Archives for July 2008
The Latest Dessert Menu.
30 July 2008 | Ten 01, delicious, plated dessert, dessert | 3 Responses
So I took the chocolate flour-less cake recipe that I used for Chocolate Whiskey Cake, and I piped and swirled some NY Cheesecake batter into it and I’m calling it Marble Cheesecake. I discovered this process by mistake at Carlyle, where I had the two batters ready at the same time. Funny how stuff comes together sometimes. I learned one recipe from Tony, and one from Mark, it’s as if I delivered their bastard child. The creaminess of the cheesecake flirts with the fudge-like chocolate, blackberry coulis and delicate horseshoe chocolate garnish sells it. Pretty cool looking I thought, and hell of decadent. I used this cake for a recent off-site event, and it was well received. Some people even want it for their birthday. Right now Bramble-type berries are so good in Oregon, and these blackberries are no exception. Viridian farms delivers, and the berries don’t disappoint. Take for example their blueberries, which are an integral part of the Lemon Blueberry Tart, below. This is an extremely simple dessert, pate sucre, lemon curd, the blueberries and coulis, a bit of chantilly. It’s selling well. I didn’t know how it was going to work until I had it on the plate. Simple and delicious. I’m also using their raspberries for the new Bread Pudding set, with raspberry caramel ice cream, a different but delicious frozen treat. Also new this menu is Funnel Cakes. I wanted to try these again to see if I could actually produce them, instead of just piping a few like I originally did. I can. I can also serve it with roasted banana anglaise and call it a day.
Eating Again.
27 July 2008 | eating, Ten 01, food | 2 Responses
I eat good at work. At about nine-thirty, or ten o’clock, I’m about to get fed. One night Perez made me this slider, it had foie torchon and a fried quail egg. I practically inhaled it. Arturo loves to cook for everybody. One morning when we were all hungover he cooked up some rib tacos with black bean sauce. Perfect hangover food. One night, at the end of service, he brought me this tasty pork loin dish, it had this great spicy salad on it. Niell also cooks for me sometimes, like stuffed chicken breast and bacon shallot mashies. I asked him what he could throw together for me real quick and he shows up with a perfectly seared, feta stuffed goodness with smooshy taters. It made my night. He made me a big fat steak one night, too. Still another night, Tony 2 Fingers had a duck tit mac-e-chee for me, with stinky blue cheese. He’s always got some project going for me to taste, like a bacon wrapped terrine. One night I ate this delicious duck confit, Perez made that one, too. But you know, I get hungry. Doing what I do, you can catch an appetite. The kind of appetite that requires a healthy portion of mayonnaise, butter, duck fat or cheese. I wonder what my cholesterol looks like these days. I imagine a delicious looking sludge pumping through my veins, a river of fetid creaminess that would make a good sauce were I to mount some butter. Ah, gluttony…GIMME A RIB!!
Crap Meal In Paris.
23 July 2008 | eating, Europe | 2 Responses
Yes, faithful readers, that, unfortunately, is Foie Gras. A cold lifeless hunk of fatty fat-fat, alongside a pile of stinky aspic. This pathetic terrine was crap, and so was our entire meal at a brasserie in Paris, France. The 27 euro prix fix was just shit. The service staff hovered annoyingly, the dude eye-balling my fork, just bent on that moment when I put it down so he can snatch it away. Our salad, hands down the best course, reminded me of middle school. I felt the bearded cigar smoking lady from 6th grade lunch line watching me from the kitchen as I ate slimy lettuce and hard tomatoes. Even the cream corn was present. Kate had salmon, a flesh colored mass that arrived at the table amidst a broken hollandaise and rice pilaf. The only texture in the fish came from the numerous pin bones. My lamb chops showed up overcooked with no sauce, the “chips” were the only thing more embarrassing than the foie terrine. And what the fuck was that salad? Even Ground Round did it better than that!! At least they dressed the cunting thing. We sat in the middle of the dining room, in sight of the (shudder) dessert table, which housed the included sweets of the evening. A kind of enclosure or sneeze card covered the room temp plates I could almost reach. The profiteroles came from the kitchen, however and the imported Hershey’s syrup the saving grace of the meal. My lemon crap-tart arrived quickly, as it was stored less than a meter from my face in the center of the crowded room. It had the tip broken off of it’s stale meringue. The fucking tip was broken off!! Show some pride people!! This is Paris!! Putain de merde!!
