Oh what a dinner I had!!!!!

Tags

food, Le Bernardin, postaday2016

My husband and I were taken out to dinner last night by our dear friend Kevin and his lady love Allison, she was a joy to get to know, I would venture to say a kindred spirit, we hit it off immediately. The restaurant picked was Le Bernardin, my favorite restaurant in the entire world. Kevin and Allison had never been, so it was even more exciting as a dinner, it was our opportunity to share a special place with them, an opportunity to show them a cuisine that is, in my opinion, a revelation to the world of seafood in all of its artistic and culinary expressions.

As you can see from the picture above, the decor is elegance par excellence, and that excellence extends to the service, there is an art to restaurant service and at Le Bernardin you will see it at its pinnacle. The wait staff anticipates your every need, refilling your glass before it empties, removing your plate once it’s done, arriving with the bread tray once your bread is finished. As a former waiter, I appreciate the high standards that are met consistently by those who work at Le Bernardin, they make it look easy, the surest sign of professionalism and dedication to the craft. All of this is done under the eagle eye of the general manager Tommy, who introduced himself to our table, taking the time to make sure that we were happy and satisfied with our dining experience, he made us feel special and that our singular experience was of the utmost importance to the restaurant’s owner and himself. This personal attention is one of the reasons why I hold Le Bernardin in such high esteem, I feel valued as a patron and it makes me want to go back for more.

Now to talk about the food, the food!!! We decided as a table to have the Chef’s tasting menu, the reason we chose the Chef’s  tasting menu was because it is the best vehicle to introduce Kevin and Allison to the unique culinary vision that the Chef, Eric Rupert, has regarding seafood. My feeling is that until you dine at Eric Rupert’s table, you don’t under the width and breadth of the possibilities that lie with treating fish as an ingredient. Under Eric Rupert’s cooking, the fish is the star of the plate and all of the accompanying ingredients and sauces are chosen to underscore the particular fish and lift it up to its full flavor potential. His creativity and imagination are also the reason why I adore this restaurant so much.

As we waited for our first course, our head waiter surprised us with an amuse-bouche trio, the presentation was simple and elegant, as were each of the following courses, a lobster/tarragon sphere served on a spoon, it looked like an egg yolk, but when it exploded in my mouth, there was no question that it was the essence of lobster and tarragon, it was exquisite. The second item was a tiny piece of fluke served with a yuzu emulsion, so light and flavorful, fish done right and the third piece was a watermelon cube macerated in some type of alcohol, I forget which, but I have forgotten how delicious it was, the trio was the perfect choice to open our palates for what was to come.

We started with King Fish-Osetra Caviar tartare served with a creme fraiche emulsion, a small bite of the clean, fresh taste of the King Fish, a fish in the mackerel family, combined with the briny taste of my favorite caviar, tempered with the smooth flavor of creme fraiche, an excellent start to any meal. 

The next course was lacquered lobster tail with an herb spring roll, served with a lemongrass consommé, the oohs and ahhs over this dish were memorable, Kevin and Allison were in awe of the delicate yet complex marriage of flavors in such a small tasting, just enough to tickle and satisfy the taste buds at the same time. They got their first revelation and there was more to come. I can’t say which course was my favorite, they were unique and special, at every course we couldn’t imagine how it could be topped and yet the next one made us ooh and ahh yet again.

The third course was unbelievable in its decadence, a seared foie gras with a langoustine tail, surrounded with pickled Hon Shimeji and served with a Perigord sauce. Words to describe how it felt to eat this combination of flavors are just that words and they fall short to communicate how exquisite this bite was in my mouth. I wanted the experience to continue without end, the seared foie gras and the langoustine together bathed in the Perigord sauce, lingered on my taste buds, it was heavenly.

The next course was simple and straight forward, a barely cooked organic salmon served with a baby peas and fava bean, mint-tarragon emulsion. The flavors were clean and refreshing, a nice break from the complexity of the last course.

The fifth course blew my mind, poached halibut with Manila clams and a wild mushroom casserole, I would have never, in a million years, thought to put wild mushrooms with halibut, but it works! It was so delicious, if we hadn’t been in a high end restaurant, I would have used my bread to sop up the sauce and then licked the plate clean. Kevin and Allison were beyond words by this point, they had never eaten dishes this delicious before, they were feeling exactly how my husband and I feel every time we go to the restaurant. 

The last course was the piece de resistance, I am ruined for steak forever, as are my husband, Kevin and Allison, we were served grilled Escobar and seared Wagyu beef with fresh kimchi and Asian pear surrounded with a soy-citrus emulsion. Oh my goodness, the Wagyu beef was seared to perfection, the inside was rare and while we were eating the steak, the beef felt like velvety silk deliciousness flowing down our throats, it was truly revelatory in how exquisite beef can be, I’ll never forget it. The Escobar remarkably didn’t fall short, it too was absolutely amazing, it was firm and tender and the sauce was to die for, the perfect compliment to the fish. It was a perfect ending to the savory part of our meal.

