When attempting to attack something of this nature, the best thing to do, in my opinion, is just abandon all hope for being casual and relaxed about it. I say spend every waking moment obsessing about every detail and let yourself only be properly satisfied with an unusual amount of desired perfection in the outcome. Setting your goals ridiculously high will easily create a sense of unbridled drive and hopefully this passion will overcome you and push you to new heights, while inspiring others around you to throw in their lot and do the same.

That night in early November, a small group of us sat down to talk, plan, experiment and discover truly what we had signed up to in trying to recreate this meal.

First task was to turn the menu, with its simple and cryptic description, ingredients and quotation marks, into recipes.

I can say now that the first night was one of the most memorable events in my entire life. To watch this assorted group of people fall together behind this quest and in 6 hours go from nothing to having some semblance of a plan. To see people, who had never met each other before bond with dedicated passion over this goal was so strong it fueled my own drive for the long months to come.

While pouring over the various cooks books we could get our hands on we searched and hunted for clues and tips that we could use. In a bit of good fortune some of the dishes were classics and were able to be gleaned directly from the amazing cookbooks these meals were celebrating. But a majority of the courses were new: progressions on thoughts that the chefs had been cultivating over many years, new flashes of inspiration that overtook them in the run up to these glorious events, reinterpretations on dishes and techniques that they had created or perfected and were now able to bend to their creative will.

This first night turned out a few great successes and some amazing failures.

Our first success, were these little puffs of yuzu. Fluffed with Methocellulose F50 in a stand mixer and then piped on to a dry sheet of acetate. Like tiny meringues but instead of being baked with egg whites, these were dehydrated to a crisp. Containing only: yuzu, water, sugar and roughly 1.25% of the total weight of juice of Methocel F50.

This was a reinterpretation of a dish we found in the Alinea cookbook that was originally a spiced foie gras treat. Here it was served as a passed canapé with a smoked salmon pâté and with a caper buried deep in the light and crunchy yuzu puff.

After a long battle of wrestling with recipes we ended up breaking the menu into pieces for everyone to do some research and refinement over the weekend. And with a few more drinks we started stage two of our planning: how to recreate the Alinea display pieces.

The man behind the camera of these pictures W. Oberlin and Brian Sullivan, were captaining the construction and develop of the two critical devices we would need to serve this meal,

1. Parafin wax bowls

2. Squids

A handful of amazing drawings were scribbled out on paper, in blood red ink, crossed out and then redrawn. Little words were written next to big words on digital prints of the actual devices. After a bit of doing we settled on budgets and what we thought were good ideas and then remembered we had one last recipes setting in the fridge.

It was decidedly the most triumphant success of the evening. It was one of the most simple but thought provoking dishes in the whole menu. It was Chef Achatz Black Truffle Explosion, a riff on a Chinese soup dumpling but with a truffle stock and butter liquid center wrapped in a rich and dense Italian style fresh milk and egg pasta. Here the gelatinized center is poked before being wrapped in the silky pasta dough and gently cooked.

It is hard to explain how incredibly flavorful this was, but easier to understand was the emotional response to closing your mouth around the little bit and having it explode filling your mouth with overwhelming deliciousness.

It was just the stock emulsified with butter and then set with about 1% gelatin into a sphere. Simple enough, and now a great way of making liquid filled ravioli of any flavor or design. Please try if you are so inclined as it is simple and amazing. The shape of the gel does not matter so you can just set a gelatin and then cut it up and wrap it tightly in fresh pasta dough. Have fun.

One of the complete failures of the night, and what would become one of the more difficult dishes to decipher, was Chef Achatz’s Lamb, Fennel, Pernod, Coffee-Scented Air. Not having any idea what this would be like we started making wild guesses and decided on trying to make spheres of Pernod sauce and braise lamb necks until they were tender. Turns out we got close with the lamb necks but in the end there were actually a total 3 different cuts of Lamb (loin, neck, sweat bread), three sauces (in varying consistencies: liquid, gel and leather) and the Pernod was actually an airy foam laid on top of the coffee braised lamb neck pudding.

Even liquid nitrogen wouldn’t get the Pernod gel to set for us to try to encapsulate it with gellan. After about twenty minutes of fighting with this, everyone basically took to blowing into the bowl with the LN2 and making fun little clouds.

