Stagaire

grant achatz dinner

I don't think chef grant needs any introduction so to say the least i was pretty excited that he was doing a dinner there.  Chef grant did a lot of the prep his self so there was very little that we had to help him with. Pick fennel fronds for garnish, cut gels into perfect cubes, stuff like that.  What the chefs do when they come to blackberry is do a cooking class in the morning, which we were able to watch. That night the chef does a dinner with the executive chef of blackberry.   

The first dish that chef achatz did that night was a shot glass of celery juice that had a sphere of apple juice encapsulated in horseradish.  Very awesome, as you can see in the perfect spheres of apple juice sitting on top of the blue trays. All it is is frozen apple juice that has a horseradish infused cocoa butter wrapped around it, genius.

 

the next two courses were filled in by chef klander.  second course was a beautiful piece of Loire Valley asparagus with an herbed sabayon and shaved asparagus salad.  The asparagus was huge, they were poached in salted water for about a hour and were delicious.  Third course was a wood burning oven roasted rouge with root vegetable hash.

As you can see the asparagus were bigger than the fish!

Fourth course was chef grants turn he did a kobe short rib with vanilla potato puree and charred salsify with root beer aromas.  The short ribs and potato's were in a small bowl and the aromatics were in a larger bowl so the dish sat on top of the aromatics and as hot water was poured in table side the aroma of root beer is present while your eating the dish.

Chef grant was inspired while walking through the blackberry garden and made a course strictly out of blackberry ingredients.  he took the tops of of the multiplier onions and filled them with house made blackberry yogurt and blackberry jam.

 

the onions were served so that you pulled the yogurt and jam out with your teeth absorbing the onion flavor at the same time.

For dessert was the sweet potato tempura a pretty familiar dish on the alinea menu.  it was composed of three gels sweet potato, jack daniels, brown sugar. the three gels were cut into cubes and and skewered on long cinnamon sticks.  They were then dipped in a tempura and fried.   The tempura recipe is the best i have ever seen.  I ate one that he did in the demo in the morning that was still crispy a half an hour later.  You can find the recipe in art culinaire volume 85.  The dish was served on one of alinea's many pieces of service ware this one was called the squid.  His service ware is available through jb prince.

Blackberry farm

blackberry I was lucky enough to visit blackberry farm a couple of weeks ago.  I have been wanting to go there for some time.  My friend chad liitle is a line cook there and told me about Grant Achatz  coming to do a dinner. I jumped on the chance to spend a couple days to see this place for my self.  Definitely one of the most beautiful places i have ever been.  Blackberry is in walland,tennessee about 30 minutes outside of knoxville. There is a lot of exciting things that go on behind the scenes at blackberry.  There have there own garden where they harvest alot of there vegetables for the restaurant. The barn in the picture above is the brand new restaurant that has been open less than a year.   Peter Glander is the new chef at the barn and has only been there less than a year as well.  Chef Klander was formally the executive sous chef at the modern in NY and also worked at jean George. His style is very simple and one of his own not really reflecting prior restaurants he has worked at.  The first day i spent working with the cooks for dinner service.  The chef writes a new menu everyday.  So the first thing the cooks do is talk about the menu the cooks dont even know what station they are working until the chef decides the menu. the line is composed of a five man line a fish cook, meat, two apetizer stations, one person just to plate amuse.  There is a seperate line for desserts where one pastry chef plates. The Cooks pass all of the food to the chef and the sous chef and they plate everything.  It was a very relaxed service that i was there for about 80 covers the most people they do in the barn is about 130 people.

more on blackberry to come......