Click here to view the embedded video.

On the first of May we hosted a “luncheon” on the L line of the New York City subway. The subway is a familiar place, providing a necessary means of transportation for many New Yorkers. Its stairwells, turnstiles, platforms, trains and unpredictable elements are all-too-familiar to its dedicated patrons. One begins to know the exact time of travel from one destination to another. One begins to intuit the conditions of a ride, anticipating smooth stretches and knowing when to brace for a jarring turn. Through a series of familiar gestures, presented in commonplace locations in unfamiliar ways, we set out to challenge a habitual experience.

We wanted to serve a meal in a dynamic and strained location, to give ourselves a challenge that could only be overcome through teamwork and partnership. It is with great honor and pride that I say that this event born in the mind of Mr. Cigar in the back of a luxury car somewhere lost in the bowels of Los Angeles came alive when it was brought to team of creative and inspired people below. I am honored to have such good friends and compatriots that can take such ridiculous ideas and bring the into fruition no matter the adversity.

It is with that that I am honored to say thank you to everyone listed here below as this event could not have taken place without your energy, effort and support. No matter how big or small a roll you thought you played without you this would never have happened.

My sincerest thanks go to:

Daniel Castano – founder  – a razor, a shiny knife
Jonny Cigar – Winetology
Mike Lee – Studiofeast
Linda Lou – The Cheeky Chef
Andrew Rosenberg – a razor, a shiny knife
Ronen V – Pictures, Videos, Stories, Friends and Cool Projects

CK
Michelle Cortez
Zach McGeary
Kristen Hager – Snooth.com
Carissa Cirino – Tutus over French Fries
Dominic Musacchio – @dominicjohn
Alex Davidowski – Mirador Studios
Keith Haskel – Videographer
Steph Goralnick – Steph Goralnick Design and Photography
Emily Cavalier – Mouth of the Boarder
Drew Altdoerffer – Photography
Katie Hawthorne
Hannah Newbury
Cathy Erway – Not Eating Out in NY
Chad Griffith – Photography
Michael Opalensk
Simona Picco
Maurcio Vargas - The Blaaahg
Dan Vallejo
Alex Schulten
Andrew Warman
Alexis Ames – nineteen84 Design
Joe Levine – Studiofeast
Marissa Ain
Laura Huben- Studiofeast
Danielle Gould – Food + Tech Connect
Dave Christiansen – Pop-up Studio
Benjamin Lambert – Ben Lambert Chef
Ivana Kottasova
Derrick Yuen – Studiofeast
Soomin Baik – Studiofeast
Mihir Desai – Cross Species
Danny Zlobinsky
Joseph Yoon
Jana Philips
Nora Lidgus
Helena de Pereda
Katherine Wheelock

The Mast Brother’s Chocolate
The Brooklyn Kitchen

We will be releasing our photos and videos over the course of the next week so please stay tuned. We are committed and determined to push ahead, boats against the currents, providing unique and unforgettable experiences… And so we leave you to ponder what might be next…

Michael J Cirino

Founder – a razor, a shiny knife

Cooking workshops – Half-day cooking workshop at Surfase
Thursday, December 2nd
Friday, December 3rd

Corn Tasting Menu – Cooking workshop, performance, dinner and adult beverages
Saturday, December 4th

A Christmas Feast at The Brooklyn Kitchen

Like many an Italian-reared-child, I grew up learning to cook on the heels of my grandparents and parents. Every year, in honor of my grandparents, a razor, a shiny knife prepares two meals around the holidays. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day feasts mark the pinnacle of traditional Italian cookery — even for those of us who are not pious or religious. Tradition dictates strict rules for appropriate ingredients, preparations and recipes. This in turn creates greatly anticipated dishes with a similarity of desire to smell pies baking and to eat turkey with mashed potatoes and gravy at thanksgiving. So distinctly defined by each side of my family were these meals that I have done my best to incorporate elements of both sets of regional influences while adding a modern flavor and elegant execution to tradition.

