The Chicken & The Egg: Summer Dinner Series #1

The Chicken & the Egg: Eggcentric Summer Series #1

All photos by the amazing Mr. Ryan Fish. To check out the full album please see the Special Snowflake Supperclub FB page. 

On Sat June 24 we hosted a small gathering of about a dozen people for an intimate supper to highlight the gorgeous eggs of Little Gnome Farm. Right now I'm obsessed with Rudolf Steiner (Waldorf Schools, Weleda grooming products, architecture, farming) and biodynamic farming. There's a great book about biodynamic wine growers in Oregon called Voodoo Vintners; also the work of Maria Thun is a compelling documentation of biodynamic farming practices. Little Gnome follows biodynamic faming principles and I can honestly say that their eggs are unparalleled, I have never tasted a richer yolk, encountered a more vibrantly colored and deeply satisfying egg. 

Over the past year, we've served up some large suppers (50 at our height) and we wanted to do something really focused and also that would feel more like a dinner party so we were excited to launch our summer egg-centric dinner series.


Our friend Tyler Hauptman, who works at Courier Coffee, recently completed his master sommelier studies and he brought the most amazing complements for the supper, see wine list below.


The final menu highlights both the chicken and duck eggs of Little Gnome Farm. We also branched out with flying fish roe infused with wasabi. We started off with chicken (confit, liver mousse) from Kookoolan Farms as a playful opening to the old "which came first?" question.


We made two different accompaniments for the chicken liver mousse and couldn't decide which to serve: I liked the maple vinegar the best and Cliff favored the pomegranate molasses gastrique. We put both out so guests could vote. They were all diplomatic and voted for, "both." Ha.


The Tao of Tea in Portland offers a really potent pine-smoked tea, aka lapsang souchong. We cold- smoked eggs with a mixture of sugar, tea, star anise for about 5 hours and then boiled them for 6:20 so they were still tender and the yolks oozed like a rich red-gold sauce onto the rice. In a nod to ochazuke, we brewed matcha (green tea) and poured over the rice.


Earlier in June we took an urban foraging class with Rebecca Lerner (her blog, Firstways is beautiful and inspiring), where we learned about the amazing edibles that are literally growing underfoot in our NE neighborhood. Inspired, we harvested Doug Fir tips from our neighborhood and used these to pickle mushrooms for the main plate. We intensified the locavore focus by decorating with flowers from Ariadne Garden, a community-based urban garden located just a couple of blocks away from us.


Cliff has just started making fresh pasta from scratch. He's a natural, and his pasta is so light and just beautiful to behold, especially as it's air drying in long thin sheets in the kitchen. It was fun to make pasta the Italian way and sauce it with spicy Korean red bean paste (gokulchang) and Bo Ssam-style beef. We amped up the egg intensity with shavings of cured chicken egg yolks onto the duck egg pasta. Yowza.


The vanilla bean and bourbon semifreddo is rich with egg yolks and formed the conceptual base for the "fried egg" visual for the dessert that is supposed to look like a diner breakfast of eggs, bacon and toast. The mango and saffron jelly made the "yolk," and rhubarb ribbon stood for the crispy bacon.


We're sketching the next menu and it might be a Momofuku meets the Lee Brothers (Korean plus Southern) mash up. It would be great to make ramen broth and we have this big ham in the freezer from our hog share and we're tossing around some ideas of what we'd like to do with it. Stay tuned!

Final Menu: The Chicken Comes First

Chicken Liver Mousse, Pomegranate Molasses Gastrique; Maple and Rum Vinegar 

Avocado Mousse

Chicken Confit

Radishes

Little t's Baguette 

Pizzette with Anchovy and Oregano; Goat Cheese and Tomato

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Pine-Smoked Black Tea Egg with Matcha Rice, Kimchi Cracker, Pea Shoot Tendrils

Cured Salmon, Wasabi Flying Fish Roe, Shiso, Aquavit Spritz

Tender Greens, Agricca, Salad Burnet, Sorrel, Cucumber and Tomato Waters

Duck Egg Pasta with Cured Chicken Yolk,  Korean Bo Ssam Beef, Pickled Mushrooms with Doug Fir Tips

Eggs and Toast: Bourbon and Vanilla Bean Semifreddo, Mango and Saffron Jelly, Rhubarb Ribbons, Toasted Brioche with Butter

