Thanksgiving Day Poussin

My favorite part of Thanksgiving dinner is the mixture of stuffing, cranberry sauce, and gravy. You can keep the turkey. That is the inspiration for this dish....................

Poussin cooked under a brick with sausage stuffing, yam, chanterelle mushroom, cranberry, and pan gravy

Heart of Palm and Beet Salad

This salad sells like crazy!

The beets are roasted in the wood fired oven in a salt shell. I use the trim from the HOP and the juice from segmenting the satsumas to make the panna cotta. The paint is just a puree of whole satsumas, a little pinch of xanthum, and olive oil.

The close ups and skyline shots of this dish are my favorite. The last pic is from a higher elevation that mimics a guests visual angle.



Family Style Food

For a change of pace I did some family style platters for this weeks photo shoot.

Soy Braised Chicken, Cabbage, Shitakes with Rice

Roasted Sand Sole and Broccolini

Sunchoke Salad with Apples, Radish, Brown Butter and Hazelnut Vin

Pacific Sea Slug (Snail)

I use a local seafood purveyor who personally drives to the docks and meets his fishermen as they come in. He picks out the nicest line caught fish and that's what he sells. From time to time he will also pick up all sorts of interesting by-catch like this sea slug (also called sea snail, but has no shell).

I took the pics below with my phone after I lightly poached them. In their raw form they look like a mass of gelatinnous slime.

Its a little counter intuitive compared to land snails but the tube like mouth part is delicious while the foot is horribly chewy. They are tasty enough that I would consider serving them in the right situation..................

 

Duck w/ Roasted Carrots

Did a tasting for some media people. This is a Iphone picture of the duck dish I served.

Seared duck breast, heirloom carrots roasted in duck fat, roasted shallot puree, cocoa nib granola, dandelion shoots. The jus (not pictured) had cocoa powder and banyuls vin in it. I like the dish because of it's simplicity and the balance of bitterness, sweetness, and wood roasted flavors