Tasting menu 41

I had a gentleman named John and his chef friend named Janos joined me in the kitchen last night. They are both from Tucson and were in town and asked if they could come and play with me. John is geochemist at the university of Arizona. He has a lot of knowledge of liquid nitrogen ( he uses it for science stuff) It was a lot of fun asking him scientific questions about centrifuges and he told me stories of putting liquid nitrogen in his mouth. We talked about building specific scientific machines that we could use in molecular cooking. I think we started a great relationship and I am very interested being able to know a professor I can bounce some questions off of. We are going to do the Lego dish this week. I am excited for this new presentation.

Tasting menu

Roasted summer vegetables
Vinaigrette sheet, ricotta gnocchi, squash blossoms from my garden

Lego’s
Red=shrimp, Blue=pineapple, Green=corn, Yellow=goat cheese, Orange=cilantro
chive creme fraiche, lego garnishes

Hibiscus space foam


Sou-vide prime rib cubes
Warm walnut mayo, fried aujus, morel puree


Warm zucchini bread
Golden raisin ice cream made tableside
Using liquid nitrogen

Soft silicon molds

I have found that this style of cooking requires a lot of different molds. It is impossible to find a flat sheet tray in this hotel. When I pour my product onto a surface it is hard to get a even shape and it is even harder to cut. The answer is having molds that are the exact shape you want. I have been thinking about doing a Lego dish for a couple months now. I needed to make my own molds to pour different Lego flvors. I ordered the soft silicon mold set from Albert Uster. It was around $100. It allows me to cast any shape that I want. The directions are simple. It takes about 3 days to produce a final mold. My first attempt is this dice cube. I needed to mix a little more silicon but I have a few ideas for this mold

I love noodles

As you can tell by my tasting menu I have an obsession with noodles. Molecular cooking has enabled me to come up with new flavors that are gluten free and are 95% or more of the ingredient you are highlighting. I think people are comfertable with this medium, they are willing to try new flavors because we all love it. This week we did a Bing cherry noodle to go with the salmon

Puree being passed through a plastic tube into ice water

They look like twizlers with an amazing spring flavor

Recipe

740 grams 80% bing cherry juice 20% red grape juice

15 grams balsamic syrup

60 grams Turbano sugar

10 grams Salt

9.84 grams Gellan F

35 grams Glucose


Place juice in a sauc pan with balsamic, sugar, salt and gellan f. Pulse with a emersion blender to hydrate the gellan. Add the glucose and place over high heat. Remove and fill a syringe. Squeeze into plastic tubing and dunk in the ice water for 1 minute. Fill the syringe and repeat stopping when the gelled noodle is at the end of the plastic tube.

My daughter holding bok choy from our garden

Tatsing menu 40

I have not done a post in a few days. I am trying to get my packet ready to send into Bocuse. I feel that I have some strong dishes. The only problem is that I heard of it last week so putting together a art full presentation might be a stretch. I will put in a entry no matter what. This opportunity does not come along everyday. It has been very crazy in the hotel. We have been very busy with the recent press. I have decided to keep my shit together rather then blog. We had 8 GM's from different properties for a VIP dinner. I also had Mike Long, a really good chef come up and have a tasting menu. I have known mike for a while, he is a strange guy, that's why we get along. It is nice to have other chefs come in and critique your work. He is honest. He makes me a better chef with his criticism. He did not have a lot to say this time. I guess that is a good thing.

Tasting menu

Berbere encrusted pork bellyc
Fermented black garlic, sour cream folded basmati, poached egg

Sou-vide dill salmon
Carbonated lyches, bing cherry noodles, sweet corn butter


Grapefruit and spearmint space foam

May ploy incrusted buffalo meatloaf
Blue cheese air, bok choy from Ian’s garden, shitake gnocchi


Chambord marshmallow
Toasted on graham cracker and dark chocolate ice cream
Made tableside with liquid nitrogen

Doo at the Zoo

We had a pretty good event last night. We could not get the grill to work when first arrived. You have to trust that every thing will work and if it doesn't you have to figure it out. We ended up serving our pork loin without the spatzel until we could enough heat to crisp them up. I could have served the spatzel warm but I wanted the texture. We also did Liquid nitrogen creme brulee tarts. It is fun to see peoples faces when they try it for the first time. Thanks to my wife for helping out and no I did not get a chance to bag an elephant

Democratic National Convention 08

Our hotel is about 20 miles from downtown Denver. A couple days ago the security department showed us a little video about possible terrorist concerns with the convention. It basically was a video of people blowing up other people using breifcases, trucks, cell phones and even fake babbies in a carriages. It scared the shit out of me. First of all it is impossible to screen everything that enters our hotel. Second it made me very happy to live in this country, I don't think I could function knowing that the box of romas next to me could blow my ass up.

