oyster po’ boy
with pickled onion remoulade
This roll was A-MAZING. The oysters are coated in riso flour (finely ground arborio rice) and the remoulade was made with dill and some house-pickled spring onions. So good.
foie gras & jamon iberico
with saba & faux yolk
Sometimes you don’t need fancy garnishes; when you just have perfect shapes on a plate, they stand strong all on their own.
minneola citrus & happy boy mixed greens
with sesame brittle, fromage blanc, & citrus vinaigrette
thai beef salad
with chili-lime citronette
Just a basic thai salad….
fennel crusted & sous-vide pork chop
with pt. reyes blue cheese & bacon baked potato and ‘collard’ kale
My favorite kind of baked potato is made with pesto, really good blue cheese, and some bacon bits—I love that shit. Poor quality blue cheese is just pointless…
seared local petrale
with spiced plantains, chimichurri, & chili threads
This was our healthy dish for the week.
sous-vide/grilled sword fish
with foraged peppercress coulis, wild mushrooms, & potato brulee
For our Chef’s Table. My boss showed me a technique for a potato ‘brulee’. You cut a rondelle of potato, cover it completely with duck fat, and then bake it until golden. The result is a super crispy exterior and a mashed potato-y interior.
artichoke pizza bianca
with shaved sunchokes, fromage blanc, & preserved lemon oil
Close-up.
artichoke pizza bianca
with shaved sunchokes, fromage blanc, & preserved lemon oil
We took Wolfgang Puck’s popular pizza dough recipe from Spago’s and made a slight tweak by cranking up the oven to 650 F. It’s not the greatest dough recipe, but it’s good for mass production, and if you don’t have a proper brick oven.
You can find the recipe here.
pho ga
vietnamese chicken noodle soup
In order to make a good pho you need a collagen-rich stock packed with umami. If you’re making a beef broth, use oxtails instead of beef shanks. If you’re doing chicken, go with chicken feet. Don’t roast the bones and use the traditional aromatics such as burnt onions & ginger, cardamom, cassia (a Vietnamese cinnamon), star anise, coriander, and cloves. To heighten the sense of umami, I also add dried porcinis, shiitakes, fish sauce, rock sugar, and clam juice (to make up for the absence of MSG).
You can tell the difference from a good pho place and a bad one by taking their broth to-go and refrigerating it. The more it looks like jello, the more collagen exists in the soup. If it doesn’t congeal at all, you know they’re using some pho bouillon shit that they purchased wholesale. I’m not saying it’s terrible, but those soups tend to lack the unctuousness of a home-made pho.
compressed watermelon tartare
with mango ‘yolk’
For our Chef’s Table. A mock steak tartare.
“KFC”
with kim chi fried rice
Here’s another view, this time, with kim chi fried rice. There’s a new Korean chicken joint originally from LA that just opened up here called, Bon Chon Chicken. Their batter is different, their sauce darker, and their chicken is much less dressed. I wanna try cracking that recipe someday too.
"KFC"
korean fried chicken
I was introduced to the phenomena of Korean fried chicken not too long ago, and it really blew my mind, how crispy it was. I decided to write it on the menu this week and it was a surprising hit. We tried recipes off the internet, but they just weren’t cutting it, so we attempted our own. It was pretty good from the get go, but we tweaked the recipe bit by bit each day, trying different flours and ratios until we got one that was very close to one of my favorite joints nearby, 99 Chicken.
Here’s the recipe:
batter
2/3 c rice flour
1 tbl cornstarch
1 c soda water
1 tsp baking powder
Whisk together in a bowl. Don’t worry about the lumps.
sauce
5 tbl soy sauce
5 tbl gochujang
3 tbl rice vinegar
1 tbl sesame oil
1 tbl honey
2 tbl sugar
2 knobs of ginger
1 head of garlic
1/2 onion, chopped
Sautee onions, garlic, and ginger in a pan on medium high with oil. When onions are translucent, add remaining ingredients. Let simmer for about 20 minutes. Remove from heat. Pick out ginger and discard. Dump the whole thing in a blender and puree until smooth.
brine
2/3 c sugar
1/4 c salt
1 gal water
I use only dark meat, but use whatever you prefer. Whisk the sugar, salt, and water until it is completely dissolved and then slip the chicken in and let brine for at least a day, and as long as 4 days. Drain and wipe dry before cooking.
Once you have the chicken, sauce, and batter ready to go. Set your fryer at 325 F. Coat the chicken in cornstarch, dust off any excess, then dunk it in the batter, and then into the fryer immediately. Fry for 10 minutes. Remove the chicken and let sit for 10 minutes. Return the chicken to the fryer for another 10 minutes.
This is where it gets a little weird. After frying, let the chicken drain on a rack and then blow-dry with a hair-dryer on the cool setting for about a minute. I’m not sure what this does exactly, but I’ve seen them doing it at the authentic Korean joints so I’m going to follow suit. Finally, brush (don’t toss!) the sauce onto the chicken and then garnish with finely crushed peanuts. I like to brush the sauce on, rather than tossing it because I think a light coating works best. Also, tossing it can break the crispy skin, although, if you’ve done it right, the skin should pretty resilient and should retain a fire-cracker crisp even after 15 to 20 minutes of being sauced.
house-made gnocci carbonara
with truffle butter, sous-vide egg, & marin sun farms bacon
Here’s another shot at the gnoccicarbonara, this time we made the gnocci in house. We used yukon gold potatoes, roasted them in the oven until their skin cracked enough for us to peel, riced them, then folded with flour and egg yolk until it came together just enough to form little pillows out of. The trick is not to overwork the dough which stretches the gluten in the proteins and makes for a tougher piece of gnocci.
sous-vide & seared salmon
with duck fat poached halibut & butterbean cassoulet
This is Chef JC’s (my boss’) dish. I love butter beans, and the ones grown at Iacopi farms is the best you can get around here. After they were cooked, we sauteed them with piquillo peppers, garlic, and thyme. Then we hit it with lobster stock and reduced it til it reached demi consistency. After which we folded in halibut that we had confit in duck fat. This alone would have made a stellar seafood dish, but topping it off with a seared piece of sous-vide salmon and some crispy-ass bacon just made my day.
sablefish en papillote
with shaved fennel & marinated piquillo peppers
I love this kind of simple, classic food. ‘En papillote’ means ‘in paper’ in French; in this case, the fish was wrapped and cooked in parchment. It’s a classic technique that never fails to deliver a moist piece of fish. Drop in a knob of butter or a drizzle of olive oil before you wrap it up and all the juices from the fish and aromatics will mingle with it to create a light brothy sauce.
apple tartlette
with creme fraiche ice cream
Apples again?? Yeah…aside from citrus, it’s the only fruit in season that we can get locally, plus we’ve been on some kind of apple pie kick lately. Notice the Palantir logo on the plate! A cheesy, but fun gesture.
apple pie deconstruction
with jack daniels caramel & apple cider foam
A very Jackson Pollock-esque representation of apple pie…
touch
directed by minh duc nguyen starring porter lynn
This is unrelated to cooking, but too awesome not to post. My sister, Porter Lynn, plays the main character in the movie, ‘Touch’. An article about the film made the front page of the San Jose Mercury News. I’m so proud of her.
To read more about the film, check out the following links :
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Touch-2011-a-film-by-Minh-Duc-Nguyen/183404358713
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_20153522?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com