Escolar and Beets

Escolar was poached in beef fat, sherry-beet puree, roasted baby beets and shaved candy striped beet, spruce, rosemary oil, and golden beet pickle juice whipped into a foam

Foie Gras au Rosaleen.

Foie Gras.  We put foie on the menu about once a year.  A special occasion appetizer that always gets me and the team excited.  The same day the fatty duck liver was delivered to the restaurant was the same day my niece Rosaleen was born, seemed appropriate to honor her.  Having a name like Rosaleen I thought make the dish have strong aromatics and a fresh rose flower flavor.  The foie was cured in rose water, coriander, and nigella.  The foie was then slow poached for 40 minutes, chilled, and sliced.  We served it in a bowl with black truffle vinaigrette and a rutabaga terrine.  At the table we pour a roasted crab consomme (crab stock has an intense aroma) that was infused with more rose, coriander, lime, grapefruit, orange, and keffir lime leaves.  The truffle remains in the bowl which allows the diner to pick how much truffle flavor they want with each bite.  Welcome Rosaleen to the world and congratulations to my sister Alicia for giving birth to her 5th child!  I know, 5 kids!  

Minestrone.

Our Minestrone is a vegetable inspired Italian soup.  The only real requirement in a 'minestrone' is that it has a legume and a pasta and/or grain.  We created a version with winter vegetables, farro dressed in lemon zest, and a sphere made of corona bean cream.  We pour a consomme table-side; which is made of duck confit jelly, braisage of pork shoulder and short ribs.  All of the braised or confit'd meat was brined so the consomme has a heavy spice flavor...(clove, cardamom, juniper, black pepper)...  This dish is a culmination of several different dishes and ended up being one of the best of the season.

Foraged weeds

Wood Sorrel, Purslane, Chickweed, Baby Dandelion, Ground Ivy...  all found out of the cracks of the city of Washington D.C.!

holy mackerel

house cured mackerel with a french breakfast radish puree, watermelon radish salad, tarragon oil, pears, and a mussel-miso mayonnaise...
plated by another, a one named johnny spero.

147 lbs. Half Pig!

 This big boy took me forever to break down, it barely could fit on out butchering table!  Eventually got all the proper parts in place and created different brines and cures for different pieces (culatello, head cheese, trotters, ham, loin, tenderloin, ribs, tail, belly)  After about three weeks here's the first dish sold using this bad boy!

We treated the loin as if we were making a piece of baked ham (long brining time, then poached in the circulator) took the bellies out of brine a week later then braised it till tender.  On the pick up it was served with smoked and pickled matsutakes, savoy cabbage stuffed with guanciale (made in house), rutabega, onions, garlic, whole grain mustard, and chilies.  The sauce was just molasses aerated!  super porky.

Skate Wing...

Wrapped the skate around a cooked calamari-shrimp mousse (slow poached using optimus prime), shrimp-chestnut puree, brussel sprout leaves, spruce gel, egg white-onion vinegar espuma.

carrots from culpepper, va

duck legs

Brined and braised duck legs, deboned, shredded, and set with the braising liquid.  It was breaded and then deep fried.  Served with pistachio puree, sumac pudding, and a duck fat mayonnaise(which we incorporated crispy duck skin bits and kewpie) with a salad of shaved matsutake mushrooms and weeds dressed in pistachio oil and sumac

Sablefish

 Sablefish (black cod) is a delicious fish, it has an amazing and rare texture.  If you don't cook it right, it'll just fall apart into pieces.  We served it with an oyster stew made of tapioca pearls cooked in clam juice, small dices of celery and potato, pieces of treated seaweed, and chesapeake and/or rappohannock oysters from Virginia.  The white 'cream' is smoked olive oil that was emulsified and whipped...  It was finished with crispy chips of baked skin, celery leaves, other wild autumn greens

La Belle Farms Duck!

I recently got these La Belle Farm Ducks.  They're air dried birds have enormous breast's (insert pun here) and the perfect sized legs and wings for us!  This is the dish we're using for a duck breast entree.  The duck is spiced with cumin, coriander, clove, and cardamom.  It is garnished with a watercress puree, pickled grapes, hazelnuts, fried pieces of Oatmeal-hazelnut polenta, and whipped yogurt.  Now to figure out a leg and wing dish...  all waiting in brine till we can decide.  Any ideas, let me know!  

