You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Week 17 (Lamb & Veal)’ category.
Island Creek Oysters of Duxbury Beach (~30 miles south of Boston), MA, supplies to many of the area’s fine restaurants. This year marks the 5th annual Oyster Festival, an event that includes oysters, beer from Harpoon Brewery, live music, and food stands from the 21 Boston chefs (listed at the bottom). 3,000 attended and 500 people volunteered.
As raw bar attendants, Richard and I had front row seats to oyster shucking action and got to snack our way through fresher-than-fresh oysters. I stopped counting at an half dozen. These beauties were lusciously briny and slippery. They were good even without the spread of usual accompaniments on the table. What a treat! At the end of the night, we even got a free oyster shucking lesson from the State Runner-up Oyster Shucking Champion. Ready for seafood week! Give me more oysters!
Chefs on board for the 2010 Oyster Festival:
(from ICOF website)
Jody Adams / Chef & Owner, Rialto
Ming Tsai / Chef & Owner, Blue Ginger
Jeremy Sewall / Chef, Island Creek Oyster Bar, Lineage & Eastern Standard
Seth and Angela Raynor / Chef & Owners, The Pearl
Tony Maws / Chef & Owner, Craigie On Main
Chris Schlesinger / Chef & Owner, East Coast Grill
Jasper White / Chef & Owner, Summer Shack
Chris Parsons / Chef, Parson’s Table
Greg Reeves / Chef, Green Street Grill
Eric Brennan / Chef, Post 390
Chris Robbins / Chef, Gaslight
Art D’Allessandro / Owner, Arthur & Pat’s
Art D’Allessandro / Owner, Arthur & Pat’s
Michael Serpa / Chef, Neptune Oyster
Barry Maiden / Chef, Hungry Mother
Louis DiBicarri / Chef, Sel de la Terre
Michael Scelfo / Chef, Russell House Tavern
Dish 1: Grilled Lamb (Leg meat) with Salad of Tomatoes, Olives, and Feta Cheese & Toasted Cous Cous with Chickpeas
Dish 2: Veal Saltimbocca alla Romana with Shiitake Mushroom Risotto
Veal scallopine pieces overlaid with fresh sage leaves and prosciutto, lightly coated in flour and pan-fried. This was the clear winner dish of the week. Next time I get to really work out my issues through that meat mallet. These pieces here are a little on the thick side.
Lesson on garnishes — don’t put it on the plate if you don’t expect customers to eat it. I was fed this pointless parsley leave during critique. In cooking school, even lessons are handed down in edible forms. Hmm…..edible lessons…
Today Chef Mushin (head executive chef of the school) came into our class and cracked the whip real good.
There’s been a lot of tension resulting from over-stretched resources and mismatched expectations, but not today. Not today.
As small as our current class is (15 +/- depending on attendance), production days can get crazy. Ingredients or equipment can be missing, mapped out plans of attach can be flawed, products often times behave differently than imagined, and important execution details may be overlooked. All of this applied to a mix of personalities, emotions are sure to come out.
What Chef Mushin did today was exactly what we needed. Here’s a rundown:
1) Set a tone of seriousness.
2) Straight-to-the-point, on-the-spot instructions as he made rounds.
3) Wove lessons (based on mistakes) throughout production period.
4) Kept us on our toes with clearly communicated expectations.
6) Summarized the day with take-home points.
Sauteed Lamb Noisette with Tarragon Sauce
Of all days to have things go wrong, today was the best day to fuck up. And fuck up I did.
I overcooked my potatoes, started over, and then proceeded to burn them.
I undercooked my rack of lamb and went through a prolonged struggle to salvage the dish.
My sauce got overly reduced as my timing got all out of whack thanks to the undercooked protein.
I was one of the very last people to complete my food today.
Roasted Rack of Lamb with Sauce Marchand de Vin and Pommes Chateau
I was overdue for a day like this and I must say, it feels great to be on edge. Totally got schooled. Good day.
Need I say more??? Look at this lineup: Ferran Adria, Jose Andres, and Harold McGee!!!
I’m so so so happy that I got into this amazing lecture.
Harvard University organized the first ever course on Science & Cooking in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Of the 800 undergraduate students interested, only 400 won the lottery to enroll. The course is rooted in hard science but inspires through the lens of culinary achievements. Each week a renounced chef guest lectures a topic and us lucky Boston residents are invited to a mirroring free public lecture. Today was the kick-off.
I just found out about it this afternoon, got super excited, but quickly saddened to see a “SOLD OUT” sign plastered across the ticketing option. However, some events are worth the gamble of a waiting list. I showed up 45 minutes prior to the talk and anxiously fretted the already 15+ line formed outside. This was probably the closest I ever came close to groupie behavior. And I’d do it all over again.
I’ve been worshiping Harold McGee (James Beard Award winning author of On Food & Cooking: The Science & Lore of the Kitchen) for years. His writing miraculously blends together food basics, cooking methods, history, anecdotes, and multi-discplinary sciences. It is the most lucid treatment of scientific material that remains accessible without dumbing all the way down to CNN-level (pop science). Thank you for this seminal work, McGee! It was especially gratifying to find him equally eloquent in oratory skills as on the written page. The only problem is, now that I’ve got my copy of his book autographed, I’m tempted to museum-display it for good.
And to be in the same room with Ferran Adria??? That’s like going to a “water-to-wine” demo if you were Jesus’ contemporary. elBulli receives 2 million reservation requests per year but accommodates only 8,000 diners during the 6-months the restaurant opens to service. No repeating of menus and each dish is meticulously researched, tested, and tweaked. If anyone’s heard of the term molecular gastronomy, it was Ferran Adria and his team at elBulli that put it on the map. We are actually coming up to a molecular gastronomy fatigue; many people are relegating the category to over-exposure, or worse, irrelevance. Admittedly, I myself haven’t been gaga about the trend despite people’s assumptions. However, after today’s lecture, I’m completely in awe of the genius that is Ferran Adria. This man is a visionary! elBulli is now transitioning into a new phase away from food-production focus and will be devoted to full-time culinary creativity instead. Adria explains that his goal is to “help teach people to think and to create in the right way.” There is such a thing as misguided experimentation masked as creativity and his goal is to provide a platform for avant-garde talents to move the field forward based on science. This dialogue isn’t new but formalized discourse at the leading academic institution of the world certainly is.
Jose Andres, himself a leading chef of our time credited for bringing tapas to America, translated for Adria’s Catalonian tongue and expertly helped paced the lengthy lecture with humor. Demos by two of his chefs from DC were also very thoughtfully designed. Capping the night were free bottles of Estrella Damm Inedit beer and book signings. This was truly a world-class event.
Recent Comments