As faithful readers know, I’ve cooked my whole working life.  In my seventeen years of kitchen work, I’ve only had one job that wasn’t food related; driving a horse carriage in Vail. I still hesitate to call myself a Chef, as it is a moniker for which I hold much respect. Even though I’ve had the word in my title as pastry chef for a few years now, Chef with a capital “c” is something else altogether.  Jack Yoss is a Chef. Compared to him I will always be a cook. Semantics aside, the gods have somehow seen fit to land me in a Chef role of sorts, and I couldn’t be happier. As Chef jobs go, this one is breezy. It’s an invite only pop up restaurant for ten people, hence the name. The counter at Kitchen Cru was just begging for this model, and why shouldn’t it be me who answers the call.  I was able to convince Michael, the owner of KitchenCru and my employer to try. Him being far from a slouch in the kitchen, a very experienced home cook, in fact, he came on board as co-chef. TenTop was born.  We had very keen ideas from the beginning about what this would be; very small; very exclusive, the two of us having fun with food and friends. The idea to implement a Twitter/Facebook update blackout came to us very early, my friend and mentor Adam Berger having suggested it. Make this a true experience, one that didn’t need validation from the internet. Any blogging, tweeting or Facebooking that took place would happen on our end, before and after the event.
Our first dinner was Satan’s Feast, a heavy metal themed dinner. I wanted to make it fun and have an element of another driving force in my life: music. The menu descriptions were cryptic, as I tried to make them sound as metal as possible. I played some Instrametal like Pelican and Animals as Leaders during the dinner which at a lower volume seemed quite nice to eat to. Our first course was a freshly shucked oyster, because what is more metal than eating something that was alive only moments before? Second was my favorite dish of the evening, poached leeks with and Arrabbiata vinaigrette and duchess potato garnished with fried pepperoni. A last minute course we put together before the entree turned out to be the most metal of all, chicken heart dipped in agro dulce served on a duplex nail with a shot of grappa. Our entree was a fra diavolo surf & turf sandwich with some chioggia beet chips. Served on a house made pullman loaf, this sando was something to behold. It didn’t eat as well as I hoped, it ended up being a little cumbersome. The flavors were spot on though, hell of decadent. For dessert, I looked to make pastry metal by using the most brutal ingredient of all, blood. A pig’s blood custard with lemon sherbet, smoked pickled cherries, and blood caramel. This was a successful dish, the flavor of pig’s blood goes quite well with cocoa, the panna cotta’s other main flavoring ingredient. A subtle coppery earthiness and a slightly viscous texture created a nice complexity.

All in all, our first dinner was a huge success. In the near future I’m going to be bringing in some buddies of mine, fellow cooks and sous Chef’s who want to unleash their own food on the public, but don’t have a venue because they work in another chef’s kitchen. Also, you’ll see plenty of these dinners blogged about here with pictures and recipes, a la mrjeffmccarthy.com. For now you can download the recipes here. Check out all the photos for this event on my Flickr page. Follow TenTop on twitter @tentopcru, or check out the facebook page.

I’ve run into a diverse cross-section of chefs, and Mike Perez is one of the best I’ve known.  He’s more gringo than Mexican, but he’s still a great cook.  He’s got the humble pan pusher work-ethic, and the passionate drive to make the best food.  We’ve got an easy raport that sometimes speaks volumes in a look, the kind of in-the-trenches kind of friendship that only true kitchen lifers know.  Sometimes during service, deep in humping out food, he’ll just crack a sly smile.  “Ain’t nothin’ to a boss!” Sometimes, he’ll look at me like Murderface, and I’ll know what he means; you nasty, girl! As a faithful reader, our jokes got jokes, laughter comes easy.  I’m proud to rank him among the top people I’ve met in this business, and as a lifelong friend.  As all cooks know, you run into those people in your careers; the kind of peeps you say you’ll work with again, maybe even open up your own place, and with Chepe it’s no different.  With him I can almost see it actually happening.  We both were privileged to be mentored by Chef Jack Yoss, and as anyone who has worked with Jack knows, that’s something. I’ve learned a lot working with Perez, watching him cook, lead the cooks. I’ve jumped down, I’ve turned around, I’ve picked a bag of cotton.  I’ve been violated. I’ve enjoyed some long services, some outlandish circumstances. We’ve even spent some time together off the clock, riding the mountain, eating and drinking.  Drinking, eating, cooking, drinking.  The guy loves food. I recall once I was drinking creme anglaise out of the blender.  Perez walks up and laughs, then asks for a hit.   You really have to respect a guy that will drink creme anglaise out of a blender.  Well…I do anyway.

