Truffle Fest Pictures

PREPARE TO BE OVERWHELMED. My wife took a lot of pictures. As I said before we had a blast as some of the pictures will show.

An obscene amount of truffles from day 1. This was the story for the entire weekend

More of the Same. People were using truffles like they were button mushrooms. Awesome

This is an up close picture of our Tea smoked duck from the first night. We served it on wontons with homemade black mustard. We cured it for three days and slow smoked it with Lapsang Souchong.

Chef instructor Jules Pernell from USC.

A large bowl of truffled ranch courtesy of Sam Poley of Durham Catering. Delicious!

My sous chef John Mersinger cutting up a lot of tea smoked duck.

The beautiful house were we served our smoked duck, foie gras, and truffled brie.

Cane Creek Farms Pork belly made by Amy Lynn Lafreniere of the Umstead Hotel and Spa.

A picture of two of our three passed hors d'oeuvres. The top one is foie gras tourchon, black currant jam and shaved truffle. The bottom is our tea smoked duck with housemade black mustard.

My ugly mug working in the kitchen at the Double Tree hotel in Asheville pre party.

John getting ready the first night.

Sam Poley's roasted salmon.

Bill Harrison from The Umstead.

Me again cutting crostini

A celebratory drink at 11am on saturday. John, Bill from the Umstead, and I after finishing the risotto competition.

Two pictures of the plate John and I put out for the competition. We tried to think of ways to use risotto that didn't involve a traditional bowl of risotto. So we used the risotto rice like sushi rice and served it with seared scallop in the center, Mache tossed with verjus and pickled truffle.

A picture of the photogragher, my beautiful wife, and Amy Lynn from the Umstead.

More Champagne after the competition.

This is John first thing on saturday morning stirring our risotto with a lot of love. He looks so happy to be stirring while I kept asking what was taking him so long.
(It didn't really take that long)

This is a quick shot of the crew from the Umsteads' plate going out to the judges. It looked amazing.

John and I with the man Franklin Garland. Franklin and his wife Betty, provided all the Truffles, and Accomodations for the chefs. We were really pampered.

The large bottle of Chimay going on Ice on saturday morning. If you look closely you can see this is a 22qt cambro. That's a lot of beer.

A bunch of picture of most of the chefs at the competition with Franklin and Betty Garland front and center.

Bill working hard to make sure the chimay gets cold!

Some of us awaiting the results of the competition. Yes that is Iron Chef Walter Royal all the way to the left. He was a judge and is a super nice guy.

Saturday night I am describing our scallop dish to 120 people.

Yes look at the date on that Medoc. I went out into the dining room to brag to my wife that I was drinking a 1996 Medoc in the kitchen. She in turn shows me this bottle of 1988. Both were amazing. This is a little nod to lavash lifestyle we were living for 3 days in Asheville.

John and I trying to look pretty at the last event on Friday. These great outfits were courtesy of our restaurant Owners Ed and Deborah Roach who were so kind to let us both attend the event.

A Big Thanks

I wanted to get this up as soon as I got back from Asheville where I had one of the best times cooking with some of the most amazing people. I want to thank Franklin and Betty Garland who made this weekend happen and they also provided all the truffles!!!!! I have to thank my sous John Mersinger who helped bail me out of hangover cooking. My wife Sarah who has taken an insane amount of pictures, and eaten a lot of truffles, which I will be posting soon. And to all the other chefs we worked with it was a great time and a great weekend. Look forward to more from the fest.

Trefethen Wine Dinner

We are offering a wine dinner featuring Trefethen Wines on Wednesday March 18. The menu i posted below and should be a blast. We have pulled a few items from the Truffle Fest menu so those of you who can't make it to Asheville the weekend before won't feel left out.

AZURE GRILLE

Trefethen Wine Dinner

March 18, 2009

Reception, 6 – 7 pm, First Course, 7 pm

All wines from the Trefethen family vineyards

in the Oak Knoll District of Napa Valley

Trefethen’s Southeast Regional Manager, John Harrington,

will be here to present the wines

Reception

Gougeres with chived goat cheese

2007 Dry Riesling

First course

Smoked Salmon with sherry dressed shaved asparagus

2006 Chardonnay

Second Course

Merlot risotto with pancetta, grana padano and micro basil

2005 Merlot

Entrée

Pheasant en Crépinette, Pheasant Sausage, Chestnut Jus

2005 Cabernet Sauvignon

Dessert

Ile Flottante

Floating Island, Raspberry Mousse,

Caramelized White Chocolate Custard and Almond Tuile

2007 Late Harvest Riesling

National Truffle Fest Part 2

The First Annual North American Truffle Festival is coming up in a few short weeks. Tickets are still available. I wanted to post the menu for our wine dinner we will be cooking the first Thursday of the event. Each chef is cooking 4-5 course to be paired with wine and each meal is for roughly 12 people, so tickets for this event are going fast. Here is what we have decided to cook. Remember this is a truffle driven event so get ready to eat some truffle.

Amuse Bouche

Tuna Crudo, Litchi-Green Tea Gelee, Telicherry Pepper

First Course

Chicken and Foraged Mushroom Consommé Royal, and Shaved Truffle

Second Course

Diver Scallops, Risotto, Shaved Truffle, Sorrel and Verjus

Third Course

Pheasant en Crépinette, Pheasant Sausage, and Chestnut Jus

Fourth Course

Ile Flottante

Floating Island, Raspberry Mousse, Caramelized White Chocolate Custard and Almond Tuile

Eating Local and The Economy

Today President Obama signed into law a bill to help save the American economy. An insanely large some of money that I can barely fathom. This combined with my sous chef's ranting phone call about local economy and restaurants spurned me to post this particular blog. Well, right now we here a lot of gloom and doom coming from the restaurant gossip circles. And not just around here in NC but all over the country. Friends in NY and New Orleans talk about it being particularly bleak.

