Several images are from a dinner in December at Benu. A few are from recent meals at Monsieur Benjamin and Mama Ji’s. The rest are scenes from our kitchen.

As usual, click a picture on the mosaic for a larger-sized version.

Ginkgo flour “tortilla”, matsutake mushroom, pine needles, 10 year old aged pine syrup.

Caviar with hand-pressed sesame oil, sesame leaf and daikon.

Milk pudding, salted caramel sauce, peat

Omija sorbet, olive oil

Shrimp tempura, jellyfish, seaweed

Whipped ricotta cheese, chestnut honey, chopped pistachio nuts.

Left: Pickled crosnes and pearl onion. Right: XO sauce, house-made soy sauce.

Kohlrabi kimchi.

Pickled long beans with pork and chile peppers.

Broccoli rabe with garlic and lemon.

Black truffle steamed bun.  Basically a play on Peking duck – stuff the bun with quail, top with condiments and enjoy.

Quail liver mousse, au jus, black truffles.

Chicken meatballs with ricotta and lemon.

Barbecued quail from Wolfe Ranch.

Chicken wing stuffed with abalone and abalone liver mousse.

Endive salad with walnuts, mustard vinaigrette and apple.

Xiao long bao with lobster coral, house-made soy sauce, vinegar.

Spicy fermented bean paste with tomato, served with crudités.

Chicken with tree ears and Chinese mushrooms in a clay pot.

Sauternes.

Pernil – Puerto Rican-style roast pork.

Asian pear and Napa cabbage kimchi.

Chrysanthemum leaf and scallion salad.

Arctic char amandine, haricots verts, brown butter.

Marinated mussel, root vegetables.

Thousand year old quail egg, cabbage juice, ginger.

Anchovies and parsley.

Butter with orange blossom honey and ginseng. Not shown are some sprouted grain rolls.

Salted walnuts, dried persimmons, sweet rice cakes

Monkfish liver steamed in rice wine, with toasted seaweed and chili.

Butter lettuce salad, French breakfast radishes, chervil.

Blood sausage, sweet rice, squid ink, shiso.

Steamed Japonica rice with powdered scallion.

Grilled veal short ribs, seasoned with sesame seed, perilla seed and pine nuts.

Sea urchin marinated in fermented crab sauce, with thinly sliced celtuce

“Shark fin” soup – Dungeness crab, ham, egg white and black truffles.

Coconut chiffon cake

Short ribs.

I’ve never committed to a regular blog posting schedule in the nearly 13 years this blog has been in existence, but I suppose I should start doing that, no? That should be my New Year’s resolution…or one of them, anyway.

So here’s to a beginning of sorts.