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.

Thousand year old quail egg, cabbage juice, ginger.

Quail liver mousse, au jus, black truffles.

Arctic char amandine, haricots verts, brown butter.

Endive salad with walnuts, mustard vinaigrette and apple.

Marinated mussel, root vegetables.

Broccoli rabe with garlic and lemon.

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

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

Steamed Japonica rice with powdered scallion.

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

Sauternes.

Milk pudding, salted caramel sauce, peat

Asian pear and Napa cabbage kimchi.

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

Spicy fermented bean paste with tomato, served with crudités.

Pickled long beans with pork and chile peppers.

Butter lettuce salad, French breakfast radishes, chervil.

Short ribs.

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

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

Whipped ricotta cheese, chestnut honey, chopped pistachio nuts.

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

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

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.

Salted walnuts, dried persimmons, sweet rice cakes

Coconut chiffon cake

Chicken wing stuffed with abalone and abalone liver mousse.

Omija sorbet, olive oil

Blood sausage, sweet rice, squid ink, shiso.

Pernil – Puerto Rican-style roast pork.

Shrimp tempura, jellyfish, seaweed

Chicken meatballs with ricotta and lemon.

Chrysanthemum leaf and scallion salad.

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

Barbecued quail from Wolfe Ranch.

Anchovies and parsley.

Kohlrabi kimchi.

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.