Seasonal Tribute

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but the summer is fading fast. In fact, my produce purveyor has already informed me (to his own dismay) that local Winter Squash(!!!) such as butternut and acorn are now available, although the term actually refers to squash harvested autumn that can be stored through winter, but still...!!!

I always find myself grasping at the tail-end of the season this time of year, trying to squeeze in every incomplete idea that I have jotted down in my notebook over the summer out of fear that I will be unable to coerce the same ingredient for another nine months or so. Fortunately for me I am always looking forward towards something new, but if an old idea falls into place it is only a sign that it is even more apparent that it belongs in my repertoire, as is the case with my next special.

I had first conceptualized a sauce that I've called a "Bacon Ragout" for my Guest Chef Night at the Farestart organization a little over a year ago, but I never had a chance to use it at the restaurant until now: first I finely chopped some Bavarian Meats bacon (have I already stated this as the BEST?...worth doing again) and rendered it slowly to yield its fat in order to create a base for my sauce, then I added sliced garlic, chopped onion, diced carrot and a touch of grated ginger root. Once the foundation was set I added half of a bottle of red wine, a mild beef stock, diced local tomatoes and chopped baby fennel and allowed it to simmer for a few hours to mature.

I knew that I wanted to use this sauce as a variation on the classic Southern dish of Smothered Chicken Thighs, but I really wanted to add the refinement of crispy skin to the traditional concept, so I pan-seared the skin side in rendered duck fat before roasting them in the oven (hey, I have to make up for the vegetarian dish from last week, right?). Once cooked through I returned the chicken to the bacon ragout so that they could absorb some of that succulent sauce before turning it all out over perfectly cooked jasmine rice.

The favors are Mediterrasian with the health benefits of southern style cooking!!!

For this week's drink special I decided to do a tribute to one of my many mentors, Paul Nicaj. Paul is one of a few who are responsible for giving me my first Executive Chef position and is also notoriously known from the Plaza and Pierre Hotels in New York City. One of his favorite introductory drinks to greet guests is the Bellini, a mix of peach nectar and champagne, so I thought that I would pay tribute to Paul and the progress that he has helped me make by offering a bellini made with fresh juiced Northwestern Peaches!!!!

Better yet, if you specifically ask for "Paul's Bellini" we will give you 25% off of the regular price!!

If Paul has taught me anything, it is loyalty to your customers, because without them, you are nothing.

With Love,

Cheffrey

Where's the Beef?

It would probably come as no surprise that at any given time that I sit down to figure out my next special, I'm usually trying to figure how I can put more meat into a dish, and more often than not it would be some form of pork. I must be coming down with something (swine flu?? waa-waa) because when I reached deep down inside to come up with another great idea, a vegetarian dish is what I found.

Perhaps I was inspired by all of the great local produce that I am seeing right now, or maybe it's another step in my growth as a chef by working out of my comfort zone in order to expand my horizons and potential. Either way, I am happy with the outcome, and after only one night as a special I was called out to the dining room to meet a guest who declared the exact words that I was hoping to hear:

"I'm not a vegetarian, and I love this!!"

If that isn't convincing enough, allow me to entice you: I started by salting thick slices of local eggplant to draw out the bitterness and any excess moisture, then grilled them until tender and pliable. I filled the slices with red lentils that were cooked with a fresh vegetable stock and then mashed with Japanese breadcrumbs, onions, garlic and extra virgin olive oil.

Due the the inherent mushiness of both the eggplant and the lentils I knew that I had to add some crunch to balance their textures. Since I also have an extensive knowledge of Pastry Arts I sometimes like to crossover sweet ingredients and concepts into savory dishes, like last week's Corn Custard, so for this I made an unsweetened crumble out of butter, flour, fresh thyme and oregano, cashews and dried porcini pieces - similar to what you might find on top of an apple crisp.

Yes, the eggplant is also complimented by sauteed baby swiss chard and a fresh sweet bell pepper sauce that was blended with a touch of mild middle eastern spices, but what really completes this dish is a warm and luscious brie sauce that gets its unbelievably velvety texture by passing it though my trusty whip cream canister.

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

I am starting to feel like a radio DJ because I've been getting requests for repeats. I usually ignore the requests for the dinner specials unless they're something that is transformable like a flatbread or a seasonal item like my heirloom tomato plate simply because I like to make something new and you can only try one entree at a time, but as far as cocktails go, I'm all ears!!

So when a regular requested my Vodka Lavender Lemonade (a favorite of mine as well!), I gratefully complied.


