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.