Next: Hollywood

With every new menu concept the people at Next are challenging themselves.  Sometimes within the strictest box they can find such as The French Laundry menu from October 28, 1996.  Sometimes it's within a specific style of food such as Ancient Rome or Modern Chinese.  Other times they challenge themselves with a complete abstract idea such as Childhood or with the current iteration, Hollywood. 

With this menu the chefs wanted to be inspired by the movies.  Some of the courses were the chef's recreations of dishes made famous within movies and sometimes the courses were inspired by the movie as a whole.

The initial table setting, had a script written as though the restaurant was a scene in a movie. 

The opening course was inspired by the iconic "Gone with the Wind"  this is a film reel used as a plate with a single bite of caviar, champagne gel and an edible paper with the word "damn" on it.  The word is from the famous line from the movie "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

No movie experience is complete with out popcorn.  This is a fancified version of it.  Popcorn that is dusted with fennel pollen and anise seed and then there is an ear of roasted baby corn wrapped in guanciale and topped with celery and meyer lemon hollandaise.  Simply amazing.

The next three bites were inspired by the lunch scene in "The Breakfast Club"  The drink was actually a watermelon gazpacho that was drizzled with Allison's pixie stick, in this case it was an oil concoction.  The sushi looking bite is inspired by Claire bringing sushi to the lunch.  The restaurant made a morel mushroom nigiri.  Then finally, the crustless sandwich made famous by Brian.  The restaurant took this up a notch.  The bread is actually aerated cheese and the inside is the classic BLT.

Next we go back to the all time classics with "The Wizard of Oz" and a dish inspired by the yellow brick road.  The sauce is a golden raisin sauce with Amarillo for a little bit of spice then topped with roasted romanseco and broccoli and a few small pieces of white anchovies and a smoked yogurt sauce.  Another home run from Jenner Tomaska and his team.

Notice that we had our first scene change.  The black table cloth was removed to show the table top covered in red foil.  The two bites that followed were inspired by "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."  The restaurant bough actual portholes for a real ship and plated the first bite which was a scallop cracker topped with passion fruit and other sea vegetation. The second course is a roasted octopus fermented black bean, pear, peanuts and oregano foam.

We move back into more modern movies with this one inspired by the mosquito trapped in amber used to fill in the dna of the dinosaurs in "Jurrasic Park"  This rye bread topped with a madeira gel.  This bite was ok, some of the flavors were a little off putting.

The next few bites were perfect for the inner nerd in all of us.  This is the "Star Wars" course.  The plate were toy guns that were painted to look like Han Solo's blaster, and I shit you not these guns made noises if you pulled the trigger.  Needless to say lots of half drunken photos were taken of my other dining companions posing with the guns.  Anyway, Jabba the Hut's favorite food in the movie is frogs.  The course is a fried frog fritter served on a nasturtium leaf.  The whole things is edible similar to a taco.  I loved loved loved this dish.

"Blade Runner" time.  The plate is an LED light that changed colors periodically.  On the servicing dish is home made ramen wrapped around roasted duck.  What an incredible bite, absolutely delicious.

The second and final scene change.  The foil was ripped away to reveal a table top wrapped in movie posters and then sealed.  Each table had different posters, ours had Clueless, Godzilla and several others. 

The next bite takes us from "Blade Runner" into a kids movie "Ratatouille"  As cliched as this course is, the team at Next would be remiss if they hadn't done it.  It's a ratatouille served on a tomato biyaldi whieh uses a metal mouse trap as a a plate.  This dish was a delicious as it was cute.

And we bounce right back into the not exactly family friendly realm with "The Godfather"  The course was a savory cannoli with a picture of a gun underneath evoking the line "Leave the gun, take the cannoli."

This course wasn't a specific movie, but a genre, horror.  The left side of the plate was smoked pork neck which tasted like the best pulled pork you've ever had.  The second component was spherified beet juice that was covered in edible silver leaf that when your pierced it acted like blood.  This was a crowd favorite of the night.  Everyone at the table loved it.  I'd definitely rank it as one of the better dishes I've had in my 17 trips to Next.

The next course was inspired by the Big Kahuna Burger from "Pulp Fiction."  The onion ring was made out of heart of palm.  The beef portion on the inside was cherry smoked and roasted A-5 Wagyu Beef braised in hawaiian flavors and wrapped in shiso and dressed with sesame seeds.  A-5 wagyu is the creme de la creme of beef in the world going for well over $100/pound retail. 

