Mason Dixon Master Chef Tournament
Next week begins the Mason Dixon Master Chef Competition. Starting on Monday, May 10th and going on until Monday, September 23rd. In the competition will be 32 Executive Chefs in the Baltimore area, and their sous chefs. Competition will be held on most Mondays and Tuesdays between this time at the Belvedere.
This week will have a menu of Spring Salad (poached pair, red and green oak lettuce, assorted berries, red peppers, pinenut dust and raspberry vinaigrette), sorbet, choice of chicken, beef, or vegetarian, and dessert of mini creme brule, chocolate truffle, and fruit dessert soup. The chicken dish is chicken Neptune (chicken with scallops, shrimp, jumbo lump crabmeat, and sherry cream sauce. The beef dish will be beef filet with blueberry merlot demi glace. And the vegetable dish will include grilled portabella mushroom with ratatouille and three cheese fondue.
Proceeds from this event will go to support Moveable Feast, a nonprofit organization that brings food to the houses of people in Baltimore area that are home bound with HIV/Aids and Breast Cancer.
Tickets to the event are $55 for a four course meal, and $75 to be added as a mystery judge.
I want to give a shout out to two of the chefs in the competition who I've worked side by side with in the kitchen, Chef Matt Merkel of The Reserve and Chef Chad Novak of Don't Know Tavern. Good luck to both of you (OK honestly though I hope Chef Merkel wins.)
7:29 AM | Labels: baltimore, Mason Dixon master Chef tournament, moveable feast, the belvedere, the reserve | 0 Comments
Macarons or Macaroons
Pictured To Left Macarons from Bouchon Bakery, New York City.
Needless to say that this bakery didn't have them, but I remembered a facebook post a while back that mentioned that a bakery in Baltimore sells the french style macarons. Patisserie Poupon at the corner or President and Baltimore Streets, is the only place in Baltimore that I know of currently making the French style of macarons.
When I got there they had five flavors available; lemon, raspberry, chocolate, pistachio, and hazelnut. I bought 2 pounds of mixed macarons at $16 a pound, with about 38-40 cookies per pound. Not to bad of a price in my opinion since the almond flour used to make them costs 10 a pound at the grocery store.
I first tried the chocolate macaron, outer shell nice and airy, breaks apart easily in your mouth and still a little moist in the center, but it was filled with chocolate ganache. While I must admit I do enjoy chocolate ganache, I don't think it works very well with macarons. It's just to heavy of a filling for such a light cookie. When I made macarons I filled them with a butter cream filling, and I think that a chocolate butter cream filling my work a little better.
Then I tried the raspberry macarons stuffed with a raspberry jelly, much better then the ganache filled macarons. Then I tried the lemon macarons, that's the flavor I wanted, the light fluffy cookies with a light lemon cream in between them, DELICIOUS. After that I tried the hazelnut macaron and that one was even better in my opinion.
While many bakeries will have Macaroons on their menu, make sure you a specific in describing the kind you want. The french style of macaron is two very light airy cookies that are sandwiched together usually with a cream filling, and the more commonly found macaroon is made with coconut and then dipped in chocolate.
7:32 AM | Labels: baltimore, food review, macarons, macaroons, patisserie poupon, volt restaurant, voltaggio | 0 Comments
Flights of Food
While in Chicago for the St. Patrick weekend celebrations I noticed many restaurants doing FLIGHTS of food or wine. A flight is three or four tastings of a similar product.
One restaurant, oENOlogy, offered wine, cheese, and chocolate flights. Unfortunately, we passed by this restaurant since it was going to be open until 11PM and didn't feel like going after dinner from a day full of seeing everything we could in Chicago. The menu was consisted entirely of flights. You could order wines, cheeses, and chocolate in flights. Each wine flight consisted of three wines themed around an idea such as location, style, pairing similarities, etc., a fancy name was chosen on the concept of the flight. Cheese and chocolates were served in the same way. By doing this you could learn how the flavors of the wine change with different cheeses and chocolates.
Before we left we went to a brunch restaurant called Orange, one of their specialties is the pancake flight which changes every week. Ordering this you get four stacks of three silver dollar pancakes, each with different toppings. This week included pancakes with lucky charms and cream, Guinness yogurt with cantaloupe, bacon and orange marmalade, and Irish cream pancakes. While not all of these pancakes tasted as great as other options available, I enjoyed the concept.
As a chef you must constantly create 4 unique recipes based on one common recipe, but the possibilities are endless for a restaurant that wants to try this. I believe this would be a great way to promote holiday and seasonal foods on a menu, and provides the stability and change of a menu that customers love. Still haven't seen this in Baltimore yet, if you do, please send me a message about who is doing this style of dining on their menu.