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.
Sauternes.
Chicken with tree ears and Chinese mushrooms in a clay pot.
Pickled long beans with pork and chile peppers.
Marinated mussel, root vegetables.
Steamed Japonica rice with powdered scallion.
Salted walnuts, dried persimmons, sweet rice cakes
Milk pudding, salted caramel sauce, peat
Shrimp tempura, jellyfish, seaweed
Chicken wing stuffed with abalone and abalone liver mousse.
Chrysanthemum leaf and scallion salad.
Xiao long bao with lobster coral, house-made soy sauce, vinegar.
“Shark fin” soup – Dungeness crab, ham, egg white and black truffles.
Thousand year old quail egg, cabbage juice, ginger.
Asian pear and Napa cabbage kimchi.
Black truffle steamed bun. Basically a play on Peking duck – stuff the bun with quail, top with condiments and enjoy.
Pernil – Puerto Rican-style roast pork.
Short ribs.
Endive salad with walnuts, mustard vinaigrette and apple.
Butter lettuce salad, French breakfast radishes, chervil.
Arctic char amandine, haricots verts, brown butter.
Left: Pickled crosnes and pearl onion. Right: XO sauce, house-made soy sauce.
Broccoli rabe with garlic and lemon.
Whipped ricotta cheese, chestnut honey, chopped pistachio nuts.
Monkfish liver steamed in rice wine, with toasted seaweed and chili.
Blood sausage, sweet rice, squid ink, shiso.
Caviar with hand-pressed sesame oil, sesame leaf and daikon.
Barbecued quail from Wolfe Ranch.
Butter with orange blossom honey and ginseng. Not shown are some sprouted grain rolls.
Quail liver mousse, au jus, black truffles.
Anchovies and parsley.
Kohlrabi kimchi.
Spicy fermented bean paste with tomato, served with crudités.
Chicken meatballs with ricotta and lemon.
Grilled veal short ribs, seasoned with sesame seed, perilla seed and pine nuts.
Sea urchin marinated in fermented crab sauce, with thinly sliced celtuce
Ginkgo flour “tortilla”, matsutake mushroom, pine needles, 10 year old aged pine syrup.
Coconut chiffon cake
Omija sorbet, olive oil
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.