To my loyal fans and followers, this bud's for you...;)

With Love,

Cheffrey

In a Pickle

I know that I have already professed my love for over-extending myself by hand-making the components of my specials that could otherwise be purchased like vinegars, cured meats or chips, but what you may not know is that the same holds true for our everyday menu as well. From condiments like Tomato Jam, Tzatziki and Ginger Dill Pickles for our burgers to the Sweet Pepper Relish under our Deviled Eggs. Aside from the concept that the more you do yourself the better the outcome, there is another factor here: my passion for the old world technique of preserving.

This time of year is the highlight of agriculture, with an overwhelming abundance of produce falling off faster than we can use, and just as much now as before fruits and vegetables are being jarred, dried and canned, but what was a method of survival is now a matter of flavor. So now I take it upon myself to carry on those traditions - not out of necessity, but of desire.

So for this dish I went with a more delicate approach of the pickling method; a tribute, if you will: instead of the heavy infusion of a boiling vinegar solution poured over the ingredients I decided to quickly marinate thinly sliced Green Beans, Red Onions, English Cucumbers, Red Bell Peppers and Celery in seasoned red wine vinegar over a period of hours at room temperature in order to retain their color and crunch, but still imparting that acidic bite.

The next component is something that I have been bouncing around my head for quite some time, being someone from Indiana and having a background with some Pastry Arts skills: I pureed fresh corn kernels with half 'n' half, cream and egg yolks and baked the mixture in a shallow pan (like a savory custard base for creme brulee), which was then cooled and cut into rectangular bars and topped with a new ingredient - Seared Sea Scallops, and for added dimension I dotted the plate with a sweet and spicy puree of thickened carrot juice cooked with Madras curry powder. The dish pops from the pickled vegetables and the spiciness of the carrot curry puree in contrast with the rich and creamy custard, all of which compliments the naturally sweetness of the scallops.

I know that this may seem like a backwards way of composing a dish, but you have to realize that accompanying ingredients are just as important as the alleged "main" ingredient, thus creating a balanced dish.

~ ~ ~

This time, I can't take the credit for this week's drink special, and I am more than happy to do so. Our Brunch Manager Extraordinaire Kari Zumwalt took it upon herself to come up with this one.

Sometimes my cocktail specials don't translate well from nighttime to brunch; some people just don't like the taste of bourbon at 9 am (go figure...), so we have been augmenting them with more accessible concoctions like pomegranate mimosas or apricot bellinis in order to soothe the beast instead. Last weekend Kari was inspired by my use of local raspberries in the raspberry mojito and decided to implement her own version of a Kir Royale, but instead of sparkling wine with creme de cassis she used Chambord and garnished the glass with the same local raspberries! I loved it so much that I had to showcase it here!!!

It just goes to show you the dedication that everyone here has, and that I am not the only one here that has love to give.

With Love,

Cheffrey

Ambition

Life is not without irony, and that is certainly true for me as a chef. These days my specials have a tendency to be inspired by what I can write about them in this blog instead of the other way around, which is fine since it not only allows me explore another form of creativity in tandem with that of food, but sometimes those literary conceptions can come back to slap me in the face.

Case in point: this past Sunday my wife and I sat down to watch the much anticipated season premiere of Mad Men, an amazing show about an advertisement agency set in 1960's NYC. During the show a character's wife told him that he is "an ambitious man, and an ambitious man is never happy with what he has". The dialogue struck a chord with me because I too am never satisfied with what I have done in my profession; I am always trying to push the limits of myself and my kitchen further to create something better than I have before that can still be expedited quickly without sacrificing quality.

So I sat down later that night to do some brainstorming and I came up with an intriguing technique of wrapping partially cooked slices of potatoes into a lattice-woven crust around pork tenderloin. My mind was piqued with the possibilities, and after a couple of nights of stewing on it I finally had the chance to try it out early today at the restaurant, and the result was:

FAIL!

Not on a large scale, but since I didn't want to serve raw pork wrapped in a beautiful, crispy crust, I decided to go without. Fortunately, this idea wasn't the focal point of my dish... the succotash was.

Last week my purveyor presented me with some local fresh cranberry beans (cranberry beans are a fresh legume that have a chestnut-like flavor with a creamy texture, pictured here) and I knew right away what I could do with them. In the past I have used various beans in the place of lima beans to make succotash, a southern dish of shell beans cooked with corn that became popular during the Great Depression, but this time I added some local favorites: Red Corn, Yakima Tomatoes, Baby Swiss Chard and Walla Walla Onions.

To go with my now naked pork tenderloin I chose to make a bold and flavorful sauce that is still light enough to be enjoyed in the summer heat: a combination of pancetta broth with some beef stock for body and slowly simmered with a good dose of sherry wine for added refinement and depth.