What followed all of this decadence was a light palate cleanser, a cucumber “pisco sour”, a sorbet to make way for a tiny bite of dessert, which was on the same plane as what had preceeded it, a coffee caramel cremeux served with a roasted almond mousse.

After all of this, we were beyond satisfied, we were satiated and happy. When we left, our wait staff bid us adieux and thank you, Tommy the general manager did so as well, we were equally lavish with our thank you’s and our promises to come back very, very soon.

This was one of the best dinners of my life, all of the other ones were of course at Le Bernardin, I can’t wait to have another best dinner of my life in the future.  

Lobsterfest in Astoria

Tags

food, lobster, postaday2016

  
On our last day in New York, my mother and my cousin treated us to lobster with steamed baby potatoes. My husband and I arrived early to help because lobster as we enjoy it is a family affair. Before I get into describing the sauce and the slaughter, I have to brag about my mother’s butternut squash soup, it was delicious. She had roasted the butternut squash while she sauteed tons of onions and garlic, after she had added the roasted squash, she pureed it to a beautiful thick consistency, it was a delight to eat right before the lobster, giving us a nice warmth in the belly, setting up the perfect conditions to thoroughly enjoy the lobster feast to come.

   
 
   
 
As you can see, the slaughter is pretty brutal, my cousin wanted to be the one to lead the lobsters to their destiny, I don’t mind doing it, the method is very quick, a decisive plunge into the head with a very sharp knife and it is over for the lobster. We prefer to roast our lobsters after drizzling olive oil, salt, pepper and paprika over the tender meat in a 375 degree oven for about 15 minutes for 21/4 lb lobsters. I wish that I hadn’t forgotten to take pictures of the famous sauce, it is a beautiful sauce, white with red dots throughout, the red dots are the lobster roe simmered in the heavy cream. However if you look closely at the pictures, you can see the sauté pan filled with sauteed shallots, reduced to a syrupy consistency after stirring for about ten minutes over medium high heat about a cup of white wine and 3 tablespoons of white vinegar, you can also see the cartons of heavy cream, what I neglected to show were the images of lobster eggs, they are a rich dark green and when you break them up with a fork and whisk them into the hot cream and shallot mixture, they become these multitudes of red dots which give the sauce the loveliest taste, you can’t go back to drawn butter once you eat lobster with this sauce, it just isn’t the same.

We had steamed baby potatoes, which eaten with the sauce, is a perfect compliment to the sweet lobster meat. I personally love heaping spoonfuls of sauce over the lobster tamale, the insides of the lobster, because it becomes something rich and decadent on the tongue, as food critics like to say, it has a great mouth feel and the taste is just out of this world. Words honestly can’t describe how delicious it is, you just want to continue sucking and finding every bit of lobster goodness possible, I eat lobster as if it is the last meal I will ever eat, I become an absolute mess, licking every single finger, making the loudest noises while I lick everything and suck up all of the juices. My barbaric behavior at the table is why I never order lobster at a restaurant, I keep my nonexistent table manners at home. LOL

This was an excellent day for us, not so much for the lobsters.

Busy in the kitchen

Tags

cooking, food, postaday2015

  
I felt culinarily inspired after some food shopping, with the chilly nights coming our way, I felt the need for soup. I had emailed my mother a link http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/healthy-fall-recipes_5638fdd5e4b027f9b96a4f43 and among those recipes there was one that had intrigued me, a cauliflower and leek soup. The recipe is extremely easy, however I changed it just a bit, instead of using two leeks, I put in 6 and instead of cutting up one head of cauliflower, I chopped up two heads and roasted them at 375 until nice and toasty brown, I added one potato that wasn’t in the recipe and lastly I added fresh thyme and fresh sage along with chick stock. I pureed it and the all important jury, the kids and the husband, approved the addition to my repertoire of recipes. I would have made it again anyhow because I really like it a lot and it’s so easy to put together.

When  I went into the back to harvest some thyme and sage, I looked over towards my garden surrounding the pond and I saw some beautiful color, a lovely surprise.

  
The next dish I worked on was just as easy; sauteed shrimp and steamed littleneck clams over thin spaghetti with a garlic lemon butter sauce.

  
My father showed me a neat trick, once you’re done sauteeing the shrimp, your pan will have nice browned bits from having sauteed the shrimp, those browned bits have great flavor, so to harness that flavor for a sauce, I deglazed the pan with what I have on hand, usually chicken stock, but if you have white wine, that will work even better, so after putting the shrimp off to the side, I put the littleneck clams in the pan with a cover and steamed them in the shrimp infused stock, once they were open, I took them out and worked a  bit more on the sauce, adding fresh lemon juice and a nice amount of butter.  Meanwhile the pasta was cooked and finally I put everythng together and voila, dinner!