Turns out it was never supposed to be a sauce in a sphere but a foam. Which was way easy and quickly rendered once we saw the photos.

About one year ago we decided to embark on a series of adventures. It was our hope to learn through emulation and execution of what would be some of the most exquisite food in the world, cooked by two of our generation’s greatest chefs.

It was last September 17th when Grant Achatz and Thomas Keller announced to the world that in celebration of their new cookbooks and their admiration toward each other they would host a meal at per se in NY, Alinea in Chicago and The French Laundry in Napa. They would serve a 25 course meal showing a career retrospective and some of the most current and advanced dishes their kitchens have developed, paired with the most amazing wines, at a price of $1500 a person. Three of the best restaurants in the world, hosting a meal that would come to define this generation of American cuisine.

It was at this point, while trapped in a crushing rain storm somewhere on interstate 84, driving to Boston for a series of events Daniel and I decided that best way to learn and advance with our own cooking was to try and recreate these meals. To elevate our own cooking by learning from the incredibly high bar these masters have set with this series of events. We decided the only way to do it properly was to recreate the meals to as exacting a measure as possible, following the chefs across the country, and preparing our interpretations of the meals in NYC, Chicago and San Francisco.

We gave ourselves roughly one month from the dates that they had set to host our first event in NYC. Without any knowledge of the actual events and not being able to sample and taste the food we embarked on the recreation from a purely educational point of view.

We were able to convince a friendly insider to sneak us a copy of the menu from per se a couple days before the event to see if it would be possible to execute such lofty food from our studio and serve it in home kitchens. With that one sheet of paper we dove into reverse engineering for twenty-five of the most technical dishes of haute cuisine in world, from simple menu description.

The above menu does not include the following passed canapés

Chef Keller

Salmon Cornet – Marinated Atlantic Salmon with Black Sesame Tuile and Red Onion Crème Fraîche

Lamb “BLT” – “Petit Salé”

Chef Achatz

Puffed Idiazábal – Yeast, Mustard Seed

Smoked Salmon – Yuzu, Caper

We had to rely on, photos and blog posts about similar dishes served and eaten in their restaurants and the few scraps and pieces that were scattered across their respective brilliant new cookbooks, and any hint or review that could be gleaned from small amount of press that attended the first dinner.

Not knowing how food was supposed to taste added one level of complexity but not knowing what it was too look like was another layer of impossibility that started to become overwhelming. How do you recreate a dish that in its description was beautiful to eat and delicious to see on the plate?

How could we know how they wanted it to be presented to the world? If we could get it to taste similar would we fail when the pieces didn’t come together correctly?

In addition to the plating and composition of the food we also had been tasked with creating the custom service pieces that Chef Achatz uses to serve his dishes. Parafin wax bowls to suspend a pin a with a hot potato over a small cup of ice cold potato soup, steel squids for holding a singular bite. Here was the best example of how refined and perfected these men held their craft. Would we fail if we could not make sure to execute these details as well?

So with about 32 days to work out all of the details we set to work with nine chefs, two engineers, an industrial designer and a collection of amazing friends whose strength and support would prove to be the most deciding factor in being able to follow through with all of this.

At the end of October we sat down with our good friends Alex and Aki from Ideas in Food and wrote up a menu for a seven course meal that we had been kicking around for a little while. It was a difficult balancing act getting four such divergently creative minds to come together to create seven dishes that would then form together a cohesive meal.

It was also difficult preventing Alex from adding courses when we weren’t looking as he was full of ideas that just weren’t able to be realized in this meal.

This meal was the first of a style of event and also marked the first instance where we felt that we were able to really balance the theatre of the event with the open and warm social atmosphere as well as food that was executed the way we had imagined it.