**********

Wines curated by Tyler Hauptman: 

Pazo Do Mar Ribeiro 2010

La Valentina Cerasuola Rosato

Chalone Estate Syrah

Rochette Morgon Micouds 2007

Special Snowflake Studio: latest collaborative work with The Center for Genomic Gastronomy

Aside from the supperclub, I also do consulting work as part of Special Snowflake Studio. Here are some pics of my latest work, focusing on plant-based protein and upping the antioxidants on the plate to promote "Healthy Ageing Populations" in the Netherlands (yes, British spelling). I'm looking forward to seeing the recipes and accompanying text published in book form. Since I met Zack and Cat of The Center for Genomic Gastronomy last year, I've been fortunate to collaborate with them and develop recipes for 3 projects: Plantetary Sculpture Portland at Recess Gallery, Edible: The Taste of Things to Come exhibit at Science Gallery Dublin, and this latest, Healthy Ageing Populations Netherlands.

 This is my favorite of the recipes from Science Gallery Dublin: a vegan ortolan. This is a cruelty-free version of one of the cruelest dishes ever devised. An ortolan is a beautiful tiny songbird. In some countries, people trap the bird and pluck out its eyes and stuff it into a black box to gorge on grain. This cruelty is made additionally ridiculous by the ignorance of bird's circadian rhythms; the pineal gland in the brain governs circadian rhythms, not the eyes and there are light sensors in the brain that detect light through the skull, in addition to the eyes. The birds are then drowned in armagnac and then roasted and served whole. Eating this dish is also given additional theatricality with white napkins placed over diners' heads to either "concentrate the aromas" or to "hide one's face from God" because of the decadence and cruelty of the dish. Taster notes list the fatty foie-gras-like richness of the flesh, the bitterness of the guts and the crunch of the bones. My challenge was to create these sensations with vegan ingredients.

Below are all dishes created for the Netherlands project.

Green Tea pasta with tender egg and brown butter sauce

Araucana eggs, matcha powder and tipo 00 flour

425-degree roasted cauliflower florets

Roasted Cauliflower soup with Seed Saver Granola

huitlacoche and corn: yowza

Who needs beef when you've got supergrains?

Huitlacoche, aka corn smut or Mexican truffle

Huitlacoche and cornmeal super grain burgers. Huitlacoche, aka corn smut, Mexican truffle, is a fungus that grows on corn. It is sweet and smoky. Huitlacoche feeds on the corn and creates lysine, an amino acid missing from corn. (Important nutrients in corn such as niacin are not bioavailable unless soaked in an alkali such as ash or calcium carbonate. The Mesoamericans (Aztec, Maya, Inca) figured this out but Europeans never did. That is why there can be famine even when there is plentiful corn/polenta. Researchers in the American South finally figured this out and thus pellagra was finally eradicated. Sorry, I digress. Basically, huitlacoche + corn is a complete protein as the lysine and the other amino acids in corn combine to create a "complete protein" that contains all 8 essential amino acids. These "burgers" also contain quinoa and amaranth, protein-rich grains.

Chickpea crepe (so simple: water, chickpea "flour," )

Chickpea, olive oil and Dutch cocoa cake

Beet, blueberry and rhubarb crumble

Final Menu and Cook's Notes: Nordic/Mesoamerican Feast 2.24.12

All photos by the extraordinary Ryan Fish. To see more of his work, visit his website for Marrow Magazine. 

The inspiration for this feast was, here we are 'twixt winter and spring, let's do something that embraces both and follows the movement of the seasons. So, my first thought was food from the lands of snow and ice: Scandinavia! I then learned that to include recipes from Iceland, this then more properly would be called, Nordic. And then my idea about thinking of sun, warmth, sun, was, the Kingdoms of the Sun in the Americas where they worshipped the sun (as I so long to do. right. now. Help me out, Portland. We get bright sun but it's still chill and we're prone to bouts of eye-stinging hail. Poor crocuses and cherry blossoms). Anyway, so I did research what people ate in the Kingdoms of the Sun (the Aztec, Maya, Inca) before Christopher Columbus brought Christianity and Pigs and Cattle and Wheat. 

My main resources and inspirations: 

Hamman, Cherry. Mayan Cooking: Recipes from the Sun Kingdoms of Mexico. New York:      

     Hippocrene Books, 1998. 

