Farmers Market Caprese

We are really luck to have such a great farmer's market and group of farmer's around the Chapel Hill area. We buy a lot from local farmers but I usually only go to the Farmer's Market on Saturday's with the family. Most of the farmer's here do deliver which is amazing considering the gas prices these days.

These days we have been seeing some great tomatoes coming in. We have featured a lot of tomatoes over the summer, but I hit a chef's writer's block so to say. Sometimes I over think too much and fail to look at the simple beauty of the local products we get. This past Wednesday one of my line cooks John and I went to farmer's market to see what was available. While we were there John suggested mozzarella caprese. I was quick to dismiss the idea as seen all too often and on far to many menus. Luckily John convinced me otherwise and we bought almost everything for the salad at the market.
The Shopping List:
Chapel Hill Creamery fresh Mozz- Chapel Hill creamery uses whole milk Jersey cows to make all their cheeses. Their mozzarella is some of the best i have ever had. They also make some other great cheese from hard too soft.

Lyon Farms sungold, brown roma and grape tomatoes. A great selection of sweet and meaty tomatoes grown in Creedmore, NC.

Perry-winkle Farms Basil- fresh farmer's market basil is always so much more intense.

The rest of the ingridients were silver DOP 15 year Aged Balsamic. Dop extra virgin olive oil and fleur de sel and elephant garlic

Mozzarella Caprese is so simple and so great but only if you let the quality of great ingredients shine through. The Farmer's did all the work on this dish. We just presented it on a plate. And thanks to John for helping break down my Chef's Block.
On a side note our garde manger chef got waxed on this all weekend. Chino (this means chinese in spanish, and chino is a latino) did a great job with these.

Short Rib Ravioli

We have been working on our ravioli dough recipe for a while and really trying to get it down to a science. Now, ravioli dough has been around for a long time and many many people make great ravioli. This shouldn't seem like something hard to make. But when we looked at compressing the dough for tenderness we ran into a slew of visual problems. After lots of experimentation we have finally put our compressed pasta dough to bed and we can move on. Here we took shots of our local grass fed short rib raviolis from start to finished plate. The finished dish:
Local Grass Fed Beef Short Rib Ravioli with Shitake Ragout, Edamame, and Red Wine Syrup.

A lot of goat cheese and marscapone went into the mix

Makin' Bacon

During our tour of Cane Creek Farms, our tour guide , after watching pigs trying to copulate, told us about making bacon. He told us every time a tour came through the pigs always seemed to get a bit randy. We got quite a kick out of that.

Here in the restaurant, we are "makin bacon"
Besides great pig and grass fed beef, Cane Creek has some awesome produce including yellow watermelon. These are small and sweet and really good. Here we are pickling the rinds.

Farm/Wine Dinner Menu

Here Is the menu for our wine Dinner. Specific Details can be found on the restaurants website.

First Course

Lobster Ceviche, pickled jalapeno, Mango gelee, and avocado mousse

Second Course

Beet Root “Carpaccio”, Valdeon cheese, watercress, and Cane Creek Farms Ossabaw Bacon

Third Course

Miso Braised Cane Creek Farms Ossabaw pork belly, pickled watermelon, and daikon salad

Fourth Course

Braeburn Farms grass fed short rib ravioli, Fava beans, wild mushroom ragout and cabernet reduction

Fifth Course

Roasted Local figs and cinnamon marscapone

Tuna

Tuna has become a love hate relationship with me. I really love cooking, or not cooking, tuna and eating great quality tuna, but the market on tuna has become so short and the demand is so large that the price of tuna has risen above what we can pay. The picture above is from around 1950 and it is a 300 pounder. Tuna this large is becoming increasingly rare because of over fishing. Tuna is no longer allowed to mature before being caught. So in an effort to be more conscious of our limited resources we will not be serving tuna for some time. While this is unfortunate, and I will miss sashimi, I feel t it is important to work towards sustainability.