Slow and Steady Wins the Race…My review of Porterhouse

I don’t want to sound like one of those elitist snobs that put down Americans…I am an American and I’m very proud of it. But, there are a few things we, as Americans, can learn from Europeans. In my mind, chief among these lessons is the ability to make dinner an event. To sit and enjoy a long leisurely meal and not rush to get the check the second our dinner plates are cleared. A sort of sit back and smell the beautiful food aromas type attitude. Therefore, as you can imagine, any restaurant that promotes this aura of decelerated dining and doesn’t try to rush you through each course, earns many points in my book. And, as luck would have it, I had such a dining experience this past Friday evening at Porter House in the Time Warner Center.

My sister and I attend the NY Holiday Pops Concert at Carnegie Hall every year. It’s our Holiday tradition and one of those things that officially makes it feel like Christmas. Before the show, we go to dinner somewhere nearby. This year we chose Porter House, as we knew we needed to get some last minute gifts and figured we could get in some shopping indoors before dinner.

In the “spirit” of the season, we began our meal with a cocktail. I had a smoked black tea and gin cocktail and my sister had a Japanese kiss which was whiskey and strawberry. Both were suitably strong and delicious. My sister wished aloud that her strawberries had been a bit more muddled in the mix and crushed them with her straw to get the desired flavor. Mine had this unique/interesting smokey finish and a great tea and gin flavor. It was one of those drinks that on the first sip you're not entirely sure you chose the right one, but then it starts to grow on you and you start to really enjoy it. Holiday indeed! Now, here’s where this leisurely spirit began. We ordered these a few minutes after we were seated and were left alone to finish and enjoy these cocktails for a good deal of time before our waiter approached and asked us if we were ready to order.

For our appetizer, we selected the clams casino. We pondered the bone marrow but the waiter explained that he didn’t love the texture of their bone marrow but loved the clams. As we awaited our appetizer, the bread basket came around and we were offered a sourdough, a nut raisin, and one other option. I opted for the nut raisin, which was a delicious taste of salty sweet carb heaven. On a tangent, I would like to say that I really like the walked around bread basket. I believe that it results in a lot less wasted bread at the end of the night and doesn’t leave you wondering whether your table’s bread basket is a leftover mishmash of other diner’s rejects!

Ah, the clams. Pairing seafood and butter is only natural, and when you throw some breadcrumbs into the mix it only gets better. The clams were nice and tender, and the butter was the perfect amount so as not to overwhelm the clams. The breadcrumbs gave that nice crunch, and there was just a hint of diced red pepper in the mix. I hate when all you can taste on clams casino is pepper, so I was very happy to find the application of peppers to be very conservative. Overall, a nice way to begin our meal.

My sister had the rib eye with cabernet shallot sauce and I had the skirt steak with chimichurri. We couldn’t decide on the sides, as they all sounded pretty darn good. So we went the more is more route and ordered three: creamed spinach with bacon, macaroni and cheese, and truffled mashed potatoes.

The steaks (both ordered and prepared medium)– I thought both were good. The cabernet shallot sauce was a nice, rich yet slightly sweet sauce that I thought was going to have a bit more depth but fell a little short of my expectations. My chimichurri was good, but I wanted a bit more of the sauce and a bit more flavor in the sauce (maybe a little more garlic). The steaks themselves were nice quality meat, but they didn’t melt in my mouth in the silky tender way I prefer a steak to. Thats not to say they were tough, but they were just not as tender as I would want from an expensive steak. Perhaps, the way to go at Porter House is the porterhouse for two (you're probably saying duh Jen the namesake is typically the best). The table next to us ordered that and they must have been happy with it, because there was nothing left but the bone.

As far as the sides go, the macaroni and cheese was the best by far. It was incredibly cheesy, rich, and had a nice breadcrumb crisped top. The truffled mashed potatoes were also very good (I mean not much with truffle oil in it isn’t good), but these could have been a bit warmer. The spinach with bacon was just okay. The texture of the spinach and the balance of spinach and cream was ideal, but the bacon didn’t transmit the amount of salt that the side dish really needed. It was a bit on the bland side.

To accompany dinner, Karen had a glass of cabernet and I had a glass of malbec. Both of these nicely demonstrated the quality of the restaurant’s wine list. The wine list is massive, but the binder of choices is made very user friendly with a table of contents and tabs with categories like Big and Bold Reds. I really liked the list and presentation of the list.

I’m going to blame the fact that I don’t get invited to cookie swaps during the holidays on my not living in the suburbs. Not that my cookies aren’t good, but I like to get a mix of holiday cookie cheer around this time of year. Consequently, when I saw the cookie plate dessert at Porter House, I begged my sister to let that be our dessert for the night. To accompany this we each ordered a glass of port (because we’re 90 year olds). I had the Grahams port and Karen had the Taylor Fladgate Tawny Port. I love both of these ports and can never decide which one I like more (yes my sister and I drink port that often that we have favorites). The cookie plate consisted of 15 cookies – 3 of each of the 5 varieties. The 5 types were oreo, chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, brownie, and spiced crescent. The clear winner of the plate was the oreo, with a chocolate cookie that was a bit chewier in a nice way then the store bought variety and enough delicious cream center to be called a double stuff. The next favorite was the spiced cookie that had a nice crisp snap to it and the warming cinnamon/nutmeg winter flavors that I love. The remaining cookies were good but not extraordinary.

Now, was Porter House the best meal I’ve ever had? No, but it was a solid, good meal without serious disappointments. The timing between courses was ideal and the servers were friendly and attentive without being annoying. Overall, just a nice night out in a nice atmosphere and location. I think that the best thing you can say about a place is that given the choice you would eat there again, and while I'm not going to rush to return, I will keep it on my list of places that I can rely on for good food.

Class 21: Any plans for dinner? I've got a Pot of Fire and a tartlet...

A moment of sadness as I realize that this is the penultimate techniques cooking class. No more getting gussied up in a chef's coat and flame-retardant, checkered pants...what will I do with my Monday and Wednesday nights?!