Tatsing menu 39

I am doing some early prep this week because we are cooking at Doo at the Zoo on Thursday. This event raises money for the zoo's programs throught the year. I have a pretty sick dream of jumping one of the fences and taking down a elephant with my french knife.I know that is sick but when you let a bunch of crazy chefs in the zoo what do you think they want to do?

Tasting menu

Oyster Carpaccio
White soy gelee, frozen olive oil, lime air

Pretzel consommé
Dijon chicken, charred onions, apple dumplings

Black truffle paper

Buffalo short rib ravioli
148 egg, cotija, sweet onion tops from my garden

Lindsor tort
Sour cream and mint ice cream
Made tableside with liquid nitrogen

Penny Parker

Penny gave us a great article in today's Rocky Mountain News. She came to the music event last week. http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jun/17/penny-westin-chef-puts-music-on-menu/

Mango paper

Happy fathers day

Here is a link to the story they did in the Rocky mountain news this week. As you can see I am very proud of my dad and the culinary adventures we have been on
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/jun/10/dads-delights/

Tasting menu 38

I have been scaling back some of the techniques to see if the menus will sell better. I am relizing that the people that come in for it are looking for the freeky shit. I am going to experiment a little more with some flavor combinations and textures. I am using some rose pedals that I picked and some bok choy from our garden this week.

Tasting menu

Grilled anchovies
Romaine sheet, shallots, Dijon air

Wild mushroom jelly
Fried cherries, cherry balsamic, crisp apple skins

Whiskey caviar and cream

Coconut sou-vide Alaskan crab
Candied kumquat, Bok Choy from Ian’s garden,


Grilled apricots
Goat cheese rose pedal ice cream
Made tableside with liquid nitrogen

Musical event

We had a great event on Tuesday. Here are some pictures of the stations as we set them up. Claire Walter is a amazing travel writer based out of Boulder. She covers a lot of happenings in the culinary world. This is a link to her blog and thoughts of the evening
http://culinary-colorado.blogspot.com/2008/06/molecular-gastronomy-and-other.html

Denver post review

Tucker Shaw reviewed us yesterday in the Denver post. We got the review that I new was coming, a review that highlights our service and room. Tucker talks about the fact that the molecular cuisine does not go with the restaurant we are serving it in. I agree with him, we are trying to be too many things. Chefs are always concerned with reviews. Good reviews bring business and bad ones don't. We use reviews to judge our careers. The good ones get put in a folder and come out when we look for other jobs. Most of all it is your reputation. I have mixed thoughts of this one, if we can't put it all together then it will never be greathttp://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_9532976?source=email

The Garden

My wife and I decided to plant a pretty big garden this year. We wanted to see how long certain items take and if they would grow here in Colorado. We planted early, the first week in May. It was probably a couple weeks early. We had to cover the plants a couple nights. Everything lived and is thriving. We wanted to see how long lettuce took. We cut our mixed greens 1 month after they went into the ground. We yielded about 4 pounds of lettuce. Our cost was 3 dollars and got 20 dollars in greens. If you staggered the planting times you could have mixed greens all summer. Some other items we planted: white cherry tomatoes, white patty pans, heirloom pineapple tomatoes, sweet corn, watermelons, cantaloupe, romaine, bok choy, leeks, scallions, jalapenos and a shit load of herbs.

JB Prince order

JB Prince has a lot of great items. There dipossable serving pieces are really nice for events. I called JB Prince two weeks ago to place an order for our media event next week. I specifically told them I needed the items no later then Monday in two weeks. Half of my items showed up yesterday. When I called and asked about my other 3 items they said they are on back order. They offered another item "in stock" but it would be another 120$ in shipping cost. Get your shit together. Most events are planned two weeks out. Don't say you carry it if you can't deliver.

Tasting menu 37

I am very busy this week with the planning of the media client party. It should be a great event. We did a photo shoot for the Rocky Mountain News a couple days ago. They are doing an article for fathers day and got a few shots of me and my dad. My father is a culinary instructor and is the reason I got into this business. Our garden is starting to produce some amazing arugula and bok choy that I will feature on the menu this week

Tasting menu


Smoked peppered Spanish mackerel
63 C quail egg, agave cream, acorn squash


Crisp camembert
Grilled tomatoes, freeze dried corn, balsamic foam

Lime vodka nitro foam


Sou-vide New York
Crimini marshmallow, butter powder, Asian salad Bruschetta


Tres leches
Cinnamon pecan ice cream made tableside with liquid nitrogen

Taste of the nation 08

We did this event at our sister property the Westin downtown. It was a good event. We had 10 guest sit table side as we prepared a 7 course menu. I love sitting in front of the guest and watch them as they experience some molecular food for the first time. I forgot my camera and it was probably a good thing seeing how my station looked afterword. This was my 10th year doing this event. I think I might be in the 100's for charity events in my career. Hopefully I am building up some good Karma