Prune

Yield: 4 orders	x8	x16
1 chicken (4–5 pounds)	2	4
1 lemon	2	4
10 garlic cloves	20	40
rosemary leaves from 2 sprigs	4	9
¾ Tablespoon EVOO	EVOO +/-	EVOO +/-
2 Tablespoons Dijon mustard	¼c.	½c.
kosher salt freshly ground black pepper	S+P	S+P

Prune Vinaigrette

Bibb lettuce, washed and dried

collected day-old bread heels—with plenty of life; don’t unload rock-hard 2-day-old bread here

Rinse and dry the chicken thoroughly. Use paper towels.

Set 2 chickens in each hotel pan, and squeeze lemons over each, leaving spent lemon halves in the pan. Season the birds highly with salt and pepper. Smear them with the Dijon mustard and scatter the rosemary around evenly and the garlic cloves equally between each hotel pan. Drizzle them with olive oil and massage all of the ingredients into, around, and all over the chickens.

*If you are only roasting / chicken for some reason, follow same protocol but use a ½ sheetpan or a ½ hotel.

Set in 350° ovens. Separate the hotel pans—if you can—between the 2 ovens. If you don’t have that luxury of space to spread out in, keep the pans side by side on the upper rack in one oven rather than above and below each other.

Roast, turning and basting once, to 160° at the deep part of the thigh. Depending on what’s going on around here with the ovens this day, opening and closing incessantly, fellow line cooks shoving your pans around, etc., the chickens should be done in an hour, more or less. Remove from oven when they look irresistible, and let cool on a rolling rack. Try to keep an eye out that everybody walking by doesn’t rip off a wing or pick at them all day.

When just cool enough to handle with a doubled-up pair of latex gloves, pull the birds apart right in the hotel pans, letting the juices flow out into the pans. Set the legs and breasts aside and contribute to family meal. Pick the “oysters” of meat from backbone, and pick all the meat from the wings and leave in hotel pan. Discard lemon halves. Save the bones for stock. Save every bit of juice, garlic, pan dripping, burnt rosemary leaf, fat, skin, pope’s nose, and picked meat and keep warm.

To plate:

Per order, put a few leaves of torn Bibb lettuce in a wooden salad bowl and slightly overdress. Set in a hot spot on a shelf above the grill until the salad looks sad and wilted. Set a couple of torn heels or crusts of bread on top of the salad in the bowl and spoon over a generous soaking of chicken pan drippings and a spoonful of vinaigrette.

4 chickens yields 16 orders’ worth of drippings, more or less.

Tongue and Octopus with Salsa Verde and Mimosa’d Egg

For the braised beef tongue:

Yield: 4 orders	x8	x16
1¾ pounds tongue, rinsed	3½#	7#
2 stalks celery	3 stalks	4 stalks
1 peeled carrot	2	4
neutral oil
½ large yellow onion, peeled	1 onion	2
6 parsley stems	1 doz.	2 dz.
1 teaspoon black peppercorns	½T.	1T.
1 dried bay leaf	2 bay	4
4–6 cups water	8-12c.	16-24c.
2 Tablespoons red wine vinegar	4T.	8T.
½ Tablespoon kosher salt	1T.	2T.
¼ cup colatura	½ c.	1 c.
water to cover	h₂o
kosher salt to taste	salt

Clean up the celery and cut for mirepoix. Cut the carrot and onion for mirepoix.

Even for mirepoix, prep vegetables that you would want to eat, so you don’t have brown, ratty crap going into the pot. Cut the blackened tops off the carrots and peel them. If it looks very good going into the pot, you can probably count on it being quite good when it comes out of the pot. Don’t confuse the stockpot for the compost pile; it still matters.

Put the deep, heavy 7-quart Le Creuset Dutch oven on medium-low heat and add a glug of neutral oil. Sweat onion, celery, carrot, peppercorns, parsley stems, and bay leaves.

Cover and let the veg steam briefly.

Add water, tongue, red wine vinegar, and salt. The tongue should be just barely covered by the liquid. TASTE THE LIQUID! KNOW WHERE YOU ARE HEADED!

Cover and bring to a boil, then reduce heat as low as possible as soon as it starts to hiss.

Lay in a parchment round, re-cover with lid, and simmer 4–4½ hours.

Add colatura at the end, when tongue is tender and off the heat, but still hot.

The tongue sucks up a lot of water quickly and becomes engorged. Be sure to keep track of the pot and add water as needed, usually an additional 4 cups by the time the tongue is tender.

Also, this is not a set-and-forget project. Simmering pots around here get pushed to the side constantly by other cooks looking for burner space. Your gentle simmer goes from dead still to a hard boil if you don’t protect it.

Add salt to the pot if you add a full 4 cups of additional water.

*Peel tongue while it’s warm; it’s impossible to peel when cold.

Store peeled tongue in its braising liquid; strain out the mirepoix and discard.

For the octopus:

Yield: 4 orders	x8	x16
1 2- to 3-pound octopus, cleaned, head and beak removed	1@4#	2@4#
2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil	¹/₃ c.	²/₃ c.
½ cup sliced red onion	1 c.	2 c.
3 garlic cloves, smashed	6	12
2 chiles de árbol	3 arbol	6
½ bunch fresh thyme	½ bn.	½ bn.**
water to cover	h₂o
kosher salt to taste	salt

**don’t multiply thyme in large batch. too strong.

In the 7-quart Dutch oven, gently heat the EVOO and warm the onions, garlic, chilies, and thyme.

Stir the vegetables until they start to give up steam and look alive.

Sweat down a bit but do not get any color, just 2–3 minutes.

Nestle the octopus neatly in the pot.

Add enough cool water to not quite cover the octopus. She will float a bit like a crocodile at a river’s surface.

Season accurately with salt, keeping in mind that the octopus will render its own seawatery liquid into the pot during cooking.

Cover with the heavy, tight-fitting lid and bring up to a boil, then immediately reduce heat to the gentlest simmer possible—and let the octopus go undisturbed for 45 minutes.

Check in on the octopus then, stir things around, feel the firmness/tenderness of the thickest part of the legs, re-cover, and let it continue to simmer.

Check occasionally for doneness by piercing the creature with a skewer.

At first she will turn bright purple-red and swell up considerably, but when she is nicely tender, she will have shrunk and become bluish purple. Cooking times vary widely.

