeys shirt I got for christmas as I was wearing it when we came up with the dish(thanks matt). So we will be doing a beurre noisette cauliflower puree, truffle potato agnolotti, foraged mushrooms, and LaBelle Farms Foie Gras topped with a little arugula and baby radish salad. Of course a heavy handed shaving of nice winter truffles is in order to finish. We will be pushing some serious numbers so I had to figure out a way to do my foie quick and consistent. I did a test run and came up with this

1" thick slices of foie gras
1 tbsp J. LeBlanc Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Fleur de sel and pepper to taste

cryovac the foie with all ingredients, sous vide at 65.3C(149.5F), for 5 minutes and put directly in an ice bath.
when ready to use just sear on both sides until warm in the center. The foie retains the fat and is cooked perfectly for pick up.

Tomorrow it all starts, $15,000 of fish, foie, and meat to break down, brine, and sous vide. Braising, blanching, cleaning, juicing, reducing, shaving, dicing, drying, frying, toasting, and trimming of various components. We are attacking NYE, the plan has been set, the stations are stacked with everyone in their strongest positions, most of the cooks know what is coming and the ones who don't are learning fast, we are going to kill this shit. No excuses, just make it fucking happen and it better be right.

The Farm

2009-12-10T23:33:00.005-05:00

Well here it is, doesn't look like much other than 3 acres of scrub brush, palmettos, some pines, and a couple of young oaks coming up here and there. Hopefully we will begin clearing within the next month or so and we can start getting the soil ready for planting. This will be no easy task and it will require a lot of time I don't have but it's something that I will be doing for myself. I was a forestry major in Flagstaff, Az before cooking got a hold of me and have since always wanted my own plot. Staging at McCrady's last year had convinced me that this is what I have to do.

By no means will the land be ready anytime soon and there are surveys to be done, expenses to be taken care of like equipment for clearing the hardest plant in Florida to get rid of, the palmetto. Along with being a pain to get rid of they are also considered notorious hiding spots for various poisonous snakes here in Florida like the eastern diamond back rattlesnake. Click on the link to see a perfect example of one hiding among the palmetto's palm fronds.

It's only 3 acres but it is pretty dense. I already have some volunteers from the restaurant to help with the labor aspect of it. The cooks there are dedicated and seem to really want to take on the responsibility of a farm even though this will have no official affiliation with the restaurant. This is my private land and this will be used for my own organic planting purposes as well as a learning tool for any and all interested. It's about 45 minutes from the restaurant and 20 minutes from my house so it will not be too hard to make the trip in the mornings then go off to work when I need to. This is mostly horse and goat country but I'm sure a few pigs wouldn't hurt. If we fence in 1 acre and give a couple pigs 3-4 months they can serve as our personal tillers. They will root up all the soil and eat everything leaving fertilized land to be planted. It's still too early to make any decisions. We have to weigh our options and see what we are dealing with once we find out more about the soil under all that brush.

I will be reaching out to Al Rosas and many others over the next couple months for advice, initial planning, insight into the operations of the farm, organics, seed saving, planting cycles, and soil content. Granted this is only 3 acres but at least it is something and something great can be done with it. We just have to do it. I'll randomly post on the progress of my newest venture, stay tuned.

Black Sea Bass,heart of Palm, tangerine

2009-12-10T00:09:00.004-05:00

Charlie at Hammock Hollows is supplying us with some awesome product. He runs the oldest organic farm in the state and supplies to some of the best restaurants around the country. Today we featured some of his tangerines, meyer lemons and spinach along with hearts of palm and black sea bass sashimi. I poached the hearts of palm in butter, sugar, water, salt and meyer lemon juice. We also pickled some HOP in yuzu juice, champagne vinegar, water and sugar. The baby spinach is meaty and flavorful. We did segments of tangerine and a fluid gel to support the round of poached HOP.

Gary's seafood brought in some nice black sea bass for us which got a J. LeBlanc, fleur de sel, meyer lemon zest marinade.

Honey crisp apples were compressed with yuzu rice vinegar and mirin then tossed in O blood orange oil. Micro shiso, some of Charlie's chervil, and sorrel completed the dish.

We also picked up some nice baby collards that will be featured on our "Dirty South Swordfish", red and white baby turnips have been cleaned and sous vide to complete our organic veg of the day. The turnip greens will find there way into our pasta and abalone supplement. Savannah Mustard greens that have been added to our German influenced "Ze' Idaho Berkshire" pork dish. Also floating around we will have blue tuscan kale, baby flambeau radishes, charlie's famed mixed greens along with baby romaine and little gem lettuces as well. I love Wednesdays in the fall, winter and spring when that truck pulls into the loading dock with a palette sized mystery basket for us. Charlie takes a break from Hammock Hollows in the summer to travel and start co-op farms sharing his invaluable knowledge. It is an honor to work with the ingredients he has provided.

HCD

2009-12-09T00:00:00.003-05:00

In case you haven't noticed our "who we read" widget has expanded. My former sous chef Michael Gleason, a.k.a. HCD, is on his way to open his own restaurant. The Avery Creek Bistro just outside of Asheville, NC. This is a good opportunity for anyone with the desire to open their own place, you get to sit back and watch via his blog how it unfolds. So click on his link and read about the restaurant. We all wish him good luck.

Michael Mina

2009-12-08T00:45:00.003-05:00

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Chef Mina for a few minutes in our lounge today to shoot the shit and also to help him out with a casual dinner he will be cooking tomorrow for friends, team, and family.
My wife and I went to San Francisco in 2004 with a spot on our friends couch and a reservation at The French Laundry. We took a couple days and explored San Fran then went off to Napa for the day. After one of the best meals of my life and the descriptions we provided to our friends they wanted to experience something similar. We made our way to Restaurant Michael Mina at the Westin, his flagship of trio goodness. If your counting the trios I had over 25 courses, some plates were trios of hot and cold so 6 entirely different courses on 1 plate. The plate itself was designed by Mina with the help of some folks in Limoges to accommodate his style. We went to the bar for a couple of drinks and if you sit to the far left you can see part of the kitchen where Mina was on expo that night checking all the plates, tasting, pen behind the ear, pointing, marking tickets, instructing captains and controlling the flow.
As a younger chef it was inspiring to watch. I had back to back incredible meals and it was a trip I will never forget. Two years later I was taking over bluezoo as executive chef and the first week I was to be chef we were doing a media dinner with Michael Mina and Todd. So no pressure at all with a 2 michelin star chef coming to your restaurant to cook with you along with your boss. It was a great challenge and experience. Michael is a chef with high expectations but very personable and approachable. His sous chef Junior was a machine and informed us he was on his way to open up the restaurant in Mexico City after this was said and done which seemed appropriate, the guy was good!
So needless to say it is a great honor for myself whenever Chef Mina is around. Here is one course I had a chance to take a shot of for his 20 top in the restaurant tonight.
Sous vide lone peak beef, methocel truffle gnocchi, cauliflower puree, foraged maitake, FORVM glazed pearl onions.

