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FML:

Restaurant Weekend Returns

For those of you in the South/other places that don't do Restaurant Week (anywhere except NYC, Philly, Baltimore, and DC?), perhaps a clarification is in order.  Twice a year, restaurants around DC for a week offer three coures from their menu (or a smaller version thereof) for $35.  Some of these places typically charge upwards of $30 for a single course.  So on the bright side, you can find great deals if you get to some of the pricier restaurants before they're totally booked.  But on the downside, restaurants often offer limited menus, chefs use cheaper ingredients, the service and food preparation is more rushed and less careful, and you'll be packed like sardine in a can with tons of other diners.

Last year, Alyse and I decided that, with an equivalent monetary contribution from our friends, we could create a better dining experience than the vast majority of places that do Restaurant Week.  Restaurant Weekend was born, and we were right. But this year's Restaurant Week was different.  Dinners I enjoyed at Farrah Olivia and Rasika turned my impression of Restaurant Week upside down.  In one weekend, both restaurants vaulted into my top four restaurants of all time, along with Perilla in NYC and Corduroy here in DC.

But we were up for the challenge again.  That is, at least, until I lost Alyse to a bit of personnel shifting at Granville Moore's.  I managed to pick up the indispensable Jazmin as a sous chef for Sunday's seating, but I was totally on my own for Saturday.  This was going to be interesting....

By starting on Thursday, I managed to take a lot of pressure off the weekend.  That night I finished up the garlic aioli, basil oil, bleu cheese butter, shrimp marinade, and maple chili glaze. Friday I knocked out the tomato jam, asparagus puree, red pepper sauce, 15 spice blend, and cilantro oil.  So by Saturday, I felt pretty good about what I had left to do.

But this was nothing like last year.  Way more moving parts=way more things to go wrong.  Fortunately, a few of the dishes were replications of  the previous weekend's 7 course extravaganza.  Making second appearances were the amuse bouche of torched escolar, the shrimp and grits, the bleu cheese butter and pear stuffed pork tenderloin, and the apple fritters with cinnamon, caramel, and white bordeaux ice cream...with some notable changes in portion size and, in some cases, garnish and whatnot.

After the amuse bouche, we had two options for course 1.  First was a slight variation of the shrimp and grits Alyse and I served the previous week.  But instead of pancetta as a base of the red pepper sauce, we used it as a garnish (Jazmin doesn't eat pork).  The flavor of the sauce was definitely a bit off from last week, but the presence of the crispy pancetta was an awesome addition.

The other option was a trio of scallop sandwiches, each with their own fillings.  In the first was a simple puree of blanched asparagus, chicken stock, and a little ground ginger.  The asparagus puree was topped with diced mushrooms (day 1 got Oysters, day 2 got Shiitakes...I preferred the Shiitakes) that had been marinated and cooked in white wine, sherry, and worcestershire sauce until all the liquid had evaporated.  The second scallop was a spicy and sweet tomato jam of peppercorns, allspice, clove, mustard seeds, sugar, and crushed tomatoes cooked down until thickened and then hit with a little basil oil.  The final scallop was delicious delicious bacon topped with a double garlic aioli.  I dusted the scallops themselves in salt and paprika before searing them in bacon fat and slicing them in half.

I got the idea for these while driving to Richmond and daydreaming about dishes (it's also when I thought of the torched escolar amuse bouche) and I was incredibly happy about how it turned out.  The asparagus and ginger was a wonderfully fresh start to the dish, the classic tomato and basil really stood out in an unusual presentation, and garlic, bacon, and scallops should definitely get together and make delicious babies.

The first option for the main courses was the same pork tenderloin as last time around, except now I was much much better at butterflying the pork tenderloin.  Look!  Pretty!  And say hi to Jazmin in the background.

I roasted the pears a bit longer in the vinaigrette this week, and boy did it pay off.  A little bit of extra time left me with a vinaigrette that was much richer and developed in flavor.  On the other hand, my better butterflying skills actually left me with a piece of meat that was even less apt to stay together than last time.  Nonetheless, this is still a wonderfully well balanced, complex dish.

