Saturday, October 13, 2012

Autism Speaks Chef Gala 2012

These are just some photos from an awesome event in NYC, Autism Speaks. I was so honored to be invited by chef Neal Fraser from LA and it was amazing to part of the event. There were many incredible chefs and it was a just an overall great experience!

 Chef Neal Fraser 

My friend and very talented pastry chef Malcolm Livingston from wd-50


Plating the "Buttermilk Cheesecake"
 Johnny Iuzzini plating and I was honored to watch him work

on20's Evan Small came to help out!





All the chefs!


Saturday, October 6, 2012

Service

Just some shots of pastry during service.....

 herbs
 buttermilk dish waiting for quenelle
 chocolate and the pass
 intermezzo
Celery Sorbet
absinth / lemon / granny smith apple
mignardises

Apples "Benedict"

 Macoun Apple
warm spice cake / thyme / quinoa / brown butter ice cream

So I love New England. I love my home state of Connecticut and all its amazing produce as well as traditions. Apples are just such a staple of CT and I have been going apple picking every fall for as long as I can remember. I love the McIntosh and Macoun apple varieties more than any other and they are the most popular in New England. So I have been trying to create a new dessert that showcases these apples but a dessert that is also classic in flavors as well as presentation. Apple crisp is the perfect example of a truly New England dessert. It has become such a familiar dessert that you will see it on almost every restaurant's menu around fall. I decided one day on a whim to make it for staff meal at ON20 and it just came to me that I had to make a warm apple dessert that was traditional in flavors and familiar in presentation. A modern take on a classic dessert.

I decided to make the apple dessert look like a dish that was just as traditional and approachable as apple crisp... Eggs Benedict. The dish starts of with a muscovado sugar-spice cake that is baked in cast iron egg coddlers. The cake is the base of the dish and is spiced with typical seasonal spices, nutmeg, cinnamon and clove. The cake serves as the toast component. I then decided to cook slices of Macoun apples and sous-vide them in an apple cider caramel. It is very easy to cook the apples to "mush" when baked in an apple pie or apple crisp, so the sous-vided of the apples ensures that they still have a nice soft, but crisp texture. The apples are also infused with the strong flavor of the buttery, apple cider caramel. The apples taste like they have been cooked for a very long time but feel like they have been barely cooked. They make up the "canadian bacon" portion of the dish. The "poached egg" is actually a brown butter ice cream that is filled with the apple cider caramel. Due to a high ratio of glucose, the caramel "oozes" out of the completely frozen brown butter ice cream. The ice cream looks like it has been poached and this is because it has been... "poached" in liquid nitrogen. The cake is served warm with the cold ice cream on top. These differentiating temperatures of hot apples and cold ice cream, have the same nostalgic impact of that of an apple crisp. It is also served with a thyme creme anglasie that is poured table-side. This is the "hollandaise" component. Visually, it looks like breakfast but stylistically, it is a traditional dessert.

 Staff Apple Crisp