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.

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

Harvesting a Dinner from a New English Harvest

So I have a good friend of mine, who occasionally sleeps on my couch and plays music for me. He lives in a house in Boston, a refined part of Boston called Lower Alston, which, unfortunately is above most of Alston and is one of the neighborhoods where I used to live when I called Boston my home. Said friend and his lovely Italian roommate came to our Peaches dinner in July where we began speaking about creating a harvest themed dinner at their place in the fall.

Menus were discussed and abandoned and then re-discussed with renewed vigor and passion. It was all with a little bit of tongue and cheek that we decided to do a Harvest style party but that concept evolved into a full bodied and warming meal for a night that was a complete rainy and cold mess. It included some old favorites and some new things that seemed to be decent ideas at the time.

Menu (in no special order):
• Porter-Braised Pork Shoulder Steaks with Creamy Polenta
• Butternut Squash Ravioli, Sweet, Crunchy and Ricotta filling with a Beurre Noisette and Sage Sauce and Pomegranate Arils
• Grilled Mexican Corn with Aji and Lime Mayonnaise and Queso Fresco
• Southern Style Onion Soup
• Rocket Salad with Sheeted Cucumber and Radishes with a Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette
• Apple Soup with Chilled Honey Custard

Menu written with Daniel Castaño with a Honey Custard recipe from Aki Kamozawa & H. Alexander Talbot

After we ate there were some amazing performances, from some ancient sounding folk music to Dominick the dancing dish washer. Enjoy and please don’t be too critical of my point and shoot work.

Rocket Salad with Sheeted Cucumber and Radishes with a Myer Lemon Vinaigrette
This salad was just used a light foil to the heavier pork and polenta dishes we had and allowed us to showcase some of the recent techniques we had learned from Alex and Aki at Ideas in food.  We were enamored by their ability to make sheets of fruits and vegetables by using pectin as a food glue and set out to try to create some “stained glass” (in the words of C. Erway) of our own.

Butternut Squash Ravioli with a Beurre Noisette and Sage Sauce and Pomegranate Arils
This is one of Daniel’s personal dishes he has been working on for years and is really an amazing adaptation of classic Tuscan style pasta. It has a butternut squash and amaretti cookie stuffing that is richened with some egg yolks and homemade ricotta. The sage and browned butter sauce is a classic but the overripe pomegranate arils created a light pop of fruit and different sweetness to counter the richness of the sauce and to dance with the sweetness of the stuffing.

Grilled Mexican Corn with Aji and Lime Mayonnaise and Queso Fresco
This was a very standard interpretation derived from a childhood of eating corn on the cob Mexican style with my mother and the delight of the stands at the Red Hook Ball fields.

This was Carissa’s favorite photo of the night

Apple Soup with Chilled Honey Custard
This Honey Custard was taken directly from Aki and Alex’s recipe book. We have made this specific recipe 3 times and each time have enjoyed it more and more. Here the monolith waits judgment and a drowned death in a spiced apple consommé.

Porter-Braised Pork Shoulder Steaks with Creamy Polenta
Braising pork and their shoulders is clearly one of our specialties, and in specialties I mean we do it all the time and love it with all of our faces. It isn’t a difficult thing to be good at, but it is massively rewarding. These torn steaks mellowed out nicely in the dark porter and aji braise, which yielded an amazing pan sauce and was a great foil for the creamy polenta.

Southern Style Onion Soup
This was a very happy accident that was born of the need to make a stock for the braise. We browned the pork shoulder bones and some lovely super sweet local onions to make a slightly syrup molasses broth. After we set the shoulders to cook we had a ton of left over stock and onions and set to task of making a soup.

Some sharp white cheese made it onto these crackers and some of the reduced pan sauce sweetened up the bowls with a chunk of trim.

Here Daniel is showing where the loins are located on a boar, so they can be removed and wrapped in chicken skin.

