Tasting menu 97

I have jury duty tomorrow, something I am not looking forward to at all. Don't they know that a crazy chef should not make any decisions pertaining to anyone else. I can barley keep my shit together as it is. Here is the menu for the next 2 weeks

Pear, apricot, plum gastrique
Poached shrimp, goat cheese marble, vanilla

Smoked trout Bruschetta
Salt water caviar, frozen tomatoes, chili threads

Sous-vide lamb chops
Peppers from the garden, Colorado corn, chayote chips

Crème brulee ice cream with burnt palm sugar
Made table side with liquid nitrogen

Tasting Menu 85

The tasting menu has been selling like hot cakes lately. 80% of the reservations last Thursday, Friday and Saturday were here for the menu.

Sweet green pea flan
Carrot cardamom caviar, pea shoots, smoked trout

Chipotle angel food cake
King crab, tequila mosaic, cilantro

San Francisco sourdough space foam

Snapper Veracruz
Flexible avocado, apricot rice taquitto, tomato
]
Hot chocolate ice cream
Shattered whip cream made table side with LN

Tasting Menu 80

I should have kept my big mouth shut about not getting any snow. Last Thursday we had a good size storm that dropped around 20 inches. The hotel was slammed, we did around 600 covers for breakfast, lunch and dinner. That is the main difference from working in a independent. If I was in my own restaurant, I wouldn't have made it off the couch that morning. I would have called it a snow day but here at the hotel we have customers that are here everyday and when it gets really cold out we get slammed. I will have a small news segment on Wednesday on channel 2 in the 9 o'clock hour promoting the cookstreet class

Grilled butter shrimp
Old bay popcorn, mint tabbouleh, rainbow caviar

Berbere rubbed pork carnitas

Sopapia, smoked grapes, fried sour cream

Ice wine sorbet

Sous-vide duck with honey and clove
Cranberry beans, warm root vegetable brulee, soy sugar

Mexican vanilla ice cream

Cinnamon tortilla, frozen caramel powder

Tasting Menu 79

Next week will start to pick up for us again. I have a wine dinner on Thursday night that is sold out. We are hosting the event along with Buil & Gine winery in Spain. Xavier Buil is personally making the trip over from Spain for the dinner. It should be a great night. I am also getting ready for April 1st. The iapc conference is here in Denver this year. They have asked me to help gather equipment and organize the event. There are some great professionals speaking at the conference including Alex and Aki from Ideas in Food, chef Andonu Luis Aduriz from http://www.mugaritz.com/ in Spain and one of my favorite chefs Michel Nischan. After helping with the conference I will be teaching a molecular class at Cookstreet that night.

Plantain
Avocado, blue crab, strawberry caviar

Risotto
Bone marrow, blueberry sphere, lobster mushroom

Vietnamese spring roll
Cilantro wrapper, shrimp and pork, salty peanut ice cream

Honeydew consommé
Mascarpone noodles, plum ice

Tasting menu 72

We have our annual bison council meeting this week along with a speech from Mr. Buffalo himself Ted Turner. I have been asked this year to do a demo on unused cuts of buffalo. It should be a great event. The cooking class on Saturday is sold out. I am doing a demo at nobel sysco on February 9Th to launch the companies affiliation with Will Powder. There will be a few other chefs demoing including Keegan Gerhard from Food Network andhttp://www.dbardesserts.com/. I am also starting work on the Miracle Fruit project. Things are starting to move again after a couple very slow weeks.

Purple yam éclair
Tobiko fondant, scallop scramble, coco nibs

Smoked pecan waffle
Mushrooms, corn, goat cheese bubbles

Loaded baked potato gnocchi
Buffalo sirloin, dandelion, cayenne

Hot chocolate ice cream with broken whipped cream
Made tableside with liquid nitrogen

Tasting Menu 66

I am posting the menu for next week a little early. We are doing a special menu next week with some Mont Blanc products. They are having there Christmas party here next week. It is insane here at the hotel right now. For example I have 5 parties in my restaurant tonight along with over 1000 in banquets. During the holidays you really see which employees and which managers step up their game. Needless to say December is not going to yield a lot of time to play. Tis the season

Mole Shrimp
Dried pasole, cotija relleno, cactus glass

Chocolate Polenta
Pulled spicy pork, mozzarella sheets, tomato textures

Ghana Space Foam

Caramel Chicken
Carrot pudding, pea sphere, brioche

Chai tea noodles
Coffee consommé, condensed milk
Made table side with liquid nitrogen

Tasting Menu 64

We had a really messed up Saturday night last week. Not only did we sell over 30 tasting menus, we had a group in house called LA Dance. This is a group of 8-12 year old boys and girls that have a dance competition here at the hotel. Imagine slamming out tasting menus with 150 orders of chicken fingers along with our regular menu. Nights like Saturday make me realise that I try to do to much sometimes. We are almost sold out for Thanksgiving brunch here at the Westin. I have volunteered to help cook thanksgiving dinner for St. Matthews Baptist church this year. I will be here all night at the hotel cooking turkeys along with all the fixens. We will not serve the tasting menu on Thanksgiving. We will have it Friday and Saturday night.

