ALL ABOUT APPLES

A tasting menu from Scott Carsberg of Lampreia

a tastingmenu creation

TABLE OF CONTENTS
SCOTT CARSBERG & LAMPREIA

By Hillel Cooperman
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INTRODUCTION

By Scott Carsberg
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ALL ABOUT APPLES

Dungeness Crab wrapped in Red Delicious Apples

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Buckeye Apple lled with Foie Gras served with Preserve Fig Vincotto as a condiment
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Red Cabbage Velout with Apple Gele

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First published in 2004 by tastingmenu.publishing Seattle, WA www.tastingmenu.com/publishing Copyright 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior consent of the publisher. Photographs tastingmenu and Peyman Oreizy All About Apples by Scott Carsberg, Hillel Cooperman, photographs by Peyman Oreizy The typeface family used throughout is Perpetua, designed by Eric Gill in 1929-30.

Cooked & Raw Zumi Apple with Red Prawn & Virgin Olive Oil Dressing
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Pork prepared two ways with Apple Cider Sauce & Tyrolean Apple Dumplings
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Gorgonzola dOro with Shaved Apples & Trufe Honey

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Apple Soup with Cinnamon Cream

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Bolzano Apple Cake

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THE MAKING OF ALL ABOUT APPLES

By Hillel Cooperman
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SCOTT CARSBERG & LAMPREIA

Ive been eating with friends at Lampreia

(as in lamprey eels), a small, special restaurant in Seattles Belltown area, for over two years. The first year was spent exploring the menu. The second year was spent abandoning it. And these last few months were spent having Chef Scott Carsberg show us how he makes us so happy. But Im getting ahead of myself. Lets start at the beginning. Scott Carsberg was born March 4, 1963 at Stanford University hospital in Menlo Park, CA. He has one elder and two younger sisters. His father was a cryptologist and then worked for a chemical company. Mom raised the children. The family is a mix of first- and second-generation Portuguese and Swedish immigrants. Scott still feels connected to his Portuguese heritage. The family moved to Seattle when he was two. What was his first memory of cooking? Carsberg used to take his sisters Easy-Bake-Oven and bake cakes with his own ingredients. But he could never get the chocolate to melt. So he would put the chocolate on the baseboard heater in little plastic containers to melt it. Mom did all the cooking at home. Simple. Hearty. Chicken, meat, fish, stews. Goulash. There were twelve things that she did well. There were four kids so everything needed to scale. She made cakes and cookies. She was working full-time so it was hard. She worked as a waitress at a restaurant frequented by longshoremenNiftys under the West Seattle bridge. Only once in a while did his family go out to dinner, and that was to the Jolly Roger, a popular dance hall and restaurant with a checkered history. Scotts first job was at the age of 14 as a busboy at the Royal Fork Cafe in Seattle. The chef was in the union. He was Swiss, and his job was buffets. He had big barons of beef and ham. For $4.50, youd load up. Scott enjoyed being a busboy. It was a good job, and it kept him busy. He did dishes for a while. He liked to cook, and he knew he liked to spend time in the kitchen. He also liked the girls who were at the Royal Fork. But although his manager tried to get him excited about staying on, Scott already knew that type of food wasnt for him. When Scott was 14 turning 15, his mom, dressed in her bathrobe, sat him down at the kitchen table and said, You know, Scott, youre a handsome kid. But youre not going to get far with that. You need to find something, and you need to find it right away, because no one is going to give you anything and Im sure as hell not. I dont have anything to give you. So youve got to find something that you enjoy because youre going to be doing it for the next 50 years of your life. Then she lit up a Benson & HedgesTM and said get ready for school and that was the end of it.
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His mom had already figured him out. She was busy raising three girls, and didnt have time for subtlety. She knew what Scott needed to hear. High school was spent in various jobs. At the age of 16, Scott worked as a prep cook at Alki Beach at The Restaurant. Making blueberry cobbler, preparing salads, cleaning the walk-in. Scott already knew he was going to do this kind of work for the rest of his life. He spent the summer of 10th grade on a fishing boat in Alaska. His grandfather told him that this was how he would be spending his summer, and Scott went. He pulled leads and corks on a purse seiner, a commonly used fishing boat, all summer. One of Scotts responsibilities was cooking for the crew of five on the boat. Simple stuff. One time Scott tried walrus. Fishy. Very fishy. Scott returned to Seattle with experience and cash. Living at home, working and going to high school, made sense at the time. But Scotts mother knew it was time for him to move out. Scott wanted his freedom, and his family needed the space. And, as always, Scotts mother pulled no punches. She knew he had goals, and that the sooner he was out on his own the better he would be able to achieve them. Scotts high school started a real-world internship program for students. His was at the Four Seasons hotel in Seattle. He was now making money, living on his own, and finishing up high school all at the same time.

down and work. And if the floor is clean, everything else looks clean. Scott went straight to the sauce station, working under a chef named Frank Champley. He made all the classic French sauces: morel, Bordelaise, vin blanc, beurre blanc, vin rouge, brown sauce, veal glac, chicken stock, fish stock. Very well-executed French-style sauces. He was from the old French school of apprenticeship, so Scott spent two years learning everything end-to-end. At the age of 17, Scott was taking an immersive class with the experts at a five-star French restaurant. By now Scott knew exactly what he wanted to be. He knew he would eventually be a great cook with his own restaurant. He had Michel Gerard and Roger Verges cookbooks. He would look through them and fantasize about cooking that way. Eventually he realized that the best food wasnt actually that complicated, but it could be made complicated. And to become as good as the chefs in the cookbooks, he would have to be around them. By this point, Scott was eating everything he could. He was tasting everything. Though he didnt eat the fancy food they were cooking at the Four Seasons, he wasnt coming without any context to the food. After all, his mother had sometimes cooked beyond the basics, cooking with wine for example. After two years, Scott was flipping through a food magazine called Cuisine and saw a picture of Yannick Cam. When Champley (Scotts boss) first came to America he worked with Yannick Cam in Washington, DC at Cams restaurant, Le Pavillon. Scott calledYannick, mentioned Champleys name, and asked for a job.

from far left to right: Four Seasons staff; Academy of Culinary Arts; Scott at Le Pavillon

For 40 hours a week, Scott worked at the Four Seasons. He also had classes to take as part of his apprenticeship. He would spend three months doing dishes, then in-room service, banquets, etc. He rotated around the hotel, learning every aspect of the operation. Scott polished silver, did laundry, and of course, he cooked. He still didnt know exactly what type of food career he was going to have, but he knew that he needed stimulation. Work at the hotel gave him that. The kitchen was run by an old-time Swiss chef named Goldinger who had worked with Escoffiers disciples in the 30s or 40s. From him Scott learned To keep my mouth shut. Keep my head
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When Cam saw his resume, he offered Scott a job, and Scott pissed off Champley by not going through him. But Scott was 18 now, and knew hed learned everything he could at the Four Seasons. The next day he was on a plane to DC to work at Le Pavillon. Scott was so excited, and Cam couldnt believe how young he was. Scott did garde mange, cold station, fish station, meats, pastry, desserts.The only thing he didnt do there were sauces. Instead he went from station to station, cooking Cams cuisine, as a second cook and later as first cook.
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He was one of twelve people in the kitchen serving lunch and dinner to a dining room with 85 seats. Cam worked on the line every night instead of just calling out orders to the kitchen. Just like Scott today. Scott not only grew as a cook at Le Pavillon, but also learned how to stand up for himself. Three separate fights arose in that kitchen, with Scott emerging as the victor from each. He didnt have to fight anymore after that, and earned new respect from Cam. After two years at Le Pavillon, Scott decided it was again time to move. Gnter Seeger, a German chef with one Michelin star, came to Washington, DC and opened a restaurant at the Regent Hotel. At this time German chefs were starting to get recognized by Michelin. Scott felt that every one of the up-and-coming German chefs were good. Seeger was fired (employment in this industry is very fluid). He would use Cams kitchen to teach cooking classes to make money on the side. Seeger told Scott that he was looking for a young guy to help him open up a restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta. But Scott already had an interview with the famous Italian chef Andrea Helriegel at Il Palio in New York. Everyone knew about Helreigel, and just seeing pictures of the food in a magazine was enough for Scott to know thats where he was headed. He knew that kind of food was his calling. But Seeger called Helriegel and asked his permission to take Scott to Atlanta for a year. The deal was done. Scott traveled to New York for his interview only to have Helriegel tell him that he was going to work for Seeger in Atlanta for a year and then would come back to work for Helriegel. Scott was furious, but essentially had no choice. Now Scott admits that working for Seeger was one of the best things he ever did. Just like Scotts mom, Helriegel knew what Scott needed better than Scott did. He knew he would benefit in the long run, when Scott eventually went to work for him. Scott spent the next few months making that

restaurant great. As sous chef, he helped Seeger create the dishes, cook the food, and did everything else that was needed. According to Scott, the food was Northern Italian, clean, kind of German mix, well done, beautiful, very nice. Scott spent about a year there, until he was asked to leave after an argument with the pastry chef. Seeger was desperate to keep him, but was overruled by the management of the hotel. It was about time for Scott to head back to Helriegel anyway. And when Scott got to New York, Helriegel surprised him again. He needed Scott, but not in New York. He sent him to work at the Villa Mozart, in Meran in Northern Italy in the AltoAdige region near Tyrol. At this point Scott was all of 21 years old and headed to Italy. The Villa Mozart was a beautifully-designed 10-room hotel and restaurant. By his second season, Scott was running the kitchen in tandem with another chef, Raymond Foutcher. Helriegel showed up twice a year to write the menus and check on their work. In the spring, the hotel would fill up with German guests. As summer came to the region, Americans and Japanese would come to stay. The food included the Bolzano apple cake featured in this cookbook, beautiful risottos and handmade pastas, Tyrolean specialties, several liver dishes, and more. This was similar to the food Scott was making for Seeger in Atlanta. But in Italy, there was even more olive oil. And Helriegels food had even more depth. It was warm, rich, and flavorful. Not austere. It had love. That was how Scott wanted his own food to taste. After Villa Mozart, Scott worked outside of Milan, and spent his spare time eating his way around the best restaurants in Italy. With every meal, he would ask himself whether he could match their food, whether he could do better. He knew the answer was yes. He also knew that he had to open up his own restaurant and work for himself. And despite his seven-year absence from Seattle, he knew that Seattle, his home, was where he wanted to be. After brief stints working at Seattles Settebello and Mezza Luna (where he met his wife, Hyun Joo Paek), thats exactly what he did.

