Matthew Levin's FAHRENHEIT825:

Tonight we had our lobster dinner at Lacroix.  The night went very smooth, which is good since we had a few food writers in the restaurant.  I was pretty happy with all of the courses.  The amuse bouche was fun and tasted amazing, it was a lobster doughnut that we rolled in lobster fat after frying and then dusted it with lobster roe.  My play on the glazed “Munchkin” with sprinkles, only if Noah J would have eaten it… Probably not, it wasn’t chocolate!

Lobster Dinner

Lobster tartare

Root Beer, Miso, Meyer Lemon Consommé

Torrontes, Familia Zuccardi

Mendoza, Argentina, 2006

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Poached Lobster

Rosemary, Nori, Truffle

Chenin Blanc, Robertson Winery South Africa, 2005

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Lobster and Foie Gras Curry

Gewürztraminer, Presque Isle Wine Cellars ,Lake Erie, 2006

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Beef Short Ribs

Hand-Rolled Pasta, Celery Root, Lobster Egg Sauce

Châteauneuf du Pape, Domaine du Grand Tinel,

Rhone Valley, 2000

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Banana, Lime & Lobster

in Caramel Gelée, Citrus Granité

Monbazillac, « Petit Paris »

Bénédicte & Patrick Geneste, Southwestern France, 2005

Plates

Plates can make average food look amazing.  I’ve worked with some really nice china in the past and when working out a dish that I was thought was ok but not overwhelmed with, plating them on really intricate plates made all the difference.  To me Bernadaud is by far some of the nicest out there, but also the most money. A friend of mine Jeff Michaud at Osteria, www.osteriaphilly.com, puts his pasta dishes in hand made terra cotta bowls that make can simple noodles look like real art. Another friend and chef at my old restaurant David Felton is now the recipient of my plate shopping at the Pluckemin Inn, www.pluckemininn.com, and if you haven’t noticed I’m jealous, I miss those plates. Im looking for someone that is into ceramics to bring some of my plate ideas to life, so if you know anyone ask them to drop me a line.  This picture of an old signature dish “hamachi in textures” was a perfect example of simple food on cool plates made to look amazing. 

Squash

This dish was on the menu at Lacroix for a while. We have since taken it off, but I really like where it ended up. We had tried cooking the squash sous vide in many different liquids and at different temperatures, from kaffir lime juice and gin to apple juice and lemon, to thyme and ascorbic acid. We wound up with a combination of Hendricks gin, Kaffir lime zest and black truffle oil and butter. Cooking it in citrus juice caused the liquid to take on a strong, bitter taste that is common when cooking citrus, but we thought that since we were controlling the temperature we could control the bitterness as well. We were wrong! We cooked the squash at 42 degrees Celsius for five hours, which left us with a silky, almost butter like consistency that held its shape. The contrast of the sharp, floral acidity of the fresh kaffir lime and the earthiness of the truffle was awesome. Adding the caramel cotton candy gave the squash back the sweetness it had before we bathed it in citrus. Now the only thing left was to give it some heat, so I made a harissa paste with golden raisins, lemongrass and Thai long peppercorn to brush on the plate. For texture I took the harissa paste and turned that into a "paper."  The dish sold great.                                                                                                                              

Harissa Recipe

Here is the recipe for the harissa paste and the "paper"

• 1 cup Israeli harissa paste
• 1 stalk lemongrass, smashed
• 2 ounces golden raisins, hydrated
• 1 small nub of ginger, grated on a microplane
• 2 Tbsp Bliss maple syrup
• 1 Tbsp ground Thai long peppercorn

Combine all these ingredients and cook over low heat for about 30 minutes.  Puree the mixture and pass through a sieve.  Allow the mixture to cool overnight covered.

For the paper-

• 1 cup pureed harissa mixture
• 2 egg whites
• 1/2 Tbsp ground Thai long peppercorn

Combine the eggs with the harissa mixture and spread thinly on a silt-pat.  Then lightly dust the top with the peppercorn.  Place in a dehydrator at 150 degrees Fahrenheit for 3-4 hours.