I stood behind Chef Jack and watched him address the crowd.  His words numbed me, the lights were warm and dazzling.  My body was worked and my brain was out of breath, the past weeks whirlwind had me winded.  Having been pitted against a punishing prep list, long days and busy nights, I end up here.  On a stage, people applauding; dessert service forks and tinkling wine glasses, laughter in my ears.  My mind flashed back onstage, the past year, month, week, moment.  My career’s skyrocket since meeting Jack and starting at Ten-01. Working, always working.  So many great dinners, so many memories.  Perez and I working Sunday before investor sponsored staff party. This whole day, prepping and plating; flashing in my mind.  We just kicked out the best dinner this group’s seen, over a thousand plates over five courses in 2 hours. I left the hall elated and grabbed an icy cold bottle of white and hit the showers.  That night, its was late night shots and darts with one of the best chefs I’ll meet, a friend and mentor. He believed in my talent and demanded my proper execution, encouraging and strong.  It was an easy parting for him and I; just farewell, both sure of our permanent friendship. Besides, I know he’ll never really get lost out there.  Our paths will cross again.

I’ve been through a lot with this bread pudding recipe.  I’ve done about ten different versions since I’ve been at Ten-01; and until a recent mishap, was about to give up on it.  I was trying to bake the pudding in a dome mold, trying to coax a new plate design out of this tired old custard soaked bread.  The flexible silicon molds produced perfect little domes, but they were all custardy near the top.  Also, the crusty upper region, the best part, was now on the bottom.  I fed one to Chef and he was not into it.  It got me thinking.  Like I said, the best part of this pudding is the top inch or so of dark brown crustiness.  So I cut off the part that was soggy custard, ending up with perfect round disks, perfect for sandwiching something.  I bet could achieve that same result by baking it in a thin layer in a sheet pan.  Hmmm…..I went back to the recipe’s roots to start a flavor profile.  When I learned it from Tony, it was Bourbon Bread Pudding.  Maker’s Mark glug-glugged it’s way into the custard once more.  I had made Butter Pecan ice cream the week before and it’s salty richness held up the bourbony pudding nicely.  Salted Caramel sauce also fit in well.  I’ve been experimenting with different tuile cookies lately, and  Lace Tuile made it into this presentation because of it’s simple light crunch.  I learned some new things with this dessert.  Firstly, that I can bake bread pudding in a thin layer and get great results.  Second, I can form freshly spun ice cream into a sausage and slice it at service, for a nice clean portion.  At first I made a plastic wrap tube a la Michel Richard, but after a quick chat with John our sausage maker, I was using collagen casings for my ice cream logs.  This dessert is selling like crazy, and is making the Chocolate Cake look so last year.  On the menu it reads Ice Cream Sandwich, and I think that really sells it.  It recalls childhood, a whimsical peek at the past.  Soaked in bourbon.  Learn how to make bread pudding here.  Make Butter Pecan Ice Cream and Lace Tuile with the recipes below.  Add salt to your favorite caramel sauce recipe.  Enjoy delicious sweets.

Butter Pecan Ice Cream adapted from Ben&Jerry’s Ice Cream Book.

8 oz butter

2 cups pecan pieces

1 tsp salt

4 eggs

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 cups heavy cream

1 cup milk

1.Saute the pecans in the buuter until the butter begins to browm slightly.  Sprinkle in the salt.  Strain off the butter and reserve.  Spread the pecans on a sheet tray to cool

2.Whip the eggs in a stand mixer until light and frothy, then add the sugar.  Whip on high to ribbon stage (4-5 minutes?)

3.Reduce the mixer speed to it’s lowest setting and pour in the milk and cream.

4.Transfer the mix into a blender and with it running, pour in the butter to emulsify.  I like to puree in some of the toasted nuts at this point as well.

5.Spin the mix in your ice cream machine, adding the nuts a few minutes before the ice cream is done.  Eat some immediately.  Using a pastry bag, pipe it into a sausage casing and freeze if desired.

Lace Tuile

8 oz butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 oz honey

1 oz brandy

2/3 cup flour

pinch of salt

1.  Cream the butter and the sugar in a stand mixer.

2.  Add the honey and brandy and mix to combine.

3.  Add the flour and salt and mix to form a smooth paste.  Spread thinly onto a non-stick baking mat and bake until golden brown in a 350 degree oven.  Mold while warm over a rolling pin.

My buddy David, a server at the restaurant, told me one day how he loved my bread pudding.  He told me it was as if a waffle had fucked a doughnut.  I don’t think he was pleased with my reaction to his verbal description, so he took it a step further and drew this illustration.  Thanks Dave, I’m glad you like it.