I made the same 15-spice ribeye this week, except paired it with a fianciere sauce.  A fianciere is a brown sauce derivative (just as was the chevreuil sauce) that employs mirepoix, madeira wine and truffle essence (instead of the chevreuil's bacon, white wine, red wine, mirepoix, and beef trim).  The fianciere sauce was a major hit...especially on Saturday, where there was licking of plates.  And we got some cheddar potato brioches that actually brioched!  The second day's plating, which is what this picture is of, is actually a bit comical because I ended up with too much meat.  This, the sort of mountain o' meat that is below.  Leftovers!

The apple fritters and ice cream were just as tasty as before, and even inspired Roommate Nirmal to make a little jim beam+coke+cinnamon ice cream float.  But especially exciting was the Spiced Chocolate Souffle:  just a traditional chocolate souffle with cumin, cayenne, and cinnamon.  On Day 2 I added a bit of the ice cream to the side.

And there we had it.  Huge huge thanks to Jazmin, who helped Day 2 go 1000 times more smoothly than Day 1.  And many thanks to all of my guests:  Coworkers Laura, Nora, and Maggie, Intern Monica, Roommates Nirmal and Shala, Friend Randall, Dancer Carena, and Soccer Hannah.  You are truly the cream of the crop and made this an even better experience than last year.

Maybe I won't wait a year to do this again.

Updated Blogroll and New Look

Perhaps you care, perhaps you do not.

Kathleen and I go back years and years and, even though she has now changed her last name so I can never find her on facebook anymore, she has started up a delightful food blog filled with tasty treats.  Check her at Grits and Glory.

I stumbled across a local blog called the arugula files that's both politically conscious and interested in food.  Right up my alley!

Read them.  Love them.

Also, I went and found a template that wasn't quiiiiite so blah.  This is a bit more me, so I'm gonna stick with it for a little while.

7 Course Extravaganza

For months and months, Alyse and I have talked about having over some of our favorite food lovers:  Boss Dave and his wife Jen, Chefs Tom and Christy.  Each has blessed us with delicious food and wine, and it only seemed right to return the favor.  And I have to admit...this was going to be an intimidating meal.

After all, Chefs Tom and Christy are ACTUAL Chefs (not my pretend "wannabe" variety) that have an awesome restaurant (Food Matters) and have cooked at other awesome restaurants (Cafe Atlantico).  And Dave and Jen, also awesome in the kitchen, have rather refined palates themselves (their last meal was at Alinea).  Finally, Alyse and I settled on a 7-course (7!!!) tasting menu that would give us the chance to showcase a wide variety of preparations and flavors.

The preparation for this meal actually began weeks ago with the veal stock, which was the base for the espagnole sauce, which was the base for a cheuvreil sauce that was served during the second to last course.  This has indeed been a many-weeks-long process.  But the outcome was well worth the hours and hours of preparation.

We started with an amuse bouche that had been inspired by a trip to Farrah Olivia for restaurant week.  Chef Morou serves a "shocked escolar"....a small cut of fish that has been poached very quickly, and then set in a chilled mixture of soy and wine.  It's a dish that totally stole my heart and made me crave escolar for weeks and weeks.  To get some, I had to special order it from Balducci's (did you know you can do this?  if you want a cut of meat or fish or poultry, or even produce, and you're not sure where to get it...just call and ask!  a lot of times they'll order it JUST FOR YOU.  Pretty sweet).

In any case, that is too long an explanation to tell you that I fell in love with escolar and wanted to serve it almost-raw.  I diced the raw escolar, which basically has the texture of butter, dusted it with some freshly ground cumin, placed it over some cilantro oil and topped with some fleur de sel before going at it with my blow torch and finishing with lemon zest.  I absolutely adored this amuse.

The first course was a chilled corn soup topped with a tarragon oil that was done from start to finish by Alyse.  There are few words to describe how perfect this dish turned out.  Sweet, with just the perfect toothy texture and a surprisingly mild yet well-balanced contrast with the tarragon oil.  The presentation was beautiful, with the bright green oil sitting atop the creamy yellow soup.  This was probably my favorite dish, overall, of the whole night.

And I forgot to get a picture of it.  AGH!

The second course was also all Alyse:  she wrapped some beautiful raw tuna in basil, let it sit marinate in the fridge, and then lightly steamed it right in the leaves to infuse the basil into the tuna.  She served it on top of a light, acidic slaw with a little basil chiffonade.  Another beautiful presentation, and another great starter dish.  At this point, we had hit three extra-base hits and I was feeling great about the night.

