IDEAS IN FOOD

Woodberry Kitchen

On Monday, June 2, we will be cooking a dinner down at Woodberry Kitchen in Baltimore with Spike Gjerde and his team.  We met Spike through our cooking classes and were introduced to his passionate approach to cooking.  In fact, his mindset is contagious.  When he asked if we would be interested in cooking a dinner with him the only possible answer was yes.  We had to ask one favor: if he would allow us into his fold of local purveyors and providers.  He was more than willing and he just sent us a list of ingredients from his tried and true list of suppliers.  The list will be the inspiration, the starting point for the dinner menu.  Now begins the conversation, the development of ideas and the refinement of thoughts.  There are seats available for this dinner, so if you are in the area give Woodberry Kitchen a call to grab a seat.

Yes, we will share the initial list.  These are Spike's notes to us:

WK current sourcing

Asparagus…should be plentiful through mid-June, comes ungraded from the farm so we    get everything from pencil-thin to jumbo.
Strawberries…just starting, should be abundant for several weeks
Rhubarb…I know you love it… We are getting beautiful rhubarb from several farms
Stinging nettles…good now but wrapping up as they start to flower
Ramps…about finished
Dandelion…good now, and should continue, including red-stemmed and catalogna    puntarelle
Spinach…we get young flat leaf from one farm and over-wintered old school stem    spinach from another
Arugula…still mostly hot house (“baby”)
Chard…beautiful young chard from PA. Bunched (mature) chard soon
Spring garlic…scallion-like young hard neck
Leeks…are looking good
Most herbs…have you ever worked with stevia? We also get lovage from my dad.
Mushrooms…organic royal trumpet, beech, and crimini, and we found a couple of morels
    in the park…
Jerusalem artichokes…are about the only root we have right now, except for…
Sassafras…neolithic Dr. Pepper from a farmer with a back hoe and too much time on his    hands

Rockfish (striped bass to you)…limited right now, small fish (5 to 8 lb) should be    available soon
Oysters…we get them from growers all over the Chesapeake, from sweet to mildly briny
Soft crabs…direct from John Walton in Tilgman Island…we can usually get them, but    we never know what size
Chesapeake Bay crab meat…the season is off to a rocky start, but should be available…
Shrimp…we get incredible fresh head on shrimp three times a week from Marvesta    shrimp farm in Easton. Size somewhat limited right now, but we can ask them to    grow us some big ones…
Fluke…caught near Ocean City…mediums are 1-2 lb
Also nice littleneck clams from one of our oyster guys…

Beef…local, pastured, natural beef from Roseda, hung for 3 weeks and delivered fresh to    us,  including hanger, skirt, flat iron, chuck, rib-eye, strip, & tenderloin
Bison…they only slaughter once a month so it is usually frozen
Chicken, eggs, pork…all of it, in any quantity, from local farms, maybe suckling pig?
Lamb…limited slaughter, so they build up product over several weeks in freezer
Dairy…grass fed milk and cream from PA

Drinks of all kinds will be paired with the menu.

May 17, 2008

The list shaped itself up into a tasty menu.  The winner of the evening was the softshell crab, the buttermilk dish was a close second.  For me, I was ecstatic about the gonzo zucchini. 

Parsnip Ice Cream
sake cured steelhead roe, lilac, nigella puree

Island Creek Oyster
grapefruit-yogurt consomme, olive oil

Crispy Chicken
spring and black garlic

Onsen Egg
prima donna gouda, gonzo zucchini,
opal basil

Braised Morel Mushrooms
vadouvan broth, stinging nettles

Rainbow Trout
fava beans, Cabot cloth bound cheddar

Softshell Crab
wood sorrel, melon terrine

Duck
ramp leaves, cherry mustard, tender turnips

Pork Belly Chop
fingerling potato puree, fiddlehead ferns

Gorgonzola Cremifacto
strawberries, smoked balsamic vinegar, tarragon

Buttermilk
lovage, rhubarb

Chocolate
tangerine

The Pleasures and Difficulties with Lists

ramps
stinging nettles
wild garlic
young garlic
black garlic
rainbow trout
chicken
duck breast
pork belly chops
parsnip ice cream
nigella puree
morels
fava beans
wood sorrel
rhubarb
fingerling potatoes
turnips
sake cured steelhead roe
fiddleheads
small shallots
goat cheese sheets
pullet eggs

We are in the middle of preparing a 12 course dinner and this is our list.  We have yet to visit the fish store, so the list will grow.  We have a number of ideas and directions where we may take these ingredients, although at the moment the list provides stimulus for thought.  We may mentally arrange and combine ingredients, thinking about tastes and textures, editing and re-writing.  These are the benefits of a list.  They allow you to see the elements and allow our own experiences and the tastes of the ingredients dictate the direction of our assemblage. 

