01.23.07

Our Wine Dinner

Posted in The Story at 2:13 am by Chef Matt

Tonight I actually had to work. I know what you are thinking - “Matt, you already work so hard for so many days of the week, how can you possibly stand to go in on what would otherwise be your day off to work some more?”

Well, simply put, because I want to keep my job.

Wine and food - some call it dinner, I call it heaven.

This is an extra dinner that we host about once a month, maybe every six weeks, where we have a special all-inclusive dinner for about 50 people and there is wine pairing for each course. It is a prix fixe menu that fits a theme matched by the wines. For example, tonight was Spanish wines (lots of Riojas) and therefore we had a Spanish menu to match.

While I know nothing about the wines we featured tonight (since I was not out in the dining room to hear the presentations of them) all I can comment on is the food we served. The menu was as follows:

• Crostini with white bean puree and a vinegar-cured anchovy
  
• A Salsa Verde “Shot” with Shrimp, Microgreen Salad and Avocado
  
• Grilled Venison on a bed of Sautéed Fennel and Fava Beans
  
• Smoky Chorizo Stew
  
• Seafood Paella with a Grilled Scallop Skewer
  
• Tea-Infused Chocolate “Shot” with Fresh Berries

It was a great dinner, and the creation of this meal was completely different from a normal night in the kitchen. See, on a “normal” night, orders come in for what have you at all different times as the customers come in to place their orders. But tonight, there were no orders, but all the customers had to have their food at the same time.

So on the one hand, there is the difficulty of plating over 50 orders at once to go out simultaneously, but on the other hand, there is the simplicity of knowing that they are all the same - no need for special orders or remembering what they requested. All the plates are the same, so putting them together en masse makes things a bit more simple.

Peel them from the pod, then peel each individual bean. Enjoy with a nice Chianti.

The night worked quite simply actually - everyone was responsible for their own course. I was responsible for the venison. Of course that meant I had to peel the fava beans, which is an unbelievably arduous task (thanks Edwin for your help with that!) and clean and cut and marinate the venison. I made a thyme, parsley, paprika and coriander marinade for the venison since these are flavors that go well with deer, and are typical to Spanish cuisine. The fennel was cut on a mandolin, sautéed with garlic, lemon and coriander - again, typically Spanish, and good with fennel. I even had the opportunity to grill the venison myself, which was the first time I found myself on the line in quite some time. Felt good to be back on the “hot” side of things - and I didn’t even burn myself.

But of course, I was able to help in other ways along the way. For the crostini, I came up with the plating design, and plated all of them myself (including a last-second orange-zest garnish). For the salsa verde shot, I made a lemon vinaigrette for the microgreen salad. (They wanted to just do a simple olive oil for the greens, but I thought we could do a little more there…). And for all the other courses I was knee-deep in the plating process. In short, each of us had our own creative moment in the form of our own dishes, but everyone else helped out to make these visions a reality in time for the guests to all enjoy their next course.

The thing that really impressed me about the whole dinner was how well we worked together as a team. There were a surprising number of last-minute ideas (as is always the case when you have a lot of creative people each trying to show off their finest work to some of our best customers) and I am really impressed by how everyone there worked together to turn these ideas into realities.

At the end of the night, we all walked out into the dining room and received our accolades for a job well done. It was truly fitting that we went out as a group. Perhaps the people on shows like Top Chef should take note - really great work in the kitchen is done only when the people you are working with, are actually working with you…

Matt

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