al GRESHco feast 7-29-10
Heirloom tomatoes are tossed with fresh herbs, olive oil and a splash of sherry vinegar. The broth around the plate is yellow tomato water. Topped with a seared scallop and some mini arugula.
Heirloom Tomato & Scallop
As soon as I laid eyes on these plums from Seedlings Farm I turned to holly and said we are cooking foie gras tonight! The base is a thick cut petite brioche loaf prepared in a vanilla accented french toast style. We smeared the top with the sweet “magic” plums that were caramelized, cooked down with orange juice and finished with the rendered foie fat! YUMMM! Topped off with seared foie gras, a drizzle of the sweet plum liquid and then the sour yellow plums were sautéed with thyme and finished off the plate.
Foie Gras with Sweet & Sour Plums
The “Corn”ed Chicken dish is a boned out chicken where I use the entire chicken skin to wrap it back up into shape. The breasts are left whole while I make forcemeat with the legs and garnished with lots of black pepper and shrimp. The entire chicken was then cooked in corn juice for 2 hours. It was then sliced and served over pea tendrils, vadiallia onions, a truffle corn sauce and a few Chioggia beets.
"Corn"ed Chicken
Grilled Lamb Loin served over beautiful haricot vert and a sauce made from cooking heirloom tomatoes with fresh garlic and a touch of veal demi glaze. The eggplant torta begins with grilled eggplant that is then chopped and sautéed with shallots, garlic and fresh herbs. I folded in a few chopped hard boiled eggs and topped it with buttered breadcrumbs accented with red chili flakes.
Lamb Loin & Eggplant Torta
Pop Up Vegan Tasting
The email came through that guests of theJames hotel needed a vegan tasting menu, excellent! Its not often we get requests for vegan cuisine afterall we are Chicago’s premier steakhouse! This day took me back in time when I was just a line cook working at Trio in Evanston for Chef Shawn McClain, I was on entremetier (veg station). We had tons of food requests, special diets and overall a passion and audiance to create great cuisine highlighting vegetables.
I started out with some simple nibbles in the lounge, grilled eggplant arancinis that we placed on a bed of crushed nicoise olives with roasted garlic and fresh oregano. Three sisters farm grit cakes topped with smoked mushrooms and sweet and sour peppers. The last nibble was truffle root vegetable crostinis. Look at that knife work, my Sous Chef Nolan clearly passed skills class!
We had to play with our new kitchen toy, seeing the look on my Sous Chef Dino’s face when he plays with the cryovac machine is priceless, he’s happy Dino! We made compressed watermelon carpaccio topped with marinated kumatos, watermelon radish, slivered onion rings, cucumbers, fried capers, fried ginger and mint.
We had some beautiful local baby carrots, I cooked each seperately golden with garlic, orange with ginger and purple with chilies. They were cut into small rounds and tossed with dried baguette and the remaing cooking liquids and parsley to make a panzanella. This was wrapped in basic eggless pasta dough and baked. Garnished with olive oil poached fennel and a pesto of arugula and hazelnuts.
At this point in the evening the rest of the guests at the table were eating steaks and drinking bigger red wines, so I took a simple and beautiful approach to match. Grilled king trumpet mushrooms, asparagus and watercress emulsion, corn shoots and (below) caramalized caulifower and olive oil crushed yukon gold potato gratin with fresh thyme.
Dessert, I didnt get to take a picture but it looked and tasted amazing. John a.k.a. PC1 and Amanda made a heirloom apple crisp with organic oat struesal and orange sorbet. A fun day of cooking during a classic Chicago winter blizzard!
DandyID
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