December 28th, 2009 by Sarah

Join us on January 1, 2010 for our good luck foods dinner. Pork, sauerkraut, red beans, gravy, and Carolina Gold rice and mincemeat pie. Our normal menu will be available as well.

December 28th, 2009 by Sarah

Join us as we celebrate the coming of 2010!  Four course menu with a choice on each course. Some of the things we’ll be serving: caviar, foie gras, jamison lamb chops, wagyu beef, peekytoe crab. $75 a person; 5 p.m. to close.

December 7th, 2009 by Trevett

the week ahead

The “Week Ahead” is merely a prediction of how the menu will take shape as the week goes on; occasionally things we order don’t show up, or we return them if they aren’t up to snuff.  If you are coming for a specific item mentioned below, please call us to make sure we have it on the day you are coming.

As the temperatures continue to drop, the cooks and I look forward to another week in the kitchen cooking warming, nourishing food.

Wild striped bass is due to arrive on Tuesday.  The plan is to wrap the fillet portions in leeks, bake and serve them with lentils, bacon and red wine sauce.  Mahi mahi is due in on Thursday.  I’ve had a craving for oysters lately and if we have the extra hands in the kitchen this weekend to shuck them to order, we’ll be offering them Friday and Saturday evenings.

In the meat department, the veal breast dish continues to evolve and improve and is on its way to becoming a Legume classic.  This week we’re serving it with mushrooms and polenta.  We have a lot of beef to serve this week as well: wagyu flat irons all week and rib steaks towards the end.  Both steaks will be served with our excellent Bordelaise sauce.  Cassoulet will be available Friday and Saturday.

We’ve been hearing great things about the River View farmer’s goat cheese being served at Legume these days.  Most of the credit belongs to Samuel, the cheese maker (it’s always nice when the hard work is done on the other side of the kitchen door).  All we do at Legume is pour some honey on it and stick in the broiler.  The great thing about this cheese is that each batch is a little different from the one before. Right now we’re in the midst of a great batch, and so we’ll be keeping it on the menu a while.  We’re serving it with pickled sour cherries this week.  This cheese would also be really good for dessert.

From the pickled sour cherry juice, we make ourselves a nice sauce for the duck leg confit.  But when we’re in a pinch and don’t have time to make a sauce for the duck, we run down to the basement and grab a jar of plum catsup.  As yucky as putting the words “plum” and “catsup” together sound, it’s actually one of the best accompaniments we’ve done with duck to date.  (On the menu we sometimes call it plum butter or sweet and sour plum sauce.)  We make a big batch of this stuff in the summer when the plums are at their peak and serve it all winter long.  It’s just plums, white vinegar, sugar, allspice and clove cooked together for a long time.

With the cooler weather, we’ll be trying our hand at making our own guanicale, chorizo sausage and lardo this winter.  My life was changed last September when I ate lardo for the first time at Fore Street restaurant in Portland, Maine.