ping island strike

Haven’t posted anything in a while………..been on the road, but I’m back!..promise to post more often

The garden is growing like crazy..lots to look forward to.

I am proud to announce Chef Todd Richards as our May guest chef.  Todd is a great guy and one hell of a chef.  You don’t want to miss this dinner, these sell out really fast.  Check out Todd’s blog:

http://cheftoddrichards.blogspot.com/

Todd is doing some really neat stuff and we are excited to have him in our kitchen…just call the restaurant to make reservations the date is May 18th and costs 75 dollars

p.s.  Todd was robbed on Iron Chef America versus Cat Cora during “Battle Carrot”

Ted Lang stopped by the kitchen yesterday and brought me the best hazelnuts that I have ever tasted!!

These are organically grown in the Lorane Valley of Oregon. The hazelnuts are custom cracked, hand selected and sorted just prior to shipment.

If you want the best hazelnuts you’ll ever have email them at: trufflebert@aol.com

Foie Gras destined for the center of a country pate.

this cured for 4 months, thanks to my friend Alan Benton for the inspiration!

FIG has always been my favorite restaurant in Charleston so when Mike Lata called me up and asked me if I would cook a course for his anniversary dinner I was thrilled.  It was really great to cook alongside such talented chefs.  This was a really, really good dinner…Below is the menu.

Hors d’ oeuvres

Craig Deihl, Cypress, Charleston

Crudo of Local Fish 3 Ways

Ken Vendrinski, Sienna, Daniel Island

Over Easy Ravioli with Carolina Morels, Fava Beans and Ramps

Mike Lata, FIG, Charleston

Softshell Crabs with Asparagus, Hedgehogs, and Anson Mills polenta Spin Rosso

Celina Tio, The American Restaurant, Kansas City, MO

Caw Caw Creek Suckling Pig with Carrots and Onions from Sean’s Garden

Sean Brock, McCrady’s, Charleston

Brown Sugar Hot Milk Cakes with Dulce de Leche-Mascorpone Cream and Boone Hall Strawberries

Lauren Mitterer, Red Drum, Mt. Pleasant

these are very soft and pop like caviar, thought about using them on a fish course but it took thrity minutes to pick the seeds in the picture above…wish I had a few extra hands….

these took forever to grow, but they tasted awesome, braised in carrot juice and finished with a little citrus zest

cucumber, jalepeno, sweetened buttermilk

these were on the tv show deadliest catch, they came form the boat “the time bandit”…super cool

they taste incredible with a very soft “lobster like” texture…why have we been throwing them away??

June 29th, 2008

We are very proud to announce a guest chef dinner with two of the most exciting chefs in the country, Alex and Aki from www.ideasinfood.com.  We have been huge fans of their blog for years and have become  great friends in the meantime.

The dinner will be 12 courses starting at 6:30pm in one of our private dining rooms.  Don’t miss this opportunity to meet these incredible chefs and sample their groundbreaking cuisine.

The dinner will be 75 dollars, if you want to attend make a reservation thru me at:

chefbrock@mccradysrestaurant.com

the dinner is selling out fast so make a reservation!!!

for more Information on the dinner click here

Years ago I read about this flavor pairing.  It’s quite strange to think about but tastes wonderful together.

here we took cream cheese, white chocolate and greek yoghurt and made an ice cream with no additional sugar.  It was awesome with the salty roe.  The brown butter crumble added a nice nutty flavor that complemented the now classic flavor pairing of white chocolate and caviar.

this is a fun way to start a tasting menu..it’s crispy foie gras croquant with truffled chicken liver mousse

preppin the country pate….using housemade bacon for pate work is rewarding..this came out really good.  can’t wait to make another one with different flavors, that’s the cool thing about it…endless possibilities…and btw the cvap rocks for charcuteries work

Puffed Fish Skin with Vinegar Powder, fish and chips anyone??

