jdanton

We went tonight--had the brisket and the ribs. Both were straight out of the smoker and pretty good. There were out of collard greens. The mac & cheese needs some work (and perhaps a bechamel) but the meats were very good. The brisket was fork tender and had a nice smoke ring.

I saw a dish on the menu at Per Se the other day, that I wanted to try and replicate at (I stalk their menu--I don't dine there very often). Anyway, the dish was a grilled Spanish mackerel with sauce raifort. I managed to grill the mackerel just fine, but I wasn't thrilled with my sauce. Most of the decent recipes I found were in French, which was not an issue, but not being a mother sauce, they were inconsistent. I started out by making a basic bechamel, and infusing some freshly grated horseradish (which had itself been soaking in white wine vinegar). I blended, strained and reduced. The sauce wasn't a disaster or anything (it tasted fine), but the punch from the horseradish was less than I would have liked with the mackerel. Any ideas on how to increased the punchiness of the sauce? I used a lot of horseradish--I didn't measure, but ~1 cup in 2 cups of bechamel.

I'm going to be dining at both Per Se and Le Bernardin in March. I'll file a report here--I've dined at Per Se and Jean Georges, but not LB.. PS will be private dining this time, but that shouldn't matter.

I think bacon may have jumped the shark...

In a nutshell, this sucks. CWC appears to be on the mat, as well.. http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/1383482.html

Fat Guy--have you done any tie-in experimentation with the freshly ground beef test? I'm curious as if that makes any difference when cooking to well done..

I found TKs (I'm presuming from Under Pressure) brine to be a bit salty for my taste. I did a pork belly last week, it wasn't horrible, but definitely on the salty side. I usually do 62 for tenderloin.

Chris--you mentioned your "left hand". Are you left handed? And how much did it cost to have the other side ground? Thanks

I like the idea of the pickle slices vs. the spear. While non-traditional, the spear is the most difficult thing about keeping the CSHD contained. The slices would allow for cleaner eating. My last Chicago dog was at O'Hare Christmas eve, and spear is hard to deal with.

I definitley agree... the NYC 3* restaurants do not compare to most of the 3* in Paris or France in general. I, myself, am usually disappointed with NYC 3* places, and I live there! ← I don't necessarily agree--we visited Per Se and L'Arpege within two months of each other, and I'd have to give the nod to Per Se. I think especially at the 3* level, roses are fairly comparable across continents. There are levels within 3*.

How did you cook it? Time and temp - any seasonings in the bag? How did it turn out? ← Just butter and a bit of water in the bag. 59.5 for 15 min, per TK. Came out very nice..

I decided to take advantage of cheap lobster, to cook a dish out of Thomas Keller's new s.v. cookbook "Under Pressure". Butter poached lobster, sauce bordealaise, glazed carrots and pearl onions. I am missing the bone marrow (didn't have any handy), as substituted black trumpets ($0.52!!! worth) for the hen of the woods shrooms.

Agreed--if you want a bit of garlic, just use powder. Having a super precise temperature won't matter that much here. Low simmer, 150-160 should be fine.

Wouldn't that be the benefit of cooking SV--you can use a ton less butter.

Par-cook the lobster in steaming water for 2-3 minutes. Remove claws and steam for another ~4-5 min. Carefully remove meet from shells. The easiest way to do this is SV, put in a cryovac with butter and cook @160 F for 10-12 minutes. Alternatively, use emulsified butter in a small pot and continuously spooning over tails. Low/medium heat, 10-12 minutes. That's off of memory, but I don't have any books handy, should get you reasonably close though.

It's on the site--use the google search feature. But roughly: Microplane 12 lemons. Put in 750ml of 100 proof vodka. Let sit two weeks, titrate down with another bottle of regular vodka. Cut with simple syrup. Ice and drink..

Bought a ton of meyer lemons for .99/lb from Economical on Vets in Metairie... Will begin preserving shortly..

From Keller's new book it doesn't seem they are truly s.v.'ing the lobster tails. They fill the circulator with butter, keep it at a set temperature and drop the tails in. No cryovac involved with this step. And they come out perfect everytime (at least according to TK) versus some inconsistency with the stovetop method.

