« December 2008 | Main | February 2009 »
March 29th, we'll be heading down to Local Roots Cafe in Roanoke to do a dinner with Josh and his boys. They've been doing some great stuff down there and we're all super excited about it. It will be 6 courses divvied up between the two restaurants for $65, with wine pairings available.
Jeremiah cooked me a super nice meal the other week, thanks to him and Angelo for the great time at the Ivy Inn.
Local freshwater prawns from VAN on toast with a cherry-onion marmalade. The shrimp were really good, we hope to get some soon.
Lamb with house merguez, harissa, yellow pepper, and a carrot foam. The lamb was perfectly cooked and everything else on the plate was really good and not overpowering to any one flavor.
Go check out the Ivy Inn, they're doing some great stuff in a town that is far too saturated with sub-par restaurants.
Our lunch burger...with a few additions.
Buffalo Creek beef
Smoked lardo
Charred onion marmalade
Slow-cooked egg mayo
Soppressata, Saucisson Sec, Lardo, and some Lamb Prosciutto. We've got Lonzino, Coppa, and more Bresaola on the way. This project has been incredible, and we're still learning new things everyday.
The more I learn about charcuterie, the more it turns into the true meaning of molecular gastronomy, harkening back to what Herve This and Harold McGee hoped to create when they started studying the processes of cooking and food production. Like what Laiskonis recently said, it might not be avant-garde, but its vital to understand your ingredients and your processes if you want to become good at it.
Thanks to Josh for all the advice.
Desserts have been a problem for us since we opened. They've had good flavors, but something has always been missing. Keller's new book and the Alinea book have been great resources, as they both have incredible recipes, but we constantly come into problems of space. We have no walk-in and there's no way we can have a dedicated pastry fridge. It's a good thing, however.
Not having the "luxury" of a huge kitchen with lots of kitchen help is, in my opinion, a blessing in disguise. Sure, we may not be able to have a thousand different components to a plate or the coolest new technique sitting on a sheet tray in the freezer, but we certainly try and do our best. A small workspace means that you have to work smarter and cleaner and it's almost impossible for things to get lost in the shuffle of the everyday operations of the restaurant.
Having no space also means that we have to constantly rearrange and use what is already in our refrigerators and our tiny freezer. Nothing is wasted and nothing ever sits around for too long, two things that are crucial to staying creative. Making "creative" desserts is a lot of fun, but certainly a constant struggle within our 100 some square foot kitchen.
These were bits left from a creamsicle dessert we're trying to do, but haven't quite gotten exactly what we want yet. We set pastry cream with agar then topped it with a thin frozen sheet of orange juice and a star anise tuile.
I ordered a "chicken and pork country terrine" from a certain Charlottesville restaurant, hoping for a delicious slice of liver and fat, but was instead given this:
We pulled off a 15 course menu with no bumps in the road except for the fact that neither Tucker or I managed to get many pictures. Everyone seemed enjoy the food, and I think we were happy with it for the most part.