The difficulty of the list is making cuts.  What will not be used?  What idea needs refinement?  What did not come together the way it was imagined?  How may we get to the essence of an idea?  Where are we going with these ingredients?


Still, without these eliminations, these difficult and necessary edits, the list would grow uncontrollably and there would be utter chaos and confusion in our cooking.

An Orb

I was struck by this beautifully shaped salt sphere while we were walking through the farmers market the other day.  I had not seen perfectly round pieces of salt before.  We have worked with blocks and chunks, though there is just something about a perfectly round piece of salt that appeals to my senses.  My first thought for the salt sphere was to use it for a striking presentation of salt grated table side.  I hope other people are equally excited about perfect shapes created from irregularly shaped objects and ingredients.  A round ball of salt is unexpected.  I like that.

While our first idea is interesting, I am wondering about other uses.  Actually, Aki's first idea was not to buy a round piece of salt when an irregular shaped block would do.  She wondered what the point was in having a perfectly shaped piece if I was just going to file it down into something irregular in the process of its use. That is why I am looking for other ways to utilize this orb of Himalayan salt.

Unsurprisingly I was less enamored by the sphere. I found the jagged chunks on the table with their craggy edges and irregular veins more appealing than the smoothly polished orb. Certainly there is room for both kinds of salt in our pantry. On this day I was more struck by Alex's pleasure and fascination than I was by the salt itself. I'm sure he'll find a way to put it to good use.

Lilacs, Parsnips and Allium

With the trees and flowers in full bloom there is a bounty of olfactory inspiration all around.  The aroma of lilacs continues to turn my head as I walk around our neighborhood.  In fact, the green market today was redolent with the fragrances of lilac and allium.  With all the bounty available, it is no wonder then that we returned home with bags of wild garlic, young garlic, ramps, chives and shallots.  I was also fixated on the aroma of the beautiful lilacs we smelled and then saw at various flower vendors around the park.

My first question about lilacs was about their edibility.  If these star perfumers were inedible I would need to rethink my ideas.  As it turned out lilacs are edible and their flowers are often candied and used in wine making.  While the lilac flowers do contain a touch of bitterness, the overall scent is sweet and enticing.  The lilac's aroma immediately had me thinking of parsnips.  The heady sweetness of parsnips seemed to be an ideal partner to the floral notes of the lilac.  With the seasonal proximity of the young allium and the lilacs and their arrival in our kitchen today, the three elements came together.  Sort of.

We choose to use a puree of nigella seeds as a complex onion note in our combination of ingredients.  The lilac provided aroma to the dish.  The reason our dish needed an aroma boost was because we were serving it cold, ice cream cold.  We paired the aroma of the fresh lilacs with a parsnip ice cream and the nigella seed puree.  We added a single lilac blossom since its overall role was to perfume the dish and to tie the other two ingredients together. It is an impromptu and tasty expression of a gorgeous spring morning.

Lunch at Wd-50

If you were afraid to go down to Clinton Street after dark, fear no more.  Wylie is serving lunch.  From the on-line menu it appears he is weaving a few creations from the past into his repertoire of new and evolving dishes.  I cannot wait to pop in during daylight hours, truly my favorite time to dine.

Creative Think

Do you know A Whack on the Side of the Head?

Just recently I found out that Roger von Oech has revised this ground breaking work and also he has a blog which acts as an open voice and interactive companion piece to the ideas in the book and a continued look at creativity and ways to spark, breakthrough, understand, appreciate and uncover new thoughts.

What is equally exciting is that the "whacks" resonate differently with individuals.  The use of approachable stories and often taken for granted questions and their assumed answers helps to clear the path to an oasis of creative thinking.

Here is the post which motivated me to write this morning.

Nigella Sativa

Otherwise known as kalonji or black onion seeds, these tiny beauties are the product of a flowering herb plant that is native to southwest Asia. The seeds and oil from this plant are often utilized in homeopathic medicine to treat a wide range of ailments from indigestion and intestinal disorders to muscle aches, skin inflammations and dandruff. The seeds are triangular in shape and pungent in aroma with a savory, slightly bitter flavor that is reminiscent of dehydrated onions.

Here we have pressure cooked them for fifty minutes to tenderize them and remove some of their bitter backbone.  The result of the pressure cooking produced a tender seed which still has its bold  allium flavor along with notes of pine and citrus.  The tenderized version of Nigella Sativa opens up a number of possibilities from flavoring breads to making making a puree to using in a relish of grapefruit and celery leaves.

Time and a few tests will begin to allow us to uncover a few more thoughts and uses.