More J. Girardot benefit dinner

2009-12-05T11:15:00.002-05:00

We didn't have a driver for the moving truck to get to the Ritz so I was nominated to drive. We loaded all our savory then pulled into the loading dock by pastry and I watched them loading all these super delicate sugar pieces, chocolate sculptures, air compressors, and basically filled the entire back of the truck. So no pressure at all when you have 8 executive pastry chefs from all over the country staring at you saying "don't break anything". Lets just say it took me a while to get to the Ritz and I'm sure there where a lot of pissed off people behind me.

One of the main people that brought all of these chefs together for this benefit was our very own executive pastry chef, Laurent Branlard, two time world pastry champion
Here he is putting the finishing touches on his sugar showpiece which was no easy task to begin with, then add all day rain and 95% humidity but all of the showpieces made it throughout the night. There were 6 in all that I counted, some from Ewald Notter and his team, then Laurent and Frederic Monti along with there friends put up the other half. I like the utilization of the whole glazed cocoa pods on Laurent's showpiece.

The event itself went very well, our dish was
Rouget seared in cultured vermont butter and J. LeBlanc Olive Oil, celery root puree, methocel truffle gnocchi, tangerine fluid gel, minus 8 caviar, manni per mi olive oil, brunoise celery, red ribbon sorrel, citrus coriander blossoms, and chestnut chips. There was a lot going on and it was one of the more complex dishes that was presented. Other noteworthy dishes were the pork belly from primo with pickled mustard seeds and shallots, Voltaggio's sous vide shortrib with bitter crispy broccoli, Clay Conley's lamb tacos were killer. There were too many sweet treats to list but I had the best macaroon I have ever had by far along with candies from Norman Love, Keegan's chocolate cake, Laurents pain perdu, churros from the Notter school were awesome, I could keep going.

The evening wouldn't have been complete without some acoustic guitar and singing from Ace of Cakes co-star Geoff Manthorn who roamed around the event and talked to everyone. Cool guy.

Here are some Links to follow if you would like more info on the dinner and what it was about
keegan and voltaggio
orlando sentinel

Chef's Table,literally

2009-12-04T16:56:00.005-05:00

We had our chef's table on Wednesday and it was a blast. We brought in a lot of great product and it was all family style and mostly french-i-fied food. We were hosting the dinner at bluezoo for all of the chefs participating in the Jerome Girardot benefit dinner. Some of our diners included Keegan Gerhard, Michael Voltaggio(who did a good job of not letting anyone know who wins tops chef this season after being harrassed by a couple of people at the table), Frederic Monti, Ewald Notter, Clay Conley, Chris James, Sebastien Thieffine and another 20 ridiculously talented chefs.
Here are some of the products we had for them
Live Maine urchin

We got some beautiful Shigoku Oysters fro Tailor Shellfish farms in Washington.

These are by far the best oysters I have ever had. They come perfectly packed, individually scrubbed, nice cup size, creamy with a hint of minerality.

Some nice size loup de mer was flown in from Portugal.

This is the fish after coming out of the brine and ready to be sous vide, this was served with parsnip puree, petite bouchot mussels, micro leeks, and the sauce was reduced mussel cuisson that we creamed out.

We also had some toro with micro shiso, pickled daikon, and togarashi.

Blanquette de veau, carved cote de boeuf, artichokes barigoule, beet salad, azeitao, brillat savarin, tarentaise, couronne lochoise, humboldt fog, and about 7 different kinds of crusty bread from our friends at Deuce France bakery. Of course there we some traditional french desserts like galette de rois, mille-feuille, and many more.

It was a great night, after putting out each round of courses chef rob, arnaud and myself joined the table to eat with our guests and talk shop. An awesome experience and one that I will not forget.

Pate and events

2009-11-29T08:07:00.004-05:00

Turkey day leftovers are as much a part of the restaurant as they are at my house. Utilization is key whether it's folding the candied yams into some pancake batter for breakfast or constructing the perfect turkey sandwich. This year we had a lot of trim from our birds so we bagged it up with some bourbon and a touch of maple syrup.

We ground in a bunch of neuske's smoked bacon with the breast meat and livers so it would help in the moisture department. Next we folded in choux paste instead of a traditional panade. The choux paste really helped the texture and gave it a light feeling. If I ever need to make turkey burgers I will be folding in pate choux. When doing our test pieces to check for seasonings it was cooking up nice, light and moist. When putting it in the mold we added some chunks of sous vide pork belly and golden raisins. In retrospect we should have vac'd the farce once in the mold to remove all air but it still turned out ok.
We made a quick cranberry mostarda from our leftover fluid gel and there you go

There is always some shrinkage after baking a pate, I wanted to eliminate all that fat leaching out so we bagged some up and put the circulator on 64C. Dropped it in for 1 hour and pressed it between 2 plates to cool overnight. When I'm back on Monday I will check the results.

Coming up this week at bluezoo
-chef's table december 2nd- 50 chefs from all over the country here to honor Jerome Girardot with a fundraiser for him family. The menu is going to be family style and for the most part classical french, so far here is what we have

-blanquette de veau
-cote de boeuf...artichokes barigoule
-loup de mer...canaveral white shrimp, bouchot mussels cockle, vadouvan shellfish butter
-chestnut agnolotti, nantuckets, shaved brussels, butternut
-tapas style raw bar- east and west coast oysters, uni, stone crab, key west middle necks, torro, and an assortment of sauces and garnishes in various forms
-hammock hollows greens, tableside salt roasted beets, goat cheese fondue, black walnut
-cheese!!!! couronne lochoise just got in yesterday, super funk doughnut shaped cheese to resemble the "Crown of Loches"(town of loches, Loire Valley), just one of many awesome cheeses that our resident frenchy ordered.
-Laurent will be creating 5 different custom desserts for the dinner

the next day we are off to the Ritz here in Orlando for the actual fundraiser where we will be serving rouget, black truffle "gnocchi", and a slew of other micro sized time consuming prep that chef has yet to let us in on. It will be interesting.

