Blightless

In recent years culinarian adjectives are starting to sound more like poetry than food. "Passion, love, sensual, sexy, art, etc..." are heard so often they have become cliche. The line "its my passion," has been used so much that it means nothing to my ears. Food has become something abstract, and it seems to have lost touch with the primal instinct to live. Everything has to be an experience, something to remember, but it seems all these experiences just make me forget the basic reason for food... Sustenance.

If your reading this you probably think I'm full of shit and you are probably right. After all I pay my bills making fussy ass desserts that have more components than a stocking stuffer Lego set. I suppose I only feed the monster that makes me forget about food being the antidote for hunger. Our most recent menu made me reflect on a particular food that just may be the king of sustenance for our western world and much of Europe, the potato.

I always knew that it was responsible for feeding many hungry mouths and a cheap and delicious way to fill plates, but not that it was partially responsible for the industrial revolution. Evidently potatoes allowed humans to grow more calories per acre than any other food, and therefore gave us the energy to go to work. Enough on that subject, back to the fussy ass stuff.

So a potato predessert is one of the more difficult things i have had to come up in a while. The idea for this one is not mine at all, but one from Aki and Alex at "Ideas in Food". Grilled Potato Semifreddo with Lemongrass & Ice Wine Vinegar Foam and Crispy Maple Glazed Potato Skin

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"

Whole Wheat

My first whole wheat boule

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.

I do not consider myself a stranger to wild mushrooms and their different personalities, so I was fairly confident going into our menu meeting. Then we started tossing around names like; man on horseback, fried chicken, and a number of different boletus variations. Half of the mushrooms I had heard of, or eaten. The other half were mysterious and exciting for me try. We used 19 in all! The two I decided to work with were varietals that I had tasted before, but the Matsutake I had never used in a dessert.

The candy cap mushroom was used in the pre-dessert in combination with Bartlett pears, and lent their maple quality to the pears quite nicely.



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 her, that would later pick up the dry dusty clay soil in our front yard after a rainless July. She would no doubt wear that same damn shirt all day long and into a very late Ohio summer sunset. Without doubt my hands would still be dirty and smell of cinnamon as we ran around the yard to catch lightning bugs, and raising hell. I like monkey bread.

Well in the continuing saga that is my culinary driven life, I served the monkey bread with Matsutake Mushroom Ice Cream. Matsutakes have nice pine like aroma, so the stretch with cinnamon monkey bread wasn't an unrealistic one.

While I was happy to serve the beautiful mushrooms that the northwest has to offer, as it is one of the greatest places on Earth for delicious mushrooms. The real delight was for me to have a reason to be a kid once a night for three weeks straight, and find myself back in a stained white t-shirt. Back when food was fun, when food didn't matter after I swallowed it, and there were always plenty of lightning bugs.

Thanks to Claire Schneyman for the shroom pics!