The Farm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.