These two separate meals are defined by the stringent set of rules governing their possible ingredients. La Vigilia is the feast on Christmas Eve most recognized as the Feast of the Seven Fishes (The 10 dishes represent the ten stations of the cross). Christmas Eve, like Good Friday, is a vigilia di magro, or a lean day during which meat is prohibited. Il Pranzo (the Lunch) on Christmas day is a celebration of meat, cheese and sweets.

Both meals are decadent and extravagant in their own ways, but the real beauty of these traditional events is the social interaction around the preparation and service of the meal. You would never simply show up at your Italian family’s house to eat. Rather, you engage with each other in the kitchen. This type of participation is one of our founding tenets and a clear example of the most enjoyable functions of the social aspect of cooking and food.

We were also proud to host the meal at the Brooklyn Kitchen with our good friend Jonny Cigar, who, in addition to using a beautiful electric knife to slice the goose, also performed his adaptation of the Charles Dickens masterpiece, A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost Story of Christmas with a slight tinge of ginzano.

These meals are hosted early in December so we can donate the proceeds from these events in memory of my grandparents to their a favorite charity Feeding America. www.feedingamerica.org

Here are the menus from both meals as well as a collection of photos, a short audio story of the evening by Food Thinkers as well (Listen Here) and a time lapse of the evening prepared by Michael Lee from Studiofeast.

From this point on we will try our best to speak Italian where possible

Menus:
Christmas Eve – La Vigilia
Antipasto di Mare – Baccalà, Arsella, Ostrica, Gambero, Capesante, Scungilli
Antipasto di Mare – Salt cod, clams, oyster, shrimp, scallops, whelks

Zuppetta di cozze con funghi
Mussel soup with mushrooms

Tagliolini di Bottarga
Tagliolini of Mullet Roe

Anguilla Fritte con cavolo croccante
Fried eel with crispy kale

Branzino al sale con una quantità oscena di piattini
Bass in salt with many side dishes

Granita di Aperol

La collana del prete e una selezione di tradizionali pasticcerie italiane
Dried and fresh fruit and a selection of traditional Italian pastries

Christmas Day – Il Pranzo
Antipasto –Formaggio, Salumi, Sottaceti, Fegatini, Lepre
Appetizer-Cheese, Salami, pickles, chicken livers, hare

Fagottini di manzo in brodo
Beef dumplings in broth

Ravioli alla ricotta freschi con ragu di carne – Braciole, Salsiccia, Cappone, Polpetta
Fresh ricotta ravioli with meat sauce – Pork, Sausage, Capon, Meatballs

Zampone con mostarda
Stuffed pork knuckle with fruit mostarda

Arrosto d’oca con una quantità oscena di  piattini
Roast goose with many side dishes

Amara insalata verde
Bitter Green Salad

Granita di Aperol

Struffoli e una selezione di tradizionali pasticcerie italiane
Struffoli and a selection of traditional Italian pastries

Menu was written with Daniel Castaño, Laura and Joseph Cirino, Gilda and Gerald Contento, Mike Lee and Andrew Rosenberg

The home for finished meatballs before the get frozen

Daniel and I designed these meatballs with Josh Ozersky to compete in the 2009 NY Wine and Food Festival Meatball Madness.

Meatballs

It was essential that we include all three main meats in our meatball for flavor but instead of mixing the ground meat together we allowed each meat to express itself  in a different layer of the dish.

The center of the meatball is a veal ragu made from veal bones and ground veal cooked into a smooth tomato deliciousness with onions and garlic. It was then set with 2% gelatin and placed into a mold.

Veal Ragu

Gelatinzed Veal Ragu

Gel Centers

We wrapped the ragu molds with pork, herbs, spices, grated cheese, breadcrumb, and eggs.

After, we rolled them in flour and egg, and covered them in coarse breadcrumbs. Next, we froze them.

While they were freezing we rendered out 20kg of beef tallow. Once frozen, they were deep fried in beef tallow and seasoned with salt, locatelli cheese, and beef bone marrow fat that had been powdered with n-zorbit tapioca maltodextrin.

Beef Tallow

Beef Tallow Rendering

We didn’t win but Giada did get hot sauce all over her face because she refused to listen to me tell her to eat it in one bite. Happens…

Finished Meatballs

A time lapse video of our 24 hours of cooking this past weekend. Thank you very much to Colin McCabe and Mike Lee / Studiofeast for putting this together. Thank you to everyone who made this possible, especially those at 90N 5th for the space! www.aptsandlofts.com

More to follow.