Tonight's class was Pot au Feu and Fruit Tarts. Yes, it's a bit of an odd combo, but I guess they wanted us to feel like we could make a complete meal by the end of our semester. In this class, we started by giving our puff pastry one final turn. Mine cracked a bit, because it hadn't fully defrosted. But, my partners worked out beautifully. Obviously, we used hers for our tarts. After the final turn, we rolled out the dough to the size of a sheet pan, put it on the pan, and put this in the freezer. We did this, because we didn't want it to deflate when we cut it into the tarts.

In the meantime, we began our meat. For the Pot au Feu, literally "pot on fire" (because traditionally it was a pot of everything cooked over a fire), we used short ribs on the bone. We washed the short ribs and then blanched them in cold water to get rid of any impurities in the meat. We strained this, then returned it to the pot, covered it with marmite stock (the burnt onion stock that we learnt about in the stock class), added a bouquet garni, and brought it up to a boil and then simmered it for over an hour. The point of this method is to take a tougher piece of meat and cook it long enough that it becomes tender. Traditionally, pot au feu is served with cornichons (pickles), vegetables, and a strong sauce. We kept to these traditions by cooking some vegetables as accompaniments and making a sauce raifort (horseradish sauce). For the vegetables, they tortured us one last time by making us "turn" our vegetables (carrots, leeks, turnips, and celery) into football-like shapes. We cooked these in a separate pan in some of the broth about 10-20 minutes before the meat was done. The sauce raifort was pretty easy. It involved making a flour-butter roux, cooling this roux, and then whisking in some of the meat cooking liquid. We then put this back over the heat and added creme fraiche and horseradish. I loved this sauce and thought it very necessary because the meat was a little bland without the sauce. We also took some marrow bones and poached these for a minute or two or until we thought we'd be able to slide the marrow out of the bones. We then sliced the marrow and sauteed it very quickly and placed it on top of the short ribs for platting. It sure looked good:

Once our puff pastry set up a bit in the freezer, we removed it and cut into rectangular tart shapes. From the remaining dough, we cut additional borders to edge these tarts, gluing them to the base with some water. These were decorated with x'es that we made with the back of our paring knife, just barely cutting the dough. With a fork, we pierced the center dough all over and brushed it with an egg wash. This was baked for about 20 minutes and cooled it completely before using it. In the meantime, we made a pastry cream by whisking together egg yolks and sugar, whisking in flour and cornstarch, and tempering in some hot milk steeped with a vanilla bean. This was put back over the heat to cook out the flour and cornstarch and stirred constantly. Once this was mixed fully, we poured it over some white chocolate and then put it on an ice bath to chill. I loved this vanilla pastry cream...I think the white chocolate and vanilla bean added a lot of flavor to it and I was eating it by the spoonful all night. When we were ready to assemble our tart we piped the pastry cream onto the center, cut the fruit we wanted, and arranged this fruit so that each slice would get the same fruit. We brushed this with some melted apricot jam so that the fruit would maintain its color better and the juices would be sealed in. I went with strawberry, orange, and kiwi.

Until the next and final class (Lobster and shellfish...quite the send-off!),

Class 20: Cakes and Puff Pastry

Like I said last post, I am not a huge fan of the pastry sessions we've had in this cooking class. And sadly, this lesson did nothing to change that. I just feel like in the pastry lessons we have more downtime then necessary. This night, we made a genoise cake, which is a light, airy sponge cake. I've made a lot of cakes in my life, but this was by far one of the strangest starts to any I've ever made. The entire point is to incorporate a lot of air into the cake because no chemical leaveners like baking powder are added. We started by boiling water in a pot, turning down the heat(so that we didn't make scrambled eggs), and whisking three eggs and sugar in a bowl over this water with a large balloon whisk. The motion we used was a large arc motion against the side of the bowl closest to us. We continued whisking until we could lift the whisk out of the mixture and drizzle an 8 with the whisk into the bowl without it disappearing (or until the temperature was 110-120). This was a lot of arm work, and after tasting the cake, I'll stick with my tried and true moist cake recipe that uses baking powder, thank you very much. After we reached the desired temperature, we sifted a small amount of cake flour into this and gently folded it in until it was mostly incorporated. We poured this into a well greased and floured round cake pan lined on the bottom with parchment paper and gently placed it in the oven without tapping it (otherwise, it would deflate and all our arm work would go to waste).

Unfortunately, instead of letting us make our own batches of buttercream frosting, they made one giant batch in the industrial sized kitchen aids. Since we had the time, I would have really preferred to make my own but c'est la vie.

In the meantime, we made our own puff pastry dough for the tarts we'd be making in the next class. This was a pretty intense process compared to opening up the freezer, pulling out a box of puff pastry, and letting it defrost. We started the puff pastry dough by sifting flour into a bowl and mixing in softened butter and cold water with our hands. We turned this out onto a floured surface and brought it together and made an X on the top with our knives. Puff pastry dough is very fickle so its extremely important to make sure it stays cold and that it has adequate rest between the various stages. So, after we incorporated the butter and water, we wrapped it in plastic and chilled it in the fridge for about 30 minutes. In the meantime, we took butter and pounded it between two sheets of plastic wrap to make a brick of butter about a half an inch thick and 3-4 inches square.

The next stages of puff pastry are what are referred to as "the turns". Each turn is a series of rolling the dough out and folding it to create more layers of dough incorporated with butter so that it puffs when it cooks. Puff pastry making typically involves three turns. This process is very similar to croissant making, which I'm far more interested in. After going through this for the puff pastry, I'm considering giving croissants a "turn".

After our dough had a good nap in the fridge(and we had a good nap in the kitchen while we twiddled our thumbs), we took a rolling pin and with the X facing us we rolled the top up, bottom down, and sides left and right. We placed the butter on the X in the center and then folded the dough up around it and pinched the sides. With the last fold on the left, we rolled the dough to the length of the rolling pin (all the while flouring the board so it didn't stick). We then made a "book fold" by bringing the bottom up and the top down so they just met in the middle. Then we took the top flap and folded it over the bottom. Turn number 1 done. We did another quick turn, because our dough was still cool enough. Had it not been cold, we would have put it back in the fridge before the next turn. You never want the butter to get so warm that it starts melting. The next turn we rolled the dough to the length of the pin again, and then folded the bottom up a third of the length and then folded the top all the way to the bottom of this (the book fold only happens in the first turn). This we dotted twice in the corner with our finger to signify the two turns, wrapped it in plastic, and froze until next class when we did the final turn.