Above: Scott as an apprentice at the Four Seasons.

Its impossible to know the exact number,

but its safe to say that a very small percentage of the people in Seattle understand what chef Scott Carsberg is all about. And thats ok with him. Scott and Hyun Joo opened Lampreia to the public on April 15, 1992. For twelve years it has sat at the corner of 1st Avenue and Battery in Seattles Belltown neighborhood. Through those twelve years Scott and Hyun Joo persevered. They invested their entire life savings into a lease. They charged up their credit cards to keep Lampreia afloat. For five years they never took a paycheck. Little by little, Lampreia developed a quiet reputation. And little by little, Belltown became a haven for interesting Seattle restaurants with Lampreia as their beacon.

Andrea Helriegel

But Lampreia is still not one of the growing class of famous restaurants across the United States. Some of those restaurants deserve to be well known, creating high-end food experiences for connoisseurs. Today these restaurants are created almost overnight, not over eleven or twelve years. But they can cost as much as ten or eleven million dollars to build and get started. They

have big money behind them: Millions of dollars, big-time investors, and a name chef overseeing the menu, though likely not the kitchen. Lampreia has small money behind it. Ok, no money. Scott not only oversees the menu, but the kitchen, the dining room, and every detail of the Lampreia experience. He often looks up from the food hes preparing and sternly scans the restaurant through the large window looking into the kitchen from the dining room. That window frames Scotts view of the environment, the guests, the food in action. Lampreias food is refined. So is the atmosphere. The room is peaceful, and the waiters move quietly, with purpose. Jazz guitar plays softly on the sound system.The walls are salmon or mauve or orange. Its not too dark but the light is such that its hard to tell. Familiar but modern furniture dots the restaurant, and simple crisp linens, silverware, and cutlery adorn the tables. The decorations in the space have some Asian influences. Its as if you took a comfortable Seattle corner and decorated it in a slightly minimalist fashion with furniture from the 1920s. But the look is modern and simple. A well-stocked but typically vacant bar occupies one wall in the L shaped dining space. The bar is typically only attended when a waiter goes to pour a guest a drink or later when Scott sits down for a glass of wine after the evenings service has wound down. The tables are spaced such that you can have some privacy. But its comfortable. Sometimes too comfortable. One night were eating at Lampreia. Two people come and sit at the bar right near our table of ten. They dont want to take a table because they just want a drink. Scott comes by and offers them a table anyway as the party next to the bar (us) will be noisy. Hes right. We love to eat. And were noisy. Definitely. And its ok. Weve eaten there with our three-month-old. People dress up. People dress down. Its Seattle after all. And then of course theres the food. Most people who eat at Lampreia think its French. Surprisingly, its Italian food. Northern Italian food. Not the Northern Italian food youre expecting, but from a region at the very north called Trentino Alto-Adige that shares a border with Austria and Switzerland. Its mountain territory.The Alps to be specific. And while Scott isnt slavishly locked within the regions borders, these are the ingredients and flavors that speak to him. His culinary tendrils stretch north into Germany and south into more familiar Italian territory on occasion. The blending of regions and impossibility of pinpointing the cuisine tends to make people uncomfortable. Why is that? The tendency of most people to commoditize culinary culture and reduce it to some iconic representation of what is actually a diverse cuisine is alive and well. Italian food is spaghetti with meatballs, and veal marsala, and cannoli. But in reality, Italy is a large country with a broad set of foods, from the rough and rustic to the deeply delicate and refined. But at least in the United States, people equate refined with French food only.

And the truth is that it doesnt matter whether anybody knows that the food at Lampreia is Italian. All they really need to know is that its an experience they wont soon forget. The food laid out on the plate before you can be stark in appearance, especially compared to dishes you find at many restaurants today that are either egregiously oversized or adorned with all manner of distraction, or both. Scotts food appears simple and is unbelievably rich in flavor. Clean lines dont mean lack of texture and depth. Scott Carsbergs food has texture and depth, and most importantly, each dish is a focused and distinct creation. Some dishes weve eaten over the last couple of years from the ever-changing menu:

VANILLA BEAN GNOCCHI WITH DUCK PROSCIUTTO AND RICOTTA SALATA; TWO KINDS OF RICOTTA WITH SWEET PEPPER GELATIN AND ZUCCHINI BLOSSOM; CORZETTI PASTA WITH SOFT PECCORINO, BLACK TRUFFLE, FAVA BEANS AND PRESERVED TOMATO; DEEP SEA PRAWN ALLA TAJINE; SCOTTOCCIERE CHEESE CANNELLONI WITH VEAL GLAZE; TUNA BACON WITH SICILIAN TOMATO SAUCE; TRUFFLE SCENTED TAGLIATELLE WITH PRESERVED UMBRIAN TRUFFLES AND FOIE GRAS; FIVE SPICE LACQUERED HEN DUCK BREAST WITH FRUIT MUSTARDS; RASPBERRY CLAFOUTIS; AND SPONGE CAKE WITH APRICOT WHITE CHOCOLATE MOUSSE, WHITE CHOCOLATE SHAVINGS, AND CHOCOLATE SAUCE, to name a few.
Scott is doing something different. And yet not many people know it. How you feel about something is inextricably intertwined with your expectations. Expecting haute cuisine from a street food stand isnt a sure path to happiness, and neither is the reverse. Its not because one food is better than the other, its just because we judge our experiences against our expectations. But theres a catch, expectations are based on experiences. How do you learn anything new if youre always judging things based on what youve already done? And this is the conundrum for Lampreia. Scott Carsberg is doing something unique and special. He has taken an under-represented (or unrepresented) regional cuisine, applied master craftsmanship, seasonal local ingredients, a reductionist and minimalist approach, and a fanatical attention to detail. A lot of restaurants make the same claim, but Lampreia delivers. And most diners have never experienced this kind of food. Until now.

I sometimes wonder if Scott really gets to

enjoy eating food. His entire professional existence is about focusing on creating original and exquisite culinary creations. In eating his own food hes so close to it, hes always judging, evaluating, and refining.When he eats someone elses food, he cant help but look at it in terms of what
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he is trying to accomplish himself. And my guess is that hes often disappointed at not finding the same commitment, passion, and attention to detail in other peoples food that he finds in his own. The vast majority of diners have not only never experienced Scotts kind of food, but their habits are developed to protect themselves from enjoying it to its fullest. People pre-judge food not based on who made it, but based on whats in it. Scott will take an ingredient youve never enjoyed and turn it into something beautiful and amazing. But were not trained to properly account for the chef factor in our dining choices. And so the scariest path that most American diners can take in a meal is ultimately the purest and most enjoyable way to eat dinner at Lampreiablind faith. We used to order from the menu. And once in a long while we might try it again. But over time, we realized that Scott has a vision. A vision for every dish, every moment, every aspect of our dining experience. Why should we constrain his ability to deliver on that vision with our random requests and preferences? How could we possibly know which dish on the menu we prefer if weve never tried it? What most diners see as a show-stopping constraintnot getting to pick what you eatis in fact freedom. Once we decided to let Scott take care of everything, including choosing which dishes we ate, we finally got to enjoy Lampreia at its fullest. Lampreia is nothing less than a personal tour of Northern Italian regional cuisine using Pacific Northwest and Italian ingredients, led by our deeply passionate, knowledgeable, and committed tour guideChef Scott Carsberg. There is no doubt that Scotts vision and skill put him in an elite class of chefs across the planet. And yet, Lampreia is relatively unknown. Seattle is a small city, yet it tries to be relatively cosmopolitan and prides itself on being cutting-edge. But Lampreia is often overlooked as the best restaurant in Seattle by many locals in favor of flashier restaurants with unimpressive culinary depth. Scott just doesnt fit the mold. He doesnt have millions of dollars worth of design and construction going into his space. He doesnt have a staff of ten cooks in the kitchen poring over every detail of every dish. He doesnt spend his time doing the PR rounds. All he does is cook. He doesnt have time or money for anything else. And in this day of celebrity chefs, finding a chef of his caliber that is not only still in the kitchen every night, but is also deeply involved with every dish that goes out of the kitchen, is a situation so rare as to almost be non-existent. But Scott has no choice. There are only a couple of other people helping him in the kitchen even on the busiest nights. Scott has to cook every night. Has to oversee each detail of every dish. The dishes have to be simple, focused, pack all their impact into a few choice ingredients. And its a funny thing, I think Scott is so focused on making a wonderful culinary experience that his intensity is sometimes hard to relate to. Scott is like a sentry overseeing every moment of every diners experience at Lampreia. His stern scrutiny is only used in advocacy of the diners enjoyment. But when he walks the tables, checking in on guests, and making sure everyones happy, hes almost shy and always super polite. I think guests at Lampreia dont always know how to rationalize the two faces they see on Scott. Little do they know that he is not judging them, but judging himself and his staff to ensure that every person in the restaurant has the same emotional connection with their eating experience that Scott does in creating it.