Welcome to San Francisco - Welcome to the Houseku

We left Chicago exhausted but with a profound sense of accomplishment. We had lost Mayur to rug replacement and some kind of warranty battle with an ice cream maker and we made our way to the smaller of the city’s two airports. Excited by heading home and being able to get some Potbelly’s sandwiches and Chicago style hot dogs before our flight would leave.

Without rest or comfort, just hours after we woke, we fought with all our strength to not overwhelm our conversation with talk of our trip to San Francisco the following weekend. There were many things we had learned over the past 72 hours and many new challenges that lay ahead. Spurred on by the staff of Alinea and our new-found confidence in our recipes, we set forth into reworking our next event to try and overcome that last 20%.

Cathy Erway

It was decided that we would be hosting one large meal in San Francisco as the space was large and majestic with two separate kitchens that could handle the task of serving thirty people twenty-five courses. We would be executing two dishes that required finding 20 liters of liquid nitrogen, which because of work and scheduling issues, we would not able to test until the day of the event.

Daniel was not going to be able to make it, as he had to return Colombia to check on Emilia Romagna and finalize some details for the new restaurant he would be opening in Cartagena that summer called Vera.

Jonny Cigar

Mayur as well had to succumb to the demands of real life and was relegated to cooking with us every night in preparations for the event but was not able to come with us.

In their place were three of the most enjoyable human beings I have ever met, Andrew Rosenberg, Cathy Erway and Jonny Cigar. Along with two San Francisco locals Keiko Takano and Jen Freeman as well as Melissa M. Martin, a friend of a friend who flew in from New Orleans we had assembled a formidable team to once again try to climb this great mountain of a meal.

Andrew Rosenberg

Once again our flight was scheduled to leave at some ungodly hour and having learned from our last experience with TSA, we were much better prepared for travels. It had been three weeks now where I was sleeping less than a handful of hours during any given night and the long sparsely filled flight was the perfect place for me to fall off into oblivion. All of my dreams were laced with frozen spheres of chewy candy canes or licorice syrup and seared scallops fueled by Brian and Akiko’s heated discussion of the best process and procedure for tackling this new menu. Jonny sat quietly a few seats away polishing his tie and reciting what I assumed was French poetry – delicately dancing with the elegant pronunciations in a way that was only possible by a man that learned to speak English in upstate New York farm country.

San Francisco provided us with the exact opposite weather conditions from Chicago, welcoming us with warm sunshine and soft floral sea breezes that made Jonny’s poetry seem all the more salient, I would assume. We picked out another very nice late model Minivan in a glistening shade of metallic dirty and headed off to find the Houseku and home for our final recreation.

In the Kitchen at Alinea

One week ago, I was standing in a kitchen of apartment off Lake Shore. It was the second coldest day of the past 15 years and we were deep into our preparations for our Chicago recreation meal, which would be attended by one of the contributors to the Alinea cookbook and one of the sous chefs I worked with in my short stage.

In a Kitchen on Lake Shore Drive

Today I am standing in a farmers market, with a hint of the ocean breezing past me. It is threatening to become February and I am in short sleeves and with a cold beverage sweating over my fingers. The intense selection of organic and local produce betrayed my current location and deliciousness that the northern California weather was pouring upon us was a brilliant release from the brutality of winter.

Where to find Liquid Nitrogen

It would fall on Jonny and I to handle all of provisioning, as we were the only two cleared to drive the rental Town and Country and use the credit cards. Being San Francisco, the only real problem was choosing which amazing market to frequent and where to find liquid nitrogen.

Being on the west coast was the most delightful way to end this extreme cross-country tour. Except for the fact that we were cooking 6 new dishes that we would not have a chance to test until the moment we were serving them.