Sokolov, Raymond. Why We Eat What We Eat: How Columbus Changed the Way the 

     World Eats. New York: Touchstone, 1993. 

Rögnvaldardóttir, Nanna. Icelandic Food & Cookery. New York: Hippocrene Books, 2002. Viestad, Andreas. Kitchen of Light: The New Scandinavian Cooking. New York: Artisan, 

     2003. 

1^st Routing. Cocktails, Commerce and Appetizers.

Gravad Lax (Swedish Cured Salmon). Sweet Mustard Sauce.

Grafinn lambahryggvöðvi (Icelandic Cured Lamb)

Buckwheat Cakes. Rye Crackers.

Roasted Potatoes and Turnips with Maple Vinegar.

Skyr (Icelandic Soft Cheese).**

Herring Roe.

Cucumber Salad with Dill.

Aquavit-Pickled Onions.

2^nd Routing.

Svalbard Beet Soup with Duck Stock & also Vegetarian Celeriac Stock. Rye Toast, Dill Butter, Watermelon radish. Radish microgreens, Grated Horseradish.

3^rd Routing.

Roasted Quail with Naranja Ik (Sour Orange and Chile Salsa).

Vegetarian Plate: Squash, Cherimoya, Nopales (Cactus).

Masa Corn cakes stuffed with black beans. Cotija cheese, Recado de Relleno Negro.

Hominy and Fava Bean Salad with Creamy Tomatillo Dressing.**

Tableside Sauce: Ku’ut bi Ik (Crushed Red Chile Sauce).

Sweet Finish.

Pink Snowballs. (vanilla cupcakes, lingonberry, meringue frosting and pink shredded coconut)

Aztec cocoa pudding. Mast Brothers Cocoa Nibs, Chile, Salt.  

Salty black licorice Fish

** Contributed by Tressa Yellig of Salt, Fire Time

Acknowledgements: include a huge thanks to kitchen staff Remy Jewell (there she is above frosting a cupcake on the fly!) and also to Cliff Allen of The People's Pig, Chief Quail Wrangler and all-around kitchen ninja. Many thanks to our volunteer diner/food runners and also to Tressa Yellig of Salt Fire Time Community-Supported Kitchen for curating the bar program and for contributing Skyr and a lovely Salad to the supper. Applause to Abraham King of Discourage Records for creating an amazing soundscape based on the evening's culinary themes. Thanks for closing out the evening with ABBA! And gracious thanks to Abby Fammartino of Abby's Table for hosting us in her lovely jewel box of a space. She also offers weekly supperclubs that focus on delicious foods that are free of gluten, dairy and soy, please visit her site to learn more. 

And huge thanks of course to our adventurous, spirited, and so-very-kind diners. Cheers to you all and hope to see you again soon. Yours truly, Heather

A Seasonal Affective Dinner: In Medias Res

After much scheming and sketching, Cliff and I have hammered out a menu. That's the amazing Cliff Allen of The People's Pig (downtown at 9th/Alder). And we are excited that Tressa Yellig of Salt Fire Time is running the bar (think horchata and hibiscus tea) and contributing some food fun as well (see below). It's still a proposed menu and subject to change—something might catch our eye at the market, we might figure that there's too much of this or that, or want to add something at the last second. But this is a really good idea of what to expect for next Fri Feb 24. Tickets available via Eventbrite.

First, we always start with "Cocktails and Commerce." I encourage people to bring info or products for their cottage industries, DIY ventures. This has ranged from books to embroidered napkins to Japanese tea ceremony lessons. It's a great way to encourage people to mix and talk. So the first course of appetizers, small bites is served up while people circulate and chatter. After that, we all descend to table for the rest.

Oh, and a quick note: the genesis of the theme. I was thinking about how we are between winter and spring (I am seeing carpets of violets and crocuses and early fruit trees blossoms, yet I am still wearing wool and slogging through frost and mud and cupping hot coffee close to my chest). I love chilly winter splendor and the accompanying and necessary coziness that allows us to survive. My heart also leaps for spring and the promise of sun and more sun. So land of ice/snow made me think Scandinavia. But I wanted to include Icelandic recipes so it became, more properly, "Nordic." And then as a corollary, The Kingdoms of the Sun in the Americas, so Mayan/Aztec/Inca. There's more to say on that front as far as Pre-Columbian and etc. but I'll save that for later.

