Fishy Fish

A couple dishes I have been making at L'Ecole.

Branzino with ratatouille, tapanade, aioli, and fried tomato skin.

Cod, with a salt cod potato cake, smoky bacon tomato sauce, and a salad with roasted fingerling potatoes.

Pan seared salmon, arctic char, and scallops with clams, cucumber, watercress, and potato gratin. All swimming in a clam consomme.

Good day to be at L'Ecole

Today I think we put out some great food.
I had a good time as well.
Our special dish for Thursday:
Herb ricotta gnocchi, wilted spinach, and sauteed oyster mushrooms, with a roasted macadamia nut cream sauce. Garnished with ground macadamia nuts, olive oil, fried tomato skin, and chopped herbs.

We also put out a chicken fricassee dish:
Chicken, roasted tomatoes, yellow and green squash, and radish. Garnished with fried sage.

Chef Mark showing us how its done.

Old school French..........he has crazy skills.

More Veggies

Our dish for Tuesday.

Grilled eggplant with herb goat cheese, warm olive tapenade, rosemary oil, mixed greens with radish and carrot.

The pictures show two different plating variations. 

Special Veggies

This week my group of three has to come up with a special vegetarian plate each day to serve at L'Ecole. This is what we came up with today.

Zucchini tart with herb goat cheese, a toasted pine nut parmesan cream sauce, and a small salad with lemon vinaigrette.

Saucier

This is what I do right now and where I do it. L'Ecole Restaurant.

Salty, Spicy, Sweet

This is old hat, but I thought I should include it. A while back I made flounder three ways. The idea was to have three bites of flounder each in there own sauce. Each sauce representing salty, spicy, and sweet. In each case I made the sauce, poached the flounder in the sauce, finished the sauce, and garnished the dish.
It would be very cool to have a special tasting plate with three separate areas for the three bites.
The dishes are as fallows.

Simmered Flounder with Soy, Star Anise, and Poached Ginger (Salty) Red Curry Lon with Coconut Cream and Flounder (Spicy) Poached Flounder with Carrot Apricot Cardamom Puree and Basil Oil (Sweet)

Picture is of the Carrot Apricot Cardamom dish.

Cured Meat

I love fermented foods. All of them. This is a Italian dry cured sausage I made at FCI. We cured it in a temperature and humidity controlled box for three weeks. It was made with pork butt, fat back, fennel, black pepper, red wine, curing salts, and fermentation culture. Next time, French Saucisson.

Idiot Check

Last time I checked, (today) I am an idiot. These are the flowers I got for my ex-girlfriend. Obviously she wouldn't be my ex-girlfriend if flowers had anything to do with it. They didn't. I am a idiot and so she left me. To anyone who has been in a long term relationship and then been dumped, I am welcoming myself to the group. The last two weeks have been a blur. I am without inspiration, motivation, direction, or just good old "give a shit".

Now that the dust is settling from the demolition of my life I step forward.

The wind is blowing and there is a fork in the road.

Onward I go.

Yep

Waiting for Fall

The Temperature keeps rising and the days are long. All good things unless you want to climb local projects and are waiting for your super massive climbing trip in the fall. So I just keep crankin away, climbing when I can and training for the fall. Joe and I went back to Lander a week or two ago and had another great trip. The conditions where not great, but we both dispatched of some cool routes. I was able to put up a new link-up on the Rodeo Wave. It came to me in a fit of desperation and inspiration. One of the routes on the wall is not climbable because holds have broken off the first couple of moves. (Crux) At first I was confident that I would be able to figure out a sequence through the blankness, but after trying it on two separate days I gave in to the fact that it wasn't going to happen. It is a bummer, because the rest of the route is great. So in a fit of desperation I started to look to the left to see if you could boulder in to this route from the route to the left. This sounds obvious, but we are talking about a blank 45 degree steep limestone wall. Anyway I was able to clean off a FOOTHOLD!!! and use it to boulder out right and meet up with the second bolt of the route to the right.
Vwoooooola............new route. It ended up climbing really well. The sequence involves a new and HARD four move boulder problem to meet up with the rest of the route. So that was fun.
Back here in Bozeman I have tried my project at Natural Bridge one more day with no success. I was able to get a couple moves further in the crux sequence, but thats still a couple from being through the hard stuff. Lets just say the conditions are not good at all..........really. Its hot, humid, and there are millions of mosquitoes eating you alive in the canyon. It was a miserable day other than the fact that Joe and I put up a very cool new route. Its short, steep, burly, and on perfect blue rock. We threw up some bolts, worked it out, and I was able to climb it in a few tries. It is kind of a novelty route, but a good one none the less. As for the rest of the month and the beginning of Aug. I will just be packing up my stuff, climbing when I can, and training for the big trip. I can’t wait!!!