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
Chicago Green City Market Chefs BBQ
This past Thursday Chicago Green City Market held its annual Chefs BBQ, it was an honor to cook at this event. We had a great time as expected; the best was to see the smiles on our farmer’s faces and their families. We see them every week and the market is usually crazy busy so it’s nice to see them not working and enjoying themselves!We topped our table off with sod which we later planted at the market in a bare spot by a bench. Our Himalayan pink salt served as our landscape blocks containing our herb garden featuring sweet basil, opal basil, rosemary, lavender and sage all from Nichols Farm. Some hand tools from my backyard, a few flower pots, Templeton Rye bottles and the usual business cards etc… We were ready to go and had about an hour and a half to kill so it was great to walk around and talk with other chefs and catch up before starting to cook. We grilled 35 day dry aged ribeyes and served them with a German style potato salad made from what we dubbed Nichols farm “cobblestone potatoes”, knob onions, bacon and Templeton Rye whisky. Smoked river valley shiitake mushrooms and Green Acres super sexy carrots shaved into a slaw. It was a fun night and a huge success, we brought enough plates for 700 servings and ended up serving over 850 servings, I’m glad we prepped extra!
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