Eat Local Week for Orlando

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.