Steffo dough & cultured butter
Alert the media: I’m still sticking with the tried-and-true formula of the Skyr culture but I’ve upgraded my cream to Alexander Farms this go around. Good stuff, might be the best batch yet.
Chicken liver mousse, persimmon, sake gelée, buckwheat
A small buckwheat tartlette, topped with a pretty silky chicken liver mousse, a brunoise of persimmon, and a gelée of sake and rice wine vinegar, garnished with sorrel/oxalis.
Puffed nori rice chip, lime-cured trout, crème fraiche
Puffing rice = good, clean fun.
I overcooked koshihikari sushi rice, blended and dehydrated, then fried the chips to puff and dusted with nori powder and salt. Topped it off with little slices of cured trout in the style of a gravlax, crème fraiche, nasturtium, and radishes.
Salted ling code brandade fritter, meyer lemon aioli
Major hat tip to the Camino cookbook for the recipe, which I more or less stuck to, and Monterey Fish Market for the Ling Cod. Love me some brandade.
Cauliflower soup
The simplest dish of the night. I cooked the world’s largest cauliflower from the Ferry Building farmers market (I think two heads weighed in at 15 lbs total) with some leeks and shallot, covered with water, and fortified with some white miso at the end, pre-vitamix.
Potato & pumpkin millefeuille, buttermilk, trout roe
This was my favorite dish of the night: a pavé or millefeuille (not really but sounds good) of layers of mandolined russet potato and and an heirloom pumpkin variety, cooked in a bit of cream and butter, then pressed overnight, sliced and seared off. Served with a bit of my fresh buttermilk and some house-cured trout roe. Nice dish.
Squash agnolotti, shinko pear
For the dough, I used the French Laundry’s recipe featuring a boat load of egg yolks. The filling was roasted squashes with miso, aleppo pepper, and a bit more of that buttermilk. The sauce was a beurre monté.
Pork belly, vinaigre celtique, celeriac & quince
A minor grease fire on the stovetop topped off with a fire alarm made for an inauspicious start to this course. The night before, I had braised a pork belly which I pressed in the fridge all day, then sliced off and finished in a pan. The vinaigre celtique is a reduction of apple cider vinegar and cider (50/50), macerated with licorice root, a bit of cinnamon, and some star anise I think. I looked at the ingredients for Olivier Roellinger’s bottle and winged it a bit. It’s similar to an apple balsamic but with a Christmas-y vibe.
Honey madeleines
Hat tip to Claudia Fleming for the recipe.
Caramelized meyer lemon tart
I busted out the torch for this one and lets just say there were some issues with the structural integrity.