The dessert for this menu came from what I think to be the most popular potato dessert in the United States... Wendy's "Frosty and Fries"
November 23, 2010
Blightless
November 10, 2010
Magic Shrooms

It isn't often that fungi find their way into my dessert palate, and even less frequent that they would be the centerpiece. While I find them to be a fun and distinctive flavor, it's usually just too weird for most diners to handle. So our "Mycologists Dream" menu put me in a corner and told me to mind my manners… or when you father comes home.

The next dessert was one that I have been waiting to do for a long time, a very long time. MONKEY BREAD. My mom used to make this pull-a-part cinnamon roll variation for my siblings and I when we were small, and if I recall correctly she did it in a plastic bunt pan in the microwave. I still recall diving my dirty little hands into the center of the "bread" to snatch out the pieces that where the most under cooked. Looking across the table to see my sister dropping hers down the her shirt. Resulting in a sticky sugar line right down the front of
Thanks to Claire Schneyman for the shroom pics!
October 31, 2010

It is far too often I find titles and positions in the food industry forcing chefs to pigeon hole themselves. Many think a given definition of position also gives a set list of ingredients in which to chose from, and a set stack of techniques from which to draw. Why is this? What makes a Chef a chef?
Is a chef one who produces course after course of umami rich mouth watering food only to toss the end of the game to the pastry chef? Why would she or he even need to think of the end of the meal, it's only the last thing the guest remembers. Pastry chefs are certainly the ones who move at a more methodical pace and produce desserts... right? Sometimes I find these ideals that we ourselves place upon our profession so frustrating. Most of us spend 14 hours under artificial lighting doing the same thing over and over, and many refuse to see a different prospective. Maybe it is the fear of change, or the idea of not following the rules or maybe it's not what the guest wants. Whatever our reason for staying on one side of line, it makes me realize one thing, Tunnel vision sucks.
I am not pushing for some drastic and daring collision of sweet and savory. Just an appreciation for the what other chefs (no matter pastry or savory) are doing every day. I have always thought that the savory side could benefit from the forethought that goes into a pastry menu. In the same sense most of us pastry chefs would do well to taste more often and be spontaneous every once in a while.
Random note… I sat down to type about mushrooms, and "Happy In the Kitchen" was next to the computer. A great example of an all encompassing culinary mind, and personal culinary hero, Michel Richard.
October 18, 2010
Pot

There is a unique driving force behind many of America's great kitchens. It isn't passion or obsession. It's not based on art or craft, and it has nothing to do with our grandmothers standing in front of a stove on thanksgiving. It has everything to do with coffee.
Gallon after gallon of this caffeinated life giving elixir is consumed by cooks and chefs to ensure that the first few hours of a 14 hour day are productive, and the last few hours of the day stay productive. I'm not talking the "cup of joe" when we get to work, it's nothing for a cook to consume a pot by themselves... in the first half of their day. I will gladly and proudly admit to an addiction to this energy crutch, and will continue to support it. Now don't tell me its not good for me. Without it most people wouldn't have any thing to do on a Saturday night.
Coffee, mmm......
October 14, 2010
To the Point
Autumn Sketchbook
Pre-dessert: Goat Yogurt Panna Cotta, Caramelized Holmquist Hazelnuts, Elephant Heart Plum.
This dessert was drawn from the plum and how damn pretty the puree was. Sometimes when someone goes to the trouble of growing something well, I feel it best to just present it with humility.
Dessert: Roasted Eggplant and Prune Cake, Bartlett Pear Sorbet, Pear Fritter, Rosemary Caramel Sauce
Playing with temperatures is something we as pastry chefs love to do, and that's exactly what I did here. Warm cake and fritter with frosty sorbet. The eggplant is an iconic summer ingredient and paired up with the dried plum, I thought it fit the idea of an Indian Summer quite nicely.
Autumn Sketchbook
Pre-Dessert: "Green Apple & Garden Sorrel" Sorbet, Foam, Salad, Chip, with a touch of Marigold
Bold, bright, straight forward, easy to understand, and dynamic. My favorite characteristics rolled into one. Once asked to describe my style of desserts I responded, "Simplicity through complexity". This dessert might finally back that up.