This can take up to 3 hours, so check along the way and use your judgment. We want tender not mushy; a little “tooth” but not chewy.

When cool enough to handle, separate the legs, and if the skin and suction cups look good, leave them. If they have become stringy and unattractive, slip them off.

Strain the liquid of the aromatics and store the legs in the liquid.

For mimosa’d egg:

1 hard-boiled egg, peeled

To pick up:

Slice tongue directly across at base, then on slight increasing bias toward thinner tip. In small sauté pan, add 2 or 3 slices of tongue per order depending on their size—and a few spoonfuls of the braising liquid. Bring to simmer until heated through and the broth slightly reduced to have body but not yet sticky.

Grill 1 leg of octopus per order on the hot grill until nice dark grill marks form on both sides and leg is hot throughout. Use 2 legs if they are very small.

To plate:

Spoon judicious pool of Salsa Verde onto plate, set tongue out in stacked domino fashion, and then set octopus on top.

Let the dish rest a moment and allow the juices to commingle on the plate. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil.

Press hard-cooked egg through fine-meshed sieve to neatly shower over the dish.

Pastrami Duck Breast with Small Rye Omelette

Serves 4

4 duck breasts, raw, trimmed, split

Ingredients for the pickling spice:

Yield: ½ cup	x1 cup	x2 cup
1 Tablespoon cracked black pepper	2T.	¼ c.
1 Tablespoon toasted mustard seeds	2T.	¼ c.
1 Tablespoon toasted coriander	2T.	¼ c.
1 Tablespoon red pepper flakes	2T.	¼ c.
1 Tablespoon allspice berries	2T.	¼ c.
1 small cinnamon stick, broken	2	3
1–2 bay leaves, crumbled	2-4	4
1 Tablespoon whole cloves	2T.	¼ c.
1½ teaspoons ground ginger	1T.	2T.

Ingredients for the brine:

	x1 gallon
6 Tablespoons kosher salt	¾ c.
1 Tablespoon granulated sugar	¼ c.
2 Tablespoons light brown sugar	¼ c.
3 garlic cloves, smashed	5
2 Tablespoons pickling spice (above)	4T.
2 quarts water	4qts. h₂o

Ingredients for the rub:

1 Tablespoon freshly ground black pepper	1:1
1 Tablespoon ground coriander

Ingredients for the omelette filling:

	x8	x16
4 duck skins, gently separated from the 4 breasts after smoking/pastrami process
2 shallots, peeled and thinly sliced	4 shallots	8
1½ Tablespoons thyme leaves	3T.	6T.
1 Ryvita dark rye cracker, crushed into pea-size pieces	2	4
8 eggs

Directions for the brine:

Make pickling spice by combining all ingredients.

Bring brine ingredients to a boil. Cool completely.

Submerge skin-on, trimmed, split duck breasts and leave for 2 days in walk-in.

Remove from brine, lay on baker’s drying rack, and let sit out of brine for 1 day, uncovered, in walk-in.

LABEL AND DATE PROPERLY PLEASE!

To smoke the duck breasts:

Massage spice rub into skin only of each duck breast, making sure it adheres. Don’t be sloppy.

Place duck on rack that fits inside deep hotel pan, skin side up, flesh side down.

Set up our makeshift deep hotel pan contraption with full but single layer of chips and start to smolder directly on the burner on the stove. Make sure exhaust hood is on!

Lay in rack of duck breasts, cover tightly, smoke ducks for 30–45 minutes until medium rare.

Remove from smoker. Gently separate skins from breasts using your fingers and a knife. Set breasts aside and use skins for the filling.

To make the omelette filling:

Place skin quill/spice side down in a cold cast-iron skillet and place over low heat.

Let fat render slowly, occasionally draining it off and reserving; this will take almost an hour. When skin is shrunken and brown, turn and cook on the fat side. When all fat is rendered, remaining skin will be a thin, caramelized, very dark crackling. Remove skins and cut to medium dice when cool enough to handle.

In same pan, heat 1 tablespoon of the reserved fat over gentle low flame. Add shallots and thyme, and sauté briefly, collecting fond as you stir the mixture around in the pan. Add crackling pieces and sauté until shallots are completely soft, 2–3 more minutes. Set aside.

To pick up:

Per order

Warm duck breast in gentle oven.

Make quick, 2-egg omelette, with 1 generous spoonful of duck skin–shallot mixture and one generous pinch of Ryvita crumbs inside.

Fold in half. Set on plate. Let contents reveal themselves a little, so it looks luscious. Slice warm duck breast and lay out beside omelette.

Season with salt and pepper, very lightly.

Lay 1 thin thyme branch across to garnish.

Toasted Manti with Garlic Yogurt and Cayenne Pepper Butter

For the manti:

Yield: 4 orders	x16
4 ounces (10 sheets) square fresh wonton skins, yellow not white	1#
4 ounces (40 thimblefuls) ground lamb	1#
1⅓ cup College Inn beef broth	1 qt. +/-

For the yogurt:

	x16
1 cup plain full-fat Fage brand Greek yogurt	2c.
1 fresh, sticky, burning garlic clove	3 cloves
1 splash extra virgin olive oil	2T.
kosher salt to taste	salt

Microplane garlic into yogurt; season with salt and EVOO, and whisk until smooth and blended. Let sit to see how garlic emerges. Add garlic or yogurt, depending. We want it very assertive.

For the cayenne butter:

	x16
4 Tablespoons butter, softened	½#
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper	1T.
1 teaspoon salt	+/- salt

Blend well. Chill.

To assemble manti:

Roll tiny lamb meatballs, no larger than a rounded ¼ teaspoon. Do not season the meat. Pack them in orderly rows on parchment in shallow fish tub. Get ahead. Get externs and trailers to join you. This whole deal is labor intensive. Ask for helpers.

Keep wonton skins fresh and do not let them dry out. Keep a small stack in front of you at a time, kept under ultra clean, barely damp cotton dinner napkin.

Have in front of you a very narrow pastry brush, a pint of cold water, a knife.

Cut short stack of wonton skins into 4 exactly equal squares. One cut north-south; one cut east-west.

Lay out the squares, set a tiny lamb meatball in the center of each, brush the edges with water to dampen, and fold into perfect purses, enclosing the meat and sealing the seams securely. Gently and subtly push down on each one after you have formed it to flatten the bottom so it will sit steady later in the pan during pickup.