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INTRODUCTION

When I created this menu it was between September and

October in the state of Washington. Apple orchards are everywhere, especially in eastern Washington. There are so many varieties of apples, and they all have different textures and flavors. I wanted to combine them, not so much in a theme menu, but in a way that takes advantage of the season. I just wanted to do something that was true to this area. Apples are one of those products weve always exported. Theyre a commodity. But theres more to apples than apple pie. Dont get me wrong, apple pie is good. But I wanted to do something that would be interesting with different kinds of apples, from the Fuji, to the Honey Crisp, to the Granny Smith, which is a classic baking apple. A lot of these apples can handle cooking, but are also great raw. Some are sweeter. Some are juicier. It took me some time to figure out which ones would be better for which dish without overwhelming it. I think a lot of American chefs have trouble not overdoing an ingredient that is the star of their dish. The ingredient ends up getting screwed up. The apple has to be with something. Like the apple with foie gras dish.You need something sweet and a little bit acidic to cut the fat. But you dont just put that on the plate. There are pomegranates that go well with it.You need a little vincotto.You need the fig to soften that apple up. Otherwise its like a marathon and your mouth just gets tired. Your palate is just like anything, it gets old and it gets tired. So you taste on your tongue different parts of the dish. Salty. Sweet. It goes to your brain and it tells you ah, this is great. Fat is one of those things. Fat and sweetness are things your brain likes. I like all the dishes in this book. I like the pork. I like the jus, that nice, rich, brown sauce. I like the dumplings on the pork because they kind of soak up the sauce. I like that. The prawn is good. I mean... its a prawn. Its good. The simplest dish of all is the apple cake. Slice the apples. Mix the batter. Put it in a pan and bake it. Thats one of my favorite ones. Its one of the simplest, but its one of the best. Some of the other dishes are a little more complicated to put together. But thats my style of food. Not complicated, simple in its presentation, but it requires a little work.You have to really want to do it. It takes work to keep things natural and simple. After people eat dishes from this menu I want them to feel relaxed, satisfied, comfortable, not overly fulljust right.
Chef Scott Carsberg Lampreia, Seattle, Washington

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Dungeness Crab wrapped in Red Delicious Apples

When you serve a meal with eight courses, first impressions count. When youre done eating the first course, your mind should be racing with the possibilities of what might show up in the next seven dishes. Making a strong impression requires restraint on the part of the chef. Too large a quantity, or flavors that are too strong, could narrow your palate and make the rest of the meal drudgery. Lampreias Dungeness Crab wrapped in Red Delicious Apples strikes the perfect fragile balance. Think crab cannelloni. The flavor of the crab filling is soft and detailed and almost sweet. And in that context the paper-thin apple wrapper is almost salty. But after a moment the apple is slightly sour and a different kind of sweet than the crab. The apple wrapper is super thin and wrapped tight tight tight. The crab meat has flaked into small pieces and it ends up as a creamy center with the homemade mayo. It would be wrong to call the large pieces of crab on the side garnishes. Theyre too generous for that. The slight amount of extra virgin olive oil drizzled across the dish gives a warm base flavor for all the other ingredients. The olive oil and the apple literally and figuratively wrap the crab in flavor. Tasting these subtle flavors is like going to the country and seeing stars you couldnt see in the city with all the city streetlights competing for your eyes attention.Your mouth and your imagination are now attentive and alert. Your palate is clear and ready for whats next.

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DUNGENESS CRAB WRAPPED IN RED DELICIOUS APPLES

SHOPPING & SPECIAL EQUIPMENT

2 to 3-pound Live Alaskan Dungeness Crab Red Delicious Apples Sea Salt ChampagneVinegar Canola Oil Japanese Ceramic Slicer

Mayonnaise 3 duck egg yolks pinch of sea salt to taste

1 tablespoon champagne vinegar to taste 4 tablespoons canola oil

Its critical to pour the oil slowly as you aggressively beat the yolks and vinegar so the oil emulsies and wont separate later. The consistency should not be too thick. It should look, taste, and feel light.

Crack the three duck eggs into a bowl. Add the sea salt and the champagne vinegar. Whisk aggressively until the mixture is frothy. Continue determined whisking while slowly adding oil. The oil will emulsify into the mixture, producing mayonnaise.You can add a little less or a little more oil as you see fit, depending on the consistency you desire. For this dish the mayonnaise is kept relatively light.

If youre making this on your own, or dont happen to have three hands, youll need to steady the bowl: Your hands will be busy whisking and pouring oil. Steady the bowl with a towel placed between yourself and its foundation, so that the bowl and its contents dont go flying.

Sometimes at Lampreia horseradish mustard is added to the mayonnaise give it more dimension. But that would too much for this dish as the crab has inherently subtle flavor.

or to be an

making this dish as part of the entire tasting menu, then you can use the remainder of the mayonnaise in the prawn dish. Farm fresh duck eggs are used for the rich color of their yolks. The color of the finished mayonnaise should be a light yellow. Canola oil is used in the recipe because it doesnt have much flavor, thus it doesnt compete with the other ingredients.

This mayonnaise can be made ahead of time. Its even better on day 2 and should keep for up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator. This is a good thing as you will not end up using all the mayonnaise in this dish. If you are

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When you live in Seattle, you have access to some of the best Dungeness crab. Port Townsend, near Seattle, is a great source. When you get them, they should be alive and clean. Lampreia gets much of its seafood from a local Seattle Asian supermarket. It pays to get to know the staff, even when youre buying your ingredients at a supermarket.When you get live crab, its important that they sit in a filtered saltwater tank, and are not resting on top of each other.
Court bouillon
375 ml Pinot Grigio 3 ribs of celery Leaves of heart of celery 2 peeled carrots cut into inch chunks a medium-sized yellow onion 1 tablespoon peppercorns 1 tablespoon oregano 6 bay leaves 1 teaspoon sea salt

Put the crab head rst into the boiling court bouillon.

The white substance at the head of the crab tells you its done.

Submerge the cooked crab in ice water with tongs.

Take the shell off the top of the crab.

The gooey insides should be revealed.

Twist the legs off one at a time and redeposit them into the ice bath.

Fill a pot with just enough water to submerge the crab. Add 375 ml of Pinot Grigio. Add the vegetables, then the herbs, and then the salt. Bring the court bouillon to a boil. Submerge your live crab head first into the boiling bouillon so it doesnt suffer. Make sure the pot is big enough so you can submerge the entire crab. Cover the pot. When the water returns to a boil keep the crab in the boiling water for 10 minutes. After the first few minutes, the crab should be turning red. This is good. When the 10 minutes are up you should see some white sticky stuff bubbled up around the head. Thats blood from the crab, and a sign that its ready. When the crab is done cooking, remove it from the court bouillon and immerse it in an

ice bath to chill. (If you dont have another big pot you can ll the sink with water and ice and stopper it). This stops the crab from continued cooking, cleans off the blood, and lets you handle it with your hands. The crab should spend about 5 minutes in the ice bath, enough to stop it from cooking. Put the crab in one hand with its bottom resting on your palm, and your thumb over where the white substance was. Use your other hand to pull off the upper shellthe headfrom front to back.This should reveal the inside of the crab. It will look kind of messy inside. You can do this entire procedure while the crab is still in the ice water.

Scrape out the meat from each half of the body of the crab.

Mix together crab meat and mayonnaise.

Fry legs ready for plating.

With the shell removed, also remove the gills and the roe (The gills look like slices of onions). Twist each of the legs off and deposit them back in the ice water. Take the body of the crab and cut it in half. You should be able to pick out the meat from each side now. This meat is called shake. It comes apart in little strands. Place the meat in the palm of your hand and then make a fist to squeeze all the water out over the sink. You dont want water in the crab meat. That will dilute the mayonnaise and make it run. You should end up with roughly 6 tablespoons of crab meat (or about a pound).

Take the crab meat and place it in the bowl. Add 2 tablespoons of the mayonnaise. Mix thoroughly. Remove the crab legs one at a time from the ice water. Use the back of a large knife to crack open the crab legs. One whack on each side of the leg should do it. Extract the meat as large morsels to be used on the side of the dish. You should end up with eight large piecestwo per plate. These are called the fry legs. Set these aside until youre ready to plate the dish.

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Red Delicious Apple Wrappers

3 large Red Delicious apples

To Complete

This is a bit of a wasteful dish as the entire apple isnt used. But you can always eat the leftovers as you cook. Rather than go to the farmers market at 5 in the morning, or even browse through the stalls at Pike Place Market, the bulk of the produce at Lampreia comes from one of the better local freshness-conscious supermarkets. As much of the produce as possible served at Lampreia is organic. When choosing apples, they should be firm but not too ripe. Washington state apple season runs from mid-September through early November, depending on the weather. You need to use large apples, as essentially you are going to need super-thin slices with as much surface area as possible. Youll take these from the widest part of the apple. Cut the apple in two with a knife, cutting perpendicular to the core of the apple. At Lampreia a commercial deli slicer is used (shown above) to get the thinnest possible slices of apple for this dish. Most
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non-professional kitchens are not equipped with a deli slicer. Its possible to do it with a Japanese ceramic blade slicer as well, but youll need a slicer that cuts extra thin and has a very wide surface to accommodate the entire circumference of the apple. If the slices arent thin enough, then you may have to poach them in warm lemon water (heated water with lemon juice squeezed into it) for a split-second to prevent oxidation. If you do this just before serving and slice the apple thin enough, it shouldnt be necessary. Scott also prefers to avoid this as he doesnt like lemon flavor on fresh crab. Take one half of the apple and run the cut flat surface along the ceramic blade. Discard the first slice as its been oxidized, and save the next two. Do the same for the other half of the apple. Lay these perfect paper-thin slices onto parchment paper, slightly overlapping. Take another piece of parchment and cover them. Drying the slices by patting them gently between the parchment paper is key so that the crab filling sticks to them. It also makes it easier to move and roll the slices.