"We aim above the mark to hit the mark." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Keeping with the theme of local I decided to once again tweak a personal favorite - The Mojito.

I didn't want to go too far with it though... after all, I have touted in the past the importance of simplicity and using quality ingredients in order to let them shine, so this week's cocktail is no different: to our already delicious mojito recipe I have added a muddling of some of the country's best raspberries from Richter Farms (not just by my opinion) for an added twist on the greatest heat-beater.

"A drink a day keeps the shrink away." - Edward Abbey

With Love,

Cheffrey

'Tis the Season

Being a chef relatively new to the Pacific Northwest (2 years this month) I am still getting used to the way produce grows around here. In the east, the scorching hot sun nourishes plants and ripens tomatoes faster than a chef can sweat, but here, the anticipation builds slowly, developing the flavors of some of the best fruits and vegetables that I have ever tasted, but the window in which to get them is short. Sure, these days it is as easy to get produce from Peru as it is from other parts of the US, but if you're living here, I don't need to explain to you the difference.

Obviously I wanted to take advantage of the summer bounty before it runs out, but I also wanted to take it a step further this week. In the past, I have served a variety of interesting meats as specials like Pheasant Meatloaf, Wild Boar Stuffed Cabbage and Venison Meatball Subs, but there is another type of meat that I love that you won't find on most menus, at least this time of year: Turkey.

We all know it during the holiday season, but for the rest of the year it is an ingredient that lies somewhat dormant. Somehow, someway this delicious bird has been "Hallmarked" as a treat only for Thanksgiving. Personally, my wife and I cook with it often, mostly ground for fillings and burgers; an even healthier alternative to other lean substitutes like chicken or pork, and I think that it is time that turkey makes it's debut here.

I started with the idea of pairing local peaches with local basil, something that I have been toying with in my mind because of the fruity notes that basil has and the fact that they couldn't have come into season at the same time just by accident. For me, grilling peaches has been a way to bring them out of the dessert world and into a savory dish like this because the high heat caramelizes the natural sugars in the fruit, which is not only less sweet to the tongue, but chars it just enough to balance out the sweetness.

Turkey breasts are a very lean cut and can become tough quickly if not handled carefully, so I pounded them thinly and sprinkled with some salt, pepper and a subtle amount of Ras el Hanout, a popular blend of herbs and spices used in the Middle East and North Africa. After rolling and skewering the cutlets I sliced them into thin medallions, which are pan roasted in the oven to cook through while I assemble the rest of the ingredients for the dish.

Another great component to this dish is sauteed Treviso, a cousin of radicchio that is longer yet just as purple and mildly bitter. It acts a perfect balance to the sweetness of the peach, a classic Italian pairing with the basil, and an unusual new friend of the dish's final component: Chinese Black Vinegar, often compared to typical balsamic vinegar but with a far more complexity and added spice.

I plan to introduce more specials with turkey as the main ingredient, but with the bar set this high, it might take a lot more time to come up with something comparable to this one!

Another idea that spawned from my home life is one of my favorite summer drinks, Sangria, and although I have introduce a basic version of it already this summer, I now have even better intentions.....

You see, traditional sangria needs a bit of sugar to balance the fruit with the brandy and the tannic wine in order to produce a beverage that is easily drinkable in the summertime without being heavy. So I dispensed with the refined sugar and used fresh juiced watermelon in its place, along with diced peaches, pineapple, and some sour green apples (for balance, don't you know!).

With all of the uncertainty in the world, it is comforting to know that there are things here that will put us at ease.

With Love,

Cheffrey

Inspirations

The weekend before last my wife and I headed to Chicago for a wedding/birthday celebration for me, starting on Friday in the 'burbs for the reception of my childhood best friend and ending with two nights of culinary debauchery in a seriously food-centric city. At first we were to go at it alone, but with my home town a mere (!!) six hour drive away, I asked my mother, stepfather and brother to join us.

For the first night I plotted out dinner at Graham Elliot, with a fun and playful menu by award winning Chef Bowles that paired elegantly plated food with an impressive cocktail list in a trendy environment. For the second night, I had bigger plans... dinner at Alinea, one of this country's greatest restaurants, helmed by a culinary genius, Grant Achatz. I have his cookbook, so I was somewhat prepared, but my mind was just as blown away as everyone else's! To see course-by-course pics, check them out here.

I knew that going to Chicago wouldn't be just a self-fulfilling prophecy of inspiration, nor do I need to eat at high-end restaurant to find a muse; it can come from vegetarian delivery from The Hill to simple bar food to festive east coast traditions.

