The lost meals entries consist of meals that occurred at various times throughout 2012 which, for any number of reasons, escaped my documentation – some due to a cross country move and a new job, some due to the Los Angeles Kings run to the Stanley Cup, and some simply as a result of too much travel. Having enjoyed many of these meals with friends or family and with some of them amongst the year’s very best the reality is that with time my memory has deteriorated and as life moves forward I’ve realized there is little hope to ever “catch up” or document these experiences as well as I’d hope, yet in order to preserve them I present these pictures, notes, and thoughts on the experience.
Blue Hill at Stone Barns
Keeping it Currant – Cava, Black Currant Leaf, Maraschino, Rhubarb Bitters (bitters made on site, leafs grown on the farm)
Grilled Fava Beans with Sea Salt
Crudites of carrots, peas, butter lettuce, and greens (the butter lettuce shockingly similar in flavor to the butter served later in the meal)
Pea Soup with Bacon (incredibly vegetal yet sweet, the bacon a briny finish)
Birch Bark and Buckwheat Cookie filled with Chocolate Yard Mint Cream (dead wood from farm, dried, pulverized and mixed 50/50 with buckwheat)
Sunrise Heirloom Turnip with Soybean and Spring Vegetable Pistou (a nightmare in execution as the blade did not completely cut through the turnip, but the vegetable itself so sweet it was closer to an apple with black pepper in flavor than a true turnip)
Goat Cheese with Potato Chips with Sage, Purslane, Faro Crackers (the cheese formed a base into which the crackers and chips were placed – the flavor funky yet balanced by the various crisps)
Egg Lardo with Pimento Pepper (Essentially an aged egg yolk – sort of waxy gives way to creamy and tinged with heat)
Asparagus with Pancetta and Tempura Sesame
Fish Balls, Greenhouse Lettuce, Phytoplankton Mayonnaise (Wrap the salty bass fritter in the lettuce, drag through the mayo, and eat – one of my favorites of the night)
Beet Yogurt, House Made Grapenuts, House Made Beet Sugar (The very essence of beet – earthy and metallic – in a sort of pudding given balance by the sweetness and texture by the buckwheat cereal)
Pork Liver with Chocolate (A lightly gamey sapor, but more-so ultra-rich dark chocolate)
Veal Bone Marrow with Toasted Croutons (too small for three…another favorite of the night I’d have eaten three by myself)
Green Garden Gazpacho with Strawberries and Blue Hill Yogurt Sorbet (perhaps the best cold soup I’ve ever tasted – the herbal notes of basil and rosemary brought to a bright apex by the intensely sweet strawberries while the tangy sorbet provided a clean finish)
Speck with Greens from the Greenhouse on Polenta Flatbread (Briny, smoky, a bit of balsamic – salad as it should be.
Asparagus, Spring Onions, Purslane with Almond Chorizo Jus, and Almond-Hazelnut-Egg yolk shavings (Drag the vegetables through the sauce, then through the shavings – a bit spicy, a bit nutty, and slightly smoky as though the vegetables themselves had been smoked when in fact they were only lightly sautéed in olive oil.)
Red Fife Brioche with Cracked Black Pepper and Spinach Marmalade and Freshly Made Ricotta Cheese (An Heirloom Grain from the 1800s put to great use – I could have eaten loaves of this, particularly with the briny ricotta and slightly sweetened spinach)
Horseshoe Lobster in a Spring Vegetable Vinaigrette Composition (The lobster was slightly overcooked but its sweetness beautifully matched by the bright acidity of the vinaigrette)
Grilled Radicchio with Pine Nut Puree and Cherries (I’m not a big Radicchio fan as I simply find it too bitter, but this tasted like a smoky peanut butter and jelly sandwich – definitely the best radicchio dish I’ve ever tasted and one of the most memorable plates of the night.)
Crusty Potato Onion Hearth Bread, Carrot and Sage Salts, Lardo from Blue Hill Pigs, Local Grain Fed Butter, Butter from Blue Hill Farms from two different grass fed cows – Normandy and Dutch Lineage (They claim to serve the bread late in the menu so that the guest does not overindulge and I salute them for this as I most certainly would have – but with that said I still requested three extra slices in order to properly assess each of the spreads; a very interesting culinary education provided in comparing and contrasting not only the difference between grass and grain, but how two different cows eating the same grass can produce entirely different flavors and textures of milk.)