After long delay we are proud to display some additional images from the boar dinner we held on Saturday, August 15th of this fine year two thousand and eight, in the municipality of Homer, NY. I will attempt to preserve brevity in our hopes to just dazzle you with the brilliant photography of Jennifer May and our good friend Michael Knight.
Our goal for this meal was to prepare and serve a locally sourced meal based around wild boar. This brought us to Cold Brook Hunts http://www.coldbrookhunts.com/ near the ancestral site of my family’s farm. It was to be a celebration of the great pre-mythological being in whose honor we have sacrificed of all of our whole animals to this year; Lewis. He was a pseudo-deity that retained his stature from pre-history by giving the gift of smoking, straws, and other processes that were greatly improved with suction to man. In these dishes we sought to transfer the body of this boar into a meal for twenty four cooked almost entirely by ingredients sourced within a 50 mile radius of the farm personally picked up by me the day before in a great scavenger hunt.

Menu
1. Wild Boar Rillette with a Pot-lickies Gelee and Duck Skin Crackling
2. Sweetbread and Offal Raviolo with Wild Boar Ragu
3. Chicken Fried Wild Boar Loin, Succotash Custard, Molasses Kimchi, and Soju Watermelon
4. Smoked Wild Boar Ribs with Collard Green, Mac and Cheese and Black Eye Peas
5. Aleppo and Vanilla Ice Cream with Amish Mellon and White Peaches

Menu created with Daniel Castaño, Andrew Rosenberg and Mark Low.

First you start with a whole wild boar. Slightly chilled and very wild.
Photo by Michael (Santi) Knight © 2008 www.photo.sarcfilms.com

Then you cut the ribs apart at the sternum and break the ribs off the spine using only shear force and maybe a cleaver later on if things get dirty. Either way you make Tom very happy.

Photo by Jennifer May © 2008 www.jennifermay.com

If you plan on wrapping chicken skins around the loins you first need to skin the birds making sure this doesn’t happen.

Photo by Michael (Santi) Knight © 2008 www.photo.sarcfilms.com

After the skins are free from their flightless carcasses you may now wrap them around the loins and bond them using Activa RM. Roll into a tight torchon, vacuum pack them and drop them into a water bath at 55C for 6 hours. Water that is just cool enough not to kill the Activa enzymes but high enough to pasteurize the chicken skins after 131 minutes of cooking.

Photo by Jennifer May © 2008 www.jennifermay.com

While the pork is cooking make fresh ricotta and be slightly sad that you couldn’t find sweetbreads anywhere in Cortland County that weren’t processed in Ohio or south of the Mason Dixon Line so your ravioli will just have to be filled with the creamy richness of raw milk ricotta and basil.

Grind the shoulders, hams and all of the extra fat into a 70/30 lean/fat ground boar, with a touch of pork and beef fat thrown because it was fresh. Dice up some fresh vegetables that you picked in your aunts garden and some jarred tomatoes from last year’s harvest and make up a Bolognese base.

Take the wild boar liver and kidneys as well as some left over pork, chicken and duck livers and simmer them with some caramelized onions, thyme and a bottle of red wine until glazed and slightly crisp. Add cream and puree until smooth.

Make pasta dough, then make 100 ravioli and let them rest.

Add pâté to Bolognese right before serves and lay lightly cooked ravioli on top with a light chiffonade of basil.

Photo by Jennifer May © 2008 www.jennifermay.com

The night before it would have been wise to take a little extra Activa RM and bond the leftover chicken skins and purposely cleaned duck skins into a tight torchon and refrigerate overnight. Only to freeze in the morning, sliced wafer thin on a deli slicer and then deep fried in beef tallow. Add salt and enjoy.

Photo by Jennifer May © 2008 www.jennifermay.com

Or to place on top of the wild boar shoulder rillette that you confit in pork fat for the last 12 hours and formed over a slice of spicy and floral pot lickies gelée that you made with Agar-Agar later that same morning right after the boar was butchered but before the pasta making.

Photo by Jennifer May © 2008 www.jennifermay.com

While you are at it the night before you might as well also cut 4 types of melon into steaks and spend an hour compressing them in a vacuum with a little salt and lime juice to give them a bright color and smooth consistency.

