- Peas, dill vinaigrette, watercress mayonnaise, kohlrabi, and pea pockets
- Porcini mushrooms, tortellini with fermented garlic and onions, mushroom beurre blanc, chanterelles, Parmesan
- Pickled tomatoes and onions, tomato kimchi gazpacho, basil oil
- Swiss cheese platter with plum compote and honey mustard
by Capital-Cat4898
5 Comments
The dirty edge on the first picture is due to my lack of serving skills.
1 no. 2 plate way too big. 3 yes. 4 fuck yea!
So, uh, how do we audition to be your friend?
So – first, this is a beautiful at-home meal and you clearly have an eye for plating. Your friends are lucky.
Now, here’s criticism, as constructive as I, a complete a**hole, can be.
1. The dish is lovely but over-produced. It’s like you don’t trust yourself. Get rid of frippery like sprouts and microgreens. You’re better than that. Now, flavor-wise, and texture-wise, this feels like it’s going to edge on the overly-sour bit and be somewhat unbalanced. You’ve got A lot of liquid, a lot of mayo, which is rich and mouth coating. I think the kohrabi is what you sliced to make those triangular pockets and that’s probably filled with a puree as well. Overall, you have a lot of textures but the firm kohlrabi and the mushy peas, thick mayo, and liquid vin are going to come across as a bit jarring. This dish would be wonderful with significant simplification.
2. Another nice dish that doesn’t need to be shat on with sprouts. Look, chanterelles are notoriously great with herbs like thyme, rosemary, parsley. Use a bit of that for a functional pop of color. Your mushrooms don’t look like they developed no caramelization. Otherwise, this looks like a nice dish. Ahem, not sure where the porcini are but those things on top? Not porcini, btw. I’d also lose the buerre blanc, you have a lot of richness already, but that’s a personal style point of view. I’d make a porcini broth, or some similar consomme instead of putting a butter emulsion along with pasta and cheese. Still, in small quantities, that kind of richness can be nice.
3. A very pretty dish, and here you are still shitting sprouts and microgreens on everything. In this one particular case, micro cilantro or micro basil is quite excusable. Otherwise, I feel like this at least looks like a successful dish – modulo the fact that I never put whole tomatoes in a dish because the textural pop of eating them can be unpleasant for some people. I also don’t get point of pickling something that you’re already putting in what should be a sour broth. You want to build up some contrast here. Why not just leave the tomatoes fresh, cut them in half, marinate them in your basil oil with a bit of salt for a few hours and lean into their sweetness as a way to balance the broth.
4. Cheese plate. Who doesn’t love a fucking cheese plate? That said, I’m passionate about pastry and I think that at the end of a meal like this I’d want a proper dessert but this is a nice way to substitute money for time ;).
Cheers!
Can you talk through your process for 1 and 3? Looks really delicious!! I’m curious about the base around the peas and the pockets, and then what you mean by kimchi gazpacho and if you steeped or did something else! Thanks for sharing!