09.09.08
Posted in The Story at 6:21 pm by Chef Matt
I’ve been a tad lax on my blog posts as of late, I know, and I apologize. One of the reasons is that I have been working on putting together this seven course charity dinner in my spare time. Perhaps I should have mentioned it before, but then again, if I had, I wouldn’t have been a lax blog poster… The circuity of that thinking makes me tired.
Anyway, last night, I presented a seven course meal for the Bedford County Chamber as a fundraiser, and to cut to the chase - it went fabulously. I present to you now, the courses:
Finally a photo of this dish for you all! |
1. Pan-Seared Foie Gras with Brandied Grapes, Walnuts and Cherries. This dish may sound familiar to my regular readers since it is a dish I came up with while working at Vero. It was so good, I figured I had to repeat it for this dinner. And since this dinner was all about my cooking - I really had free reign to do as I pleased - why not work with one of my first professional creations? It was a hit with the crowd - so much so that there was a palpable silence in the crowd as they realized they were in for six more awesome dishes.
The photo from the tax dinner - it’s better than any I took last night… |
2. Beer-Poached Clams with Pickled Corn and Red Pepper, Capers and Cilantro. This course was to lighten things up, and provide a little “effervescence” after the heavier foie course. The sweetness of the pickled corn and pepper combined with the salty capers and fresh cilantro made for a flavor explosion in each little bite that I then paired with a Pilsner Urquell beer. The effect was non-traditional, but I feel energizing to the crowd. Again, my loyal readers may notice this dish from its earliest incarnation when I made it for my uncle for the “tax dinner”.
3. Prosciutto-Wrapped Scallops on Garlic Polenta with Deconstructed Saffron-Herb Butter. The concept of wrapping salty pork around scallops is hardly a new idea, but the creaminess of the polenta, the wonderful herb flavors of the butter and the local Pinot Grigio I paired this with all worked together wonderfully. The deconstructed butter was an idea I saw in Saveur a few months back wherein salt, pepper and some herbs (in my case saffron and thyme) were placed on thin slices of butter, then placed atop the hot cooked scallop. The butter melts in, and the herbs and spices can do their thing. It was and awesome effect and presentation. Alas, I didn’t get a photo…
Color and flavor like that only come from a charcoal grill… |
4. Mesquite-Grilled Cornish Game Hens Stuffed with Wild Rice, Apple and Celery. I only wanted to just start the hens on the grill, and then I figured I would have to finish them in the oven since a stuffed hen might be a bit of a challenge to do completely on a charcoal grill. But as luck would have it, I finished them perfectly on the grill and the mahogany-hued crisp skin was a perfect compliment to the sweet wild rice pilaf inside. Paired with a lightly oaked Margaret River Chardonnay, this was the first of the two “main courses”.
Final touches before serving… |
5. Ginger & Melon Prosecco Shooters. But there is no reason to serve two heavy main courses back to back is there? In order to break things up and again add a touch of sweet whimsy and effervescence to the dinner, I served course five in champagne flutes. I mixed a ginger-lime syrup with a nice dry Prosecco (Italian sparkling white wine) in a ratio that took much experimentation to get just right - but it was fun experimentation - and poured this over fresh cantaloupe and honeydew melon. Topped with mint, this was not only a refreshing break in the dinner, it was just plain lovely.
Sorry the photo is so bad, the light was really low in the kitchen. The dish was really quite nice! |
6. Rabbit Braised in Chianti with Homemade Papparadelle. We make a rabbit terrine at Rustico which is really great, but I have always said to myself, “That is just not how I would make rabbit if I were to put it on my menu.” I have always thought the best incarnation for rabbit is braised in red wine and tomatoes and served on fresh pasta, so that is just what I did. Most people agreed, this was the star of the show, and I like to think that if this stood out that much amidst the rest of what they had, then maybe my method of preparing rabbit is not that far off…
7. Vanilla-Poached Pears with Vanilla Ice Cream and Chocolate-Lavender Ganache. I feel slightly cheated in life as it wasn’t until I went to culinary school that I learned that lavender was something you could cook with. When paired with peaches, chocolate and/or pears, it is just amazing. So my dessert, while simple in scope, was just a fabulous blend of flavors. My wife and I enjoyed the remaining ganache over some ice cream in the back while everyone else ate their desserts! Again, sorry no picture…
So that was it. All in all, the feedback I received was very positive, and even I was pleased with the results. I’m usually the first one to be hard on my cooking, but I have to admit, it was really all coming together for me last night.