Once our cakes cooled, we made a simple syrup by boiling equal parts water and sugar. My partner and I decided to flavor our syrup with a little shot of booze, because a little dash of rum makes everything more fun. We then used a serrated knife to cut the cake in half. We brushed the entire cake with the simple syrup and then let that set up. My partner and I decided to flavor or ration of buttercream with ground hazelnut butter. We frosted the middle top and sides with a base coat and then let this set. After that set, we finished frosting the cake, making it as smooth as possible. I opted for simplicity on my cake decorating, piping rosettes around the edge with the star tip. Decide for yourselves whether you think my simple yet elegant cake merits any awards...

Didn't love the texture of the cake because it was a bit dry. I liked the frosting but that was about it.

Next up is Pot au Feu and Fruit tarts...
Until then,

Class 19: Blown Up Out of Proportion: The Overrated Souffle

So this class and the next were two more dessert/pastry classes. And I know I always say I'm more of a baker than a cook, but pardon me if the classes we have that are baking/dessert bore me to tears (no not actual tears...nobody likes a crybaby). Perhaps its because the chef's aren't that into teaching it (as they're chefs not pastry chefs) and that attitude is infectious. Now that I've gotten that off my chest, I'll get into the class descriptions, because I've clearly gotten you so excited to hear all about them. The first of these classes was about mousses and souffles.

Each group made a white chocolate mousse and a dark chocolate mousse and a dozen souffles (I'm not exaggerating). Mousses and souffles can be savory or sweet and both are lightened and made more airy by adding beaten egg whites. Souffle translates literally to "blown up", because it increases in volume as it bakes from the air beaten into the eggs. The problem with souffles is that they pretty much start deflating the second they come out of the oven, so they have to be served almost immediately. Mousse means "foam"...funny how things in a foreign language sound so much more appetizing. Mousses have beaten egg whites and whipped cream and are served chilled or frozen.

First up this evening was the savory souffle with Gruyere cheese. For all souffles, you have to chimisee the ramekin molds, which is buttering the molds and coating them with breadcrumbs for savory ones or sugar for sweet ones. This step is very important otherwise the souffle will stick and implode. We began the cheese souffle by making a white roux, which is done by melting butter and adding flour while whisking over heat. Once the roux was made, we added milk, a little at a time, while still on the heat and worked out the lumps before adding the rest. This mixture was seasoned with salt, pepper, cayenne, and nutmeg. We then added grated gruyere cheese and cooked and stirred it a bit more until the cheese melted (you have to use a relatively hard cheese for souffles...souffles with soft cheeses don't hold up very well). We added a spoonful of this to two egg yolks to temper them and then whisked this egg mixture back into the cheese base. Then we beat egg whites to stiff peaks. A good pointer here is that room temperature egg whites whip better than cold eggs. Once the egg whites were stiff peaks, we folded them in gently to the cheese mixture in thirds. At this point in the souffle process, it is important to be gentle and not bang the bowl or it will deflate and the souffle will be a giant flop. We poured this into the prepared ramekins and baked them for about 10 minutes. Mine and my partner's souffles rose beautifully! I thought they were pretty tasty but one of those things that looks better than it tastes. I personally think souffles tend to taste a bit more eggy then I would like, so I would never call this my favorite.

Our next trick was making a creme anglaise to start our white chocolate mousse. We infused cream with a vanilla bean and then whisked egg yolks with sugar and tempered this into the hot cream. This was then cooked a bit more until it coated the back of a spoon. We poured this hot mixture over some white chocolate to melt it. We added this to some some whipped cream we made. This mixture then went into the fridge to chill. Ours didn't set up to a mousse consistency and was more like a pudding, which was fine with me because who doesn't love vanilla pudding?

Our chocolate mousse was next, and it came out much more like mousse than our white chocolate. We started by melting bittersweet chocolate over a double boiler and making more whipped cream, this time with a bit of sugar (our arms were very tired by the end of this class). Next, some more egg whites beaten to stiff peaks and the whipped cream were gently folded into the melted chocolate. This went right into the icebox to chill.

Chef explained that the easiest way to handle souffles is to start with a base formula for the custard portion. Then, you can take this base and add the flavor agent and egg whites. In other words, if you have a bunch of people over and one wants a grand marnier souffle and the other wants a chocolate souffle you can make both without having to make two full separate recipes. Have a little "choose your own adventure" dessert party. The souffle base keeps about 3 or so days in the fridge. To make the base, we mixed sugar and milk on the heat. In a separate pot, we made a roux by melting butter and whisking in flour until the flour flavor cooked out. We then added the hot sugar milk to this a little at a time while whisking. We turned the flame to low and mixed this until incorporated. Once this was mixed well, we cooled it slightly and then gently mixed in egg yolks. Viola...we had our base!

My partner and I decided we'd make one set of grand marnier and orange souffles and another of chocolate rum. To start, we heated the orange and grand marnier and chocolate and rum over medium heat to mix together the flavor agents. Then, we added a kitchen spoonful of the souffle base to each and folded in egg whites that had been beaten to stiff peaks (see, I told you our arms were tired). Each of these made 4 souffles. I thought the orange ones were far better. But, I still think souffles are a bit more eggy then I would like, and they would never be my top choice for dessert.

Next up is cakes...

Like a good friend that never lets you down...Another Review of Gramercy

I know I've said it before, but I can never stress enough how much I love Gramercy Tavern. First of all, that Danny Meyer is a genius. The feel of Gramercy makes any night feel like a special occasion, whether you're in the bar area or the dinning room. Last night, I introduced my best friend to my best restaurant.