Remove the upper layer of parchment paper from the apple slices. Take a tablespoon-and-a-half of crab filling and lay it down the center of the apple slices on one of the axes of the overlap. Form it gently into a little horizontal column of crab thats evenly distributed across the apple wrapper. Slowly but firmly lift up the near edges of the apple slices, pulling them over the crab filling and tucking them in under the crab on the far side as you roll the entire creation. Once youve completed the rolling so that the apple and crab look like a sushi roll, slowly use the parchment to roll it a little more so everything gets nice and tight and sticks together. Lay the crab cannelloni on a plate. Put the meat from two crab legs (one on each side) on the plate, complementing the roll. Drizzle fresh, light, extra virgin olive oil on top of the roll and the crab meat, and a little bit on the plate. Dont drench, just give enough for visual and flavor impact.

22

Buckeye Apple filled with Foie Gras

served with Preserve Fig Vincotto as a condiment
How do you balance the luxury of foie gras with the simplicity of apples? Take a bite. Taste the buttery, creamy foie gras and the sweet crispness of the apple. The vinegar and pomegranate add contrast. Apples stuffed with foie grasluxurious? Actually it comes off as simple, fresh, and down to earth. Its beautiful to look at, the clean edges as if the apple grew on the tree with the foie gras already at its center. This heart of the dish is beautiful and generous. The fig vincotto is sticky, sweet, deep, and rich. Its the foundation flavor for the dish.

23

BUCKEYE APPLE FILLED WITH FOIE GRAS SERVED WITH PRESERVE FIG VINCOTTO AS A CONDIMENT

SHOPPING & SPECIAL EQUIPMENT

2 Buckeye Apples Foie Gras 2 Pints of Fresh Mission Figs 16-ounce bottle of 5-year-old BalsamicVinegar Five Spice Powder 1 Fresh Bay Leaf 1 Pomegranate 1 Lemon Tamis

Preserve Fig Vincotto

2 pints of fresh gs 16-ounce bottle of 5-year old BalsamicVinegar

Set 4 fresh gs aside for later use in the dish

Foie Gras Pate

1 lobe foie gras 1 tablespoon sea salt

1 tablespoon ve spice powder 1 tablespoon sea salt 1 fresh bay leaf

Cut the figs (minus the 4 youve set aside) in half. Crush them with your hands in a bowl. Do not use a knife or other utensil to crush them. After they are sufficiently crushed, pour the entire bottle of balsamic over them. Let the entire mixture marinate overnight in the refrigerator. The next day, put the entire a pot. Bring the mixture to then simmer until the liquid This should require about 30 simmering. mixture in a boil and is viscous. minutes of

no leavings. Store in the refrigerator until needed. The vincotto will last in the fridge essentially indefinitely.

At Lampreia, Sonoma foie gras is used. When foie gras is butchered it is graded based on size, firmness, and lack of veininess. The firmer the better. You will not use the entire foie gras in this recipe, and this is an ingredient that you wont want to waste.
Warning: You must poach the foie gras a day in advance of serving this dish.

foie gras. When all the spice has been rubbed in, leave the foie gras to sit on a plate on the counter at room temperature for 20 minutes. While it sits, fill a pot with filtered tap water, an additional tablespoon of sea salt, and one fresh bay leaf. Bring the pot to a boil. When the 20 minutes are up and the water is boiling, submerge the entire foie gras in the boiling water. Leave the pot on the stove until it is brought back to a simmer. At the simmer point, pull it off the heat immediately. Set the timer for 28 minutes.

When simmering is complete, strain the mixture through a fine sieve so there are
25

Remove the foie gras from the package and rinse it in cold water. Pat it dry with a paper towel. Mix together a tablespoon of sea salt and a tablespoon of five spice powder in a small bowl. Put some of the mixture on your fingers and rub it into the outside of the

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Foie Gras Pate continued Note: when you cook the foie gras it bleeds a bunch (its pretty gross).You do want the foie gras to cook but not to shrink too much.You also want all the other aspects of the foie gras to leave it (blood, etc.). After 28 minutes, gently remove the foie gras from the hot water. Set it on some paper towels and let it sweat for roughly 30 minutes. During this 30 minute period, you should be constantly and gently changing paper towels to absorb what the foie secretes. When the 30 minutes are up, place the foie gras in the refrigerator for 10 minutes. If you decide to leave the foie gras in the fridge overnight, you should take it out and let it sit a bit before proceeding with the recipe. Basically you want it to be firm, which means it needs to be colder than room temperature, but not as cold as your average fridge.

When the foie gras has achieved the right temperature, slice the lobe into half-inch thick slices. Using a plastic spatula (or in our case a homemade stiff piece of plastic cut from a large plastic container), push the chunks of foie gras through the tamis and into a stainless steel bowl. You need to be very temperature-sensitive during this entire operation so the foie gras doesnt get too runny and turn into a paste. When youre done pushing the foie gras through the tamis take the stainless steel bowl, cover it in plastic, and immediately put it in the fridge. This is another point at which you could put everything in the fridge overnight and continue the recipe the next day. You can also stuff everything into the apples, and then put them in the fridge overnight.

Buckeye Apple
2 Buckeye apples

1 Lemon

Using a stiff piece of plastic, force the slices through the tamis.The foie gras will stick to the underside of the screen.

Apples stuffed with foie grasluxurious? Actually it comes off as simple, fresh, and down to earth.

There are a few reasons to use Buckeye apples in this recipe. The Buckeye has a bit heartier flavor than other apples and will stand up well next to the foie gras. Additionally, because the foie gras is so rich, using a bigger apple would result in too much foie gras. Boil a pot of water. (You will use this later to blanch the apple halves.) Use enough water to cover the apples cut into halves. Split each of the buckeye apples in two. Using a round cookie cutter, mark the exposed surface of half of the apple to make the outline

for the cut. Place the circle indentation in the center of the face of the apple cross-section. With a parisienne scoop (or melon baller) remove half a golf balls worth of apple meat, following the guideline made by the cookie cutter. This is where the foie gras will go. Do your scooping gently. You also dont want to take out too much or the apple will crack. You dont want to take out to little or you will not have enough foie gras relative to the apple. If the apple does crack a little, dont worry. The foie gras filling will glue it back together.
28

27

Buckeye Apple continued

Buckeye apples are chosen for their size & flavor.

Cut a lemon in half. Squeeze the juice from one half all over the exposed surface of the apples. Drop the apples into the water upside down. then squeeze the other half of the lemon into the boiling water. Leave the apples in the boiling water for 2 minutes. Dont delay between cutting the apples and blanching them, otherwise they will oxidize. Remove the apples from the boiling water. Put the apples face down on paper towels so they drain and cool.You never want to place the foie gras into warm apple halves. For this recipe, heat plus foie gras is not good.

Slice the apple in half.

But also, never put apples in an ice bath to cool them. This will cause them to lose their flavor. When done right, the apple halves should have a warm lemony smell. Once the apples have cooled, spackle the foie gras into the empty sockets in each apple half.Wrap each of the halves with filling individually in tight plastic wrap and place them in the refrigerator. They will be good there for 3 days.

Score a circle into the center of the apple with a cylinder.

Use a melon baller to remove the apple from within the score.

...clean edges as if the apple grew on the tree with the foie gras already at its center.

Youll need a rm grip and a sure hand so as not to break the apple.

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Figs

4 fresh Mission gs

Stem and halve 4 figs. 2 halves will go on each plate.

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33

Red Cabbage Velout with Apple Gele

Its a touch cold outside and the aroma of this concoction starts to fill your body with warmth. Thicker than a soup and smoother and lighter than a puree, its a velout. A cabbage velout. This soup is Autumn. Fireplace, leaves turning red, color. The apple gele perched in the middle melted instantly, its unseen pyramid base of flavor softening under the surface of the velout. The cabbage is smoky and hearty but smooth smooth smooth. The gele that hasnt yet melted ends up becoming tiny pockets of sweet and sour in your mouth. The chestnut puree is candy in the middle. Now my mouth is round. The chestnut puree gets on my spoon in dabs. I try to ration it so that it lasts evenly throughout the dish.

36

RED CABBAGE VELOUT WITH APPLE GELE

SHOPPING & SPECIAL EQUIPMENT

2 Purple Cabbages 1 Medium-Sized SweetWallaWalla Onion 3 Granny Smith Apples Olive Oil Sea Salt Guanciale Knudsen Sparkling Apple Cider EvianWater Gelatin Sheets Organic Cooked & Peeled Chestnuts Sugar Staub Pot Juicer

Velout

The guanciale is beautifully layered with meat and fat. Cut three thick slices. Chop the slices into rough chunks.
cup Knudsen Apple Cider sea salt Evian 1 tablespoon champagne vinegar to taste 4 tablespoons canola oil

1 tablespoon olive oil 7 ounces guanciale 2 purple cabbages 1 medium-sized sweetWallaWalla onion 3 Granny Smith apples

You can make this velout a day in advance. Reheat before serving. Make sure to check if it needs additonal seasoning. Often the velout can be even better on day 2 or 3 as the ingredients have had more time to integrate. Guanciale is taken from the pigs cheeks rather than from its belly. The meat of the cheeks is leaner than other typical cuts of pork but it has a deeper flavor. The meat is smoked and seasoned much the same as bacon. It may take a little extra effort to use guanciale, but its worth it for the
37

richer flavors that end up in your dish. Put 1 tablespoon of olive oil into a wellseasoned heavy cast iron skillet with a lid.
The Japanese ceramic slicer delivers super-thin slices.

Slice pork cheeks into third of an inch wide slices lengthwise. Add pork cheek pieces to the skillet on high heat. Using a wooden spoon (never use a metal utensil in cast ironit could scrape the bottom and remove metal from the pot that could get into the food) mix the guanciale for about 2 minutes until it starts to soften and the
The guanciale has started to curl.

The guanciale sauting in the pan will give off a delicious aroma.

Steam from the sauting onions.

