elements, the blog.

click here to see full post

John Boot and a Giant Octopus!

We love the opportunity to really turn up the volume creatively here at elements.  Read about what we did for a group of some of our most adventurous diners on their most recent chef’s tasting menu experience.

read about their experience 

MCTV, the local television channel  from Mercer County Community College, was nice enough to have us on their cooking show, “Dish It Out” around the end of 2011. Actually, they had us on not just once, but twice. We’re not sure when they aired, but the students at MCTV are nice enough  to put all the episodes of their show on YouTube so everyone can catch the episodes with their favorite local chefs. Now we’re passing it onto you.

First here is me, the butcher and baker, showing the hosts how we make the burger that won the local Burgermania burger competition. Or should I say, how we made, since we’ve already got a few new tricks up our sleeves for this year’s competition. Gotta keep the people on their toes.

And here are Scott (chef) and Mike Mike (sous chef) preparing hamachi tartare, steak tartare, and finally a cooked dish of pork with “curds and whey”.

We all had a good time, and are grateful to Dish It Out for having us on their show. Maybe we’ll see them again soon!

What follows is the medium fatty belly, and the fatty belly of a tasmanian ocean trout. The scrape will be used for croquettes. The medium fatty belly is to be grilled and served quite rare, leaving the fatty belly to be served as sashimi. These will be garnished with citrus, fennel, and vanilla dashi, and will be part of the Foodie Friday menu tonight!

In addition to serving the one side tonight for Foodie Friday, this loin was rolled up (below) and cured as with salmon. We will then hang it in the walk-in to age it for a few weeks.

This belly piece is brining in soy sauce, smoked salt and brown sugar. It will brine for 6 hours then be cold smoked for another 3 hours. This too will age in the walk-in.

Nicely marbled!!

Delivery

This is our first Kindai tuna delivery in almost a year for us. We got this belly portion, which ended up weighing 21.3 lbs, from Sona seafood.

Scott’s Zakuri Yanagi that he uses exclusively for tuna. Jon at Japanese Knife Imports was kind enough to have the guys at Zakuri make him this bohemoth!

Breakdown

Beautiful cross section!!

The o-toro and chu toro sections.

Another cross section towards the tail piece.

Here is the belly portion cleaned up and without the loin. The tuna tastes a lot less “fishy” than it has in the past. All of the scrape goes to tartare and most of the other sections will get used either for sashimi preparations or tataki.

[See our previous posts concerning Kindai tuna]

Scott working out a new fish dish with Jon

Here’s a peek at some of the inner workings of the kitchen from the early morning.

This hog came in today from our own Laura del Campo(she’s currently on the fish station). At some 230lbs, it’s probably the largest pig we’ve ever received in one piece. I’ve already claimed one hind leg for ham!

If you’ve noticed that the ears are already missing, it’s because Ben on garde manger already stole them for one of his projects. Even at this size, this thing won’t last very long.