Dessert: Roasted and Glazed Sugar Pie Pumpkin, Butter Fried Cedar Bough Ice Cream, Butterscotch Pudding, Prosciutto Chips, and Virgin Pumpkin Oil
Frying cedar boughs in butter to release their aroma is something I learned while cooking salmon while I was camping. It seemed to tone down the resin and release a floral aroma. The pumpkins were from our farm and perfect. I am so damn tired of pumpkin tasting like clove, ginger, and cinnamon. So we went a different route, roasting, chilling, portioning, and glazing with brown sugar and butter to order (although the one in the picture is caramelised with a blow torch, we later changed it to glazing in a pan). I ate a couple pieces of pumpkin each night, and yes nostalgia was there.
I promise to be more indepth with the next menu, we are making two desserts based on mushroom for Christ sake.
September 13, 2010
Bowerman at the BBQ
Watermelon and Popsicles are the summertime treats that I remember fondly. Watermelon straight from Dad's garden as sweet and natural as summer can taste. In the other corner was the popsicles... straight out of a plastic sleeve with more artificial flavor and color than one ever needs. Its funny how two dramatically different foods can evoke the same thought and emotion. So for our menu I decided on Lemon Verbena & Sweet Tea Popsicles with White Balsamic Dressed Watermelon.
Part two of the desserts is something fun that we have been playing around with in different forms...Waffles! Fresh peaches and waffles happen to be a guilty pleasure of mine, so it was only natural to put them on the menu so that I could eat the scraps. A couple of weeks before this menu we made some brioche waffles that were served warm with Foie Gras Torchon, and peaches. That dish gave a whole new meaning to my already existing obsession. This tim
August 24, 2010
Century
Now that I have crammed over a decade of my life into seven sentences, I will get to the point. To this point in my career the task of deciding the "100 mile" dinner menu, was one of the most difficult culinary specific jobs I have ever experienced. In all other menu planning ventures, I have gone in with the mind set of "What can we do?". This same question would become far more restrictive than ever, because most of the answers were "Nope, we can't do that".
Bread service had to be based on wild yeast only or unleavened breads all together. Also the flour we sourced had to be grown and milled with the 100 mile radius. The flour we used for the entire menu was from Nash's Organic Farm on the Olympic Peninsula. We went with a hard red wheat and a soft pastry flour for our menu. The hard red was used for one of our sourdoughs and was flat out delicious. The entire germ was ground into the flour which imparted a natural sweetness that makes me want a slice while typing.
Gluten free
Dessert number two found me breaking a promise that I had made to myself years ago. I promised that I would never have cake and butter cream on any of my menus, clearly I forgot how good baked goods with butter on them were. Though I would like to think that this one was no shortcut, as at this point all leavening agents were out the window. I wanted to make a cake that had some substance, some density, but that is a problem with just whipped whites. They do not have the strength to hold up to the shredded sugar beet and zucchini I wanted to use. So I thought and thought. Then went home and had a drink on my couch, and thought some more.
I decided to use a pate de bombe, a whipped whole egg mixture cooked and fortified with hot sugar. I figured the structure that the hot sugar provided would give me time to get it into the oven without losing air and avoid deflation while baking. The cake came out very moist and had a nice earthy note to it from the sugar beets. Pressed between the layers is a crème fraiche butter cream, which is probably closer to a crème fraiche mousse with butter in it. Overall I was satisfied with how it came out, defiantly distinctive. Its plated "racing stripe" style with goat's milk and bay leaf ice cream. The caramel sauce is scented with madrona, a native tree bark (think pipe tobacco in a cedar sauna, now think of it in a good way…). Simple black berries that were baked in a 350 convection oven for only 3 minutes were a minor revelation. They never reached the point of bursting but became softer, and their perfume was more pronounced than ever.