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Velout continued fat starts to come out. Dont cook until the pork turns crispy. If it gets crispy, youve cooked it too much. You just want it softened. Dont add salt yet because pork cheek has salt already. Slice the medium sweet onion on the ceramic slicer. (Dont use other sweet onions like Maui.) You need it so thin that it melts together with the guanciale. Add the onions to the guanciale in the pan. When the onions start to get light brown and golden (roughly 10 minutes), add 1/3 of a cup of cider. The temperature stays on high the entire time. At this point the cider is starting to work its way into the pork and the onions. Take three Granny Smith apples. Core and quarter each apple. Slice quarters into rough inch thick slices. Leave the skin on the apples. Once the cider is reduced (roughly two minutes), it will infuse into the onions. Once you reach that point (you can tell because there will be no liquid left in the pan), add the apple slices. Quarter two purple cabbages with a cleaver. Remove the core of the cabbage from each quarter with one swing of the cleaver.Slice the cabbage into half-inch thick slices. If its too thin, it wont have time to cook because theres a lot of water in the cabbage. Pinch 1 tablespoons of salt between your fingers into the cabbage. Mix with your hands to distribute the salt. The cabbage will start to sweat as the salt will bring out the moisture. Its almost like a sauerkraut. This is important as once you put the cabbage into the pot it will really stew, as its already been sweating. Additionally, the cabbage can now get more integrated with the rest of the ingredients. At this point (roughly 10 minutes), the apples should be softened. Remember to mix the apple onion guanciale mixture often. Once the apples are soft, add the
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Adding cider to the pot.

The rst round of breaking up the ingredients is done with the stick blender.

cabbage to the pan on the heat. Since its been sweating, you still dont need to add liquid at this point. All the liquid from the cabbage is going to help make the entire mixture soft. Super thorough mixing is now required, bringing the ingredients from the bottom up to the top of the mixture. Aggressively mix with a wooden spoon for at least 3 minutes. Place the lid on the pan and turn the heat to medium. Let it cook for about 15 minutes. Take the lid off every 5 minutes to check on it, mix, and make sure it doesnt stick and gets evenly cooked. Keep up this process until everything is very soft and fully cooked.

Rough chop of the quartered apples.

The consistency after hand mixing looks like this.

At this point add just enough cold Evian to barely cover the mixture. The amount of water varies depending on the size of the pot. Replace the lid and bring to a boil. Remove from heat. Pour the mixture into a large bowl. Use a stick blender to break up the chunks. The smell coming off of the mix should be rich, cabbage, warm, apple sweetness. Use the stick blender for roughly five minutes.

Mix thoroughly.

Ladle the soup into the blender. Do it in multiple passes if need be. Dont overll.

Rough chop of the cabbage quarters.

Pour the blended mixture through the sieve.

Once the big chunks are broken up, ladle the mixture into the blender. Youll need to do this a bit at a time so that you dont overfill the blender. The hot contents could blow the lid off, so be careful. Blend on the highest setting for 2-3 minutes. The consistency will get much smoother. Dont worry about over-blending. It cant be over blended. The thickness of the velout comes from the combination of the ingredients, not the amount of blending.Velout is thinner than a puree, thicker than a soup. Put the blended mixture into a fine mesh sieve over a bowl. Use a ladle to force the velout through the mesh. Once through the sieve, all that should be left is a bit of pulp and guanciale sinew. Throw these remains away. What remains below the sieve is your velout. Add water to it if you need to thin it out.

Add the chopped cabbage.

A ladle will help push the mixture through.

40

Chestnut Puree
200 grams chestnuts

2 tablespoons sugar

3 cups of distilled water

Gele

3 Red Delicious apples

2 gelatin sheets

Gently bring to a boil 1 cups of water. In a separate pot, add 2 tablespoons of sugar to 200 grams of chestnuts. Mix well until the chestnuts are coated. Add the boiling water to the chestnut-sugar mixture. The size of the pot should be such that the water barely covers the chestnuts. Place the pot on high heat until the chestnuts get extremely soft and the sugar dissolves. Dont worry about overcooking. This should take roughly 45 minutes to an hour or until completely soft and mushy. You can test this with a fork. Use a wooden spoon to break up the chestnuts as they cook. Continue to cook until most of the water boils off, turning down to medium and then low heat in the later stages as the water dissipates. Eventually you want the broken up chestnuts to get to a candied state where they are sticky and gooey and no water is left circulating in the pot.You can speed the process slightly by removing half a cup of the liquid for later use (see below). If you dont have enough water or sugar, the result may turn mealy and dry as you cook it. Continue to add water and small amounts of sugar until you get to the right consistency. Pour the entire mixture in the blender, along with any saved sugary liquid. Puree at a medium-to-low speed until soft and smooth.

Take 3 Red Delicious apples and roughly chop them into -inch cubes. Youre going to need a juicer for this. At Lampreia an ACME juicer is used but most will do. Put the apple chunks into the juicer. Dont worry about seeds, core, peel, or pretty much anything else. Most juicers can take care of that without a problem. The 3 apples should generate about 1 cups of juice. Put the juice in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Once boiling, lower the heat to medium. Cover. For each cup of juice, youll need 1 sheet of gelatin. Soak the gelatin sheets in cold water until they soften. This should take about 2 minutes. Once softened, put the gelatin sheets into the simmering juice in the saucepan. Stir gently until the gelatin sheets have dissolved. Pour the gelatin/juice mixture into a flat 9 inch square pan. The goal is to get a uniform layer of gele. Put the pan in the fridge until the mixture hardens. Depending on your fridge, hardening should take anywhere from 20 minutes to a half hour. If you want to make a batch for multiple uses you can pour the gelatin/juice mixture while still liquid into ice cube trays for hardening. That way you can pop out just as much as you need as you need it.

41

42

To Complete

Remove the gele from the pan with a fork. It should come off in sheets. Chop the gele into large dice. Dont handle the gele too much or it will melt from the warmth of your hands. Place a heaping tablespoon of gele dice into the middle of the serving bowl. Place it there as a mound. Using a pastry bag, pipe a curl of chestnut puree on to the top of the mound of gele in the middle of the bowl. Pour the hot (not too hot) velout into a pitcher. Pour the velout around the mound of gele and chestnut puree at the table. The edges of the mound should immediately start to melt and integrate into the rest of the dish from the heat of the velout.

44

Cooked & Raw Zumi Apple with Red Prawn & Virgin Olive Oil Dressing
Perfect essence of prawn. The aroma hits you as the steaming prawn is placed in front of you with its apple accompaniments. Screaming prawn flavor. The prawn seems almost undercooked but its not. Its just the flavor thats alive. The prawn is so juicy, tender, and structured. The drizzled olive oil is the base for the flavor. Super-thin shaved apples sit alongside the very best apple sauce you have ever tasted. Constructing a bite of the entire affair can be complicated when youre trying to get a touch of everything onto your fork. But the result is so simple and sweet. The textures are all completely individual; crisp apple folded over on itself, tender stretchy prawn, and simple soft tiny granular apple puree texture. Why is this so special? Its deceptively simple. The colors are beautiful and soft. The flavors are simple, bright, and delicious.

46

COOKED AND RAW ZUMI APPLE WITH RED PRAWN AND VIRGIN OLIVE OIL DRESSING
1 hour preparation, 15 minutes cooking time, serves 4

SHOPPING & SPECIAL EQUIPMENT

Zumi Apples Olive Oil Sea Salt ChampagneVinegar Canola Oil Sablone De Tomates Red Prawns Tamis Japanese Ceramic Slicer

Apple Puree
3 Zumi Apples

1 teaspoon of unsalted butter

1 tablespoon of olive oil

Peel, quarter and core 3 large Zumi apples. Zumis are a great choice because they have an interesting taste. Kind of an off-yellow. The flavor is a combination between a Golden Delicious and a Granny Smith. Take 1 pat of butter ( tablespoon) and place it in a cast iron pan. Melt the butter on medium heat for a bit while you do the next step. Add the olive oil. Shave the apples super-thin using the Japanese ceramic slicer. Put the apple slices into the pan with the butter. Use a wooden spoon to mix. Leave the mixture on medium heat. Do not let them get brown. Stir the mixture often. Break up the apples while
47

mixing them over the heat with the wooden spoon. Once everything gets soft, remove from the heat. This should take roughly 10-12 minutes with frequent mixing.You can tell its done when the apples start to release their juice. Wait until the apple mixture cools. Using a plastic wedge, push the apples through a tamis. Put the resulting puree into a pastry bag with a medium even tip.

A pat of butter goes in the pot to start cooking.

Deposit the apple slices (quickly after slicing so they dont get brown) into the pot.

Cover the pot.

Mix with a wooden spoon.

Place the mound of softened apple slices onto a tamis once theyve cooled a touch. Use a stiff piece of plastic to force the apple slices through the tamis.

The apple will have been broken up pretty ne so that the result is relatively thin.

48

Mayonnaise

2 duck egg yolks pinch of sea salt to taste

1 tablespoon champagne vinegar to taste 4 tablespoons canola oil

Red Prawn 4 deep sea red Spanish prawns

tablespoon of butter Peel the tail of the prawn. Leave the head on. Put tablespoon of butter into a cast iron saucepan. Sautee the prawn in the butter on high heat. Leave the pan uncovered so the shell gets nice and brown. Sprinkle a pinch of sea salt on top of the prawn as it cooks. Flip the prawn once it gets a little color. Cook each side for 2-3 minutes. The second side will require less cooking.
Peel the tail of the prawn.

Beat the duck eggs well.

Add 1 tablespoon of champagne vinegar to taste.