In hindsight this seems like an amazingly stupid move. In actuality it was based upon an intense trust of the ability of our knowledge, team and specifically the talent of Brian Sullivan. Brian was extremely proficient in the modern ingredients and techniques and was driven beyond all to recreate these mystical dishes to the exacting letter of the minds that created them. So with just a few long conversations stolen on flights and some casual note taking, the two of us had planned our the execution of the new set of dishes. The vague brutality of the naked ingredients and conceptual executions was exciting in it own right but turned out to be the crowning achievement of this final event.

Proficiency in modern techniques for napping

Thomas Keller's - "Galette" Hudson Valley Moulard Duck Foie Gras, Italian Pistachio "Financier," Compressed Red Sensation Pear and Garden Mache

Driving through the brittle cold, we wove our way from our small sandwich haven to the bowels of Chicago to a brilliant little high end market that was our key dispensary for mousse de foie gras and a couple of other little baubles that we might be needing for our evenings adventure.

Parking was not an option so as Kathryn made her way through the market I ran through the evening in my head. When we first embarked on this quest I had been in contact with the owner of Alinea about photos, flavors and what have you. In exchange for some much needed advice he asked if he could reserve to seats at one of our meals to give away in a raffle to an employee at their holiday party. I had forgotten about this until the day I showed up for my stage and was introduced to sous chef Andrew Graves. Quiet and incredibly professional, it was a few moments into my trailing of him that he let me know that he was the one who won the seats and he was really looking forward to seeing how we interpreted their food.

Over the 24 hours I spent working at Alinea in two days, I came to respect Andrew an enormous amount. As the shallow winter daylight slipped away, the reality of serving one of the Alinea chefs, who is responsible for the original dinners, created a tight knot around my midsection. Would there be enough salt, would the potatoes be hot enough, would we be able to serve our meal or would I seek his support and interaction? Clearing decisions by him, making him taste, poke, prod and not just relax and enjoy his evening?

The door burst open with a crisp bite of cold and the elegant aroma of the hot beverage Kathryn carried along with the sundry in a much smaller bag than I would have imagined. Still lost in thought I was mildly silent as the lake chased along our right side in varied tones of frigid blue. I was stuck in contemplation over the other guest for the evening whose opinion I was extremely interested in hearing.

Black Truffle Explosion Process

His name is Michael Nagrant, and he was asked by Grant Achatz to write one of the forward sections of his groundbreaking cookbook. The specific section he wrote was about the “Black Truffle Explosion,” one of the dishes we would be serving that night and one of the most unique and ingeniously simple pasta applications I had every encountered.

He was also in attendance at the meal served at Alinea just one month before, but instead of being in the kitchen, he was a guest – able to savor the same courses we would be serving. Unlike Mr. Graves, he wasn’t preparing he was eating and over the course of the series of recreations we served he would be the only person that ate both the initial meal and our interpretations.

As we fought for parking, a few miles north of the city, just inches away from Lake Shore Drive, my phone exploded in a cacophony of delayed messages. It had been trapped in the netherworld, designed by Apple and AT&T to remind us of how much we loved our beautiful telecommunication devices and how terribly useful they were. It seemed although our guests were not set to arrive for a few hours Mr. Nagrant had come by early to get dirty and participate in the exact portion of the Alinea meal that he had originally missed.

Arms full the elevator broke us into a pile of giggling and warm deliciousness. Something sweet was toasting into a caramel and its burnt candied notes were fighting with baking of yeast and simmering vegetables to see which would assail our senses first and most thoroughly.

Without many moments for pleasantries, I stumbled into the kitchen, with a warm hello from everyone and the handful of premature guests who were happily working their way through the mis en place for the night. Michael was grinning wide with a camera in hand and keen eye for capturing the ridiculousness that was evolving.

Daniel, was also full of gregariousness while he walked me around the kitchen and letting me know where we were in our preparations and list of issues we would have to creatively solve before service. Our $200 dollar Sauterne had found its way into our shellfish fumé, ruining both, our refrigerator (laundry room) had now taken to directly reflecting the outside temperature and was hovering around -10C, turning it into a freezer and crystallizing a few of the more delicate gels that would have to be replaced and worrying us all that a second flood was imminent from a frozen pipe, and someone had dropped caramel ice cream all over the floor in what was a tragic yet magically entertaining explosion.

