Menu for a small cooks dinnerparty

One fellow whom I worked with for over two years is going away. To celebrate him regaining his freedom, I mounted that kinda menu for the evening

Glutenfree bread with nuts
sourdough
baguettes
+
Two french butters au naturell
confit garlic
shellfish butter with the rests of the crab, dill and paprika

AB
king crab with chickpeas and warmed iberico pluma

tartare of beef more about the meat in the main section
chilli gherkins sesame seeds and oil, shallot

Pigs trotters a la Pierre Koffman, sliced and seared
poached quaills egg,
Seared sweetbread bits - the thymus goes to the mousse the ancreas stays in the bits [allways got mixed up stuff]

Starter

Tuna at 38 C
cucumber
Emulsion of haricote blancs
olive oil - thinking of maybe powder here

Beef steak this is german Simmenthal premium quality of a cow that was 550 kilos, the fillet I picked before hanging was 4.2 kg's. I am hanging it for 45 days and so far smells exciting
roasted parsnips,
buttered leeks
sonfit cherry tomatoes but im doing skinless version
mash potato with saffron must be mash!

And this is where I sweated the hardest.

Glutenfree tartelettes
grapefruit lemon cream with cointreau
mascarpone
white chocolate snow
crispy orange skins

Followed by premium Cognac I once received as a gift, and dried fruits.

Pictures to follow when the food actually gets to the table.

 

Don't start eating with out me!

 

This sounds pretty fantastic I must say!

 

Someone is going to be busy.

That excites me a little also!

 

Wow. I don't understand everything but now I am so hungry because of you. Damn you Bieniek Hehehe.
What is it about gluten free stuff?

 

Wait for me! booking a flight right now

 

One glutenfree chef. Easier to take care of him if all eat same pudding.

And its not going to be just dacquoise, I ordered glutenfree flour and coconut flour.

Yeah Jim pictures of the meat before/after to follow

 

Mouth watering menu, Mike!

Is this the event I'm attending?
I really really really hope so based on that menu

 

Yesh, indeed.

Cheers I sincerely hope I can realize the plan. I wanna eat!

 

You had me at hello.
-Dorothy in Jerry Maguire, 1996

You lost me at gluten free.
-Jay in kitchenknifefora, 2014

 

Big prep started today. Washed and polishing all of the plates and cutlery. Setting up table, washing all the glassware, baked these, Im trying to bake one round every day so I get what dough is best and how to cut properly. Shaping was better yesterday, but cutting today. I got the flavour, just have to work on the dough to get the cell structure.





I also soaked trotters, and made marrow bone stock+trotter stock, and will make chicken stock as a base for the trotter sauce.
If I get the sweetbreads tomorrow, maybe I will assembly these and keep in the fridge. Might not have as much time as I wish to.

 

Those look awesome.

 

:BF

 

Time for a small update

A lot been going on today, made:
- the fresh bacon were sugar-salted, cause many of you might not know that, but confit garlic is not all that easy a job
It gets the flavour from the bacon being confit, with the chinese garlic being confit at the same time, in the same oil, in their skins. then it gets peeled, gently, and warmed just before serving

- the red onion jam with redcurrant jelly was made, just a little extra something to the main
- double beef stock
- trotter bones stock, what an amazing smell - a real deal
- chicken stock
- cleaned chicken to extract the meat I need for the mousse and bones
- chicken skin were
- blanched and peeled tomatoes, drying
- washed, cleaned, shaved and trimmed trotters, now they sit in the oven, braising in own juices with reduced sherry, porto and chix stock
- made the white choco snow. This worked out better than the dark choco imho - and a slight change to the menu, this will go as a palate cleanser on its own, before the dessert.
- made the orange skins, drying
- shallots for the main course were sliced and are drying
- the leeks were cleaned trimmed and vacuum packed

And I baked a round with baguettes.

This thread is starting to get chunky, but what would it be without pictures?

The nature IS MOST AMAZING


:thx

 

Mike you are killing it , wow

 

This is starting to get really sexy!

 

So today I nailed what works for me. Out of the four flours I checked, the cheapest works best, haha. The organic worked out worst.
The kneading time 6 minutes, one folding and final proofing 55 minutes.

So todays dinner was a baguette with black olives, red onion, sourcream, baked salmon with soy and garlic

:bacon

 

Allright.

