A la Carte Kitchen Week 2

A la Carte Kitchen Week 2! Our menu this week:

Amuse: Savory Parmesan Cookie with Squid Ink Ash

Bread: Pretzels with Honey-Mustard and Horseradish Mousse

Soup: Vegetable Consomme with veggie powder

Salad: Zucchini Crudo with Marinated Mozzarella and Candied pecans

Pasta: Chive Blossom Pasta with lemon butter sauce

Entree: Beef Brisket in Corn Crepes with Shishito-BBQ sauce and coleslaw

Dessert: Parmesan-encrusted Olive Oil & Sour Cream Cake with Goat Cheese Gelato, Blood Orange Curd and Wine sauce

For the front of the house, we did an online search on unusual ingredients we used this week: opal basil, popcorn shoots, and mizuna. I wrote them on the chalkboard for our guests.

For Wednesday night, we had a party of 9 coming in, so we got the tables ready...

...then one of the kitchen staff had an accident with the blender. This guy was at the soup station and was making the beet puree for the soup. He had added very hot mashed beets in to the blender...and this is what happens. Do not seal the lid when pureeing hot liquids.

Amuse: Savory Parmesan 'cookies' served on river stones for that natural look. This dish was inspired by Noma, a two-star restaurant in Denmark that serves Nordic cuisines, all based on nature and seasonaliy.

Bread: Soft Pretzel with Honey Mustard and Horseradish Mousse. These tasted great, nice, soft texture...but I really think they should've been shaped differently. To be honest, it almost looks like someone just defecated on my bread plate...

Soup: Vegetable Consomme with dehydrated vegetables. Apparently, this was inspired by Cup O'Noodles. It was pretty good, but the dehydrated veggies remained chewy even after pouring in the soup--it works with Cup O' Noodles since we allow it to sit for a few minutes, but in a dining setting where the guests eat the soup right away, we had to think of something else. For Wednesday night, we pulverized them into veggies powder and the result was much better.

Salad: Zucchini Crudo with Marinated Mozzarella. "Crudo" means "raw fish" in Italian, or "raw" in Spanish. Crudo generally refers to thinly sliced fish, meat, or veggies served raw. Everyone raved about this salad--it was delicious, just the right amount of dressing, and the pickled radishes and candied pecans were a nice touch.

Pasta: Chive Blossom Pasta with Lemon-Butter Sauce. Chive blossoms taste just like chives, adds color and makes the dish look pretty. The sauce on this dish was a little bland--too buttery, and not much else, so we had to add capers, more lemon juice and salt. It was much better the next service shift.

Entree: Beef Brisket with Corn Crepes and Shishito BBQ sauce. We had the meat wrapped in the crepes burrito-style, but that made the plate look too bland. We julienned the crepes, put that and the coleslaw on the bottom. The result was much more sophisticated and composed. Other than the presentation, no changes were made to this, everything on the plate tasted delicious!

Dessert: Parmesan-encrusted Olive Oil & Sour Cream Cake with Goat Cheese Gelato, Blood Orange Curd, and Wine sauce. At first, the cake turned out really dry, and the Parmesan cheese was grated too coarsely, resulting in chunks of chewy stuff in the cake. For that day, we made a 'bread pudding' type of dessert using the cake--which turned out very creamy and delicious actually. But for the next service, we used a fine grater and sprinkled the cheese on top instead, and redid the cake. The cake was more moist and the Parmesan added a nice crunch instead of being chewy.

Mignardise: Chocolate Truffles. Courtesy of Chef Nicole and the other Chocolatier class. I took some home and Mom downed two of them in one sitting...they were so smooth, not cloyingly sweet (like See's or Mrs. Cummings...), with high quality chocolate. The flavorings in them were subtle, not overpowering (lavender and cinnamon-spice).

So that was Week 2. So far, I'm having a lot of fun in this class. I'm still a bit intimidated to go back to the kitchen though...