Gnocchi, creamy peas and Bacon

The final of four gnocchis and I might have inadvertently saved the best for last.  This version included pancetta (Italian bacon that is only salt cured, not smoked like American versions), and peas.

 All the stuff you need for the dish.  Gnocchi dough, peas, onions, Parmesan, cream, chicken broth, oil, nutmeg, pancetta and butter.

The crispy pancetta, as much as I love traditional American bacon, there is certainly a time and place for the salty goodness that is pancetta.  This was definitely one of those times.  You can find it  at your friendly deli counter at your local grocery store. 

After the bacon was cooked, I put the butter in the pan and then sauteed the onions until they were translucent. 

Once the onions were cooked, the cream, chicken broth, peas, and bacon went back into the pan to reduce down to make the final sauce.

The mixture has now had some time to reduce, maybe five minutes and is ready for the gnocchi.

While the sauce was finishing I shaped the gnocchi and fried it off in some butter. Oh before this I also boiled it off in some salted water.

I feel like my presentations have really been suffering over the past couple weeks.  But holy crap was this delicious.  I highly recommend that you guys try this one.  If you wan the recipe just let me know. 

Alinea at Home: Sardine, Nicoise Olive, Dried Tomato, Arugula

When I saw this recipe in the Alinea cookbook it looks so simple, so innocent, this bitch was anything but.  Talk about frustrating.  First frustration, nicoise olives.  So these are not easy to source in local stores so I turned to the internet.  Found them easily enough via Amazon.  Turns out the source I found was sold out and it took an additional two weeks for them to come in.  Then the tatami iwashi.  In all my research it turns out that the real deal is nearly impossible to find in the US, so I thought I would try and source what Alinea at Home used but again no such luck.  In fact when I went to the only Asian market in town and told the shopkeeper what I was looking for he looked at me like I was crazy.  So I went to plan C when I was at the store today, canned sardines and rice paper.

 The first step was the nicoise olive cream.  So for all the trouble I went to to get nicoise olives, all I needed was the brine.  Which normally would be fine, because I would just eat the olives.  Big problem, the olives I got are all sorts of awful, almost no olive flavor at all.  The first part to make the cream was to blend 150g of the olive brine with about 3 grams of ultra tex 3 which is a modified starch.  Once those were combined I started on the cream portion.

For the cream, 250 grams of heavy cream got whipped into stiff peaks. 

Once the cream was done, it was folded into the olive mixture and then went into the fridge until I was ready to serve.  I'll be honest, after reading Alinea at Home's post on this I was a bit concerned about how well the cream would set up.  Turned out not to be an issue.

Once the cream was ready this is the rest of the ingredients were easy.  Arugula, sun dried tomatoes, rice paper and canned sardines.  I boiled some water and poured it over the rice paper to make it pliable.  Once that was done I wrapped it around the end of a wooden spoon and deep fried it.  I chopped the sardines and put them on the bottom of the plate. 

This was the final plating.  Awful I know, despite its simplicity this dish was a pain in the ass. 

Next: The Hunt

So I realized recently that this blog is now over 1 year old.  Happy 1st birthday to my little piece of the blogosphere. 

Second, for the second year in a row Next has started the year with the menu that excited me the most.  Last year it was El Bulli, this year The Hunt.  I was definitely more excited about El Bulli and that menu certainly didn't disappoint (you can read my thoughts on it here).  The biggest difference, however, was that this year I have season tickets. So zero stress involved with how I was going to get tables.

The Hunt is a game centered menu concentrating on old school tactics of hunting, gathering and preserving food in times before modern refrigeration.  This menu also celebrated using portions of the animal that, today, are normally thrown away.  My brother, who joined me last night, had an interesting conversation about this concept.  In modern America, foodies are paying out the nose to get the cheapest cuts of meat because its the trendy thing to do.  My sister-in-law, who was not born in the US, has a hard time grasping this because most people around the world eat the offal (innards) because they are a cheap source of protein and they can't afford the steaks, chicken breast and pork chops.  It's an interesting disconnect to say the least.  

The centerpiece for most of the evening.  Yes, that is what I believe to be a real deer skin, and in traditional Next fashion they have a note in the center that describes what the menu was inspired by and the story they intend to tell over the next 2 and a half hours or so.

The first part of the first course which was called Hen of the Woods.  This course is a tribute to foraging.  Maitake Mushrooms (aka Hen of the Woods Mushrooms) are placed inside a glass box with a hot rock, garlic, and rosemary.  You "forage" through the box with a single pronged fork to get your mushroom.  The hot rock has cause the garlic and rosemary to steam and produce a powerful aroma that really helped the course.  The mushroom, honestly, was just a mushroom, not much special there.

This, however, made the first course.  Mushroom consomme, or broth.  Intensely flavored, and a perfect complement to a dish that honestly needed some help. 