Whenever you're introducing two of your favorites to one another, you always have that concern that they'll be like oil and water. You want them to work but fear the outcome if they don't. I should have known better than to worry. Last night's meal at Gramercy proved to me once again how wonderful the restaurant is. The servers always make me feel like a regular without constantly bothering me throughout my meal. Why do I love Gramercy so much?...read on my friend and learn how my best friend forever met my best restaurant forever...

So, I'm a big proponent of starting a dinner out with a good stiff cocktail and luckily so is my best friend. I opted for the Gin-Ger & Tonic, a wonderful blend of plymouth gin, fresh ginger, lime, tonic and crushed ice...Ahh. Susan selected the Hot Chocolate Martini but the waiter warned that it would result in her having no room for dinner so she changed to a much more appropriate aperitif of the Orange Blossom. Starting with the Orange Blossom gives one a very fancy feeling. This mixture of sparkling wine, elderflower liqueur, and orange bitters with a beautiful curl of orange peel as garnish is just elegance in a glass.

Our amuse bouche was a little potato puff on a bed of black olive tapenade. This had a wonderful crisp exterior, melty interior, and a delicious olive flavor. I love olive and so does Susan so we thoroughly enjoyed this kickoff to our meal. I relaxed a bit as I realized that the introduction of my favorites was going to go swimmingly.

The waiter's description of the first course special of bay scallops in a ginger flecked broth with butternut squash and radish made my mouth water, so I immediately decided on that. Susan flip-flopped between pretty much every first course and ended up choosing the warm maine crab in egg crepe with carrots. I loved both of these. The maine crab was buttery and melted in your mouth...I was overjoyed that Susan gave me more than one bite of this fantastic seafood starter. I adored the crab flakes with the carrot texture and silky crepe and then the butter tone of the entire dish. So simple and flavorful. My starter was also fabulous. The heavenly broth had a nice ginger hint and pieces of perfectly seared scallop throughout...just overall delectable. In both cases, Susan and I wanted more, which is pretty much the highest complement.

Okay, so to go with our meal, Susan and I selected the Unibroue Blanche de Chambly from Gramercy's excellent beer menu. Unibroue is a canadian brewery and produces some of my all time favorite beers (chief among them La Fin Du Monde and Maudite). This was the first time I had this white beer that had wonderful citrus hoppy flavor. I loved and drank every last drop and almost grabbed Susan's when she was drinking too slowly!

For the main course, I had the duck breast with white sweet potato and sherry maple endive. The duck was a lovely rose color with crisp skin and velvety tender meat in a slightly sweet sauce. Oftentimes, I feel that places go a little too sweet with sauce on a duck, but this sauce was perfect in that it was slightly sweet without being overpoweringly so. The endive and sweet potato mash made a lovely base for the dish. Susan had the poached lobster with turnips, radish, and lobster squash sauce. How do you even begin to describe perfection?! The lobster pieces were poached to the ideal al dente texture and that sauce...that sauce was DIVINE. It was pureed squash with a slight hint of the sea that I could eat by the spoonful pretty much everyday...Maybe even spread it on a lobster roll.

After our main course, they brought a palate cleanser of a creamy cheese panna cota (or at least it appeared to be a panna cota) with a small scoop of grapefruit or guava sorbet (I thought grapefruit and Susan thought guava...who was right? we'll never know!). Regardless, it was a "scrape up every last bit" winning flavor combination.

For dessert, I asked that they split the bottle of Brooklyn Brewery's 2005 Chocolate Oatmeal Stout from their vintage beer list for the two of us. They were more than happy to comply. Whats more the manager came over to introduce herself to me and praise my pairing of this beer with two chocolate desserts. She was so excited by our choice and the fact that we also had had the Unibroue with our main course, as it is also one of her favorite breweries.

I was kind to my best friend, this being her first trip to the timeless Gramercy, and I let her have the warm chocolate bread pudding with cocoa nib ice cream. I had my second choice of chocolate coconut tart with amaretto sorbet. The bread pudding was the clear winner. The bread was perfectly moistened in a wonderfully chocolate custard and the cocoa nib ice cream on a bed of what were the equivalent of Carvel crunchies (what a great texture addition) balanced the chocolately denseness of the pudding with a toned down chocolate flavor. The coconut tart was very good but the texture of the coconut was slightly too stringy for me. I wanted it to melt in my mouth a bit more. The amaretto sorbet was fantastic though.

The trio of petit fours to finish off our wonderful meal were caramel macaroons, chocolate spiced pumpkin truffles, and passion fruit tarts. The macaroon was a macaroon - a nice airy little bite. The spiced pumpkin truffle was excellent - the center was a delicious fall-spiced soft pumpkin ganache and the shell was a nice crisp chocolate. The passion fruit tart was a passion fruit curd on a little buttery crust shell.

To send us on our way they gave us a cinnamon muffin. I had this as a breakfast appetizer this morning and was pleasantly surprised with how moist and flavorful this muffin with a nice surprise of cinnamon goodness in the middle was.

At the end of the meal, Susan said "Jennie this might be one of my favorite restaurants too. I think we need to make it a point to come back every season when they change the menu". Nothing could have made me happier than her saying this...well that is except a meal at Gramercy. I should have known Gramercy would never embarrass me in front of my best friend.

Class 18 - Duck, Duck, Chicken...

I really like duck, but its one of those things that I've always been rather intimidated to cook at home (mostly on account of how fatty it is and how much grease is involved because of this). For those of you who have never seen a duck breast prior to it's being cooked, there is about an inch of fat on top of the meat and this has to be rendered out during cooking. The meat of the breast itself is very lean and therefore it is very easy to overcook. Duck breast is always cooked medium - medium rare so that its not too dry (duck doesn't have any of the same salmonella concerns that chicken does).

We started with a whole duck and broke this down similar to a chicken. According to chef, whole roasting duck is not as good as splitting the bird into the various parts and cooking them separately. We removed the legs first and then the thigh bone. We then salt and peppered these legs and rolled them up and tied with twine. We seared these. While these seared, we removed the back bone and chopped this into pieces and added to the searing legs. Chef explained that there is a lot of flavor in the backbone that will add a lot of depth to the braising legs. We then removed the breasts and scored the fat so that it would render better when we sauteed them. Okay...back to the legs. We deglazed the pan with a little orange juice once these were browned. Then we added mirepoix, a bouquet garni, and some garlic. Once this browned a bit, we added veal stock (which I'm 100% convinced is God's gift to any kitchen...throw veal stock into anything and its heavenly) to cover and put it into the oven to finish braising for about 40-50 minutes.

