IDEAS IN FOOD

Woodberry Kitchen

On Monday, June 2, we will be cooking a nine(ish) course dinner down at Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore with Spike Gjerde and his team.  We met Spike through our cooking classes and were introduced to his passionate approach to cooking.  In fact, his mindset is contagious.  When he asked if we would be interested in cooking a dinner with him the only possible answer was yes.  We had to ask one favor: if he would allow us into his fold of local purveyors and providers.  He was more than willing and he just sent us a list of ingredients from his tried and true list of suppliers.  The list will be the inspiration, the starting point for the dinner menu.  Now begins the conversation, the development of ideas and the refinement of thoughts.  There are seats available for this dinner, so if you are in the area give Woodberry Kitchen a call to grab a seat.

Yes, we will share the initial list.  These are Spike's notes to us:

WK current sourcing

Asparagus…should be plentiful through mid-June, comes ungraded from the farm so we    get everything from pencil-thin to jumbo.
Strawberries…just starting, should be abundant for several weeks
Rhubarb…I know you love it… We are getting beautiful rhubarb from several farms
Stinging nettles…good now but wrapping up as they start to flower
Ramps…about finished
Dandelion…good now, and should continue, including red-stemmed and catalogna    puntarelle
Spinach…we get young flat leaf from one farm and over-wintered old school stem    spinach from another
Arugula…still mostly hot house (“baby”)
Chard…beautiful young chard from PA. Bunched (mature) chard soon
Spring garlic…scallion-like young hard neck
Leeks…are looking good
Most herbs…have you ever worked with stevia? We also get lovage from my dad.
Mushrooms…organic royal trumpet, beech, and crimini, and we found a couple of morels
    in the park…
Jerusalem artichokes…are about the only root we have right now, except for…
Sassafras…neolithic Dr. Pepper from a farmer with a back hoe and too much time on his    hands

Rockfish (striped bass to you)…limited right now, small fish (5 to 8 lb) should be    available soon
Oysters…we get them from growers all over the Chesapeake, from sweet to mildly briny
Soft crabs…direct from John Walton in Tilgman Island…we can usually get them, but    we never know what size
Chesapeake Bay crab meat…the season is off to a rocky start, but should be available…
Shrimp…we get incredible fresh head on shrimp three times a week from Marvesta    shrimp farm in Easton. Size somewhat limited right now, but we can ask them to    grow us some big ones…
Fluke…caught near Ocean City…mediums are 1-2 lb
Also nice littleneck clams from one of our oyster guys…

Beef…local, pastured, natural beef from Roseda, hung for 3 weeks and delivered fresh to    us,  including hanger, skirt, flat iron, chuck, rib-eye, strip, & tenderloin
Bison…they only slaughter once a month so it is usually frozen
Chicken, eggs, pork…all of it, in any quantity, from local farms, maybe suckling pig?
Lamb…limited slaughter, so they build up product over several weeks in freezer
Dairy…grass fed milk and cream from PA

Drinks of all kinds will be paired with the menu.

Lunch at Wd-50

If you were afraid to go down to Clinton Street after dark, fear no more.  Wylie is serving lunch.  From the on-line menu it appears he is weaving a few creations from the past into his repertoire of new and evolving dishes.  I cannot wait to pop in during daylight hours, truly my favorite time to dine.

Cooking with Sean at McCrady's

It is with great pleasure that we are announcing a guest chef dinner we are cooking with Sean and his team down at McCrady's.  Sean's passion for cooking and his open source approach to ideas have been instrumental in our growth as cooks.  The dinner is scheduled for June 29, 2008.  The dinner will be anywhere from 4 to 400 courses. (Sean's guidelines).  Since the dinner will be in June it is reasonable to believe Sean's garden project will be donating a few ingredients to the cause.

What else can we say except we are absolutely brimming with excitement and we can already feel the creative juices begining to flow. It will be great to be cooking in a restaurant kitchen again.

Alright, I cannot keep my ideas all pent up.  One exciting dish which is on the drawing table involves eucalyptus and tomato.  Thankfully eucalyptus grows wild down in Sean's neck of the woods. We can't wait to see what else his garden produces to go with it.

Looking Closer

I came across two sets of videos demonstrations.  Both sets feature the work of the El Bulli team.

The first set of videos highlights their series of ingredients, with several new additions to the line up.  They can be viewed at the Texturas website.   The second set of videos shows techniques for 2008.  The ideas and concepts in these videos are amazing.  Once again I am floored by the creative process of others.  These videos are in Spanish, though the techniques are well visualized and the subtitles list the ingredients used.  I was able to view the techniques of 2008 at GastroVideo.

There are tons of techniques and ideas, both scattered and organized, in these videos.  Take more than a moment and watch them.  You will be amazed at where your brain starts going next.

As a bit of a teaser, I was quite pleased to see team El Bulli working with rice puree, a recent addition to our kitchen, though used in some spectacular ways.

Tutorial

If you are wondering about how those liquid alcohol centers are put in chocolates and used as fillings, take a look at Chadzilla where he has put up a step by step procedure in a twenty four hour time line.  I was first introduced to this technique in the incredible cookbook by Paco Torreblanca.

McCrady's

If you remember Sean Brock from our culinary conversations you definitely want to check out this recent photo collection of a dinner he cooked over the weekend.  And if you have not heard of Sean Brock then go twice as quickly because your missing out on a culinary genius. 

Science and Technology

Here is a link to a great article in Popsci.com about Dave Arnold and his passion for science, technology and his quest for the machinery to solve our (chefs, cooks and food dreamers) culinary short comings.  Take the time to read the article.  It is well worth it.

And an equally enticing article, really photo and information montage is here.  That should get just about any kitchen up and running.

Start drooling now, I am.

Curing Salmon Roe

I stumbled across a Japanese blog in English this morning called Blue Lotus and found an informative post about how to cure salmon roe. It's seasonal specialty in Japan and apparently not a very difficult thing to do. Of course we all know the devil's in the details, ease of technique is no guarantee of a perfect result. So, for anyone interested in curing your own roe, or just seeing how it can be done, go check it out.  If I can get my hands on some roe we may play around with it here. Imagine the possibilities.

An Insiders View

It is high time I shared the insiders view of opening a restaurant.  I certainly wish I could say it is ours.  Since I cannot I can only happily share the link to Eggbeater where Shuna is candidly sharing the ups, downs, queries and celebrations in being a part of a new restaurant opening in the San Francisco area.  It is a bit vague where and what the restaurant is though if you step beyond this series of posts on opening a restaurant and dive into some of Shuna's writing you can begging to imagine the restaurant.  And if your imagination is wrong, oh well, the posts will have enabled you to think and dive into someone else's kitchen.

Inside other peoples kitchens

Food and Wine magazine has started recording a series of short videos with chefs, exploring new techniques, ideas, approaches, ingredients and evolutions.  I find it fascinating being exposed to other chefs kitchens and approaches to food from the inside, their kitchens, rather than just the end results, what is on the plate.  I recommend taking a few moments and just watching the videos.  Then watch them again and realize that in just two viewings how many ideas now bounce about your head.  And I am not saying to just replicate what is seen.  Use the videos as sparks, benchmarks, starting lines for ideas.  That is what is amazing.  How much we can learn from each other when we can look inside other peoples kichens.

*Thanks to Sean for the heads up.