Oustanding in the Field
21 July 2008 | Ten 01, delicious, food | 4 Responses
We cooked at the Outstanding in the Field event at Domaine Serene Winery. The bus rolled up and set up the table in the middle of the vineyard, then we showed up and cooked on the hillside. Adam and Chef shucked over 200 oysters while the rest of us cut up melons. Soon after I cut my finger opening a bottle of truffle oil for the confit garlic and mushrooms. The sun baked us as the guests toured the vineyard and the servers scurried to ready the wines. The scene was set for an epic five course, including great food, wine pairings, and good company. As always we came prepared. We served up herbed melon salad with goat cheese and prosciutto. We heated the duck confit and cherry farro in a nearby oven, everything else was precariously perched on screaming hot grills. Chef seared of the duck tits and I grilled the pork loins. Our farmer from Sweet Briar Farms double fisted the meat as it was sliced up, gleefully telling all it was one of her pigs they were about to eat. It was as sweetly serene service, I drank chilled red wine and nibbled on everything. After the pork and lyonnaise potatoes we chatted and drank. People came up and clapped us on the backs and cheersed us as we watched the sun settle low on the trees. One guest was quoted “…fucking fantastic,” she would travel the country for three more Outstanding meals. A sepia coated everything as Chef told me to start the dessert. Everybody quickly plopped the cheesecakes on the plate while I mixed the berries and balsamic reduction. People ate, the elation was audible. 
You’ve Got Cheese Mail.
9 July 2008 | cheese, eating | No Responses
So a few weeks ago I received an email from a guy at Ile de France cheese company. They wanted to send me some cheese, and then write about it on the blog. Well eat the cheese, and then write about it. So here goes. I received my cheese in a small box containing a styrofoam container with some ice packs and bubble-wrap shrouding the cheese. My first thought was that great care was taken to get the cheese to me in good shape. After pulling away the packaging I must admit I was a little disappointed at the packaging. It immediately looked to me like an everyday mass-produced household cheese. I’ve been sampling a lot of good cheeses lately and most good ones don’t have a picture of cheese on the package. Our resident Frenchman also pointed out, here was an imported French cheese without a word of French on it. But cheese is good, and one of my personal favorite “cheeses” isn’t actually cheese at all and barely which meets the legal definition of cheese. I pulled it out and let it come up to room temp. Me and the boys sampled the cheese on top of some Pearl Bakery bread. The cheese smeared nicely onto the bread and had a subtle aroma. The creaminess hit me first, rich and buttery. The rind was slightly firm and reminded me of Brie, unsurprisingly. Camembert is the cousin of the King Of Cheese. A fun fact about Camembert: Salvador Dali got the idea for The Persistence of Memory from a wheel of melting Camembert. This cheese was that good. I wrapped what was left up, I wanted to enjoy it later with wine. When I got off, work, that’s just what I did. Since this cheese had such a buttery quality, I decided to finish the wheel in one of my favorite butter ways; on toast with jam. I poured some red wine as the bread toasted. I spread on the cheese, then scooped on some jam. My mouth watered as I sat in the evening sun. The cheese was just barely melting from the warm bread, and when warm, had a certain nuttiness. I read about Camembert later that evening and learned that it was one of the first industrialized cheeses, the advent of its wooden box dating back to 1890, making it possible to send the cheese over further distances. I started to make some connections. I guess the original Ile De France was one of the first refrigerated ocean liners, sailing the seas with cheese just 40 or so years after the wooden cheesebox was invented. Brie and Camembert were one of the first cheeses imported by America, and by this company. I guess between then and now they learned that Americans like their packaging flashy, and in English. And yes, a picture of what’s inside would be helpful. Overall, I really liked the cheese. A simple example of an age-old cheese. Not showing off, not falling behind. Right in the fat part of the curve. A cheese I would eat every day.
