Two weekends ago we roasted a pig in my backyard. As much as that sentence stands alone on its own I haven’t fully prepared myself to talk about the nonsense that was that magical event. I am on the other hand ready to speak about these little treats we made after being awake for 36 hours.

I have recently discovered that I love fermented eggs, especially this Chinese variety that glisten in the light and have the most amazing pine flowers. I could be wrong but I am pretty sure the way they make these is by packing them in pot ash and burying them in the ground for 40 days. I am pretty sure that you can make your own my creating a very alkaline water solution somewhere near 5% salt, 5% lye. I am also sure that using lye only requires about 5-7 days but only makes the eggs transparent brown with green yolks instead of this magical black with blue yolk. The final thing that I am positive of is that you have to use duck or quail eggs, chicken eggs definitely don’t work for some reason. This being said I will let you know about turkey, pheasants and any other foul eggs I can in addition to any edible reptile eggs I can get my hands on.

This first batch was cut into eights and piled on a pile of pickled vegetables and topped with friend shallots. Those onions were sharp with vinegar and spice that did an amazing job of offsetting the “egg jelly” flavor of the whites and the crunchy shallots played perfect foil to the creamy rotting of the yolks. A touch of aged soy and scallions rounded it all off nicely. Rotting food can be good.

Thank you Janis for the eggs, thank you Sunny for the drunken pickling, thank you Evan for getting really close to food you are about to eat with a camera.

So I have been learning Spanish recently. It is partially because I have many friends from Latin America, predominately Colombia, another part is because used to have a crush on a girl who spoke Spanish (not natively but recreationally and really well) and finally the last bit was that I have become a huge fan of modern Spanish cooking. This dish was born one night while was watching Jose Andreas be totally amazing and invoke all sorts of crazy Ferran moves, with bubbles and chemicals. Then I saw this beautifully simple knife trick where he filleted out the seeds from the belly of the tomato and made “caviar.” Ferran has been talking of this for a while and I never saw the actual process, but in practice it is quite simple and the caviar is unbelievably flavorful.

This is a homemade tortilla chip with a version of pico di gallo. The tomato caviar was marinated in lime juice and jalapeño pickling juice, then sprinkled with shallots, garlic and cilantro. Delightful explosion of flavor captured by the genus perfectly here.

Poached Scrambled duck eggs folded with homemade ricotta, olive oil, lemon zest, dirty Sicilian sea salt, black pepper and chives.

At first this idea was thrown out because it seemed silly by people of less creative fortitude then myself. Then they realized that it was really a fantastic way of dealing with our obvious excess of duck eggs and homemade ricotta.

Problem solved.

Canard L’orange sanguine

Skin was almost perfect but the glaze was delightful. James made a blood orange jelly that refused to act like a jam but was easily converted in an amazing glaze. It was then thickened with some heat and then spice up with a few poblanos and a kiss of a departing Columbian. Paired perfectly with the bread pudding.

Wild Mushroom bread pudding. This is quickly becoming the best brunch dish I know of. Slow poached eggs nestled in the top with a hollandaise and some black pepper it is delightful.

This dish is the closest I have come to meat perfection since I began cooking. Sous Vided Beef Tenderloin to 53C then deep fried in beef tallow to brown the outside, with a fig and balsamic glaze and topped with gorgonzola crumbles and crisped sage

A start at perfecting the richest types of raviolo.

These larger ravioli were stuffed with homemade ricotta, spinach and pecorino with a slow poached pheasant egg placed in the center. Sautéed ramps in raw cream butter and then crisped the raviolo before glazing them with a duck buerre blanc. Pheasant yolk invading the buerre blanc was the end goal of this whole sauce and shaved Locatelli on top was specifically to add a touch of salt.

This seems to be getting pretty close to the most decadent pasta I can make. I guess I need to preface that by saying that, it is the most decadent  pasta I can make without proper cream, bacon or duck fat. I guess.