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