Ups and Downs

It's been a long couple of long weeks and I have personally had some rough times. But things are looking up again. We had a great Graduation and Mothers' day at the restaurant and now we are looking at some great local produce as well as some fantastic fish.

Today I rolled out our new tuna and I am really happy about it. It's a play on salad nicoise. You can find it in just about any Paris bistro and is great this time of year. We lightly poached the tuna in Zoe extra virgin olive oil, local radishes and mizuna, tomato confit, piquillo peppers, our house tapenade and hard boiled egg with a broken mustard vinaigrette. I look forward to serving this for a while.


Here we paired miso with salmon, nothing out of the ordinary. It's simple and great. We dust the salmon witha spice mixture or coriander, black pepper and cardomom. Daikon, edamame, carrot, cucumber, Spain farm shitakes and sugar snap peas finish this dish. A while back we were trying to re-work a vegetarian option on our menu. I am not sure exactly how we got to this but we can't stop selling it. I am really happy with this dish and the flavor and colors really pop. We roast white and green asparagus and set it atop an essence of red pepper. A black beluga lentil cake and butter braised shitakes and oytser mushrooms top it all off.

Below we have some shots from Mother's Day weekend. Below Ricardo is shaving manchego for our arugala salad.

Kyle came in to help us for the weekend. He never looks as tough as he does in this picture. We never could have gotten ready without his help. Thanks again kyle. This picture really makes his nose look small.
P.S. That's what you get for taking pictures with my camera.

Francisco is reading up on the special menu for the weekend. All great line cooks prepare mentally as well as physically.

Things to work on/ New Ideas

• We need to get morels that look good
• I need a new knife
• Our plating can get better
• Our speed is really quite amazing
• Guilford County Grits are good and we need to utilize more
• Look at what we do with our crab cake
• Scallops need a facelift
• Post pictures of our Panna Cotta!!!
  

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.

Duck Fat Poaching

We are going to poach cod in duck fat. We figured if we can poach in water, olive oil, and you can fry in canola etc, then why not duck fat. Tomorrow:

Duck fat poached cod, summer vegetable medley, celeriac puree, and snow pea tendrils with star anise-red wine reduction.