HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!

Today is my wife's birthday. No I won't reveal how young she is but we have a pretty long running tradition. Due to my chosen profession it is hard for me to be at home on a regular basis. Especially for birthday's. So every year I cook my beautiful wife a delicious french toast breakfast. I use nice crusty bread and dry it out overnight. My french toast batter is similar to a crepe batter allowing for a slightly thicker crust. Instead of maple syrup I top it with vanilla creme anglaise and mixed berry coulis.

So HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARAH!

Long Time, No Blog

Despite a "poor economy" and an election I have been really busy. So, I haven't been posting much and I apologize. We have been working on some pretty fun stuff. A quick update our dinner menu is updated on our website so please check it out. I would have to say our pheasant is probably or best seller of the new items.

Striped bass out of Virginia is gorgeous. I am a big fan of striped bass and I pretty much always serve it skin on. We press the fish into the pan skin side down to get the best and most even crispy skin. If you really want to learn great techinique for this read The French Laundry. Here we are serving it with a blood orange sauce, slow roasted sweet potatoes and haricot vert. The blood orange sauce is a variation on Alinea's yuzu pudding. You really get a straight flavor of blood orange.
We have had a lot of success with our small plate features and we have continued running most of our specials as small plates. I think it's funny what we call small plates in America. The majority of the world eats small plates as their main course but in the States we tend to eat much larger portions. So small plates have a much different meaning here than in other countries. But I love this style of cooking. It's a lot easier to get creative and really adapt your dishes when you aren't having to load so much food on the plate.

This is another small plate salmon dish. can you tell I like seafood. This is sweet spiced salmon with pomegranate red onion marmalade and roasted root vegetables.
We usually sear our scallops at the restaurant. The caramel richness you get from a seared scallop is pretty much unsurpassed by any other seafood. But this time we strayed away from that. Mainly because duck fat is delicious. I know that may sound like an absurd comment but it is true. get some duck fat and cook just about anything with. So we opted to poach our scallops for a small plate in duck fat. We have large amounts of rendered duck fat on hand because of our duck confit. To cut to the chase: Duck fat poached scallops with black currant sauce and wilted baby arugula:
I thought it was kind of cool how the currants actually look like caviar.

Fall Menu

We have been running a lot of special items which are sooon to appear on our Fall Menu. Coq au Vin, butternut squash risotto, etc. The new menu begins this wednsday. I'll post the final version here.

Tart Tatin and the Economy

I haven't posted in a while, but we have a new dessert menu and one of the things we keep looking at is how to keep up with the fears of the economy. Se we came up with a small version of a tart tatin. I love apples in fall, I love deep rich caramel, and I love hot cinnamon. It works. Here is our petite tart tatin.