I was happy working in the kitchen, chopping, roasting and sauteeing, smelling and gauging how everything was turning out, I love being quiet in the kitchen, focused on my inner dialogue and getting it as right as I can at that moment.

The French supermarche

Tags

food, postaday2015, supermarkets

   
 
   
 
  
Believe it or not, this supermarket was one of our sightseeing stops lol. Not that we had never gone to a French supermarket before, but they are so different than what we have here in the States when it comes to products sold and the varieties of produce and the sheer diversity of cheese and yogurt; for someone enamored with food as myself, it is sheer heaven.

I miss my yogurts over there; La Laitiere, Bonne Maman yaourt a la vanille, petit suisses and all of the other varieties available. 

Until next time. 

Happy Birthday to my husband

Tags

birthdays, food, postaday2015

Today we are celebrating my wonderful husband’s birthday with breast of duck, jasmine rice and cream puffs, not homemade this year, but my husband loves the ones we buy, as long as he’s happy, that’s what counts.

  
This is one of my favorite pictures of my husband, he is so handsome, we had such a nice lunch that day together. Tonight we are going to have an equally lovely and delicious dinner this evening, sauteed breast of duck with a morel cream sauce, steamed jasmine rice and sauteed summer squash right out of the garden.

The morel cream sauce may sound fancy, but it isn’t; dried morel mushrooms are very easy to reconsitutue, you use the water they soaked in to add some more flavor to the cream sauce. The sauce starts with sauteed shallots, once they’re soft, you add either white wine or chicken stock, about a cup, two tablespoons of the mushroom water and two tablespoons of white wine vinegar, this gets reduced until it looks kind of syrupy, then you lower the heat and add the cream and allow it to heat, you don’t want to let it boil, just get hot and you add the reconsituted morels, voila you have the sauce. You can make this sauce for anything; chicken, pork, veal etc.

I love sauces, so does the rest of my gang, this is when I go crazy with bread, a good French baguette is essential when you have a delectable sauce to dip and soak up.

Happy Birthday dear husband!! 

Dinner at the Hunt and Fish Club

Tags

company, food, postaday2015, restaurants

  

Last night my husband and I went to dinner with such a lovely couple John and Nadia, they were so open and friendly, the conversation  flowed so easily that time flew by as we laughed, listened, spoke and of course tasted a variety of delicious dishes.

I loved the decor, I have always been a fan of Art Deco and this restaurant was so elegant in its clean lines, yet not pretentious in the least. The food was wonderful and the service quite professional.

My husband made excellent choices for the first courses that we all shared; we had oysters from both coasts, a ceviche of scallops, a tuna tartare, a jumbo lump crabcake and roasted marrow bones to start, a pretty impressive array of tastes, textures and flavor, don’t you think.

The main courses did not disappoint either; my husband and I shared a bone-in sirloin steak which was one of the best steaks that I have had the pleasure of eating in a long time, Nadia had a gorgeous lobster and John enjoyed a Japanese cut of steak that was sinfully rich and luxious in its marbled beefy flavor, it was like nothing that I had ever eaten before, who knew that the Japanese could be so clever in their beef stewardship. The side dishes were probably my favorites, between the creamed spinach and the tater tots, I can’t leave out the grilled asparagus, I can’t say which was my favorite because they were all absolutely delicious.

Moving onto dessert; I adored the lemon cheesecake, I confess that I ate most of it, I wasn’t very good at sharing by this point. The others had more than enough other desserts to try so I am sure that it wasn’t missed, they had a lemon parfait that was beautiful in its presentation and Nadia said that it was to die for, so I felt better.  There was also the panna cotta, the chocolate mousse and some berry concoction, I forget because I was buried in my cheesecake. We had cappuccinos as a finishing touch to all of this decadence.

It was so much fun, eating and learning about these two very charming and interesting people and their lives, it was a great night and I look forward to seeing them again in the near future.

Daily prompt: Barter system

Tags

barter system, food, pastry, postaday2015

If the world worked on a barter system, how would you fare? Would you have services to barter? Would you be successful, or would you struggle?

   

   

I am in love with farmer’s markets plain and simple, but the ones in France are particularly dear to my heart. I think primarily because I associate France with family and very happy memories. Food has always played a major role in my life from the negative to the postive; anorexia being the negative and cooking and baking being the positive. My parents invested a great deal of emotion, time and interest into food and its preparation and that has not only rubbed off on me, but it has had an impact on how I view food.

So I can pinpoint the origin of my passion for food. I then nutured it by experimenting in the kitchen as soon as I was allowed near an oven in my early teen years; those were the days of Jello, pudding and Cool Whip. As I progressed, those ingredients lost their luster and I moved onto adult cookbooks which called for more complicated techniques such as puff pastry recipes, pastry cream recipes and other types of pastry making techniques.