Nothing was too dire and as it seemed Daniel had managed to create interesting and appropriate solutions to all of the problems at hand. I set forth into a flurry of movement preparing the front of house and getting the platting and staging areas ready for the never-ending pile of food that would be served over the next four hours.

Then without real drama or tragedy we served twenty-five courses of some of the most technically difficult food in the world. With a warm group of extremely interested guests, after each course the room was alive with help. Plating, preparing and story telling were danced around and embraced. The hours poured past and the wine was drained from every bottle we had access to, with a slight turn to the syrupy and charred bourbon that was replacing the delicate fruit of the sauterne.

Not being a man of subtle stature after a long evening of cookery and drinking, I confronted our two distinguished guests in their drunken and sated state. Mr. Graves had entered a state of relaxed conversation but was beyond reserved with his words and was quickly overpowered by Mr. Nagrant’s firm opinions and statements. With a stereo just feet behind me struggling to accomplish the herculean task of providing dance party beat from speakers measured in millimeters, he cleared his throat and made sure I knew that he was impressed. In his opinion, if we had been able to recreate 20% of the flavors, textures and concepts behind the dishes then we would have at least have provided an equal level of value, but he was very proud to announce that our meal had been executed to 80% of the original. With a few misses that he described as diametric interpretations of the ingredients or preparations, which were good but nothing like the original.

Savory to Sweet Course - Raspberry and Rose I Bacon, Apple and Thyme

He then walked me through the event from the tableside at Alinea, describing the majesty and pomp that created the elegant air of perfection at the meal, juxtaposing that to the open kitchen and participatory nature of our meal. With a struggle in his voice he informed me that he could not figure out which experience he enjoyed more. It was with this amazing compliment that I let Paper Planes over take me and dance along with the rest of the crowd, rejoicing in their accomplishment of either serving or eating that night’s meal.

Our team with the chef's at Alinea

Prep-list for from Saturday January, 2009 - Photo: Michael Nagrant

Saturday morning started for me in a mid-priced hotel about a mile from the location of our dinner. It has been said that the best coffee shop in Chicago was right around the corner from us – this I cannot confirm or deny. Having entered bed well after 3:00am I was slow to rise when my alarm started making robot noises at 9:00am. It was when I reached over to quiet the singing machine that I noticed that I had missed a handful of calls and text messages from Daniel who stayed in our host’s condo with some of the rest of our team the night before. It was clear from the series of messages that he was trying to explain to me that there was a flood of biblical proportions at the apartment and I needed to come quickly.

After volley of retaliatory missed calls and text messages, I collected myself and prepared for a day during which I would be cooking in what I could only imagine was waist-deep water. Collecting a couple gallons of coffee from the aforementioned purveyor we dove head first into what could have only been a nightmare.

Upon breaking into the confines of our temporary home, I was relieved to see that there was no standing water and the only real causality for the evening was everyone’s sleep and a rug of Crate and Barrel origin. Since I had not been there I leave it to Mayur Subbarao to recount the evenings happenings to you:

Now it was late. Twenty-four courses of culinary madness served and cleared, no thanks to my own rather comical blunders: Cacao spheres in trays that had miraculously managed to invert 90 degrees onto their sides; a freezer-bowl full of cuit sous vide caramel ice cream base that had shot itself out of the freezer door all over me, my fellow dessert cooks, and the floor.

Now it was quiet; most of the cooks, including our fearless leaders Michael and Daniel, had left, and I was tidying up a few things in a kitchen that was dead silent, except for the sloshing and gurgling of a washing machine full of aprons, napkins, and caramel-soaked rags.

Hm, not so much of a sloshing and gurgling any more. More of a splashing and rushing…

I turned around to see what looked like a wave of water issuing forth from the utility room. I think I must have screamed like a six-year-old girl, because Daniel and Akiko rushed into the kitchen in mere seconds, by which point I was already ankle-deep in water. I waded to the utility room in a frenzy, only to realize that there was an office between it and the kitchen. Computers! Arrgh! was the only thing running through my head as I grabbed everything that looked vaguely electronic and piled it on the desk. Daniel and Akiko were right behind me, moving away vulnerable objects and throwing down anything absorbent… most of which was currently in spin cycle in the washing machine that had caused this mess to begin with.

