Grilled mashed potaoes

We served these with a chicken fried Cornish game hen a few weeks ago. We wanted a crisp texture on the outside and a creamy mashed potato on the inside. We made little pucks and grilled them for 45 seconds on each side

Recipe

700 g riced potato half russet half Yukon

200 g caramelized white onions in Madeira

300 g heavy cream

100 g butter soft

6 g salt

3 g pepper

225 g water

20 g methocel sga7c

7 g gelatin bloomed in water

Place the water in a saucepan and boil. Remove and add the methocel and bloomed gelatin. Mix for 1 minute. Place all other ingredients in a bowl with the methocel. Mix until very well combined. Place bowl over a ice bath until mixture is very cold to the touch

5280 review

Here is a link to the cover of the review. You have to buy the magazine to get the full article. 5280 is an amazing magazine that has a lot of pull in Denver and the surrounding suburbs http://www.5280.com/issues/2008/0806/feature.php?pageID=1177

Last Day

Tasting menu 36

Have a very busy June coming up. We are doing Taste of the Nation at the Westin downtown on Sunday. You have 10 guest that you cook table side for and you can pretty much do anything you want. My celebrity sous chef is Mark Randall. He is a ex NBA player and played for the Kansas Jayhawks, my favorite basketball team. We are also doing a media event on the 10th and a charity event and Denver's zoo on the 19th.

Tasting menu


“Slow cooked “tenderloin
Cognac, grapes, buttered leeks

Homemade sausage
Feta jelly, crispy eggplant skin, tomatoes


Yuzu nitro foam


Hollandaise stuffed shrimp
Perrier batter, champagne caviar, truffle puree


Blueberry waffle
Maple ice cream made table side with liquid nitrogen

Olive oil terrine

Yuzu nitro foam

I am slowly working through el bulli 2003, 2004. It has some amazing techniques and a large section on liquid nitrogen techniques. The first molecular item I read about was the Fat Ducks palate cleanser. It is dispensed out of a whip cream canister into liquid nitrogen. I was very happy to see the recipe in El Bulli 2004 specifically recipe number 1004. As I made the recipe I noticed that in the directions it tells you to add gelatin but in the ingredients there is no gelatin listed. I made it the first time following the recipe. It did not work. I then made a new recipe adding a small amount of bloomed gelatin. The nitro foam came out amazing. I will use it to top fish or a soup or anything that needs a crispy cold texture

Recipe:

50 g Water

25 g Yuzu

75 g Sugar

125 g Heavy cream

2.4 g Sheet gelatin bloomed in cold water

Put the water, yuzu and sugar in a saucepan. Boil for 20 seconds. Remove and add the bloomed gelatin. Stir in the cold cream and place in a canister with 1 charge. Cool in fridge for 3 hours. Release a small amount onto a spoon and then into the LN. Let the foam "cook" for 15 seconds. Remove and enjoy immediately

Media client party June 10th

Music and food go together like food and wine. We listen to music when we eat and chefs usually have a radio blaring in the kitchen.We get lost in it, it takes away from the circus we live everyday. When I was a kid I worked at a restaurant that always had classic rock on. If you did not know the song the other cooks would give you a load of shit. You listened. learned and would be able to scream out Zeppelin or the Dead when it came on. I have always wanted to pair a song with a dish. I am finally going to try it for this media event. We are going to set flat screens in each station with the video and the song playing. The guest will finish off each dish giving a play full quality to the event. We are going to send everyone home with a I tunes gift card and a musical recipe they can make at home.

Musical menu

Pour Some Sugar on Me
Def Leppard
Grilled crimini with celery root dynamite and togarashi brulee
Guest uses small torch to fire their brulee

Corn Flake Girl
Tori Amos
Cornflake and cashew tempura shrimp with avocado aioli and siracha caviar
Guest makes caviar by dropping balls with a syringe into calcium chloride


Proudest Monkey
Dave Mathews
Barramundi wrapped in banana leaf with tempura banana and ponzu noodles
Guest makes there own noodle by squeezing syringe into hot water

Cold as Ice
Foreigner
Carrot cake dippin dots with cream cheese ice cream
Guest will drop dippin dots into liquid nitrogen


Bar songs with custom molecular drinks
Red Red wine
Tequila sunrise
One bourbon, one scotch, one beer

Tasting menu 35

Took a trip to Kansas the last couple days. Thank god my mom can cook, there is not a lot of good restaurants out that way. The best meal we had was at the Topeka airport. I guess people like to watch the plains come in while they eat. It is certainly a whole different pace from my life here. My cousin and her husband have started to raise Angus cattle. Next trip out I am going to check out the farm and see if they could support a small place if I should ever open one.