Menu:
1. Cervidae Tartar with Smoked Onion Rings and Cranberry
2. Chioggia Beets with a Roasted Red and Yellow Beets Pasta Salad, Beet Curd, Aji Amarillo and Passion Fruit
3. Pumpkin Seed Risotto with Coffee and Ham Hock Lardons
4. Olive Oil Poached Halibut over Celery Leaf Gnocchi in a Lobster Mushroom Ragu
5. Skirt steak with Brussels Sprout Kimchi, Apple and Chicharrones
6. Pierre Robert with Walnut Ribbons and Pear Mostarda
7. Lime panna cotta and banana rocks with a banana sponge cake and key lime

Menu Written with Daniel Castaño, Aki Kamozawa & H. Alexander Talbot

Executed with H. Alexander Talbot, Daniel Castaño, Thomas Helmick, Cathy Erway and Kathryn Mahoney

Photos:

Cassidy DuHon
www.duhonphotography.com

Cervidae Tartar with Smoked Onion Rings and Cranberry

The tartar was made from the leg of a deer. We did a coarse chop with a set of knifes and got it into a proper 1980’s tartar texture, and tossed with some olive oil, mustard, salt, pepper and herbs. The onion rings were compressed in smoke brine instead of hot smoking them to give them a nice smoky flavor but to also get them to be nice a crisp. The smoke brine was then carbonated and used to make a tempura batter which also helped carry the smoky flavor as well. A sweet and tart cranberry sauce was put on the plate to help soften the flavors and bring a smooth richness in texture.

Chioggia Beets with a Roasted Red and Yellow Beets Pasta Salad, Beet Curd, Aji Amarillo and Passion Fruit

The Chioggia beets were glued into a sheet and the red and yellow beets were unpeeled using a planner and compressed with a spicy passion fruit dressing under vacuum. They were then cut into cut into linguine shaped strips and dressed on either side of a firm Yellow Beet curd that is vegan.

Alex and Aki pioneered this process of using pectin or sodium alginate and calcium to create a fruit and vegetable glue that can impart flavor while holding things together. Here we created a dressed beet sheet that was sliceable.

Pumpkin Seed Risotto with Coffee and Ham Hock Lardons

The process of pressure cooking pumpkin seeds to give them a risotto like consistence was another invention by Alex and Aki, while on vacation somewhere silly. In this iteration they were cooked with coffee and pumpkin stock. After cooking they were cooled and mounted to order with butter and the cooking liquid, dressed with ham hock lardons which gave the dish a nice smoky flavor. Sous Vide pumpkin balls where topped with a little pumpkin powder and parmesan cheese.

Olive Oil Poached Halibut over Celery Leaf Gnocchi in a Lobster Mushroom Ragu

This is first step in the evolution of a dish we have been working on since august. It was conceived as a surf and turf style dish where the surf is represented by a lightly cooked flaky white fish and served over a earthy flavored pasta dish, here done with celery leaf gnocchi (double cooked potatoes with celery leaf juice used in the beginning of the dough making similar to spinach) in a lobster mushroom beurre blanc.

We have since seen this dish evolve into an almost entirely black dish with black trumpet mushrooms and a black truffle beurre noir, where the fish is topped with black caviar and purple basil is grated on top like cheese. (more to follow on this soon)

Skirt steak with Brussels Sprout Kimchi, Apple and Chicharrones

Double Thick Skirt Steak is a real treat. Skirt Steak is a very flavorful yet cheep cut of beef that when bonded into a double cut piece becomes otherworldly. Fresh off our Korean Pig Roast we really excited to get some of our left over Kimchi into some more forms. In this dish we compressed halved Brussels sprouts in a Kimchi puree to get the flavoring into all of the cracks. We then seared them off on a flattop to create a nice caramelized flat edge to them. This was pared with a Kimchi Chicharrones made with tapioca flour and Kimchi and a touch of water. These crispy vegan treats played the crisp spicy role in this dish while a smooth apple puree lent a touch of sweetness to the bottom of the plating.

Lime panna cotta and banana rocks with a banana sponge cake and key lime

Lime custards for this dish were set in a sphere mold and arraigned with some freshly torn banana sponge cake that Aki made in absentia. We had a little Liquid Nitrogen left from powdering the cheese so we froze whole banana and shattered them into rough chunks and then let them come back to room temperature to give them an insane and unpredictable shape. It was topped with a little key lime zest.

Pierre Robert with Walnut Ribbons and Pear Mostarda

This was/could be my favorite cheese course ever. I know I am partial and everything but it just came together in perfect balance. The Pierre Robert was frozen with Liquid Nitrogen and then crushed into a snow like powder. It was placed next to a candied walnut ribbon and topped with a fruit leather of slightly spiced pear mostarda.

This is just a bad ass picture of our white room with a white table in the back ground and a black shirted tom being a bad ass in the front.