Pack in neat and orderly rows on parchment in shallow fish tubs. Store in freezer.

Get ahead. Get externs and trailers to help whenever they are in the building. On slow nights, send a line cook downstairs during lulls to keep going on these. They’re a real bitch, I recognize, but stay at it.

Lay frozen manti on parchment in ½ sheet pan and toast in 375° oven until golden on their bodies and deeply toasted at the star-like seams, 12–15 minutes.

10 ORDERS/100 PIECES

To pick up:

In sauté pan, heat beef broth to simmer.

Add toasted manti, seams up.

Continue to simmer until broth reduces and becomes full-bodied and has taken on what starch there is from the wonton skins.

The manti will turn glossy and swell slightly, 5–6 minutes in total.

To plate:

Dollop of room-temperature garlic yogurt in center of small shallow bowl.

Manti in neat garland, seams up, around yogurt. We are not this kind of restaurant, but the tweezers really work well here.

Spoon the glossy beef broth into the bowl to pool up around the manti. Don’t drip on the yogurt—that stays white and pristine.

Melt cayenne butter quickly, to foaming, and drizzle around into the broth, making reddish beads in the broth. Don’t drip on the yogurt.

Sell quickly. Do not let this sit in the pass.

**PLEASE do not “improve” the dish by using our homemade pasta sheets or our homemade beef broth. Always use wonton skins and College Inn.

Omelette with Parmesan

1 order

2 eggs, at room temperature

Parmesan cheese, shaved

sweet butter

Maldon sea salt

Beat eggs.

Melt a knob of butter in 7-inch nonstick omelette pan over medium flame.

When butter foams but before it colors, add eggs.

With heatproof rubber spatula, drag eggs into center from noon, 3 o’clock, 6 o’clock, and 9 o’clock. Repeat in opposite direction, from center of omelette to outer edge, but move ahead an hour so you are not cutting the same path—1 o’clock, 5 o’clock, 7 o’clock, and 11. Let loose egg run into the path of the spatula cuts until all is set. When moist but not raw/wet, add Parmesan evenly, and allow omelette to set and get a slightly golden exterior while cheese softens.

Turn out by fully inverting onto plate and season with Maldon salt. Don’t fold in half.

There’s nothing to hide behind here, so please keep it tight.

Make sure your pan is the right temp, your butter is foaming and not sizzling, your eggs are fully beaten to their greatest volume, and that your Parm is neatly shaved and distributed evenly. Some of your omelettes have been greasy and flat and over-Parmed. Take care.

Monkfish Liver with Warm Buttered Toast

4 orders

1 pound monkfish liver

6 inches non-sourdough baguette

extra virgin olive oil

low-sodium soy sauce

fresh lemon juice

Maldon sea salt

freshly ground black pepper

unsalted butter

grapeseed oil or blended olive oil

Soak liver in very cold water overnight to draw out blood.

Cut away fatty tissue or stringy membrane. Check for small spiral worms and remove with tweezers or paring knife. Cut slabs of the raw liver—approximately 4 ounces per portion.

Put the liver on a sizzle plate brushed with grapeseed or blended oil, then drizzle the liver with oil and season lightly with black pepper only. Broil for a few minutes under the sally at the lowest setting. The liver will tighten and swell up slightly, and a barely golden crust will form on the tops. Keep them medium rare. Rare is too bitter, medium starts to get grainy/chalky. Check every 60 seconds.

Slice baguette and toast slices. Spread sweet butter generously onto warm toast.

To plate:

Per order:

Spoonful of soy and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

Broiled liver slab on top of soy-lemon.

3 slices warm buttered baguette, shingled.

Decent drizzle of EVOO over livers AND toasts.

Few flakes of Maldon salt over the liver and the toasts.

Serve quickly, while warm.

**Only order 3 pounds at a time. Don’t stockpile.

Keep in cold clean water but not longer than 2 days — the h2O starts to degrade the flesh.

Grilled Head-on Shrimp with Anchovy Butter

4 orders	xWeekday	xWeekend
12 giant head-on shrimp (10/20 count)	√	√
6 anchovies packed in oil	12	20
1 Tablespoon heavy cream	2T.	¼ c.
½ pound cold sweet butter, cut into ½-inch cubes	1#	1½#

In wide deep-sided sauté pan, add anchovies and a few drops of their oil and set over medium heat. Let the anchovies sizzle and start to fry a little and dry out. Mash them and break them apart with your whisk until they disintegrate completely into a coarse paste. Continue to cook until the mashed anchovies are toasted, very dry, and dark brown in color. Whisk in cream, which will sizzle and bubble and start to reduce immediately. Shut off the burner!

The cream is there only as a stabilizer to facilitate the slightly tricky mounting in of the cold butter. Don’t be tempted to use more cream than called for because it quickly dulls this rich, briny butter sauce into a salty cream sauce, which is not what we are after.

Vigorously whisk in the butter, a few cubes at a time. Stay near the heat of the pilot light, the heat of the grill, the general ambient heat of the 10 burners in front of you, but do not open up a burner—it will break your sauce.

Pour into cylindrical metal bain set inside another metal bain of water and keep warm in your station during service.

Lay dry shrimp on hot section of grill.

Brush the shrimp on both sides with a few strokes of the anchovy butter.

Turn once or twice during cooking, until the shells have nicely charred spots and the liquids in the heads are bubbling.

To plate:

2–3 per order

Stacked attractively, heads up, on plate.

1-ounce ladle of anchovy butter pooled over them.

Lemon cheek.

Full branch leafy parsley.

Shaved Celery, Fennel, and Radish Salad with Buttered Valdeón Toasts

Yield: 4 orders	x8	x16
1 head celery, tough outer stalks removed, well rinsed	2 qts. shaved	4 qts.
2 medium heads fennel, stalks and fronds removed	1 qt.	2 qts.
2 bunches scallions (approximately 15 pieces), root ends removed and 1st outer layer peeled off with your fingers	4 bns.	8 bns.
⅓ pound sugar snap peas, stem removed and the thread at the seam peeled	²/₃#	1#
2 bunches red radishes, tops removed and well washed	4 bn.	8 bn.
5 fresh sticky garlic cloves, peeled	10	20 cloves
¾ cup extra virgin olive oil	1½ c.	3 c.
¼ cup + 1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice	½ c.	1¼ c.
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste	S+P	S+P
8 ounces Valdeón cheese, crumbled or shaved	1# Valdeón	2#
4 ounces sweet butter, at room temperature
4 long thin slices of fresh peasant bread

With a sharp knife, thinly slice the celery and then the fennel and toss together. Sliver the scallions and sugar snap peas on a bias and add to the fennel and celery. With a sharp knife or mandoline, thinly slice the radishes and add to the salad.