Turkey plate

2009-11-28T08:30:00.002-05:00

Finally got this post up, here was our holiday turkey dish.
Willie Bird brined, sous vide, seared breast. Pumpernickel and brioche stuffing, haricot vert "cassarole", cranberry fluid gel, braised and pressed dark meat, and turkey jus.

Overall a good night, 425 covers, 108 turkey sold out of 139 prepped, sold out of pumpkin soup, 57 dessert trios of pumpkin creme brulee, apple pie, and cinnamon crunch ice cream sold as well. We are happy to serve our guests on the holidays and we try to give all of them on vacation a little taste of home.

Fixins

2009-11-26T00:56:00.002-05:00

Here is our turkey jus after a full day of slowly reducing and constant skimming. Nothing in the original stock was caramelized but still we end with a dark, clean, and clear jus. Tomorrow we will butter it out lightly for some shine.

The thigh and leg braising liquid was reduced as well then mounted with butter. We added chopped sage and fleur de sel then packed it into parchment lined hotel pans. The pans were stacked and we put a weight on top of them as they were cooling. Tomorrow we will portion and sear for service.

T-day is not complete without some Blis bourbon barrel aged maple syrup which went into a foam for our pumpkin soup. After the soup was made and foamed it tasted just like a warm, slightly more savory pumpkin pie.

Now on to the cranberry fluid gel. We made a gastrique base, added the cranberries and oj then cooked them down slowly. We strained the liquid and added our agar, then pureed. It tastes just like the Ocean Spray Cranberry in a can(which is what we were going for), but in a fluid gel state. Aaron and I commented on it last year after we made it and I ended up pureeing the stuff in a can for the family when I did T-day dinner the next day and it worked perfectly. Could we have just pureed the stuff in a can? Yes! I just can't justifying serving that to paying customers, we have to use fresh ingredients and show some value for price paid. I grew up with the gelled stuff that still had the ridges from the can in the shape of a tube on the plate just sliced so for me at home I love it but couldn't do it at the restaurant. I'm hoping there will be some left over for me to take home for my day after turkey sandwich.

One of the classics is the green bean casserole. We made a mushroom bechemel, blanched some verts, folded it all together then made little bunches. These will get topped with some focaccia bread crumbs and baked.

It's all coming together. We are a seafood restaurant mainly and will sell a hefty amount of fish tomorrow for our traveling guests that have no idea what Thanksgiving is all about in the US but we have prepped about 140 portions of our "not so traditional turkey dinner" in anticipation of the people that join us year in and year out for this holiday. Now all we have to do is execute.

Knee Deep in Willie Bird

2009-11-25T00:11:00.004-05:00

It's that time of year again and I'm sure most restaurants are in the same boat as we are. Turkey time is upon us and we have sourced some fresh Willie Birds from Sonoma. The birds are an all natural fresh product that really speaks for itself. Outside of killing your own bird it is hard to compete with this product. We spent all day yesterday breaking down the 24 birds ranging from 12-14lbs. The breasts and tenderloins have been separated, the legs and thighs as well. The carcass get's it's own VIP treatment which I will divulge later in the post. Livers reserved as well as all scrap for future charcuterie endevours.
Today we began portioning breasts where as in the past we would activa and role the breasts into cylinders, sometimes stuffing them with a farce, but this year we are headed in a different direction. This year is more of a focus on the bird itself, clean, clear, and precise. The tenderloins are cleaned of the sinew for kids portions. The legs and thighs are being braised this go round instead of cured and confit as in the past.
We went with a traditional braise instead of sous vide for the dark meat since the finished product requires it. It's is a little more difficult to pick and shred sous vide thighs and legs. Below we have arranged our thighs and legs for the braise.

**A note on the braising veg, stock, and Cib**
In the past every vegetable in the restaurant that went into a stock was heavily caramelized as well as the bones. We have been show a different way from our exec chef Robert Ciborowski and the difference speaks for itself. As a TK alum, Cib shows us how all the little details really make a difference. Combined with some Roger Verge research and TK technique our stocks and braises are better than ever. For one, celery is almost forbidden in stocks and any liquid that will be reduced to eliminate bitterness. Instead we add celery root to all our braises and stocks to replace it. I never get a bitter note from a reduction on line check anymore. So here were sub celery root for our celery and add fresh laurel, and thyme.
Beauty comes in such simple forms. Sometimes randomly arranged veg just looks like it was meant to be there.

This is where the stock comes into play. The carcasses of the turkeys get a nice long rinse in the kettle under cold water until the water coming out of the bottom is clear. At this point the only thing in the kettle is the turkey bones. Then fill just above the bones with cold water and heat the kettle gradually. We have replaced all the time it takes to roast the veg and the bones with standing over the kettle for about an hour, never leaving and constantly skimming. When it comes to a low simmer and all scum has been skimmed dump in half as much ice as you have water. If you are starting with 20 gallons, you will dump in 2ea, 5 gallon cambros of ice and TURN the kettle off at this point. The ice will cause the fat at the surface to congeal and it can be easily skimmed and removed. Now slowly start your kettle again skimming as the temperature comes to a simmer. Now add your veg(carrot, onion, celery root, thyme, laurel, traditional ratios for mirepoix to gallons of stock being made). Also you want to add about 1 bunch of leeks(whites only, very important you do not add the green tops) for every 5 gallons of stock being made. Let it come to a simmer again, and yes keep skimming. Now you let it go for 8 hours, skimming every 20 minutes. The stock will be as clear as day and the flavor really represents the time and effort.
We took this stock straight from the kettle and strained it several times then covered the legs and thighs with the stock, add a cartouche, and foil.

We let them braise for 5 hours @ 200F and bumped the temp slightly at the end to 250 for 30 minutes so the meat released from the bone easily. Braised turkey is usually pretty dry and mealy but this method turned out nicely.
Now we will pick all the meat, slowly reduce the braising liquid, mount it with butter, add any desired seasoning or herbs, and fold it into the picked legs and thighs. This will then be pressed into sheet pans and put in the fridge with a weight on them. On T-day, we will portion, sear, and reheat in the oven.

