LaurentGras

Black Tortilla Shell

  
 

You would like to able to serve an inedible product, how do you make them edible? Like a mussel shell. You would serve the mussel in the shell and the whole thing can be eaten. The visual of the black shell contrasting with the orange from the mussel is very appealing. So we made a tortilla dough with squid ink, pressed it, cut it into small circles and deep fried it like a crispy tortilla. And I'd like to say that the result for a first draft was more successful than expected. The combination of the tortilla and the mussel was soft and crispy, and the sauces (one is salsa piquante and the other is a green dressing) were able to enhance the flavors. On the first plate is the first draft of the dish, the mussel is served with a salsa piquante and a round tortilla. The second draft is the plate with a green dressing and on oval tortilla. The next step for us is to create a cutter that will reproduce the shape of the mussel shell.

 

 

Eighteen Flavors of Winter

"Eighteen Flavors of Winter" is the dish, but the original idea was green. It was spring time and when I started seeing so many green vegetables, that created a focus on the color. I wanted the feel of the dish to be intensely green with couple of spots of brightness, but different color to dynamize the visual aspect. 

Acrylic can be tinted to pretty much any color you want. Acrylic also captures light and reflects it. Small scale production does not interest most companies, so finding someone for the fabrication become a long term project. When the design was done we were able to source the acrylic though our restaurant architect. The company who designed our lounge tables, which have an acrylic top, connected us to their vendor. Picking out the color with the right green, calculating the percentage of that color applied to the acrylic to  get to the right one was another several weeks. In a couple of weeks the finished pieces arrived at the restaurant just after labor day. We already had the crystal base with a sanded finish to hold the acrylic. So we started the dish later in the year, with the first plater going on the menu in early October. 

The different components are: beetroot and wasabi, honeydew and peppermint, lettuce and lemon, carrot and black sesame, fake cucumber, daikon and soy, zucchini and green olive, rapini, green apple and jalapeno, avocado and spices. 

The good thing is that we will be ready for spring this year. 

   

  

Spring at the Corner of the Road

    
Lincoln Park West today. Miner's Lettuce, Morel and Fiddelhead Ferns received today. Chantelle brought back the kitchen's orchid that had died 3 months ago.
 
 
 

 

Christina and Andy Just Before Service

 

Shear Mixer

Several year ago I looked into perfecting emulsions to create a better mouth-feel. I discovered Silverson Shear mixers, which have some of the best performance on the market. Besides developing products for large scale production in several industries, they offer a laboratory mixer that is more suitable for a kitchen application. Even being the small model, it is still a 50 pound machine. Since I found the company and purchased the mixer, they have released the latest product offering a more powerful engine and more features. It does not replace the vitaprep but compliments it very well. The heads perform best when the liquid can move and circulate throughout. It eliminates all the particles that create the graininess on the mouth-feel. All our sauces, emulsion, and sorbet are sheared for better results. 

    

Both heads are used for different emulsion. 

The first is a simple head that emulsify, the second head  is a duplex assembly that can reduce pieces to a liquid stage.