Grate the garlic on a microplane. Mix together garlic, oil, and lemon juice and dress the salad. Season with salt and pepper to taste and toss well. Let stand.

Toast the bread slices and spread each with an ounce of the butter. Divide the cheese among the 4 buttered toasts.

Toss and taste the salad again before portioning, add salt if necessary. Plate with the Valdeón toasts.

**You want a bright, assertive, unafraid dressing on clean, crunchy, crisp, and lively vegetables. Keep your mise fresh each day, pay attention to the potency of the garlic as it changes from head to head, and make sure the Valdeón toast is still warm when the plate hits the pass.

Mackerel Escabeche, Sliced Sweet Capicola, Buttered Rye Crackers, and Celery Leaves

Ingredients for the marinade: totally delishuss. from matt hamilton

4–6 orders	x30 +/-
½ Tablespoon kosher salt	2T. salt
¼ cup neutral oil	2 c. oil
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil	2 c. evoo
¼ cup red wine vinegar	2 c. RW vin
1 garlic clove	8
1 fresh bay leaf	8 bay
1 stem thyme	1 branch
¼ red onion, thinly sliced	2 onions
¼ cup whole blanched almonds	1 c.
2 teaspoons smoked Spanish pimenton	¹/₃c.

Ingredients for the rest of the dish:

	x30 +/-
3-pound mackerel, filleted	12#
¼ pound thinly sliced sweet capicola ham	2#
Ryvita dark rye crackers	—
sweet butter	—
bright green and yellow celery leaves from the heart	—

Use nonreactive stainless steel pot.

Combine all the marinade ingredients and bring to a simmer, then turn off and allow to steep for 1 hour.

Brush the fish on the skin side with lightest possible film of neutral oil, then mark the mackerel fillets on the hot side of the grill, on skin side only. Move with confidence—the fillets will tear if you are timid about it.

Place the fillets in a hotel pan, flesh side down, and pour the warm marinade over them.

Let stand 1 day in the marinade.

**Use a deep hotel pan for the X30 batch and find the matching lid. Don’t use plastic wrap. It loses its cling, falls into the oil, and then drips all over the walk-in floor.

To plate:

Per order

Drain fillet briefly.

Cut portion at 3 ounces more or less, and set on plate.

Spoon a little bit of the marinade plus goodies over fish—include some of the onions and almonds. (If the bay leaves are small, you can add one to the plate, but otherwise leave the big ones in the marinade; they tend to dwarf the dish.)

Butter the cracker “wall to wall,” then crack in half and stack on plate. Take care that butter is cool and waxy and not warm and greasy.

Loosely fold 3 slices capicola, set next to buttered cracker.

Scatter clean, lively celery leaves.

Pinch of Maldon salt and a grind black pepper on mackerel to finish.

Make sure you stir the marinade up when plating to get the vinegar onto the plate, too. Sometimes I’ve seen it go out too oily.

Stay ahead on your prep—the mackerel needs a full day in the soak.

Reuse marinade, but pay attention to viability and date. When the onions and bay lose their vitality, dump the marinade and make new. Do not send this down the drain. It clogs the grease trap. Discard into the dirty fat drum in the garbage area, please.

Grilled Veal Heart with Red Wine–Braised Shallots and Watercress

Yield: 5–6 orders

1 veal heart (about 1 pound, usually)

10 small shallots

½ cup red wine

2 Tablespoons + 1 Tablespoon EVOO

kosher salt

black pepper

1½ cups beef stock

1 bunch cress, large woody stems removed

Trim the fat cap at the top of the veal heart.

Keeping the heart as intact as possible, trim out the tough ventricle lining that bores down through the chambers of the heart. The heart will look a little like the bullet chamber in an unloaded gun when you have finished cleaning it. Butcher with care; don’t hack at it.

Freeze the clean heart for an hour.

Then slice into ¼" rounds on the meat slicer. Obviously, the slices from the top will have holes. Lay out in a 1/6 pan with 2 tablespoons olive oil drizzled over and in between the slices.

Caramelize shallots in 1 tablespoon olive oil in a stainless steel deep-sided sauté pan over medium heat, large enough to hold the shallots in a crowded but single layer. Roll them around periodically. Season with salt and black pepper during the cooking. Get good color all over. Take a full 20–30 minutes to let the color develop slowly. Don’t blast and scorch in a hurry, please.

When golden, with occasional dark brown spots of deepening char and caramelization, deglaze with red wine.

Simmer until the wine no longer tastes raw—a couple of minutes—then add the beef stock and braise, covered, on the stove until collapsing and tender but still whole, more or less. The inner layers start to slip out, which is fine.

Season to taste, but taste before you season—the added wine and stock have made a difference.

Salt the heart before grilling.

On hot section of grill, flash the heart slices on both sides, not more than a minute per side.

Arrange cress on plate, spoon warm shallots and their liquid over to wilt the leaves a bit, then arrange rare heart slices on top.

One quick drizzle of EVOO and a grind of black pepper to finish.

Keep the heart rare and tender; overcooking by even a minute makes it tough.

Duck Liver Garbure with Toasted Chestnut

4 orders	x16
Double Stock
4 2-ounce pieces D’Artagnan foie gras, frozen	2#
4 chestnuts, peeled and toasted	16 pc.
1 large parsnip, cut in bâtonnets	5 pc.
4 Brussels sprouts, leaves separated	16 pc.
4 baby white turnips, neatly peeled, blanched, halved	16 pc.

For the pickup:

Heat double chicken stock to simmer.

Drop in Brussels sprouts leaves and foie gras.

Simmer 1 minute. Leaves turn bright green and foie starts to swell.

Add turnip halves and parsnip bâtonnets, simmer 1 minute.

Add chestnut, simmer 2 minutes.