Next on the list of course was the stuffing. This recipe is an Ed Bilicki original that has stuck with us since he was the chef here before me. We have of course made our little modifications but for the most part you don't really need to mess with a good thing.
Toasted pumpernickel and brioche get tossed with caramelized mirepoix(yes this has celery in it), sage, turkey stock, and a custard base.

We press it into sheet pans and bake at 350F for 30 minutes with parchment, another sheet pan, and a couple cast iron pans on top then let it cool in the same fashion. It's basically a stuffing bread pudding. We portion it, sear it and put it on the plate.

So for now the braising liquid will finish reducing tomorrow and we will press the legs and thighs, the breasts are currently swimming in a brine then will be sous vide and seared for service. Mushroom bechemel has been made and tomorrow we make the haricot vert cassarole, focaccia scraps have been saved from service tonight to dry for a nice crunchy topping. Cranberry fluid gel will be addressed as well. The remaining stock has been reduced all day and I will post that tomorrow to show how a stock where nothing has been roasted still has great color and clarity, not to mention flavor. Stay tuned........did I mention I'm already sick of turkey!

Watermelon Radish

2009-11-22T15:31:00.003-05:00

We finally have a minute to breathe around here before the holidays which makes it easier to post a little more. We just got kicked about 20lbs of watermelon radishes for free so I have a feeling there will be a lot of compressed, pickled, grated, and spun radishes on the menu for the next couple of days.

Here it is shaved then hit with some Valderamma Arbequina extra virgin olive oil, sweet and salty goat cheese, sel gris, and some micro radish greens.

Foie Pain Perdu

2009-11-21T20:48:00.003-05:00

Chad and I were having a email discussion hitting on several topics,one being simplicity. There is no where to hide with simplicity, everything component must be on point. On that note, here is our foie pain perdu, the malaga soaked brioche is pan fried lightly, the center removed and replaced with a slice of foie torchon. Our "breakfast for dinner" dish. Then we fill it with some warm blis bourbon barrel matured maple syrup and finished with sel gris.

Simple, salty, sweet = ridiculous

Aroma

2009-11-18T15:50:00.003-05:00

Working on some aromas and how to incorporate them into dishes. Tried chesnuts and christmas spices but cinnamon took over everything. Herbs work well, now turning to spice blends to see how things will pan out. It's all trial and error, getting your temp right on the vaporizer is key. I tweeted Alex about aromas with nuts after his smoked hazelnuts but have had no luck with further tests. Just going to keep plugging, maybe a new utilization of our 2 compartment bowl from steelite. Next I think we will tackle BBQ aroma, something about the smell when you open the door to your smoker after 12 hours, need to capture that and give the same experience to our guests.

Travel Channel

2009-11-03T20:37:00.002-05:00

We entertained Samantha Brown's crew tonight who were celebrating their 10th anniversary on the Travel Channel. One of their courses was thinly sliced toro that we rolled up around pickled daikon, miso caviar, yuzu air, and micro tat soi.

This one was black cod, we did a 10% saltwater brine, rinsed, pat dry, cryovac with evoo, sous vide at 56C using the thermocoupler and cooking until 54C then let them rest at room temp for 10 minutes before warming gently in the oven. The agnolotti have a butternut filling, the foraged maitakes were slow cooked in beurre monte then a little sherry vin for acid. The sweetness of the squash and the acid of the sauce complimented the fatty cod well.

Demo and stuff

2009-10-28T00:49:00.005-04:00

Epcot Food and Wine asked us to come over for a demo. We said yes about 2 months ago to it and well later today we will be @ Epcot's Wonders of Life Pavilion, 1pm, putting together a version of our chilled maine lobster. Aaron Christian, chef de cuisine of bluezoo and myself will be there to walk through a couple techniques using our gastrovac to infuse lobster with orange essence, fennel in different textures, and whatever else we come up with from now until then.
It has been an interesting couple of days/weeks to say the least. We have been open for lunch the last 2 days with a big group at the hotel pushing out 225 covers for lunch then another 250 for dinner. We started the demo prep about 3 hours ago after service died down and will be back to work early to knock the rest out. It's Disney we are dealing with and they want everything laid out a month in advance but that is not how we work, it's a la minute improv for us so if you plan on coming I can guarantee some alterations of our components that have been printed and will be distributed for the demo.
That's cooking though, I can write a menu 2 months out but evolution takes over, you have to be able to go with the flow. Things will change. Plate ups, components, and techniques grouped together with getting your ass handed to you for the last month with no days off, throw in a couple lunch services, sleep deprivation, caffeine overload, alcohol abuse, literally living at work because there is too much to be done, 2 week notices, write ups, not knowing what day it is, yelling at FOH, getting yelled at by FOH, Todd in town for a dinner, empathizing, compromising........really I could go on.
So in the scheme of things just a normal month in terms of being a chef. With that said our demo should feel like a walk in the park compared to everything that we have gone through. Neither Aaron or myself like public speaking but we play off each other well and will knock this out. In closing come see two obsessed, semi coherent chefs talk about some food later today.

Jerome Girardot Fund

2009-10-26T15:27:00.002-04:00

Getting a chance to play host to an awesome crowd of chefs Dec 2nd that are here in town to do a dinner for the Jerome Girardot Fund. Follow this link and learn more about Jerome's story, what we are doing to help his family and the collaborating chefs that will be putting their time in for the dinner. I will be joining Robert Ciborowski at the Ritz Carlton on December 3rd as well to complete our portion of the dinner as well.

