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.

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.

Summer Menu

Our summer menu comes out today. You can check out the update on our website. We have been really busy getting ready for the new menu. I will post some pictures soon. Sorry for being away for so long.

Chicken

We use Tanglewood Farms Chicken out of Winston-Salem, my home town. It's a great chicken and local. We have worked towards a summer style chicken to get a lot lighter than the one we have had on the menu.

The finished dish: Lemon thyme pesto stuffed chicken, yuzu beurre blanc, marscapone polenta cake, and Serrano ham and artichoke sautée. This is a really good example of how I like to pull from different types of cuisine and really searching for what tastes good regardless of boundaries.