1st Routing:

Gravad Lax (Cured Salmon), Gravad Lamb Fillet (Cured Lamb)

Buckwheat Cakes. 

Roasted Potatoes and Turnips with Maple vinegar. 

 Skyr (Icelandic soft cheese). *Made by Tressa Yellig of Salt Fire Time. 

Sweet Mustard Sauce.

Cucumber Salad. 

Aquavit-Pickled Onions. 

2nd Routing. Svalbard Beet Soup with Duck Stock. Rye Toast, Dill Butter, Grated Horseradish. (Vegetarian version available). 

3rd Routing. 

Roasted Fish rubbed with Achiote. (Veg option available)

Corn cakes stuffed with black beans and shredded turkey. White cheese crumbles. (Veg. option available). 

Amaranth Greens and Toasted Grains.

Tomatillo salad *Made by Tressa Yellig of Salt Fire Time 

        Sauces Available: Recado or Xak’ (Chile Paste Sauces):

        Relleno Negro. Toasted Garlic, Onion, Chile. 

        Ku’ut bi Ik (Crushed Red Chile Sauce). 

        Naranja Ik (Sour Orange and Chile Salsa). 

Final Routing: 

Pink Snowballs.

Aztec Cocoa Pudding. Chile, Cocoa Nibs. 
Lime Granita. 

Cook's Notes: Book Release for Lisa Wells' "Beast" (Bedouin Books)

Photos in the blog post are courtesy of Ryan Fish

Flying Fish Roe, Shiso leaf, tofu custard and orange

Tender Boiled Egg. Caper and shallot oil. Smoked salt. Matcha Green tea.  

Flying Fish Roe. Shiso leaf. Tofu custard. Orange zest.

Gravlax and Buckwheat Blini. Brandy, dill seed.

Black Bean and Kimchi Quesadilla.

Muhammara. Roasted red pepper, walnut, pomegranate molasses.

Za’atar. Thyme, sesame, sumac.

Chorizo. Marinated in olive oil and aromatics. Sherry vinegar.

Lemon Chiffon Puff. Lemon curd. 

So I am riffing on the death/rebirth imagery with eggs and also with the food items that traditionally were buried in graveyards to cure and ferment (gravlax, kimchi). I was also struck by the intense color palette so I'm thinking about the color of bruises (pink, purple, yellow, green, blue) and inks dispersing underwater; we are also doing some stuff (I think) with shards and glass-fragility, fracture, food as "freeze frame." Also, I'm trying to work in something with ashes and also maybe with beer-recurring, high-frequency mentions in the poem collection. —excerpt from menu notes correspondence to Michael D'Alessandro, Publisher of Bedouin Books

Gravlax and Buckwheat Blini

Last Friday (the 13th!) we catered the Bedouin Books release party for Lisa Wells' brilliant new collection of poems called "Beast." I wanted to take our menu cues from the poems and above is an excerpt from my initial menu notes correspondence with the publisher, Michael D'Alessandro. I wanted to connect our readers on a food-level with the work, so of course an emphasis on the feral, primordial quality expressed in the title and throughout the book. What interested me most was the idea of a "reader response" expressed through food. There are many images of death and mourning and loss and fracture in the work and this powered the menu planning: 

The sky

rains silver pins across the glass

and each drop rings a tiny fractured bell.

Eggs are symbols of the life cycle in many traditions. They are associated with birth, the soul and also with mourning. I was thinking about mourning and comfort, a funeral feast in a sense, and the movement of menu tastes is from bitter to sweet, but even the lemon chiffon puffs, the dessert, have some bitter from citrus in the cake and in the lemon curd. 

The green tea on the tender boiled eggs was a note of bitter against the creaminess of the egg; it also promoted the color palette, what I thought of as the colors of a bruise that is healing: green, purple and yellow. I played around with some sugar brittles—pumpkin and candied crab—as well as a beer jelly that is stirred to look like broken glass—but did not end up serving. Experiments that did not pan out—but I will try again. I used organic, unrefined sugars for the brittles so they were cloudy and I wanted them to look like glass. And the beer jelly was wincingly bitter. 

I was moved by a kitchen scene in the collection:

Raise the dough,

grate the cheese, lay down

green leaves of fragrant basil.