Tasting menu


Sesame snapper
Dashi, edamame noodles, cinnamon


Tandori grilled salmon
Cucumber gellee, Greek yogurt, rose pedals


Organic chicken-tenderloin steak
Hunter sauce emulsion, leek, skinned tomato


German chocolate ice cream
Coconut dippin dots, pecans, chocolate ice cream
Made tableside with liquid nitrogen

Tasting menu 34

Shit is hittinig the fan in the hotel right now. Our banquet chef is leaving to go to our competion a couple miles up the street. They are not going to replace his position so it is up to the three other chefs to pick up the slack. Needless to say I am a little worried about our banquet staff leaving with him. If they do, it will be a month of 7 days a week until we get staffing levels up. I won't be here for service this weekened. I am driving to Kansas to attend my moms master degree ceremony. Better get it in while I can

Tasting menu


Vindaloo curry
Tiger shrimp, Mexican papaya, Sweet lime emulsion


Chicken fried Cornish game hen
Grilled mashed potatoes, apple gravy, smoked pecans


Sou-vide grilled Rib Eye
Goji berries, blackened spinach, cherry balsamic



Double cream noodles, butterscotch broth, espresso ice cream
Made tableside with liquid nitrogen

Sou-vide blueberries

We cooked these blueberries at 128 degrees for 95 minutes in turbano sugar and cinnamon. They came out plump like they had only been seared for a short time. The texture was amazing, like blighting into a juicy grape.

Yellow Scene Magazine

In the food section of the magazine they have started a new section where they give a chef a ingredient and 24 hours to come up with the dish. They asked if I could create a dish with a red potato. Here is a link to the articlehttp://yellowscene.com/2008/05/05/challenging-element-red-potato/ We will be featuring this soup for the next month at night

Tasting menu 33

We are getting ready for Mother's day this week. We are booked except for a few late spots. We plan on doing around 1000. The new menu is going good. The flavors are were I want them but we are messing around with some presentations and ratios. I have not sou-vide fruit so I am interested in the flavors I can get.

Tasting Menu

Chorizo
Clams, Potato, Smoked carrot foam


Pickled mango
Blue crab, tarragon, pineapple sheet


Organic Colorado tenderloin
Salsify puree, cranberry pepper jelly

Sou-vide blueberries
Pie crumbs, vanilla marsala ice cream
Made table side with liquid nitrogen

Apple spice cupcake with brown sugar frosting

Need Inspiration? Go to the Asian market

I visit the Asian market at least 2 times a week. I use to go to Lucky market on Federal. I developed such a great relationship with the owner that she would give me recipes for anything in her store. Her daughter lived in the Philippines and would send fresh exotic fruit via fed ex. She has since sold her business and moved to Florida. Now I go to Pacific Ocean on Main and 120th in Westminster. It is a very clean market with lots of stuff you just want to buy and play with. Alot of the products come in smaller sizes so you can through down a buck here in there to try something new. If you want some inspiration spend some time, a little money and make good with the little old grandma behind the counter.

New menu

We have been working on a new menu this week. There is a lot to coordinate in this hotel. Tastings, Costing, Pictures, Recipes, Prep schedules, Sourcing ingredients, Training, Printing of menus ( house and room service), Menu roll out, Quality control, Basically a lot of shit. Twice as much if I was in a independent. Here menus must be costed to the penny, at a independent I usually took the price of the protein and made a educated guess about the rest. I never took pictures in a independent because I was always there when we were open. Room service is a whole different animal. 300+ rooms with no kitchens and high expectations. Anyway I have been busy. Here are some examples of some molecular techniques that we are doing on our new menu:

Sou-vide salmon with edamame flan and curry carrots

123 degrees for 40 minutes with yuzu dill butter. Sear in hot oil to order

Colorado trout with beans, pancetta and whipped maple 7 oz pure maple, 1 oz molasses, 1/4 cup apple juice, 1/4 tsp xantham, 1 tbl. virsawhip 600

Fried baby artichokes with warm walnut mayo, cotija cheese, elephant garlic chips
6 eggs, 6 egg yolks, 1 cup walnut oil, 1 1/2 cup oil blend, 2 tbl Dijon, 2 tbl. Sherry1 tbl. salt, 1/2 cup parm grated fine, 1 Co2 charge, place in water bath of 120 degrees

Mojo jelly side sauce with oysters2 cups fresh lime juice, 2 cups sugar, 1 cup corn syrup, 8 sheets gelitan, 4 tsp. agar, 1/2 cup fresh mint chopped. Bloom gelitan, boil sugar, syrup, agar 2 minutes. Add gelitanand cool. Place in blender. Whip for 10 seconds. Remove and add mint

Southern peach sorbet made table side with liquid nitrogen with Merlot caviar and frozen thyme. 150 grams Merlot syrup, 50 grams water, 2 grams aliginate, 2.5 grams calcium chloride, 500 grams water. Place syrup, alginate and water in quart container and mix with hand blender. Place in a squeeze bottle. Put second water and calcium chloride in a different court container. Blend with hand blender. Drop small balls of Merlot syrup in calcium water. Remove after 2 minutes and rinse. Marinate in Merlot syrup.

Shrimp sheets

We used the sheets on the tasting menu this week. We layered them with whipped corn, ricotta, charred tomatoes and olive oil.

Recipe

300 grams Tiger shrimp cleaned and diced

3 grams Activa

1/4 tsp. Ground toasted fennel

1/4 tsp. Kosher salt

pinch White pepper

Put ingredients in a small chopper and pulse until a very smooth paste is formed. Smear through a tami. Place a large piece of plastic wrap on your work surface. Put 1/2 cup paste and form into a square. Put another piece of plastic wrap on top. Roll out to desired thickness. It can be rolled paper thin. Place on a sheet tray and steam for 2 minutes. Remove and cool.