Having removed everything we could (it was too late for the poor rug, RIP), we went into the utility room only to realize that the pipe leading directly into the washing machine had come loose and was now shooting water all over the place. By the time I fixed it, I looked like I’d been thrown into a swimming pool fully-dressed, and the 30-degree temperature inside the utility room was certainly not agreeing with me. Meanwhile, however, the crisis had decidedly separated the professionals from the amateurs; Daniel and Akiko were calmly mopping up the flood and cleaning the kitchen (again).

“For heaven’s sake, this happens all the time at work,” said Akiko. “You don’t want to know what gets spilled on the floor in a given day. Just go to sleep and we’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

We turned in rather calmly, and it occurred to me that somehow, flying to Chicago to execute a 24-course dinner out of an apartment kitchen with a minimal staff of volunteers which involved chilling wine on a garage roof and setting up sous vide baths in a bathroom sink…

…had given me a sense of proportion.

The hot coffee sparked the minds of those who had to battle the deluge all night and we got to work in quick fashion. Hours slipped by, and sometime just after noon I excused myself to do a little grocery shopping and to meet, for the first time, my lovely lady friend’s father.

We were doing great on time having done most of the preparation the night before and I left Daniel, Brian, Akiko and Mayur to polishing off the last few things while Kathryn and I hit up the Treasure Island and made our way to a restaurant that only served small sandwiches for our rendezvous with her Dad.

I know the idea of scheduling such an important meeting on a day already filled to the brim with nervous tension, possible calamity and exhaustion seems reckless but life does not always allow you to choose the field for your greatest battles. I wasn’t too concerned because I had some inside information that let me know that we both liked Ayn Rand, specifically Atlas Shrugged, for what I could only assume was her pride in accomplishment, enduring work ethic and rape fantasy.

Needless to say the tiny sandwiches were small, talk was delightful and uplifting and as we broke from the small building and into the brutal cold I was alive with excitement. That night we would be serving diner to two of the only people in the world who could actually give us an honest comparison to the meal that we were trying to recreate and I was giddy in anticipation.

Daniel Castaño in an exceptionally cold car

I departed Chicago a changed man, alive with new ideas, concepts and a much better grasp of what would be necessary to accomplish our next series of dinners in a fashion that would befitting the original hosts.

Our recreation dinners in Chicago would be our first attempts at performing such a high level of haute cuisine away from our home kitchen and became the template for what you could imagine as a monumental logistical nightmare. The meal itself was long and the ingredients fragile, with many preparations that would have to be accomplished in Chicago without the help of a proper work space. We would have to not only bring some of the more intricate prepared foods but we would need to bring a vast amount of specific equipment as well as finding some of the immovable devices locally with friendly or sympathetic owners.

We decided to split the meals into a Friday and Saturday seating of roughly half the number of guests we had served in New York. A more reasonable goal with all of the new challenges we had to overcome to serve twenty-five of the most technically difficult dishes in the world.

Silpat with pear chips - Sally Ryan

Our flights were booked for Thursday the 21st of January, 2009,  so early in the morning it would be offensive to most people who don’t work as long shore men. We travelled light on clothes, as every carry on and checked bag was filled to the teeth with food and equipment (a truncated list of some of the items: sous vide rib cap, dehydrator, silpats, micro-planes, yuba, low and high acyl gellan, veal demi-glace, apple fruit leather, sodium hexametaphosphate, truffle stock, truffle soup -a quart of which was lost in the packing process in New York. That quart of soup cost $125.00 hence why I wasn’t told about it until arrival in Chicago and needed to make our shopping list).

Dehydrator with red curry raisins

It seemed from the get go that security guards at the airport were going to love us, but it wasn’t until they got to our immersion circulator that the love was really felt. Being wildly expensive we obtained a pelican case for what is one of the most essential pieces of cooking equipment we owned. This steel reinforced case only reinforced the idea that even after x-raying it twice, the TSA needed to poke in and around this case, while I reiterated my explanation of its purpose with the kind of deft tact and skill that can only come with being awake and at an airport before the sun rises. Needless to say it was discovered not to be dangerous and we were on our way.