Egg Carbonara with Zucchini Noodles and Bacon (Lightly poached egg over noodles made by thinly slicing cooked zucchini and topped with house made pecorino plus bacon – another standout in both flavor and style)
Poussin Cooked in Salt with Peas and Pistachios (Intensely crisp skin, meltingly tender flesh)
Stone Barns Berkshire Pork – Loin, “Secreto” Cuts, and Rhubarb (Lean but tender in the loin and marbleized with fat in the shoulder cut; a beautiful heritage pig with rhubarb prepared like applesauce)
3 Week Aged Black-Sheep Cheese with Ash (Illinois), Preserved Strawberry / Raw Cow’s Milk “Across the Pond” (New York) with a Pickled Sugar Snap Pea / Pretzel (I didn’t really get this course considering the various house made cheeses presented throughout the meal, but I really love Across the Pond so I’ll let it slide.)
Caramelized Cherries, Elderflower Gelee, Blue Hill Farm Milk Ice Cream (The ice cream was perhaps the most creamy I’ve ever tasted and the cherries amongst the most sweet – the ‘palate cleanser’ outperforming most proper desserts)
Strawberries and Cream – Strawberry Roll, Sweet Cream, Balsamic, Green Strawberries (I never expected the BHSB pastry department to be this strong, but in a trip with a number of great sweets this was the most memorably by far – delicate textures, intense flavors, and everything from the farm)
Peanut Butter and Chocolate – Sponge Cake, Chocolate Mousse, Peanut Butter Mousse, Milk Powder, Crumbled Dark Chocolate (Another excellent dish in terms of texture and flavor, but the ‘chocolate in textures’ theme seems a bit played to me thus rendering this dish a bit less special than the rest of the sweets.
Mignardises – Honey Marshmallows, Milk Jam Lollipops, Cocoa Dollops, Sesame Seed Fudge, Tuilles (The seseame seed fudge was outstanding – like a butter caramel meets dense fudge, the lollipops also were quite nice.)
Kenya Gathambi Roasted at Irving Farm in Millerton NY (Deep, dark as hell, smoky with a lot of vanilla notes)
Of all the meals I’m sorry I did not get around to writing about earlier this is certainly the one I regret most; a magical meal at Dan Barber’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns with two friends that began with rain giving way to clear skies, a long drive there and me falling asleep in the car on the way back, and most importantly a culinary education like no other – wandering the grounds of the farm and visiting both the animals and vegetation that make up the majority of your dinner. Certainly a utopian idea in many ways, though perhaps less so to someone like myself who grew up in the midst of fields filled with both corn and cow, there has been loads written about Barber and his restaurant over the years and although phrases like ‘farm to table,’ ‘nose to tail,’ and ‘sustainability’ are obvious there is also a truly bucolic serenity to the place that cannot really be captured without a visit.
Moving past the ideals and the location, both impressive, I will note that before making the hour long trip to The Rockefeller Estate in Pocantico Hills there was some hesitation amongst the others in my group, and perhaps in my own mind as well, about how the meal would turn out as many had suggested in recent years the rise of the Slowfood movement had made the food at Blue Hill somewhat less special while service had slipped but what we found, instead, was quite the opposite.
Featuring four menus of various lengths and price points it seemed only rational to go with the longest of those offered – a Farmer’s Feast where the diner is presented a list of ingredients and questioned about likes and dislikes before the meal commences – and informed that this meal could often last as long as four hours we assented, emerging from the doors 33 plates, courses, or bites (and 225 minutes) later – almost every single one of them good and the vast majority outstanding (both the cuisine and the moments in between.) With some notes as above, mostly taken from my jotted notes and distant memories, the food was much like the scene; a true ‘experience’ to behold with each element composed by Dan Barber and executed flawlessly by his team. In a world where “Farm to table” is quite en vogue but rarely ‘exciting,’ Blue Hill at Stone Barns was both and all in all it was my second favorite meal of 2012, a great achievement in a year I’d consider perhaps the best of my life thus far.