Next always employs a transitional course to get you from the last and heaviest savory course into the deserts.  This course was inspired by "Honey I Shrunk the Kids"  In addition to the actual plate they bring out a magnify glass that looks exactly like the Pixar logo.  The actual food was chamomile, foie gras and freeze dried strawberries.

The first desert was from "Marie Antoinette"  There were entirely too many components to remember on this dish but there was cotton candy involved.

The final bites were "Mary Poppins" and a spoonful of sugar which involved a vintage absinthe spoon and fernet, tons of black licorice flavors.  The chocolates include inspirations from "Forest Gump" life is like a box of chocolates.  The chocolates themselves drew inspiration from "Some Like it Hot"  "The Goonies"  and "The Nutty Professor" 

Next always does a great job, but the whimsy and playfulness of this menu really put it over the top.  I can not wait to head back in October for the primo menu of the year and the World's 50 Best menu which will be collaborations with a number of the chefs with restaurants on the World's 50 Best list.  It's going to be epic. 

Next: Ancient Rome

So here we go, my sixth year of Next.  I can't believe that it's been that long, in fact by complete happenstance this meal was five years to the day from my first meal there back in 2012. 

The theme for this meal was Ancient Rome with dishes inspired by the writings of Apicius and Roman cook that published his receipes in the 4th or 5th century AD. 

The initial plate setting, with some components of the first course as well as the opening cocktail for the second course.

There was a big tableside production of this and the waiter indicated that it was their chemistry experiment.  This started out with a concoction of red cabbage juice which apparently is a good natural indicator of acids and bases.  Red cabbage is naturally acidic which is why it's purple.  The liquid was filtered through the rose petals, cinnamon and other items you see in the middle of the first picture.  These items act as a filter and remove a lot of the acidity in the cabbage.  Then a mixture of mead, armagnac and several other things are added and you get this;

The first two savory courses were salads two ways.  On the right is a prepared salad of honey, cabbage, apple and grape.  On the right is a raw salad of baby radish and other herbs with a melon vinaigrette.  Two very solid bites to get the meal going.

The next two bites.  On the wheat stalk is an oyster suspended in a pomegranate aspic over a thin little pancake.  The other dish is a mussel rillette with safron and lardo.  They oyster was delicious sweet and interesting.  The mussel was flat, gritty and nasty.

The fifth course was presented in a pile of rose petals.  This is a rose petal pastry almost with a puree of white asparagus and rosemary inside.  Another very fantastic early bite.

Now it was time to really have some fun.  In the bowl is a puree of beets and thyme.  Suspended over the bowl on the sword, yes I said sword, is a chunk of black truffle wrapped in crispy chicken skin.  Once this is on the table another waiter comes out and pours in a charred beet consomme.  We ate the black truffle first and then drank the soup out of the bowl.  An absolute homerun of a dish.

This was a dish that highlighted Roman preservation techniques.  The protein of the dish is a pickled striped bass served with a smoked mascarpone cheese, this was topped with crispy chick peas, fried enoki mushrooms and chickpea foam.  This was a very good dish with lots of fun textures.

This was by far the biggest "trick" of the night.  They brought out this smoking hot clay pot that had coals, wheat and some other stuff in it with a dough ball.  This was then covered and they baked bread table side to be served along a later course.

We now enter a dish that highlights Roman oppulance.  On the left is a poached prawn tail that is layered with thinly sliced olives.  On the right is a shrimp flavored creme fraiche topped with greens and walnuts.  The prawn tail was amazing, the salad was good but nothing incredibly memorable.

This course is pickled red cabbage leaves, over top of a foam (possibly butternut squash) served over top of leeks.  Again, not a ton memorable about this course except that it was highly acidic in a very good way since I do love vinegar.

At this point the bread was cooked and they cut it using the string it was wrapped in.  It was seasoned with beef fat, poppy seeds and fennel seeds.

One of the best plates of the night and probably the best tasting dish.  This is a pan roasted half quail that was lovingly stuffed with all of the innards of the bird.  This was served over lovage which is an herbaceous plant similar to parsley. 

I believe this dish was designed to mimick foraging.  This is a perfectly cooked piece of venison and then the plate is sprinkled with chestnuts.  Love love love venison so naturally I loved this dish.