Elysian Feilds Lamb

I guess that in some way I've "made it."  About three weeks ago I received a call from Keith Martin of Elysian Fields, only the best lamb producer in the world. Keith asked me if I would be willing to serve his lamb.  That is how it works, he calls you, you can't call him.  The list of cooks that have access to his product is undeniably small, if you don't cook at  French Laundry or Per Se or Daniel or Trotter's or Gramercy Tavern, and now Lacroix in Philadelphia, www.Lacroixrestaurant.com you don't have regular access to his animals.  We are buying the loins with the belly attached.  We have removed the bellies, cured them in salt, sugar, mahlab (sour cherry pits), ajowan seed and herbs, then are braising them and crisping the skin.  Monday at an event we served the belly braised with Garoxxta cheese puree, Bouchot mussels from Maine, sous vide cucumber with tonka bean and a mussel foam as well as the braising liquid reduction.   The loins are an after thought as crazy as that may seem, (we are curing them and making lamb bresola), but my new ingredient crush in Elysain Fields lamb belly, try it braised, smoked and rendered as bacon or as confit. As we play more with the bellies and other cuts of Keith's lamb I will update you on our plans for utilizing the entire animal... P.S. I had this post scheduled before Laverne and Shirley posted it on their site...

Veal Cheeks

I was talking with Sylvia from Four Story Hill Farm last week and in usual fashion, she was giving me great grandmotherly advice on life.  What a sweetheart, I'm heading up to the farm to pick out my next 6 suckling pigs. She is always waiting for us to arrive with a feast of traditional Polish and Lithuanian food, exactly what we need after 5 hours in the truck and on a freezing cold day in upstate Pennsylvania.  It's an amazing thing to be able to hand pick your livestock.  I'll say Sylvia I want this one at 30 days this one at 45 days and only mothers milk and that pig at 75 lbs and she follows behind me tagging and keeping track of our exact specs.  The last time we were up there she had fresh veal cheeks,  pink and well marbleized.  Give me 20 lbs, I'll take them with me.  As we were heading home the thoughts of veal cheeks en bocal or "in glass"  came about.  A slow braise with celery root, black trumpets and truffle that when plated in a sealed glass jar and presented table side would allow the guest to receive a black truffle steam facial.  Jay served it to a Chef's table a few days later and when the jars opened the intense truffle aroma took over our kitchen.  Just a simple and unique way of presenting a very under utilized cut of veal...

foie gras and cookies

I dont know what it is but there is something about foie gras and cookies. The cookies are often savory and play off other sweet ingredients that I pair with foie. When i think about it I see that snap or crunch of the cookie and how that balances the seared liver and its oooey gooey center. But I find myslef adding cookies of some sort to even cold preperations of foie gras also, just like the torchon we did on Monday night. It was a torchon that we lightly bruleed with muscavado sugar, we paired it with a white choccolate truffle that we infused with white truffle and then microplaned fresh white truffle over the melted chcoloate, a seriously tart hucklebery fluid gel and dehydrated black olives and of course pumpernickle cookies... At my first restaurnat Moonlight it was the foie with szechuan pepper shortbread, then it became foie with spice cookies, followed by smoked foie with oatmeal and tonka bean cookies and the other night the pumpernickle. Trust me try foie gras with your favorite cookie or tweak out a cookie, wether soft and chewy or thin a crispy, it will turn even the person with the most foie gras anger into a fan... Just ask Nick Cooney, jackass...

"Pizza"

Jay and I were on South street eating Pizza at Lorenzo's and he wanted to take that intense pizza flavor that they're known for and work in into a menu item at Lacroix.  We bounced around a soup, or as puree or fluid gel as a component of another dish.  But we both could tell what the other was thinking and knew that we wanted it to be a stand alone dish.   So we decided lets take all the components of pizza, break them out individually and transform all the ingredients back into "pizza".  After many conversations we decided on a alginate based caviar that had strong tomato, oregano and garlic flavors.  How would we get the crust?  As a toasted french bread foam... Money!  Then came the cheese aspect, we decided on a very fine crisp Parmesan cracker that is almost see-thru.  After a touch of chili flake and the best olive oil you can buy, Manni per me 2006, www.manni.biz, the dish was complete.

Pizza alginate recipe:

150 gr Ripe tomato pulp

350 gr spring water

2 garlic cloves roasted                            

12 oregano leaves

6 basil leaves

3.2 gr soduim alginate

sea salt

Octopus

We have been working on this dish for a while, a tweak here and tweak there.  the seasonality of the butternut squash has caused us to change to kabocha or Japanese pumpkin.  This change has created the need to counter the sweetness from the kabocha, so we added more black pepper to the BBQ which is based in a black pepper caramel and Guinness. So far that seems to have solved the problem. I wanted something that would pull from the nuttiness of the Guinness so we made an intense almond milk that was titties... The dish also needed some texture with all the components being soft, so we added some pumpkin seeds that we pickled in lime juice and smoked paprika then dry roasted in a pan which makes for a really crunchy seeds.   That combined with searing the octopus on the plancha before serving, which adds some texture to the tentacles, we have a solid dish that as a team we are all happy with.  This dish will be on the on for a bit longer, especially since it made  Philly mag as the best octopus in Philadelphia...