To plate:

Per order:

Use slotted to retrieve all the goods and place them in small shallow bowl, casually but aesthetically. Use solid to spoon broth over until everything just floats and is half submerged, more like a nage than a soup.

Few flakes of Maldon to finish. It needs the crunch of the salt crystals.

Reuse the same broth all night long, poaching the ingredients for each order in a service-long continuous broth, though switch out pans frequently. Every time you spoon out some of the broth, add more double stock to the pot.

It’s certainly good at the get-go, but by the last few orders of the night that broth is outrageous.

Also, this is not really a garbure, so if you leave here and go on to work at a real restaurant, don’t make the error of presenting this as garbure—this was an interpretation we did for a weeklong festival in NYC celebrating the foods of the Aquitaine and in collaboration with Jean-Claude Xiradakis. I ended up loving it and keeping it on the menu in spite of its “restauranty” look. The only thread between this and a true garbure is the cabbage.

Shad Roe with Bacon and Smoked Paprika Butter

4 shad roe sacs

4 slices bacon

Smoked Paprika Butter

Wondra flour

butter

lemons

kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

4 Bibb lettuce leaves

Bring 4 inches of water to a gentle simmer in a deep-sided sauté pan. Season with salt and squeeze ½ lemon into the water.

Rinse the roe sacs gently, taking care not to split the sacs or break the fragile membranes that encase them.

Slip roe briefly into poaching bath, just to set the sacs from bright red to drab gray, 90 seconds.

Pull them before they burst. If they burst, use them anyway. It’s not ideal, but it happens; it’s unavoidable, and this is too precious an item to discard just because a sac bursts. Poach as gently as you can.

Once set, allow the sacs to cool on a baker’s drying rack. Pick off the cooked large vein that runs between the lobes.

Cook bacon in flat-bottomed sauté pan until golden and crispy.

Remove bacon but leave fat in pan.

Dredge shad roe in Wondra flour and fry in bacon fat until golden and crispy.

Turn gently with fish spatula and fry on the other side. Sometimes you will need to add additional fat to the pan—use a nut or two of butter.

Cook to medium rare—but closer to rare than medium. Depending on size of lobe, 2 or so minutes per side.

Set on a few Bibb lettuce leaves on plate. Season with salt and pepper, briefly. Smear generously with smoked paprika butter—enough that it drips lusciously down onto the plate. Set the bacon on top. Finish with lemon cheek.

Grated Radish with Trout Roe and Brown Butter

Yield: 4 orders

8 red globe radishes, top and tail removed

4 Tablespoons sweet butter

4 ounces trout roe

With very sharp knife, make fine slices—as thin as potato chips—of the radish.

Stack the slices and make fine julienne.

*Don’t use the mandoline. Keep your knife skills in shape.

Store radishes covered with damp paper towel to keep fresh and lively during service.

Make casual nests in the bowl with the radishes.

Top each radish salad with a heaping tablespoon of trout roe.

To pick up:

Brown sweet butter to fragrant and nutty.

Immediately spoon hot browned butter around and over the radishes, but avoid the roe so you don’t “fry” or collapse the fish eggs with the hot butter.

Don’t let this sit in the pass. Get it to the table immediately.

Bagna Cauda

Yield: 4 orders (½ pint)	x1 pt.	x1 qt.
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil	½c.	1 c.
8 Tablespoons unsalted butter	½#	1#
3 fillets (½ ounce) anchovies in oil	6	12
4 garlic cloves, finely minced	8	16
¾ teaspoon caper brine	1½tsp	1T.
freshly ground black pepper

Heat oil and butter in saucepan over low heat.

Add anchovies and garlic and cook 3–4 minutes, stirring and mashing with wooden spoon, until anchovies dissolve into sauce.

Raise heat to medium, whisk in caper brine.

Turn off heat. Season with black pepper.

Keep warm next to stove in steel bain.

Stir contents well before portioning.

Ideal:

Freshly cut sweet and cold raw common green cabbage wedges.

Neatly arranged Belgian endive leaves.

Perfectly blanched and internally seasoned cold cauliflower. (Salt the blanching bath well—taste it before cooking the vegetable so you know what you are dealing with and remove from shocking ice bath as soon as possible so you don’t waterlog the cauliflower after cooking it. Drain well so the customer doesn’t taste any water.)

This one is my favorite—sweet, crunchy, bitter, and cold—in perfect counterpoint to the salty, buttery, warm bagna cauda. And I prefer the monochromatic—-the white, pale yellow, and even paler green all together on the plate.

But you can also run this with:

Blanched broccoli stems—peeled and beautifully cut, please.

Raw peeled baby white turnips—only if they are from the farm and looking very lively, and no bigger than a Ping-Pong ball. Use your judgment: sometimes the skin is so thin and tender they don’t need to be peeled. If you have to peel them, use long strokes from stem to tail, hold the peeler like a paring knife, don’t chip/hack away at them, and try to keep that long tail intact.

Raw scallions, stripped to their tenderest cores, roots trimmed.

And I don’t mind:

Treviso or radicchio.

Those beautiful dark purple sweet bell peppers.

Radishes.

Please don’t use the cherry or grape or Sun Gold tomatoes—the sauce won’t cling to their shiny skins and the customer can’t get a good purchase on them for dunking into the warm bath.

And please plate the veg first and don’t call for the anchovy butter until you are ready to walk the dish—customer should receive cold veg and hot sauce.

Deep-Fried Sweetbreads with Bacon, Capers, and Brown Butter Sauce

Yield: 4 orders, 3–4 ounces per portion	x8	x16
1 pound veal sweetbreads, from the heart side	2#	4#
3½ cups cold water	7c.	14c.
½ cup hot water	1 c.	2c.
¼ cup kosher salt	½c.	1 c.

¼ cup all-purpose flour

1 egg, well beaten

1 cup panko bread crumbs, ground
to fine in the food processor

½ Tablespoon unsalted butter	1T.	2T.
4 slices bacon, cut on the thin side, cooked to golden and crisp	8	16
1½ Tablespoons butter	3T.	6T.
1 Tablespoon + 2 teaspoons capers in brine	¹/₃c.	²/₃c.
1 Tablespoon water	2T.	4T.
7 Tablespoons cold butter, cut into cubes the size of your thumbnail	7oz.	1#+/-
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper	½tsp	1tsp
lemons for garnish

To prepare the sweetbreads:

Dissolve salt in the hot water and then add to the cold water.

