Going all out for New Year's Eve

Even though we have kept our New Year's Eve menu shrouded in secrecy we are now fully booked for that night.  I'm excited about the food that we're going to be cooking so here's a sneak peak.  Raw materials are arriving.  Prep begins in earnest tomorrow.  I was going to start on the boozy gingerbread steamed pudding tonight but I was unfortunately stymied by a lack of fresh ginger.  So, I blog instead.

Four geese going in brine soon.  They will then be air-dried in our cooler overnight before getting roasted whole.  Raised free-range in South Dakota by the Schiltz family, we got these beauties along with a healthy 30# bucket of goose fat, some fatty goose livers, and some goose wings.  We're not sure where the goose wings will end up yet but I'm excited about the possibilities just having them nearby.  Goose wings!  Who has ever had those?

We also have some really wild wild rice, not something that you have probably ever had, vastly different from the paddy grown "wild" rice that is readily available.  I've been bugging Millar to get some of this for years, since my days at Journeyman, and he finally ordered it for me.  We cooked some of it today, tossed in some herb butter and salt.  Really delicious.  I don't remember exactly but I think Brittany said it was "off the hook."

Other highlights: whole trout wrapped in prosciutto, confit pork shoulder, brussels sprouts with bacon, and roasted heirloom squash from Trillium Haven Farm.  Brandon's making sausages, Blair's making truffles, Chef is braising and roasting everything in sight.  And in the end we will set that steamed gingerbread pudding ablaze with some bourbon. 

Oh, and I think there will be some wine to go with the food, too.

Reserve's Farms: S&S Lamb

Death to stagnation! I would be writing about how great potted pig's tongue is, or would be, but Chef thinks it may not sell well. He's probably right, unfortunately. If, however, any readers would show interest via comment, perhaps you may see it after all. Our charcuterie should rightly have something that scares you. Something that makes you bring it up to your friends, or at the office. It makes you wonder what it's like..how gross and alien you perceive it to be. Then, after all this deliberation, you might have worked up the nerve to actually try it, and possibly even like it. I suppose I'm beginning to rant a little, but I feel better, and you are still reading. So, let us talk about one of our farmers.

Pierre and Sharon Schierbeek & Family operate out of McBain, MI. Their land and animals are chemical free. Their animals fertilize their pastures as they graze on their land from spring to fall and their winter feed is harvested from their farm. They do not use hormones, antibiotics, supplements, or additives in their feeds. S&S lamb grow happy and healthy in this natural environment through their lives and after finishing they are processed by L & J Meats in Lake City, MI. Afforded humane butchering practices, these combined practices from farm to table directly translate the care and quality that has been invested into them.

At Reserve, we have cultured a good relationship with Pierre and his family and operations. We are currently talking about having Pierre raise specific breeds of hog for us better suited to our culinary aims. Those breeds are still being discussed, but Duroc and Berkshire are looking like good candidates. S&S Lamb are just one on many farms we use at Reserve, meshing well with the ethics we look for in sourcing our foods. They also supply us with the rabbit that has been on our menu lately, and eggs from time to time.

In addition to lamb, eggs and rabbit, S&S also sells beef, chicken, and goat. From cuts to wholes and halves and even some pet products as well. Their eggs are a steal at $3/dz when clearly inferior eggs are sold for more at the supermarket. They also sell 100% wool products harvested from their ewe flock. Find them at the Fulton Street Farmers Market every Saturday through the winter. Their store can be found here if you'd like to cook at home. If you'd like us to cook for you, well, you know what to do.

SUCKLING PIG

These two cuties come to us courtesy of Cherry Capital Foods. They are new a supplier for us, and so far have hooked us up with quail, a mangalitsa, smoked lake trout and whitefish, rabbit, and a few other tasty creatures all raised right here in Michigan. Their entire product line is comprised of Michigan meats, fruits, vegetables, grains, etc. and it was a great score for us to connect. But more on them later.

Suckling pig, as the name implies, is a very young hog raised solely on mother's milk and slaughtered before six weeks of age. They are usually quite small, under 20#s or so, and it's fairly rare to see them around on menus these days in West Michigan. The flesh is a beautiful, light blush pink and quite tender throughout. Sucklings are almost always cooked whole. Part of the attraction of cooking one is the show of bringing it in it's whole roasted glory to the table. The rest of course lies in the experience of eating it.

