snout to tail at its best

today my girlfriend and i had the pleasure of having brunch at a local boston hot spot "craigie on main" where chef tony maws does a great job bringing farm to table, snout to tail cooking together in a delightful way. his use of  local farm ingredients and great sourced product made me happy to be spending my morning drooling over the thought of,pigs heart, claves brain and all of the other nasty bits so often over looked in this country.
we had a great brunch, house brined corned beef tongue, with slow poached local farm egg and greatly executed anson mills white grits with braised kale and bacon. delectable sides such as potato galette and grilled pork belly.
 not to mention the staff was very warm and inviting, they had mentioned tonight is theyre one year anniversary and are offering a "Best of" menu, unfortunatly no room for a six top or we definitly  would have gone back for dinner... i will have to long await my next trip to boston, happy anniversary to the staff of craigie on main

re inventing steak tartare..

Recently i have added steak tartare back on to our menu in the traditional but non traditional way. steak tartare is one of those dishes that people either love it or, they dont even try to like it! my thought was to serve it in a manner that was approachable to all guests. using modern techniques we have upgraded some of the classic elements such as worchestshire, in the form of a thin fettucini per se, avacado using versa whip to make a fluffy like mousse, red onion served in a tomato salasa, caper and jalapeno chips, black truffle, parmesan snow, fried artichoke hearts and waygu strip and tenderloin. and of course warm brioche toast. so classic french meets modern mexican american flavors that everyone loves and knows -- its like eating a tartrare of carne asada taco! come and try it. you be the judge

Check This out.........

be aware of the aromatics in the dining room !!!

i was lucky enough to have chris from mikuni wild harvest drop by yesterday with a monster batch of urbani white truffles from piedmont italy .. the aroma took over my kitchen and persauded me very easily to spend the money and pick some up. although they are a pricey note to pay between 3.80 and 4.50 a gram depending on the size(notice the 453gram beast in the picture) they are well worth the price!!!  unfortunatly i could not afford that "grande" of a truffle so i opted for a smaller one, they will be featured on the menu this weekend.. thanks mikuni.

2009 fresh michigan chestnut season has begun

 Chestnut groves can once again be found throughout the Midwest. Chestnut Growers Inc.(CGI) www.chestnutgrowersinc.com/ is a chestnut growers cooperative of Michigan chestnut farmers who grow, harvest, process and peel their own chestnuts.American-grown chestnuts are a little smaller in size than their European family  members but much fresher and sweeter in flavor.
on our recent fall menu at  Cathouse  we added a roasted young chicken with chanterelle mushrooms, smoked bacon and roasted michigan chestnut tart. we are serving the chestnusts in two preperations. roasted
and cooked sous vide, and also in a puree with sweet confit of garlic. you dont want to miss this.. for recipes contact me at :brian@innovativechefs.com

Anthony Bourdain's Alternate Universe

This should be interesting! I myself a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain is curious to see if too much time on t.v. will change the bad habits and foul mouth of our favorite chef/ tv host .... 

From the creators of No Reservations and the mind of world traveler, chef and best-selling author Anthony Bourdain comes a new animated web series -- Anthony Bourdain's Alternate Universe.

In this fun, new 6-part web series, Tony invites the audience into his twisted imagination, mocking himself and others along the way.

The web series, coming in 2010, promises to deliver some humorous and gritty entertainment. For more, check out Tony’s Blog where the creator himself sheds some light on his Alternate Universe.