Food and Wine Behind the Scenes

2009-10-24T10:22:00.002-04:00

Kosta put up another great bunch of pictures from our recent food and wine dinner. Thanks to Kosta for taking the time to document and post all these pictures. We were so busy with all the preparations that I only took a half a dozen pictures or so.
Check out Kosta's blog and see all the pictures of the prep, the people and the food.

food and wine

2009-10-20T01:02:00.003-04:00

Too much going on right now to write a long post about it so I'll give you the link to Kosta's blog, this is the second year he has come down to help us out. It was a great dinner, and good food considering we were doing a reception, amuse, and 6 courses for what ended up being 165pp.
here it is

http://justforfood.wordpress.com/

Swan and Dolphin All Stars

2009-10-10T01:30:00.009-04:00

What an insane week so far and its not going to get any easier. Wednesday we did a chef table for 135pp for the Darden Restaurant groupwith some great food. We cooked everything in the room in front of the guests. Needless to say there wasn't time for pictures between plate up and making 135 parsley oil and isomalt bon bons.
Once that was done it was on to prep for tonight, 20pp, "blue light special"(if you've seen the previous post on this you know what I'm talking about), all the guest sat in our garde manger kitchen after a reception in our cooler with and ice bar and couple raw appetizer selections. Here is a picture of the garde manger kitchen when we were setting up.

We plated everything from the banquet kitchen adjacent to garde manger.

The amuse was buffalo chicken mousse(bresse of course), celery puree, buttered out hot sauce, crispy bresse chicken skin, celery julienne, celery leaf, bleu cheese espuma.

The first course was french onion soup. The top part of the bowl had an Echire butter toasted crouton topped with a nice melted slice of comte and brunoise veg.

The servers place the bowl down and removed the top to reveal encapsulated french onion soup on top of an agar onion disc.

Here is how it was presented to the guest

A little ham air topped off the soup before it was covered by the lid

Our deconstucted Waldorf had an apple puree, apple gelee, brunoise apple, nitro freeze dried raisin powder, encapsulated yogurt-mayo-herb dressing, lemon juice powder, red wine vinegar powder, walnut powder, and a celery root gelee.

Here we are beginning the plate up of the rouget.

The rouget was seared in J.Leblanc and Echire butter, topped with a cartouche then pressed. Chef Cib's barigoule artichoke puree was the base, We followed up with micro parisiene of butternut squash, carrot, celery tourne, olive puree, buttered out meyer lemon vin(echire again), johnny jump ups, and chervil.

Now on to the main which was a dry aged beef tenderloin, la ratte potatoes finished with whipped echire and whiped cream, sugar and ghost white pumpkin, micro red ribbon sorrel, frissee, truffle coulis, truffle coins, savoy cabbage, and bordelaise.

Here is a closer shot of the veg.

After that Laurent went to work with a strawberry and lemon verbena custard, violet macaroon, chocolate and pear pairing, then topped it off with some tonka bean ice cream. Ridiculous to say the least.

Here is a shot of the plate minus the ice cream which went on top of some brown butter crumbs.

A very successful dinner and great to work with all the chefs from the hotel. here is everyone that had a hand in it for perspective
Robert Ciborowski-exec chef swan and dolphin
Arnaud Violtat-exec sous
Dan Herman-exec sous
Devin Queen-exec chef Il Mulino
Bogdon Sonta-complex chef de cuisine
Shannon Murray-Garden Grove exec chef
Paul Bunny-Garden Grove Sous Chef
Russ Neideg- dolphin banquet chef
Greg Shimoda-complex garde manger chef
Ceasar mendoza-dolphin garde manger chef
Laurent Branlard-complex exec pastry chef
Wesley Mayton-Dolphin exec pastry chef
Daniel Richard de la rosa- bluezoo jr. sous chef
and myself Chris Windus-bluezoo exec

It's great to put all the chefs on property in one kitchen. Everyone brings years of experience and it really shows what teamwork, drive, attention to detail, and communication can achieve.

rabbit 5 ways

2009-10-02T23:11:00.002-04:00

One of the benefits of working in a hotel is when banquets has a site visit. They usually end up with leftover product and since we are the only restaurant on property that can actually alter our menu and utilize these products we get all the goodies. Last night we had 15 rabbits with only the hind legs removed handed to us. So we started breaking them down to loins, kidneys, frenched racks, fore legs, and scrap for stock. It's a tedious project but well worth it. Tonight we did a black pepper pasta, carrot sheet(agar and gellan), sous vide the legs overnight with duck fat and made a rillette, soaked the kidneys in milk and then basted them with brown butter, sous vide the racks ahead of time then pan seared to mr on pick up, and again sous vide the loins a la minute and gently finished in the pan as well(in my opinion the hardest part of the rabbit to execute correctly).

We agar clarified the stock and ran it through a coffee filter, the servers frenched it tableside, we added a little lemon juice and basil oil to the consomme to help with the overall flavor of the dish. Some radish greens and turnips as well.

In the end you have
1 loin
2 rack
3 kidney
4 rillette
5 consomme

The saute station loves the four pan pick up. A lite fall dish, no all we have to do is get the servers to really push it. Rabbit in Orlando is not an easy sell so it is up to them to really sell the customer on it. I'll usually give them the go ahead in pre-shift to spiel the guests on an item like this, "Try it, if you don't like it I'll buy it for you", a risk you sometimes have to take to get things moving and get people to try new things but so far we haven't bought anyone dinner on that recommendation.

ICC PHOTOS

2009-09-28T01:13:00.004-04:00

Not the greatest photos but the best I could get between typing notes and trying to get some shots in.

Bouley was sick! Sharing his pholosiphy of kaiseke mixed with traditional french technique. Some of the best dishes I saw put together.

The master started by cutting the scales off a nice japanese hamachi with his custom Nenox knife instead of using a scaler so the flesh under the skin would not be damaged. I was in my fishroom here at bluezoo within the first 10 minutes of being back in the restaurant doing the same.

Jose Andres brought a great stage prescence and personality along with some of his chefs from minibar. I have already implemented two of his techniques. Littleneck clams cryovac'd and poached in simmering water for 10-15 seconds then removed and into ice, then shuck. Gives them a much nicer finished look and of course topped it off with some iberico jamon broth.

Juan Marie Arzak shared his history, philosophy, and love of food with us.

Doc Sconz and Juan Marie after his demo. It was a pleasure to finally meet Doc and his son.

Dave and Nils doing their thing, and doing it well. If I was on my way to culinary school I know where I would be going.

After the demo Dave let a couple of students and attendees take their shot at killing some live black sea bass by severing the spinal cord above the gill plate and again at the base of the tail then threading a piano wire down the spine ceasing all commands from the brain for the flesh to tighten and go into rigor. The result, crunchy sashimi, it actually had a cruch to it and it was great. I don't know how much live fish I will be bringing into the restaurant but I have a new trick for on the boat sashimi next time I go fishing.