Petite fours were a bit more rustic than usual, due to the lack of chocolate, pectin, glucose, gelatin…. I am really getting sick of telling you about what we did not have at this point, and I am sure you are tired of hearing it. So here is what we did make for petite fours. Puget Summer Strawberry Fruit Leather, Rye-Rosemary Shortbread, Hazelnut Meringue Cookies, Frosted Wild Blue Berries, Yarrow Caramel.
August 13, 2010
Day 1 of the "hundered"

August 08, 2010
The Herbfarm Ingredients = 2π*100miles
"Alex what are;" Rathbone, Hayden, Marceaux, Badley, Wolverton, of Caesarea, Saint's Cathedral, and Racuk.
Not so long ago I recall competing on an episode of Iron Chef America in which basil was the secret ingredient. While I can't speak for Chef Clayton or Chef Symon, in my opinion it was one of our most difficult wins. Basil doesn't want to play nice, it gives up easy, doesn't respond well to heat, and bitches and moans if it doesn't get its way. While each of these basils have a common thread in base aroma, they have their own personality and all want to be heard. It's like a game of Pictionary at a sorority party.
Lucky for us Bill and Sally and the rest of the crew on our farm (all of whom do a fantastic job and we as chefs are beyond fortunate to work with), are bringing in a lot of beautiful produce. The one thing about gorgeous produce is you don't have to do much to it, just treat it well and with respect. It just so happens that basil likes the same attention, and last second usage. I posted recently about the "Tomato Patch" dish that Ben devised, a dish that was easy to understand, fun to eat, and beautiful.
The desserts for this menu were a mixture of something new for me, and one that was very familiar. The latter of which I'm sure my previous sous chef Liz (the current pastry chef of Lola, and doing a damn fine job) would be able to pick out of a lineup of twenty desserts.
The "pre" dessert evolved from an initial sorbet course utilizing Cinnamon Basil, into a tribute to The Herbfarm and to a reputation it had developed long before I was there. If it were not for such a reputation I may not be here now. It was a great honor to take note of a dessert tradition here and usher it into a new form for a new menu. Cinnamon Basil ice cream is a big deal around these parts, and I believe it found its way onto the original "Basil Banquet" menu in the form of an ice cream cone. I wanted to utilized this tradition, but fashion it in a way that would really complete a composed dessert. What's the next of kin to an Ice Cream cone? Well as any well versed 10 year old ice cream aficionado would tell you, an ice cream sandwich of course.
I didn't express this to any of my co-workers, but I was beyond happy with this dish. There is more of my childhood in this two ounce dessert than a chapter of writing could do justice. Seeing my father come in from the garden with zucs bigger than I was and remembering that my mother's favorite fruit is blueberry. Knowing that I always hated cake for my birthday, but loved ice cream, so why not have two options! And then there are the peaches, and I'm not telling you the story about them….I love how much emotion can be evoked from food. Today I snagged a bite of a pork terrine that was served with our fifth course, and it sent me spinning back to my Grandma
Barrett"s breakfast table. Sitting there with my Grandpa the scent of coffee in the air, and the taste of steel cut oats with chopped ham hock in it. The three of us sitting at a table watching the early morning news, deciding if it was a good day for me to go for a ride on the golf cart. Here I am in one of America's great restaurants choking back tears, all because of a fucking pork terrine. For so many years I said "It's not like we are saving lives here", and would scoff to myself. I'm now realizing we my just have the power to help someone remember there life, and I'll be damned if that is not just as important.Damn... that was heavy.
Anyway on to the next dessert, and this one doesn't have the slightest bit to do with my past. It's steeped in basic pastry technique, and a new flavor combination (at l
Take home treats and mignardises where fun as well this week. Strawberry- Rose Geranium macaroons, cupcakes (financier), cinnamon basil caramels, and foccacia (that I partook in way too much of) made my list of favorites.
August 07, 2010
You Say...
"The Tomato Patch"
Heirloom tomatoes in four preparations: Jam, Confit, Partially Dehydrated, Blanched
Rye "Soil", Crispy Tomato Leaf, Olive Oil Powder, House Made Goat Cheese, Bush Basil, Fennel Flowers.