2 poor semesters of college economics does little for my validity,and I am hardly political, but here are my thoughts. EAT AT YOUR LOCAL RESTAURANTS! At our restaurant we purchase roughly 80% of our food locally. Our owners actually live 3 blocks away from our front doors. All of our employees live and feed the economy in our area. But it goes so much further than that. When a guest enters our restaurant you help us as well as our waitstaff to make a living. In turn we purchase food from local purveyors which helps their employees and so on.

Let's take for instance dining at your neighborhood chain restaurant, i.e. Applebees, Chili's, TGIF, Macarooni grill, Outback, Carrabas, Bonefish etc. When your enter these Establishments yes you help the economy of the employees who work at each individual unit. That is more or less $.30 of every dollar you spend staying local. Next, the food purchased by these chains comes from varying sources such as California, China, Mexico, Peru. That is another $.30 on the dollar not going to local economy. Then the profits from these chain restaurants is shipped to Wallstreet where CEOs get it.

Money Spent in our restaurant stays local. If you have a problem with a meal you can call/ email the owner. They live right here. They are your neighbors. Also, if you don't find favor with the food that I create you can come knock on my door. So eat at your local restaurants.

I was in a restuarant profitablity workshop and talking with the restaurant expert I came to find out that most chain restaurants are actually more expensive than the local eateries. Yes they advertise meals for $5.99 (to start). But the majority actually charge more and usually offer far inferior products. Support your local dining scene and I bet the economy will benifit greatly.

My wife and I this past Sunday went to celebrate the final days of the restaurant where we met. Shucker's Oyster bar had been in business for 24 years and has finally closed it's doors at the original location. It was a happy sad time. Good friends and drinks. It is also the kitchen where I got my start. Here is what that kitchen looked like after a beating and 24 years of service.

Truffles

I got an education in truffles. It was like a back alley drug deal. 10:30 at night our local truffle farmer and the USA truffle man, who also started this years first annual truffle fest, came by with an obscene amount of truffles picked that very same day out in Yadkin Valley near my home town of Winston-Salem. Franklin Garland was super kind to come by so late with his truffles and actually let me pick the best of the bunch. I got to sniff and touch and hold more truffles than most chefs will ever get a chance to handle. We had to scrub the dirt off to get an accurate weight measurement. You don't want to pay for the dirt when truffles run $800 a pound. I was completely awe struck. Of course Franklin is telling me about roasted a whole truffle with a little cognac and eating it like a baked potato! Seriously, that is sick. I picked two truffles which came out to exactly a 1/2 pound. But Franklin gave me a lot of information about truffles and the different less expensive varieties. It was a good time.

Valentines Day Shots

Here we have the start of our chocolate dipped hazelnuts with fleur de sel. This was our amuse bouche for valentines day. On this tray alone there were roughly 400 hazelnuts. We poured hard ganache over the four different times and then topped them with fleur de sel.


This is our almond brittle thuile being molded on our back line. We used it for the Banana Split for Two shown below. My sous John and I write a lot menus over many beers and we play the what if. Example, what if we did a banana split for valentines day. Yeah, maybe we could make a huge sweeping thuile to come off the plate. Sounds great. Well the next part is actually making the thuile. I am no pastry chef, but with a little trial and error and one quick run to Ace hardware we actually pulled this one off. These are the types of experiments for me that really get me excited. Especially when they work. It is actally pretty scary how many of our ideas come through versus how many fail.

Thanks to all who came for Valntines day. I am pretty sure the banana split is going on to our regular menu.

Separation

Some vinaigrette's are easy and some are not. A lot of of our recipes use very few emulsifiers to bind our dressings together with the idea of keeping our flavors as pure as possible. But this often results in line cooks (and myself) breaking the vinaigrette. So we used to start over and try and re-emulsify. Thanks to cooking for engineers we saw a better way to start over. Of course using a basis from chemistry we force the separation to speed up using a zip lock bag. Hanging the bag allows for a complete separation and when the mixture is finished we cut a small whole in the bottom of the bag and allow the mixtures to drain into separate containers and then we can start anew. It is a great method for separating any liquid.This is our pomegranate vinaigrette. A constant source of frustration.

NC Snow

We've been really busy recently until we had a NC snow day. It doesn't happen often in NC but when it does it sure shuts things down, including our restaurant. I came in with our dishwasher only to work on a few things and make sure all was well. I thought I'd let the rest of you see our fantastic view from the window in our kitchen. I hope all had a happy sledding day. My children sure did!

Valentine's Day

Valentines day is right around the corner. I thought I'd post the menu.

Amuse Bouche

Dark chocolate dipped Hazelnut with Fleur de Sel

Soup

Lobster Bisque

with house made crème fraiche

Salad

Rocket ArugulaGreens,

Raspberry-Vanilla vinaigrette, sweet pickled fennel,

whipped Saint Andre cheese and toasted almonds

Appetizers

Grana Padano Crusted Asparagus

with Garland Farms Shaved Truffle

Crispy Fried NC Oysters

with bacon-tomato ragout and fresh shaved horseradish

Entrees

Chateaubriand For Two

Served with sauce Béarnaise, Roaring Forties Cream,

Sauce Bordelaise and roasted fingerling potatoes

Lavender Dusted Wild Striped Bass

with sorrel cream and braised baby spinach

Berkshire Pork Osso Bucco

Creamy Guilford County Grits, bourbon jus

and bacon-thyme Brussels Sprouts

Dessert

Banana Split For Two

Roasted and bruleed banana, banana gelato, raspberry sorbeto,

bing cherry compote, chocolate ganache and almond brittle tuile