Shoyu Duck Rillette, Apricot Ume Compote, Crostini
Coming soon…
We did this dish in menu development today. One of our cooks, David Fujimura, took the challenge of utilizing the extra duck legs that we had. It evolved into this presentation.
Monday is “Menu D” day and some were working on future Next Generation Dinners of their own while the rest of us worked out some Valentine’s Day specials. Like most things, the process is more important than the destination, and that’s the journey.
Sonny Acosta just returned from the Bocuse d'Or competition held at the CIA and he is back in the kitchen creating again. Inspired, this is his latest -- an amuse, braised pork belly in Filipino adobo style, an adobo gastrique, mongo bean puree, and pickled fennel salad. It was quite tasty today in menu d. I am most proud of the fact that he is continuing the work that he started before he went up there. This dish shows he learned something about how to improve his efforts.
Shaun Gaines, our sous chef, worked on this fish course for our upcoming Valentine's Day prix fixe menu. Seared opakapaka seasoned with salt and Ras El Hanout. It sits on a vegetable ragout of tomatoes, chorizo, shiitake mushrooms, potato and asparagus cubes. The sauce is a garlic black pepper oil, infused with achiote, chorizo, pimento and dashi. We sprinkled some cubeb pepper on the side to give it some added kick.
Shaun learned today that he needs to just get started, feed me the components before plating, let me give him a few suggestions; let's do this together. He originally made a Thai basil gastrique for this dish. It tasted good, but it didn’t fit in with what he already had, so we came up with a new sauce. I told him to keep the gastrique for another dish and put it in his back pocket for now.
~~AW