So with a total sense of irony and ridiculous timing I would like to share with you today some photos from our most recent pig roast. It was a bit of a Korean/Asian influenced affair with hint of the Carolina’s and Texas as usual.

Most of what is included below would fall under the heading “food porn” but that should not be looked down upon as with all porn it functions as an important part of inspiring our society.

All photos by Annoushka Owen © 2008
http://flickr.com/photos/oushki

This pig was slaughtered at a farm in upstate New York, Sullivan County to be specific. The kidneys are left attached to the carcass because they are the first part of the animal to spoil and when choosing meat you can tell it’s freshness from the freshness of the kidneys.

When flat roasting a pig it is key to make sure to crack the ribs off the spine and completely butterfly the whole animal. This will insure a more even cooking.

Here you can see the belly of the stuffed pig laced up with butchers twine and stuffed with Kimchi, smoked onions, garlic, chilies, scallions, chives, dry rub and 6 extra racks of ribs.

Note: the ribs that are stuffed into the chest cavity and slow cooked in the pig are the best ribs you can eat, ever. This is not up for discussion. These ribs are reserved for the crew that stayed up all night and flipped the pig, they are worth the effort.

Skin and crackle. Unfortunately the skin around these blisters becomes inedible but the meat in the opening gets a nice char and is super delicious with a touch of crunch.

Mark and I done our plastic gloves (which eventually will melt onto our hands) and get our knives in hand to break down the beast. First the stuffing is removed and the inner ribs are sent to the grill to get lathered up and charred. Then we remove the bellies and start on the primal cuts: head, then shoulders, ribs, hams, loins, tenderloins, and then to service.

A question from Mr. Low after many hours of non-sleeping
“Where did I leave my knife?”
“In that steaming pile of pork”
“Ah, yes thank you.”
“No problem what-so-ever.”

A little while ago I traveled to Panama with some loved ones. It was a ridiculously silly thing to do at the time and when we arrived it became an increasingly silly adventure to be on.

Upon our return two of our very good friends decided that they wanted to host a party where we would recreate the dishes that we served in Panama and film it for a TV network.

All in all it sounded like a great idea so here is a semi recap of the dinner we served in Panama being served to Americans in a loft in Brooklyn for television, with really nice lights and an unbelievable mean ambient temperature. Needless to say the moving picture version of this night will be broadcast sometime in future in a format beyond my control but hopefully with my diction.

Here is a small peak into what an amazing photographer and food stylist can do for the equatorially inspired food we made.

Menu
Butter Poached Lobster on Panamanian Tortillas with Cilantro Pesto and Candied Aji
Balsamic Pickled Peach Gaspacho
White Risotto with Black and White Prawns and Coconut Crisps
Mixed herb salad with fresh tomato, pixbae (pickled palm fruit) and toasted spiced nuts
Whisky Drizzled Crepes with goat cheese, mango and dark chocolate w/Cold Brewed coffee and tobacco whipped cream

Menu written with Mark Low and Danielle Florio

PS: If you look closely you can see Hunter.

All Photos:
Andrew Casey © 2008
Food Styling: Pablo Munoz (This man is an unbelievable talent.)

We started the meal off with a Panamanian style tortilla with a cilantro and chili sauce and a slice of reconstituted lobster meat that was poached in a beurre monte. A couple of candied chilies were place on top to cut through the richness of the lobster with some spice and sweetness.

We originally thought that putting the sauce on first was the best idea. But after some sober and personally introspective deliberation we agreed that the version pictured above and was amazingly less soggy and aggressive with it sauce delivery.

On to a delightfully refreshing dish we worked on all summer from our peaches party in July to this meal where it was retired due to the season change still unperfect but with great character. Pickled peach gazpacho with crème fraîche and compressed peach slices. When this balance between the pickled peaches and the fresh peaches finally works itself out this will a brilliantly refreshing dish. Topped with a touch of mint for greens-sake.

Look close to see the color break between the pureed fresh peach and tomato bases and the balsamic pickled peaches and cipolini onion core on which the fresh tomato slices sit.

Here we attacked the risotto and shrimp dish with a Coconut as the serving vessel, clearly showing that Mark has a flair for the dramatic. What seems to be a wasteful amount of salt and pepper used to hold the coconut in place was actually part of the final plating because it allow for the dish to be seasoned better by the guest as we had varying opinions on how spicy and salt the dish should be served.

