the week ahead
Pumpkin is back on the menu again in our pumpkin tortilla soup and in our pumpkin cardamom flan. Both of these dishes were popular last year, and we are very happy to bring them back this season.
We’ll be getting trout again on Tuesday. In the past I’ve written in these notes that I’m not a huge fan of farmed trout, but I don’t want to pass up the opportunity to use fish that is so fresh (harvested the morning we receive them), doesn’t travel a long distance to get to us (from Laurel Highlands) and doesn’t require a lot of packaging (two plastic bags versus Styrofoam box and gel packs).  We’ll be getting in more fish for the weekend, though I’m not sure what it’ll be yet.  We usually tweet about what fish we’re serving and other new things for the weekend on Thursday or Friday.
We got two 60 pound whey-fed pigs last week. They gave us trouble. Whey fed-pork is very lean and I suspect it requires a different approach to cooking pork, in the same way that grass-fed beef cooks nothing like corn-fed beef. Even though we mis-cooked or mangled much of the pork, we did manage to make some tasty rillettes that we’ll be serving over the next few weeks. Once we figure out how to cook it, I think the whey-fed pork will be a great addition to our repetoire.
We have a few flat iron steaks from Keystone Co-operative out of Uniontown which we’ll be serving on Tuesday evening. This isn’t a melt-in-your-mouth steak by any means but the flavor is really good. Earthy and robust, this beef is truly a taste of Western PA.
All in all, we’re keeping it simple this week. I’ve been so focused lately on trying new things and working on various interesting projects that it has started to come at the expense of overlooking the little things that make our food what it is. It’s really easy for chefs to get bored with the basic day-to-day details that keep a kitchen putting out good food. Having the discipline to turn towards the mundane aspects of running a kitchen properly is one of the hardest things for a young chef, and one of the reasons most of us aren’t successful for very long. This is a week that I’ll make sure that everything gets my full attention. It might not all be perfect, but it will be as good as I know how to make it.