Society Room
thanks again to sara and jason for taking the time to photograph and edit the pictures for this dinner
17th June, 2007
thanks again to sara and jason for taking the time to photograph and edit the pictures for this dinner
This will be roasted and presented whole for our first chef’s table dinner on Wednesday.
Today the Ping Island Garden was extended….The soil is being prepped for biodynamics and we shall see how things unfold in the next couple of months….
My home garden is complete and should be biodynamic by the fall……very exciting…I”ll post pics when things start growing….I have purchased seeds from Italy, France, Virginia and Japan….should be very interesting in deed.
Foie terrine layered with foie marshmallow. We served it with compressed apples and licorice
new tuna dish for our current menu using these wonderful products
Restructered Sweetbreads with marinated maiitakes, scrambled cauliflower and black truffle jus
Eggless Saffron flan, eggplant puree, chorizo and olive poached artichokes
Trying to figure out the best temp for these crispy baby swiss chard leaves….
This is our current lamb dish…..Braised pistachio cassoulet, carrot confit and
bay laurel jus….we are currently putting the finishing touches on our new lamb dish….
The chocolate appears to w
be solid but is actually liquid. We serve this with peanut butter ice cream, burnt marshmallow fluff and thai basil
reverse sferification…
we use calcium gluconate, calcium lactate and sodium alginate to achieve this…
this is a nifty trick that allows us to create new aromas at the table….we have been playing with various extracts and essential oils that are mixed with sawdust… they sawdust is placed in the pipe and the smoke is trapped under the plastic wrap…everytime the guest touches the food smoke rings are made…..for this dish we used a licorice smoke to go with sweetbreads and sunflower seeds….joan roca is responsible for inventing this technique
Alan Benton is a great man, his bacon is incredible…..Bentons’ is located in Madisonville Tn, we love TN
We serve these with duck ham, crispy bread and cornichons for an amuse…They are 100% savory thanks to “envision”
This stuff is from Japan………it was like eating cold butter..really good butter
We were doing some serious work with meat glue today and didn’t want to take any chances…safety first
We use methocel SGA150 and gelatin to shape the strips of hollandaise for our ribeye dish…..we make between 35 and 60 of these every day
To achieve this texture we used Ultra Tex 3 and a dehydrator.
This dish was inspired by the tasty and classic bacon wrapped shrimp……….We slow cook the shrimp and serve it with a serrano ham consomme and fennel…..Thinking about adding a drizzle of 50 year balsamic????
This is 93 ounces of oscetra caviar and 2 pounds of white alba truffles….
Today we discovered how to make carrot juice crispy……it completely dissolves in your mouth
we were able to take yogurt and gel the outside with beet juice. The exterior is beet gel and the interior is liquid yoghurt…..we served it with fennel pollen, hazelnuts and poached lobster….
This picture is from day one. It should be interesting to see how this picture progresses in the future…
We have been rather obsessed with powdering things lately…..Why not foie gras??
this is what happens when you put garlic whistles through the juicer……..the flavor was insane….just like papa john’s garlic dip…..thanks to daniel heinze for this idea……we serve it with grass fed beef and local marble potatoes
This dinner was so much fun, more pics to come…Thank you Sara and Jason for such great pictures
Never Start a practical joke war with a man that owns 165 liters of Liquid Nitrogen….kinda hard to put your shoes on after work when they are -270 degrees C…
on the new dishwashers first night
Planet
We brine the foie gras whole and the sear it on the plancha….we serve it with granola, whipped raisin and brown butter-cider poached pears
After three days in the brine we cold smoked the lobe. Then seared it on the plancha……We served it with Blis elixir, apples, and hazelnuts.
photo by Andy C.
These are sheets of lobster sauce for a ribeye dish we are working on. Here we are trying to choose the correct methocel for this particular application.
We use a blowtorch to set the methocel.
We have wanted to make chewing gum for quite some time now. It is really easy
and lots of fun. We are thinking about making bacon, foie, meyer lemon, spruce, mastic, vadouvan, menthol, tarragon to name a few
This is an onion puree that has been set with gellan gum and cooled. It is then charred with a blowtorch and cooled. It is then cut into perfect rectangles and served alongside roasted diver scallops.
Cauliflower puree in blanket form. I draped these over some potatoes just to show the effect.
we served these in medallions with mastic, broccoli, and matsutake mushrooms
these are made using sga 150 methocel…we serve them with cream cheese, pickled ramps and crispy bagel cubes
we are still working on this piece of equipment…..it allows us to freeze things instantly..
..the circulator keeps the ln2 moving and the compressor keeps the nitrogen from boiling away
this is served with chanterelles, charred onions and brown butter artichokes…….
Eat the cotton candy and drink the tea
We discovered activa a couple of years ago and have used it on a daily basis ever since……
It allows us to restructure things so that we can have more control over the cooking process…..Here we were concerned about the thickness of the halibut we have been recieving…..it was rather thin and was very easy to overcook. We simply dusted the skin side with activa and folded it over…..now it is twice as thick and will cook more evenly…..