Next up was our version of "Shrimp and Grits."  We marinated the shrimp in an oil that had been infused with red pepper flakes, orange juice, copious amounts of garlic, and parsley and then sauteed them over really high heat.  At the top of the picture is my 15-spice blend (for the ribeye later) and the cilantro oil from the earlier amuse bouche

The grits were polenta and gruyere, chilled to room temperature, cut into rounds, and then deep fried until they were crispy-on-the-outside, gooey-on-the-inside goodness.  They were served over a red pepper sauce that had sweet and salty notes of polenta.  4 for 4.

So we were due for a mistake somewhere along the way, and finally we hit ours.  We thought a nice, simple, chicken consomme would be a great palette cleanser.  A little dash of it into a bowl with a sauteed mushroom and some scallions would do well to transition from the lighter first courses into the heavier main courses.

But the execution ended up all wrong.  When reheating the consomme, I must have left it on the burner too long, because while a consomme should have the clarity of this (which it did, before I reheated it):

mine had the clarity of this:

Yes, that's miso soup.  And that's what it looked like.  The flavor of the consomme itself was ok, but the mushroom was a little bitter and my idea for using toasted rosemary as a garnish that would impart a nice, herbal scent failed when all the rosemary fell into the soup.  Just, massive fail.  Although, if there were any dish to miss on, it was this one, and if there was any way in which to fail, it would have been that (and not overcooking/undercooking a main protein, for instance)

The pork tenderloin got us back on track.  I started by butterflying a tenderloin--something that requires a bit of practice to get right.

We then added layers of bleu cheese butter and red bartlett pears that had gone through a mandoline before rolling the entire thing up, tying it, sprinkling with salt, pepper, and paprika, pan-searing, and then oven roasting while glazing with maple syrup that had been infused with thai bird chiles.  We served over some wilted dandelion greens that had been tossed in a roasted pear vinaigrette.  This was a wonderfully balanced dish.  The mild, salty bleu cheese worked together with the sweet and spicy glaze over the bitter and acidic greens to achieve a balance of the entire palette that is often hard to come by.

Carla from Top Chef actually inspired the last of our main courses.  I loved how she was perfectly content to put a perfectly cooked piece of meat, a slam-banging sauce, and some well prepared potatoes in front of a panel of food experts.  So I picked up a huge dry-aged, bone-in ribeye and crusted it with my 15-spice blend before basting it with clarified butter and finally roasting it in the oven.  The preparation was relatively simple, something I had done dozens of times before, and felt good about.

The most complicated part of this dish was unquestionably the sauce.  The veal stock--->espagnole sauce---> chevreuil sauce.  We started with another basic mirepoix.

From there, I added bacon and some trim from the ribeye that I didn't feel like using and let all the fat render out.

My thinking here, since I wasn't working from a recipe:  "Well, I love bacon.  So I should just use tons of it.  I mean, what could be better than bacon?"

Oops.  Because after I added the sauce espagnole and began to reduce, something became very quickly apparent.  The balanced, superb sauce I was looking for was just....a bacon sauce.  Forget chevreuil and all that.  This was bacon sauce.  Sounds great in theory, but in reality....not as good as it should be.  But this was my favorite moment of this dinner for me--I didn't panic.

I added more veal stock and another dose of white and red wine.  I added a sachet d'epices.

I reduced and reduced and reduced and finally (about 3 hours after I started, and about 15 minutes before the ribeye was ready) it hit the sweet spot of both the consistency I wanted and the rich flavor with just hints (HINTS) of bacon and herbs that I wanted).

Our other part of the plate, a potato brioche, didn't quite brioche the way we had hoped, so we substituted with some (less than perfect, but still quite edible) potato chips with alderwood smoked sea salt.

Finally, we wrapped up with an ice cream that I had based off one of Christy's white bordeaux dessert wines she had introduced me to a couple of weeks earlier.  With just a touch of cinnamon and caramel, it paired wonderfully with some apple fritters and a reduction of another Food Matters special offering--the Alcyone dessert wine (also know as "the most delicious thing I have ever put in my mouth")

And there we had it.  7 courses and an amuse bouche.  All the food got out, and with generally only 10-15 minute waits between courses.  And while there were a couple of missteps, Alyse and I both agreed that this was by far the most challenging, impressive, (and, at least for me, rewarding) meal we had ever put together.  Special thanks to Dave, Jen, Tom, and Christy for joining us and letting us try this out on you!  A great night with great friends, great food, and great wine.  Can't complain about that!