Chez Berliner's

Coni Berliner Farms Fresh Eggs

2010-02-15T23:57:00.000-08:00

local, organic, and grown by my own mom! these are the worlds best eggs and honestly, until i started getting these eggs as precious little gifts from my mom, i had no idea what a really fresh egg tasted like. i had no idea what a beautiful, deep orange gold the yolk could be. and what better to do with such brilliant fresh eggs? poach 'em and splash 'em with hollandaise sauce of course!

Sauteed Gnocchi with Butternut Squash and Sage Cream

2010-02-15T23:55:00.000-08:00

i'm pretty sure this is a pretty classic flavor combination: sweet squash, floral sage, salty prosciutto, all bound together in bath of cream. the sauce took on the beautiful color of the squash and made for a colorful base to the sauteed gnocchi.

the gnocchi were hand made with only 1 egg this time, and i may try an eggless dough next time. but instead of boiling i was inspired by a recent trip to db Modern Bistro, and instead sauteed them in butter. the result was a nice, crisp exterior with a typically silky gnocchi interior. i am pretty certain this is now my favorite gnocchi preparation. guess i'll have to keep eating gnocchi in order to find out!

A New Kind of Smoking

2009-12-18T17:05:00.000-08:00

it's funny how some thins can be built up in your mind to be bigger than they really are. i had prided myself for a long time on knowing the difference between grilling and bbq, but i had only ever done the former. bbq'ing, the simple act of cooking with low, indirect heat and flavoring with wood smoke, seemed so difficult that i was scared to ever try. i didn't have a smoker, i didn't have the time; all i had were a bunch of excuses.

well i finally manned up and smoked some meat and you know what? it wasn't all that hard. now don't get me wrong, the art of bbq, as practiced by all those pitmaster savants is exactly that - art. and my bbq was nothing like that, but it was good, solid bbq. here's how it went down.

learning
i'll make this quick - after years of watching on tv, reading in various books and magazines, and listening to any and all wise words from anyone who had knowledge to share, i ended up at one website for all the specifics: http://amazingribs.com/. Craig "Meathead" Goldwyn, a pro que circuit judge, lays down the most specific, well written instructions i could find, collected in one free place. and sometimes "instructions" are exactly what i need; especially the first time i try something that seems difficult to me. in then end, two days later, i was so satisfied with the results that i now feel like i have the solid foundation of understanding required to start the refinement process.

shopping
shopping, as always, was easy - i just headed straight to Pape's. hey, that kinda rhymes: "straight to Pape." check it out if you live on the penninsula: http://www.yelp.com/biz/pape-meat-co-millbrae. i picked up 15 pounds of pork spare ribs and had the butcher trim them down to st. louis cut ribs, which basically means the ribs are cut at a natural joint, resulting in a nice, squared off rack. observe the 15 pound bag of sad pig:

rubbing
prep is certainly one of my fav parts of cooking and good bbq requires lots of prep. first, the membrane on the bone side of the racks was, quite painstakingly, removed with a knife, some pliers and a pirate ship full of cursing. after the membrane removal, spices were gathered and measured in accordance with the "memphis dust" rub recipe. please notice the sierra nevada bottle standing guard, making sure that i was happy and adding love to every last grain of preparation. once the "dust" was mixed, tasted and ready to rock, the ribs were given a good rub with the dust, wrapped up in ziplock bags, and put to rest in the fridge for the next 24 hours. at this point my ocd and love of prep had kicked in and i snapped a few photos:

smoking
i have very little photographic evidence of this stage, but it was by far the most surprising and the most fun. in a massive show of self control (one of three in my life) i managed to not party too hard the night before with the very same friends whose parties typically leave me in a semi-vegetative state for at least a day. instead i came home early, got a good night's rest, and was up at 9am to get smokin'.

i wanted to eat at 3pm, assumed a 5 hour cook, and figured on an hour to prepare. although the prep took a bit longer than i thought, was able to stabalize the smoker at 230 degrees F or so. throughout the cook, when the temp started creeping up i would just open the door to cool things down a bit. i loaded up the wood chip pan with hickory (because i couldn't find apple) wood and by 10:30 am, the smoker was pumping out a beautiful, fragrant, plume of smoke. holy crap. see the photo above for the glorious sight that has certainly changed my life. i don't know what i was expecting, but seeing that smoke, knowing that it really is that easy, sent me to cloud nine. or cloud hickory. whatever.

the ribs had been out of the fridge, coming to room temp of course, and in they went. 10:30am on the nose. a couple victory swigs of the Glenfiddich were in high order so swigged away did i. some friends had joined the party at this point, and all kinds of other prep was under way. however i never got very far from the smoker and probably checked the temp every 15 minutes. after about an hour i could no longer resist the urge to take a look. so i did.

dear god it was beautiful. there was melted fat dripping ever so slowly and the spice rubbed ribs were glistening with brilliance. there were beautiful, pitch black splotches here and there along the bottom edges of the racks. and the smell was out of this world. i let the smoke go for another 30 minutes, for a total of about 1.5 hours of smoke, and then took out the wood. (a bit longer than i read, but shorter than my more experienced neighbor recommended.)

more victory swigs.

3 hours into the cook and it was time for the "texas crutch," which is a means for infusing a bit of flavor, tenderness and moisture back into the ribs. i pulled out the racks and wrapped them in foil pouches with about a cup of apple juice per pouch. the pouches were put back into the cook for an hour and then removed again. the ribs were then returned, sans crutch, to the smoker for the final 40 minutes of cooking. at almost exactly 4 hours and 40 minutes, i grabbed my tongs, took a rack lengthwise with the tong tips about half way up the rack and gave it a little bounce. the surface cracked ever so gently and the meat just under the surface looked moist and succulent. victory.

saucing
the final step was at hand. i removed the racks from teh smoker, cranked up the grill to high and painted my hand made bbq sauce onto the racks. the racks then got "sizzled" on the hot grill and basted a few times with more sauce. sadly, i "sizzled" a bit too long and made the surface of the racks more dry that i wanted. next time i think 4-5 minutes per side, just to crust up the sauce, would be more than sufficient.

and that was that. i cut the ribs into single ribs and the party loved 'em. i was pretty proud for my first attempt. bummed i only got the final parting photo. but hey, at least, if you look really close, you can see a bit of the prized pink smoke ring. victory indeed...

Roasting in the City...