WE take oysters and puree them……….we then drop them into liquid nitrogen…..we serve them in the shell….they melt in your mouth and you are left with the sensation of a fresh oyster
After seeing a picture of Albert Adria holding an oil encased in sugar, I began wondering how the hell they produced it. We brainstormed for weeks, some of our ideas for producing this was downright hilarious. We finally figured it out, or at least made it work for us. I am still not sure how they produce their oil bonbons but it was rewarding finally getting the results we were looking for. We have begun to brainstorm various other fats that would work with this technique. We were even able to add balsamic vinegar to the olive oil. Endless possibilities are ahead………
We are very fortunate to have such great local farmers. These vegetables are from our friend Rita from Full Circle Farms.
These allow us to manipulate food in new ways. Read the labels the next time you go to the grocery store.
what a great place to wind down…….the smell of the ocean and the taste of margaritas
A picture really says a thousand words…..
We put these things thru the ringer at the restaurant……They are also put thru the ringer before they even leave the farm….
How to Cook Like an Avant-Garde Chef
By Ratha Tep, Assistant Features EditorRelated Categories: Restaurants, Ingredients, News, Chefs
In our July issue, you’ll see the results of our third annual “What Chefs Know Best” poll, a survey of 100 top chefs around the country. Included in the questionnaire: “What food trend do you want to see disappear?” Many of the chefs said molecular cuisine; Todd Gray at Equinox in Washington, D.C., even replied, “Space-age cooking à la George Jetson.” The founders of Gastrotek resoundingly disagree. Launching in about two months, Gastrotek will be the third retail company to sell the chemical powders (methylcellulose, tapioca maltodextrin and the like) beloved by avant-garde chefs. Gastrotek’s Web site (up soon, at Gastrotek.com) will offer video clips that demonstrate the basic uses of each chemical, and a DVD will explore more esoteric preparations beyond the now seemingly ubiquitous “caviar balls.” One partner in the company (no surprise here) is the superexperimental chef Sean Brock, who’s taken over the legendary Charleston, South Carolina restaurant, McCrady’s. The other is more unexpected: Tyler Gray of Mikuni Wild Harvest, known for supplying wild edibles to the likes of top chefs like Thomas Keller. “I work with 700 restaurants, and I get calls every day about where to find these chemical powders,” he says. “They’re not going anywhere.”
Very few things in life bring me this much joy……….stay tuned for more pics as the growing season progresses….we are very lucky
cubes
into vichysoisse and served it with smoked steelhead roe
We served these tasty little shrimp with salsify gnocchi, celery, saffron and apple…
these are some of the components that we are working on for a new lamb dish……mustard broth and eggless spinach flan.
This is my new favorite spice thanks to my friends at le sactuaire…
Here we serve it with lobster, cauliflower and apricot…..we finish the dish with crispy arugula
This is our first attempt at a new technique that our friend Asbel was kind enough to explain…..the texture is amazing, the vegetables shatter and then melt away when consumed. thanks Asbel, we are currently working with lots of different vedge, herbs, etc
we are always looking for ways to make food lighter….
we stumbled upon this by accident…
the flavor is mastic
hollandaise, duo of potatoes, black trumpets…we serve this on
our tasting menu
For years I have been trying to convince our beef purveyors to sell us just the cap
or deckle from the ribeye…..they finally listened and we are super pumped, this is our favorite part of the cow
We have been really interested in taking things apart and putting them back together lately…..here we take butternut squash and roast it with blis maple syrup…after it is roasted we add butternut squash juice and puree the two together…we then add agar-agar and mold the puree…the result is very similar to the squash in it’s original state, we have just amplified the flavor…..we are working on making it better by distilling or reducing the juice…..
my goal is to shape these like cheetos, they will then be covered in citrus powder to resemble one of my favorite snacks…..
we are currently brainstroming other flavor combinations as well
We pour a bacon-butternut squash puree tableside
We served alot of turkey today….here we used TG to serve boneless medallions of turkey………they were delicious, glued, brined, poached and fried…..we served them with foie gras stuffing
Inspired by a few conversations with Alex Talbot about how pressure affects food and what a great tool it is, we began to brainstorm tools that would help us achieve our goals….We discussed building new pieces of equipment and talked about everything from food marinators to isi chargers. Yesterday we pressurized scallops with foie gras broth and the results were incredible.
Our kitchen changes all the time. We are always moving things around to try and make our lives easier…..check the archives and compare the differences….keep checking back, I am sure we will change it soon.
This new set up allows all the food to come to a table in the center where everyone can contribute to the plating.
this is our newly renovated private dining room. It is well over 200 years old. George Washington had a 30 course meal here in 1791
Our version of a classic dish….Brown butter-caper ice cream, parsley juice and lemon rind puree.