There were so many more things to the ICC. I wish I had some pics of Sean Brock's presentation. It was a history lesson on a plate. Our good friends Chadzilla, Chef K, and Fabian. It was good to see Alex of Ideas in Food again, got to hang out with Kosta again and it was a pleasure. 3PO made a special guest appearence, Danny, my sous chef was lucky enough to attend after I won a free ticket to the event after filling out the culinary trends survey. I think he will benefit from this greatly, next year it's Aaron's turn. Seeing George, an old cook now at Olives NY, Mac and Dixon from Olives for hooking us up with some grub. Momofuku Ssam bar was good as always, pork buns, beef tendon salad, their version of the McRib, pickles and kimchee were all good. Pastrami on rye at the Stage deli was over the top, have to get it all the way of course with coleslaw and russian dressing. Halaal Chicken stand on 53rd and 6th at 3:45am with a line of about 75 people waiting for some street food. JB Prince store, could spend $10,000 in 5.5 seconds, Korin shop down by the Brooklyn bridge, ridiculous. Pre-drinking/post-drinking hot dog from who ever and where ever, Baoguette booth at the ICC was nice.

To finish it all off we had a great meal at Marea, Chef Michael White's new place next to Colombus circle and the Essex House. It was an amazing meal with great company. Myself, Danny, Kosta, and Chris(3PO, name that stuck, don't ask) celebrating his 25th birthday. It was coastal Italian cuisine at it's finest. Awesome uni covered with a melting paper thin slice of lardo on some fresh baked bread, rustic and ridiculous. All the courses were amazing and it didn't hurt walking into the restaurant, sitting two tables away from David Bouley and Pierre Gagnaire, and all of us looking at each other saying to ourselves "this is the shit".

Information overload, it will take some time to process and digest. A great experience.

The Man

2009-09-22T08:23:00.004-04:00

Pierre Gagnaire, don't really have to say much more.

Dinner last night at Marea was sick, I knew we were in the right place when we were sat two tables away from David Bouley and Pierre Gagnaire sharing a meal.
Have to do a separate post on the dinner itself, amazing and a big thanks to chef Michael White, ridiculous flavor combinations, super clean.

Round 1, new menu tasting

2009-09-09T15:45:00.003-04:00

Here are some of the photos from round one of our new menu tasting. Tomorrow we go again with a whole new group of upper management and also adding more plates that weren't put up today. We are trying to stay modern, please our family guests, and streamline for the busy months ahead. It is a balancing act but one I think we do well. So here you go

chilled maine lobster...citrus, fennel, samphire

baja octo...octopus, fresh garbanzo, red ribbon sorrel, acg emulsion

dirty south swordfish...bbq rub, house smoked tasso risotto, rock shrimp, littleneck

heritage half chicken...macaire potato, seasonal mushrooms, truffle chicken jus

lone peak beef tenderloin...parsnip, brussels, marble potatoes, agro dolce
(the beef is out of colorado, grass fed,100% organic grain finished, super clean and fresh)

and the piece de resistance...

4 story hill farm dry aged beef...entrecote, carrot caraway puree, seasonal organic vegetables, red wine glaze
surf supplement...king crab medallions(20)

After tomorrow we will have finalized price points and finished dishes. Then we start staff FOH training on Friday then go live on Wednesday September 16th. It's been a long process and I'm glad we are nearing the end.

That's a big Spiny

2009-09-02T21:15:00.003-04:00

Adam's catch after free diving in 90ft of water. Huge spiny lobster.

Also hit a 50lb cobia at 80ft on a spear gun. Not at work tonight but will twitpic it tomorrow when I get in.

Octo

2009-08-28T20:58:00.004-04:00

Still testing for the fall menu. This will be similar to but not the exact flavor profile we will be using but had some VIPs in so had to give them some of our sous vide octopus. Abondoned the red wine braise for sous vide. Why not, it's perfect every time.

After it cooled we removed the skin and suckers. Then a little olive oil, herbs, seasoning, and on the plancha. Stayed super tender, hit it up with the old ACG powder, heirloom tomatoes from chef garden, and some red ribbon sorrel.

Direction

2009-08-27T00:37:00.002-04:00

I have written briefly of menu testing and the rigors of hotel menu changing, here are some thoughts

Aaron is working some german influence on berkshire, creamed apple kraut, pumpernickel, braised red cabbage puree. I want to incorporate some beer, honey crisp apple slaw, and smoke.

four story hills beef with a surf supplement
popcorn sweetbreads, sunchoke 2 way, sorrel, royal trumpet
octopus, red wine braise, grilled, chickpea, spicy, dirty martini vin
kobe flank steak, chipotle, salsa verde
breakfast flatbread, quail eggs, country ham, parm
bacon wrapped corvina, heirloom beans, tasso, frisee
tuna, nicoise components, anchovy gribiche
brandt beef, baby brussels, mixed marble potatoes, celery
monkfish, stewed root vegetable, red pepper noodle
chilled salt block lobster, citrus, honey, clover
caramelized fennel jus finished with orange butter, as an option for our simply grilled fish sauce, I sense agar clarification
heritage poulet rouge, turnip, bitter greens

new product coming out of Hudson Valley Foie Gras called Lola, male mallard duck crossbred with female peking. The yeild is a 3lb bird supposedly with greater flavor. Sample will be in on Friday, I'll let you know. Limited production and only a few distributors carrying this bird as it has not yet hit mainstream production.

Lots of ideas floating around, especially with the addition of the gastrovac. Nothing but testings, tastings ,costings, and specs to come in my near future.

Salt Block Scallop

2009-08-25T19:36:00.003-04:00

Amuse tonight was ox heart tomato, glazed purple carrot, kohlrabi, spinach, corn silk, chanterelle, and some scallops finished on our newly acquired salt blocks.

I've been wanting some of these for a while now. Just put them in the oven for 20 minutes on 400, then on a serviette and finished cooking while seasoning them as they were on their way out to the table.

Menu testing

2009-08-17T22:37:00.003-04:00

It's that time of year to start thinking about our fall menu. We'll be picking up some dishes with heartier earthy tones for the upcoming season. We brought in some Four Story Hill Farm Cote de Boeuf. It has been dry aged for 28 days and has become one of my favorites pieces of meat.