Fried baby artichokes
Caper dirt, warm walnut mayo, garlic sugar

Smoked herring brandade
Onion taffy, dried corn, red pepper crisps

Beet Space Foam

Molasses painted quail
Smoked chicken hash, fennel, apple textures

“Red” noodles with miso ice cream
Made tableside with liquid nitrogen

Neutral Caramel Mosaic

The neutral caramel was one of the first recipes I tried out of El Bulli. As with all of the other recipes, it is impossible to do unless you have the right equipment ( In this case a spice grinder). This neutral caramel is made by cooking isomalt, glucose, rice wine vinegar and fondant to the hard crack stage. After the sugar is cool I put it in a spice grinder and made a fine dust. I then put the mixture through a fine sieve onto the transfer sheet. We then took a torch and very carefully melted the sugar onto the sheet. After the sheet is cool the sugar will peel right off with the pattern of the transfer sheet. It then can be melted onto any food as a garnish

Tasting menu 62

We are really starting to feel the dip in the economy. The good news is our weekend business has been very strong. We sold 43 tasting menus last week. It is time for me to crawl back into my shell again. I have my best ideas when I don't look at a lot of food media. We are going to make head cheese next weeks menu. I have not made it before but our Executive sous Scott did it a few times. The inspiration for the ice cream this week comes from Ideas in Food's article in Popular Science

Crawfish noodles
Creamy grits, smoked corn, cactus paper

Snow crab crème brulee
Watermelon, hoison sugar, unagi

Liquid Nitrogen Ratatouille

Sauerbraten
Mustard textures, truffle croquette, crispy sauerkraut

Rum ice cream with raisin powder
Made table side with liquid nitrogen

Ginger Soy Caramel Popcorn

I snuck a little bite of my daughters popcorn ball on Halloween and it reminded me of a popcorn I use to serve for lunch at the Hilltop bistro. This recipe uses some rice seasoning made of bonito flakes that you can pick up in any Asian market.

Recipe

750 grams popcorn popped

150 grams Isomalt

125 grams Sugar

8 grams Ground ginger

20 grams Sesame oil

100 grams pineapple juice

40 grams Sweet soy

50 grams Butter

100 grams Coconut toasted

100 grams Mac nuts toasted

20 grams Bonito rice seasoning

40 grams Soy sugar

3 grams Table salt

Place Isomalt, sugar, ginger, sesame oil, sweet soy, butter and pineapple juice in a saucepan and cook until the hard crack stage. Place the popcorn in a bowl and pour the sugar mixture over the top stiring constantly. Toss in the rest of the ingredients and cool on a sheet tray

Tasting menu 61

I just bought a dehydrator this week so I will be playing around with some new textures. We have a charity event on Saturday this week with a Cowboy theme. I know I live in Colorado but can we please stop the Cowboy shit. I am going to do a campfire smores ice cream with liquid nitrogen. We also have a school demo at Palmer elementary on Monday.

Flexible parsnip
Popped wheat, maple jell, grilled carrot marshmallow

Tiger shrimp powder
Cocktail caviar, dashi granita, horseradish bubbles

Crispy soy wrapped Kobe beef
Smoked milk pudding, granny smith apple, shitake leather

Homemade eggnog ice cream
Rolled in frozen sugar cookie powder
Made table side with liquid nitrogen

Isomalt garnishes

Here are 2 easy garnishes that give dramatic effects to plated desserts or buffest. We heat isomalt with a small amount of red food coloring and water. We cook the mixture to 320 degrees. We then pour the sugar mixture into a pale of sugar and a bucket of ice. These are the shapes you get. Store these garnishes in a air tight container with limestone. Humidity will kill your sugar work.

Tatsing menu 50

I was wondering on my days off if other chefs have the same problem going out to eat as I do. I can never sit down and enjoy the meal. I think about operational shit like what was the food cost of that dish or wonder what the line looks like and how many cooks do they have? It is very annoying never being able to turn my brain off. This week we will be doing a lot of experimenting with our new carbonating machine. We have also been looking at doing a dish using superconductivity. I never thought I would here myself say that

Snacks
Yuzu soda with rasberry sorbet

Crispy chocolate wrapped curried peanuts

Pomegranate marshmallow

Oil poached snapper
Smoked corn pipette, crispy potato, potato foam

Scallion crème brulee
Unagi, Asian pear, king mushroom

Bing cherry flambé
Mexican vanilla ice cream made
Table side with liquid nitrogen

Curried peanuts in crispy chocolate

El Bulli recipe #641. Pretty straight forward recipe. The key is cooking the chocolate long enough to get the crispy texture. My camera sucks so I am back to taking pictures on my phone

Isomalt light bulb

We were doing this as a garnish for out crispy coconut ice cream with rum marshmallow. We stopped doing it in the summer because it is too humid here. You can extend the shelf like by putting it in a air tight container with limestone. The limestone draws out the moisture giving you a few more hours of life.

Heat the isomalt and water to 310 degrees and pour into a metal ring on a silt pad

Let it sit for 2 minutes.

Slowly pull the ring up to get the candle form

The finished product is placed over the dessert. The guest shatters the bulb and it will rain some crispy sugar on the dessert

Tasting menu 42

Very slow right now. After having 2 months of good business, this week sucks. I have been working on a couple side projects but when the days drag on, it is hard to stay motivated. I stole some gold leaf from the pastry box that I will use on the final course this week. I remember a lunch I cooked for Bush about 6 years ago that we garnished all of the plates with gold leaf. It is a real pain in the ass to work with but if you do it right it makes an amazing presentation.

Tasting menu


Artichoke textures
Crepe, mousse, fried, kewpie baked


Sushi rice salad
Wasabi tobiko jelly, wok seared salmon, white soy air


Achiote sou-vide pork
Chayote squash, white cherry tomatoes, tomatillo glass


Banana split dippin dots
Shattered whip cream made tableside with liquid nitrogen


Organic white chocolate and spearmint gold leaf bar