In my previous meals at Next, I've been terrible at getting pictures of the drink pairings.  I'm glad I did last night because they were dynamite.  This course and the next course were paired with this; Jean-Yves Peron Cotillon des Dama, Savoie 2010.

Course #2 was called Catch of the Great Lakes.  This was a tribute to early frontiersmen having to preserve food to survive long winters in the northern midwest, in particular Minnesota.  I say Minnesota because the trout on the left is from Lake Superior and the rillette in the mason jar is made from walleye another very common fish in the land of 10,000 lakes. 

This dish consists of Lake Superior trout that has been both hot and cold smoked.  Hot smoking is like what you do with barbecue it actually cooks the meat.  Cold smoking is just getting the fire hot enough to smoke and then adding smoke flavor to the meat.  The trout was freaking delicious.  The walleye rillette was walleye, and then slow poached in milk for sure and most likely some fat.  What you're left with is a spreadable creamy fish flavored mayonnaise basically.  The rillette was spread on the crispy pumpernickle bread on the right hand side.  As a palate cleanser throughout the course there is pickled kohlrabi on the left.   This was another fantastic dish.

This is why I will always do the standard beverage pairing when I go to Next.  We are in one of the nicest restaurants in Chicago and they bring out a drink pairing in a freaking flask.  Is that awesome or what.  In the flask is Chateau du Tariquet VS Classique Bas Armagnac.  Armangac is a version of a French Brandy.  Which makes sense for the next course........

Charcu-tree which is a play on words of Charcuterie.  Which is a french word (get the drink pairing now) for preserving meats.  This course was served on half of a birch log that has been topped with glazed slices of elk antlers.   The five little bites across the plate are first picture, rabbit pate, elk jerky.  Second photo wild boar sausage and venison heart tartar and in the third photo blood sausage. 

When I saw the menu in pictures for the first time, this was the course I was most looking forward to.  Two things I had never had in heart tartar and blood sausage but two things I had heard nothing but good things about and couldn't wait to try.  The heart tartar blew me away, it was flavorful and you had no idea that you were eating an organ until an interesting iron kick on the finish.  The blood sausage was made with rice so it had a lot of texture but definitely not the blood flavor you might expect.  (Please tell me I'm not the only one who has sucked on a little cut you've had on your hand and that everyone knows what blood tastes like.)

More tributes to preservation.  This is called Cellar Aged Carrots and Onions.  The carrots and onions have been preserved in sawdust for 60 days at cellar temperatures.  This removes a lot of the moisture and helps prevent them from rotting over the winter.  The carrot was still delicious, the onion was fried at a very low temperature to just crisp  up the outside and the sauce was a carrot demi-glace which was also delicious.  The one thing that really did not need to be on the plate at all where the preserved carrot tops.  There was minimal flavor and maximum hassle in eating them. 

This was a dish I was looking forward to, but had heard mixed reviews about.  This is called Duck Tongue, Cider and Vinegar.  The top is a scrambled duck egg that has been wrapped in roasted radicchio and topped with sorrel.  On the bottom is puffed and smoked duck tongue maybe served with some puffy rice (don't quote me on that).  The waiter told us that this was kind of a play on bacon and eggs and when everything was eaten together I got some of that.  Overall, I think the dish would have been better off without the radicchio, it's bitterness was just too much for this dish.

I didn't get a picture of it because they didn't leave it on the table but the pairing for the last two courses was a sparkling hard cider called Etienne DuPont Cidre Couche Brut, Normandy 2010.  Apparently, its made from a number of different heirloom apples that are grown in this orchard in Normandy.

The best wine pairing of the night for what was easily the best dish of the night and one of my top three from my last five meals in Chicago.  This is Peique Godella Bierzo 2011.

So we've now left the rustiness of an American hunting camp and entered the oppulance of French Hunting Clubs, except the ingredients on the plate are all American.  This is Sturgeon and Caviar, American Sturgeon because the Russian version is endagered and American Sturgeon caviar which in this case is being specially made for this meal.  This dish was blackout good.  The sturgeon was creamy and cooked perfectly, the caviar was served in a beurre blanc sauce.  This caviar was different than any I've ever had before in that there was no pop as you bit into the eggs.  What a mind-blowingly good dish. 

The wine for the next two courses.  Camille Giroud Santenay 2009.  This was the only red wine of the night and it went really well with the two courses that required a red.

This is Woodcock Jolie.  I've had Woodcock once before and ironically enough this was the only hunted meat on the entire hunt menu.  Woodcock is hunted because it is a strictly a wild game bird.  These were two little roulades of breast stuffed with a forcemeat of wood cock organs.  I don't think they described the sauce on the left.  This whole dish was very delicious.

Here we have 1/3 of the Pressed Squab course.  This plate includes roasted breast, the roasted head which included the brain and a roasted leg as well as a wonton stuffed with organ meat.  The sauce is a blood sauce that is extracted when the carcass was pressed through a large vice grip.  Everything on this plate was fantastic. 