We did a traditional bordelaise and a carrot caraway puree that came out really nice. The veg will change with whatever we have in house on top of a couple of staples that will always be on the plate(shrooms, turnip, eg..) Thinking about some carrot noodles as well to drape over and around the veg.

Part of being in the hotel environment everything has to be tested, documented, costed, and ran as a special to see what kind of feedback we get from our guests. When we get our dishes together then we do a tasting for f&b key players, exec chef and exec sous of the hotel, everything gets ran by Todd and he throws in what he wants. If everything is good then we go for a big change at once, if not we re-tool and look at problem dishes individually. Once everyone is happy with the pricing, the look, and the taste we schedule staff meetings for training. We'll go over all the products being used, their origin, what's special about them, any allergy concerns and substitutions for the FOH and BOH. Then we prep and put it into motion. It's a long process, of course we are always tweaking dishes and changing little things but the initial revamp is massive. This is the time of year where I wish I was at an independent restaurant, change everything all the time, tell the servers at pre-shift what is going on and the cooks will get a list of what they have to do that day and figure it out. Would be nice.

Pick a Peck

2009-08-12T22:12:00.003-04:00

It's not everyday you come back from a week off and there are 2 hotel pans full of all kinds of peppers waiting for you. Then I went into our mise en place cooler to find some already pickling. Those little purple peppers will put you down, but for the most part the others have good heat and not over the top.

What to do with a ridiculous amount of peppers but make rellenos. Rock shrimp rellenos, black bean risotto...

Can't go wrong with that. The meticulous peeling, de-seeding, and stuffing brings me back to Flagstaff,Az when I was working at a little mexican joint back in the day. Perfect bar food, now I need a cerveza.

jamon, melon, cherry

2009-08-04T01:15:00.003-04:00

The hotel owners were in tonight with some friends so we put together this little taste. Iberico ham, "melons under less pressure than normal"**, port and balsamic pickled cherry, whipped watermelon, mint blossom, radish green, and miel d'Acacia vin.

Simple, and can't really go wrong with a sliver of the iconic spanish ham on just about anything.

**Note, Dave Arnold dislikes the term compressed in relation to vac sealing. So what do we call it? Melons that were at some point in time under their normal atmospheric pressure? I see his reasoning, he understands the process and why call it that if it is not that at the time it is served. Do we have to call it anything? I see why chefs call it that with the action of the bag in the vac machine but how do we reverse this widely used misconception? Is there is a better way of describing it to our guests in a way they will understand.

Beet 1/3 Bras

2009-07-23T21:32:00.003-04:00

Some awesome product from last nights chef table entered the bluezoo today. Pretty much a tour de chef's garden. Here we took some nice baby beets, 25 different herbs and blossoms, truffle fluid gel, shaved truffle, and topped with a fleur de sel, meyer lemon, acacia honey, and J.leBlanc evo vinaigrette.

Our salad has only 1/3 the amount of components Michel Bras' famed Gargouillou salad contains.

VIP

2009-07-23T07:46:00.003-04:00

We did the chefs table tonight in our garde manger kitchen and cooler. When we do something like this Chef Rob, Arnaud, Dan, myself, Bogdon, and Shimo handle the food. This was chef Rob's menu and a sick one at that. We all get our lists and produce our parts of the dishes and bring it together. this is the second installation of the chefs table and it works out pretty well and have had good feedback so far.
First the guests arrive in the lobby, are greeted, then walked through the blue light lit back of the house to get to the gm cooler where overcoats await the guests.

We turned the gm cooler into an ice bar where the guests get some nice cocktails with lots of vodka options to start them off.

in the same cooler was an ice carving setup for oysters, mignonettes, and various cold and frozen apps all

after 20 minutes in the cooler the guests move on to the kitchen where there places are marked by personalized cutting boards.

The kitchen is set and the decor is neatly arranged food stufs

Amuse
sous vide squab, cherry jus, brunoise consomme, micro tarragon

1st
summer melon, tomato sorbet(frix air), baby leek, meyer lemon

2nd
scallop and clam, clam butter, clam air, red pepper noodle, baby squash, 10 summer blosssoms

the clam is on a rong of red pepper gelee that is also filled woth the clam and cornichon butter

3rd
iberico wrapped wsb, chanterelle, radish, roe, lobster bouillon
This was a cool technique, we wrapped the fish in iberico, seasoned, then twisted them up in the foil. Then sear in a dry pan in the foil and finish in the oven. I have to admit that this is the first time I've ever seared foil but chef said this is classic TK.

You can see the fish does look seared and the iberico has melted onto the fish. I had to temp the fish out because with this preparation. I couldn't get a good read on it, the fish stays super soft and moist.

lobster bouillon was finished at the table

4th
four story hills dry aged cote de boeuf, grandma cib's gnocchi, peas and carrots, bordelaise glazed sweetbreads. I'll put four story dry aged up against Kobe any day of the week.

there is truffle fluid gel, pea tendril puree, truffle vin(manni evo), and also sauced the beef tableside.

It was a great dinner. It's good to know you work for someone that everytime you cook together you know your going to learn something. It may not be agar clarification or reverse spherification but some serious solid food that can stand up to some of the best restaurants in the country. The butter, the manni olive oil, the vinegars, the peppercorns, the herbs, proteins, veg, all procured from the best. It's nice to work with these products especially during a period where you don't get to see them that often.

Gotcha!

2009-07-19T21:50:00.004-04:00

Being where we are it's sometimes a challenge to do new and interesting things and have them be accepted by the masses. Of course creative menu writing helps, being a little vague in the description area can help us do what we want to do. In my eyes that's what I want as a diner. I don't want your paragraph long description of a dish, surprise me. It doesn't always work for everyone though. Right now we are flooded with families on vacation. If we want to survive we have to adapt to our clientele and their needs or wants. We run a lot more pasta\italian based dishes and scaled back family style menu on top of our a la carte to get the extra business that wouldn't have come through the door.
I recently read a post from Shola about his experience at Corton and listening to Drew Neiport saying, "the cream rises to the top", referring to all these restaurants offering cheaper menus to get people in the door will slowly sink to the bottom and how the ones holding their ground and don't give up on their ideals or style of food just because the economy sucks will rise to the top. I agree to an extent. If I was talking about NY then yes. Orlando isn't NY or even close to being any kind of culinary mecca so we have to take what we can get at the moment.
That being said, If we have to do basic, simple food for the masses then we have to slide these new techniques into our dishes where we can. Here is an example with some mozzarella orbs that we put in the pasta.