Photo by Jennifer May © 2008 www.jennifermay.com

Once done in the sous vide take the chicken skin wrapped boar loin out of the bag, batter dip it and deep fry it until golden brown. Slice it into thin rings (here you can see both tenderloins bonded together to form a larger loin sized cut).

Photo by Jennifer May © 2008 www.jennifermay.com

Actually the most important thing you should have been doing right after they were broken out of the carcass was getting the ribs into a pork confit to soften for 4 hours and then into a smoker with layers of boar belly stacked on top of them and hickory smoke circling past the glassy meat.

Whip up a mac and cheese, some collard greens and a black eyed pea and aji mash and you have a rib entrée and hopefully a tiny bit of room for desert.

Photo by Jennifer May © 2008 www.jennifermay.com

And serve those over the molasses kimchi with melon and scallons

Photo by Jennifer May © 2008 www.jennifermay.com

Jonny and I after hours of negotiations

About a month ago I was relaxing with a friend of mine named Jonathan over a long late summer weekend, drinking Korean beers that taste enormously like Miller High Life and enjoying the lack of breeze. We were sitting in my back yard, watching my dog viciously lie in the sun and while talking about nonsense we stumbled into a conversation about dinner and theater.

We were speaking about our plans for the fall and some of the events that we were working on. I explained about the dinner on the first of November and the Autumnal Harvest and Pig roasting extravaganza in October, while Jonathan went on to explain about his plans for acting and writing throughout the fall.

Sometime around the middle of the afternoon it occurred to us that we had nothing yet planned for September and with a little bit of mental wrestling we discovered that there were some dishes that need to be tired and some of his plays that needed to be worked on. It was in that moment that we decided to take a stab at Dinner Theatre.

We wanted a lounge feel, with smoke and cocktails. Jonny thought it important to include some multimedia in the event and decided that he would like to bring in a dance performance as well as the thespian display. I felt strongly about cooking for each act and leaving dessert for the after whisky. What we eventually came up with, through the great help of our friends was this night of Dinner Theatre:

Menu:
Snacks: Candied Bacon, Crisp Garbanzos and Spiced Nuts
1. Dark Roux Sausage Étouffée with Caramelized Onions and Pega
2. Black Tempura Prawns in Green Curry Custard with Key Lime and Cilantro
3. Sweet Braised Short Rib, Country Pâté Brulée over a Horseradish demi-glace with Alsatian Munster whipped fondue, Enoki mushroom and quail yolk purses and charred Japanese scallions
4. Tobacco Crisps with Coffee crème and whisky dipping sauce
5. Cigar – Dominican Metropolitan

Menu created with Daniel Castaño and Eugene Edele.

Executed with Daniel Castaño, Eugene Edele and Cathy Erway; and special thanks to Kristen Hager, Kirsten Larson, Nora Sherman and Leah Viens-Gordon for all of their help in coordination and execution.

Wines and Spirits by Jesse Salazar:
Bodegas Llopart 2005 Rose Brut Reserva Cava
Wingut Hirsch 2006 Riesling Gaisberg
Scholum Project 2007 Naucratis Lost Slough Vineyard
Elmer T Lee Single Barrel – Buffalo Trace

With performances of:
“The Confidence Man” adapted from Herman Melville’s novel by Ben Rose and Jonathan Cristaldi and performed by Jonny Cigar and Abraham Danz.

“Awakening” choreographed by Ori Flomin and performed by Amanda Wells and Ori Flomin

“Kammerspiel!” Written, directed and performed by Jonny Cigar while featuring: Abraham Danz, Phoebe Oglesbee, Zach Bernstein and Another Girl.

Video Installation by Tyler Coburn www.tylercoburn.com

Photos by:

Tim Ireland © 2008 www.irelandstudios.com

Christine Wells © 2008 http://christinekwells.blogspot.com/

This is a simple snack that was common place in my childhood in many different forms. Here we just fried the canned Garbanzo beans until crisp and then tossed them with coriander, cumin, cayenne, Balinese long peppers and dried lemon rind. Citrus juice to flavor.

