Food
Summer Tomatoes
I like tomatoes as much as anyone. So I bought a few plants for the season. The guy next door planted over 50. At some point, I became the principal watering partner since he didn’t have time. Now I have tomatoes everywhere. On my counters, on my deck, feeding the rabbits and the birds. Everyone is enjoying a taste of summer. This is a quick shot of one afternoon’s casual harvest. An ear of corn snuck in for a cameo – also from the garden. I’m going to have to remember all this sunshine in a few months when it isn’t there.
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Say Cheese.
Sometimes it’s good just to revel in the visual pleasure of food. Simple plate of local Wisconsin cheeses and charcuterie, honey and local black raspberries. Well balanced selection.
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Breakfast At Tiffany’s? Brunch At Balthazar
Brunch at Balthazar isn’t as much a food experience (though the food can be great) as it is an oggling, see-and-be-seen experience. Booze is flowing, everyone is made up/dressed down (as much as you can be in Prada), the better to be ready for your close-up. Where’s DeMille?
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New York’s best dumplings?
Pork scallion and vegetable dumplings
Dumpling House on 106th – best dumplings I’ve found so far.
Arrival Of Spring Vegetables
Spring vegetables: green tomatoes, carrots, kale, beets, potatoes, red leaf, squash. Vanquish winter.
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Cooking: Foie Gras Ravioli with Black Garlic, Parmesan Cream and Candied Habanero
Foie Gras Ravioli with Black Garlic, Parmesan Cream and Candied Habanero.
Algerian Pastries in Paris
Walking around, I stumbled across this pastry shop in the 7th Arrondissement - don’t ask me exactly where, though. They specialized in “Pâtisserie Orientale” which is the French term for pastries from Africa, the Middle East and Turkey. These little purses were filled with sweet pastes made from chestnuts and pistachios and other things, then dipped in beautiful colored icings. Spectacle!
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Pierre Gagnaire
Dinner at Pierre Gagnaire, Paris. It was the Fall 2009 tasting menu, so roughly 9 courses, with a lot of this and that included. And of course, a dish on a menu may actually be comprised of several plates, so yes, a lot of pics.
An amuse that included a cremeux of foie gras, parmesan geleé and dried tomato crisp. There was also a creme inside the cylinder but I don’t recall what it was.
Bread service which ran through the course of the menu. A Chestnut, Baguette, & Pumpernickel selection.
Warm Pompol Beans, Seabean and Tuna Carpaccio.
Soft Poached Shrimp, Pea Puree with Yuzu and Fennel and Wonton.
Salmon Belly on Fried Green Tomato with Crispy Veal Skin coated in Black Sesame. Second plate is Smoked Haddock, Milk Foam.
Diced Crab seasoned with a creamy spider crab broth. Toast with crunchy lemon sardines. Baby Squid Rings.
Beet Pave with Chanterelle Casserole.
Beet in citrus syrup served as a condiment to previous dish.
Creme of Foie Gras with black olive gelee, charred carrots and madras curry. (This was stunning – the carrots had been charred with a blow torch on their exterior, and the smoky/burned flavor was incredible.)
Grapefruit salade with champaigne creme and crisp seaweed. Condiment served with previous dish.
Roast chicken breast in peanut curry with corn and avocado.
Chicken forcemeat in a quenelle with haricots vertes.
Cheese plate: Morbier with preserved raisins, Gruyere, Tome Chevre with Medjoul Dates.
Dessert Service: Gingerbread dice with strawberry sorbet.
Assorted sweet mignardise.
Vanilla and Raspberry Merrengues with Raspberry Sugar.
STUNNING heirloom tomato sorbets with thin grannysmith apple crisp.
Sweet red pepper ice cream with anglais and red pepper coulis, fried sweet peppers.
Delicious strawberry ice cream, grapefruit gelle and basil oil. Sorry for the blurry pic – by this point I was completely absorbed by the food and rather hastily snapped a quick photo after eating half of it.
Chocolate pave, ganache and cake.
Gagnaire special blend herb tea with rosemary and thyme.
All in all, a stunning and amazing once in a lifetime dinner. Wine was a St. Deny Premier Cru from 2005, which was also amazing.
Cooking: Pan Seared Diver Scallops, Golden Cauliflower, Brown Butter and Mango Chutney
I came up with this dish to take advantage of some golden cauliflower that made it to market late last year. Since then, I’ve made it a couple of times and refined it a bit. The brown butter brings richness to the sweet scallops and cauliflower, and the mango chutney has just enough pickle and spice to set it off. Winner.
Can You Believe They Served Escargot?
Someone once complained to me about a dinner they attended at a friend’s house. The first course was escargot. “Can you believe they served escargot?” he said, clearly offended. “Maybe you looked like someone who would appreciate it” I said. Yet another lesson in how looks can be deceiving.
So here’s a restaurant I passed on some side street in Paris that serves…escargot. WYSIWYG.
Austin Tex-Mex
Enchiladas at Manuels in Austin for SxSW. It isn’t that they were so great as much as they looked like what I wanted, when I wanted it. I snuck away from my company cohorts (who were schmoozy somewhere else that night) and had a quiet dinner to myself.
Razor Clams at Wu Leng Yi
I know, the workers were treated badly here and they didn’t pay taxes or something like that. Still, they had the best Ma Pa Tofu in the city, and you can’t dispute this was flat out stunning. Ah well.
Lemons Still Life
Walking around the grounds of an estate in Sonoma, I found a few lemons that had dropped from a small lemon tree into the base of the planter, and realized this would be the only sunshine I would see for a day or two. Fuck winter.
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