In the course of a culinary career there are memorable moments such as learning the magic of making a hollandaise sauce or seeing a soufflé rise as expected, watching pommes soufflé puff up and crisp, making feuilletage pastry with its thousand layers as well as constructing a complicated sauce like veal demi glace. In my formative years working in three starred Michelin restaurants, I learned that superb ingredients are a vital ally in preparing superior classic cuisine. Chef's like Alain Ducase claim that sixty percent of a successful dish is influenced by ingredient selection.
That mantra of ingredient-driven cuisine was my guide in planning a recent wine dinner for the Central Coast Classic Rare Wine Dinner. Archie McLaren, chairman of the Central Coast Wine Classic, requested that I prepare a dinner to compliment the wines provided by Don Schliff. The list featured a who's who of the French wine big guns, see the menu below. My challenge was to create a menu that reflected the nature and character of those wines. Unable to have a wine tasting, I relied on tasting notes researched on the internet. Once that was done, it took less that thirty minutes to plan the menu. It's simple in a way but relies on great ingredients cooked accurately.
The first course was my version of a dish done at Le Gavroche in London circa 1980. That in turn was a riff from chef Antoine Carême, the master from the late 1800's. Albert Roux, chef-patron of Le Gavroche at the time, discovered that recipe in one of the books written by Carême during Careme's lifetime. Albert had a private library of first edition cookbooks from the 1800s and I was able to borrow them for research. My version of the recipe changed the design and changed deviled quail eggs from a poached egg. The artichoke's hand turned hearts were cooked a blanc in a court bouillon spiked with lemon. The local Santa Barbara Smokehouse salmon I used is a great product.
The scallop dish featured fresh dry pack scallops weighing in at over two ounces each. In the trade, those are called U-8s. I dusted them with flour and seared both sides with a final cooking on the oven. The sauce was a classic chardonnay cream sauce that was finished with a puree of sea urchin roe. This gives the sauce a briny lobster-like finish and we set them on a nest of julienned leeks, carrots and celery root with a crown of tobiko caviar.
A duck breast course followed. Muscovy dusk breast, trimmed and brined twelve hours, was seared, cooked with the sous vide method and then seared again to crisp the skin side. I prepared a standard duck demi glace from some two dozen duck frames reduced down to an essence of four cups. The sauce was finished with cooked, diced foie gras from Hudson Valley and peeled grapes. Yes I said peeled grapes. I recall the first week I worked at Le Gavroche I was asked to peel grapes. I thought at the time it was a little extreme and still do but we did peel the grapes.
The canon of lamb is the rack cut off the bone. I did a similar sear and sous vide cook for the lamb. The sauce again was derived from the bones of the rack, demi glace style. I nested the lamb on a mix of chanterelles and royal trumpet mushroom, cooked Bordelaise style with shallots, garlic and parsley. Of note were the chanterelles that I got from my dear chef-friend Kurt Grasing, of Grasing's in Carmel by the Sea, California. The mushrooms were harvested in Slovenia and traveled to Oregon, San Francisco, Carmel, Santa Barbara to end up on a plate in Pismo Beach, California.
The beef course of slow braised short ribs was set on a confit of shallots. The base sauce started as my classic veal demi glace that I learned from the Troisgros restaurant, Roanne, France, when I did a stage there in 1981. Their method did not involve roasting the veal bones but done a more of a fond blanc, white stock. The garnish of haricot vert fine came via my chef-friend James Sly of Sly's in Carpenteria, California. They are extra small and tender and unusual to find. Fondant potatoes has been a mainstay in my repertoire since Albert Roux introduced me to them in 1978. This version of mine adds a topping of potatoes gratin for an additional flavor layer. Carrots were simply sautéed and braised in chicken stock and butter.
Peaches and Chateau d'Yquem wine were made to go together. I made puff pastry, that magic dough, and cooked the peaches using my pastry-chef wife Christine Dahl's method for tart tatin. Basically, a butter-sugar caramel is prepared and placed in a tin, topped with peeled, sliced peaches, topped with a disk of thin puff pastry and baked. I garnished with a peach brandy spiked caramel sauce and whipped creme fraîche to finish the dish.
We finished with dinner with mignardise, those sweet littles nibbles you thought you had no room for. They included chocolate-dipped candied orange peel, hazelnut tuile, coconut macaroons, chocolate earthquakes and crisp palmiers. A special thanks goes to my assistant chef Hugo Alvarado in preparing this dinner.
In closing, this was easily amongst the top five dinners I have prepared in my forty-five years of cooking and I must say, it is as rewarding and compelling as is was in the early days of learning the craft of cooking.
Tastefully,
Chef Michael Hutchings
Potato Blini, Black River Uruguay Oscietra Caviar
Chef Carême's Smoked Salmon Appetizer
Seared Sea Scallop
Muscovy Breast of Duckling, Foie Gras and Grapes
Braised Shortribs on Shallot Confit
Peach Tart Tatin Sauce Caramel