While this cooked, we took some of the duck fat and rendered bacon lardons in this in a pot. Once these were browned, we added sliced red onion and caramelized it. Once this cooked a bit, we added macedoined apple, some sliced red cabbage, 4 crushed juniper berries, and red wine vinegar. We cooked this down until the vinegar dried and then added salt, pepper, and chicken stock. I loved this cabbage mixture and have been craving the salty bacon, sweet apple, and vinegary mixture since class.

So then for the duck breast. We started sauteing it in a little bit of clarified butter on the lowest possible setting with the skin side down for about 20-25 minutes. We poured off the fat a few times in the process because you don't want the duck to deep fry in its own fat. After the 20-25 minutes the skin side should be golden. After it was golden, we turned the heat up to high and browned the skin until it was crisped. We then flipped the duck and then seared the other side until the meat was med/med rare (you have to judge by touch). This has to rest for 5 to 10 minutes skin side up (otherwise it losses its crisp).

Now back to the legs. We strained the sauce into a saucepan and reduced it until nappant. While this reduced we made a gastrique, a reduction of sugar and vinegar that is cooked until a light caramel. We had previously peeled an orange and boiled the julienned rind three times (the first two in a bit of water and the third in an orange liquor). We also made a pomme darphin (potato pancake) in duck fat...Ridiculously good. Once the sauce from the legs reduced, we added some of the gastrique and then the orange zest. This sauce was fantastic. I spread it on all our duck pieces and the potato. I was eating this sauce up by the spoonful. It was at this point that a few of us in class decided we were going to have a huge veal stock making party and make gallons of the stuff together and divide the bounty!

After break, we took a chicken that we had quartered earlier coated it in olive oil, salt, thyme, and red pepper flakes and then grilled it. Meanwhile, we cooked sliced shallots down with white wine vinegar and crushed black pepper. When that was almost dry we added (surprise) veal stock and some dijon mustard and butter and cooked it down a bit more. After the chicken was browned on the grill, we put it in the oven to finish. When the leg meat was close to done, we took it out of the oven rubbed it in a mixture of 50-50 mayonnaise and mustard and then breaded it in bread crumbs. We then put it back in the oven and crisped it up. This was then plated with the veal stock sauce.

This was an incredibly difficult class. I had a hard time finishing everything in time. I loved what we learned though and wish I had had more energy to get it done! I'm beyond sad that we only have 4 more classes left.

Until next class,

Class 17 - Fried Fish and Buerre Noisette

Our class began with fileting and gutting a flounder and trout. The bone structure of trout is a lot softer, so fileting it is very different and a lot more difficult. Trout is a good fish to saute or cook on wood. From the outside of the fish, we started by marking the fin and tail with little cuts so that we didn't get lost while removing the filet. The top filet is removed first with an angled cut and then the other filet is cut off the backbone. Once this is done, all the pin bones on the filet (there are about 30) have to be removed with tweezers. This was a huge pain and hard to ensure we removed them all. This was another one of those times I decided buying fileted, boned fish is the way to go!

The preparation for the flounder was breaded and deep-fried and the trout was prepared a la Grenobloise, which is fish coated lightly in flour and fried in butter. The a la Grenobloise is then served with a buerre noisette (browned butter sauce) that has capers, lemon, and croutons.

The flounder we cut into little strips and breaded. We then began preparing the two sauces to go with the flounder fish sticks. The first sauce was a homemade mayonaisse with chopped pickles, capers, and herbs (not unlike a tartar)...one of the groups near us added red pepper flakes to this and it was fabulous (I was very jealous of their sauce!). The other sauce was a red pepper sauce. To make this we sauteed sliced shallots and garlic and sweated these in butter. After cooking these a few minutes, we added sliced red bell pepper from which we had removed the seeds, a sprig of thyme, salt and pepper, and a dash of water. This was covered with a parchment paper lid and cooked until the pepper was fork tender. We then removed it from the heat (removed the thyme) and pureed this in the blender with some cream.

Chef then demonstrated how to make some garnishes. We took lemon slices and cut the peel 2/3 of the way and then curled the peel under itself to look like a swan. We then took potatoes that we had cut with mandolines into waffle cuts and blanched them in 325 oil for 2 minutes. After these were blanched, we used a basket and overlapped these potato slices in it to make into a basket shape and fry it. We also fried some parsley for less then a minute and then gave a dash of salt and pepper on this (chef explained that fried herbs are an excellent garnish because the beautiful green and slighty transparent look they get when fried). Next up was frying our breaded flounder, which also only takes a few minutes. We served the flounder in our gorgeous potato basket with the mayo sauce in a radicchio cup, the red pepper sauce drizzled around the plate, and a lemon swan swimming in the background! This was our dinner and was fantastic. Theres really nothing like a good fish stick with a mayonaisse based sauce and fried potatoes...yum!

After we ate, chef did a demo of how to make a mousseline. A mousseline is a mixture of raw white fish (or some other meat like chicken), egg white, and cream (of course with salt and pepper). This is all processed in a food processor. The fish is pureed first and then the egg white is added and then cold cream is added in a steady stream. The egg white binds the mixture and the cream smoothes it out. This can't be processed too quickly otherwise it'll make a whipped cream. Chef added some chopped herbs. He then took this mixture and pressed it through the wire basket to make spaghetti shapes, and poached this in boiling water. Alot of times chicken mousseline or fish mousseline is used to stuff the chicken or fish when cooking.

We also learned how to make compound butters. This is basically adding different elements to butter. First the butter is whipped and then the flavoring agents are added. The butter is then rolled and wrapped to chill until firm. Chef's favorite is a truffle butter on a steak (a definite note to self to try).