August 01, 2010
The Wright Way
"Where do you find inspiration" is a question that chefs are often asked, and I am sure that the variations in answers are as expansive as the question itself. I have always been of the mindset you do not find inspiration, it finds you. If you are in the proper open mindset anything can inspire. Flavors, cultures, other chefs, books, blogs, pictures, smells, all are obvious ones. The wind, landscape, soil, emotion, nature, a long run, your childhood, architecture, are not so obvious.July 27, 2010
Flock Together
The only sense of normalcy I have seem to achieve thus far has been found in the kitchen, my security blanket I suppose. While there is no doubt that it is my comfort zone, the mindset that I find in this new kitchen is one of exploration. The menu that I am writing of in this post is properly named "Of a Feather", and no it does not taste like chicken… actually the roasted chicken skin sauce did taste very much like chicken. I must admit I was a bit apprehensive when thinking of ways to involve fowl into desserts. There are always eggs and feather look-alike garnishes (hardly my thing). I wanted to evoke more out of the two desserts than just product usage and proper technique. I wanted the diner to have to stop, look at the damn dessert, and think HA! Whether we take them there through whimsy, humor, nostalgia, the "wow factor" or an overwhelming sense of Yum, it is our job as chefs to entertain our guests. Their palates, eyes, nose, memories, imagination, sense of adventure and always keep them smiling.
The ways that I have tried to do that in this menu speak for themselves. This theme was fun and tasty and a few chuckles heard in the dining room during pre-dessert helped me out a little in the search for normalcy and comfort. I find myself remembering that chefs need the guests as much as they need us. Not only for business sake, but to share in the sheer enjoyment of food.
I hope you enjoy.
Bread: Our pastry cook chance has taken full reign of the bread, and his skills are developing quickly. The culmination of his efforts last week came in
Amuse: While pastries is not exactly responsible for the execution of the amuse, we did get a chance to lend a hand in some of the "vessels".
Foie Gras "PB&J", Foie Gras Terrine, Strawberry-Rose Geranium Gelee, Hazelnu
The smallest loaf of brioche I have made to date.
Pre Dessert: Another interesting turn in this menu was how to incorporate fowl into the desserts without just using eggs. I have made a good number of desserts in brown egg shells, and while it was a delicious, amazing, fun to eat, and yes Chef (you know who you are) near perfect dessert, I wasn't looking forward to going down that route. Then Ron came into the pastry area and dropped of a bag of perfect little egg molds, within minutes Chris mentioned that apricots were coming into season, and a dish was made.
Apricot Coulis Dome
Mint Chocolate Bavarian with "Yolks"
Mint Chocolate Bavarian with Apricot Coulis, Corsican Mint, Apricot Poached in Whey-
Butterscotch
The butterscotch we made with whey (from the cheeses that we made here at the restaurant) was one of my favorite things about this dish. It was like dulce de leche meets a 1930's soda fountain… Latin influenced soda fountain, hmm????
Dessert: Just having moved to the area I was only slightly aware of the quality of the berries during this time of year… it's unreal. Raspberry, Strawberry(I used 4 different types on this menu), Saskatoon Berry, Golden Raspberry, Boysenberry, Tayberry, Blackberry, Blueberry, Red Currant, White Currant, Black Currant, Logan Berry. I wanted to use them all, but what should I do to highlight these berries, what can I do to make them better?
I took a step back, and decided to do nothing at all. Nightly the berries were portioned and placed into a warmer at 130 degrees and left for 20 minutes or until they reached warm water balloon doneness. Part of me just wanted to serve the berries and nothing else, they were that amazing. When we opened the warmer to remove the berries I heard on more than one occasion "it smells like a Pop-Tart out of the toaster," I'm not going to argue.
The warmed berries were served with duck egg yolk and lemon verbena ice cream, duck fat crumble, and flowering Chervil.
Small Treats:
Rosemary Chocolate Biscotti, Frosted White Currant, Milk Chocolate-Sorrel Ganache (more to come on this combo next menu) , Sage Hazelnut Sandies and Raspberry Sancho Pate de Fruit

