Summer Menu!

Gazpacho

cucumber, hibiscus

Salad Sponge

goat milk, sunflower, homegrown

Tomatoes

herbs, manchego, edamame, black pepper

Hanging

smoked watermelon, roe, custard

Pierogi

Potato, white truflle, marscarpone

Scallop Tartare

avocado, almonds, mussels, peaches

Carrots In Honey

trotters, chanterelles, black garlic-coconut soup

1 Pill Makes You Larger 1 Pill Makes You Small

Shrimp Noodle

scampi

Hand-cut Pasta

black truffle, soft boiled egg

Oatmeal Dashi

chia seeds

Bacon Ice Cream

black pepper, Koval Whisky

Lamb Bite

corned, preserved lemon, date

Duck Breast

sour cherry, peanuts, nasturtium

Mirepoix

celery, carrot, onion, white chocolate

Mexican Hot Chocolate and Strawberries

balsamic, basil

This Is How Good It Was...

Photo by Jen Moran.  

And check out more photos from the Vegan Dinner I hosted with my mom HERE!  What a fun night!  Love cooking all food.  This means all the more welcome to my dinners!

Well Rounded

So many times I've encountered savory chefs that do not do sweets or sweets that don't do savory, on and on.  Being one who thinks more about savory has had to really focus and teach myself how to do sweets, bake, the works.  My menus combine sweet and savory in almost every course and roller coasters from one side to the other throughout.  But even settting those parameters aside there is a whole other world between working with meat as opposed to meat/animal/face-free cooking.  Tomorrow I am using my One Sister umbrella to host a dinner for vegans using my mother's plant strong vegan preparations, which is for her an essentially fat-free cooking style (I did get to add fat into some of the preparation but very little).
I can remember several years back when I retreated to the kitchens full-time, my mother telling me to be more neat and clean when cooking.  I definitely didn't learn my militant organization from my stints at any of those fine places where I've worked either front or back of the house-it was solely from my mother, Sandra Regan who was a chef herself when I was in the womb.  These days I rarely get a speck of flour on the floor and today I had to clean up after her.  I hope she's reading this ;).  But wow, what a way to force myself to become more well-rounded.  I used miso, nutritional yeast, almond milk, tomatoes, tumeric, paprika, garlic powder and several other ingredients to make a cheese sauce.  We will serve seven courses tomorrow.  One thing I could not keep my hands off of was the mushroom caps we doused with Braggs Liquid Aminos and then roasted in the oven to complete a mushroom gravy.  I'm so impressed with the improvisation and glad to gain the experience and broaden my knowledge.  It ensures my abilities to be able to cook for anyone.

Spring Menu!

Spring menu in the works.  I've got so many ideas for this Spring I see the menu to be changing fairly often losing a dish here or there only to be replaced by something else fun and of course it will be subject to change depending on my foraging excursions.  I should have lots of wonderful items like ramps, nettles, fiddleheads, morels, chickweed, mulberries, elderberry flowers... 

Gazpacho

cucumber, hibiscus

Sunflower

goat's milk, lavender honey, home grown

Pierogi

white truffle, potato, marscarpone

Snow Crab Ball

hanging

Shrimp and Avocado 

mango noodles, other garnishes

Cannoli 

Scrambled egg, asparagus, prosciutto di Parma, yeast

Shrimp Noodles

scampi

1 Pill Makes You Larger 1 Pill Makes You Small

maitake, pecan, cocoa, chamomile

Hand-Cut Pasta

English peas, chicken liver, black truffle

Sweetbreads and Brains

pumpernickel, apples, nasturtium 

Oatmeal Dashi

hato mugi

Ice Cream Cone

bacon, Koval Whisky, black pepper

Bison Tenderloin

blood, marshmallow, berries

Gobstopper

strawberry and rhubarb pie

Mirepoix

Carrot, celery, onion, white chocolate

Gelatin/Agar Agar Clarifcation

Oatmeal in the front, gazpacho in the back.