We have been lucky enough to have some incredible chefs staging with us for the last couple of weeks.  It really allows us to work on some things that we normally wouldn’t have time to do.  It’s incredible how much you can accomplish with a fresh set of eyes and open ears.  Thanks to Robert, Damon and Christian for all their hard work and enthusiasm.  It is greatly appreciated.

these were layered into a foie gras terrine

this is a good luck gift from my friend Saramel

I planted this on January the 21st….and all of a sudden it decided to grow the other day…great lemon flavor

these are some Texas 1015 onions that we are growing for our restaurant.  They taste great when they are this size but I can’t wait for them to get huge and sweet

Date Puree, farro Verde, Thackeray Cabbage

Thanks to Damon Campbell for prepping and cooking the lamb neck.

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we filled these with aged sherry cream, they ended up looking kinda like creme puffs.

I was recently invited to cook dinner service at The Quinones Room at Bacchanalia with my friend Andy Carson.  Wow, what a humbling experience that turned out to be.  Anne Quattrano and her staff are incredible hosts and operate one of the most impressive businesses I have ever seen.  The cured meats program is mind boggling.  The smell of that room is just amazing, as you can see in the picture, I am thrilled to be standing among such wonderful, delicious pieces of art.  Thanks again to everyone at Star Provisions, and thanks for all the charcuterie tips.  If you haven’t been there plan a trip right away, I can’t wait to go back.

Star Provisions

with smoked ice cream and crispy blood orange

We have been making some great pork skins lately, thanks to some direction from our friend Andy Hayes.  Clean the fat away, cook for 81C for 12 hours.  Clean the fat, deydrate, fry and season.

We started picking these a couple of weeks ago. Super Tasty

It doesn’t get much better.  What a fun thing to make.  We used local milk from grass fed jersey cows

We have always heard that the secret to good grits is cold milling.  In fact, people use to rush to be the first in line at the mill to get the grits first while the mill was still cold in the morning.  We realized that we have the ability to control the tempurature using liquid nitrogen.  These were the most amazing grits I have ever eaten.  They tasted like fresh baked, buttery cornbread.  A great example of forward thinking.

From left to right:

Napoli Carrots, Forono Beets, Shunkyo Radishes, Albino Beets, Easter Egg Radish

A really neat technique.  Now we start playing with flavoring the salt

Wild Sturgeon

buy some from Tyler

this stuff takes forever to grow, and then the deer eat it, thank god for Anson Mills

I’ve had some new thoughts on rice recently.  I am still quite obsessed with cereal production.  We wanted to create a rice puff that was super light and airy…

We started by cooking the shit out of some nishiki rice and then we put it in the thermomix with some wheat dextrin.  We tried frying the dough right away and got the hollow puffs in the second picture.  We then smeared some on a scallop and seared it.  The scallop was really tasty and super crispy, maybe the crispiest crust I have ever experienced.  Then we dehydrated the mix and fried it.  The result was very similar to a pork rind.  All in all some good results but not exactly what I had in mind, funny how that works.  We will see what happens today.

“You are not finished seasoning or balancing a dish until it tastes so good you can’t stop eating it”

Dear Lord, pork rinds taste good

First of the season.  These were compressed with honey vinegar and served with Meyer Lemon curd, white chocolate and yoghurt.

Ted and Susan Chewning have done some incredible things with seed saving, among other things.  They were kind enough to share their hard work with us and give us some of these seeds.  We can’t wait to grow this corn.

Chorizo glued to Grouper….this is then poached at 60 C for 12 minutes and finished on the plancha.

Aged Korean Black Garlic.  Truly a unique ingredient.

created for a foie gras dish, we needed acid and salt, two birds with one stone

 shoulder and belly

We had some uni left over from our David Chang dinner.  I thought it would be fun to make a savory ice cream to start our tasting menu.  Seems like everytime I make ice cream I want to try a different approach or recipe for the base.  Today I called Alex and he suggested that I use white chocolate, cream cheese and greek yoghurt…..This turned out to be one of the best ice creams I have ever eaten…Alex needs to write an ice cream book

Thanks to Emile for providing us such a great product….this stuff tastes awesome.