2009-10-09T18:11:00.001-07:00

ah bachelor life. i am not saying i miss it. i don't. i'm just enjoying the bit of it that is flying by me like a cloud. presently, as i have been for the past 4 days, i'm staying at hedda and leonard's place in japan town. it was crab night upon my arrival on tuesday. if there's one thing, and trust me, there are many, many more, that hedda knows well it's crab dinner. you see, she loves crab. and, i've been told, that our crabbing season is simply "the bers:" september, october, november (, december? i don't know, i can't recall having crab in the christmas season...). today's date, october ninth, puts us square in the middle of that glorious season, that yearly gift of culinary bliss: crab dinner season! sadly, overcome with joy, frenzy, shell cracking, i failed to take any photographs what-so-ever. oh, but did i mention the treasure hiding in the fridge? the oxtail marinating in love (wine, herbs, vegetables)? no? well, allow me to explain the three day love affair between us and the oxtails.

day one
using the "pot au feu" recipe in the french laundry cookbook as our guide, we set out marinating oxtail, rather than short ribs, overnight. and by we, i mean hedda. good lookin' out girl, good lookin out...

day two
(ok, at this point im just diving into the cooking) we separate out the meat, the marinade and the vegetables in preparation. this night's plan was to: 1) brown the oxtail, 2) clarify the marinade and cook the oxtail and 3) make pasta for dinner. everything swent swimmingly and thus we have steve and leonard enjoying a few beers along with the pasta.

but, first of course, was browning the oxtail. the marinade was separated from the vegetables and the oxtail. the oxtail, once seasoned, were browned in oil and placed in the le crueset. quickly sauteed, and, i think it is important to note, seasoned, vegetables followed. while all of that was happening, the marinade was bubbling away, being skimmed, painstakingly, every few minutes. repetitive, focused little motions, steps, tasks... i find a lot of comfort in that, so i skimmed and skimmed and skimmed for about an hour. when the oxtail and vegetables were both settled in for a long, slow boiling, we added the clarified marinade and enough stock to cover.

up to a boil over medium heat, certainly not in a rush here, and then into the oven.

after somewhere just shy of five hours, maybe four, the oxtail was tender and the sauce seasoned. that was the end of the cooking for the oxtail that day. off the heat more skimming occurred, and, after hours, the pot was put in the fridge for the night.

day three
sadly, leonard had to work late, or normal relative to his schedule. so hedda and i did some shopping at molly stones to pick up potatos and celery root, aka celeriac to serve with the oxtail. i won't get into the details, but that little trip to molly stone's turned into a very amusing, very quirky, trip that included the phrases: "only king of potatos, oh i know all about THOSE kind of friends, no - he's my best friend's husband, and i like chinese girls too." complete whackyness.

at home, the cooking commenced. the potatos and celeriac were peeled, chopped, covered with water and brough to a boil. after scrapping up and tossing the fat that had risen to the surface, the oxtail pot was returned to the stovetop to warm up over a medium heat. once the liquid in the pot had melted, out came the oxtail and vegetable - oxtail into a big container in a warm oven, vegetables into the garbage. the remaining sauce was then reduced over heat for about 20 minutes. and guess what, it was skimmed almost constantly. once reduced to a sauce consistency, it was seasoned to taste.

this resulted in the three primary components: meltingly tender oxtail, a very strong, red wine based sauce, and boiled potatos and celeriac. the potatos and cleriac were mashed with about 15 pounds of butter and quart of cream (and yes, that's an exageration) into a smooth and creamy consistency. i'd like to point out that leonard, who was home at that point, couldn't find the potato masher so i, brimming to the gills with liquid courage, took after mashing those potatos and celeriac with two wooden spoons and a loud "hell yea!"

and that just about did it. we plated, we served and...

sadly the photo just doesn't do it justice. we were really, really proud of this one. the oxtail was tender, the sauce savory and the mash nicely creamy. not only that, but we had a lot of fun cooking, as usual.

so that's it. through the haze of good times, my four day roast in the city that i love, with the friends that i love, doing the things that i love, missing the ones that i love. cheers...

Lonely App and Dessert

2009-08-20T22:22:00.000-07:00

Ack, need more words here... Main point is that the braised oxtails Hedda made were so tastey that no photographs were taken. The appetizer and dessert were both good tood, and here's the photos:

Gnocchi 3 Ways and Osso Bucco

2009-08-20T22:12:00.000-07:00

Ah the adventures... 4 pounds of veal shanks, hand made gnocchi and the opportunity to obsessibly chop veg. Dig.

Japanese Poser Plate (and the 6th Grade)

2009-07-14T20:23:00.000-07:00

this past may, babe and i had the pleasure of juliet, jennifer and baby maddison visiting from vancouver. juliet and jennifer, twin sisters, are two of alisa's oldest friends. juliet's lovely daughter maddison, is just a few months older than lucas. the visit was a blast and i got to cook dinner for one of the evenings. the twins, rockin' chicks as they are, love their steaks rare. that being the case, and since i live but to serve, rare steaks were served...

so what's up with the poser plate you ask? do you even remember the word poser? the word, like an old familiar tune, ringing just barely in earshot, takes me back to a sweetly simple time. 1986. sixth grade. we were rockin' the long bangs and, like 11 year olds with turrets, we would shake our heads in vain attempts to get those long bangs out of our faces. we were blooming idiots, by which i mean idiots that were blooming, eyes peeled open by the wonders of a world that was bigger, grander and, most importantly, ours for the taking. lead fearlessly by devious older brothers, we were learning about rock music, the glorious fact that girls weren't actually "grodey," nor did they have cooties, and those crazy, pioneering lords of the skating world: caballero, hawk, mountain. the list goes on. skating was it, it was the bangs in our faces, the sweet ass vans shoes with skulls, the sure fire way to come home every day with bloody knees.

it was the line between the glory of truth and the shame of being a poser. posers were the ones who talked the talk but couldn't ollie the curb at full speed.

ah, good days. hence the title of this post. my plate, with the carefully placed pile of spinach, chopped in ribbons, tossed with a fresh white balsamic and fresh peach vinaigrette and topped with seasame seeds, the four squares of firm tofu, glazed with a miso, mirin and sugar reduction and broiled, and the two (not one or three) tempura prawns, doused in mayo, soy and sugar, was a poser. it was a pretty good poser though, not only lookin quasi-japanese in organization and precision, but tasting fairly good as well. do you ever get raw spinach at a japanese restaurant? rarely. peach dressing? i've never. well, cest la vie. the guests were happy and, bonus, i got to trip myself down memory lane...

Salmon Burgers, Apple Pepper Slaw, Out of Focus

2009-05-15T20:03:00.000-07:00

this'll be a quicky, just a few shots of some salmon burgers with and apple and red bell pepper slaw made some night last week.

the slaw was made with julienned fuji apples and a red bell pepper. on the good advice of my good friend myra, i picked up a japanese veggie slicer and love it. anything sliced with the apparent precision of a julienne just looks cool to me. (and yes, i realize my next challenge is to julienne by hand! man, if that doesn't sound like a time suck that i'll enjoy greatly.) the dressing: mayo, sugar, mustard and some rice vinegar.

the burgers are salmon, celery, parsely and chives. all in all, simple good stuff. wow, what a boring post.

Risotto, u confound me...

