Cous cakes

Orange juice, carmelized shallot, chicken stock, standard breading procedure.

Coursed Dinner Party Menu, December 30th

 

 

 

Tentative Menu

 

 

Caramelized Celery Root Pave, Lemoncello Cured Salmon

 

This amuse course should be fun, a faux custard of blanc cooked celery root, pureed & strained overnight in cheesecloth.  Finished with yuzu juice.  The salmon will be cured with kosher salt & brown sugar overnight and then basted with meyer lemon infused vodka until a pellicle is formed.  I'm planning on brulee-ing the top of the pave served in black miso spoons and garnishing the top with the thinly sliced gravlax.
 

Foie Gras & Chestnut Soup, Seared Foie Gras Awesomeness

 

Soup course of course!  Onion, garlic sweated in butter (lard or bacon fat, kinda waffling on this), white wine & a touch of sherry, chestnuts, orange zest, chicken or duck stock, cream.  Finished with foie gras butter (3:1 butter to passed liver scrap, keeps from curdling) & sherry vinegar.  Served in mini 4 oz. soup cups with a metal fleur de lys skewer holding a seared piece of foie gras over the top.  Decadent, maybe.  Tasty, damn right!  My homage to the late, great Jean-Louis Palladin.

 

Lobster Custard Timbale, Vanilla & Star Anise Scented Root Vegetables, Beet Emulsion

 

1/2 quart of cream : 4 whole eggs.  Buttered timbale molds, parchment round in the bottom.  Cooked, diced lobster, dried on towel before folding into the custard.  Season with salt, pepper & herbs as necessary.  Cook in water bath in 300* oven until set.  Chill overnight, run paring knife around edges and unmold.  Star anise & vanilla bean oil just infused for a few weeks (grapeseed or neutral oil preferred).  Thinking a mix of fun root veggies, whatever I find at the market or through Tom Cornille if I can fit in a visit.  For the Beet Emulsion, cooked red beet pureed with some balsamic & sherry vinegars and some nice extra virgin olive oil.  Might garnish the top with something crispy, a beet, lotus root chip or fried leeks.     

 

 Poussin, Citrus Cous Cous Cake, Baby Carrot, Blueberry Jus

 

This is the course that's most likely to change depending on what I can get my grubby little mits on.  [Insert diabolical laughter here.]  Any game bird that I can find fresh, poussin (baby chicken), squab, pheasant or duck in a pinch.  If poussin, I'm planning on removing the breast & thighs from the carcass and cooking them seperately, confiting the thighs and roasting the breasts.  The carcass will be roasted for the jus, which will be finished with syrup reconstituted dried blueberries & foie gras butter.  The cous cous will be cooked in orange juice & chicken stock, drained without rinsing onto a sheet pan, frozen, cut into shape, and then egged breaded and pan fried to golden sweetness.  The baby carrots will be treated with love and affection, and some charred orange may make an appearance.  'Cuz that's how I roll, guy.   

 

Roquefort, Aerated Dark Chocolate, Candied Cilantro

 

Sound strange?  It isn't.  Blue cheese, chocolate & cilantro are wickedly awesome together.  Just ask Chef Don Yamauchi who first introduced the combo to me back at Le Francais.  I've changed it to a more contemporary take, by aerating the chocolate.  To aerate chocolate, first temper dark chocolate and pour into an Issi.  Charge with two cartridges.  Shoot chocolate into a metal 3rd or 1/2 pan and put into a cryovac machine, *uncovered*, and run the machine until the mix almost overflows the pan.  Repeat a few times and then freeze to set the mix.  This causes the chocolate to take on tons of tiny air bubbles, almost making a solid mousse without cream or eggs.  The candied cilantro with be done up with lightly frothed egg white and caster sugar.  The blue cheese will be the best I can find, tempered to room temperature, of course.

 

Rose Touched Creme Brulee, Currant

 

I found a recipe for rose creme brulee in a French cookbook by Joel Robuchon called Facile.  I'm planning on adapting Le Titi de Paris' old creme brulee recipe to include rose instead of vanilla notes.  Currants are the fruit of choice, but if something else catches my attention, this is apt to change.

 

Mignardises & Coffee

 

Is it only me that wants to pronounce mignardises, MIG-nards?  Planning on coating a foie gras flavored cream cheese with Callebaut dark chocolate.  Or something else you wouldn't normally find filling chocolates.  Any suggestions?