Garden planning at Davidson...

Moving right along with the "Chefs Move to School" program with an area school in Davidson, NC.

We are in the beginning stages of the garden planning for this Spring. We will be planting a small garden in front of the school for the next semester and today we pulled weeds, marked off the garden plot with stakes and twine, discussed what we will be planting and so on.

The students decided to grow snap peas, carrots, radishes and more. I will be showing them how to create healthy meals and snacks using these ingredients and to help them make smart choices when eating.

It was great to see everyone get excited about the garden. I think I'm more excited to show students how to make the food than they are of planting it, lol.




Stay tuned for more fun!

My "nose-to-tail" pig project...

I've always been in to pushing the boundaries of the day-to-day. I think this is why I am so attracted to the restaurant business. Never a dull moment and you never know what each day will bring.

A fellow chef and good friend texted me asking me for ideas on what to do with a whole pig he recently purchased. My mind was racing with great things one could do with such a divine creature; guanciale, bacon, smoked trotters and hocks, head cheese, chicharrón, the sky's the limit! I was inspired by my friends quest and so I did something about it. (Thanks Bryan!)

Someone showed me this pic and asked me if I could really eat such a cute creature? (Umm...YES!)

So, I've decided that, since I've never broken down an entire animal before, I'd do just that. I bought a whole 60 pound suckling pig decided to create as many items as I could with that beast. Kind of like showing respect to the animal. Besides, will be great practice for my butchery and charcuterie skills. :)

Cut in thirds...

My piggy came in frozen solid and needed a few days to thaw. After a good "chill" in the cooler, I plopped her out onto the prep table and began. Armed with a hack saw and a couple sharp knives, I began my duties.

Dispatched...

Even though this was a small pig, I still had to put two cutting boards together to have enough work space to butcher this bad boy. After a good rinse, I began by removing the head. I put this aside for head cheese I plan to put on our charcuterie plate at a later time. Besides, I've always wanted to taste head cheese over a nice local salad.

Burning off the hair for the head cheese.

Simmering away in wine, garlic and herbs for about 5 hours.

The finished product, pretty yummy!

Next, I removed the hams and then the buts with my boning knife and under sized hack saw (next time I do this, I will be sure to buy a real butcher-style hack saw and not a small house-hold one from my neighborhood hardware store, lol). It took some doing, but worked out perfectly.

I removed the skin for pork rinds, the trotters to add to the head cheese and the hocks for smoking (think I'll put those in some local collard greens, yum), then saved the butts to make American style hams. The hams came out amazing, but, sadly, I didn't get a picture of the pork rinds before we ate them all! Yes, they were insanely good.

Perfect ham with Dijon brown sugar glaze.

Smoked ham hocks for collard greens? Maybe soup?

Now, I split the saddle down the middle. I removed the bellies of both sides. One of them will be stresa (a flat pancetta) and the other half will be traditional belly bacon (or streaky bacon).

Hack saw. Splitting the saddle in half.

Future bacon.

With the loins, I sawed one into chops (I marinated those with jerk seasoning and grilled them!) and the other, I broke down into loin/ tender loin feeding the ribs to my cooks for our dinner. (they simmered them in a spicy jalapeno salsa and we ate them over rice with tortillas, yes, it was good.) The other loin, I made into Canadian bacon for eggs Benedict ;) .

My finished Canadian bacon came out perfect!

Tiny loin chops!

I love tasso ham, so I de-boned the shoulders, cured them, packed them with spices and smoked them over hickory. Salty, hammy goodness :)

Any scraps left over were set aside for meatballs. I will sear them and serve them Swedish style over home-made egg noodles.


So, head cheese, tasso ham, American style ham, pork rinds/ chicharrón, bacon, stresa, Canadian bacon, smoked hocks and meatballs. This little piggy definitely went to market and a tasty market at that! Next time, I will source a larger animal and get some better tools. But, this was a great experience for sure and I really learned a lot!

(more pics to follow!)

Chefs Move to School, continued...