And that was a major boost to my personal confidence as a chef. Here was a collection of my own recipes done in my style for people who shelled out their own money for them. And the results were overwhelmingly positive. There is hope yet for my being in charge of a restaurant someday…
Chef Matt
Permalink
09.02.08
Posted in The Story at 3:23 pm by Chef Matt
Vincent: And you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
Jules: They don’t call it a Quarter Pounder with cheese?
Vincent: No man, they got the metric system. They wouldn’t know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is.
Jules: Then what do they call it?
Vincent: They call it a “Royale” with cheese.
Jules: A “Royale” with cheese! What do they call a Big Mac?
Vincent: A Big Mac’s a Big Mac, but they call it “le Big-Mac”.
Jules: “Le Big-Mac”! Ha ha ha ha! What do they call a Whopper?
Vincent: I dunno, I didn’t go into Burger King.
You’d dig it the most! |
Besides being one of the greatest pieces of introductory dialogue ever filmed, this little conversation hints as to just how important the difference between the US measurement system and the metric system are.
Recently at Rustico, we upgraded our walk-in fridge to be even more powerful since keeping stored cold is very important. The problem was that shortly after we did this, our pizza crusts lost their “spring”. We’re very proud of our pizza crusts, seeing as how we make darn good pizzas, so this problem was one we had to address immediately.
Since we store the crusts in the walk-in, the temperature issue was almost assuredly part of the problem. The crusts were being stored at a lower temperature, so the yeast was not reacting as much as it was before. So the first solution we came up with was to give them a longer proofing time at room temperature before we moved them into the walk-in. Alas, this was not working for us. And with each passing day, we found ourselves more urgently needing to find the solution.
No book and movie has done more to help people less understand what chaos theory is about than this… |
To quickly step aside here, this is why I didn’t become a baker/pastry chef. See, when you mess up as a line cook, you can easily hide it. As one chef friend put it, “Just saute some shallots, reduce some stock, and you can cover anything…”. But with baking it is not that simple. Just as in chaos theory, any small mistakes in the beginning of the process are only amplified with time, and it takes a long time to see their effects. And of course, by the time you see the effects, it is too late to go back and do anything about it. Simply put, diagnosing problems with bread making is a pain in the ass, and I didn’t want to spend my career doing that. (Even though I love to make bread…)
So back to the problem at hand. With each successive batch, the problem wasn’t getting resolved, and the stretch of time with bad pizza crusts was really wearing thin on Chef’s patience. He had a series of ideas as to what the problem could be, and he wanted me to test for all of them. I’ll say this about Chef: he’s an amazingly talented cook/businessman/kitchen organizer/etc. But alas, he isn’t too much of a scientist, as he always wants to test all of his theories at once.
This is where I came in, as he tasked me to find out what was wrong with the dough. I didn’t relish this task because of the combination of the above two problems: 1. Finding out what is wrong with bread can take days to discover and 2. Chef was already impatient with the problem. But I had to start somewhere, so I decided to observe the dough making process as my prep chefs were doing it now - to get a baseline understanding of what was happening.
Question of the day: Why does soda come in 12 ounce cans, and two liter bottles?… |
I walked over to them, copy of the recipe in hand, and watched as they step-by-step (from memory) proceeded to make the dough exactly the way the recipe said to. That is, until they got to the measurement of the water. We make dough in very large batches naturally, so there is a lot of water that has to be used. And lots of water is measured in very large containers. Well, the amount of water needed for one batch of pizza dough according to the recipe is 14 liters. And there they were using a large container that had marks in…. yup - quarts.
Now a quart and a liter are pretty much the same thing for those of you who don’t know. In the grand scheme of things, they are usually interchangeable. But over the course of 14 liters, I assumed that maybe this difference was playing out to an extreme that could have a major effect on the dough. So i went to my favorite online conversion website, and saw just what was the difference between 14 liters and 14 quarts. The answer - about 3 cups of water. Almost another whole quart.
Well now HERE was a variable we could test! I poured in another 3 cups of water into the dough as it mixed, and told the cooks to proceed as normal with the dough making process. I marked this batch of dough so as to know which batch was the test batch, and told chef that we would have our answer the next day. (He was not thrilled that we had to wait, but was pleased that something was being done…)
“The metric system?!? My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that’s the way I likes it!” |
The next night, we were finally able to use the test dough, and it was working like a charm. I’m not entirely sure what the interplay between the colder fridge and the lack of water in the dough was doing to suddenly cause such problems for us - maybe some food scientist out there can enlighten me - but what I do know is that we have our dough back, and that means Chef is happier, our customers are happier, and all is well in our land of really strange measuring systems.
Chef Matt
Permalink