This was the final savory course that was centered around oxtail.  Oxtail is one of those proteins that I don't cook nearly enough.  It's unique enough to satisfy the foodie in me, when cooked right it has the texture of pot roast but has so much more flavor, and it's easy to cook and cheap.  What's not to love.  This one was served with turnips, horseradish and nasturtium as garnish and served in a hot bowl of aromatic salt that included cinnamon and cloves.  This was a very nice was to end the meal.

Meals like this always include a transitional course to take you from the last usually very heavy final savory course to desert.  This version is artichoke, Carob and citrus.  I don't have much thought on how this one tasted, but I do remember reading a blurb online that artichoke was chosen for this dish because some of the natural things in artichoke act as natural palate cleansers

The first of two deserts, this is goat cheese, honey and fennel.

The final few bites of the night in another ode to how Romans feasted.  No we did not eat this entire bowl.  In the foreground is an apricot taffy.  On top of the apple in the background is an apple semifreddo and in the the that you can't really sea is a hazelnut bite.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this meal, though I will say that at times I had a hard time hearing the staff describe the dishes which is why some of my descriptions were a bit short.  But overall, a very solid way to start the year out.  I will be back in July for the Hollywood theme in which the restaurant will take inspiration from food scenes in the movies.  Can't wait. 

Linguica and Red ONion Marmalade Crostini

As part of the first chapter of this book there are a lot of recipes for various crostinis and bruschettas.  Based on my research there is very little difference between the two so I tend to treat them the same.  Basically grilled or toasted bread with whatever toppings that you like. 

This particular one has a linguica sausages and red onion marmalade. 

Linguica is a spicy Portugese sausage that tends to be very difficult to come by in the various meat markets locally, so I decided to make my own. 

The sausage is a mixture of pork butt, paprika, garlic, salt, red wine, sugar, white and black pepper, oregano and cayenne pepper.  I ground all the ingredients together in the grinder attachment to my kitchenaid and then stuffed it into a natural hog casing I bough off of amazon.  From there I smoked it gently on my smoker to impart a bit of extra flavor.

The red onion marmalade included red onions, naturally, port wine, sugar  which reduced down until it was basically a chunky syrup.

From there I grilled up the sausage over direct heat to cook the sausage through and then toasted up the bread as well.  The bread was coated with the red onion and then topped with sausage slices and plated. 

Overall, this dish was good, but I will say that the sausage ended up a little dry for my tastes.  I'm not sure if the sausage was cooked more than I thought when I smoked them, but its hard to tell.

Stuffed Olives

The first chapter of this book is all appetizers and sharable plates so everything I'm making are side dishes, but it doesn't make them any less delicious.  For this one I pan seared off a pork chop as the main part of dinner and then fried up these stuffed olives for the side. 

Overall a very simple dish, large olives that I pitted and then stuffed with a sweet Italian Sausage.  The olives were then battered with flour egg and bread crumbs and then deep fried.

These were a great side dish but would also be an awesome bar snack.

A New Chapter

The blog had pretty well descended into my reviews of a single restaurant, Next.  Last night I began to cook my way through a new cookbook and on a whim I decided to take a photo and begin to document the things I cook from it.

The book is Simple Italian Food Recipes from my Two Villages by Mario Batali.  I cooked a number of things from this book many years ago when I was much less experienced and had a lot less equipment to work with.

I don't expect this to become a detailed post about each and every dish, at times like this one it'll probably just be a single picture and a few thoughts but I wanted to get some content up here so here it goes.

These are dolmas, stuffed grape leaves.  In this case they are stuffed with a goat cheese and pepper mixture and then tied and grilled and garnished with good balsamic and thyme leaves. 

I was slightly nervous about this dish because the first time I cooked this I thought it was terrible.  The grape leaves were entirely too pungent for my palate at the time.  This time I got dry leaves, I think the first time they may have been pickled.  These still were packed with a funky flavor but seemed to be more mild and were actually really good.

Next: The French Laundy October 28, 1996

I know this menu sounds a little on the very specific side, but there is a very good reason why.  Each and every menu at Next comes with a playbill.  The playbill for this menu tells a very personal story about Grant Achatz.

20 years ago, I was an unemployed cook who had lost his desire and passion for the profession.  I read about The French Laundry in a magazine one day, thought it sounded wonderful, and mailed a letter to Chef Thomas Keller every day for several weeks asking for a job.  Eventually he called and invited me out to Yountville, California.

 My Father and I packed up a car with all of my belongings and drove to Napa Valley.  I arrived there to find a tall cook sweeping the floor early in the morning, I asked him if Chef Keller was in yet.  Of course, that was Chef Keller.  The French Laundry was a very different place with an amazing leader and mentor.

