Century

Over twelve years have passed since the first time that I walked into a restaurant kitchen and they have all been progressively more interesting. Fledgling jitters gave way to youthful excitement in the earlier years. Those followed by an unwarranted arrogance which thankfully was slapped out of me by a great mentor. A man I will never be able to repay for the stern but gentle hand he used in educating me, and giving me a centered confidence only found in hard work. Shortly after being "schooled" I partook in an endeavor that would scare me shitless, still to this day I have never felt more fear in a kitchen than what the talented staff at Tribute placed inside me. After Tribute a brief stay in Las Vegas lead me to Michael Symon's Lola, and eventually to competing on Iron Chef America with him. Currently my home is in Washington and at The Herbfarm.

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 breads this week were interesting to say the least, and probably one of the single biggest challenges ("what the hell am I gonna do") of the entire menu. Often Rice flour, sorghum, or other non local flours are used to make up the bulk of non-gluten breads. As those were not an option, I decided to fall back on my good friend Mr. Potato. Not only does it share a slight resemblance to myself, but it also is a multifaceted jack of all trades in the kitchen. Two of the more interesting foods were gougeres from russet potato "pate au choux", and blue potato biscuits.One dinner service the blue potatoes also found their way into one of our sourdoughs for standard bread service. All of the potatoes used in bread service and anywhere else on the menu came straight from our farm a couple of miles down the river (that sentence was for legal purposes or at least it sounded like it).


I was told the Venturi Shoulze Vineyard on Vancouver Island makes a balsamic vinegar, but really Canadian balsamic? My first thought is that it must have notes of maple syrup, hockey puck rubber, and polite disposition. Then I tasted it, and thought "I am an ass". The stuff is OUTSTANDING! The nuances of all of the different barrels and woods come through so clear and clean, yet offer an awesome depth of flavor. So I took the easy way out on this one, and just kept things simple and made a sorbet with it. Along with the sorbet we served raspberries fresh from the farm vines and a jam made from heirloom tomatoes scented with rose geranium. As one regular taster noted, "A small bite, JAMpacked with flavor" pun intended.

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.
One more week of the menu still remains, and I am sure by the end of it things will change. However I feel satisfied with where it began.