Soak whole raw sweetbreads a full 24 hours in the brine, refrigerated. This will draw out some of the blood and season the gland internally.

Bring 3 quarts of water to a boil. Drain and rinse brined sweetbreads, then gently submerge in the boiling water. Let the water come back up to a boil and immediately turn down to a slow simmer. Poach the lobes gently, uncovered, for up to an hour but check at 20-minute intervals. The water should very gently roll. Remove the cooked sweetbreads and place in an ice bath to stop cooking. Let chill thoroughly. (They should be firm and opaque throughout, with no raw, rosy center. Raw sweetbreads are bitter and gelatinous and unpleasant. Conversely, overpoached sweetbreads become chalky and mealy. There can be a significant variation in cooking times, as much as 20 minutes, so keep an eye and use your wits. But it’s a pretty generous protein and gives you a wide berth between perfection and ruin, so don’t feel daunted by the task of properly poaching. Just keep the pitfalls in mind.)

Thoroughly and neatly peel the membrane—the thin, slippery, translucent “skin” that encases the gland—which will come off in a rather neat sheet. Trim off any waxy fat clusters, which tend to cling to the underside of the gland, and gently tug out any egregious muddy brown veins. Try to pull out the tubular-looking arteries as well. If you’ve made it this far and are not retching into a garbage can, leave the minor little capillaries intact in order not to have the lobe fall apart into nuggets.

Portion into 4-ounce pieces, as possible.

To bread:

Dredge the blanched sweetbreads in the flour and pat off any excess. Dip them thoroughly in the well-beaten egg, then drop them into the ground panko and thoroughly coat. Set the coated sweets on a baker’s rack to let the coating dry a bit. There should be no open patches revealing flour or egg wash, but instead an evenly and thoroughly coated lobe.

You can stab the sweetbreads with a skewer to bring them through the messy egg-flour breading process without getting your hands so unpleasantly caked up. It’s a neater, more finessed way to bread, if you want.

Deep-fry sweetbreads at 350°. Slice with a sharp knife into clean medallions as thick as a slice of bread and finish with the sauce.

For the sauce, per order:

Heat ½ tablespoon butter in a small sauté pan. When butter is foaming, place cooked bacon slices in the pan and swirl around over medium heat until heated through and fragrant.

As soon as the butter in the pan is brown, quickly add the capers in brine and the water in order to stop the butter from blackening, and bring the fatty, briny liquid to a full boil until it reduces to 1 Tablespoon. This will happen almost instantly. Remove the pan from the heat and turn down the flame.

Over the lowest heat possible, and sometimes even lifting the pan off the heat if necessary, swirl in cold butter, a couple of cubes at a time, while constantly stirring and agitating and swirling the pan until the cold butter melts into an unctuous, creamy-looking sauce that should taste rich from the cold butter, deep and sweet from the browned butter, and just nicely balanced by the acidic brine of the perfume-y capers. Taste it.

Spoon sauce liberally over the fried, sliced sweetbreads; lay 1 bacon slice over the portion.

This sauce requires your attention as it is easily broken. Pay attention to the heat when you are mounting the cold butter—and keep it low, low, low. Careful when bringing the brown butter/water/brine to the boil that you don’t allow it to evaporate. Be sure to start to mount the cold butter right away.

Lemon cheek garnish and full parsley sprig.

Salt and Sugar–Cured Green Tomatoes with Fried Sicilian Pistachios

firm tangy green tomatoes

kosher salt

sugar

Sicilian pistachios

extra virgin olive oil

orange blossom water

Slice tomatoes on meat slicer as thin as possible without shredding—⅛" ideal.

In ceramic or in glass, lay out 1 layer of slices neatly without overlapping.

Season very carefully with salt and tiniest pinch of sugar to quick-cure them.

Build another layer on top and repeat the cure, until you have stacked all of your tomatoes.

Get this done early in your prep so the tomatoes can cure for at least an hour before service.

Tomatoes will weep so make sure your vessel has a rim to collect the “tears.”

To pick up:

Arrange good-looking, shingled, circle of tomato slices in bottom of small shallow bowl, leaving ½" of white plate perimeter where the green oil will pool up. About 8 slices per order.

Fry Sicilian pistachios in EVOO in small pot on stove. Reuse the same oil all during service.

Very sparingly splash some drops of orange blossom water over the tomatoes. You want to smell it and taste it, but in a fleeting way.

Scatter small spoonful of fried pistachios on the tomatoes and then spoon the warm olive oil they were fried in around the empty white perimeter left on the plate.

We should figure out something to do with the interesting cured tomato water that accrues in the bottom of the plate by the end of service.

Maybe the bartenders have an idea?

Razor Clams with Smoked Paprika Butter and Hominy

Yield: 4 orders;	x8	x16
¼ cup coarse sea salt	½ c.	1 c.
¼ cup cornmeal	½ c.	1 c.
24 razor clams, looking lively and obscene	4 doz.	8 doz.
2 teaspoons kosher salt	1T. + 1tsp	2T. + 2tsp
2 cups dry white wine	4 c.	8 c.
1⅓ cups cooked hominy, drained	2-3 c.	1qt. +/-
6 Tablespoons fino sherry	¾ c.	½ c.
½ cup finely sliced parsley leaves	1 c.	1½ c.
Smoked Paprika Butter

To prep the clams:

Combine 1 gallon water with sea salt and cornmeal. Add clams and soak for 2 hours to get them to disgorge grit and sand. Keep refrigerated during the purge.

Rinse thoroughly. Be vigilant about culling any clams that are not vital and doing that unbelievably uncanny dog-penis thing. Be sure to put the shellfish tags in the bin on top of the ice machine and save for 90 days for the Health Department.

*Don’t just slam them into the pan and manhandle — their shells are extremely soft and brittle and they splinter easily.

To pick up:

Heat a large dry sauté pan with a good-fitting lid over high heat until blistering hot. Be orderly and gentle and add clams without breaking their shells, then quickly add the wine, which will hiss and steam violently. Cover and cook until clams stop hissing (shells will be slightly open) and are just cooked through, 2–3 minutes.

Lift the cooked clams out with a slotted fish spatula onto a ¼ sheet pan and return the sauté pan of liquid to the burner.