2009-04-24T14:55:00.000-07:00

it all seems so simple - melt butter, sautee onions until translucent, add rice for 2-3 mins until faintly toasty, add wine until evaporated, then add heated stock, 1 cup at a time, letting each cup get completely absorbed before adding the next. stir constantly. stop when risotto is creamy but still al dente, or "toothy" in the middle of the grain.

this should leave you with risotto - creamy, saucy rice basically. well, it does, but damn, doing it is waaaaay different than doing it well! i've tried dozens of times and am only now getting close to a good risotto.

first and foremost, use a wide sautee pan - i tried like 10 times with a deep stock pot before finally realizing that was not the way to go. (ok, recipe's often don't specify the cooking vessel, and when they do, i often don't recognize which is which. i had to see someone making it on a cooking show before realizing my mistake. lame. not at all suprising.) second, be patient and keep stirring. trying to speed things along does not a good risotto make.

anyways, these days i'm fairly happy and have become unconfounded. here's the mise en place and the finished product: musroom risotto and orange-rosemary grilled lamb chops.

DAF... Done and done.

2009-04-10T14:38:00.000-07:00

like the oh so great chocolate, another DAF has gone by, and the success is bitter sweat. the normal players were present - Aurthur and Elaine, Leslie and Kelvin, Hedda and Leonard - as well as a special canadian guest, alisa's childhood friend Virginia. foxy wife decked the house out in fine style, adorning our table with a beautful setting of mandarin oranges and hand made menus. amidst the sweet smell of blooming birthday roses, my biggest endevor ufolded, itself blooming, and took on a life of it's own. and this night saw and added touch of joy, which, like that perfect pinch of salt, flavored the whole evening - we were celebrating alisa's birthday!

this DAF also featured another unique addition: a blind tasting wine contest. the rule was $25 max bottles. the tasting was fun and i'll write up the details in my next post... stay tuned.

babe's beautiful table setting

amuse bouche ~ lobster pops

first course ~ crab salad and avocado

second course ~ corn chowder

third course ~ scallops and citrus sauce

fourth course ~ sea bass, beniimo salt al cartoccio

fifth course ~ game hen, polenta cakes, carmelized onions

sixth course ~ sierra nevada braised short ribs, fingerling potato coins

about the food
amuse bouche ~ lobster pops
first up were the lobster pops. i had planned on serving a toasted bread box filled with brie and topped with a meyer lemon marmalade, but when i tested the recipe i found out that i am absolutely incapable of making a good marmalade. (that in itself is just a challenge really 'cause considering there's like 4 ingredients, it shouldn't be all that hard). anyways, if no bread box, then what?

well, inspiration strikes where you least expect it: las vegas. foxy wife went to vegas (baby!) for a bachelorette. they ate at Sea Blue and were served lobster corndogs. how deliciously haute country cuisine. i had to bite on that idea, and bite i did. seemed to me that a corndog tastes mostly like the cornmeal based batter and would probably mask the sweetness of the lobster. on went my little little culinary thinking cap - quite obviously the very first sign of trouble - and out popped the above mentioned tempura lobster pops. genius i thought - tempura batter, properly executed, is so light and subtle that it would surely add only a cripy texture to the golfball size chunks of lobster it was to coat.

well properly executed was the first problem ~ i followed what i thought was a fairly standard tempura recipe: corn flour, flour, ice cold water and egg. i even went so far as to chill the flour mixture in the freezer to ensure cold ingredients! regardless, the batter was waaaaayyyyy too heavy resulting in exactly what i was trying to avoid - lobster pieces lost in a mouthful of thick, crunchy fried batter. the second problem was just the rookiest of the rookie manuevers - i forgot to season the lobster. ack. there. i said it.

ah well, the idea is still solid ~ the pops themselves were fried nicely, the lobster was tender and moist and delicious. they were served with lemon wedges and fried basil. next time i go "mano y mano" with the lobster pops, ill season the little bastards liberally and follow the french laundry's tempura recipe (which includes baking soda and sparling water), and, dear friends, i'll be victorious. oh, and i hope you are there to try them out...

second course ~ corn chowder
nothing to say here except that corn and crab fritters were intended to join the perfectly-fine-but-not-interesting soup. only the fritters never made it to the party. i was told they forgot their baking soda and didn't have time to go back home and pick it up. subsequently they disintegrated in hot oil, pissed me off, and skipped out on dinner. oh well, onward...

third course ~ scallops and citrus sauce
so for this dish, i guess i need to link back to the originator? i'm not really sure how that works. anyway, babe and i ate at a joint called The House in the city and Chef Tse's dish formed the foundation for this one. Seared scallops, micro-green salad, and some sort of citrus sauce that was smooth, silky and sweet.

I have no idea what was in his version, but my sauce (served from a squeeze bottle in a funky shape - boo ya) was basically a lemon juice vinaigrette of lemon juice, white balsamic, and olive oil, enhanced with this really kick ass pomegranate syrup i found at a little middle eastern market. the syrup is incredible - super concentrated pomegranate flavor that somehow has all the sweetness leeched out so that you can control the sweetness level yourself. then the lemon-pomegranate vinaigrette was mounted with butter (again, you must be shocked) and sweetened with honey to form what i think was a nicely balanced, smooth and tangy sauce that brightened up the tender scallops. one last touch that was small but important to me, was the addition of a pinch of fluer de sel and a thyme sprig tip to each scallop. when consumed together, the salt cut the sweetness slightly and, right at the end, the thyme imparted a floral freshness, thus keeping the whole bite almost refreshing. (holy crap, that little tirade, although absolutely true and my honest thoughts, is worth a post of its own. seriously, who the hell do i think i am, haha...)

plating wise, well, i'm proud gosh darnit! why can't i use a squeeze bottle, a rectangular plate, and the rule of thirds to compose a dish that looks better than it tastes?!?

fourth course ~ sea bass, beniimo salt al cartoccio
check it: baking in paper rocks. baking the tastiest fish in the ocean in paper rocks squared. baking the tastiest fish in the ocean in paper seasoned with beniimo salt that your dear friends brought you all the way from japan rocked the house d-0-w-n. super, super simple. julienned red bell pepper and carrots, a nice hunk of sea bass, thyme (again) and the beniimo salt are assembled in an envelope of parchment paper and baked for 9 mins at 500. bam. done.

so the beniimo salt. comes from beni imo, or Okinawan sweet potatos. the dried, minced sweet potatos are mixed with salt and just float around like little bits of purple haze. when added to the fish, their color bleeds, creating little purple patches on the fish. topped with the thyme, the colors blended beautifully - from bottom to top: red and orange, white, purple and green. it was a straight tie-dye dish... the hippie in me smiled big.

fifth course ~ game hen, polenta cakes, carmelized onions
this dish was covered pretty well in my post about the sauce so i'm not going to get into the food per se. i do, however, want to take a moment to talk about the mad respect i have for the organizational genius it must take to run a real deal restaurant. my dish included a stock based sauce, sauteed game hens, sauteed polenta cakes and carmelized shallots. that's 4 little items.

yea, it took me several hours spread over 2 days of cooking to put this one together.

