I went to LAX last night to pick up my brother and of course we were going to get something to eat. It was the start of Chinese New Year so of course a seat at the counter of Chinois, a place we had been to a few years ago and a place I used to go to sit at the counter and steal ideas, watch techniques (Kazuto splitting the live lobster and then putting it in the wok), and of course eat great food. However, Gung Hay Fa Choy, the menu was a special tasting menu for $95.00 and while a few years ago we would have dived right in we have gotten a little too old to eat that much too late. So we got the car back from the valet and went to Joe's Restaurant in Venice. He is a dear friend for years and I see him at the Farmer's Market most every week and I had been wanting to go there for quite a while. We'll sit at the counter and eat some appetizers, maybe split an entree I told my brother, but alas by 8:15 on Sunday they could no longer take walk ins because they were running out of food and they wanted to make sure they had enough for their reservations. So what's next.
Riva, just reviewed in the L.A. Times and in a space I new well. Formerly owned by my former friend Bruce Beach. It used to be a dark and almost dirty space but Jason( an aquaintance from the farmer's market and owner and chef at Fraiche in Culver City) has turned it into an inviting place completely different from before ( I never did see it in its past incarnation as Scarbonis(?)) with space and windows.And most of all pizza.Great crust, not too expensive and a nice place to sit and eat and talk. Now a days its all about the crust and with the wood burning oven this crust is great( of course my crust turned out great on New Years day with the oven at my friend's house but I use cheese like I'm from New York not Italy).
So if you have a chance enjoy the pizza and remember that the Sage and Sage on the Coast Chinese New Years tasting menus are only $35.00 and they include a fortune cookie after dessert.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Saturday, January 24, 2009
The evolution of a dish
The new year has started, we have a new president and as a restaurant guy I'm trying to come up with ideas to get new customers and keep my existing ones with new dishes or new ideas. Sometimes you create dishes because of something you read, or maybe something you saw on television or you tasted something. Many times it is an idea which might have hit me while walking through the farmer's market or talking with other chefs. Seasonal be it produce or proteins, sometimes traditional food combinations sometimes combinations based on the land where the food was raised and the grapes were grown. These ideas start and sometimes sit with you for a long time before the right time comes along and you can use it. The sweet corn tamales morphed into a side dish of grits with corn and asiago cheese served with pork and a pinot sauce.
You hang out with friends and experience different cultures and foods and you store that and along the way something comes up and a dish materializes. New Years Day I was lucky enough to tag along with my friends Abe and his wife Sarah and got to experience the foods of a traditional Japanese New Year's Day with their friends in the hills above Beverly Hills. The wood burning oven on the patio allowed me to experiment with our pizza dough as well as beets and duck confit. Hopefully the ideas which I have been kicking around will grow into a dish.
A recent trip to Washington D.C. and a visit to an Indian Restaurant called Risakka introduced me to a great bar snack-- popcorn. Of course this one was seasoned with cumin, chile powder, coriander and fried curry leaves, a little spicy, great and unusual.
Which brings us to Fried Chicken. We were searching for a dish to serve Sunday nights at Sage on the Coast ( Eastbluff has Stroganoff). Something along the lines of the barbecue rib dinners we served during the summer. Comfort food for hard times.
In August I cooked a dinner for my friend Joe Davis's birthday in the central coast wine country with Henry and Michele Salgado from the Spanish River Grill in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Henry had worked with Edna Lewis in Atlanta and had learned to make her legendary fried chicken. We decided to make this chicken as one of the dishes for the party. I followed Henry discreetly notebook in hand and tried to write down as much as I could. The dish was a two day operation or maybe it just seemed that way. He brined the chicken overnight, rinsed it and soaked it in buttermilk. Meanwhile he seasoned some lard in a "rondo" with a ham hock, or maybe two. After the ham hock cooked through on low heat,he seasoned the chicken with the secret flour mixture-or was that potato flour?- and then began the frying process. Helped by our new found drinking buddy, Bradley Ogden, we were able to cook 50lbs.of chicken quarters successfully for some of the best fried chicken I've ever had. Better yet we shredded the ham hock and added it to our slow cooked greens.