Tim Ireland © 2008 www.irelandstudios.com

Gratuitous sausage. These cubes were shaped for the Étouffée. The shape held well, our next goal is to get casing to fit the outside. I imagine it shaped like a wrapped present.

Tim Ireland © 2008 www.irelandstudios.com

Due to some dietary restrictions in the audience we were able to provide the Étouffée in both a sausage and more traditional shrimp versions.

Tim Ireland © 2008 www.irelandstudios.com

A collection of black batter dipped shrimp.

This was just a standard tempura batter that we added shrimp brains and sepia for additional flavor and color. After we had it balanced and seasoned we bottled it and carbonated it to 50 psi to too make the batter extra light and crisp. The coating was airy and light and the brains gave the crisp a full flavor.

Tim Ireland © 2008 www.irelandstudios.com

Short Ribs with a liberal amount of pâté

Tim Ireland © 2008 www.irelandstudios.com

Short Ribs being caramelized

Tim Ireland © 2008
www.irelandstudios.com

This is a shot of the short ribs from our test kitchen the Sunday before the performance. Here we exchange the Obrato for Phyllo dough.

Christine Wells © 2008 http://christinekwells.blogspot.com/

We eventually settled with Enoki and Slow Poach Quail Egg wrapped in soy wrapper and flashed fried crisp and awaiting steak

Tim Ireland © 2008 www.irelandstudios.com

I know it might seem obvious in this setting and maybe even trite being that the performers name is Jonny Cigar but we have been working on this Coffee and Cigarettes style dessert all summer and this iteration seems to work well. With crisp cookies and Cathy’s indulgent Sanka Cream custard the cookies we absolutely delightful on their own but with a dip in the whisky syrup everything became divine.

Tim Ireland © 2008 www.irelandstudios.com

Panama was probably the best vacation I have gone on in a while. There are many reasons for this but the primary two are:

1. I had practically no travel responsibility; insomuch as all I had to do was wake up and be in paradise, eat, nap and then go to the beach.
2. I got to cook with some amazing friends, in an amazing country for some amazing people who were all really amazingly interesting and could dance averagely.

Here is a little chronology of the trip and the dinner that I cooked with my good friends Mark Low and Danielle Florio from The Whisk and Ladle in Panama City for some other amazing friends at Diablo Rosso.
Here is a short list of some of the things we tried while we were down there:
Butter Poached Lobster on Panamanian Tortillas with Cilantro Pesto and Candied Aji

White Risotto with Black and White Prawns and Coconut Crisps

Plantain Pizza with mango, aji, black beans and queso fresco

Chocolate Chip and Sea Salt Cookies

Aside from the cooking, while in country we were also witness to the country celebrating their first medal with the unbelievable long jumping of the amazing gold medal winning, Irving Saladino.  In retrospect this whole trip was in reverence to him and his accomplishments for himself and his country.

Having driven directly from our two day boar feast in rural Syracuse, NY to Newark Airport, my inability to properly grasp reality was at an all time high. After picking up a casual taco at the airport stand and some light periodical reading on science and spatial relations the airplane ride was amazingly uninvolved and sleep befit us proper and quick.

Upon arrival we were greeted by no one; it was an hour before our friends appeared with large grins and a night full of nonsense ahead of us. First stop was the 24 hour grocery store, as the island we were would be staying at was devoid of all provisions except beer, wine and beaches.

Mixing Ron& Cola was one of the better things I have ever been apart of.

The first thing that struck me as amazing was the variety of fruits that seemed to be taken for granted by our friends. They were constructed oblong, sharp and lumpy; bitter, sweet and acrid; colored as the flora of the streets we drove around the city.

The best game to play was: Bitter or sweet

Which is this one?

I hadn’t the strenght to inquire

The second thing was the apparent desire for a beverage made out of grain products.

After a brief discussion about the current state of the music industry and the obvious lacking that needed to be filled by our new band, we retired to prepare for the mornings travels.

