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.
Whipped ricotta cheese, chestnut honey, chopped pistachio nuts.
Thousand year old quail egg, cabbage juice, ginger.
Pernil – Puerto Rican-style roast pork.
Asian pear and Napa cabbage kimchi.
Steamed Japonica rice with powdered scallion.
Omija sorbet, olive oil
Salted walnuts, dried persimmons, sweet rice cakes
Grilled veal short ribs, seasoned with sesame seed, perilla seed and pine nuts.
Caviar with hand-pressed sesame oil, sesame leaf and daikon.
Anchovies and parsley.
Xiao long bao with lobster coral, house-made soy sauce, vinegar.
Endive salad with walnuts, mustard vinaigrette and apple.
Chicken wing stuffed with abalone and abalone liver mousse.
Butter lettuce salad, French breakfast radishes, chervil.
Black truffle steamed bun. Basically a play on Peking duck – stuff the bun with quail, top with condiments and enjoy.
Chicken with tree ears and Chinese mushrooms in a clay pot.
Marinated mussel, root vegetables.
“Shark fin” soup – Dungeness crab, ham, egg white and black truffles.
Coconut chiffon cake
Spicy fermented bean paste with tomato, served with crudités.
Arctic char amandine, haricots verts, brown butter.
Ginkgo flour “tortilla”, matsutake mushroom, pine needles, 10 year old aged pine syrup.
Quail liver mousse, au jus, black truffles.
Pickled long beans with pork and chile peppers.
Short ribs.
Chrysanthemum leaf and scallion salad.
Milk pudding, salted caramel sauce, peat
Barbecued quail from Wolfe Ranch.
Chicken meatballs with ricotta and lemon.
Broccoli rabe with garlic and lemon.
Shrimp tempura, jellyfish, seaweed
Kohlrabi 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.
Sea urchin marinated in fermented crab sauce, with thinly sliced celtuce
Left: Pickled crosnes and pearl onion. Right: XO sauce, house-made soy sauce.
Blood sausage, sweet rice, squid ink, shiso.
Sauternes.
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.