There will not be too many pictures, I just had enough to do with serving the folks and eat and drink the wines all at the same time :line

But I can try to explain how did it went.

The wines.
Pinot Noir with the chicken mousse and tuna, Shiraz with fillet and Riesling with.... dessert
I must admit the Syrah fell into my taste very much. The Riesling too, Pinot was a little too thin for my taste but so was the fish, with no detectable flavour, so yeah didnt go to well.



Confit garlic


Chicken mousse with cepes, sweetbread and rolled in trotter.





The bread


and the digestives


So to the food. It started very well, the butters went well and after 90 minutes outside had just the right consistence, where you can spread, but not too thin hehehe :thx

The garlic needed little salt, but all the barbarian side of it was nicely mellowed. Not too fatty, but hey it was boiled in fat!

Now, the spoons. Tartare was just seasoned with olive oil, salt, pepper, a drop virtually one drop of soy and with a thin slice of red onion heart over it. The meat had fantastic consistence, firm but melting, if you know what i mean

Crab was a little more elaborate, the flesh panfried, chickpea puree under with a lemon segment, and over the crab was a dressing made with olive oil and chopped, cured iberico "pluma"

Then we went to the trotter, after stuffing got poached for 45 minutes in 78 degrees. The mousse was creamy and juicy, the sweetbreads a little over, but still creamy. The mushroom added this little body that was missing. At this stage I would like to add, that I did not use morrels for a simple reason: I am not familiar with them, I mean, where I am coming from, we didnt use them, but cepes...plenty

So the trott was served with poached quaills egg, reheated with 55 C water, uber crispy chicken skin, first SV at 55C for some thousands of years, and then baked for some more time at 150C. and a piece of poached, panfried sweetbread - these fellas got the full treatment, soaking, cleaning, poaching but because of the size of the pieces I went for 15 minutes at 85 degrees and could easily do it 10 mins.

Next off - tuna with haricote blanc emulsion, cucumber and shallots.
Tuna as mentioned, fresh but very little flavour, didnt even attempted on saving it, so first poach for 10 mins at 38, then 20 mins before frying rolled in olive, lemon juice, coarse salt and pepper.
Funnily enough with all the tastes somewhat mellow, this dish was balanced but I wouldnt remember it, mainly due to the bad fish.
I want to work further with it, but I think the only solution here, without access to really fresh tuna, is to find another fish worth the place on the plate.

Main however went well.
I had my potatoes ready made in the morning, so reheated them in a SV, didnt split so no repair was needed, blanched beans swiftly, rest was reheated, seasoning on the beans, butter of course, salt pepper, taste, salt pepper, taste, taste oh and eat one more these are good beans, good... Ups I just stand there like an arse and guests are waiting. Yeah. Bashed it out to the table.
My meat, which went for 80 minutes at 55 C was nicely browning on the pan, didnt loose any drop of juice, not even when slicing, the cutting board was totally dry.

The consistence, jelly fat and disintegrating by itself meat umpumpumpumpumpumpump

When I sliced it open, I just remember a scene of a one of many bad movies with Adam Sandler, where he prepares a good lokin sandwich for himself, and when hes about to eat, he says "Oh baby"

Sliced to the table and boom, talking stops

Then, some half an hour to catch your breath and talk about some lovely buttocks, and here comes the gimmick of the night.

When I was out to buy the beans, Ive spotted awesome pomegranate, picked the seeds then, marinated with olive oil, lemon juice and served under the white chocolate snow. I can tell you fellow gangmembers, their ******** dropped umpumpump

But the gimmick was just there to refresh the palate, make them think about dessert, just enough time for me to bang the main pudding together.
Coffee.

I made a cake using eggs, olive oil, baking powder, coconut flour, glutenfree flour and covered it with grapefruit cream, splashed a little mascarpone on the top, and threw some crispy orange skins all over it.

And so cognac arrived. This kind of destroyed us, but this time there were no naked girls sleeping in the bathroom when I woke up.
We were 7, 2 drank very little because of work the next day and cars. We anyway managed to empty out 11 bottles of wine, and a half a bottle with cognac.

When all left, I tried to clean a little result was one glass in bits and dishwasher with the boxes of white chocolate on the longest program, but no detergent - everything after was covered with a nice smooth fat layer.

:cool1

 

of, forgot about this:

 

Wow what a report Mike. Your friend had quite the send off.