Looks like mozz until they stick their fork in it and all that rich mozz fondue seeps out. That's the "Gotcha!"

Sometimes I will argue the necessity of a technique, does it make the food better? In this case it does, when the mozz orb breaks and mixes into the sauce it enriches the dish.

By no means are we reinventing the wheel with but at least these little things keep us going in a time of split plate, separate checks, mac'n'cheese, 2 for 1, free glass of wine, $24.99 three course meal awesome time that we are in.

Flavors of Merguez

2009-07-18T15:52:00.004-04:00

Still playing around with the charcuterie. We are learning a lot every time we do these cured items from fat content, flavor profile, the morphing of the flavor form start to 2 or 3 or 8 months down the road. Even the process in itself, trying to make it more efficient each time. This is a semi-dry lamb sausage we stuffed the other day. We made a harissa paste, mixed it with the ground lamb, cure 1 and bactoferm frm-2.

We ferment for 2 days at 85F, 80% humidity for the bactoferm to drop the ph to 5.0.

Now we will hang for 18 days at 55-60F before it goes into cold storage. We cooked a piece off and it has the characteristic spicy merguez taste but not as oily. This may just be the result of the recipe being a little different from a normal merguez which is not intended for aging.
So after today this will go in the meat locker and we'll check back in a couple weeks to see where we're at.

Side note, flavors of merguez could be a pretty cool dish on it's own.

Squirrel Hole

2009-07-16T22:56:00.004-04:00

It's that time of year again to start picking, preserving, drying, salting, saving. The cabinet in my office is starting to get full with our preserves and pickles the we have been making for our fall menu. After all the pickled ramps and preserved spring vegetables are gone, we start with more summer time fruit and veg. Right now we have 3 different cherry varieties working, long peppercorn, spicy thai cherry bombs, and a port balsamic.

The goose berries could possibly end up being paired with some chilled lobster.

ICC

2009-07-15T21:56:00.003-04:00

Finally got the go ahead for ICC. I didn't make it last year. I was in Pomona cooking for the Directors Dining Room, one month, no budget, only 2 chefs, doing 40 covers a night, new menu every night. I found myself shaving white truffles into my omelet for breakfast or pasta for lunch, sifting through my mini fridge in the hotel room loaded with shaved wagyu tenderloin, ox-heart tomatoes, fat tire, honeycomb and humboldt fog.

Bresse Chickens, brittany lobster, pouisson, live korean halibut, lupe de mer, rouget, maitake, st. pierre, toro, geoduck, monterrey abalone and scallops were regulars on the menu. It was a good experience and a chance to work with the best ingredients money could buy so I can't really complain.
Not this year. We are leaving the DDR to the california chefs, have fun, I'm going to NY. See you all there. I think Bar Boulud, Tailor, Eleven Madison Park, Saam Bar, Corton, and Del Posto would be a good start. I'm probably already behind on making some resos.

5 Spice Bacon

2009-07-07T21:14:00.003-04:00

Our chinese bacon finished curing. We cold smoked it with a mix of ginger peach tea and birch. 5 Spice is one of those love it or hate it flavors. In moderation it works but can easily overpower. Here it was nicely balanced and not overly offensive in the clove department. Here is the smoker in action.

Pork fried rice family meal tomorrow??

At least that is what I would make if I was going to be here but I am gone for a week on some forced time off for labor purposes. I'll take it, get to spend some time with the family, get my head together for menu change, finish United States of Arugula and relax.

Fennel and Coccoa Rubbed Lonzino

2009-07-07T14:59:00.003-04:00

This was a test run on a recipe we found on Grant Van Gameran's site. We took suckling pig loins, cured and rubbed them. Put them in a beef middle casing and hung in the meat locker. Being suckling loins they moisture loss happened fast. We just hung them on 6-24 and could have actually pulled them a week ago and would have been ready. They should be around 38% moisture loss and we were pushing 58% so not a lot of yield but a really nice flavor.

This was one of Baxter's best that he has produced. It's all trial and error, super salty, or not enough and you loose it to spoilage. There is a fine line. We are using some product to assist us like bactoferm and insta cures since the Florida environment isn't really the best place for Charcuterie. Another month left on our suckling pig prosciutto, can't wait.

Georgia Inspired

2009-07-06T20:38:00.004-04:00

Utilizing some vidalia onions in our pasta tonight. The tortellini are filled with a mixture of pureed confit vidalia, potato, and extra virgin. When removed from the water they are tossed in a smoked burro fusso. We paired these with an orange molasses brined pork belly we picked up from Snake River Farms, some chanterelles that happened to turn up after not being utilized at another event in the hotel, some evo pudding, onion blossoms, arugula, and peach.

This is my flavor test run for the new pork that will be on the menu. Instead of vidalia confit tortellini we will agar and mold spheres of the onion puree, double bread them and fry for a nice liquid center vidalia "fritter".

The onion blossoms are intense! I recommend not eating these on their own as Aaron and I each took a nice bite out of one of the blossoms and ended up regretting it. I have come to the conclusion that there is pretty much nothing on the planet that will get that taste out of your mouth if you have too much at once. Eat one and it will only take about 4 hours for it to go away. Needless to say, we are using them sparingly as to not offend anyone's taste buds but it is a good background flavor in moderation.

Chanterais

2009-07-02T11:02:00.004-04:00

It's that time of year again and our chanterais melons have come in from Charlie at Hammock Hollow Farms. The whole walk in smells like melons. They are similar to cantaloupe but far superior flavor. The executive sous chef of the hotel Arnaud Violtat reminded me that "they are so good because they are french" like him.

I replied by saying "of course they are french, they are only good for two weeks out of the year." It was all in good fun, I've worked for and been yelled at by enough french chefs I can get away with it, sometimes.

Here is last years chanterais plate of mint yogurt, procuitto, honeydew fluid gel, and compressed chanterais. This was also one of the first dishes where we used fluid gels on our menu.

We used them tuesday on our tasting with some dungeness crab, yuzu rice vinegar compressed heart of palm, and whipped coconut, micro shiso.

Olive Oil Pudding

2009-07-01T01:04:00.003-04:00

A balance of sweet and salty olive oil goodness.