Let the liquid reduce by half, and in the meanwhile, arrange 6 clams per plate, hinges down, flesh up, in a neat stack prone to receive the sauce. If there is residual liquid from the cooked clams in the sheet pan, add it to the reducing sauce.

Add hominy to the reduced liquid and keep boiling, swirling to coat hominy, until liquid turns syrupy. Reduce heat to very low or turn off completely and rely on the ambient heat of your other 10 burners, and swirl in cold paprika butter a tablespoon at a time; sauce will thicken up a little too much, heading toward gluey. Sprinkle in sherry to loosen and bring back to luscious and glossy.

Taste it. If the sherry taste is too raw, let the sauce rest just a minute in the heat to tame the boozy hit.

Spoon hominy sauce over clams evenly, slice parsley just before finishing, and sprinkle liberally over each plate.

Parmesan Dumplings in Capon Broth

Yield: 15 orders	x½	x30 (150 dumpling)
1½ cups grated Parmesan	¾ c.	3 c.
1 cup dried coarse bread crumbs, not panko	½ c.	2 c.
½ teaspoon nutmeg, freshly grated on microplane	¼ tsp	1 tsp
4 eggs, lightly beaten	2	8
8 cups Capon Broth
some of the capon meat from making capon broth

For Parmesan dumplings:

Combine bread crumbs, Parmesan, and nutmeg.

Make a mound with a well in the center. Pour beaten eggs into well and knead all ingredients together.

Form into ½" balls. This is a messy task and the dough sticks unpleasantly to your hands. If you like how it helps, you can dip your hands repeatedly in ice water and then spray your hands with cooking spray to get through it a little more neatly.

To pick up:

Bring capon broth to hard simmer in small saucepot. ½ cup per order.

Drop in dumplings and simmer gently for just a few minutes, until dumplings swell to almost double their size. Adjust flame as needed. Don’t let them split or explode by cranking the heat in haste. 5 dumplings per order.

Taste broth for seasoning.

Retrieve dumplings with slotted spoon and arrange in small shallow bowl. Spoon broth over and bury them ⅔ of the way up.

Leave an inch or two of broth in the pot.

After soup goes to table, drop one nice hunk of torn capon meat into remaining broth, warm through, and send out to table on a tiny side plate with a few grains of grey salt. The delay is so it comes as an unexpected pleasantness for the guest. A cook’s treat shared with the guest rather than saved for the cook.

Calf’s Brains Fritto Misto

Yield: 4 orders

2 full sets calf’s brains

milk

1 dozen cippolini onions, peeled but left whole

Gala apple, cored and cut into ⅛’s

8 Tablespoons unsalted butter

2 Tablespoons salt-packed capers, rinsed

1 cup all-purpose white flour

3 eggs, beaten

2 cups panko bread crumbs, briefly ground finer in the Robot Coupe

Soak the brains in milk overnight in the walk-in. Try to get a 24-hour soak.

Soaking brains in milk helps to draw out the little bit of blood that circulates through all that membrane and to draw in white, inoffensive milk in its place.

Given the challenges already inherent for the customer in the very idea of eating brains, as well as the textural challenge of brains’ custardy nature, let’s not further burden customers with the third challenge of unsightly dark blood threads. Soak twice in clean, refreshed milk if you have to. The milk really helps with a consistent white complexion.

Discard pink-tinged milk (or discover an interesting and tasty use for it and run it by me) and rinse brains well.

Poach brains in gently simmering, generously salted water for approximately 5 minutes until firm and set.

Remove gently and submerge in ice-water bath to stop cooking.

Drain on a baker’s rack.

Keep the full set of the lobes intact through the soaking and poaching steps as possible. Once they have set and been shocked, split them apart at the natural cleavage and discard the creamy, soft white brain stem.

Gently peel the very thin membrane off in one sheet as best as possible. Use the sharp tip of a paring knife to get started, then pull the rest of the way with your fingertips.

Dredge the brains in flour, patting off excess—then dip in beaten egg, then coat with panko bread crumbs, and set on baker’s rack to dry.

Commit the apples and onions to this same process.

Deep-fry (350°) the fritto misto ingredients at the same time—they will cook approximately evenly—and all should be ready after 4–5 minutes in the hot fry.

Drain in a stack of coffee filters. Lightly season with salt.

In a stainless steel pan that allows you to track color more reliably than in a black pan, brown a healthy chunk of butter until fragrant, nutty brown, and foamy and pour into a ramekin with the rinsed capers. (This goes quickly—we want beurre noisette, not beurre noir. Take care.)

Arrange fried ingredients on butcher or parchment paper on a plate and serve with brown butter–caper ramekin for dipping and lemon chunks for squeezing.

One lobe per order is as much as any human can consume—these are very rich. Arrange 2 onions and 2 pieces of apple to accompany each lobe.

Sorrel Soup with Salted Lemon Whipped Cream

Ingredients for the soup:

Yields 5 cups/4 orders	x12 shy 3qts.
10 ounces sorrel, washed, any heavy stems removed	2#
1 large shallot, thinly sliced	3
8 Tablespoons unsalted butter	¾ #
1 large russet potato	3
kosher salt	salt
2 cups chicken stock	6 c. stock
½ cup heavy cream	½c. h. cr.

Ingredients for the salted lemon whipped cream:

1 lemon	2 whole
1½ cups heavy cream	3c. h. cr.
kosher salt	salt

For salted lemon whipped cream:

Peel lemon with Y-peeler in long wide bands. Take all there is; there is no logic in leaving stripes and bald patches on the lemon.

Grind the lemon peel in the spice mill with a pinch of salt to get traction and to pull out the oils.

Clean out every last fleck of lemon zest puree from the grinder and add it to heavy cream in a clean quart container and stir well. Taste now to see how powerful the lemon flavor is. Add salt to bring it out further.

Put a lid on the container and shake well, then refrigerate and allow to steep like a cold tea until lemon flavor fully emerges.

Strain and whip as needed, in small batches. Whipped cream doubles in volume so only whip a cup of cream at a time during service to give you what you need per seating. You don’t need to waste the cream by over mis-ing in the first place. Whip only to soft peak, when it hits its greatest volume but the peaks can still flop, according to the will of gravity, to whichever direction you tilt the whisk.

