This Friday, we are cooking dinner with the team at Elements in Princeton, NJ. In order to plan the meal, we met several weeks ago to go over dishes and ideas. We started with a blank piece of paper and filled in the voids quickly. What came out of that meeting was a reflection on dishes we were working on and dishes we felt would work well for the dinner.
Fast forward to today. It was now crunch time to get in ingredients and really refine what we would cook. Scott pulled out the sheet of paper with the menu script, and we started talking about the dishes. In the time that had passed, we had cooked, eaten, refined, and put those original dishes to rest. I looked at him and said, “That was last week.” Everyone at the table rolled their eyes and pushed through my ADD. So we begin again, with some evolutions from our notes, plenty of inspiration from the ingredients, and excitement with the refinement and necessary focus on the dinner, October 14, 2011. See you there to eat these seven-ish courses.
This Week (subject to change):
– False Seafood: abalone, oyster, scallop
– Radish Parts and Pieces: black garlic, weakfish, sour honey
– Shaved Bonito Puttanesca: broccoli rabe salsa verde, macadamia nuts
– Butternut Squash: consomme, yogurt, cobia
– Lobster: mushroom curry, red pepper-crustacean broth, pandan leaf, bamboo rice
– Big Wagon Wheel: cuttlefish, onion juice, aged pecorino
– Meat Potato: glass of wine, dry-aged jus, crispy carrots
– Leg of Pork: smoked oyster vinaigrette, pawpaw, charred allium
– Sunchoke & Asian Pear: glazed, roasted, ice cream
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