Crack the 3 duck eggs into a bowl. Add the sea salt and the champagne vinegar. Whisk aggressively until the mixture is frothy. Continue determined whisking while slowly adding oil. The oil will emulsify into the mixture, producing mayonnaise. You can add a little less or a little more oil as you see fit depending on the desired consistency. For this dish the mayonnaise is kept relatively light. Farm fresh duck eggs are used for the rich color of their yolks. Canola oil is used in the recipe because it doesnt have much flavor so it doesnt compete with the other ingredients. The color of the finished mayonnaise should be a light yellow. If youre making this on your own or dont happen to have three hands, youll need to steady the bowl:Your hands will be busy whisking and pouring oil. Steady the bowl with a towel placed between yourself and its foundation, so that the bowl and its contents dont go flying. Sometimes at Lampreia horseradish or mustard is added to the mayonnaise to give it more dimension. But that would be too much for this dish as the crab has an inherently subtle flavor. This mayonnaise can be made ahead of time. Its even better on day 2 and should keep for up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator.This is a good thing as you will not end up using all the mayonnaise in this dish. If you are making this dish as part of the entire tasting menu, then you can use the remainder of the mayonnaise in the crab dish. European Cocktail Sauce

Place the butter in your pot.

Lay the prawn on the hot butter. Stretched out, the prawn should be relatively large.

Aggressively beat the yolks and vinegar so the oil emulsies and wont separate later.

2 tablespoons of mayonnaise 1 tablespoon of dried Sicilian tomato powder (Sablon de Tomates)

Add the Sicilian tomato powder and water to the mayonnaise mixture.

Take 1 tablespoon of the tomato powder and mix it with 1 tablespoon of warm water. Mix this into the mayonnaise.

Salt the prawn appropriately while in the pan.

Flip the prawn once its done cooking on one side.

It will have a slightly brown color on both sides when done.

49

50

Apple Slices
3 Zumi apples

To Complete

Cut the apples in half, perpendicular to the core. Slice 12 thin slices off of the widest part of the apple using the deli slicer (or the Japanese ceramic slicer if thats all you have). You probably wont get more than 5 or 6 slices off of each apple that are big enough. Thats why this is a wasteful dish. Snack on the remainder of the apples.

Shape the apples into cones as seen in the pictures. Place the apple slice cones on the plate. Pipe the apple puree onto the plate into a line. Squeeze a bit of the European cocktail sauce onto the plate. Place the prawn to complete. Serve.

51

52

Pork Prepared two ways with Apple Cider Sauce and Pippin Apple Dumplings
There are so many wonderful things about this dish, its hard to know where to start. The smell of the pork loin found my nose in a hurry. The tenderloin is unbelievably juicy. No surprise given that its been basting in butter. The cured meat adds perfect oil to this dish that drizzles over the dumplings as theyre served. Speaking of the dumplings, they have a doughy sour flavor dotted with perfect tiny pieces of copa. When served, they have a gentle coating of sweet and savory cider sauce. The pancetta has almost a pastrami-like flavor. Its beautiful to behold, with the dumplings under the pancetta absorbing the oil and flavor and getting even more flavorful. Theyre like mini apple-concentrated balls of slightly finely crumbled dough. The flavors in this dish are gentle, but strong and smooth. The smell of the pork engulfs you.

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WITH APPLE

PORK PREPARED TWO WAYS CIDER SAUCE AND PIPPIN APPLE DUMPLINGS

45 minutes preparation, 30 minutes cooking time, serves 4

SHOPPING & SPECIAL EQUIPMENT

Court Bouillon 9 ounces Hand-dippedWhole Milk Ricotta Cheese 1 Pippin Apple 1 Chicken Egg Sea Salt Grated Parmesan Cheese Copa Farina Flour Pomache Olive Oil 2 Pork Tenderloins (16 ounces) Pancetta Thyme and a Bay Leaf Butter Knudsen Sparkling Apple Cider Guanciale

Dumplings

9 ounces ricotta cheese 1 Pippin apple 1 chicken egg

sea salt copa

Start this dish by making the dumplings. They can be made a couple of days in advance and stored in the refrigerator. Make sure to cover them with a cloth so they dont dry out. Place 9 ounces of ricotta cheese into a metal bowl. Crack 1 chicken egg into the ricotta. Mix with a spoon until you get a smooth, creamy consistency. Add 2 tablespoons of julienned copa and 3 full tablespoons of finely grated parmesan cheese to the mixture. Continue to mix until the ingredients are evenly spread throughout the batter.
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Grate a quarter of the Pippin apple onto your cutting board. You should end up with a heaping tablespoon of the grated apple. Place the apple in your hand and squeeze somebut not allof the juice out of the grated apple.You dont want too much extra liquid in the batter. Put the grated apple in the batter. Mix well. Slowly add 5 to 7 tablespoons of the Farina pasta flour. The amount depends on the moisture of the ricotta. Youre looking for a consistency in which the batter stays on the spoon if you turn it upside down.Youll have to judge this yourself.

Once youve got the right consistency, add a pinch of salt a teaspoon. Mix thoroughly. Let the mixture sit for a couple of minutes to settle. Fold it into a pastry bag with a medium even tip. Pipe onto parchment paper in smallish inch-high cylinders. Cut around the dumplings, leaving them on inch-square parchment paper rectangles. Place in refrigerator, covered with a cloth towel, until ready to boil.

Crack the egg into the ricotta mixture.

Mix until the egg has completely integrated with the ricotta.
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Pork

1 tablespoon Pomache olive oil 2 organic pork loin chops (16 ounces) 1 teaspoon Sea Salt

1 bay leaf 2 large sprigs of thyme 2 tablespoons butter

Add the julienned copa.

Add the parmesan cheese.

Mix well.This is your dough and the ingredients must be distributed evenly.

Put 1 tablespoon of Pomache (a lower-grade olive oil than we use for finishing) into a pan. Put on high heat.
Salt the tenderloin before cooking.

Spread a teaspoon of sea salt onto each side of each pork tenderloin.You will be serving half a tenderloin per person. Place the loin in the pan. If the pork starts to dry a little as you cook it, add a touch of the same Pomache oil. In general, dont use extra virgin olive oil for cookingits wasteful. Its quality is for finishing. Its meant to be put on things that are already cooked or warm or done. When the meat has gotten mostly cooked on each side (flip when its ready on one side), its time to baste. Take 1 bay leaf and a small amount of thyme and put them in the pan with 2 tablespoons of butter. Mix with a metal spoon. Deglaze it with cup of the apple cider after the basting begins. You should be constantly spooning the herbs and butter over the top of the loin. Cook the pork until medium done. When done, remove the pork loin to a metal grill. The herbs are not served with pork, they are there for flavor only. Pour the remaining pork juice through a chinois into the cider reduction. Reduce further.
Add oil as necessary.The juices are crytallizing in the pan.

Grate the apple onto a cutting board.

The nely grated apple should look like this.

You want to squeeze out most but not all of the water in the grated apple.

Let the loin cook on one side and brown before ipping it.

Mix with a spoon.

Scrape the mixture off the sides so it all gets well mixed.

The consistency should be relatively thick and not fall off a spoon when raised above the bowl.

Add the herbs to the cooking loin. Add the butter to the loin and herbs. Baste, baste, baste.

Use a rubber spatula to scrape the mixture off the sides of the bowl.

Place the ricotta mixture into a pastry bag.

Deposit the dough onto the parchment paper in small even mound.

Apple Cider Sauce

cup Knudsen sparkling apple cider 1 teaspoon unsalted butter

guanciale

Finish Dumplings

Pour cup of cider into the saucepan.

In another saucepan, place 4 -inch-thick slices of guanciale. Slightly warm the slices in the pot over a low flame, searing the pork cheek. Theres no need for oil, as the cheek is fatty enough to supply its own. Add a cup of the cider to the saucepan. Simmer slowly over a low flame. Reduce, reduce, reduce. Start cooking the pork tenderloin at this point in time. After half the cider is gone and starting to glaze, add in one teaspoon of unsalted butter. Simmer for a few minutes longer. By this time the pork loin should be done. After the pork loin has been removed from the pan, filter the remaining pork juice through a sieve into the cider sauce. Mix and let simmer for another minute or so. If the cooking of the pork loin has left lots of cooked fat stuck to the pan in which it was cooked, you can remove the herbs and then deglaze the pork loin pan with the cider sauce. Cook it for another minute, scraping up the leavings from the pork. Either path results in a delicious sauce.

Fill a pot with enough boiling water to cover the dumplings, then salt the water. Once the water has come to a simmer, deposit the dumplings into the water. If you cant easily remove the dumplings from the paper squares just dump them into the water with the squares. Dont worry, the paper will come off easily in the simmering water. The dumplings should spend 3 to 4 minutes in the simmer.You can tell that theyre done when they float to the top. They wont be just hanging around the top of the water but will really stay at the top. Remove them gently with a slotted spoon or spatula onto paper so they can drain.

Boil the water for the dumplings.

Place the dumplings in the simmering water.

Pancetta

Pour the remainder of the jus from the pork loin into the sauce.

Just before serving, fry 4 slices of pancetta in a pan. The slices should be super thin, but not fall apart during frying. Fry for 1-2 minutes until theyve curled up into little delicious bacon-like pieces.You will be hard-pressed to not sample. Best to fry up a couple of extra slices of pancetta.

The pancetta should be sliced very thin.

The pancetta curls when cooked. Continue reducing.

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Place the cooked and now slightly crispy pancetta on top of the loin.

To Complete Place the dumplings and pork loin on the plate. Balance the fried pancetta on top of the dumplings. Drizzle a decent amount of the cider sauce on top of the pork and dumplings. Serve immediately.

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Gorgonzola dOro with Shaved Apples and Truffle Honey

This dish will slam your tongue. The meal has been progressing on a path where subtle and simple flavors build on each other, each dish getting more and more exciting. Just when you think youve reached the crescendo, you try this dish and are blown away. The obvious culprit would be the cheese, but its really the combination of ingredients that gets you. The truffle flavor is so incredibly complementary, rounding out the sharpness of the gorgonzola.Your tongue gets very busy processing the cheese, at the same time the truffle fills your mouth and nose with its smell. Dont forget the honey though. The sweetness binds the flavors and mellows them a touch. The texture of the bread is crisp, light and essentially perfect. Its not hard or brittle. Somehow its airy and crispy at the same time. The apple is subtle, sweet, soft, crispy but somehow not lost in the dish. The entire combination is like an exclamation point to the meal.