Then, I eat

I then tried to capture this visual with the za’atar heavy with green thyme on rounds of toast:

Za'atar (sesame, thyme, sumac)

There are a lot of references to driving in "Beast:" 

The road’s yellow stitch hems me to earth,

fragile as a swatch of sun

From this couplet I became obsessed with the idea of a yellow dessert. I loved these lines as they made me think of W.S. Merwin's "Separation:" 

Your absence has gone through me

like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

I thought about trying to line up the tiny lemon chiffon cupcakes like highway divider lines, but happily discarded the ideas as possibly impractical and too literal. 

Planning and executing the menu was a really engaging project and I hope that we have more opportunities for such collaborations and impressionistic renderings of responses to works of art. 

Please visit Bedouin Books to purchase a copy of "Beast." 

Some of the beautiful work published by Michael D'Alessandro of Bedouin Books

http://marrowmag.com/

Fabrication Feast Cook's Notes (9.17.11 Event)

It was exciting to design a meal for ADX’s fabrication festival.  I wanted the dinner to feel interactive and so guests were invited to bring their own dining kit and table story; for the meal, diners “finished’ their dishes with the sauces that were served alongside the courses, the idea is that the dish didn’t come together until the diner added the sauces, in the amounts and combinations that suited them.

The inspiration for the menu was “communities of builders” and somehow these three sprang to the fore: bees (honey, hives, comb), Amish barn raisings, and Carthage.

Here is how I expressed these themes for the feast:

Bees: I bought a full bar of honey for diners to “harvest” honey from the comb. We served hexagonal pastry cookies (honeycomb is hexagonal) for diners to ice with a pea, feta, mint “icing.”  The space at ADX buzzed with our conversation, like a hive, and Bill Taylor of PD(X) Lab brought a digital system that cast light patterns that shifted in accordance with the noise levels of our diners; we also called this a “digital barn raising.”

Amish Barn raisings: The whole notion of coming together for this fabrication feast felt like a barn raising. We invited numerous collaborators: Abraham King of Discourage records DJ’d, Tressa Yellig of Salt Fire & Time brought kombucha and kvass for cocktails, as well as a classic lemonade (think Harrison Ford in Witness, gulping down a glass of lemonade in one draught while Kelly McGillis watches and sweats), we convinced Cliff Allen of The People’s Pig to smoke and roast the lamb legs, and of course our hosts at ADX and our diners all made or brought things for the feast. So the Amish part of the feast was milk, honey, oats, jams, pork, all of the food that feels “heartland.” I kept thinking of the refrain, a land of milk and honey.

Carthage. Ok, Rome was a first reflex, but I thought Carthage, ancient Rome’s chief rival, would be more fun, especially as the founder of Carthage, Queen Dido/Elissa, was a Phoenician (Phoenicia is present-day Lebanon, Carthage is present-day Tunisia), so we could reference both Lebanon and Tunisia, so do more middle east, north African, southern Mediterranean foods. Dido was also a clever mathematician and there’s the whole Carthage foundation story of the oxhide and how after being promised land encompassed by an oxhide as a joke by the locals after she landed at Carthage, she cut the hide into tiny strips that encompassed a large territory. Perhaps apocryphal, but a great story, and there’s a math theorem named after this principle, called “Dido’s Theorem.” So the fresh figs and green pistachios belong to this flavor palette, as do the black olive oil, chickpea puree, the lamb rubbed with za’atar, and served with preserved citrus, harissa, yogurt, vegetable tagine and freekah (green wheat). 

 Final Menu: Fabrication Feast at ADX 9.17.11

Honey in the comb

Fresh figs

Black olive oil with anchovy

Chickpea puree

Shredded pork maple, paprika

Hexagonal pastry cookie

Pea, feta, mint “icing”

Smoked corn, cherry tomatoes, alder-smoked salt (farewell to summer)

Roasted leg of lamb with za’atar

Vegetable tagine (looking to fall… root vegetables: beets, parsnips, potato and kale)

Freekah

Preserved citrus (grapefruit, lime, lemon, orange, honey and curry)

Harissa (Aleppo pepper for less heat than traditional harissa)

Yogurt, cucumber, mint

Oat shortcake

Raspberry and white peach jam

Chocolate and pear jam

Goat cheese, goat milk and cream

Young Pear

Green pistachios

 See full pic sets on our facebook. 

All hands in.... September 17 fabrication feast at ADX

OPEN CALL: Diners, please get in touch if you want to help fabricate tables and seating for the September 17 supper at ADX. snowsupper@gmail.com xo, Heather