If I had had the talent for pastry decoration or even just the finesse necessary in, not only creating delicious desserts, but beautiful ones as well, I may have thrown my hat into the ring in opening a Patisserie shop, a small place where one can sit and order a cappucino and a pastry while you read your newspaper or your iPad. That has always been a dream buried beneath a realist assessment of my limited talent.

All of this conjecture does bring me to the heart of this prompt, if we ever re-engaged in the barter system, I would feel very comfortable trading my skills in the kitchen for supplies or services that others would be willing to barter in return for say an apple tart or a cream puff. I might even find a home at a local farmer’s market, bartering my pies, cookies and cakes for cuts of meat, beautiful produce and other sundry items that I would need. I would definitely have a lot of work to do if I wanted to be able to run my household based solely on my edible wares. That would be quite the challenge. 

I think that this would be a very good lesson for many of us, a lesson in understanding the how’s and why’s of value and precisely how objective, and alternatively, how subjective both value and perception can be; because in the final analysis, there is not one concrete method to apportion value to something that could be devoid of one’s inherently emotion based perceptions, thereby thrusting subjectivity into the equation. The last item involved that I neglected to mention is the need factor, there is where I may have trouble, how many people out there really “need” my pastries? Moreover another factor to take into consideration would be how many people want my pastries? Need and want are two different scales in the human value system and how one perceives their relative importance is yet another factor to be considered. I can see how one can view economics the discipline as both simple and complicated at the same time. I have just seen first hand how tricky it is to satisfactorily explain what I mean even when in my head it seems so clear. Good luck trying to decipher my gobblygook. lol

Happy Easter everyone!

Tags

chocolates, Easter, food, postaday2015

This Easter is a nice quiet one, our daughter is working today getting time and a half, so it only us, our son and the dogs. Since we have all been very busy, my husband and I driving here and there and everywhere and our kids working, the menu was decided very quickly and easily, by my husband I think, Eggs Benedict for the meal and chocolate for dessert.

   

   

My husband is the king of the Eggs Bendict and I don’t say this lightly. Our son would probably name Eggs Benedict is one of his most favorite foods and he has eaten them at the best restaurants and hotels and he says that his Papa’s are the best that he has ever eaten. I agree with my son because not only were they divine today, my husband has made them this way consistently for years now. There is something about the combination of the hot thick egg yolks, the zesty thick almost custard like Hollandaise sauce, the savory Canadian bacon and the nice chewiness of the English muffin that makes the taste buds sing in pleasure.

I have to say that watching my husband put the Eggs Bendict together for myself, our son and himself, is akin to watching a master at work because every movement is precise and efficient. I have made Eggs Benedict in the past and it can go south quite easily; between overcooking the eggs, curdling the Hollandaise Sauce or even burning the Candian bacon, anything can happen. My husband makes it look so easy and that is what makes him the master.

Now I will wait for my stomach to do its job and then I think that I will have some chocolates.

Happy Easter!

The king of salmon

Tags

food, husband, postaday2015

My husband made a beautiful salmon pad Thai. Pad Thai is a noodle dish with rice flour fettuccine and a nuanced sauce made with chicken stock, ketchup, fish sauce and red pepper flakes, my husband seared the salmon and did some other stuff that I wasn’t privy to, but it looked very beautiful and very appetizing in the pan when he unveiled his latest creation. The kids loved it and so did I. Hooray for the chef in the kitchen!

I don’t know what happened to me but I woke up today at noon feeling as if I had been dragged through hill and dale so when my husband presented the salmon as practically a fait accompli, there was no one who could be more gratified than I with the thought of food preparation off of my plate for today. There might even be leftovers; woo hoo!

Another great birthday celebration

Tags

birthdays, celebration, food, postaday2014

Our son had another little birthday celebration, this time at my sister’s house and we had an absolutely delicious salad as a first course; it had enoki mushrooms, toasted macadamia nuts, toasted Chia seeds, mesclun lettuce and an asian dressing made with toasted sesame oil, garlic, ginger and more ingredients. My sister is going to email me the recipe, it was out of this world. The next course was an egg, spinach, cheese and bread strata which was excellent and very satisfying. The dessert was an assortment of small pastries from our favorite French patisserie La Canelle.

We had a great time with our niece, nephew, my mother, sister and brother-in-law and Jack. Jack was providing us with entertainment as he was running back and forth from French door to French door chasing those fat, unafraid squirrels in my sister’s backyard. Jack was dying to get at them, but he remained silent in his determined pacing.

My sister and my husband, each took a photo of our son and our nephew; I think that they make an adorable pair. My niece was a little busy so we missed getting her in the picture, maybe next time.