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GORGONZOLA DORO WITH SHAVED APPLES AND TRUFFLE

HONEY

1 hour preparation, 10 minutes cooking time, serves 4

SHOPPING & SPECIAL EQUIPMENT

1 Honey Crisp Apple Pound Gorgonzola dOro Fireweed Honey Bemunge White Trufe Oil Iron MountainWhite Sliced Bread Japanese Ceramic Slicer

Crispy Bread Rectangle

Iron Mountain white sliced bread

Gorgonzola section you would be slicing off little perfectly square slices. The bread needs to be cold (straight from the fridge) when cut or it will tear. Place your rectangles on a baking sheet. Put the sheet in the oven at 200 degrees for 90 to 120 minutes. When the bread has lost all its moisture and chewiness, turn the oven up to 350. Check every 30 seconds to make sure the rectangles are browning consistently.You just want them to have a nice tan. Its very easy to burn them. Watch them like a hawk. The resulting toast should be almost delicate, light, and crunchy.

pound Gorgonzola dOro

Warning:You will need to store the bread in the fridge for at least a week before proceeding with this recipe. The bread will get stale and lose some of its moisture. This is a head start for you.You need to use a very thick white dense bread. You do not want anything fancy. Use a cheap white sandwich bread. Not Wonder, but close. You want something soft that when toasted will break up into nice pieces. A rustic higher quality bread wont work. No special grains, nuts, or other ingredients. You want to take 4 slices to get 6 sticks from each slice. Take a few slices of bread, remove the crusts and slice some perfect rectangles. Two inches long, and 1/3 inch thick is about right. If you cut the baton as a cross65

Warning: You will need to refrigerate the cheese overnight for inclusion in the recipe. Remove the rind from the cheese with a knife. Put on plastic (or surgical) gloves and mush together the cheese with your hands until its smooth. Once smoothed out, place the cheese in the center of a large piece of plastic wrap. Roll the plastic wrap over the cheese like nori on a maki sushi roll to make a sausage-like shape. As you twist the ends of the plastic wrap, it will reinforce the cylinder shape (like a roulade). Refrigerate overnight. You will need to remove the gorgonzola and slice a couple of hours before serving.

You will need to slice after coming out of the fridge so the gorgonzola slice retains its cylindrical shape, but you will want it to gently come to room temperature before its served.

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Truffle Honey

4 tablespoon raw reweed honey 2 tablespoons Bemunge white trufe olive oil

Slowly heat the honey in a saucepan.

Briefly place a small saucepan on medium heat. Give it a minute or less to get warm. Remove the pan from the heat. Pour in 4 tablespoons of raw fireweed honey. While stirring with a metal spoon, slowly pour in two tablespoons of the truffle oil. After you are done pouring, continue mixing as you transfer to medium heat. Continue to mix for 5 minutes while on medium heat. Mixing is critical here.You want the ingredients to integrate. You are trying to avoid having the oil and honey separate. You want to mix vigorously but evenly so as to not aerate the mixture. It will be done when the mixture starts to turn a little bit cloudy and the ingredients get completely integrated. Remove from heat. Leave the mixture out to cool. When cool, put in a small bowl and seal with plastic wrap. Store at room temperature. You can choose to heat it a touch before serving.

Add the oil slowly while stirring the mixture.

Stir until the ingredients are super integrated. You dont want them to separate.

The deli slicer will result in the thinnest possible slices of the Honey Crisp apple.

Honey Crisp Apple Slices

1 Honey Crisp apple

Shave 16 super-thin slices of Honey Crisp apple. Use a deli slicer if possible. Or a Japanese ceramic slicer if necessary. You will need to throw away (or eat) the first few slices as they will be too small to use. Create the apple slices at the last possible second so they dont turn brown while waiting to be served.
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To Complete At least an hour before serving, remove the gorgonzola from the refrigerator. Slice into 1/3 - to 1/2- inch-thick coin-shaped discs. Place in the center of the plates on which theyll be served. Allow to sit for at least an hour and gently come to room temperature. Gently drizzle no more than 1 tablespoon of truffle honey onto the gorgonzola, dripping a little bit on the plate near the cheese. Concentrate the bulk of the honey on the cheese itself. Layer the apple slices on top of the honey thats covering the cheese. Arrange in a circular pattern with one apple slice in the center, and 3 others laid as overlapping petals. Rest the crouton on top. Serve immediately.

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Apple Soup with Cinnamon Cream

Apple juice? Apple sauce? How about something in between? A dollop of slightly cinnamoned cream in the middle makes it complete. The soup is velvety smooth and still has a heartiness about it. The liquid coats and calms your mouth, especially if youve just had the gorgonzola explosion. The color is a deeper version of the color of the walls at Lampreiamuted rose. You may have thought that the apples had already given everything they were capable of for this meal, but this dish comes along to remind you that theres more flavor to be had. And more unique flavor at that.

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APPLE SOUP WITH CINNAMON CREAM

15 minutes preparation, 30 minutes cooking time, serves 4

SHOPPING & SPECIAL EQUIPMENT

5 Medium-sized Red Delicious Apples 3 Tablespoons Olive Oil 1 cups Chateau Haute Bernasse Sea Salt Powdered Cinnamon cup Organic Heavy 40%Whipping Cream 2 Tablespoons Organic Sour Cream 1/4 cup Fine Powdered Sugar Juicer

Apple Soup

5 medium-sized Red Delicious apples 3 tablespoons olive oil

pinch of sea salt 1 ngerprint powdered cinnamon

This dish can be served warm or cold. Room temperature is great, or hot if the weather is particularly cold. In the context of this tasting menu the soup is being used as both a palate cleanser and a punctuation to the meal. Quarter and core 5 Red Delicious apples of medium size. Do not peel. Cut the quarters into thirds.You need them as chunks as they are going to stew for awhile. Pour 3 tablespoons of olive oil into a deep saucepan over medium heat. Wait until the olive oil heats up, and then deposit the apple chunks into the pan. Immediately stir
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vigorously with a wooden spoon. Do this until every piece of apple gets coated evenly with the oilabout 90 seconds. As the apples cook, the color of the peel should start to darken a touch. But the color of the meat of the apples should stay light. Add a pinch of sea salt. Continue stirring. You want to cook until the edges of the apple start to soften, but you dont want to go too far and start browning the apples. Cover when youre not stirring.

Chef Carsberg starts with Red Delicious apples.

Chop and core the apple into quarters.

Mix so that the apples get coated with the olive oil from the pot.

Mix with a wooden spoon. Check to make sure the apples are not changing color.

Salt the mixture to taste.

Pour the wine into the mixture.

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Apple Soup continued Add 1 cups of Chateau Haut Bernasse. This is a sweet wine made like a Sauterne but originating from Mombazillac. You can experiment with substituting other sweet wines of the same region or style. Bring the contents of the saucepan to a gentle simmer on medium heat. When the mixture is simmering evenly across the surface, put a lid on it. Cover and let steep for 3 to 4 minutes. Remember the peels should get darker but not completely turn color.You want to keep the fruit relatively firm. At this point the mixture should have an earthy smell. Remove from heat. Once off the heat, put the entire mixture in the blender. Blend at the maximum setting for 4 to 5 minutes until there are no pieces left. Pour the mixture into a bowl through a fine sieve. Use a ladle to push the soup through the holes in the sieve. Salt to taste. No more than a fingerprint of cinnamon to taste. Be careful with the cinnamon. It may seem gentle when you first put some in the soup, but over time it can sneak up on you and dominate the flavor. There will be cinnamon in the cream, so a tiny bit in the soup is really more than enough. Its just an echo.

The apples should still have a pulpy texture post blending.

Use a ladle to force the mixture through the strainer.

Once thoroughly cooked, pour the apple chunks into the blender.

There will be plenty of pulp and stringy remnants after youre done using the strainer.

Pour the soup into a pitcher for serving tableside.

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Cinnamon Cream cup organic heavy 40% whipping cream 2 tablespoons organic sour cream

powdered cinnamon to taste cup ne powdered sugar

Whisk the heavy cream in a metal bowl. Continue whisking until the cream thickens. Sprinkle in no more than a light pinch of cinnamon. Be careful, as cinnamon gets more powerful over time and you dont want it to overpower the flavor of the soup or the sweetness of the cream. Add cup fine powdered sugar and continue to whisk. Add 2 tablespoons of sour cream to the bowl. Continue whisking. The sour cream gets added for thickness and additional flavor. The texture should be such that the mixture doesnt fall off the whisk.

Mix the whipping cream with a whisk until it thickens.

A light pinch of cinnamon. No more.

Add the sour cream to the mixture. Whisk gently.

The nal texture of the cream should be relatively thick and stick easily to the whisk.

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To Complete Pour the soup into a bowl. Place a quenelle of the cinnamon cream on top of the soup in the bowl just before serving. To create the quenelle, place the spoon in boiling water just before you scrape it across the side of the bowl with the cream. Dragging the spoon should produce an almost oblong egg-like smooth shaped dollop of cream that slides off the spoon and floats gently on top of the soup. Dont be surprised if this is harder than it looks. It takes practice to get it right. Luckily, even if your quenelle isnt perfectly smooth, it will still taste great.

Bolzano Apple Cake

Apple Cake. There are seemingly infinite ways to make an apple cake. But this isnt just any apple cake. The cake is made of apples. I mean the dough (actually more of a batter) is really only there as connective tissue binding the apples together. This cake is like a wall of apple. Sweet apple bricks laid tightly one on top of the other. It comes to the table a sugary rectangle. The top of the cake has caramelized into a crumbly topping. Its not only sweet but adds contrasting matte texture and yummy cake flavors to the stack of apples that make up the body. The body is super compressed. The texture of the cake is all spongy, buttery, fruity goodness. The sweet round flavor lasts and gently finishes the meal with delicious satisfaction.