Watch a sneak peek of Alternate Universe,

when life deals you lemons, make foie gras - courtesy of jauque bluett

So it’s been some time since my last food entry, but it’s been an eventful month. I’ve found myself in the bowels of Austin, the lower intestine of Las Vegas, and rarely in the comfort of my own home. In the meantime, I’ve lost three year’s worth of music due to a hard drive malfunction and I’m now really, really engaged, ring and all.
That said, I’m going to lay down all my best finds over the last few weeks and hope it all makes sense in the morning:
Caveat: all the best food finds I had in Vegas are due to the extreme kindness of Chef Brian Howard of Bouchon (Thomas Keller’s Vegas venture, he’s the only American to hold two joints in this great country that both wield three Michelin stars simultaneously), who I met by chance at B&B Ristorante while I was eating and getting drunk at the bar with some co-workers.
He must have thought I was alright enough, or at least thought I was serious enough about finding something special, he gave me some earnest recommendations: the grilled octopus and the beef cheek ravioli. Both of which were excellent. The grilled octopus was unlike any octopus I’d ever had, not even slightly rubbery (going against everything I’ve ever known about octopus, this was fresh as hell, which was surprising to me coming from a coastal city to a gambling oasis, I was expecting the usual buffet fare), a bit crusty and wonderfully seasoned on the outside. With my nicotine-tinged palate, I’d have to say this was some sort of pseudo-creole seasoning, it had this nice paprika-thyme based redness. The best thing about the dish was the simplicity of the fresh main ingredient and the nice supporting cast of fresh seasoning. This isn’t the powdered shit in your mom’s kitchen, someone actually tasted this shit and made sure it was fresh and good enough for the leading actor, our greco-octo friend.
The beef cheek ravioli almost tasted like organ meat, it was so rich and flavorful. The ravioli pasta was perfectly al dente with a nice, hard cheese melting into it, probably a good stinky parmesan. Not that powdered shit I’m used to, this was nice and oily, hard and cold, beautifully bitter against the savory innards of the ravioli. Just to add here, it was me and two co-workers at the bar getting blistered on the cheapest wine we could get away with ordering in such a place, the other dishes we were passing around were the most retardedly tender lamb chops I’d ever tasted (I gnawed the bones and felt as if I was going to crawl under the porch like a dog ready to die).
The last was a dish I thought was going to be predictable and stupid, something called a “lobster spaghetti”. The only lobster I’d ever had was at Red Lobster twice, once as a drinking grown-up, once as a tender teen, both times I thought, “why am I paying for the pleasure of tasting something that has the texture of a condom that tastes like butter and garlic?” I mean, I love buttah and garlic, but geez… anyway, this was the first time I’d ever tasted capital L Lobster, and it was transcendent. The other wonderful dish was brussel sprouts cooked in an in-house pancetta. Here’s a tip: any vegetable you hated as a child, roast it, toss it in some sort of fatty pork meat (pancetta, lardons, prosciutto, et. al.), and then come see me, see if you don’t like it. Seriously, you don’t love kale? Throw some bacon on that bitch, G.
So I mentioned earlier that I was fortunate enough to meet Chef Brian, and he made my trip to Vegas by personally arranging a night at Bouchon for me and my lady. Here’s a layout of our night’s offerings (sorry Chef if I bastardize them with my crappy descriptions), with descriptions to follow:
1.) Freshly toasted pistachios with a crusty loaf of bread (you might say cibatta or “artisan” bread if you were to bastardize the form, my girl aptly called it “scorpion bread”). In any case, it was perfectly crusty, extraordinarily airy, absolutely popping with air bubbles upon breaking each loaf, it was a waiter’s worst nightmare, whose job it is to crust the workmanlike butcher’s paper tablecloth every time he sees a fleck of crust.
2.) Cold, COLD! moules on ice, some sort of smaller, more delicate variety than I’m used to in H-town. Served with a delicate dijon mustard, it was the kind of taste that you never wanted to swallow, it was beautifully subtle and exquisite. The transition from the bread and fatty euro butter to the mussles, good Lord. Wonderful. Put me on life support and float me down the water log ride in Euro Disney and call it done.
3.) Butternut Squash soup, with julienned apple (gala?) and chopped chive garnish. Usually, something like squash soup in those shit hippy joints either have the consistency of baby food or stringy, undercooked sea-debris. I felt weird getting all fanboy about the chives, but they really tasted more chive-y than any I’d ever had before. The perfectly executed vegetable stock, I believe was the source of this texture, and I’m sneakily suspicious that there was some chicken stock in this mixture, but I think I’m wrong because these mothers are such brilliant, purist perfectionists, they can even pull off a pure veggie dish without plying a guy like me with a marrow-based stock.
4.) Salad Maraichere(?) with blood orange, some delicate form of mandarin orange, and duck foie gras. I’m guessing here, because once I tasted the foie gras, my mind left the shuttle location and wandered off into the desert. Seriously, it was the most beautiful taste of food I’d ever had to that point. If you’ve ever had really good butter and really good gelato, this is some sort of Faustian synthesis. To those of you who are fans of the illegal, there’s a reason our government is trying to do the same to this, it’s so good it could destroy a society. Cruelty aside, this is so, so worth it. Like anything bad is, I mean, if someone needed to make me listen to Springsteen’s “My Hometown” on repeat for sixteen years and then slice me into tiny succulent morsels, I think that’s justifiable on both ends of the deal.
5.) Continuing the chain of eating cruel baby versions of things, I ordered the veal sweetbreads (that’s k-k-k-kidney, folks) seared and covered in bacon, in a miniature roasting pan full of new potatoes, a whole mess of beautiful mushrooms (hedgehog, oyster, etc.), a beautiful veal stock glaze, some pearl onions, and a display of all other things baby in vegetable form. It was so rich it seriously made me gag with how amazingly flavorful it was, at this point I basically began weeping like a small child, seeing color, having fever dreams, which lasted all night. Seriously, I felt like I’d taken really, really strong hallucinogenics, and that I was going to die very, very soon. Now I know why rich people do this. I felt like going on a crying jag.
6.) Just when I thought I was going to crawl under the table and die, our guy brought us a trio of desserts: a pot de creme, which was flavored with espresso, it killed. This badass baker accompanied the creme with what we call biscochitos down in NM, aka cinammon infused sugar/butter cookies to those of you elsewhere. The second dessert was a trio of tiny, beautiful lava cakes, which tasted like something out of baby Jesus’s easy-bake oven, each topped by a different flavor of home-made ice cream: pistachio, vanilla (real bean, bitches), and chocolate (near O.D.). Last of all was a cheese I was too insane-o to remember, but it was served with a reprisal of blood oranges, a beautiful flashback, and some of those beautiful gala-esque apple slices, arranged in a statuesque formation, a recherches geisha’s fan, atop a bed of sticky and lovely tasting honeycomb. I felt like doing coke off of Sartre’s ass at this point.