So you make the flavor, substance, solid you want to liquefy... turn to clear liquid... shear a little agar agar over the top, freeze, let it defrost in cheese cloth in strainer over container then presto chango-clear liquid.  Not quite as quick or clear as a centrifuge, not quite clear as distilled, but still neat.  Maybe you can get kids to eat things they normally wouldn't by tricking them into drinking them ;)

Chicken Fried Oh My Goodness

Chicken frying anything makes almost anything scrumptious.  I cannot lie, I love fried chicken.  When I worked at Table 52, Sunday was my favorite day because it was fried chicken Sunday's and at the end of the night there was usually some left over and even room temperature or chilled it was super tasty.  It's all in the brining and seasoning.  It's imperative to brine chicken if you're going to fry it or even cook it at all, at least at the restaurant level, maybe not at home.  But anyways, oooooo, it is good.  Just this morning I was reminded of it when I woke up and saw that Chef Art Smith was following me on twitter.  Hmm, so I followed him back and told him I missed the fried chicken.  I thought about mentioning him bringing Oprah over to one of my dinners but I decided against it.  That would be so cool though.  And Gale too, she'd be invited.

So speaking of chicken I made a chicken liver pate the other day for one of my dinners and spread it through a stencil which says, "XPLICIT," and we play Busta Rhymes along with the course.  It's also served with a hand cut pasta in a butter and black truffle sauce.  For a dinner I had a couple days following I decided to roll the pate into a torchon shape and chicken fry it.  I served it on the bottom of a shot glass as a single bite with a pickled onion and mustard seed sorbet with watermelon rind.  This dish has several plays of traditional charcuterie elements, southern picnics, and pate en croute....
This is what I do to chicken fry.  I coat whatever I am using in corn starch and tap off the excess starch.  But remember to have your chicken, fish, pate, whatever it is seasoned, brined, etc first.  Then I make an egg and buttermilk mixture-two egg yolk and about 1/2 cup of buttermilk, more or less depending on how much you are frying.  I coat my elements in the egg mixture.  Then I have a combination of all purpose flour, fresh thyme leaves, cayenne pepper, salt, black pepper, garlic and onion powders (in this case I didn't go heavy on the last two powders because there was black truffle in my pate and it was served with the onion sorbet which was strong as it is so I didn't want to over power).  So I take the element, the pate, from the egg and roll it into this flour and spice combo.  Once it's coated I put it back in the egg mixture, coating it again, being careful not to lose my seasoned coating and then I put it back in the flour spice combo again.  Essentially I want two layers of this last seasoned mixture bound with the egg.  I fry it at 350 till it's golden and crispy.  That's it.  The tricks of chicken frying are in your seasonings and brinings.  Have fun with it but not too much fun because it's not the healthiest cooking method and it's addicting.  Oh and especially if it's a liver pate.

Kitchen Practice

Shrimp, cucumber with cuke "angel hair," in rice wine vin, radish, spinach and lime.  I created this dish because I wanted to practice something I had read about which was to mix Activa with the shrimp then vacuum seal it and pound it out.  I had tried this several other times, cooking the shrimp first then cutting in thin slices and rolling out between plastic wrap, slicing thin, freezing, on and on.  This pounding method, raw, in the food saver baggie was one thing I didn't think of.  Great result.

Same dish-another shot.

This one was created in a similar way but I cut the shrimp differently... The main ingredient of this dish, the avocado, was pounded out in a similar fashion in the food saver baggie but no Activa and was frozen (another technique I read up on).  I took it out of the freezer to just temper a bit and assembled it while partially frozen or else the avocado will just become mush.  Before I ate it I let it warm.  There is also the addition of dulse seaweed, radish spouts (courtesy of moi) and quail egg-one of my new little obsessions.  I love them.

In this pic I cubed the shrimp.

Today I wanted to practice my chiccaron skills.  Lately I've been working on making a Westmalle Trappist Dubel and Oyster "cracklin," or chiccaron.  I can't seem to get it just perfect and aerated enough but I'm continuing to work on the recipe... However in the meantime I thought I would practice by first better understanding the fundamentals of true skin chiccarones.  I cleaned the skin as good as possible, vacuum sealed it and then cooked it sous vide at about 140 for 30-50 minutes, something like that.  Then I let it cool, removed it, and scraped the skin a bit more until all that was left was skin.  It's sticky, beware.  I dehydrated it at 160 for about 2 to 3 hours, until completely brittle, and then fried it in canola oil at 375.  They were perfect, so good. Again, I put the salmon skin with quail egg, salmon roe and cocoa.  I used this flavor combo because I'll be having a similar dish on my Spring menu but that dish will be a little more elaborate and hopefully I can get Shad roe!  This is really a fun flavor combination.  

Dining In Literature.

