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This last Monday I was able to have one of those great Culinary experiences. Kind of like one of those religious experiences you here people talk about. James from River and Glen (who we get our sustainable seafood from) organized a trip to see where blue point oysters are from. We left at about 4am from Hershey to meet in Philly with about 10 other Chefs. Once in Philly we took a “party van” to Long Island Great South Bay. Once on the bus we enjoyed mimosas and caviar and salmon bagels for breakfast (not too bad if you ask me). At the Great South Bay we hopped on a fishing boat where it took us to a small dock. On this small dock was a small wooden blue looking house. This was the area where the Blue point oyster Company was located. Chris Quartuccio greeted us and gave us a great demo on how he grew and harvested the blue points. We learned that Chris the only person harvesting the blue points. You could tell from how he spoke about the oyster that this was not something he did as a job but as a passion or a love for the oyster. It makes it even that more enjoyable to be able to have this kind of experience. I would love to be able to buy everything that we use in our restaurants from these type of people and not from a big company. He told us he delivers about 30,000 oysters a week to the New York City area. After the demo we able to enjoy a lite lunch of oysters and beer. After about a hour of beer and oysters we took a boat out and spent the rest of the day fishing for Striped Bass. I must say it is one of those experiences that you will never forget and makes you really love what we do as Chefs.
I have just received the new Alinea cookbook and so far from reading is one of the best cookbooks that I have bought this year. Alinea is a restaurant located in Lincoln Park, Chicago IL and run by Chef Grant Alchatz. The restaurant has been called one of the best in the country. He and his team have been pushing the envelope in what is considered a normal dinning experience.
I recently read again about the tempura fried egg yolk, I remember seeing this somewhere about 2 years ao and thought it was a amazing and simple idea, that has so many homes.
Recently for our chef table I wanted to do yet another version of a nicoise salad. Why not the egg yolk method. Egg yolks and eggs in general have a amazing mouthfeel and have the capability of adding so much life and depth to a dish. There is so many other flavor compontents that we can do but it is always nice to have a starting point.
We took a beautiful loin of ahi tuna, cut and lightly pounded until the desired width was achieved. Taking the tuna and cuttting it into strips and layed it down on the plate. I made a salad using velvet oracle, potato threads, olives, haricot verts, pickled beech mushrooms. Finally the moment of truth: the egg yolk.
Perfect finish with a extremely enjoyable texture.
Utilizing products that are available to us or just trying to give them a home.
Thinking about what we can do with a product is a important step of our job in order to keep waste and cost down, while maintaining the products integrity as something amazing.
I recently hand several guinea fowl on hand to implement somewhere, some how, but how??? Guinea fowls are in the same family of the pheasant and are a wonderful ingredient if used properly.
We currently are running a Chefs Table dinner that is tied into our 75th anniversary of the Hotel, the dinners are based on classic preparation aswell as past menu items over the Hotel history.
I wanted to do something somewhat classic and include these guinea fowls.
Coq Au Vin, this classic preparationof a chicken slow cooked in a stew of red wine, bacon, mushrooms, and pearl onions. This combination of flavors and the depth that in portrays is just the right fit for what I was looking for on this menu aswell as it goes great with the season.
How should I start?
The initial idea of just chopping up this bird and stewing it really turned me off, as I knew there is a much more refined way that I can do this, while still maintaining the heart of this classic dish.
I began with removing the skin (in whole), flesh and bones from the bird as shown. Next I marinated the separated white meat and dark meat parts in a blend of red wine etc. for 4 hours in cryovac to ensure the incorporation of flavors. Next I took the skin of the fowl trimmed it down and rolled the dark meat inside using activa. I remarinated this in the red wine mixture and recyovaced. Next I used the idea of the bacon (coq au vin) and rolled the breast is this again cryovacing to incorporate flavors. I cooked the dark meat at 66C for 6 hours in thermobath and the White meat at 70C for 1.5 hours.
The result was an amazing combination of flavors between the dark meat and white met there were 2 very distinct flavors but still blended well together. To keep with the tradition if the dish I used bacon lardons, beech mushrooms, and cipollini onions to finish the dish. There is always improvements to be made but it was definitely a success.