Journal Excerpt-4/6/08
3 July 2008 | journal excerpt, eating, Europe | 1 Response
We ate a quick, early breakfast of poached eggs, croissants, charcuterie and cheese. After checking out of our room, the owner of the hotel offered to drive us to the bus station to begin the next leg of our journey. Leaving much loved Riva Del Garda was bittersweet, but we were bound for Rovereto, then Bellagio. We waited at the station for about an hour, dozing on our heavy backpacks. On the bus, we marveled at the beauty of the Italian countryside. In Rovereto, we had just enough time to grab some snacks- cappuccino, “light” coke, and a panino. The train ride to Verona was a quick and easy on hour. A twenty minute lay-over and then a train to Como. When it arrived we wandered empty car after empty car looking for our seat numbers. In the very last car, which was packed, we found our seats next to an ancient nun and a smelly old lady reading the funnies. Her cell phone kept buzzing loudly as she dozed, completely oblivious. We arrived in Como around 3 pm and had beers and a package of cookies. Our final bus of the day to Bellagio left in about an hour. When it finally rolled up in the warm afternoon sun we barely got seated before the driver hit the accelerator. Riding through the city of Como, the bus loudly banging and creaking over bumpy streets, I could hear it’s roar over my ipod. I commented to Kate about how roootie-poot it felt, we soon found out why. The bus ride from Como to Bellagio is one I will remember for the rest of my life. A white-knuckle nightmare of blind corners and blaring horns. Our driver, the picture of calm in the rear-view pounded that bus around impossible corners, up narrow-assed streets, gassed it through too-tight curves and hammered it up and down steep grades. He leaned on the horn often, as if to warn oncoming cars of their two options: pull over or die. Near-miss was met by close call and again with the horn. Too-tiny streets where houses and buildings teetered over the cliff’s edge, the asphalt winded up around and over and through. I gritted my teeth and held on to the seat-back in front of me, which I then noticed had roller coaster style handles. Motorcycles passed us at regular intervals. Fucking death wish? At one point, a particularly narrow corner, road work had closed off one lane. What did our driver do? Again with the horn…but this time his trumpeting was only met with more trumpeting, of another oncoming tour bus. Screech!!! Hilarity ensues. Picture this, on one side a thirty foot rock wall, about three inches from the side of the bus. On the other, another huge bus crammed in at a weird angle between us and the guardrail, the hundred plus foot drop into Lake Como over houses and gardens. Italian men from both buses were in the road cursing and waving their arms, comically creased brows and incomprehensible shouting. Bottlenecking traffic, cars and motorcycles piled up in front and in behind, ever inching closer as the buses eeked back and forth, trying to get around each other. After about fifteen minutes of this, our driver manages to squeak out, how he didn’t scrape the rock wall is beyond me. But now you see, we were off schedule. The fifteen minutes spent maneuvering the construction zone had made us late, and our driver knew it. I don’t think he let off the gas once over the following twenty minutes, even when he slammed on the brakes to carry us careening around cars or through narrow tunnels. Arriving in Bellagio and screeching to a halt, he promptly killed the engine and jumped out, no doubt in search of a stiff drink. As I peeled my fingers out of the grooves I had created in the seat in front of me, I wanted one, too. We checked into the Hotel Bellagio, and on the third floor found our room with stunning views. After settling we wandered the tiny winding staircase streets inquiring at several eateries about dinner. In this town, apparently, dinner wasn’t served anywhere until after 7 pm. We sighed and parked our butts at a patio cafe and ordered drinks. They brought cream cheese and chive crostini and cheap chips with our beverages, we ate and watched the sun sink low in the sky. An hour or so later, we were in front of Far Out, a swank feeling restaurant with a good looking menu. Once seated, we were told service would not begin for another fifteen minutes, in which time we were completely ignored. I walked over to the bar and ordered us a couple of drinks. At our table, our server told us they didn’t serve wines by the glass, even though I just bought one at the bar. Our empty glasses stayed on the table the entire meal. We ordered our food and waited, pondering how Italian restaurants put out bread and olive oil, but no plate to dip. During our caprese salad and bruscetta, we watched a bunch of obvious looking Americans pile into the seating area. Our server, who also was also hosting, told them “Sorry, we are full.” We glanced around the empty dining room just as they had and exchanged confused looks. The group left, looking puzzled. I thought maybe the tables were reserved or something, but as the room filled up with random walk-ins I realized they certainly were. For non-Americans. They had reached American capacity. I enjoyed my Head-on Tiger Prawns and Beef Tenderloin but really wanted to stiff these assholes on gratuity. Kate wouldn’t have it. She loved her Salmon Ravioli too much. We left three euro on a fifty euro check. Back at the hotel we watched old sci-fi movies (in English yay!!) and fell asleep to the sounds of a thunderstorm.
