We're almost done! This week, we had a few specialty ingredients: "Bacon" Avocado, Halibut cheeks and alligator. "Bacon" Avocado doesn't actually taste like bacon, but does have a higher fat content than a regular avocado. Hence, it's smoother, creamier and richer in taste and texture. Halibut cheeks are literally, the fleshy portion right below the eyes on halibut. It has all the flavor, but scallop-like texture. It's very expensive, since the yield from a single halibut is very small. Alligator came already seasoned, in a vacuum-sealed pack. Chef decided to make a confit out of it. Here's the menu for this week...
Amuse: Cherry & Plum Canape. Fresh plums, Merlot-macerated cherries, bacon and port salut cheese on puff pastry. Very cute!
Bread: Molasses-Cherry Beer Bread. With hazelnut butter, merlot-vanilla cherries, and mascarpone-cream cheese. It was a fancy spin-off of PB&J. The bread was delicious! I think I'll try making it with different kinds of beer in the future.
Soup: Mango-Shiso/Opal Basil Soup. With bacon avocado, basil yogurt, port wine sauce, and shiso-basil dust. My partner and I made this--we added ginger, buttermilk, orange, and ramp; thinned with pineapple juice. It was a spin-off of mango lassi. We thought it tasted pretty good, and apparently, one of the guests wanted to lick the plate (according to Chef), but there was no mention of it on the comment card. Same with the dinner service, the guests complimented on every dish except the soup, which got me kinda worried. At least no one complained about it...
Salad: Alligator Confit Salad. With roasted asparagus and fingerling potato, tomatillo aioli. So what did this alligator confit taste like? Like ham. Seriously. One would expect some funky/cool/interesting flavor from such an exotic ingredient, but no, alligator confit tastes like ham. Sorry to disappoint.
Pasta: Thomas Keller's Squid Ink Pasta. With crab and fresh pea slaw, and coconu-miso sauce. The slaw was delicious! The squid ink pasta itself didn't have a particular flavor (it did taste slightly different from a regular pasta), but definitely adds a great color contrast to the plate!
Entree: Halibut Cheek Duo. It's a 'duo' because one portion is sous vide in lemon and butter, while the other portion was sauteed with chipotle aioli. Served with creamed hominy with habanero-cheddar.
Dessert: Creamsicle, Banana Split, Doughnut. We had some problems with the dessert. This was the very first presentation. As you can see, very meager portion :( Chef wasn't very happy with this, so for Wednesday night service, we had a major dessert makeover...
...A much better dessert. We added chocolate sauce, strawberry with blueberry fizz, and cotton candy. People who came in to dine later during service left good comments about the dessert (those who came in earlier did mention about the small portion of the dessert).
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