Spring Vegetable Tasting

Had the GM of the hotel in tonight with the F&B Director, along with the GM of the Chicago Sheraton Waterfront. Having been to Chicago to eat at Alinea early last year and I wanted to produce something with Alinea esque inspiration. I didn't want to copy anything, I just used the style of the plate up as my inspiration. One of my courses as Alinea was the white bean course, a white bean puree with a dozen different garnishes placed around the white bean puree in the center. I went with the same plate design but without the one element in the middle to pair with each of the other garnishes.
12- peas and carrots...english peas, purple carrot, pea puree, roasted carrot puree
1-salsify
2-micro patty pan squash
3-nettle
4-fiddle head
5-spring onion
6-braised baby fennel
7-waterkist tomato
8-artichoke...acg(it's a todd thing)
9-Morel
10-ramp
11-cuke blossom

Wish I could of snapped a picture but we were getting rocked. I also sent out our John Daly, and a reconstituted tomato basil course that we prepared in the frix air. The texture that the frix air produces is awesome, since I did not add any fat or ultra tex, gelatin, ect, to the tomato water before processing it looked like granita but super fine, smooth and melt in the mouth. We added some basil flowers that got a dip in liquid nitrogen and a touch of basil oil. Also when we blended the tomatoes we added lots of fresh basil, evo, fleur de sel, and then super bagged it before freezing in the canister.
Overall a good night, a good service, and some good dishes that left the kitchen. Not a bad way to end a 14 day stretch. 2 days off in a row hasn't happened in 2 months and I'm ready for some family time.

Nemox Frix Air

A new toy showed up yesterday. The Nemox Frix Air reconstituting machine is similair to a paco jet but just a little bit different. The canister seals and the pressure drops to around 2-5mb while processing takes place.




I have some canisters freezing and will play with it tomorrow. It also has a whipping blade, I'm going to attempt to make aioli in 1 minute. I put one egg yolk, a little mustard and some evo in the canister. We'll see tomorrow.

Arnold Palmer

This is the my version of the Arnold Palmer, or more specifically a John Daly as this is the alcoholic version. I made a fresh lemonade with a touch of fleur de sel and gelled it up with gelatine then put it in the ISI. I made a Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka gel with agar and some good southern sweet tea.




About 30% sweet tea and 70% firefly, .8% agar. We also made a sweet tea isomalt garnish. 200g Isomalt, 2g lipton tea cut out of the tea bag, mix it up, put between two silpats that are between two sheet pans, press the sheets pans, and bake at 365 until melted, remove the top layer of sheet pans and silpat, let dry, break up and hold in dehydrator. We only have to do this for 1200 people so it should be fun. We will have two antigriddles, and are also serving suckling pig with whipped turbodog, and a fuid gel of louisianna hot sauce. We usually pair wines but we are turning to one of our beer reps for a couple kegerators and a selection of Abita beers.

Four Story Goodie Bag

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





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

Domestic Mangalitza

The NY Times article on the Hungarian Mangalitza breed of curly haired pig has sparked a craze in the pork lover world. I think if anyone writes anything that says"so and so sous chef of the French Laundry sous vides the belly and serves it with..." then there is going to be a run on it. Basically, its the kobe of the pig world, or kurobuta squared. They are well marbled and prized for their belly. As soon as we saw it I put the word out to our specialty purveyor, he was looking for a couple weeks and nothing. Now sources are turning up. Our guy estimates that there are only about 1000 heads of domestic Mangalitza, but I have found producers all over europe. We were fortunate enough to get a small sample. We received a nice piece of the collar attached to a huge hunk of fat back. I see mangalitza lardo in the future.

Patty Pan Squash Blossom

It was VIP city tonight, we just got a shipment in from chef's garden. They hit us up with some patty pan squash blossoms. Since we were going to have a lot of amuse going out we wanted to stay simple.




We dredged them in a very light tempura, fried and served with truffle aioli.

Blue Abalone

Tonight we had some New Zealand Abalone from OceaNZ Blue. It is a farmed abalone and the product is of good quality. It's no Monterrey Bay abalone, but the next best thing. It is a farmed product and their operation is impressive. We had a rep bring it to us about 6 months ago and we have been using it here and there ever since.



I love the the abalone shell, a work of art in its own right.



These New Zealand abalone have a trademark blue tint to the shell.




As for the preparation, we clean and trim them. Slice nice and thin, then give them a very fine score on both sides. I compressed them with a little olive brine and evoo for about an hour. It seasoned them throughout. A little flour, and a brown butter sear and they are done.



In the shell is some of our spring vegetables that we have been running and a little parsnip puree. The sweetness of the parsnip went well with the brined abalone.



Now the question arises. Is this a sustainable product? In terms of not depleting the wild abalone population I would say yes. In terms of carbon footprint, maybe not. I would say the actual production of the product seems sustainable but we are getting it from New Zealand. So some may make the argument that yeah you're not depleting wild stocks but you are depleting other natural resources from packaging, to shipping, and a whole laundry list of other things I probably haven't thought of.

I've seen this argument come up with the new influx of Australian farmed hiramasa in the states. A farmed yellowtail, but ferocious eaters. It takes a lot more feed to get them fattened up and that feed usually is containing fish oils and meal. Where do you get fish oils and meal from, more fish. So where is the sustainable line drawn? There has to be a balance. When you go out of local, biodynamic, delivered by bicycle, harvested by hand, watered with recycle rain collections, solar powered ovens to cook everything, can we be fully sustainable? I believe some people are at least attempting to fix some of the problems we have made for ourselves within our environment, right now that is better than nothing.