That night something magical happened.  Chef Keller hosted my father and me for dinner.  An incredible act of hospitality, this was, of course, not a formal first day of employment!  Everything about that meal and the generosity shown to us by Chef KEller and The French Laundry team changed the way I viewed being a chef... and pivoted the course of my life. 

May of the dishes presented here are faithful reproductions from that meal.  Others are seasonal favorites that I cooked with Chef Keller during my time at The French Laundry - from 1996 to 2001.  All of these items reflect the core philosophy and attention to detail that has defined The French Landry. 

In preparation for this menu, Chef Thomas Keller welcomed Next Executive Chef Jenner Tomaska into his kitchens to experience The French Laundry magic first hand.  Together, we bring a little bit of Napa Valley to Chicago. 

For me, food is almost always better when its personal.  Now Grant Achatz isn't in the kitchen at Next most nights, but I'm sure his presence is felt deeply by the staff when cooking this meal and I think that is reflected well in the final product.

We started with canapes, three small little appetizers.  The first one is a salmon cornet.  This is a crunch pastry that is filled with red onion creme fraiche then topped with salmon tartare. 

The second bite is a poached shrimp with avocado salsa. 

The third and final canape is a white truffle egg custard that had a black truffle ragout in the bottom.  The item sticking up is a chive chip.  Two very thin slices of potato with a chive in the middle and then baked. 

This is the dish I was most intimidated by all night, oysters and pearls  Oysters are a tough sell for me, and I love caviar in small amounts, but as you can see, there is a gratuitous amount on this dish.  Obviously, we have oysters in this dish.  I don't remember the exact variety but they were from Massachusetts.  The pearls make an appearance in two ways, the golden osetra caviar as well as the based of the dish, sabayon of pearl tapioca.  The team did a fantastic job of cleaning the oysters, no grit at all, and I wouldn't have expected anything less.  The caviar was smooth and balanced, not overly salted like you can get with some caviars. 

The first four courses are all time TFL classics that are on the menu more often than they are off, if the every leave.  The fifth dish started a forray into dishes I was less familiar with.  This a hardened dish of heart of palm, topped with shaved heart of palm, served over the top of date vinaigrette and cilantro oil.  The whole this is topped with a frisee salad.

The genius of Thomas Keller is demonstrated in this dish.  No sauce, no garnishes, nothing to hide behind on this one.  Keller is the man, so he can pull a dish like this off perfectly.  This is a piece of pompano crusted with almonds and brown butter.  When making brown butter, the product takes on this rich caramel nutty flavor that smells ridiculous.

This was a unique place to put the lobster course but it worked well with how this dish is constructed.  Normally, lobster is served with lighter flavors so as to not mask the delicate flavor of the crustacean.  The sauce on this one is a port wine reduction which is then topped with the lobster.  Then, as though, all of that wasn't enough, the whole thing was topped with a slice of seared foie gra.

Now we are onto more game focused dishes.  This one is known and Storey Farms Chicken.  This is a braised chicken breast cooked with the ingredients for a rif on ratatouille. 

This was the final savory course of the evening, pot eu feu.  This is The French Laundry's version of post roast.  This is a braised short rib with par broiled vegetables and then topped with crispy bone marrow.  The other cool thing about this dish, is that the wine poured with this one is a wine in which Thomas Keller has nearly complete control of distribution, in that The French Laundry gets basically everything the vineyard can produce. 

We then moved onto the cheese course; this is a chunk of goat cheese and served with plums.  This is not something I say very often, after 15 meals at next I can probably count on one hand the number of dishes that I truly hated, but this is one of them.  Of the top of my head I can only come up with one other one, but I have to think there are one or two more out there too.

This is the first true sweet dish of the night.  Verjus sorbet with peach butter and mint oil and garnished with a peach chip.

Another all time Keller classic, coffee and doughnuts.  Cinnamon sugar dusted brioche doughnuts served with a cappuccino semifreddo.  I don't like coffee at all, I can't stand the smell of it, nothing.  But this dish was really good.

To close out the evening, we had the mignardises, just little one bite deserts.  On the tray there were concord grape jellies, salted caramel, pistachio nougat and one other bite and then in the bowl was peanut butter chocolate truffles. 

This meal was quite the experience.  The French Laundry has always been on my bucket list, and while I've not gotten out the Napa to eat at the real deal, I do feel like I got a very true representation of what the restaurant is like.