Tasting Menu, or What I've Been Doing This Week

[lillibet]

Tasting Menu
Saturday, 16 October 2010

cucumber-dill sorbet

pear-goat cheese crostini

creamy parsnip soup
with guanciale

grass-fed tenderloin tartare

Italian onion soup
with onion-fontina bruschetta

mushroom-artichoke bread pudding

duck egg salad
with mixed greens and warm anchovy vinaigrette

poached haddock in saffron broth
with chorizo,

Comments

[lillibet]

The cucumber-dill sorbet was really good--I had a version of it at Journeyman that we agreed was too sweet, so fixing that was a goal and I think I really hit it. Very refreshing.

The crostini were a fantastic combination of flavors. I wish the recipe were online--it calls for tossing the pecans with honey & brown sugar and the pears in honey & butter and roasting them, so those are sweet and warm and balance really nicely with the salty goat cheese and bitter/spicy greens.

Other people listed as their favorites the parsnip soup (which I thought came out well, but didn't blow me away as much as the creamy artichoke one I did last time) and the mushroom-artichoke bread pudding, which was good but not as impressive to me as other things. I am incredibly fond of the duck eggs with warm anchovy vinaigrette and greens, but no one else seems to dig it the way I do.

We all loved the haddock--the mix of flavors there is really wonderful and the intense flavor of the tomatoes really came through. The rabbit got some good comments, but I think didn't hit other people's tastebuds as straight on as it did mine. The goat was really less good than anything else, but on there for novelty value, which it definitely had.

The desserts were both really good, but everyone seemed to think the pots de creme were the winner.