this innocent looking little dish was, however, my biggest organizational success and a very potent reinforcement of the value and efficiency of good prepping and organization. day 1 consisted of butchering the hens, separating out the legs that were to be used for the dish, and making the sauce with the freshly harvested carcasses. while the carcasses roasted with some carrots, onions, celery and garlic, i made the polenta (which, by the way, got a great flavor spike by adding crushed garlic to the stock that was simmered prior to adding the corn meal ~ thanks again french laundry cookbook!). the polenta finished cooking and went into a sheetpan to cool while the carcasses came out of the oven and went on to the stovetop. the sauce was made on the stovetop and then set aside to cool along with the polenta. finally rounds were cut from the sheet of polenta and everything - the sauce, the hen legs and the polenta rounds - went into the fridge, ready for the next day.

day 2 started with seasoning the legs and carmelizing the shallots, hours before dinner. then, come time for this course, all i had to do was sautee the legs and the polenta rounds, pull them and keep them warm while the sauce was finished in the pan used to sautee the legs. lastly, assembly of all the completed pieces and voila - the course was cooked and served in 15 minutes! this may not sound all that impressive, but considering we were five courses in, i had been cooking for like 9 hours at this point, and i HADN'T GOTTEN DRUNK YET, time was certainly of the essence. all the prep meant that i got to start drinking that much faster once dinner service was complete. need i say more?

sixth course ~ sierra nevads braised short ribs, fingerling potato coins
i, along with thousands, nay, millions, have said it before: slow cooked meat rocks. and, as you know, beer is considered to be the 8th wonder of the world at Chez Berliner's. so the two of them together is just fine by us. this is the third time i've served it and everyone always loves it. but i'm getting tired of it so this is the official swan song of the sierra nevada braised short ribs! adios tasty ribs...

well, there you have it. more than you ever wanted to know about this round of DAF. on the whole i'm really pleased. 6 courses plus an appy pulled off with no stress - well, very little stress - and another great night. best part was that i didn't get wasted until AFTER dinner so hey, success!

Gastrique!

2009-04-10T12:08:00.000-07:00

Gatrique's rock. Super potent, very pretty on the plate and super easy to do! This one was sugar, vinegar and apple flavored tea. Mix, reduce and use... The chicken was pan seared and steamed thigh over fingerling potato and parmesan mash. Bit of thyme has been going with everything lately - not sure why, just obsessed with thyme.

Oh, and regarding the pan seared/steamed thing, I found, quite by accident, that covering chicken while sauteeing it, which adds the "steam" part of the equation, really made for tender and juicy chicken. I only figured it out because I was trying to keep the damn oil from popping all over the place. Lucky discovery!

DAF, T-Minus 17 Days!

2009-03-19T10:02:00.000-07:00

the prep has begun. once again, poor foxy wife has had to cope with maniacle murmers, inaudible mubles of culinary mayhem in preparation, and of course, me, being really, really annoying. i've got a menu planned, and, thanks to our craptacular economy, a spreadsheet listing each item and it's cost so as not to get out of hand in my desparate attempt to impart all my love of cooking, like an intravenous shot of dopamine, unto my guests in the form of dining pleasure.

this one will prove to be an excersize in organization and preparation. the menu includes an amuse bouche (heh, that will never not make me laugh) and six full, alibiet small, courses. Dinner's at 4pm on saturday and I don't get off work until 5pm friday, which leaves me just under 24 hours to shop, prep, cook, plate and serve. there's a little voice in my head that, along with babe, is telling me that i've bit off too much, that i'm marching up too big a hill, but i say "bah! i can do it..."

best part is, we're hosting a wine tasting competition along with dinner, based loosely on Chateau Montelena's '73 Chardonay's famous victory in 1976 in Paris. i'm guessing i could serve 2 of the 6 courses an no one would even notice!

i'll share more of the planning after dinner so as not to spoil the suprise in the event that one of my guests happens to read this.

Six Courses at Chez Berliner's

2009-02-26T23:10:00.000-08:00

the players

picture the scene: two dear friends visiting from canada, Babe, 9 months pregnant with Lucas, a chill to the air outside... what else is there to do but to go big and have an intimate dinner party? first up, the players: me and Babe (and, technically, Lucas), Myra, friend, co-host, chef, Maurice, guest and photographer, and Anita, guest. observe:

the dinner soirée
this is my cooking blog so i'm just going right to the food. and there was lots of it. as usual, babe set the mood with her beautiful decorating ~ sort of an enchanted winter dinner party feel. dinner, 2 days in the making, took 3 hours to consume, which was really rewarding... felt very european as a matter of fact, with a laxidasical pace, endless conversation, free flowing wine and, of course, the food. when the last drop of mango sauce was licked from the beautiful dessert dish, maurice looked at his watch and exclaimed, "holy, it's 11pm!"

come to think of it, "rewarding" isn't strong enough ~ it was downright invigorating! as noted in an earlier post on Why I Love This..., it's in the combination of food and friends, exhibition and glory (or not sometimes!), and, of course, butter, that i find so much pleasure. and this night, this dinner that slipped 3 hours out from under us without shaking a glass, this experience was a savory hallmark in what i hope will be a lifetime of such events...

the enchanted table

a la foxy wife

amuse bouche

gruyeré cheese gougers

first course

butter nut squash soup

second course

dungeness crab salad, mixed greens, pomegranate dressing

third course

sweet potatoe agnolotti, curry emulsion sauce

fourth course

seared halibut, broccoli rabe, citrus vanilla buerre blanc

fifth course

sierra nevada pale ale braised short ribs, fingerling potato coins

sixth course

vanilla bean panecotta, mango compote, homemade pistachio biscotti

so there you have it, six courses at chez berliner's courtesy of todd and myra. you can find the complete album of Maurice's Fabulous Photos on, again you guessed it, facebook. in case you're not cool enough (i kid) to see his photos, here's the gist of the food shots. oh, and hey, don't feel bad, i had to make a six course meal to get access to these photos (again, i kid)!

The Sauce...

2009-01-31T09:59:00.000-08:00

last night, and of course i truly wish i would have photographed more, I experimented with a really big sauce. I tried, with varying degrees of success, to butcher 2 cornish game hens (more on that below) and to make a sauce from the carcases.

so let's get to the good stuff already, eh? the sauce. oh the triple distilled sauce. i can't even wait, i have to show you what i'm talking about with another classically crappy food shot by yours truly:

there's some mash and, if i do say so myself, a wonderfully crispy skinned cornish game hen leg, and the sauce! now, i know i need to get help on presentation - i just can't figure out any interesting ideas or new ways to plate potatoes, meat and sauce. i guess in teh end stacking is probably the most interesting but oh well, in person even the plate above looked much nicer. ah, i digress...

making the Sauce...

so the sauce was made by putting the remains of my game hen butchery ~ 2 wings and 2 carcasses cut into chuncks with a cleaver (that was actually 7x as fun as it sounds and i'mpretty sure i'm going to have to figure out a way to cleave things more often. i think i may have actually yelled a chinese word when i did it. awesome), a sliced carrot, a sliced onion and 2 smashed cloves of garlic into a small roasting pan. all that love went into a hot oven for about 45 minutes. i added water periodically to prevent the juices from buring on the bottom of the pan.