The second third of the pressed squab.  Rolled oatmeal mixed with black truffles and more organ meat which was served over more of the blood sauce.  Again fantastic.

And the most interesting portion of the tree plates.  This is roasted carcass, they tell you to get messy and gnaw on the bones.  It was fun, but a little unnecessary.

This was the only cocktail of the night.  This is Balcones Brimstone, Cynar, Banks.  This included bourbon, tea and was served hot.  This was delicious. 

This is called Fallen Leaves and Kidney.  There was roasted seaweed, parsnip chips, purple cauliflower and some other things which were served over a kidney mustard.  The plate in this case was birch bark.  The restaurant has figured out how to sterilize and wash the bark so it can be continuously used throughout the menu.

Part one of Bison and Bernaise.  They bring out this smokin hot rock in what I'm pretty sure was a cedar box with some rosemary. 

The thinly sliced bison ribeye.  This isn't just any ordinary bison, this bison has been dry aged for 45 days.  Nobody, not even the best steakhouses age their steak that long. 

So you took the bison slices and seared them over the hot rock and then put them in this plate with a melted leek and a spring onion with an onion sauce on the bottom.  This was a fun dish.

And here we are transitioning into desert, the final wine of the night is a hungarian sauterine known as Disznoko Tokaji Aszu 5 Puttonyas Hungary 2005.  This stuff was historically made in Hungary until communism and after the fall of the iron curtain the French came in and bought up the vineyards and started making sauterines (a sweet desert wine).

This is what I thought would be one of the scarier dishes on the menu this is called Marrow Brulee.  Turns out that this isn't pure bone marrow its a custard that has had bone marrow included.  Ultimately I was disappointed in this dish because there was hardly any custard in there.  It definitely left me wanting more.

The first true desert course.  This is called Maris Otter.  Maris Otter is a hard hulled barley which the restaurant lets steep in water overnight to get Maris Otter flavored water.  The water is then used to cook more traditional pearl barley to make a porridge.  It was good on its own, but taken to a new level when the following ingredients were added.

From the left to right, english toffee, mint and basil, pecans coated in vanilla sugar, tart cherries and I don't remember what the last one was.  They call this part of the dish Choose your own adventure.

The final dish, they bring this tray of "snow" they pour caramel over ice and then you twirl the caramel on the end of a maple branch and eat it like a lollipop.  This course was inspired by the sugarshacks in Quebec. 

This meal did not disappoint me in the least.  I had so much fun at this meal, I'm starting to look forward to the rest of the meals this year. 

Sausage Arrabita Gnocchi

So this is the second of four gnocchi dishes that are on the docket here pretty soon.  I'm so glad I've figured out how to make gnocchi properly, light, but substantive.  Basically, you know you're eating what is essentially a pasta but it doesn't set up in your stomach like a brick and you can enjoy the other stuff in the dish.

 So this is everything you need.  Onions, tomatoes, red pepper flakes, yellow pepper, sweet italian sausage, garlic, parmesan, basil, potato dough, olive oil, salt, pepper and white wine.  The dough is really simple and I made it the last time I had gnocchi.  The dough consists entirely of potato, flour and egg.

 I browned off the sausage in some olive oil.

 Once the sausage was brown, the onions, garlic and yellow pepper went in for a few minutes until the veggies were cooked.  Then the halved tomatoes went in.  This mixture sat until the gnocchi was ready.

I didn't get a picture of it but I rolled out the dough into little logs and cut the little pillows (the english translation for gnocchi) and t hen boiled them off in some salted water.

The cooked gnocchi.  Don't they sort of look like little pillows?

Now that the gnocchi was boiled, I sauteed them off in some butter to crisp up the outside.

I combined the gnocchi with the sausage mixture which had since had basil added to it and then the whole mixture was topped with some shaved parmesan.

Chili Chicken Skewers with Mashed Sweet Potatoes

Dear God, I'm sorry readers it's been two weeks since my last post.  Life has just been insane, and even though I've been cooking, blogging about it has been way in the back of my mind.  So lets hit the reboot button yet again.  This is a dish I made last night, it's a chicken breast that was coated with a chili mixture and served along side some mashed sweet potatoes. 

The first step was to make the pesto dipping sauce.  This consisted of cilantro, parsley, garlic, lime juice, peanuts instead of the traditional pine nuts and olive oil.

The whole mixture buzzed around in a food processor until this was the result.

 Next up was the chicken.  The rub included chili powder, cayenne, salt, pepper and brown sugar.

I coated the chicken with the rub and then sauteed them off in a bit  of olive oil.

 The final step was the mashed sweet potatoes.  This version is a little unusual since it included bananas.  I peeled the sweet potato and boiled it until it was cooked, I then added the banana, chopped jalapeno and orange juice until it looked like the picture below.

This was the final plate.  Unfortunately, the chicken was a bit chewy and the mashed potatoes a little too sweet which made the dish nearly inedible.  The pesto, however, was awesome.