A gratuitous display of pasta

In the midst of trying to recreate the series of ground breaking dinners that Thomas Keller and Grant Achatz served at their world renowned restaurants, the years of my life ticked over into another decade and with a riotous amount of celebration I became thirty. The week after, the New Year was filled with various celebrations befitting such a monumental accomplishment. My family got together for nice Italian meal on the date of my actual birth and a collection of good friends and I went to Mr. Castaño’s restaurant in midtown the next night for some serious brutality. All of this was wrapped up in a weeklong celebration showered over me by my lovely lady friend. It was a delicious week and I was very grateful for the much need break from the grueling hours of prep, cooking, planning and trying to squeeze in my day job between dinners.

So when Saturday came around I believed it was time to get back to business. We had the first of four test dinners to prepare ourselves for menu changes that Keller and Achatz executed at Alinea and the French Laundry. Being the creative forces that they were they did not just rest on their laurels and serve the same menu at all three restaurants, but they changed about 40% of the menu each meal. This kept us quite busy, writing recipes, researching techniques and then testing everything before our next series of events in Chicago and San Francisco.

We were going to split the menu up into pieces and practice some of the new elements while refining some of the harder elements we had come close to perfecting at our first series of events. Each night we would be serving eight of the twenty-four courses, paired with wine, and as you can see from these photos, a long series of cooking lessons and demonstrations.

Needless to say I was not aware of the fact that on Saturday after our test dinner my lovely lady friend had planned a huge surprise birthday party for me! So as we were cleaning up at the Whisk and Ladle, a steady stream of my friends and loved ones started to roll in carrying presents and copious amount of tasty beverages and treats. The very coy team that had been working with me all night whipped out all of their surprises and converted our dinner from a Keller/Achatz themed evening to a custom made party for me. Resplendent with special treats, fancy cocktails dreamed up by Mayur just for the evening and a very dangerous piñata which severely injured my lovely lady friend.

As luck would have it our good friend Steph Goralnick was there and was able to take some amazing photos of us cooking, the food and just some amazing interactions.

That evening’s menu:
Thomas Keller and Jonathan Benno (chef de cuisine per se):
“Galette” Hudson Valley Moulard Duck Foie Gras, Italian Pistachio “Financier,” Compressed Red Sensation Pear and Garden Mache

Thomas Keller's Foie Gras "Financier"

Thomas Keller and Cory Lee (chef de cuisine the French Laundry)

Salmon Cornet – Black sesame tuile and red onion crème fraîche
White sturgeon caviar – Lemon verbena gelée, cauliflower

Just seconds before plating all of the evenings Lemon Verbena Gels

Japanese Greenup Abalone – yuzu, tapioca, seaweed, matsutake mushroom broth

Snake River Farm’s “Calotte De Boeuf Grillee,” brisket and cabbage dumplings, horseradish pudding, sour cherries

Thomas Keller's Calotte de boeuf with sour cherry reduction and brisket dumplings

Chocolate S’mores – graham cracker ‘crunch,’ chocolate ‘crémeux,’ creamy “fluff” toasted marshmallow, chocolate emulsion

Thomas Keller's "S'mores"

Grant Achatz

Hot Potato-Cold Potato, Chive, Black Truffle
Black Truffle Explosion, Romaine, Parmesan

A delicate collection of pasta wrapped around a black truffle juice enriched eith butter and topped with wilted romaine lettuce Parmesan and a slice of Black Truffle

Prepared with: Jesse Carter, Cathy Erway, Deborah Gorman, Mark Losinger, Akiko Moorman, Andrew Rosenberg, Mayur Subbarao

Deborah Gorman, Andrew Rosenberg, Cathy Erway

…and a very special thanks and love my lovely lady friend for throwing me the most amazing thirtieth birthday party (week) ever!

For more information please click on the photo and read along with the captions.
All photos taken by Steph Goralnick © 2009

A mess of food photography - Steph Goralnick

After a hard fought battle with Keller and Achatz a calm settled over us as we prepared for our next series of dinners in Chicago. The preparation for those events was pushed to the back of our minds and we threw a party with our friends at PhotoJoJo in celebration of the photography of food. All the attendees were invited to bring a camera and get up close and dirty with whatever was created.

After our first hard fought battle with Keller and Achatz a calm settled over us as we prepared for our next series of dinners in Chicago. The preparation for those events was pushed to the back of our minds and we threw a party with our friends at PhotoJoJo in celebration of the photography of food. All the attendees were invited to bring a camera and get up close and dirty with whatever was created.

Aside from us the lovely ladies from the HAPA Kitchen were there, as well as Ted Allen and Amy Sedaris’s supper club. The whole event was hosted by the Whisk and Ladle with cocktails poured by resident bartender Nick Bennett and virtuoso cocktail artist Mayur Subbarao.

Here is a small collection of photos taken by our good friend Steph Goralnick.

Our Truffle Flight from the first Keller/Achatz Dinnner

The days were long and grueling. The mornings were filled with recipe writing and research on ingredients suppliers, purveyors and manufactures. Deliveries would arrive between 1000-1300 and testing would begin about 1600; lasting into the wee hours of the evening, with a rotating cast floating in and out of my apartment with casual regard an energy that was constantly refreshing and inspiring.

About a week out from our first set of events we were pretty sure we had a good idea of what we were going to serve for the dishes outlined on the simple printed menus we had been basing our dinners on. It was at this point that a burgeoning friendship with Nick Kokonas (the owner of Alinea) provided us simultaneously with the most beneficial and detrimental tool in our quest. He was able to get us a very extensive set of photographs that were captured by Lara Kastner at the per se dinner.

This provided us with a conundrum as the photos enabled us to answer all of the questions we had when we were trying to extrapolate the simple menu descriptions but we had already committed hours of practice and testing to the recipes we had written which were no longer relevant to the actual dishes. So in what could have been the worst decision we had made for our sanity we decided to rewrite all of the recipes and try to execute the dishes exactly the way they were served originally.

With 72 hours before service was to being on Friday December 12^th, 2008 we started to prepare and write simultaneously. Working around the clock, while shuffling our day jobs and the fleeting extraneous bits of our lives we pushed forward and into one of the longest dinners ever.

Truffle Flight:

© 2008 Lara Kastner. If you would like to see more photos from the Keller/Achatz Dinners please visit Lara's site and look through her Cuisine Portfolio

Keller:
Truffle Oil-Infused Custard
“Ragout” of Black Winter Truffles

White Truffles from Alba
Celery Branch and Celery Root Mousse

Achatz:
Black Truffle Explosion
Romaine, Parmesan

Hot Potato-Cold Potato
Chive, Black Truffle

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.

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..