when the carcasses and veg were browned and the drippings smelled great, the pan came out of the oven and onto the stove top. a cup of stock was added and then the liquid was reduced 'till it caramelized on the bottom of the pan. another cup of stock, another reduction (this is where all the big bold flavor comes from) and it was ready for the 3rd and final reduction. for this last one, thyme sprigs and a bay leaf were added along with the stock. this reduction was only about 1/2 the volume and then the whole affair was strained into a saucepan. (then strained back and forth 3 or 4 times for good meausre!)

this left us with a rich and fairly thick jus. after sauteeing the game hen legs in another pan, the fat was poured out and the jus was used to deglaze the pan. swirl in butter (lots, duh!) and season and viola! this was the best, most rich and complex sauce i've ever made. dig!

butchering the game hens

I suspect that most people who cook a lot, including my mom, are well familiar with buying a whole chicken and taking it apart. It is probably taken for granted, an unavoidable lesson learned by anyone with the slightest bit of sense and the desire to cook at home.

well, despite my strong desire to cook at home, my lack of "the slightest bit of sense" meant that i had face down these two game hens ~ and learn the hard way. the major "duh" moment was discovering that poping out the joints by hand, such as the thighbone from the back bone, and THEN cutting away the surrounding skin and flesh was far easier, and far neater, than trying to just cut through the joints.

oh yea, go ahead and laugh, you should, but i'm not even gonna get into the other idiodicies of my adventure - in stead i'll tell you that in the end, i was successful and those 2 game hens ended up as 2 very neat carcasses and a plate of 4 beautiful breast fillets and 4 lovely, semi-bonless legs. (ok, that was one of the greatest things i learned - take out the thigh bone but leave the drumstick bone! makes for a very nice presentation AND you get to eat the succulent thigh meat without having to negotiate around a bone - very nice.

anyways, random post, sorry bout that. gonna try to focus a bit more in the future - this was supposed to be about the sauce, not my rambling. always learning lessons.

Finally Steamed, Bamboo Style

2009-01-12T19:50:00.000-08:00

for years i've owned the classic chinese bamboo steamers and for years i've been too afraid to use them. not sure why really, since the process is so simple. but the fact remains, i've never busted them out. well today the trend of senseless fear came to an end.

i steamed. it rocked. observe...

Guest Stars

2008-12-27T16:56:00.000-08:00

just some random shots of the superstars who have graced my kitchen recently. first up, myra jung, crafting a smokey, baconlicious, butternut squash soup. next up, maurice li, serving the soup that myra just made, and lastly, a chinese feast by our dear friend hedda cheuck ~ steamed fish with green onion, spareribs, steamed egg ~ just general deliciousness! thanks all...

Ribs ~ Pork Babybacks, Beef Short ~ Need I Say More?

2008-12-07T22:02:00.000-08:00

The beef short ribs, done up for practice prior to unleashing on future dinner guests, were braised in beer (cuz we all know how much i L-O-V-E beer) and hoisin sauce. The asian inspired, sweet twist on beer braised came from a Dave Lieberman recipe found here on the Food Network (hey, pipe down now). First, slow cooked meat rocks, second, browning on the extra burner of my grill out back was like the best idea I've had since proposing to foxy wife. No fire alarms, no 6 hour aromatic reminder of browned meat and the consumption of some of the beer that would soon be braising the meat - doesn't get much better. The method you ask??
* brown ribs thoroughly (outside!)
* move to stove top w/ a bottle of ale, ginger and garlic for 2 1/2 hours
* remove some of the braising liquid to a saucepan, add hoisin, reduce to thicken sauce
* move ribs, braising liquid and added hoisin to 350 stove for 1/2 hour
* plate fingerling potato puree, reduced sauce, top w/ rib, garnish w/ chives

Next on our carnivorous culinary chronicles? Pork baby backs... Ah the mighty pig - you may oink innocently, but in truth you rule my world like the mighty north star guided countless sailors across the globe. Yup, I lovepork and I love pork ribs. Oddly enough, despite all the wisdom to the contrary, I prefer to dry roast my ribs in the oven instead of using a braising liquid (much less boiling)! Rather than ramble, I'll get to the goods:

* brown sugar, paprika and other spices rub, wrapped tight overnight (use your favorite spice rub or google one up!)

* removed from fridge and brought to room temp

* roasted at 250 for 2 1/2 hours, or until the ribs are sticking out of the meat and turn easily when twisted (I got a tip from some Youtube video about wrapping and roasting directly in saran wrap and foil)

* Once roasted, finish on hot grill, basting w/ sauce - in my case I used 2, a classic BBQ and a peanut butter/hoisin/lime/seasame sauce

* plate fingerling puree, garnished w/ fried onion strips, ribs and serve with BEER OF COURSE!

* (yes, i realize i need a new protein but stay tuned for an up coming post in which i actually serve meat w/ something other than mashed potatoes - gasp, i actually use veggies! ok, close your slacked jaw, it's not that crazy...)

Why I Love This...

2008-11-12T22:29:00.000-08:00

Good friends and good food, that, plain and simply, is why i love cooking, why i sweat over the hot stove, why i drive myself scattering about the kitchen like a cracked out weasle. i love the frenzy which is really odd for me, a departure from my natural self dilusion of calm that is actually just laziness. poor babe often laments my maniacal nature in the kitchen so i've been workin' hard to just let the love in, share the load, and not foam at the mouth when someone pitches in. i mean hey, if it's food and friends i love, why not love friends helping to prepare the food? (and yea, the obvious answer is that i just want all the glory and praise... why lie?) so here it is, wrapped up in one great evening, all the things i love about cooking - good food, good friends and just a little bit 'o the warm and fuzzy team work. awww, ain't that sweet? first up, the fruit of the labor: steak (i know, suprising), 2 (not 3 and not 4) baby carrots, and what will henceforth be known as "Leonard's Silk Spuds." second, and of course more importantly, the food and friends, so happy together, a singular visage of the joy i find in it all.

Crab Ravioli - Feenie Style

2008-10-21T09:06:00.000-07:00

Thanks Mrs. Chan for another awesome gift - by the way, for those of you who don't know, the Chan women are absolute maestros of gift giving - the Feenie's Cookbook. You can Google Robert Feenie to learn more, but the important thing about him is that his former restaurant, Lumiere in Vancouver, is where I took my beloved foxy babe for dinner the night I asked her to marry me. Anyway, here's the first dish I made out of the book: Crab Ravioli with Truffle Oil Buerre Blanc. Very fun dish to make - hand made pasta for the first time from scratch and rolled it OLD SKOOL with a rolling pin, picked the meat out of two crabs, and made a buerre blanc which, i must say, is my current favorite sauce - booze and butter? oh hell yea... in hindsight the ravioli should have been a little smaller and the parsely more artfully placed, but the dish tasted great according to babe and our friend Diana, so no complaints!