Pics are here On our recent trip to France, Belgium and England we visited. l'Arpege. We had been to two 3* restaurants in the US this year, Jean-George and Per Se, both in New York earlier this year, so the comparison to a French 3* would be interesting. We both chose the lunch tasting menu @ 135€ was within reason. We were not to be disappointed. We were given a couple of vegetable chips (parsnip--maybe??) with beet puree and carrot/mustard puree respectively. These were quite tasty. The Arpege egg is the signature amouse bouche. It consists of a creamy egg yolk, topped with a custard, maple syrup and sherry vinegar for balance. The next course was a tomato "gazpacho" with moutarde ice cream. It was basically a very simple, purely flavored tomato soup, with mustard (strong and spicy) ice cream. It was prepared tableside, so we got to the see the waitstaff make nearly perfect quenelles of ice cream. Although flavors were a bit odd, they worked amazingly well together--who thinks of these things?!?! This was followed by a fairly dramatic tableside presentation of a salt roasted beet. The waitstaff carved a large amount of salt away, revealing some lovely beets to be taken back to the kitchen to be finished. This was served with a parsley coulis, a beet noodle, and some old balsamic. The skin was very salty and a nice contrast to the sweet beet. The next course was a tomato consomme with three ravioli. One of the ravioli was beet, the other a tomato/salsa type thing, and the third an unidentified green peppery taste (tasted like a green salsa). K though this course was kind of weak, I liked it, but am a sucker for ravioli. The next course was a radish "risotto" with a parmigiana foam. The flavors worked well and I envy the knife skills of whomover prepared the "risotto". Was started to get fairly full of vegetables by this point. The next course was basically a vegetable explosion with a bit of couscous. Nice dish, all the vegetables were freshly prepared and excellent, but I thought it was a wee bit repetitive at this poing. There were a few beets, carrots, potatoes, red cabbage, and I'm probably missing something. Arpege redeemed itself totally on the next course. It was fairly simple--a chestnut veloute (a great fall dish) with a speck (ham) whipped cream. This was heavenly. The chestnut soup was amazing, and the ham cream just made it better. It was prettier than this pic. The last non-dessert, non-cheese course was the scallop course. This was really basic, oven roasted, uber-fresh scallops oven roasted on the shell with butter, chives and maybe lavender. The trick was they were served on a REALLY hot plate, with quatre epice giving a wonderful aroma. My one beef, ha ha beef, ok that wasn't funny. The dish was really hard to cut, because it was just shells on a plate. So it made cutting them very difficult--typically this could be resolved by presenting the scallops on a bed of rock salt. But then you might lose the pungency of the aromatics--anyone have any ideas on this? I'd like to do this dish at home. Next was the amazing cheese board which I failed to take a picture of. I don't really know what cheeses I had, but they were all pretty amazing. Pungent smelly goodness. This apple tart was the dessert. It was served with a caramel sauce with a bit of a salt. Each of those apples in the tart were individual apple roses. I can't imagine the work that went into this. Very simple, very tasty. The final course, the mignardise was very interesting. All of these cookies were vegetable based. There were jellies (not pictured), the little cookies (which have a formal name I'm forgetting) were tomato, artichoke, and pepper. The brown chips were these amazing fennel chips that took me back to a St. Joseph's Altars in New Orleans. We were very full by the end of this. However, it was all very good. It shows that there are multiple ways of getting to 3*s. This was very different the JG or Per Se, but still a 3* experience nonetheless. In terms of wine we had a glass of champagne each (we were tired and didn't want to fall asleep). It was Billecart-Salmon reserve at 30€ a glass !

I think Percy (percyn) and I are, but since its at home, it probably doesn't count.

It's also in the Le Bec Fin cookbook..similar recipe.

Cold Potato Hot Potato--pretty easy to do, used mushroom stock instead of truffle juice. Had a real truffle though. Excellent dish full of umami.

My copy shipped yesterday!! Woo hoo.

Was there on August 30, man am I slacking in writing this up. I've been a long-time Keller devotee (cooked a lot of TFL cookbook at home) so I had pretty high expectations for this meal. Fortunately it didn't dissapoint. Talked with the captain before the meal about wines. Basically asked him to pick a few glasses--a Champagne, something sweet for the foie, a white for the fish, and a red for the meat courses. It worked out to $100/each for the wine, but they were excellent. We started of course, with the gougeres and the salmon cornets. I don't think I've been making my cornets thin enough, thus causing my issues. We had an amouse bouche of sunchoke soup, which had the perfect texture of velvet. It was served cold with picked radishes. In a nice touch the spoon was also cold. The first course on the menu was Oysters and Pearls. I had made this once at home--mine was actually pretty close, I was happy to say. As my wife said, this is like the best thing I've ever tasted. We both had the torchon of foie gras, with peach gelee, peaches, pickled red onion, and Carolina puffed rice. My only (and it's minor) complain about this dish was the way it was served. It was in a bowl which made access to the torchon a bit difficult. However, everything tasted wonderful--the puffed rice was a nice textural touch, and we were served brioche "melba toast" with the foie. The piece of foie was huge!! And the torchon was PERFECT--perfect texture, perfect color, perfectly round. Color me impressed. Next was an olive oil poached Dorade with a piquillo pepper gastrique. The pungency of the peppers was a great compliment to the fish. The butter poached lobster was served with a curry emulsion (from the fava bean agnolotti recipe in the book) and pickled dates. Lobster was tender (not fork tender, but very soft) and went well with the curry, however I saw another recent menu with a vanilla sauce, that sounded a bit better. Next was a perfectly seared squab breast, with figs and squab leg confit. Well executed, but I wasn't blown away. I had never had squab before, and was expecting a bit more flavor from the meat--the confit was awesome, the breast a bit bland. Perfectly executed, and the sauce was nice. Veal tenderloin with greenmarket carrots was our last meat course. Came with a veal sauce and served with a great pinot. The cheese course was Benno's take on the caprese salad, with a cheese called Burrata from DiBuono Brothers in Philadelphia. This cheese is sort of like Italian Buchuron, with ricotta inside of mozzerella. It was served with a basil puree, Manni olive oil, and a combination of roasted and fresh tomatoes. My only complaint, was that the flavor of the Manni was a bit lost in the dish. For the sorbet course, I was impressed--my wife is type 1 diabetic (they kitchen received warning) but they were able to whip up a no sugar added canalope granita (I'm assuming on a Paco Jet) it was very good. My sorbet was probably the most interesting dish on a technical level all evening. It was a ginger plum sorbet, with plum consomme and ginger caviar. Worked really well. Desserts were very good, but less memorable--coffee and donuts was good, as was the coffee service (heated cream), but when you have 3*s what else would you expect. Not the most creative meal I've ever had but definitely one of the best.

Nice--I really need to get a new smoker and fire up some bacon again. And some pancetta now that its fall.