As a chef I am constantly learning, and learning comes from researching and reading books like Chef Achatz', which goes beyond the importance of fresh ingredients to focus on new ideas like:

Global Awareness - using ingredients and techniques from other countries that are unfamiliar in order to create unique combinations

Form Mimicking - making familiar food by manipulating other items to look like it

and of course,

Technology - using what we now know as "Molecular Gastronomy": the process of using new techniques to create different textures and profiles that are unachievable with traditional cooking methods.

I am paraphrasing of course, and there are for more insights in his book and in this realm of "Modern Cuisine", for lack of better terms, than I want to get into here.

So, to get to the point, I wanted to create a special that is not only a part of our culinary view, but embraced the ideas of these great chefs, and be simple enough to execute in our small kitchen. With that in mind, a bar food type sampler was in order, with a twist.

Here's the breakdown:

The Clam Bake is a New England classic, so I centered the plate with our shot glass full of clams, brunoised purple fingerling potatoes, corn and a chorizo and beer broth that I foamed with lecithin for an airy texture. Next I went with some variations on the classics: Lamb "Wings" - seasoned ground lamb wrapped around pieces of sugar cane to act as a bone over a fresh made harissa sauce; herbed goat cheese stuffed cherry peppers, breaded and fried, over powderized house made ranch dressing (a now common substance called Tapioca Maltodextrin can turn any fat into a powder, until it touches your tongue and becomes liquid again); and my version of potato skins - hollowed out purple and red potatoes filled with an unbelievably light and smooth mousse that I made by filling a whipped cream dispenser with hot mashed potato, bacon fat, milk and truffle oil.

Not on the level of such great chefs, but well above what you will find from a small kitchen like ours - but, as you know, big things come in small packages!

~ ~ ~

As I noted above, Graham Elliot had an exceptional cocktail menu, and one drink that I (vaguely ;) remember had an infusion of bourbon and plum, which I took as soaking prunes (an ugly way of saying dried plums) in good ole bourbon for a few weeks. So when I came back to Seattle, wouldn't you know it, Northwestern stone fruits such as peaches, nectarines, and yes, plums are in abundance. I started out with the intention of making an intricate cocktail with fresh juiced plums blended with my new favorite whiskey - rye, maybe some herbs, or perhaps some of my house made limoncello.... but once I tasted the simple combination of the plum juice with the rye whiskey I realized that anything else would be going overboard. The plum's naturally sweet and tart flavor balanced perfectly with the slight bitterness of the rye whiskey, omitting any need for additional filler. A perfect summer sipper to compliment the fruits of my labor!

With Love,

Cheffrey

Old School

Sometimes as a chef you have to go with your instincts and not confine yourself within boundaries, even if that means that you step outside of yourself a little bit. It's how we learn and how we grow. Honestly, I could probably formulate an elaborate passage in this blog in order to justify how I feel that my version of Hakka Cuisine could fit into our restaurant's theme of New Americana, and believe me that I would be up to the challenge, but that isn't what I'm here to do, so instead of trying to skew an idea for a special away from a more traditional or specific cuisine in order to mold it or blend it with another I simply allow the idea ring through without forcing it. After all, sometimes straying away from the path will get you even closer to the goal.

So with that said this week's special is decidedly Italian; closer to our former incarnation as El Greco than our current one, due mostly to my obsession with (the now trendy) unusual and cured meats. As chef of El Greco I implemented a menu item called "The Chef's Country Plate" that included old world items such as pates, Bacalao, and others, some of which were carried over to the Table 219 menu, like the Smoked Bone Marrow Butter that adorns our Hanger Steak.

One of my personal favorites was a little known preparation of Italian bacon called Guanciale, which is an unsmoked pork jowl that I cure in salt, sugar, parsley, thyme and black peppercorns for a week and then hang to air dry in the refrigerator for four more weeks. I know that some of you may be scoffing at the idea of eating jowls, but it isn't really any different than eating the belly of a pig - it even looks like what we know as bacon, as depicted in it's sliced form in the image here. So why use a lesser known ingredient instead of the great bacon that we have already been known to have? One word: FLAVOR!! The belly that traditional bacon comes from just doesn't have the uncanny richness that you can get from the jowl, especially the way that I cure it!!

So for the base of the sauce for this special I sauteed fine julienned strips of my Guanciale until they are crispy and then I added onions, garlic, white wine and some tomato water, a clear broth made by pureeing tomatoes that are strained through a very fine cloth that still contains all of the vibrant flavor without any of the pulp.