November 5th 2002, I remember bits and pieces of that day clearly.  It was an election day.  When I got my coffee that morning I stopped on the street to chit chat with a co-worker about voting.  I think that was back in the day when people had Obama signs for Senate in their lawn.  That afternoon I headed off to work at Trio in Evanston a bit early because my motorcycle had broken down on the way to work the day before and I was meeting with a tow truck.  I was waiting by my motorcycle eating a yogurt covered granola bar.  It was chilly.  I was tired.  A couple nights before I had gone to a post Halloween party with Michael Carlson from Schwa who worked with me at Trio at the time and a couple friends from work and I still really hadn't recovered yet.  The tow truck came and picked up the bike and I headed to work.  We really hadn't started to get too much into service that evening.  That was back in the day when Chef Achatz was just beginning, you know, I loved working with him so much because I loved the passion and creativity he applied to his work.  I think it was the first time I really worked with someone who was doing what they were absolutely destined to do.  He is and was very inspiring.  So anyways not too much later my manager came up to me and told me I had a phone call.  Immediately I knew something was wrong.  I didn't have a cell phone yet so of course they would call my work but my friends and family knew not to call me there unless it was an emergency.  Well it was, my oldest sister who was 39 at the time passed away.  I supposed I remember all those minute details of the day cause as time went on I tried to time what was happening with her that day as I was passing through mine and the actual not knowing that simultaneously someone I loved so much was transitioning.  It's eerie.  Well, at the time I had just changed majors in school from Chemical Engineering to Fiction Writing.  It was quite a change but I was unhappy with engineering and I think it was my time at Trio, seeing people do what they're meant to do which made me realize I should do something I believe in.  I always loved reading and writing and I actually got into Chemical Engineering from having read Jitterbug Perfume, a book my oldest sister lent me when I was 12.  Well, anyways, grief stricken I plowed into the writing.  As an assignment for class, I don't know what the assignment actually was but I know what I did...I turned the entire dinner scene in To The Lighthouse into play format.  My professor at the time loved it.  This was the beginning of dining in literature for me.  I've always loved writing and the restaurant industry but didn't see restaurant writing or criticism as an option for me considering I liked fiction.  And however it's tough to become a fiction novelist.  I tried a myriad of things after college to support myself while writing, from continuing to work front of the house positions at upscale restaurants like Alinea, etc, to even real estate. But I always ended up back in the restaurants, always having a dream of someday owning my own restaurant and being a writer.  I remember the day Henry Adaniya of Trio interviewed me.  He asked me why I was in this business of restaurants, 22 at the time, having been in restaurants since I was 15, a single young independent lady with a small voice probably sounded funny saying, I want to be a chef and writer and have a restaurant someday but I think that's what got me the job.  He had this knack of seeing the potential in people.  Anyways, I transitioned to the back of the house when I knew getting my novels published would still be ways away and I couldn't afford going to grad school to teach writing so that is when I began my business, One Sister.  The duality of the name: one based on sustainability-that I started a garden and wanted to incorporate everything I grew or foraged myself into my foods while also obtaining as much as possible locally and organically so that I could respect our earth as I think it respects us-call it hippie-ish or whatever (it's true).  And two: One Sister-for my sister, who beyond the grave has basically guided my life.  That's what sometimes grief does to us, makes us who we are.  And I just got into all that to explain a fun dining adventure I'd like to do beginning in May, after I take my week off of work, traveling and camping the woods for morels, is to have once a month a dinner that is extracted from a piece of literature.  So often I'm reading thinking, yummm, sounds delish!  Well.  It'll be an abstraction and sometimes a dead on recreation of the meal.  The first one will be To The Lighthouse since I'm so familiar.  It's a great meal and a fun location so I think I can do a lot with it and so on.  This is just for fun, no pretension, blah blah blah.  Hope to have some of you.

Oooo Mommy.

Bacon and eggs or land, sea, and sky, all about umami...this dish has several concepts.  48 hour cure of soy, brown sugar, and lemon grass on pork belly.  Soy, lemongrass, ginger, shallot, caramelized sugar, carrot and chili flake braised kombu and wood ear mushrooms.  Hard boiled quail egg.  Crispy ice fish.  Rice wine vinegar pickled watermelon rind.  Braising liquid reduction and a pork and lemon grass consomme which is not pictured... This dish is one of my new favorites.  I served this over the weekend.  It was a new dish for valentines but I will move it to the winter menu.  I just love it.