This week at Davidson Middle School, another day with the Chefs Move to School Program, we discussed how to make salad dressing and dipping sauces using the emulsion technique. I brought along my handy stick blender and a container with a screw-on-lid discussing that you don't need a fancy gadget to make an emulsion. The students chopped garlic and grated ginger while I discussed different oils and vinegars that one could make a dressing with. A couple students cleaned sugar snap peas for later.



Afterwords, the students went to visit a local farm in Concord, NC to discuss eating local and to see where there food comes from. They toured the farm, picked lettuces and discussed the importance of local farms in the area.




They then came back and ate what they bought from the farm using our emulsions and their dipping sauces. A fun time was had by all! If you hadn't had a chance to work with kids about the importance of good food choices, eating healthy and using seasonal ingredients, you should try it, its great!

Deep Plate Challenge...planning, plating and eating!

Wow, this is gonna be great! I'm doing this sweet challenge with another chef for the upcoming Deep Plate Exercise. In case you hadn't been following along, this plate company sends out a plate to you (if you are a professional chef or culinary student) each month, you plate up your food on it and send them pictures. They then post the pics with descriptions on their web site and facebook page.

Since I really shouldn't post this blog until the contest officially starts, you'll be reading this after that day. Makes things a little more fair, eh?

The chefs name that I will be challenging is Richard Taitt. I don't know this person, but I'm looking forward to doing this with him. Should be a blast.

After a little planning and scheming, we have to do 5 courses to consist of an amuse, an appetizer, a salad, a main and a dessert.

For my amuse, I've come up with something small, two bites, that reflects the season:

Butternut squash and wild mushroom filled ravioli with fried shallots, chili oil and micro basil and radish. Soft fresh pasta filled with local butternut squash, some wild mushrooms and a little ricotta. Combine that with the crisp fresh micro greens and fried shallot, a perfect bite.

For the appetizer, something a little more substantial but light:

Pan-seared scallops over pesto with micro radish salad and extra virgin olive oil. Seared on a hot pan and placed on a fresh pesto sauce, great combo. Of course, we need a little crunch, so its topped with strips of radish and local micro radish greens. And, for some color and nuttiness, topped with some amazing Greek olive oil. A nice app to set you up for the next course.

Salad, fennel, frisee and radicchio salad with toasted hazelnut vinaigrette. Crisp and delicious. The bitterness of the radicchio and frisee together with the sweetness of the fennel and leaf lettuces go great with the nuttiness of the toasted hazelnuts. Perfect combo.


Main, pan seared loin of beef over creamy polenta and topped with roasted mushrooms and pearl onions topped with local micro greens. A heartier course but not too heavy. Even though it is beef, the portion size is perfect. Soft polenta goes great with the roasted mushrooms and onions. The mushrooms have a unique crispness that just blow your mind!


And, finally for dessert, double chocolate cherry cheese cake topped with bourbon cherries and micro mint. A chocolate blast! Dark, semi sweet chocolate, bitter sweet cocoa and bourbon soaked cherries go great with that punch of micro mint and crunch from the Oreo crust. You may have to keep yourself from licking the plate!

I got the hook up on the micro greens from Lucky Leaf Gardens, thanks Kate!

Each of the above pictures, along with the other chefs pics, are judged by our peers on Deep Plate's blog. Not sure if there is a prize, but bragging rights to the winner is good enough for me!

Check out the link and cast your votes! :)

[edit] Thank you to all who voted, I won by over 50% of the votes! Cool stuff :)

New menu, first month and it's highlights...

If you've been following along, you will no doubt remember that I was rolling out a new menu incorporating local and seasonal ingredients at the restaurant I work for, The Galway Hooker Irish Pub. When the new web site is up, I'll post a link. Well, having just past week four of this great project, it's time for a little reflection.

It took a few days of bumps and grinds, and continues to somewhat, to prefect it, but it's coming along nicely.

If I'm honest, rolling out a new menu of this magnitude for the first time in almost three years of this place during the busiest month of the year was probably not one of my finest choices culinarily, but I digress. My mentality was "Maximum Exposure" and I sure got it, lol. If I had waited a few weeks and rolled it out in January, I would have had less than half of the exposure and, besides, what fun would it be to roll out a menu during the SLOWEST month of the year, lol, I have to keep my boss on his toes, right? (Sorry Chris, didn't mean to stress you out, lol).