As stated before in other posts, I love making pasta by hand. There is just something about slowly drawing sheets of dough methodically through a roller; to me it's like long pulls from a cigar or savoring sips of wine.... I know it may sound ridiculous, but these are the things that I live for as a chef, despite how much easier it would be for me to just buy it from somewhere else. This time I went with pure semolina flour, extra virgin olive oil and eggs, rolled out and hand cut as fine as I possibly could, and finished with chopped curly endive and some Pecorino al Tartufo (an Italian sheep's milk cheese that is infused with chunks of black truffles). Here we have a bowl of something even more Italian that even the greatest of culinary trends would admire:

To offset my lack of an attempt at Americana Cuisine for my dinner special I offer this in it's place, and with the heat bearing down on Seattle in record temperatures, it's not a moment too soon either...

For this treacherous summer weather that was stolen from use by the East Coast, I can only offer solace in the best way that I know how: A Cool, Refreshing Drink!!!!

This week we are muddling fresh cucumber, mint and lime with sugar and vodka to give you The Cucumber Mojito!!

I know that this heat wave may seem like a penance, but with a cocktail like this in hand it will be more like a condolence!!

With Love,

Cheffrey

K.I.S.S. Me Again

As some of you know, last Wednesday we participated in Farestart's Guest Chefs on the Waterfront (see last week's post for more detail), and I couldn't be more happy with the way that it went. I wanted to offer something easy and delicious, and most certainly and item from our actual menu, so we served our delicious Roasted Garlic and Bacon Deviled Eggs with Smoked Paprika and Sweet Pepper Relish. The praise was overwhelming.

I would like to say that Stacey and Nani (from our sister restaurant, Geraldine's Counter) were a great help, but truth be told they pretty much ran our booth on their own so my inflated chef ego could mingle with the masses and hobnob with my culinary peers, and for that, I am thankful.

I met some wonderful people, tasted a lot of great food and sipped a lot of great beverages, but to my surprise my favorite samples were the most simple offerings, like the Chilled Baby Octopus Salad from Matt's in the Market, the Hot Pastrami from Roxy's Diner, or the Pavlova "Shooters" from Starry Nights Catering, just to name a small selection of highlights. Normally I go for the over-the-top stuff, but it was evident to me that all of the chefs there with the best dishes focused on what they do best and allowed the ingredients shine as opposed to trying to outdoing someone else's food; if I've heard it once, I've heard it a thousand times:

Keep It Simple, Stupid

It is a statement that rings out through serious kitchens everywhere, basically saying that you should focus on building from a few, solid flavors instead of muddling a dish with a laundry list of ingredients. I am the first to admit that from time to time even I stray away from this philosophy of cooking every now and then, for good or for worse, but I never do it in a way that compromises taste for theatrics.

So this week, I embraced the KISS principle wholeheartedly. The second my produce purveyor mentioned those holy words "Heirloom Tomatoes" I knew what I had to do.

If you have ever strolled through a Farmer's Market and wondered "what is an heirloom tomato?" you can find more in-depth information here, but it doesn't stop with just tomatoes; you can now find varieties of potatoes, lettuce, beans, even melons such as honeydew (a nod to my birthday dinner at How to Cook a Wolf). To put it simply: pains have been taken to maximize flavor instead of a mass-market visual appeal, so really, you shouldn't have to do much with them anyway; to fuss with them beyond that would only mask the amazing flavor that has been painstakingly produced.

Though I cannot predict what varieties that will be available throughout this week, some of them should include Brandywine, Black Krim, Ida Gold, and Green Zebra. (I am growing a few of these varieties myself on my balcony, but I will never give up those!)

I just alternated thin slices by size and varietal on a long plate and dressed them with some fruity extra virgin olive oil, a medley of fresh cracked peppercorns and Fleur de Sel(the top layer of hand-harvested sea salt collected in France), served with a few herbed baguette crostini. A tribute to the simple beauty of nature and those who labor to keep it!!!

As a newbie to the Seattle area I am sometimes overwhelmed with the many summertime opportunities that this beautiful region has to offer, and I find myself falling behind on my to-do list every year. At one point I wanted to make plans to take the ferry over to Sequim, WA between Port Angeles and Port Townsend on the day before my birthday for the Lavender Festival since the final day coincided with one of my days off, but alas, too much too soon.

So as a tribute to the festival, as well as the glorious season of summer, I decided to honor the floral member of the mint family by steeping it in water, sugar, lemon juice and lemon zest. Once strained and cooled I stirred it with vodka and ice in a tall pint glass to compose a super refreshing summer cocktail sipper, the Vodka Lavender Lemonade!!

With the record high temperatures that are predicted for this weekend in Seattle an inevitable truth, I can promise that this vibrant cooler will beat the heat better than any shade that you can find!!!

With Love,

Cheffrey