Food.

I just felt like putting these up.

 

And the prize for the pointless thread of the year goes to.......

 

Meeeeeeeee!

 

What is the name of the first dish? It actually looks pretty good! Looks like something out of a fancy restaurant.

 

Haha, quite proud of yourself aren't you?

 

The first dish was a seared tuna loin, with a roast garlic jus - the roast garlic jus was made with sherry vinegar, dark, aromatic guinea hen stock, roast garlic, touch of black pepper. The seared loin was flown in via next day air. Shoestring potatoes, spinach. Basic. But our best seller.

The second was red grouper with a blood orange butter sauce, caramelized baby bok choy from our local organic farmers, roast winter root vegetables and a bit of basil oil for color and accent.

The restaurant was mine.

Earning anything on this august forum is a badge I'll own gladly.

Don't know why. But missing my former biz at the moment.

 

I must say I love the food.



..and congrats on the Award!

 

dude, why are you mocking other members' threads so much? grow up! why dont u join Nintendo? this guy wanted to start a thread about this, it is okay. nobody asks for your approval.

 

Yumm... I just ate but this thread is making me starve again...

 

I always support food threads...mmmm.


Northpoint clearly knew that I just started my food blog and wanted to talk about it!

How come you got out of the restuarant biz?

I spent eight years off an on working as a catering event manager. I really loved it but the work schedule is just so grueling. It took me a year to get over leaving it for good, but at least now I have the time to lavish yummy homemade treats on my friends. Sharing a great meal is one of my all time favorite things to do.

 

nice looking dishes! Yum yum!

The mere mention of f-o-o-d makes me salivate... it also works with the 6:30 alarm on my phone, call me pavlov's human subject

 

Glad you all enjoy the virtual meal. Waterstone was the love child of my wife and myself, and although it didn't make it ultimately, we remember with fondness what we accomplished. Here's a couple more, for the hell of it.



A trio of Spanish quail, stuffed with roast fall fruits, white bean puree, locally grown tuscan kale, and a spiced cognac/quail jus



Pear Napoleon - puff pastry, poire william creme patissiere with caramelized pear, pear tuile.

 

Came across your blog, and posted a comment - very nice blog! (However, I wanted to add you to my feeds (no pun intended), and got a 404. FYI.

 

yum yum yum!

 

Hey, thanks for letting me know about that...I've got it fixed now. I recently upgraded to Wordpress 2 and it's broken a lot of things on the site (although it works perfectly on another blog I manage, go figure).

Mmmmm...yummy rss feeds.

 

I was joking, dumbass, go buy yourself a sense of humor

 

Someone repped with a "jus! pah, it's gravy." Skilled.

Here's how we made it:

we bought whole spanish quail, and boned them out - 60 at a time, service for 20. The bones were reserved for the - em, Jus, or, in your world, I guess, gravy. We roasted the bones to well caramelized then ... oh, what the hell.

Here's the recipe:

Quail Jus

Yield: 5 cups

30 quail carcasses
Canola or peanut Oil
½ cup (2.5 ounces) carrots, ¼” mirepoix
½ cup (2 ounces), 2 ½ cups onions, diced ¼” mirepoix
½ cup leeks, ¼” mirepoix
8 garlic cloves, crushed
2 quarts dark chicken stock
1 small bunch thyme
1/3 tsp “game spice”
¼ cup cognac

Break carcasses into 1” pieces. Brown in liberal oil on high heat in sauté pan, stirring as needed to prevent sticking/scorching and until bones turn very dark brown; but do not burn. Reduce heat to medium high and add vegetables and game spice. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Deglaze with stock; add thyme. Reduce by half. Strain into clean pan, add cognac and reduce to original volume. Strain and reserve.
At service, mount - "beurre monte."

(We used lots of roast spice blends, made in house; culinary history is a love, and I used lots of preparations, modern and ancient - verjus, for instance, my wonder acid - the juice of unfermented green grapes - adds acidity without bracingly doing so. Flavored oils, vinegars, spice blends, in-house butchery (live lobsters flown in from maine, jointed, lobster stock and sauce americaine - all made from the best nature offered)).

OK, I'll stop reminiscing now, and pull out of reverie. We're in such a damn hurry, these days. I miss the hours our guests spent, an event of an evening, no rush to go anywhere.

 

It's still like that in many restuarants I've been to in Europe. I remember the first time I went there I was getting pissed because the server wouldn't bring us our check.

I quickly realized that you need to actually ask them for it or else you could sit there for hours.

Most places around here get pissed of at you if you spend more than an hour at a table.

 

And for those of us who are food geeks...

Complements of Wikipedia's.


Not all cooked meat juices [edit: in the US] would be called "au jus" (we don't call chicken stock au jus do we?), and not all thinkened sauces made with meat juice would be called gravy. tut tut

 

Jus does usually imply a thickened sauce derived from the juices obtained from roasts - whole duck, lamb shoulder or leg, etc. But really, with a jus, in my book, what you're talking about is something drawn from the animal itself, which extracts and concentrates its flavor - jus here shares with essences and stocks, or coulis and fonds, the intrinsic character of what you're cooking. A literal use of jus in this way is veal stock - sometimes called jus de veau, sometimes called fond de veau.

Basically, I use jus when the sauce is made from roasting something - be it a whole joint of meat, or the carcasses, and the essential character of the animal is preserved and extended in the sauce - as opposed to a sauce wholly made, and wholly unrelated in character, from the meat it accompanies on the plate.

At Waterstone, all sauces began as integral sauces, even if eventually they were derivative or small sauces - for lobster, we made a sauce americaine with lobster stock, tomatoes, saffron, cognac, wine; a duck sauce with, well, duck carcasses and aromatic, dark duck demi-glace, and aromatic vegetables in remouillage or rewetting of the bones for a deepened flavor and character. Guinea hen with guinea stock. Venison sauce from venison stock, (plus, later, as autumn came on more fiercely, pomegranate, verjus and other things); And so on.

All of these began with, loosely, essences, coulis, fonds. The only thickener was the gelatin extracted from the bones and connective tissue obtained during butchery. For the most part, I wasn't interested in wizardry in sauces, only mastery - simplicity, expressing the essential nature of the thing itself. What the French called, "les choses ont le gout de qu'elle ces sont," or "things have the taste of what they are."

In this sense, almost all of our sauces were jus (except for the sauces in which we did a good deal else after). At least that is my view of it.