I opted for super spicy with the blackened shrimp but we ended up toning it down a little after a guy on staff almost passed out. I will gladly serve this too you that spicy if you want and you too can almost pass out. I must say that if the test isn’t conducted in a room that is above body temperature and after a day of you holding a boom microphone out into space for 9 hours it won’t be completely equal.

Little herb salad with some delightfully ripe tomatoes and nuts, oh such spicy nuts.

This is dessert and we were really keen on the racing stripe for like an hour, and then I thought it wasn’t awesome. Then I ate it and thought it was great again. Then Pablo took this photo with Andrew and I like the background better than the crepe but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t tasty.

Did I mention that Mark’s Whisky Dizzle is stupid good.

Coffee and cigarettes rule the day again!

Brunch is always one of those meals you love to eat but never think about cooking yourself. It requires getting up early after a long night of doing things to yourself that were probably inappropriate and then cutting stuff with sharp things and cooking things near hot stuff. It is really the realm of Dad’s and those braver than I.

That being said the morning after our Harvest Party in Boston we decided to take a hand at cooking without sleep and having a many cocktail instead of water to properly ride that dog home. Wow that was tough to write and to read I am sorry.

We wrangled up a local by the name of Heather Walleston, who has been by far one of the most influential forces in my culinary pursuits and education. We chatted on some ideas and built a nice little menu that was able to blend sweet and savory with the right amount of liquor to get us in proper shape for the ride back to Brooklyn.

Menu:
1. Black Grits and Butter Poached Shrimp with a Charred Corn Gremolata
2. Poached Scrambled Eggs and Ricotta with Wild Boar Potatoes O’Brien and Radish and Fennel Salad
3. French Toast Suzette with Orange Butter and Brandy Syrup, Meyer Lemon Pot de Crème
4. Melon Terrine and Tomato Salad with Mozzarella and a spiced balsamic reduction

Menu created with Daniel Castaño and Heather Walleston.
Homemade bitters for the Negronis provided by Eugene Edele.

Photo Christina Wegs © 2008 www.christinawegs.com.

Unless unlabeled then I took them all by myself!

Black Grits and Butter Poached Shrimp with a Charred Corn Gremolata

Our obsession with black things seems to be growing by the minute. The light sea taste from the black grits was delightful when paired with the sweet buttery shrimp. We hoped that charred corn Gremolata would give the dish a little lightness and sparkle. Bring some acid and get some heavy nonsense out of the way.

Photo Christina Wegs © 2008 www.christinawegs.com.

Finished with a touch of black Cypriote salt

Poached Scrambled Eggs and Ricotta with Wild Boar Potatoes O’Brien and Radish and Fennel Salad

Home making ricotta is easy and creates such a superb richness that it is something I wish to teach to everyone I meet. These poached scrambled eggs started as a crostini topping with James, originally done with duck eggs and topped with a little olive oil and chives, but in this form the suppleness from the poached eggs and the richness from the ricotta played well with the brightness from the radish and fennel salad and the salt and savory of the hash.

Photo Christina Wegs © 2008 www.christinawegs.com

French Toast Suzette with Orange Butter and Brandy Syrup, Meyer Lemon Pot de Crème

Heather was all over this dish with amazingness. The suzette started off as crepes and then moved to toast with a stroke of challa. There seems to be some fennel in there for lovelyness

Photo Christina Wegs © 2008 www.christinawegs.com

These were oranges of some interesting variety, the name of which, I have totally forgotten. (look at me not ending that sentence with a preposition!)

This little iceberg looking wedge was the French toast. We cut the bread with a cube shape and battered it all lovely getting the juice as deep as we could. It was then topped with the pompadour of orange butter and set to sail.

The bandy syrup was almost as dazzling as Mark Low’s whisky syrup and paired well with the orange in everything.

After we cut the cube from the challa we buttered, compressed and toasted the leftover bread and made crisp squares that were filled with the Pot de Crème.

Heather double fisting the whisking situation

Photo Christina Wegs © 2008 www.christinawegs.com

Melon Terrine and Tomato Salad with Mozzarella and a spiced balsamic reduction

Brave little soldiers getting ready to be glued into nice bricks of melon terrine

Photo Christina Wegs © 2008 www.christinawegs.com