Flying has never been a problem for me but when you are in a plane that is smaller than a garbage truck and can only hold as many people, including the pilots that you can count on your hands, the concept is pushed to the limit. Add to this formula a runway that is longer than the island we were hoping to land on but still not long enough for the plan to properly come to a full rest without pulling a sweet inner-city taxi style U-turn at the far end.

This island provided the perfect place to taste some local foods and do some sea level cooking at 100% humidity. Which in retrospect isn’t so far from NYC in August but still it seemed excessive.

These cookies were delightful and just could not be finished. We ate them all day and night, at the beach, in the little pool, on the hammock, in our beds. Danielle threw a little bit of this unbelievably resilient Panamanian sea salt in the batter and instead of breaking down and dissolving they just added a nice pop of savory in a cloud of chocolate chips.

The days got hard and Mark had to brew some of his now legendary cold brewed coffee to wash these bastards down.

This is Diablo Rosso’s café/art gallery transformed to be full of friends, while Mark, Danielle and I called to attention the room for a little culinary description and thanks to our gracious hosts.

This is Dr Salci and Saky Kosmas two of our gracious hosts. Thank you very much my friends and to the rest of the lovely people that extended their love and affection over what could have ever been imagined to make us feel comfortable and welcome..

A couple of weeks ago we spent a weekend in the country and had a feast based around a wild boar. The New York Times was gracious enough to come and write about it, here is a link to the beautiful photography and words that told the story of Lewis and our gastronmic appreciation of him.

More to follow in our words and photos but please follow Daniel’s snack to see theirs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/dining/27boar.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=dining

Sunday Dinner – July 27th, 2008
Cold Service

So after weeks of fighting the oppressive heat that my kitchen was able to create this July we decided that the best thing to do (instead of baking, braising, or sautéing with all of our burners on high) was to gave in and cook a meal based entirely around cold and room temperature dishes. Although this accomplished the goal of reducing the amount of BTUs being unnecessarily dumped into the room, the idea itself created a stress on our meager home refrigeration equipment and our ability to prepare everything on the day of service so our guests could watch, participate and learn as we constructed dinner. Note to those of you who were not at this meal: do not attempt to make and serve ice cream, granita, gelée and aspic in the same day without a serious amount of cold- a very serious amount.

This meal was the first in which ideas that we set out to accomplish were unable to be executed, but these failures led to what I can easily describe as my favorite moments in a kitchen this year. As with most meals, dinner was around dusk but preparation started mid-day; and on this particular Sunday we had a great group of people show up early to get dirty and participate in creating that night’s meal. Our hope was to shut off all burners by 18:00 and get the room nice and cool by dinner. This lofty goal was attained, but as dinner started we noticed that the large white box in the room that was supposed to be making our food cold was doing a “poor” job at best.

Its lack of coolness presented the greatest challenge to our pot lickies aspic, which at 15 minutes before plating still refused to get solid. So we took our problem to the room and to the 18 guests and chefs. Over wine and carbonated beverages, we turned a broken aspic into a beautiful pan sauce to dress the pâté.

I say this was one of my favorite moments in a kitchen because it accomplished everything that we hoped to have happen with our cooking: to get our guests to not be passive participants in a meal but active members of a dining experience, with a vested interest in everything that happens and to take ownership of the food they eat. This was no longer just a meal we were presenting to them; this was a meal they created with us throughout the day and together we were able to overcome the problems that our less than ideal conditions created.

Menu
Peach Gazpacho – White peach and mint gazpacho, finished with balsamic pickled strawberries and lime purée

Insalata Caprese – Buffula mozzarella, roasted tomato gelée, with basil oil and balsamic syrup

Wild Mushroom Brulée – Maitake and gorgonzola custard with pancetta brulée

Pâté En Croute – southern style pork pate with collard green pot lickies aspic wrapped in puff pastry

Raisin Granita – Raisin, Ancho and Serrano Ham Granita topped with candied Serrano chilies

Honey and White Pepper Ice Cream – locatelli and black Cypriote salt

Menu created with Daniel Castaño and Mark Low.
Cooks: Andrew Rosenberg, Daniel Castaño and Mark Low

Peach Gazpacho – White peach and mint gazpacho, finished with balsamic pickled strawberries and lime purée
I have never been a fan of gazpacho. I used to work next to a very well respected and critically acclaimed Mexican restaurant which had their gazpacho mentioned in every article or review but even its elegancy escaped me. Until one equally hot afternoon in July where peaches became the new shellfish and a frozen peach soup was born to help cure the heat. This is an evolution of that dish which garners nice compliments every time we serve it but still has not completely sold me on the idea these types of cold soups.