Wrapped 2 ways...

2008-10-09T16:26:00.000-07:00

Wrapped way #1 - So i made my first set of dumplings finally - something i've been wanting to try for a long time. the recipe, although i'm sure it's pretty standard, came from ??? in a recent issue of Gourmet magazine. ground pork and chives baby, doesn't get any better i think. they came out ok but... wait for it... i learned ANOTHER lesson. minced ginger out of a jar is both lazy (bad chez berliner, bad) and extreemly potent. so i call these dumplings the "pow-kick-yo-ass-with-ginger" dumplings. however i must say, wrapping those things was totally zen for me - i wrapped 43 but would have been happy to wrap another 100. i just wrapped, enjoying a beer, listening to the tv. very nice.

Wrapped way #2 - I finally nipped the tip of my finger off using my kick ass Benreinier (or however u spell it) - thanks Myra!! I feel more "official" now but I'm afraid it was too wimpy to leave a scar so I'll have to keep trying. anyways to prevent, um, bleeding all over the rack of lamb i was making - with some incredible poached fingerling potatoes from an Alice Waters recipe - I just gauzed it and then taped the sucker up - yea!

DAF: Lobster Eaten, Lessons Learned

2008-08-28T21:33:00.000-07:00

this round of DAF was bitter sweet. this post covers 2 aspects of the dinner: the food (sweet) and the personal (bitter - why i wasn't a rockstar). WARNING - THESE DISHES TASTED BETTER THAN THEY LOOKED!

the food (sweet)
~~of the menu this time, sadly, only 2 of the 3 courses were captured.~~ UPDATE: leonard did get all the courses, including dessert. ~~leonard, our resident photographic guru may have captured more so i hope to be able to come back and add a photo of the first dish.~~ anon - the menu:

~ pan fried ling cod, samosa filled ravioli, curry emulsion, vegetable salad

~ chicken tikka masala, indian saffron rice

~ butter poached lobster, puff pastry medallion, lobster sauce, baby bok choy, baby carrots, pearl onions

~ melon balls in simple syrup

^ Ling Cod & Samosa Ravioli ^

^ The Tikka Masala ^

^ The Curry Butter Poached Lobster ^

might as well start with the photos of the finished products above, none of which are very pretty due to my BEING WASTED at the time of plating - which is covered in more detail in the "why i wasn't a rockstar" section following this food section - so those of you so inclined can skip the rest of the rambling. but i give fair warning: if you stop now, you will miss out on the cruel lobstercide of 4 lovely maine lobsters and a glimpse at what $85 of freshly extracted lobster meat looks like!

the menu was all sorta prep time cooking. although, in retrospect, i should have made both sauces, the curry emulsion sauce for the fish and ravioli, and the lobster sauce, the evening before. seems to me now that sauces can develop their flavors when the rest in the fridge for a day. any of you notice that as well? ah well, that's NOT what i did. instead, the previous day's prep duty included: 1) steeping the lobsters (boiling 2 minutes just to kill 'em, and make it easy to extract the basically raw lobster meat for its subsequent poaching in the beurre monte), 2) marinating the chicken overnight for the tikka masal, and 3) preparing the samosa filling for the raviolis.

course 1 - pan fried ling cod, samosa filled ravioli, curry emulsion, vegetable salad
the first corse, not pictured, was a pan fried piece of ling cod on top of a samosa ravioli in a curry emulsion sauce. i say this again in case you didn't get that from the header above (uh huh.) there was a deceptive amount of work done here, but, like the lobster, all the vegetables were chopped, blanced, iced and stored prior to cooking. the plating worked out well with a nice circle of sauce and the ravioli, fish and vegetable salad stacked in a tower. the fish was bland and i'll have to remeber to either NOT buy ling cod again, or to season the ever lovin sweet jesus out of it. the curry sauce (from none other than the french laundry cookbook) rocked - it was smooth, mounted with a lot of butter and the warm curry flavor worked well with the bland fish. curry just rocks, period.

for the ravioli i wanted to do a play on indian samosas to compliment the indian nature of this particular dinner. so i created a traditional vegetarian samosa filling of potatoes - but omitted the green peas, since i hate the little bastards, and went with finely chopped carrots to add some crunch. seasoned the potato mix with some garam masala, tumeric, cumin and chili and combined with well mashed potatoes. i think the result was pretty interesting - enjoy this photo of Leonard, the photo guy, assembling the raviolis:

and the finished product:

course 2 ~ chicken tikka masala, indian saffron rice

i've made this several times using this recipe: http://www.recipezaar.com/25587. the recipe is great and i only change a few things to suit my tastes - namely marinating the chicken overnight and adding butter and sugar to the sauce in its final stage of simmering. (i'm sure this came as a shock since i rarely use butter... except for when i cook ANYTHING savory.)

now what i really love about cooking indian is that it's like a little science experiment - mixing 4 or 500 spices together like little chemicals. i may have to use a beaker somehow the next time i make this. here's the mise for the marinade (and no, the gatorade didn't make it into the dish) (and another "and" - no making fun on my cheap ass spices. i'm cheap, deal with it):

course 3 ~ butter poached lobster, puff pastry medallion, lobster sauce, baby bok choy, baby carrots, pearl onions

here it comes, the lobstercide - that, for you uneducated folks, is the murder of lobsters. the dish, in theory, came from Michael Minna's Lobster Pot Pie. i got to eat there with my engineering group at work - score - and i did, if i do say so myself, pick the perfect menu. for my main i had the lobster pot pie. there's a great video showing the serving of said pie which i encourage you to observe. the frakkin' pie tasted 10x better than it looked and i was determined to make it. of course by this time i was commited to making the tikka masala, since i knew i could do that well, and thought, how do i make this lobster pot of goodness indian? curry. duh.

first up, the lobstercide:

^ "oh, hi larry!" ^

^ "uh, larry?" ^

^ "you sick f@ck!" ^

note: the preceeding commentary was originally provided by my buddy Paul Wang outta New Yoke City.

that last picture is of Larry and 3 of his brothers and sisters, each of which was steeped in hot water for 2 mins, just to Lobstercide them but not enough to cook the meat, and then the meat was removed. this was so that i could control the cooking of the meat in the buerre monte (aka water and butter emulsion aka almost melted butter. if you really want to know the difference, look up emulsion) - yet another technique culled from the great FLC. it was amazingly difficult, especially 4 times over. worst part of it was that it took a long time for each lobster to finally die! i felt awful when, even after a full minute, they were still twitching. next time im putting them straight in boiling water - no more torture in my future. then came the meat extraction - frakkin' hilarity. i got pretty good at it, but no matter how you do it, there are a lot of juices that need to come out of a recently deceased lobster. by then time i was done twisting the tail off, ripping the top of the body off, and whacking the shinto out of the large, very tuff claws of four lobsters, there was LOBSTER GORE EVERYWHERE! haha, you had to be there... (although i laugh now, it is only to try to protect myself from the terrible empathy i feel and guilt over causing what must have been a hellishly painful death - seriously, im going to try another method next time to ensure less suffering)

ok, meat out of lobsters - check - vegetables cut and blanched - check - time to make the sauce. first a quick shot of my OCD in action, followed by 2 stages of the lobster sauce in it's 2 hour development of searing the lobster bodies, and, well, read the recipe to find out how if you're so inclined:

^ trust me, at this point it smelled like effen lobster heaven! well, except for the lobsters, although i certainly hope they were in lobster heaven... won't be going there myself. maybe in hell, where i belong, larry will get to come back and kill me slowly. damn... ^

so that's the food. all in all pretty tasty. i need to work on the photography though, don't think i've quite nailed the "story of dinner" yet. alas, on to the bitter part of this post...

the personal (bitter - why i wasn't a rockstar)
first, im not ashamed to admit that one of the main reasons i love cooking and hosting DAF is the personal satisfaction that comes from my peeps being impressed by my work and by enjoying it. bottom line: when the crew comes over, raves about the food, eats and drinks for hours, and, in general, has a kick ass time, then i feel like a rockstar -- and really, who doesn't like feeling like a rockstar?!?

that being said, this DAF taught me that letting your guests relax (preferably by making sure they drink way more wine than you do) and not "fishing for feedback" about the food is the true path to a night of decadent dining pleasure. this time around, against a background of lobster shells, sauce and meat, i didn't let anyone relax, and i fished away, all damn night. it was still a lovely night, and not wanting to cry over spilled milk, i will simply say it could have been better and i won't make the same mistake twice.

and did i mention that i think this was all cuz i was totally wasted? i had been prepping for 2 days - my poor babe had been hearing maniacal murmers like "mmhh ahh i could just plate the lobster on TOP of a piece of puff pastry instead of using a pot, mmwhaa..." - and come sunday morning i woke up ready to rock the day! after all that hard work i figured i deserved a beer while i cooked. so first up, start decanting the 2001 jordan river red, next drink a beer... at 10... IN THE MORNING. come 2 pm the vegetables were peeled (ok, pearl onions are just little bastards, no other way to put it), chopped, blanched, chilled and ready. lobster bodies were seared, mirepoix and cream gently bubbling away around them. all was well. by the time the first guests arrived i was half way through a 6-pack of sierra nevada and having a grande ole time. my boy leonard and i took off to procure some fresh pasta dough and i promptly put him to work on the samosa ravioli. now leonard is about as cheerful as a person can get and hanging out with him just puts you in a mood to have fun - so why not start on the wine? (eff'n genius!)

well, to make a long story short, when cruch time hit and i had to sear off 6 pieces of fish, blend the curry emulsion suace, warm the vegetable garnish and try to plate all 6 before everything cooled down, i was D-O-N-E... loaded... and sweating bigtime. and this was the starter course out of 3 planned courses. so the first course out and at this point im blabbering on, feeling terrible about the "weak sauce" and the "bad plating." and here was the lesson that hit my like a ton of bricks the next morning:

my guests didn't have the chance to form their own opinions about the food, nor to enjoy it - instead they could only eat and listen to me complain about the food. all of a sudden i didn't feel like the rockstar i did last time and although the party was still fun, it was clouded, like san francisco fog, with my drunk ass bitching and moaning. oh well, cest la vie, lesson learned. we still had fun...

the end (of lobsters)

Enough "creative" writing...

2008-08-28T16:28:00.000-07:00

sorry about that last post - tried my hand at "creative writing" and, upon reflection, i've decided that there will be no more of that. ("lovely bath in boiling butter?" yea...)

Morels, Roasted Ribeye, Pommes Maxxim, Love

2008-08-21T23:01:00.000-07:00

so here's a wonderful dish, lifted mostly from the French Laundry Cookbook: pan roasted rib steak, pommes maxim and morel mushroom sauce. so here goes. first up, the sweet, beautiful ruby red tower blessed with marbling worth far more than that hard, inedible marble in caesar's palace. I'm talking about a rib cut, 2 1/2" thicks, marbled in fat that looks, gloriously, like this:

And that piece of love, so carefully crusted with coarse cracked black peppercorns and a veritable snowstorm of kosher flake salt, was magnificent. a 2 1/2" thick cut of love, PROPERLY SEASONED PEOPLE, that was ready to be treated to a lovely bath in boiling butter... You wanna see i suppose, how it looked roasting in the oven:

There it roasted, like a king bathing in an golden pool of butter, salt and pepper; and there it bathed being turned periodically, basted... over and over and over so that the roast became one with, infused by, the french cooking secret of butter, butter, butter. and you know what happened next??

We rocked the pommes maxxim - a couple of waxy potatoes gave their lives and were sliced thin, arranged in circular patterns to fit a saucepan and finally, like a great reward, were layered and doused with the sweetest of clarified butter. these lucky potatoes, their slices, fulfilled their destiny and baked together, melting and fusing, one layer after another golden layer, into the pommes maxim they were destined to be. and that was that.

Two quick additions, saucier in nature joined the fray: Bordelaise sauce, easy with the marriage of the proper mirepoix in a ruby splash of red wine, and the sauteed morel mushrooms, bought fresh at Whole Paycheck for way more than I'd care to admit. The morels, although delicious beyond compare, just weren't the purty, so the Bodelaise sauce is pictured here instead:

and finally, since i'm starving now, the finished product: a hunk of the pommes maxim, draped with the sauteed morel mushrooms, topped with slices of the beef, all swimming in a pool of the Bordelaise. enjoy...

holy lobster flavor...

2008-08-15T09:39:00.000-07:00

Despite the great prices of for fresh, live, well cared for Maine Lobster over at New England Lobster in South San Fran - I still wanted to try a lobster sauce last night without actually investing in fresh lobster. Enter the Better-Than-Bullion Lobster Lobster Base. See stolen photo below:

Because I still have SO MUCH TO LEARN I went a little nuts with the base figuring more base - more flavor. W-h-o-a. It had kick, bite, and soooo much lobster flavor. The dish wasn't ruined and I learned a bit about using prepared base, this being my first time. Awsome tool to allow great flavor when you don't have time to extract it from the real ingredients yourself (and probably good for all other kinds of situations I am ignorant of).

Check out the results - curry seasoned, sauteed jumbo prawns on a pie crust medallion (pie crust: another first for me) in the afore-mentioned lobster sauce...

random dinners: tonkatsu and tenderloins...

2008-05-27T21:04:00.000-07:00

will update with details shortly, in the meantime some photos of dinners gone by in the last 2 weeks:

hell's real kitchen

2008-05-27T20:51:00.000-07:00

ok, quick post cuz im not in a writing mood. you think you've seen hell's kitchen on tv? check this out. total square counter footage = 4. its whack. and the stove, tilted. melt butter to sautee something and i get a nice pool on the south west corner of my pan. rockin'...

so from left to right: mini-counter, sink, cool absinth illustration from france (aka pier one), fridge holding sweet kitchen aid mixer, my absolute best friend in the kitchen digital thermometer, knife set (including the only knife i actually use - the wusthof 8" chef's knife), the sad leaning stove and my little kitchen kart holding my pots, pans and prep/portion containers - you know, those little metal and glass 1 cup sized containers that all the mise-en-place prep work goes into.

and there's me, in a mirror. obviously. ok, done...