Week one was a little crazy. We had a celebrity comedian working the comedy zone upstairs and, well, it was a bit of a nightmare. Ticket times were horrible and, well, a few people were pissed off, including my staff and I. The only thing to do was to learn from it, prep more and be READY! And by the end of the week, we were. Nothing like a little embarrassment to get you motivated.

The next week went a lot smoother. As any decent chef would agree, it's all about mise en place or having your things in their place.

Fast-forward a couple weeks and my guys have a much stronger grasp on things. Shoot, some of these guys never saw a micro-green before in their life before they met me! lol. Aside from having to gently remind the boys how I want the plates to look, I think we've made huge head way in getting the new menu out.

This past week, we've been busier than I expected and the menu is getting rave reviews from just about everyone. Of course, there's always the one or two that just cant be satisfied no matter what (makes you wonder why they even leave the house, really) but I take them to a grain of salt and just try again when they come back.

I'll post a few pictures when I get them.

Sous Vide Demo for my local ACF Chapter

Having fell in love with the Poly Science sous vide machine carried by Williams-Sonoma, I've offered to demo the benefits of sous vide at the Charlotte chapter of the American Culinary Federation (ACF).

It has been a learning experience for my two helpers and myself, for sure. We all discovered that 12 ounces of marinade is enough to flavor over 40 pounds of meat! Pretty awesome. Also, I discovered a way to make amazing fried chicken to order without having to store raw chicken under my line cooks station and its probably the best fried chicken we ever ate!

Short ribs, well, I shouldn't have to tell you how good they are when you cook them low and slow for two days! No waste, no mess, wow.

During setup, I took a few pictures.

This small 12 ounce bottle was enough marinade to do 40 pounds of chicken legs, very impressive.

Hands-free cryo, nice to have when taking pictures, lol

Almost 50 pounds of short ribs, two cans of this great rub from Williams-Sonoma, seared, cryo'd and they took a 140F water bath for over 48 hours. We almost wept a little when we ate them. They even made their own jus, conveniently, which I mounted with some local butter, yummers.

Carrots that don't suck? Oh yes, I figured out a way and yeah, they were awesome. Maple and local butter glazed. They stayed bright orange and tasted like love. I swear, they were the best damned carrots we ever ate! Again, this small bottle of maple syrup was enough for all of this 25 pound batch of carrot bats. Yes, those are nobs of that local butter I keep yapping about.

We had a blast setting up for this event. We cryo'd almost 100 pounds of protein and over 50 pounds of carrots and local potatoes. That's a lot of bags. We used two vacuum machines and my poor little house model cryo machine kept over heating, lol, which slowed things down a little. Only took about 6 hours to rub, sear, pour, season and suck, lol.

[edit] just got the weather forecast, this demo was canceled until further notice. Sad to say, I was really looking forward to this. Well, I'll keep you posted!

"Big Boss" of Raleigh, NC local cuisine beer dinner...

Great night tonight. We recently rolled out a new dinner menu using local and seasonal produce, cheeses and such and it's going well. People seem to be very receptive to our new and improved menu and ideas, which is a relief, to be honest. My ideas of great food is not always in keeping with OTHER peoples ideas of great food. To me, there's nothing like an unctuous pork belly sandwich or a rare steak simply seasoned with salt and pepper. Most folks, sadly, eat to live and have the palate of a small child.

Anyway, people are excited about our new dinner menu, which makes me excited.

In addition to our dinner crowd enjoying our new offerings, we ran an intimate beer dinner in our private banquet hall upstairs. Big Boss Brewers offered the beers and I came up with a menu based mostly on locally produced goods. My kinda food. Its easy to pair food with beer if you have access to the best of each.

My morning started off picking up some local micro greens at Lucky Leaf Gardens and then a load of locally grown produce at Barbee Farms. Earlier in the week Ashe County Cheese delivered some of their yummy-ness and a farm in Rutherfordton, NC sent us some quail eggs and mache. Awesome.