So with this experience under my belt I set about with Chefs Kris and Adam to come up with our own fried chicken tradition. After a few false starts ( the beauty of this dish is even the mistakes still taste pretty good) we have begun the process and I think are on our way to a dish that, while not legendary will still be pretty darn good.So far we have studied brining and learned about the inticacies of buttermilk and when we have finished we will have created our own version of something similar to what I ate with Henry, though the ambiance of that occasion might never be recreated.
Some of the things we have been thinking about besides the process and the flavors is how we are going to cook the chicken, with bones( traditional) or without bones (due to our time constraints in the kitchen). How is the portion going to look, how big is our serving size? Who is resonsible for assembing the dish? What are the sides going to be? How will it look? What do we do with the leftovers besides employee meals. We after all are in a business and need to utilize as much of the dish as possible to sell to our customers. Our major concern is that it tastes great but all of these other thoughts go in to creating a dish. Timing in the kitchen and how many steps a dish takes is important when you are trying to create your menu. You need to balance the different stations in the kitchen so one section doesn't get "slammed" and force everyone else to lose their timing. Kitchens get out of synch and customers end up waiting for their food way longer than is desireable.
We are now working on our product figuring we will unveil the dish the Sunday after the Super Bowl. I will continue to update during the next few weeks and hopefully you will be able to come and taste the finished product.
You hang out with friends and experience different cultures and foods and you store that and along the way something comes up and a dish materializes. New Years Day I was lucky enough to tag along with my friends Abe and his wife Sarah and got to experience the foods of a traditional Japanese New Year's Day with their friends in the hills above Beverly Hills. The wood burning oven on the patio allowed me to experiment with our pizza dough as well as beets and duck confit. Hopefully the ideas which I have been kicking around will grow into a dish.
A recent trip to Washington D.C. and a visit to an Indian Restaurant called Risakka introduced me to a great bar snack-- popcorn. Of course this one was seasoned with cumin, chile powder, coriander and fried curry leaves, a little spicy, great and unusual.
Which brings us to Fried Chicken. We were searching for a dish to serve Sunday nights at Sage on the Coast ( Eastbluff has Stroganoff). Something along the lines of the barbecue rib dinners we served during the summer. Comfort food for hard times.
In August I cooked a dinner for my friend Joe Davis's birthday in the central coast wine country with Henry and Michele Salgado from the Spanish River Grill in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Henry had worked with Edna Lewis in Atlanta and had learned to make her legendary fried chicken. We decided to make this chicken as one of the dishes for the party. I followed Henry discreetly notebook in hand and tried to write down as much as I could. The dish was a two day operation or maybe it just seemed that way. He brined the chicken overnight, rinsed it and soaked it in buttermilk. Meanwhile he seasoned some lard in a "rondo" with a ham hock, or maybe two. After the ham hock cooked through on low heat,he seasoned the chicken with the secret flour mixture-or was that potato flour?- and then began the frying process. Helped by our new found drinking buddy, Bradley Ogden, we were able to cook 50lbs.of chicken quarters successfully for some of the best fried chicken I've ever had. Better yet we shredded the ham hock and added it to our slow cooked greens.
So with this experience under my belt I set about with Chefs Kris and Adam to come up with our own fried chicken tradition. After a few false starts ( the beauty of this dish is even the mistakes still taste pretty good) we have begun the process and I think are on our way to a dish that, while not legendary will still be pretty darn good.So far we have studied brining and learned about the inticacies of buttermilk and when we have finished we will have created our own version of something similar to what I ate with Henry, though the ambiance of that occasion might never be recreated.
Some of the things we have been thinking about besides the process and the flavors is how we are going to cook the chicken, with bones( traditional) or without bones (due to our time constraints in the kitchen). How is the portion going to look, how big is our serving size? Who is resonsible for assembing the dish? What are the sides going to be? How will it look? What do we do with the leftovers besides employee meals. We after all are in a business and need to utilize as much of the dish as possible to sell to our customers. Our major concern is that it tastes great but all of these other thoughts go in to creating a dish. Timing in the kitchen and how many steps a dish takes is important when you are trying to create your menu. You need to balance the different stations in the kitchen so one section doesn't get "slammed" and force everyone else to lose their timing. Kitchens get out of synch and customers end up waiting for their food way longer than is desireable.
We are now working on our product figuring we will unveil the dish the Sunday after the Super Bowl. I will continue to update during the next few weeks and hopefully you will be able to come and taste the finished product.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