For the trout, we started by making croutons. Its actually amazing how much butter is used to make croutons (Remember croutons start with frozen bread because its easier to cut). The trout was salt and peppered, coated in flour, and sauteed in butter. To sautee fish, you cook on medium/medium low skin side down first until the fish is cooked about 80% of the way. Then you flip it and cook it for only about another minute. After the fish was finished, we removed it from the pan and then added cubed cold butter into the pan and uped the heat to high. We swirled the butter around and cooked it until it was a hazelnut brown (buerre noisette). We then made it into the a la Grenobloise by adding chopped capers and sliced lemon. The fish was plated with this sauce and the croutons. I was a huge fan of this sauce. Alot of people in class thought it was too lemony in flavor but I was eating it up with a spoon (probably not a good idea to eat spoonfuls of butter sauce at 10pm but who's counting).

I really enjoyed the two fish classes for a few reasons...(1) I appreciate the work of the fish mongers that filet fish and I will continue to rely on them to do this as working with fish that hasn't been fileted is incredibly messy and (2) I really liked the simple yet delicious preparations we learned.

Until next class with duck and another chicken...

On the Wings of a Dove: Review of Dovetail

By the end of my epic meal at Dovetail the other night, I was definitely cooing like a dove. This was possibly the best tasting menu I have ever had. I think I'm in love with chef John Fraser...

We were greeted at the hostess stand by a cold host (at the end of the evening he was even worse in such a way that he let us down after our waiter, the food, and wine pairing had left us feeling euphoric...such a bubble bursting jerk that I would get rid of him in my restaurant...hint hint chef fraser). Okay...sorry but I just needed to have a quick vent about him because besides that EVERYTHING else was spot on perfect.

The restaurant itself is beautiful in an extremely comfortable way. There are a variety of different textures on the walls (there is an exposed brick island in the middle of the dinning room that operates as a waiter station and the back wall has a carpet like paneling). The colors are a calming earth tone that has a homey feel to it. For a restaurant with a sophisticated menu, this dining room has a nice and laid back vibe. Chef John Fraser worked at French Laundry and Compass among other restaurants before he opened this restaurant, his first solo venture.

Since it was big sis's birthday, we opted for the tasting menu along with the wine pairing. First up were individual rectangles of warm cornbread that were crisp on the outside and salty deliciousness on the inside. Next came the amuse bouche. I love when amuse bouches are a multi-part series. I like when chefs want to combine multiple flavors and textures on one plate to show the full depth and a bigger sneak peak of their kitchen's capabilities. The plate contained a shiitake mushroom gelee, shrimp caesar salad with foam, and a small little croquette. I loved all three. If you read this entire post, you'll know that I am obsessed with the quality and flavor of all the gelees that the Dovetail kitchen produce. The mushroom flavor was rich, deep and smooth. I usually hate foam on a dish, but the shrimp caesar salad bite was a pleasant surprise and the salad, dressing, and foam worked extremely well together. The croquette reminded me of childhood and the frozen chicken croquettes my mom always made us (in a good way...I used to love those croquettes!). How could these three bites not be mouth amusers?! I love that wine pairings always start with a champagne because it always makes it feel so decadent and celebratory. Our champagne toast was no different.

No sooner had we finished our champagne then a new glass of wine arrived and a additional course from the chef of an oyster in what I believe was a red wine vinegar sauce. The oyster was a bit more fishy then I would like but it had a good texture to it. I would tell chef that this wouldn't be something I would add to the permanent tasting menu.

Our appetizer came next...I chose the brussel sprouts with cauliflower, manchego cheese, and ham and my sister and her husband opted for the housemade mozzarella, pumpkin panna cotta, and pomegranate seeds. I can't even begin to describe the pumpkin panna cotta. It was satiny and had a toned down pumpkin pie flavor. Chef Fraser's cooking is in a large part a science in making the perfect bite and getting a bit of everything that's on the plate in one bite. The housemade mozzarella was very good and the accompaniments rocketed this dish to extraordinary. Having a bite of the mozzarella, the pumpkin panna cotta, and the pomegranate seeds was amazing. The pop of the pomegranate with the creaminess of the panna cotta and mozzarella was insane. I love brussel sprouts and I really liked the use of the leaves as a salad here. The leaves were served in a vinaigrette as a sort of brussel sprout cheese and ham sandwich. The sprouts were blanched to the perfect texture and the vinaigrette was a nice light blend of seasonings that enhanced the flavor of the cheese, brussels, and ham. Just a great start to the meal.

For the next course, I choose the salt baked onion with truffles (according to an interview with chef fraser this is his favorite dish on his menu) and my dining companions had the french onion consumme with foie gras, kobe beef, and raisins. Our waiter described the consumme as the chef's take on french onion soup and this description was spot on. The silken and luxurious foie gras with the slightly sweet raisins and cheesy bites topped with the oniony beef broth tasted just like a french onion soup but with more depth and texture than I've ever had. The salt baked onion with truffles, maple brown butter, and hazelnuts was brought as a presentation to the table before it went back to the kitchen for plating. When it arrived and I cut into it, I was astonished by the abundance of truffles inside the onion. Based upon the look of the onion, I thought it was going to be a little undercooked and tough. But when I first bit into it, the caramelled onion layer and truffle melted in my mouth i was in love. The truffle layer despite being generous did not overpower the onion flavor. Our waiter explained that the chef takes each layer of the onion off and inserts a truffle slice and puts the whole thing back together again...well that hard work certainly paid off.

For the next course, I opted for the bay scallops in a coconut curry/gingery broth with lemon grass gelee. Each bite was amazing. The bay scallops with the coconut broth were elegantly enhanced by the little bursts of lemon grass. I loved the texture combination with this broth and gelee. My sister selected the red mullet with fennel, olives, clementines, and chai spices. This was served on the skin and was a nice flavor combination. My sister really liked this and I liked it with the exception of the clementines which I thought were a bit too bitterly overpowering. I did really like the fish on its own with the spices. But I was very happy with my decision to go with the scallops, which were amazing and I have no doubt I'll be craving these soon.