not safe for work... disgusting , but filmed in my home town

this is a must for any book shelf

“David Chang is magical–that’s why it’s so difficult to explain what he does. I can only tell you that you need to experience his cooking; it will move you deeply. He is a chef of prodigious talent–and also a great guy.”
—Ferran Adrià

“The breathless hype is true. His food is as good and as exciting as everyone says it is. David Chang has opened up a new direction in dining and cooking. With his troika of Momofukus, he changed the whole game. Scary-smart, funny, and ambitious, the wildly creative Chang is the guy all chefs have got to measure themselves by these days.”
—Anthony Bourdain

“As a food professional I am always on the look out for the new, the different, and the delicious. It was with great pleasure that one day I tasted David Chang’s pork buns at Momofuku. Since then, I have sampled almost all of his delectable creations and I am so pleased that I finally have a book of recipes that will allow me to try to emulate them at home.”
—Martha Stewart

HOT DOUGS

On my recent trip to Chicago, i searched out the best hot dog and sausage in the city. About 20 minutes from the downtown area you'll find Hot Doug's.

3324 North California, Chicago, IL 60618 Phone: (773) 279-9550

some of the best sausages ive ever tasted,  this is not your average dirty water hot dog. this is the best chicago has to offer ... duck sausage with foie gras, sauternes, truffle aioli and sel gris... white wine rabbit with whole grain mustard and tripple cream brie and of course The Dog, your classic chicago dog........ the possibilities are endless and dont forget the duck fat french fries, only on saturday though. plan on waiting outside inline for 30 minutes, but trust me as they say " there are no two finer words in the english language than encased meats"

THE FOOD MOSAIC

through the next year i will post random food mosaics, it is a test to see how many times a particular ingredient will be used more than once as a focal point or main ingredient. im one to believe i do not have favorites, lets see at the end of the year.