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BOLZANO APPLE CAKE

40 minutes preparation, 75 minutes cooking time, serves 8

SHOPPING & SPECIAL EQUIPMENT

1 Cups Sugar 2 Eggs CupWhole Milk 1 FreshVanilla Bean 1 Stick ( lb) Butter 5 Granny Smith Apples 2 Teaspoons Baking Powder cup Farina Flour Japanese Ceramic Slicer Powdered Sugar

Apple Cake

1 cups sugar 2 eggs 1 fresh vanilla bean cup whole milk

1 stick butter 5 Granny Smith apples 2 teaspoons organic baking powder cup Farina our

Take a 9-inch square baking pan and wrap the surface completely in tinfoil. Spread butter from the end of a stick all over the surface where the batter will sit. Lightly sprinkle a little bit of flour all over the buttered surface. Put aside for later. Pour 1 cups of sugar into a large empty bowl. Crack 2 eggs into the bowl. Whisk vigorously. Split 1 fresh vanilla bean down the middle with a sharp knife. Scrape the insides out with the knife edge, being careful not to scrape off pieces of the husk.
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Drop the contents of the pod (now on the knife) into the bowl with the sugar and egg mixture. Take the empty pod and place it in a shallow saucepan. Pour a cup of whole milk into the saucepan over the pod. Warm gently on low heat. Continue whisking the sugar/egg/vanilla mixture until all the sugar is dissolved. This will take a while. The batter should stretch like a ribbon when you pull the whisk out of the bowl. The dry ingredients dont go

in the mixture until the last minute. Set the batter aside to rest. Put 1 stick ( pound) of butter into a sauce pan. Leave it to melt slowly over medium heat. Peel, quarter, and core 5 Granny Smith apples. Peel the apples so that the peel comes off in one long S. Put the peel in a bowl of icy cold water so it doesnt turn brown. You will use it later as a condiment. Immediately slice the apple quarters using the ceramic slicer.

Return to the batter. Whisk while slowly adding the melted butter, then whisk vigorously. Remove the vanilla bean halves from the milk mixture. Slowly pour the milk into the batter while whisking. The batter texture should be a bit loosey-goosey and feel somewhat thin. Add 2 teaspoons of organic baking powder to the batter while whisking. Continue whisking while adding cup of the Farina flour. Whisk well. The mixture will get slightly thicker but still flow very easily.
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Apple Cake continued Dump the apple slices into the mixture. (Dont squeeze any water out of the apples.) Mix together gently so as not to break up the apples.You need just enough batter to bind the apples together. About 2 to 1 ratio of apple to batter. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Bake until cooked through and throughroughly 80 to 90 minutes. To test whether the cake is done, put a knife in the middle periodically when you think its ready. When the knife comes out clean, the cake should be ready. Touch the blade carefully to your lip to check that the inside of the cake is hot. When the cake is done, remove it from the oven and lay the cake still in the pan on a rack so air circulates above and below the pan to cool the cake. After a couple of minutes the cake will start to recede a little bit from the sidessink and shrink. Go around the edge of the cake with a knife to help it completely recede from the sides of the pan.
Line the baking pan in tinfoil for easy removal of the cake later. Split the vanilla bean carefully with a sharp knife. Scrape the vanilla from inside the bean using the sharp knife.Take care not to scrape out the stringy membranes that make up the shell of the pod. Deposit the contents of the vanilla pod into the sugar and egg mixture.

Crack two eggs into the mixing bowl with the sugar.

Place the empty pod husks into a small saucepan.

Add milk to the saucepan with the empty vanilla pod and warm.

Melt the butter in a separate small saucepan.

Whisk until the sugar has started to dissolve.

Once the butter has melted and the milk has warmed, they are ready for use.

Make sure the sugar has dissolved in the main mixing bowl due to aggressive whisking.

The mixture should briey form a ribbon when you pull the whisk through it.

Start peeling the apples.

When peeling the apples, leave a lengthy bit of peel in a curly S shape for later use as a garnish.

Core the peeled apple quarters.

Pour the melted butter into the main mixture and whisk.

Remove the empty pod from the milk.

Pour the vanilla milk into the main mixture and whisk vigorously.

Apples ready for slicing.

Slice the apples using the Japanese ceramic slicer.

The resulting slices should be extremely thin.

There should be enough batter to coat and bind the apple slices well but no more.

Pour the entire mixture into the baking pan.

Make sure the batter is distributed evenly in the pan.

To Complete

Gently lift the cake out of the pan by holding onto the tinfoil edges. After cooling, the cake should have shrunken a bit, making it easier to remove.
The cake should get to a rich and dark brown color before its truly ready. Once the cake is ready, remove it from the oven, it should start to shrink from the sides.

Once removed, trim off the excess tinfoil with scissors or a knife. Cut off centimeter-thick edges of the cake (these make for yummy snacking because the smell of the cake has probably made you super hungry by now.) Cut the cake into inch-wide strips that go the length of the cake. Remove the tinfoil. Lay the slice of cake on its side on the plate. Take the apple peel out of the water. Curl a long piece of the peel as garnish and place next to the cake on the plate. Generously sprinkle powdered sugar over the cake and peel on the plate. Serve.

Once the shrinking has begun, use a sharp knife to go around the perimeter of the cake, separating it from the tinfoil.

Unwrap the foil from the edges of the pan.

Cut away the tinfoil.

Use a very sharp knife to cut long thin slices once the cake has cooled.

Place a clean stainless steel knife into the cake to see if its done.When the knife comes out clean, the cake is done.

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90

THE MAKING OF ALL ABOUT APPLES

12 months preparation, hundreds of hours cooking time, serves everyone

What right do a bunch of amateurs have creating a cookbook? Even when a world class chef like Scott Carsberg is providing the recipes and the inspiration? Well, essentially none. But that didnt stop us. The truth is, it was Scotts idea. After our umpteenth visit to Lampreia, we happened to show him some pictures we had taken of his food and he suggested we do a cookbook together. A cookbook.
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Doesnt that require hundreds of recipes, food stylists, a publisher, printing?

We thought for a while, and of course as with many questions, the answer to this one was: the Internet. What if we published on the web? What if we focused on one delicious and exciting tasting menu? And of course, wed apply our obsessive attention to detail and documentation to the entire process. The result is this cookbook. Eight dishes. All about apples. All from Scott Carsberg, Chef of Lampreia in Seattle, Washington. Over several weekends we spent time with Scott and Dana, one of his up-and-coming cooks, in the quiet kitchen at Lampreia. Sunday mornings wed get up early to go watch Scott cook. The focus was on making the dishes, but we were there to question, document, and photograph every single move. It was tough at first. So many of Scotts moves in the kitchen are so natural for him, that many times we would have to say slow down, or what was that, or I have no idea what you just did. At those moments wed have to back up, slow down, and retrace our steps so we could get down every detail. Scott adapted quickly, knowing when to slow down, when to explain in greater depth, and when to give context to what he was doing. Dana, who assisted throughout the making of most of the dishes, was quiet, fast, efficient, anticipating Scotts requests. Like a second set of hands. Frankly, it was pretty exciting watching him deconstruct the dishes wed come to know and love. And as clich as this may sound, he made it look so easy. And in some ways it was. Scott
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doesnt have a staff of twelve cooks working under him. His dishes have to be relatively simple. But at the same time, theyre not simple at all. The attention to detail, the focus, and the vision were all evident. Especially when we tried to make them ourselves. And of course, we had to try making the food ourselves. We didnt know much about writing a cookbook, but we knew enough to try and test the recipes. With Alex taking the lead, and me as his assistant, we cooked all the recipes wed watched Scott create. And who better than to judge whether wed succeeded than Scott himself? This was scary but exciting. After a week of shopping and planning, a full day of preparation, countless phone calls to clarify confusing sections of the recipes, we were rapidly approaching the critical moment. Scott, Hyun Joo, and Dana came over to Alexs house and we all ate the dishes wed prepared from the cookbook. To really make sure we were testing the recipes properly we needed to simulate a readers real environment, which we suspect would almost always be without the chef who created them sitting in their kitchen offering assistance. Cooking a chefs own food and then serving it to him is actually a more stressful exercise than you might imagine. It was also pretty fun. The biggest challenge was not poaching the foie gras, or slicing the apples as thin as possible. It was in fact keeping Scott out of the kitchen.
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Even when we were willing to let Scott explain something to us to clarify the recipe, he was often best able to communicate by just doing it. Needless to say, we got through it. And more often than not the recipes came out quite well. That said, its not chemistry. Exact measurements wont help you when things are not quite right. Only an understanding of how the dish is supposed to taste, and lots of practice, will get you to the finish line. And with this cookbook, weve tried to give you every possible advantage of how each dish and each ingredient should look and behave at every step of the process. Weve even tried to do our best to describe how the end result will taste. And so finally, this cookbook is complete.We hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it.

WHO DID WHAT

CHEF

Scott Carsberg
WRITING

Hillel Cooperman
PHOTOGRAPHY

Peyman Oreizy
DESIGN

Jenny Lam
EDITING

Debra Weissman
RECIPE TESTING

Alex Hopmann
COOKING

Dana Bickford
VIDEOGRAPHY

Deborah Dubrow

SPECIAL THANKS TO

Hyun Joo Paek, Lauren Antonoff, Chris Evans, and Leslie Evans. Additional recipe testing and photography by Hillel Cooperman. Additional videography by Alex Hopmann. Additional photography by Chris Evans. Additonal editing by Leslie Evans.

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a tastingmenu creation
New cookbooks arrive every day. Every hour. This is something different. This is something special. One brilliant chef. Likely not someone you know. One who cooks meals in his own restaurant every day. One tasting menu. Eight recipes. One hundred pages of obsessive detail. 291 gorgeous photos of every step, not just of the final dish. Read it. Cook from it. Cherish it. Keep it in a safe place so nobody steals it.

$29.95 US/$35.95 CAN