Our Thermomix is four years old….we use this to hydrate and disperse lots of food gums, this works great with gellan, agar, and carrageenan.  We also use this everyday to make our potato puree.  We really need a new one………..

The last couple of days Travis, Timmy and I were able to make lots of great sausage.  We were lucky enough to use some milkfed ossabaw and berkshire pork from Emile at Caw Caw Creek…We made chorizo, sauccison sec, hot and sweet italian sausage and bratwurst.  Tasty stuff

this is a sam mason creation, a true visionary, and one hell of a nice guy.  We are going to serve it whipped with smoked foie gras

really delicous, we served them with kaffir lime, avocado, fresh hearts of palm and caviar

We have incredible produce here in South Carolina, but I have always been jealous of the chefs who have the produce of California at the fingertips.  It truly is amazing.  Tyler Gray has a new program where he can deliver produce from the Santa Monica farmer’s market to your door no matter where you live……pretty sneaky

Still in the works.  Cutable chocolate pudding made with iota and kappa carrageenan.  This turns into a wonderful chocolate pudding when it is consumed, I think Bill Cosby would like this one……..we are serving it with mascorpone cheese, brandied cherries and nitro cocoa crispies….

thousands of tomato plants have been started……I  can taste them already

We are getting very excited about this spring’s garden…we have already planted a ton of stuff and will be expanding by 200 percent……

mango, chocolate, balsamic and butternut squash…..we served this with roasted foie gras

Mushroom puree set with gellan, sheared and cooked with glucose….we then dehydrated the puree in the oven…

 great texture but the glucose added to much sweetness.  Alex says the gellan works just fine without the glucose….back to the drawing board

xanthan and methocel….I love this texture, endless possibilities

This stuff is unbelievable.  We serve it with tomatoes when they are in season and here we are serving them with garden beets and goat cheese panna cotta….the dish is finished with nasturtium and armando manni olive oil….buy some vinegar from www.mikuniwildharvest.com

These are Perigord Truffles that are grown in TN by a genius named Tom Micheals.  In my opinion these truffles are better than anything else on the market, they are the real thing….. The aroma is incredible, I can’t put these truffles down, last night I slept with them under my pillow, Yuzu the pugdog loves them as well…the quality is incredible, I’m sure the freshness has something to do with it and the love and respect that has gone into this project by Tom and his wife…Honestly, this is one of the most exciting things I have seen in years…

Tennesse sure is amazing….truffles, whiskey, Alan Benton, Blackberry Farm, country music, moonshine and nascar.  What else do you need?????? 

I got some mango vinegar from my good friend Tyler Gray a while back, this stuff is insane.  Tyler can really track down some kick ass products…

we serve this vinegar with poached scallops, per me olive oil, flowers and avocado

Recently I have been thinking alot about cold foie gras preparations…the textures that are available, the refinement, the flavor, the mouthfeel, the romance of the entire process..while not 100 percent happy with this experiment I think we are headed in the right direction

First we cleaned the foie gras, then we soaked it for 24 hours in carbonated milk flavored with gran marnier….after a quick dunk in some ice water, we cleaned it again, checking for any gnarly veins or bruises….then we cure it with tcm, salt and sugar… next we cook the foie at 37 degrees C for 1 hour, then we cleaned it again…the mixture was cooled and then pushed through a tammis….next, into the kitchen aid with the paddle attachment and beaten for a quick minute…now it is ready to cast and chill

 we served this with some garden beats, saba and finished it with grated Tennesse truffles tableside with some hot toasted brioche…i think next time the puree will spend some time in the vaccum chamber to remove any air pockets.

one hell of a city….always a good time, can’t wait to go back….we ate at nougatine, wd-50, tailor, gramercy tavern, some cool hidden burger place, chinatown and of course lots of hotdogs……

We cook the crap out of the rice and then roll it into thin sheets.  The rice is then deydrated and flash fried.  We season it with togarashi….

We have found that gellan gum helps us produce great vegetable purees.  .45 percent type f….set and puree