Here is a good time to discuss the nice amount of break time they gave us between courses. We had a good 20 or so minutes before the next course, which when you're eating that much food is very appreciated. I was so looking forward to the next course...I picked the smoked chicken with kumquats, parsley, and mushrooms. John, our faithful waiter, told me that this was like chicken bacon. Wow...He was absolutely right again. The chicken was in rectangles and consisted of a mixture of leg meat and breast meat that was smoked. The flavor was this smokey sweet mixture with the kumquats. I loved it so much that I was rather disappointed that there wasn't more on my plate. The other option for this course that my sister went with was the roast squab with red pepper polenta and pancetta and trevisano. This was fantastic. It was a tad bit on the salty side but I really thought this suited the bird perfectly. The skin was crisped and the meat fell apart delicately in each bite.

The next course had no options...everyone at the table received the veal with roasted potatoes and roasted garlic jam. Unbelievable. The veal was a perfect rose color and a wonderfully lean piece of meat. Each bite melted in your mouth with a nice garlic and rosemary flavor. I could not get enough of this beautiful plate of meat.

That rang in the end of our savory dishes. The palate cleanser from the kitchen was a gorgeous aloe vera gelee with rose petals. Holy cow. I have said it before but I love these little gelees that chef makes. They really have the most fantastic smooth texture and concentrated flavor. I want to start making some of these at home and adding them to my dishes!

To start off our sweet meal finishes, there was a small little dessert amuse bouche of buttered rum pineapple cake. Pastry chef Vera Tong's desserts were very good but not as amazing as Chef Fraser's meals. This little shot glass of cake had the right balance of rum and pineapple flavor. We each choose a different dessert: I had the gingerbread with stout ice cream, my sister had the brioche bread pudding with bananas, bacon brittle, and rum ice cream, and her husband had the pumpkin cheesecake with a gingerbread crust. My sister's dessert arrived with a little white chocolate token that had Happy Birthday written on it and a candle. A really nice touch. Okay so for the desserts: I thought the gingerbread was okay but a little on the dry side but I loved the flavor of the stout ice cream. The brioche bread pudding was very good but I have had better bread puddings. The pumpkin cheesecake was the clear winner of the three. The satiny cheesecake had the priceless fall spices that we all associate with and love about fall. The farewell plate of bites was also fantastic. The lemon pate e fruit with crispy sugar coating was excellent and like a tasty little lemon drop. The hand rolled honey caramel truffles were very soft and rich. Finally, the creamsicle marshmallows were little pillows of heaven. I mean who doesn't love a marshmallow and then to make it taste like a creamsicle...just genius!

Chef Fraser managed to take traditional flavors and add creative and playful layers to each dish. These came in all sorts of forms from crisped squab skin to melt in your mouth gelees. In other words, alot of chef Fraser's creations were plays on textures and working multiple layers of texture and flavor onto each plate. The overall composition of each plate was a work of art that almost always turned out to be a masterpiece with very few that were just below this status. Truth is that there wasn't one thing that we had that I wouldn't want to order again. AND, there were many that I would want again very soon. In a meal of 13 courses, this is quite a feat. I adore a restaurant that makes a birthday celebration memorable and special and Dovetail did just that. We took a look at the bar menu before we left and the pork face sliders might just be what brings me back...well that and the thought of each of the 13 phenominal tasting menu courses.

Until the next time I'm hungry,

Class 16 - I Hate Fishs' Guts

I'm not a very squeamish person...not too much grosses me out. But tonight's class showed me that fish guts really gross me out. Fish are actually a lot bloodier than I thought. I don't think I'll be fileting my own fish or eating any fish roe anytime soon...

I'm not going to bore you with any of the info we learned on how to tell if a fish is fresh...I think we all know they're not supposed to smell fish-y or have cloudy eyes. So I'll leave it at that. There are two primary structures of fish: round fish and flat fish. We fileted one of each so we could get an understanding of how to do each type. The fileting took a good 30 minutes.

We wore gloves while we cut the fish, which only slightly cut back the slime factor. For our round fish, we used a farm-raised stripped bass that luckily had already been scaled and gutted. Cutting fish involves long confident knife strokes (which meant I was in trouble!). The first step is to remove all the fins from the fish with kitchen shears. I was shocked at how strongly the fins are attached and how much pressure you had to put on the shears to cut through them. We then switched to our filet knife, which has a slightly flexible blade. With the spine closer to us on the cutting board, we made a cut along the backbone from the head to the tail. This cut should be just above the backbone and you should hear the knife against the backbone so that you're certain you're getting as much fish as possible on your filet. In the next step, we carefully made knife strokes along the rib bones to cut away the filet from the length of the fish. We switched back to the shears and cut away the ribs and viola filet number one. Then we cut off the head and flipped the fish over to remove the other side. We cut off the belly as well because this is too fatty to eat. After we had removed both filets, we skinned the fish. To do this, we put the filet parallel to us on the board and made a small cut on one side to begin the removal and make a little handle on the fish skin. We then held this skin handle with a towel and with the filet knife parallel to the cutting board we removed the skin without removing too much of the fish meat with it. I was actually shocked that I did this very well and ended up with an almost perfect looking fish filet (I say almost because I had a small knife slip when I was removing the fish from the backbone that resulted in a small puncture in the middle of my filet...oops!).

Okay, so then we moved onto our flat fish, a flounder, that was neither scaled or gutted. Flat fish are usually the slimiest because of that whole bottom feeder thing. We started the same way by removing the fins. Since this fish hadn't been gutted, we had to do this. To start, we made a diagonal cut on one side of the head and then we wiggled the head so that we could pull the guts off with it. Gross and wicked slimey. Now for the grosser part...we had to remove the egg sack. Ours was ridiculously large and an orange playdough color. My partner and I had made a deal that one of us would remove the guts and the other would remove the eggs. I was stuck with the egg sack, which is a good way to phrase it because these things are really in there and hard to remove. After I pulled on the stupid thing really hard, it finally came out and some ended up on my chef coat...yum. So flat fish yield four filets, two on the top and two from the bottom of the fish. On flat fish, there is a natural line along the backbone and we made our first cut down this line and similar to the round fish we then cut the filet away from the backbone staying as close to it as possible. Then we removed the skin in the same way as well. Phew...I was glad this part was over. But I'm not going to lie, after this, the last thing I wanted to eat for dinner was fish!