For New Year’s Eve I created Chocolate 3 ways form of Ibarra Hot Chocolate, Flourless cake with Basil Ice Cream, and Milk Chocolate Panna Cotta.  Last year I did Chocolate 4 ways, so next year it will probably be a Duo.  I don’t know if I’m getting more refined or more lazy.  In the post-holiday slow season I’ve been busy as hell trying to stay busy.  I received an email to make dessert for this years IPNC event, a 400 person catering mission.  I’ve been developing a new boozy chocolate candy line (above,) brainstorming a new dessert menu, and I’ve even started writing on the restaurant’s blog. This last bit is excites me.  I’ve got some great ideas to promote our food and drink, as well as write some cool pieces on my fellow awesome people; the staff at ten-01!  Once I work out some of the kinks in the wordpress theme, we’ll have how-to videos, hella pics, and lots of great writing by yours truly.  I’ll begin by creating bios for everyone.  When that person is mentioned in a post, I can link back to thier bio, and create a richer experience.  Anyhoo…my faithful readers needed fret, my work writing will be done at work, so I’ll see have plenty of time to continue publishing great content here at mrjeffmccarthy.com. For example, here’s a video of Perez breaking down a chicken while Chef heckles him.  At first I thought the video was ruined, but after watching it on YouTube a couple of times, it started to grow on me.  Stay tuned!!

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is a variation of one of my older recipes, literally the first dessert I made at ten-01. I learned this one from Tony, of course, and I’ve been tweaking it ever since.  If you review the earlier version, you’ll notice a few changes in the recipe below.  Firstly, the weights have changed.  Somewhere along the line, while converting it for various applications, I skewed the amounts.  The newer proportions reflect just how many times I’ve made this recipe, how many times I’ve observed it’s subtleties.  Chef actually improved upon its technique by mistake while I was in Europe.  Anyway, here’s whats changed and why.

This recipe contains all my favorite ingredients; butter, chocolate, eggs, sugar, and booze.  I was taught to melt the butter and chocolate over a double boiler Then whisk together the sugar and the eggs.  Then, when the chocolate was melted, everything was whisked together with the booze and baked in a water bath in ten inch cake pans.  When baked and thoroughly cooled we glazed them with a one to one ganache and sliced them in 16 portions.  Onto a marble and out to the buffet.   Simple and decadently effective.  The main trick then (and now) was knowing when to pull them from the oven.  They never really look baked, all loose and jiggly.  It’s still a kind of leap of faith for me when I pull them.  I find myself touching them every five minutes until they cool and solidify.

At Carlyle this recipe started to evolve.  The original recipe, just cut in half, was giving me some great results. I realized at this point how similar this cake was to cheesecake, and I treat cheesecake like a custard. I started baking it at a  lower temperature, and turning off the oven for the last half hour of baking.  A thick, fudgey texture was my reward.  I started trying different molds, and building up creamy layers.  The best version at those times was with passionfruit, I wanted to call it Sexual Chocolate.

For my tasting at ten-01, I baked the cake in a small ring mold and served it with brown butter ice cream.  It was over the top rich and showed I wasn’t afraid to knock people unconscious with chocolate.  At least that’s what I kept telling myself as they ate it (”They don’t hate you, they don’t hate you, they don’t even KNOW you, man!”)  I got the job, needless to say, and the cake ended up on the first menu.  I started to bake it in frames around this time, and that marks the first change in the recipe’s proportions.  Every time I pulled the 1/2 sheet cakes from the oven, the tops were just pooled with butter.  I think this happened because the cakes where to big to cook through before basically breaking.  I tried varying oven temperatures, mixing techniques, and finally ended up just reducing the amount of butter.  The cake had a slightly more crumbly texture but was still dense and fudgy.  Chef suggested I started serving the cake at room temperature. Chef knows a lot about food.  Much like cheese, the cake was way better at room temp. He actually improved upon the recipe by mistake, confusing the bread pudding technique with this one and whipped it on high speed for over 15 minutes. The cake melted in the mouth, inducing groaning.  This version of the cake sold really well. It seemed like it was around forever.  I started to get bored with it.  I replaced it with another Tony Classic and tried to forget about it.

Fast forward three or four menus.  The servers are clamoring for a rich, knock-out chocolate dessert.  The stupid Guinness brownie thing just wasn’t working.  Marble Cheesecake? Yeah, kind of, but not quite.  Scouring the internet for ideas,  I came across this.  The tenth item on McCormick’s 2008 Flavor Forecast was rubbed sage and rye whiskey.  Things started to click into place in my mind; the hamster running in its wheel turned the lock’s tumblers to open my mind on a new idea.  I knew whiskey and chocolate worked.  Would I use whiskey in the cake or in the sauce?  I knew how to make a kick-ass mint ice cream, would it work with sage? And would it go with the rich fudginess of the cake?   As it turns out, it does.  Famously.  I remember standing in the walk-in waiting for the ice cream base to cool down enough to spin.  I had some whiskey caramel left over form the Guinness brownie.  I spooned the caramel into my mouth followed by the sage base.  Closing my eyes, nodding, I reached to the top shelf for a beer…it was time to celebrate.