The addition of pickled fruit really helped to brighten the dish and give it better balance. With something like this the refreshing quality is what is important and I think the next time we take a stab at this I would like to see it equally as spicy as it is acidic. Giving the spice balance a little kick might also step up the cooling factor as well.

Insalata Caprese – Buffula mozzarella, roasted tomato gelée, with basil oil and balsamic syrup
This was just a reinterpretation of the classic Italian dish that will become a fixture on my table over the next month as this summer’s tomatoes come into season. Here we just replaced the fresh tomatoes with a concentrated roasted tomato gelée, hoping to create a smooth uniform mouth feel that would be able to sit in unison with the creamy density of the mozzarella. The flavors and textures were almost perfect and Mark’s superb knife skills saved the gelée which like the aspic refused to completely set.

Wild Mushroom Brulée – Maitake and gorgonzola custard with pancetta brulée
This was my favorite adventure of the night. Being a fan of Italian cooking I frequently enjoy room temperature dishes that you might see served cold or hot. This savory dish was something that I am happy to say was delightful at any temperature.

I know you can say “add bacon and blue cheese to anything and you pretty much have a winner,” but the consistency and creaminess of the savory custard was just delightful and the crack of the spoon on the pancetta was just as satisfying as breaking through a crust of turbinado sugar.

Pancetta Crackers

Pâté En Croute – southern style pork pate with collard green pot lickies aspic wrapped in puff pastry
In hopes of fusing southern pork flavors with a French preparation,this very standard pork shoulder and offal dish was designed to be our entrée in this meal. This, of all the dishes we have ever attempted to serve, was wrought with the most difficultly and failure, but was one of our greatest accomplishments.

• The pork protested the attack of the food processor
• The puff pastry cracked and refused to hold the aspic
• The aspic rejected the cold and did not set

But the dish was a success of flavor and texture and we accomplished it as a group.

Raisin Granita – Raisin, Ancho and Serrano Ham Granita topped with candied Serrano chilies

With six courses of cold food, two deserts are only to be expected if not demanded, but not wanting to give into our sweet tooth too easily we tried a semi-savory Granita. This was based on a simple Serrano Ham stock which we clarified the night before and added raisined fruit and peppers to flavor the dish until the sweet caramelized flavors overtook the rich creaminess of the pork. The candied chilies gave just a kick of spice that reminded your palate that you had not completely been given desert yet.

Honey and White Pepper Ice Cream – Locatelli Cheese and black Cypriote salt
This dish was dreamt up one night, many months ago with my friend Danielle over a glass of wine and a lifestyle and food magazine. As Ms. Florio flipped through the pages we talked about dessert, my aversion to it, and her quickly growing mastery of ice cream and granita making. At some point we got to talking about the ridiculous flavors of ice creams that we had been seeing around the city and how it seems as if people were trying to out silly one another. Not to be outdone we started on a verbal journey of nonsense that produced a long list of ice cream ridiculousness that we decided we had to try. This dish was the one I felt was the strongest and I believe was inspired by a brand of perfume that was either advertised in said lifestyle and food magazine or that was being worn at the time by Ms. Florio.

Locatelli cheese was added for its amazing salt and MSG levels, with the smoky flavor of the volcanic black Cypriote salt adding a touch of savory into the otherwise light and sweet dish. The white pepper gave each bite a touch of kick which you attempted to satisfy with the next bite of sweetness only to be placed at the beginning of the circle again. The slice of cheese was the savory ending to the brutal cycle of spice and sweet and left the cold meal finished.