We Support Reproductive Rights Charity Dinner
Gazpacho Andaluz
Like most of our dishes, our take on gazpacho takes some liberties with tradition and takes longer than most... Tuscan cantaloupes, heirloom tomatoes, English cucumbers, roasted poblano peppers, caramelized onions, braised garlic, roasted leeks, sautéed shallots, are all salted and cured for two days before being twice-pureed, and then run through a fine-mesh sieve to leave nothing but the softest texture in the bowl.
Poole's Cauliflower Soup
Inspired by the Poole's Diner cookbook by Chef Ashley Christensen, this soup combines our CES mire pox, cauliflower two ways – roasted & caramelized – cream, cauliflower & chicken stock. The soup is puréed and, finished with crispy capers, gruyere crouton, and lemon créme fraîche.
Crawfish Bisque
Shells and heads of steamed crawfish are used to make a three-hour pressure cooked stock which is mated with a sixty-minute roux, san marzano tomato sauce, an appropriate amount of cream, and a touch of barrel-aged hot sauce. It is loaded with crawfish tails and finished with a roasted poblano pepper and jalapeño créme fraîche.
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Boudin Patties
When your girlfriend loves New Orleans so much that she names her cat NoLa, a chef kinda has an obligation to create a recipe for this classic Cajun dish. Pork shoulder is marinated for three days and then pressure-cooked with imperial brown ale and braising vegetables. It is finely chopped and blended with mushroom risotto, cheddar, gruyere, and parmesan cheese, shaved jalapeños, various spices, formed into patties, battered, and pan-fried. Served with remoulade and smoked dijon mustard.
Twice-Cooked Pork Belly
Heritage breed pork belly is marinated for 72 hours in a buttermilk and beer solution, and cooked sous vide with An (in)Appropriate Amount of Butter. The belly is cooled, sliced, and crisped in brown butter. It is served on a parmesan and sundried tomato polenta and finished with smoked mustard and remoulade sauce.
Gamma Meets Abuela Tacos
Free-range chicken is marinated in a secret family jerk recipe, slow-cooked confit style, and shredded. Served with caramelized onions, red cabbage, avocado, & jalapeño coleslaw, cave-aged cheddar, cilantro-forward tomato salsa, on house-made flour tortillas.
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Meatloaf
When chefs put classic dishes on a menu, they are either being reductive/intellectually lazy or they're putting down a marker – a declaration that “yes, you've had this dish a bunch of times, and this version is gonna wreck all others past and future”. I'm not reductive or intellectually lazy so it must be the other thing...Have you ever heard the story about the billionaire's meatloaf? This one is so much better.
Ground Wagyu beef is marinated in a red wine solution, ground lamb and pork are marinated in a buttermilk solution, mixed with sautéed vegetables, ground brioche, ground mushrooms, grated cheddar, grated gruyere, and grated monterrey jack cheese. The blend is baked in a bacon-lined loaf pan, glazed with “ghostface-spilla” bbq sauce. Served with creamed spinach (not so much creamed spinach as it is closer to spinach flavored fondue), and horseradish whipped potatoes.
Jambalaya Pasta
It sounds simple, Jambalaya is a blend of stock, roux, a protein or two, and served over rice. Simple, sure, but the stock usually takes 12 hours to make, the spice blend has been developed over generations, and it took an apprenticeship to learn to make the roux and all of the aforementioned. Our proteins are andouille sausage, chicken confit (cured for three days and slow-cooked in duck fat, butter and olive oil poached shrimp. A 90-minute roux is blended with an overnight chicken & seafood stock, a spice blend, and a touch of cream. Served over house-made pappardelle pasta.
Pozole Rojo de Puerco
Pozole is, in theory, a classic Mexican soup... but it is a soup that is more akin to truly great chili in that it eats more like a protein course than soup. Of course, we take some CES liberties. Mildly spicy guajillo and ancho chile broth (made with non-traditional items: red onions, roasted garlic, leeks, dijon mustard, touch of soy sauce), served with hominy, braised pork shoulder (heritage breed pork shoulder, marinated in buttermilk, dark beer, and soy sauce, braised in sherry and imperial stout, shredded and added to the broth), garnished with shaved radicchio, diced shallots, fresh lime juice, and queso fresco.
Spicy Creamy Tomato Sauce
I was done with the first draft of my cookbook. I was done with the first rounds of edits. I was into the recipe testing phase and then I got incredibly lucky and sideways stumbled into this recipe. I tested the hot-pepper butter and sous vide pork shoulder on the same day. Later that evening, I figured I would re-test the bolognese and treat myself to that for dinner... and then I thought about the hot-pepper butter, and the goat cheese in my refrigerator. Balancing flavors is what every dish is about. As I described it (read: not even close to humble-bragged) on social media, “this dish balances the heat and creaminess like a 100 foot seesaw sitting perfectly straight atop the Washington Monument”. A gaggle of friends asked if it was going to be in the book and I was kinda on the fence about “opening” the book to more recipes, but they were correct. This dish meets all the criteria for inclusion in the book (while not new in the sense that chefs have been balancing heat and fat for millennia, it is a specific manner of doing so that I had not seen in print).
Slow roasted San Marzano tomatoes, caramelized onions, braised pork shoulder, melted goat cheese, hot-pepper butter, touch of cream, served over fresh linguini and topped with grated pecorino.
Lamb Shank Stew & Cheesy Polenta
Lamb shanks are marinated in a greek yogurt, soy sauce, Dr. Pepper (gotta trust me on this), and honey mix, and then seared, braised, and shredded. The bones are used to make a stock that is thickened and flavored with a 90 minute roux, root vegetables, served in a bed of cheddar cheese & tomato confit polenta.
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Dessert is TBD