“Oh wait…” I thought, “…it’s only 6:30.”  I started straight away making a batch of flourless chocolate cake. Scanning over the ingredients, I encountered a problem.  I’ve only made this recipe with alcohol.  It’s always been whiskey, or Grand Mariner or Bailey’s or something.  I knew this recipe really well and just knew that I had to come up something to use in the place of whiskey, 3/4 of a cup of what, dammit, air?  Suddenly it hit me.  Water.

This batch of cakes,  baked in my handy new flexipans, was one of the best I’ve created.  Fudgy, of course, but the main flavor was chocolate. Not booze, but chocolate.  Water made this possible.  Having worked in pastry for a few years, this really struck me.  Water, the arch-nemesis of chocolate, was helping me showcase chocolate in this recipe.  Sometimes when things seem weird at first, proper handling can produce fantastic results.  Water is now my new favorite ingredient.  Even chocolate isn’t scared anymore. I  even used the two together it in the mirror glaze.  Anyway, enough of my jawing, here’s the recipes for my faithful readers, and also for the readers of the Willamette Week, who will find this cake in the October 15th Restaurant Guide.

Chocolate Flourless Cake

1 pound 14 ounces chocolate (64%)

1 pound 8 ounces butter

15 ounces eggs

15 ounces sugar

3/4 cup water

1.  Pre-heat your convection oven to 200 F.

2.  Weigh the chocolate into a bowl and set aside.

3.  Weigh the butter into a sauce pot, and bring it to a boil.

4.  Weigh the eggs and butter into the bowl of a stand mixer and whip light and fluffy.

5.  Pour the boiling butter over the chocolate, give the bowl a shake and a spin and let stand two minutes.

6.  Whisk the chocolate until smooth.

7.   Fold the whipped eggs into the  melted chocolate, then fold in the water.

8.   Pour the batter into the flexipans and bake in a water bath until set, about 30 minutes.

9.  Cool properly and chill thoroughly before demolding and glazing.

Mirror Glaze

1/2 cup corn syrup

1/2 cup heavy cream

9 ounces chocolate

enough hot water to reach desired consistency

1.  Weigh the chocolate into a bowl.

2.  Measure the corn syrup and heavy cream into a sauce pot and bring to a boil.

3. Pour the boiling cream over the chocolate, give the bowl a shake and a spin and let stand two minutes.

4. Whisk the chocolate until smooth.

5.  Whisk in enough hot water to make the glaze loose and pour easily.

Assembly- Set the de-molded  cakes on a glazing rack and ladle the hot glaze over the cakes.  Chill the cakes and apply a second coat.  Serve at room temperature with Sage Ice Cream and Whiskey Caramel.

We did it again, faithful readers. We rolled up into a vineyard and cooked a bad-assed meal.  At Adelsheim Vineyards in Oregon wine country Chef and I cooked up a 5 course plated dinner for some lucky people.  They had hor de oeuvres at the winery while we set up our food and the service staff set up the table.  Nestled between rows of grape vines sat our al fresco kitchen, which was equipped with two low propane burners (the kind used for outdoor turkey frying,)  a large charcoal grill, and ample plating space.  The guests were enjoying Gazpacho shots, arugula pesto prawns, and hamachi tartare while I drank beer and spit cusses at the grill.  I had one hell of a time getting that thing lit.  It took a side towel soaked in lighter fluid, but I got that fire rolling.  The guests strolled up in the waning evening light as the charcoal sputtered and spat to life.  Spring Lamb Chops marinated.  Chef seared scallops as the girls plated the first course.  I scurried about, feeding chef clean pans and regulating fires and helping plate.  The servers bussed and poured and ran the plates when each course came up.  When it was time for the duck tits, the sheet pan flat top was again created, and the sizzling fat filled the air with a delicious smell.  They were sliced and hit the plate with a scrumptous plop.  The fading light mingled with the gasps of gastronomic pleasure, the breeze wafted sweet smelling smoke and aounds of merriment across the vineyard.  The lamb chops hit the grill with a satisfying sound, that fucker was hot.  Chef kicked me off grill duty as I blackened some of the chops.  Fucking pastry chefs trying to grill, shit…

Scalding hot lamb fat..That’ll Getcha…Sorry Chef!!