Bocuse d'Or

The Bocuse d'Or is the Olympics of the culinary world. It happens every 2 years in Lyon France and is coming up in January 2009. The NY Times has nice article about the USA's involvement over the lifespan of the awards. No one from the US has ever placed higher than 6th place.
In an effort to up America's showing Thomas Keller and Daniel Boulud are putting a together a competition with Paul Bocuse's son Jerome call Bocuse d'Or USA. The winners will get to train with Keller and Boulud before going to France. I think it's awesome that America is finally taking the culinary world seriously. I hope this all proves to be successful and allows America to place first. Although I'm sure to be at the bottom of around 20,000 applicants, I figured why not try so I will be filling out an application to the Bocuse d'Or USA.

James Beard

I personally consider the James Beard awards the be the tops for any chef working in the United States. I am not trying to sound like a patriot and I am not trying knock Michellin, but this is how I feel. Anyway, The awards came out today and Grant Achatz won for oustanding chef of the year. There are also a lot of other great chefs listed who were either won or were nominated for other various awards. If you want an inside to some of the best chefs in this country check out the website.

Grant is really cutting edge and he is coming out with his cookbook this fall. The cool thing is his cookbook will be linked to an interactive website. Pretty cool and congrats to all.

New Dessert Menu

We have rolled out a new Dessert Menu. Just wanted to let you know. Here it is:

“Strawberries and Wine”

Local North Carolina Strawberries and Goat Lady Dairy Chevre drizzled with wild flower honey and served with Mer Soleil Late Harvest wine

Profiteroles

Filled with banana gelato with bruleed roasted banana and chocolate ganache

Rocky Road Parfait

Fudge brownie topped with chocolate, chocolate chip gelato, house-made marshmallow and pecans

Colombian Chocolate en Terrine

Dense chocolate mousse with raspberry coulis, crème anglaise and pistachio prailine

Tart au Citron

Lemon Tart with blueberry compote and Grand Marnier Chantilly

Tahitian Vanilla Bean Crème Brulee

I have a lot of favorites here. The blueberry on the tart are local NC berries as are the Strawberries and wine. For the strawberries and wine we actually compress the strawberries with a little honey in our new vacuum sealer.

Talking S--T

All the pictures of the last post got one of our prep guys a little jealous. I overheard him talking in Spanish that why don't I take picture of him making crab cakes. Well, we talk a lot of junk in our day to day life in the kitchen. I figured instead of a witty retort I would just post his picture on my blog.


Nothing beats a guy holding meat. This is also a little tribute to a guy who does a lot of work no one else wants to do. Such as cleaning green beans, sugar snap peas, peeling potatoes, bearding mussels. Either way take that Alberto!

De-Boning Lamb Loin

We had the opportunity of having one of our purveyors come in and demo us on de-boning a lamb loin. For those of you wondering what is lamb loin, I'll give you a brief description. Lamb loin is the saddle of meat just below the rib cage on the back of the lamb. In America the lamb loin come cut with the last rib bone still attached. The ribs towards the head are what you would eat when you eat French racks and crowns. After de-boneing the lamb loin you end up with what is equal too 2 lamb NY strips and 2 lamb tenderloins. We left the top 2 loins attached and rolled them for our special. Here is a sequence of Will who works for Halpern's our sole beef supplier. Will is a former chef and butcher and was very kind to show us this technique.

1. Lamb loin before trimming.
2. Cleaning the underside of excess fat


3. Here we have cut away the tenderloins and are working on pulling away the short loin from the spinal cord.
4. Here the whole spinal cord has been removed and we are left with the 2 short loins still intact.


5. Here is our finished product. We ended up stuffing this with mint chimichurri and we served with chevre gnocchi sauteed with baby arugala, tomato butter and smoked shitake relish.

Foams

There is a lot of debate on the use of foams in the culinary world. Most comments I've heard are on their over use. Until today I hadn't attempted a foam because I didn't want to jump the band wagon. I like the idea of a light airy sauce but wasn't sure what application to use it with. We started a tuna trio appetizer featuring tuna tartar, sashimi and a lightly seared tuna. For the sashimi we were serving a ponzu as a dipping sauce. I thought it might be fun to foam the ponzu for a little more plate appeal. I can't believe I didn't use a foam before. Not only does the foam add the light airy whisp of ponzu but the practicality of it works with the dish. As one dips the sashimi into a liquid ponzu and pulls it out the majority of the ponzu runs off leaving a faint trace of the flavor. The foam, being gelled, actually sticks to the piece of tuna lending more flavor to the tuna. Not to mention the light brown color looks pretty sexy on the plate.

Lambcetta Revisited

Our lambcetta cured correctly. We hung it and dryed it. I was using a recipe from Michael Rulhman's Book Charcuterie but there recipe uses pork. The ratios were a little off and the Lambcetta was too salty. I will start again and shorten our intial cure time and a little less salt.

Desserts

We are working on a new dessert menu as well. We have been featuring a chocolate terrine as a special that will definetly make it on the menu.
We use Cordillero single origin Colombian chocolate %71 cocoa. This stuff is amazing and really pulls a lot of fruit flavors from the soils in the Colombian mountains. On the plate we have raspberry sauce, creme anglaise and pistachio praline. I can't stop munching on the praline. It really is addictive.

Spain Family Farms

I was lucky enough to have the Spain Family walk into my old restaurant one day with some of the best looking Shiitake mushrooms I have ever seen. They soak about 900 oak logs and their season has just started They are an extremely nice family and are right in Raleigh. We are going to use them for all of our shiitake recipes we already have and a few specials.

Mother's Day

THings have been a little busy with the lead up to Mother's day and Graduation here in Chapel Hill. I promise to post more soon. Right now I am working on a new menu for Dinner as well as a new dessert menu. When they are done you all will be the first to knew.