With the fish bones and head, we made a fish fumet (stock). To make the fumet, we sweated onion and leek with butter and then added the bones and head (all of which we rinsed off ALOT!) and bouquet garni. This was covered with some water and a little white wine and simmered for 45 minutes.

We cooked our round fish first. The method we used for this fish was en papillote, which is in parchment, and the fish is cooked by trapping steam in the parchment along with the fish and other aromatics. For this dish, we started by making a tomato fondue (see class 2) and mushroom duxelles. The mushrooms were finely diced and then cooked with diced scallions in butter with thyme and a squeeze of lemon juice. We also julienned carrots, leeks, and celery and then blanched these. We rounded the edges of a piece of parchment and folded it in half. on the edge of this fold, we laid down a little of the tomato fondue and next to that a bit of the mushrooms. On top of this, we put the fish with a splash of white wine and thyme and then we put some of the carrots, leeks, and celery. We then folded the other half over the fish and sealed the edges with egg white. Then we folded the edges over on themselves until the package looked like a calzone and brushed the edges again with some egg white. The top of the parchment was then brushed with olive oil so that the cooking process would give the parchment a nice brown color. This went in the oven for about ten minutes. My partner's papillote lost its steam and didn't puff up because she missed a spot with the egg white. Mine puffed up well (b/c I was a little obsessive with the egg white brushing). The fish came out wonderfully with an excellent texture that was nice and flakey. The tomato, mushroom, veggies, wine and thyme flavors were infused into the fish via the steam cooking. I was shocked how much I liked this (especially after the fileting debacle).

Now for the flat fish...We cooked this bonne femme, which is literally "in the style of the good wife". Well one things for sure...if this is what is expected of a good french wife, I'd make for one horrendous spouse. In a small sautoir, we cooked sliced mushrooms and shallots in butter. We then took the flounder and rolled it up and seasoned it. We then put this on top of the mushrooms and poured in some of the fumet and white wine up to about 3/4 of the height of the fish. And covered this with a lid, essentially poaching the fish in its sauce. Unfortunately, our fish fell apart in the poaching process so we were left with tiny little nuggets of fish. When the fish was cooked we did our best to remove this pieces from the pan. Then, we added some cream to the sauce and kicked the heat back up to high to reduce the sauce. Once that was reduced we added even more cream (this time whipped cream). We plated the fish with some of this sauce, and then put it under the broiler to brown. I wasn't a fan of this ludicrously creamy dish. It was a little too much cream for me and I suppose the fact that our pieces of fish were virtually non-existent didn't help!

Well...I survived fish part 1, so hopefully for the second fish class I'll be a little more gutsy.

Class 15 - "Salad"

Tonight's class was in large part a review of the different cuts. We prepared a number of different vegetables, all of which we had to cut in different sizes. I am not sure why they had a whole class in this or why we had it now rather than earlier. In fact, we had so much down time, chef showed us a few different preparations of pasta at the end. But back to the vegetables...

We made an "assiette de crudites" or a plate of simple salads. We started by making two dressings, a lemon vinaigrette ("citronette) and a white wine vinaigrette. We julienned carrots and put these in the citronette. Then we threw tomatoes in boiling water for a minute, shocked them in cold water and then peeled and seeded them. Once we salted them and let them sit for a while, we put some vinaigrette on them. We also sliced red cabbage and put this with some vinaigrette. We also made a mushroom salad. We sliced the mushrooms and tossed them with chopped tarragon and vinaigrette. I actually really liked the mushroom salad and I don't usually like raw mushrooms.

That was all for the vinaigrettes. The next salad was with celery root and was basically a celery root coleslaw. This was my favorite salad we made for the night. I typically have my celery root cooked but this gave me a whole new set of ideas of what I can do with celery root. We julienned the celery root and put salt & pepper, white wine vinegar, mayonaisse, mustard, and a little lemon juice on top. We also made a cucumber salad with creme fraishe, lime juice, and mint. I thought this was a bit creamy. I like cucumber salad but I have made it with yogurt in the past and I think I'll continue making it that way.

We also cooked macedoined carrots, turnips, and string beans with peas alanglaise (in boiling salted water). After we drained these we mixed this with mayonaisse and learned a technique for plating. We took a round metal cookie cutter looking thing and pushed the veggies into this round and then removed the cutter so that we had this beautiful looking round of colorful veggies. Apparantly, this used to be an extremely popular salad in parisian bistros.

Our final preparation was vegetables a la Grecque. In this method, we cooked the vegetables in a mixture of olive oil, onions, white wine, toasted coriander, black peppercors, lemon, and a bouquet garni. We made zucchini, caulflower, and mushrooms in this method. We tasted these in the next class because they are supposed to get more flavorful after a few days. I thought they were okay but nothing special and most of the class agreed.

Since we had extra time, chef, who previously worked in one of Mario Batali's kitchens, demonstrated how to make some simple and delicious pasta dishes. First he explained that cooking with dry pasta is perfectly acceptable, but you should use a good one that looks powdery and feels coarse because it will absorb the sauce better. Chef also dumped a huge amount of salt into the water for cooking. He made a pasta aglio e olio with chili flakes in which he put good olive oil, crushed garlic and chili flakes in a pan and toasted briefly. He then added some of the pasta cooking water and the cooked pasta and finished with a bit of olive oil to plate. The next pasta was a cheese sauce. He added the cooked pasta to melted butter and then added pasta water and a mixture of parmesan cheese and pecorino and cooked and stirred until the cheese melted. This one was excellent. It was like an alfredo sauce that was less heavy and had a stronger cheese flavor rather than being excessively creamy. The next pasta he made was a tomato and pancetta sauce. He ran a plum tomato through a ricer and then added this to diced pancetta and diced red onion and tomato paste that he cooked slightly in a pan. He added pasta water as needed to keep this sauce moist until he added the pasta and plated it. This was also very tasty and something I'll try at home.

Glad that we're on to fish next! Until then,