Dine About Friends ~ Chapter 4ish

2008-03-31T23:35:00.000-07:00

So, how beautiful does our new table look? The table, incidentally, is like 3 times the size of our old one so we can now invite up to a whopping 8 people! Very, very exciting... Anyway, Alisa, the foxy wife who never lies, went nuts on the table setting - I wish our little camera could do it justice. My good friend Leonard, with his sweet nikon, got much, much, like 150 thousand times, better photos. And, amazingly enough... wait for it... they are posted on Facebook.

So the basic premise of the night was thus: me and said foxy wife host; guests bring the booze. What, not civilized enough? Fine, the libations, how's that? (Not quite a proper use but c'est la vie.) While Alisa spruced Chez Berliner's to the apex of it's potential, I cooked. Our honored guests elevated the evening even further with the Lewelling 1995, which I'll cover later - and hopefully drink again someday - and what I easily considered the best pitcher of sangria I've ever had, which, again, I will cover later. Now this blog is about cooking and since I actually did that part, that's what I'm going to write mostly about. I don't know wine and won't pretend to, same goes for sangria I suppose. Nonetheless I'll talk a bit about both... mostly the cooking tho.

Ahem, the menu?
~ Gruyere Cheese Puffs (aka Gougeres)
~ Gnocchi with Brown Butter, Sage, White Truffle Oil
~ Greens with Orange, California Avocado, Champagne Vin
~ Savory Crepes with Chive Sauce
~ Rack of Lamb with Gewurztraminer Poached Apples, Asparagus
~ Foxy Fabulous Ice Cream Cones, Fresh Fruit Plate

And here's the my geeked out "to-do" list. (I love to-do lists... there's a great finality to putting a nice little circle with a check mark next to each task. like a gratifying little reminder that i accomplished something - and no mini-victory is too small. so positive eh?) Check out the mint bunch - didn't end up using it. I tried mint in the wine, i tried mint in the lamb sauce, i tried and tried but the mint just didn't work. Oh yea, the list:

On to the cooking...

First Up: the Prep...

The night before the big event I prepared what became known as "the Thousand Layer Mushroom Crepes." My friend Hedda named them, gotta love the romantic Chinese nature - I immediately felt like the dish was imbued with history and grandeur a thousand times greater than my humble creation deserved. Bottom line: basic crepes (a paltry 8 layers in reality) layered with finely chopped Cremini mushrooms - by far my favorite mushroom oddly enough - served on a chive oil sauce.

Asparagus spears, apple cubes and tangello segments... frui-tay (and, technically, vegitabl-ay)

Cheese puffs, pre-baking. These are funny on so many levels. But quite tasty once baked.

The 10, no 13 year, Lewelling Cab. As promised I'm going to cover it: it was freakin' good. I thought it was mellow and went superbly with the lamb.

Cheesballs eating cheeseballs.

Cheesballs after eating cheesballs plus 4 more courses.

The gnocchi - no, the were not fresh made. Will probably never buy packaged gnocci again unless I find a much better product that these. And, as a matter of fact, my ego was bruised by serving these relatively poor gnocchi so now I am forced, by none other than my own stubbornness, to make them by hand for the next dinner party. Oh yes, it's fun to be stubborn!

Mixed gren salad with avocado and tangello segments. The tangello was an odd choice but i liked it, nice and sweet. Also I tried putting them and the avocado on the side. After a bit of usability testing (that is my day job by the way) i came to belive that when scattered all throughout the salad itself, chopped avocado or even full segments became difficult to find, inevitably ending up alone, drenched in dressing at the end of the salad consumption. Now while several bites of pure avocado after a nice salad if just fine with me (i tend to eat 1/4 of the avocado like an apple when preparing them for salads anyway), I did come to believe that maybe, just maybe, this segragated presentation would allow my users (damn! wrong job), my guests, to assemble and consume the perfectly balanced bite of citrus, greens and avocado. So, the result you ask? ... I don't think anyone really noticed so again, cest la vie. Looked pretty, no?

The aforementioned "Thousand Layer Mushroom Crepes" with chive sauce.

The star and one of my all time favories - RACK 'O LAMB. The lamb and the asparagus spears were plated on top of a lamb stock reduction sauce and then topped with the apples that had been sauteed in butter and then poached in reduced Gewurtz wine. I was fairly pleased with the combo - the savory lamb and sauce was nicely offset by the crisp and slightly sour apples and wine. Lesson for next time though, and there always is one otherwise it wouldn't be so deliciously frustrating for me to always get something wrong... wait, am i serious, is that fun? well, it always happens and there's nothing i can do about it, so i might as well be ok with it. again with the positiveness. so yea, the lesson: remove that big layer of fat on the top side of the ribs - I had left it on hoping that it would add flavor to the ribs when they roasted, but think now that the ribs, trimmed all the way down to loli-pops just looks cooler. period.

And, finally, the Foxy Fabulous Ice Cream Cones, Fresh Fruit Plate (fruit plate not pictured here). They were delicious and cleverly presented in wine glasses. So the users - frack! - g-u-e-s-t-s, grabbed a wine glass, took out the cone, enjoyed the cone, then enjoyed the wine i poured in the glasses while said cone was being enjoyed. They do say Foxes are clever...

Well, there you have it. My first big ass blog post about my biggest dinner party yet. This took me forever but was kinda fun so I'm hoping that I will have another up after the next big party - which will be in about a month. Cheers... -- TB

Ok, I'm here, that's a start...

2008-03-27T09:44:00.001-07:00

Hello all, I'm Todd Berliner, the last of the west coast Berliner's as a matter of fact. This should be an adventure, I have no idea how to write but I do talk alot - guess we'll see if my fingers can keep up with my mouth. I'm here to atlk about my cooking mis-adventures. I suppose, ike most people doing things they LOVE to do, I'm mildly delusional... Most of the time my "creations" are whack -- like some sauteed apples that reminded me of "Oh Powerful Candy" from back in the day -- but occasionally they are pretty good.

So what can I already do? Steaks, chops (lamb and pork), lots of fish. I sautee, fry, roast and grill. I do NOT bake, e-v-e-r. I even know a sauce or two. I haven't, until now, blogged at all so I am sorry if you've already passed out from boredom (hope you didn't hit your head on anything!).

I think I'm gonna cut this one short while I try to dig up some examples of past work. Not sure how "link love" works, or even what it really is, but i will tell you this: Carol, author of French Laundry at Home is my current favorite read. Clever as hell and effortlessly cool. Oh, and yea, a diary of cooking ridiculously incredible recipes from one of the greats, Thomas Keller and his team, that doesn't hurt at all either.