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