Ramp Top Gnocchi

We made the gnocchi dough and added a ramp top puree to bring it together. They didn't take on as much of the bright green color as we would of liked but they did have an earthy, garlic\leek flavor in the background. First we wash, oil, season and fork the potatoes. Bake until done,rice the potatoes through a ricer, not a food mill, an old school potato ricer. Then add egg yolk, flour, salt, and the ramp top puree. Mix very lightly, almost like making biscuit dough so they do not become gummy or chewy. Then roll them out into strands about as thick as your pinkie finger. We cut them into a different shape though. As you cut(about 1 cm in length), roll the dough forward and back to make little pyramid shapes. Then we blanch, shock, and toss with evo, season again then store until we pick them up in brown butter. Tonight's "chef pasta" also had creamy nettles, sous vide ramp bottoms, spring onion confit, and some more ramp tops sauteed with everything, then topped it off with butter poached crab tails.

Stinging Nettles tonight

Tonight on the list for seasonal veg we have our nettles, ramps, favas, spring onion, morel, english peas, artichokes and salsify. We are running a free form spring veggie lasagne topped with sopraffina herb ricotta, focaccia bread crumbs, and garlic chips.

The pot has been stirred

Chris Cosentino of offalgood.com has posted some interesting PETA related news. After being threatened by a PETA related group for continued service of foie gras at Incanto and Mark Pastore's virtual masterpiece on the foie industry in response to these threats, he has posted a link to a website whose sole responsibility is to expose PETA for who they really are. I'm sure most people join and donate money to PETA because they love animals and truly feel like their money is going to help animals in need. The radical extremists that run this organization have found a few new ways to spend the money instead of using it to save abused or mistreated animals. Hey, you can do whatever you want to do, that is your right but if I were a member of PETA I would read this and see what my donations are contributing to. Join the other 166,000 people that have already done it and sign the petition to have PETA's tax exemption status removed. Either way I could care less about them, but when restaurant chefs and owners are threatened, the way we live is effected, our safety is compromised, and our businesses are effected then I assure you that we won't just sit back and take it.

Cocoa Puffs

Salted whipped milk with layers of chocolate meringue.

Dancing Pompano

This is a love hate relationship with this piece of equipment. We have a giant rotisserie on the front line of our show kitchen to cook the fish for our "dancing fish" entree. The fish twirl and rotate around the grill while 3 wok burners below slowly roast them. This is a custom piece, chef has two more in his Boston and Seattle restaurants but they are wood burning and are much more efficient. We are not allowed to have wood burning anything on our property so we had to go with gas.
The problem in the past was we couldn't find or get parts for it, the burners clog up every other day or it would go off track. We have a new company that takes care of it for us and it actually works the way it should. The fish have a smoked paprika rub and are served with fingerling chorizo hash that is pressed cut and seared with a green olive, whole grain mustard and orange supreme salad. They are then filleted tableside by your server. Right now pompano are everywhere but we will run yellowtail snapper, v-liners, dorade, black sea bass, kampachi, or anything we can get in the 1.5-2# range that will fit on the plate.
When the grill is working properly it produce a slight char on the fish while keeping it moist. When we have the grill loaded, the people walking in to the dining room see this and then they want it. We have been consistently selling 20-30 a night.

Chicharones

Something good always happens when you have lots of whole pigs laying around and a brazilian prep cook\butcher.





Maybe a new bar snack special. Just need a little more meat attached to the skin and we're in business.

Coming to America

Our pastry chef Laurent has all kinds of connections in France. The french food scientist that was working with Laurent on his alcohol spray and infused sugars is producing caviar. All I can get out of Laurent is that the frenchy scientist is also named Laurent, other than that I know he is building a plant here to produce said caviar. It has a four month shelf life and he will have around 30 flavors available. He gave me a couple samples, one was red wine vinegar and shallot. Basically a mignonette caviar designed for oysters. I also had the casis, mint, and caramel. The caviar DOES pop like freshly made alginate caviar but he is making it with something else, possibly gellan. They are perfect spheres and very flavorful, not like the flavor robbing alginate caviar pretty much everyone has seen or made. Here is some sample packaging



They are available in France right now but they are expensive, around 15 euros for 250g. When they come out here I foresee every oyster bar using the Les Perles de O'Cean, as they should. They are delicious.