Venison

We crusted the leg of venison in licorice root and anise seeds; then pan roasted.  It was served with Spaghetti Squash "saurkraut" (pickled and fermented), black trumpet mushroom veloute, dots of celeriac-pear puree, baby turnips with their greens, and pieces of crispy fat back.

Buttercup Squash

New Soup!  We created a soup made of buttercup squash; made primarily of the roasted squash, ginger, onion, garlic, and mounted with a whole bunch of spiced drawn butter.  This soup is poured table side over this garnish.  A black garlic puree with a bit of sherry vinegar, caraway and juniper powders, wild peppercress(im still amazed what you can find in the city), and tuna.  The tuna was cured, smoked, and then slow cooked in smokey duck fat.  The fish was flaked and has flavors reminiscent of bacon and tuna salad.  I really love the flavors of this dish.  Simple looking (tuna, powders, black garlic, soup) but lots of different things going on.

used/old circulator... soon to be optimus prime!

I bought this used immersion circulator from Ebay...  it's analog, cheap, and I it works! 
well, kind of...  I need a thermometer in there to make sure it's constant and adjust the thermostat to make sure it's the temperature we need.  Tomorrow it's going to be constructed into a massive unobtrusive master...  well at least for two days until it fizzles and breaks into pieces... 

Mushroom Salad.

mushroom salad composed of pickled porcini mushrooms, crispy-smoked hen of the woods, barely sauteed chanterelles, and a lobster mushroom jelly terrine.  The mushrooms are accompanied with puffed Parmesan rinds, rosemary-bonito vinegar, a froth of rosemary dashi, and lots of chickweed and lambs quarters from the back yard.  autumn! 

Tomatoes

Heirloom Tomatoes..  They were seasoned with fennel pollen, black pepper, salt, and chives; dressed in boccorones oil (we fry the white pickled anchovies in olive oil until they were crispy and broken up a bit. Mozzarella curd with a basil-honey puree and a parmesan consomme "pudding" was made and finished it off with weeds and greens from the back yard, baby dandelion and fennel fronds.  It's basically "Insalata Caprese" modified.  It's a simple dish that's been on the menu all since tomato season started... I thought it would be appropriate to post the dish right before tomato season  ends. 

Artic Char, cured and smoked...

I had an Artic Char.  We cured and smoked it, sliced it thin and wrapped it around a yogurt-honey bavarois.  The char was garnished with saffron threads, pickled mustard seeds, fleur de sel, LOTS of lemon balm, sunflower seeds, and a crispy smoked black currant puree.  The froth is lemon balm puree and skim milk.

Sardines...

Maybe it's because of the time I worked in Italy or the labor of love that is required to butcher and clean these fish but I absolutely love sardines!!!  I think the best way to eat them is just a simple cure or pickle; this time we decided to cure them with salt, sugar, fennel pollen.  They were served with fresh cannelloni beans that were smoked with hickory and rosemary, reserved some of the smoked beans and made an encapsulated sphere of smoked bean cream; crispy bread tuiles, shaved VA crab apples, and a crab apple juice "sponge".  The beans and shaved crab apples were dressed in tarragon oil.  The juice "sponge" was treated with versawhip(a soy based substitute for egg whites created for meringue use) and xantham gum. 

official mortadella dish

Mortadella made of guinea hen legs, livers, a little pork butt, fat back, pistachios, spices, wrapped in guinea hen skin; served with a roasted eggplant tile, tonnato, pistachio oil whipped and set with pistachios and xantham gum; salad of pickled potatoes.

Meat-pouch-adella...

We had a bunch of Guinea Hen Legs left over so it was decided to make mortadella. We recently used all of the bung casings for other various cured and cooked farces so made two large mortadella's with the hen skin being the casing but still had a lot of farce left over so, decided to bag it and poach it, I thought the shape looked like a purse which amused me.  The other two mortadella that were wrapped in skin came out much better; the food saver doesn't quite have enough strength to remove all the small holes that can appear when making mortadella, hand rolling in plastic wrap or using the sausage stuffer is the way to go.  Regardless, it's a funny looking piece of meat.