I can easily look back at my childhood and say thank you to both my grandmother and mom. They taught from a early age how to appreciate food. When I was a kid growing up my family always had fresh vegetables during the summer months from the backyard garden. My mom was very into organic and making everything from scratch. We rarely if ever where allowed to eat fast food or food that was deemed unhealthy by my mom. This does not seem to be the case today. I can’t believe that in the past 20 years parents have forgotten how to feed their children. It seems that they have no concept or care what they are doing to their children when they eat fast-food. Which brings me to the topic of slow food. The slow food movement was founded by Carlo Petrini in Italy in the mid 80′s. The idea was to prevent fast-food from pushing out local restaurants and taking over the local cuisine of the area. The slow food movement is against anything fast food and more so into keeping the integrity of organic foods. They are in favor of ethical buying, against pesticides, genetic engineering of food. They are for preserving heritage seeds and the breeds of animals. I understand it as the way food once was. Restaurants that practice or are part of the slow food movement will have a little symbol of a snail on their menu. In more recent years the term “green” has become very popular and the practice of farm to table. Where in which a restaurant gets its product strait form the smaller farms’ or growers’ or grows it’s self. All we can do is hope that people will wake up and try to understand what we are putting in our and our children’s bodies will effect them later on in life and have a impact on the planet.
Antique Auto Week is upon us for this are it is one of our busiest week for the CDR we have a lot of preplanning and preperation to do. Also following along with new menus daily and adjustment that may need to be made for special guests. These last couple days of this auto week are crucial it seems it is so easy to get behind bnut for now we are rolling ahead with our menu for this evening and hoping all goes well. This year we are actually meeting our forecasted numbers even so we are going over what it was supposed to be.
We’ll see what comes with a new day
I was Asked what is my favorite Hot Chocolate? Well growing up the way we used to drink hot chocolate, was 1000% sugar rush but boy is it good. Me and my brother would get only canned Hershey syrup this is better than the bottle stuff in my point of view(it seems to be thicker) 2 spoons of this and i spoon of sugar we would then mix this in the cup and pour hot milk and mix till melted then we would put a handful of marshmellows on top. this is the bomb. I even feed it to my kids its like family tradition. So this whole time i thought that thats the way they did it in Hershey, at least thats what my brother told me when i was a kid. So about 9 months ago. I came to Hershey for an interview and i went to the Coco Beanery and ordered a hot chocolate then I saw her pouring Hershey hot chocolate powder and i stopped her boy this whole time i thought they used syrup, so i told her that if she could please give me Chocolate syrup with milk and she replied oh a steamer so this whole time what me and my Family called hot chocolate it was really a steamer. So try my recipe and see how great it is it also give you a good sugar rush.Rember the can hershey syrup that rules
Look at that picture. I love scrambled eggs.
Recently I was in Berlin, talking with a fellow cooking enthusiast from Australia, who informed me of a technique whereby he puts the milk and butter into the frying pan first. He says cold milk makes the eggs weird.
So in the frying pan, he heats the milk and butter together before dumping the mixture from the frying pan back into the mixing bowl with the cold eggs. Once in the bowl, he whisks everything together, and only then adds the combined mixture of hot milk, butter, and warmed eggs, into the frying pan, which he cooks very, very slowly.
The verdict: some of the best scrambled eggs I’ve ever had.
Good tip, Nathan. This post’s for you.
I like to think that sometimes I know it all. But the truth is I don’t and no Chef will ever know it all. You could say that it is a Chef’s ego that sometimes prevents him/her from learning. Learning is a constant thing that I’m doing and is a nonstop part of being a Chef. I find my self many times during the day doing research. If it is not picking up the latest book by Thomas Keller, or reading Blogs, Food arts. Even when I go home for the day I crack open a nice cold beer sit on the couch reading a Culinary book from the shelf. I can never stress enough to the externs about reading new trends or starting a good collection of books.
So It’s been a while since my last entry, to be honest to long. The summer grind is over and I survived. The season has started to change to Fall, which to me is one of my best times of the year. The colors are changing, the air is a little cooler and there is a sense of peace. We have just rolled out with the new Fall menu which I can say that I’m so far happy with. The food as I say has a little more substance or stick to the ribs. With a little touch here and there I know we can improve on it. Which is something that as chefs are always trying to do.
Pan Roasted Ocean Trout, Tomato, Olive, Fennel Ragout, Balsamic Reduction