To plate:

Arrange potatoes in soup bowls and ladle hot soup over until they are barely submerged. Top with big, fun dollop of soft-peak salted lemon whipped cream and sell quickly—the cream starts to deflate instantly.

To make the soup:

Peel the potato and discard the peel.

Square the potato and cut into perfect ½" dice. Save the trim. Hold the diced potato in cold water so it won’t discolor. Melt butter in soup pot over medium-low heat and sweat shallots with the potato trim until soft and turning translucent. Season lightly with salt. When potato trim is soft, add the sorrel to the pot and stir around briefly until the sorrel turns drab and collapses, which is almost instantly.

Add chicken stock and bring to simmer.

*Needs no more than 10 mins on the burner once you’ve added the stock.

Season with salt to bring it alive.

Add heavy cream in “doses,” tasting after each. Tame but don’t deaden the tartness. Transfer to blender and drop in one good chunk cold butter and blend to silken texture.

In small pot, boil water and season assertively with salt.

Drop in diced potato and blanch to perfect doneness. Drain and spread out on sheet pan to cool quickly.

Serve hot at dinner, in a bowl. Cold at lunch in a water tumbler. Adjust salt accordingly to account for dulling effect of the cold.

Smokey Eggplant, Parsley-Sesame Flatbread, Grilled Lemons

For smokey eggplant:

Yields: 4–5 orders (approximately 1 quart)	x2 qts.	x4 qts.
1½ pounds standard purple-black eggplant	3#	6#
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice	x1 lemon	x2 lemons
2 garlic cloves, microplaned	4 cloves	8 cloves
1¼ teaspoons kosher salt	salt +/-	salt +/-
5 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil	½ c. evoo	1 c. evoo
1 Tablespoon finely chopped parsley	parsley	parsley

For the rest of the dish:

Flatbread

lemons

EVOO

Set the eggplants directly on the burners of the stove and turn the flames to high. Allow the eggplants to char on all sides, turning intermittently with kitchen tongs, taking care not to puncture or split them when turning. They will do that on their own when they are cooked. The eggplants will smoke and spark and give off terrific aroma. Char eggplants over open flame for approximately 14 minutes, or until cooked through. When the skin splits and the eggplants start to collapse, place in a large stainless steel bowl and cover tightly with plastic film.

Let sit for 15 minutes to steam in their own blackened jackets, then uncover and let cool enough so you can handle them.

On a cutting board, with a sharp knife, split the eggplants in half from stem to base. Do not discard the bowl in which the eggplants steamed. With a large spoon, scoop out all the flesh and put it in a clean bowl, taking care not to carry along any of the bitter, charred black skin. Discard all the blackened skin.

In the bottom of the bowl in which the charred eggplants steamed there will be a rich and slightly viscous dark brown liquid with many flakes and bits of burnt and blackened eggplant skin swimming in it. Through a fine-mesh strainer, pour all of that delicious smokey liquid over the eggplant flesh, keeping all the blackened bits out.

Gently break down any large pieces of the eggplants by cutting it in the bowl with the sharp edge of the spoon or by taking a knife in each hand and giving the flesh a few scissors-like passes. The eggplant should be a little chunky but manageable.

Gently add in the olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, parsley, and salt, taking care not to overstir, lest you end up with a kind of unattractive muddy and gluey appearance. A fork, gently combed through when adding the final ingredients, is the best tool.

All of the beautiful varieties of eggplant work well, but the skinny Japanese kind are tedious to work with since they don’t yield as much flesh—use the larger varieties for efficiency. It tastes best at room temperature, so be sure to remove from the refrigerator in advance to allow it to shake off the dulling chill.

For the lemons:

Boil the lemons for 5 minutes.

Drain and cool, then cut each into thin rounds.

Set a few slices per order on hot side of grill and let them caramelize and collapse a little, on both sides.

To plate:

Good spoonful of eggplant, 2 slices of flatbread, and grilled lemon slices.

Drizzle with EVOO to pool up slightly at the rim.

Stewed Tripe Milanese with Gremolata

6–8 orders	x24
2–3 pounds honeycomb tripe	8#
1 cup white vinegar	2c.
kosher salt	salt
2 stalks celery, trimmed and peeled	4
1 yellow onion, peeled and finely chopped	21g
3 garlic cloves	6
1 medium ripe tomato, peeled, seeded, diced	3 toms.
2 carrots, peeled and trimmed	3 c. baton
3 zucchini, trimmed	3 c. baton
3 russet potatoes, peeled	3 c. baton
freshly ground black pepper
2 cups white wine	3 c. ww
4 cups Beef Stock	8 c. +/-
4 tablespoons cold sweet butter
grated Parm
Gremolata

To blanch the tripe:

Bring large pot of water to boil. Add salt to season well. Add vinegar.

Add tripe, bring back to boil, and let go for 15–20 minutes. Try to do this early in the day when there are no patrons in the restaurant because of the offensive smell.

Drain tripe and rinse under cold water.

To braise the tripe:

Slice the blanched tripe into ¼" × 4" ribbons.

Finely chop celery, onion, and garlic.

Cut carrot, zucchini, and potato into 1-inch batons.

Set medium rondeau on medium heat, add big chunk butter, and sweat the onions, garlic, and celery all the way through to golden stage of caramelization. Take your time and let the sugars develop.

Add the tomato and wine and bring to simmer.

Add the blanched tripe and just enough beef stock to cover the contents of the pot. It wants to be crowded and brothy, not sparse and washed out with too much braising liquid.

Season briefly with salt and pepper, keeping in mind that it will cook and reduce for the next 4 hours, concentrating the seasoning. Cover with tight-fitting lid or parchment and lid if warped/buckled.

Let tripe cook over gentlest heat possible over the next several hours, checking doneness along the way. Add half of the potatoes and half of the carrots halfway through the braise, after 90 minutes or so. Add any remaining beef stock.

Add the rest of the carrots and the rest of the potatoes and all of the zucchini for the last 45 minutes of the braise. When all the contents of the pot—tripe and vegetables alike—are tender, sticky, soft, and almost creamy, remove from heat and chill down quickly.

For the pickup:

Reheat portion gently in small saucepot, and when very hot stir in good nut of cold butter, off heat.

To plate:

Use a wide shallow bowl. At the pass, finish with good spoonful of gremolata, shave of Parmesan, drizzle of olive oil.