Menu was this:

Starter

Spicy Sage and Fennel Local Scotch Quail Egg with House-Made Whole Grain Mustard (passed)
Paired with: Blanco Diablo (Belgian Style Wit)

Soup

Roasted local pumpkin and toasted black pepper bisque topped with local pumpkin sprouts and pan-fried coriander pumpkin seeds
Paired with: Hell’s Belle (Belgian Style Ale)

Salad

Honey Cider Poached Local Apple, Baby Arugula; Ashe-County Crumbled Blue Cheese, Sweet Spicy Local Chestnuts, White Balsamic and IPA Vinaigrette, Parmesan Curls
Paired with: High Roller IPA

Main Course

Slow Braised Local Pork Belly with Roasted Local Root Vegetables, Wilted Local Greens and Bad Penny Pork Jus
Paired with: Bad Penny Brown Ale

Dessert

Dark Chocolate and Roasted Apple Crème Brulee with Caramel and Apple Chip
Paired with: Aces and Ates (Coffee Stout)

Needless to say, everyone was a little drunk when they left but they all had a blast. Unfortunately, no one had the fore-site to take pictures and I just didn't think to. You'll just have to make sure you come to the next one to see how things look! :)

Chef's to School Program and my journey with Davidson Schools, continued...

Today during our current "Chefs move to schools" project, we discussed healthy alternative ingredients in baked goods. The 8 students picked out three baked items and I replaced or added an ingredient in the food with a healthy alternative.

Chocolate Chip Blondies where I added sweet potatoes, apple crumble where I used whole wheat flour and oats in the crumb topping and corn bread where I added a little butternut squash. All were yummy and a little healthier than their alternatives.

A great time was, again, had by all. We all enjoyed eating our subject material the best, I think.

Another demo at Williams Sanoma Birkdale...

This new sous vide machine is just amazing. I got to play with the Polyscience Sous Vide Professional Immersion Circulator for a few days then do a small demo for about 12 people at my local Willams Sanoma. People loved it so much, someone actually bought one! That same person is having me over to teach them how to use it, joy.


We showed the crowd how to sous vide a bone-in turkey breast then deep fry it, yum. Tender, juicy and delicious! We also pushed the new "Smoking Gun" made by the same people who make the Immersion Circulator to smoke some of the cooked turkey. Fantastic. There were a couple more toys I got to play with; cryovac machine, a couple sweet knives, and more. I love being a chef. After it was all said and done, I went down the road and had a meal with my wife and relaxed at home, not bad for my "day off".

As a result of this last class, a customer had asked me to come to their beautiful home and show them a few ways to use the immersion circulator. We had a blast.

We did salmon with a simple orange vinaigrette, acorn squash with butter, brown sugar and cinnamon and 48 hour short ribs (which are cooking right now). Here are a couple pictures I took.

New menu preparation, Day 2

Day two of the practice run for the new menu. Knocking out some yummy stuff, as usual.

Sweet potato bacon hash with granny smith apples.

Bringin' back onion soup!

Pan-seared tuna slider with pickled ginger, fresh spinach and soy mustard.

Angus slider with pimento cheese and fried onion strings.

New chicken Philly (will be tweaking this a little)

The last three sliders; crab cake with baby arugula and lemon caper tartar sauce, pork belly with caramelized onion marmelade and pickles and corned beef with braised cabage, Swiss cheese and remoulade sauce.

Onion jam for the new Arancini (fried risotto balls)

More to come. Come check us out when the new menu rolls out in November.

New menu practice run Day 1

Our new menu rolls out in a few days and we're doing a practice run starting today.

So far, rubbed some "Fred Flintstone" sized beef short ribs and pork belly on the braise :) Yum...

Pork belly scored before cooking.

Enormous beef short ribs before being rubbed with spices. :)


Nice hot sear on these bad boys.


Bacon pimento cheese spread. In this pic it's hot, not too happy with the way it looks, but the flavor is awesome. Will have to work on presentation.


Lobster baked penne, eh, yummy but lobster was over-cooked, will revisit this again.


McNcheese, yum! A winner.


Braised pork belly, need I say more? Will make a slider out of this when the new bread comes in the morning.


Club steak (our new house steak). 12 ounce bone- in NY strip steak, just awesome.



Braised beef short ribs, OMG! Delicious.


The "local seasonal" salad. Everything grown within 20 miles and picked within 2 days.

More later!