A la Carte Kitchen Week 6

A la Carte Kitchen Week 6! Sorry about the delay in update...as you can see from my previous posts, last week was a little hectic for me, with Mom's birthdays and some cake-problems and whatnot.

But this was our menu for Week 6:
Amuse: Asparagus, mushroom and goat cheese mini-pizza
Bread: Savory Potato and Sweet Potato
Soup: Pea and Cucumber Broth
Salad: Dates and Watercress
Pasta: Beet Gnocchi
Entree: Pork Belly BLT
Dessert: Taste and Textures of Herbs

Amuse: Asparagus, mushroom, and goat cheese mini-pizza. With rhubarb sauce and shredded radishes. It was pretty good, but the pizza dough was more like pita bread.

Bread: Savory Potato and Sweet Potato. With Black Garlic & Shiso butter, and spiced date-honey butter. The first time I baked them, they turned out very soft--but very bland. Neither Chef and I couldn't figure out why, but we decided to compensate by adding lots of salt to the butter. Even then, a diner commented that the butter needed more salt.
That night, when I looked over the recipe, I realized, to my horror, that I had totally forgotten to add the 1 tablespoon of salt called for in the recipe! No wonder it was bland... So I quickly emailed Chef to see if I can come in a few hours early to redo the bread. She emailed me back the next morning, telling me I can come in whenever I want. So I showed up two hours early and redid the bread--this time, I added salt and rosemary to the bread. The bread turned out perfect! Very tender and very flavorful. Chef was very happy and she ended up taking half a loaf for herself.

Soup: Pea and Cucumber Broth. With white chocolate and crispy serrano ham. This one was a chilled soup, which was nice, since the weather was really warm during this week.

Salad: Dates and Watercress. With Mortadella Mousse on Date-Honey crouton. Mortadella is like a creamy salami with mosaic of lard bits embedded in the meat. It was a pretty good salad, I'm not sure if I liked the mortadella mousse though.

Pasta: Beet Gnocchi. With three kinds of beet chips, orange-acron squash cream sauce, Seville oranges, and beets roasted in apple juice. The beets were very tasty.

Entree: Pork Belly BLT. Slow-roasted pork belly (B), sourdough-roasted tomato froth(for the bread element), roasted tomato compote(T), kale chips (L), sauteed mushrooms and aioli. The pork belly turned out really good, well-seasoned and crispy.

Dessert: Tastes and Textures of Herbs. Wheatgrass ice cream, isomalt glass (with pink peppercorn), rhubarb compote, agave-marshmallow fluff, chocolate-dipped rhubarb meringue, Chocolate-thyme beignet. The wheatgrass ice cream had this corn chips-like taste and was interesting.
Once again, all the customers left happy--they especially liked the pork belly.

Afterthought...
Usually, when making sweets, salt is pretty much optional--a teaspoon of salt won't be missed in a cookie dough, for example, so I tend to omit salt (that and Mom has high blood pressure and needs to watch her salt intake) when baking. But now I have learned the importance of salt, especially in bread baking.