Because the animal is young, the muscle contains an enormous amount of collagen, a protein that when cooked turns to gelatin, giving the meat it's contained within (and its juices) a very full body and mouth feel. It is soft and rich, and because its diet is strictly milk, a very clean, slightly sweet flavor. No looking for the subtleties of chestnut or acorn finishing here. This is straight pork.

Suckling pigs are still eaten commonly in many parts of the world, central Europe, southeast Asia, Cuba. In the U.S., they were  once popular tailgating food and often graced a table in the American south when larger groups assembled. In Europe, they are commonly eaten at Christmas, at one time nearly as popular as roast goose.

Right now the piggies are having a stretch for two days before going into a mild brine for four. After the four day brine, they will hang again for two to dry slightly and let the salt even out. Then into the oven for a long, slow roast, finishing hot to provide plenty of crispy skin.

Next Friday and Saturday night, we will be serving the suckling pig at the apex of our first in house event in the wine vault, an extraordinary room downstairs that is usually only available for private functions. The menu is the same each night and includes paired wines. The dinner is limited to twelve people each night. This is a rare experience and it would be a shame to miss it.

CANAPE
Oyster with tomato and horseradish gelee
Midnight Moon gourgere with local chevre, truffle, and herb
Crisp pork rillon with fig and blue cheese
Poached farm egg yolk with piperade

SOUP
Pumpkin soup with lemon curd and pumpkin seed oil

PIGGY
Whole roasted suckling pig
Warm, house made apple sauce with pan drippings
House made guanciale braised Brussels sprouts, turnips, and carrots with Saba
Watercress, cheddar, walnut, pear, and pickled red onion salad with walnut vinaigrette
Celery root mash

DESSERT
Warm apple charlotte with rum raisin ice cream and Blis "Elixir"

Click here for more details, or to book a seat. Space is extremely limited.

Mangalitsa Spuma

We've been having lots of fun with our 200+ pound Mangalitsa hog that came in last Friday.  One of the most unusual things we have right now is the spuma that Brandon made on Saturday.  We've talked a lot about how to get people to eat this, how to describe it so it will be appealing to our guests, but the fact is that what we have here is whipped pork fat.  Very delicious, high in unsaturated fats and linoleic acid, whipped pork fat.  After rendering the lard into liquid fat and straining out the solids (which Brandon salted and ate for the rest of the day like popcorn) the fat was cooled and then whipped in our big Hobart mixer.  We spread it on bread and eat it like butter.  Even well chilled it spreads easily and I really have to tell you that it is delicious.  You've been putting fat on bread all your life, so don't feel weird about this, come down to Reserve and we will give you some for free.  While supplies last of course.  We'll be cutting into the Mangalitsa ham that we got from Johnston County Hams this week too.  It's going to be a good week for pork here.

PigStock TC: Day One

Reader beware; the following may include content offensive to vegetarians and misinformed PETA advocates.

Cute furry happy piggy. Even without fur and you'd still have a happy piggy, and a happy piggy is a tasty piggy. The Mangalitsa hogs at Mark Baker's farm (Baker's Green Acres) in Marion, MI are in fact both furry and happy...and I can attest to their being very tasty.

At the beginning of the month, some two dozen chefs and other food professionals, including Brian Polcyn, assembled in Traverse City for an event called PigStock. This was the first meeting of its' kind in Michigan. The events to unfold included going to the farm for the slaughter and processing of a few hogs, followed by the preparation of the animals over the next two days. Master butcher and President of the Austrian Mangalitza Breeders' Association will take the group through the technique of seam butchery along with his wife Isabell. Isabell will assist in the slaughter and by showing us (among other things) various preparations of the internal organs the following day. Blood sausage and spleen on toast? Polcyn inflating a bladder with a drinking straw? Damn straight.

Day one, 6:30am

We assemble outside the Bayshore Resort and load onto a charter bus to head out to Baker's farm in Marion. The sky is dark and it's cold... bitter cold. With the exception of a few calling in orders for their restaurants by the light of their cell phones, the atmosphere is fairly quiet.

We arrive a little over an hour later and are in the immediate presence of the Mangalitsa pen. The smell of smoke is in the air from a few fires burning close by. Even with a hard frost over the area the pigs are playful and happily trudging through foot-deep mud filled with shards of ice poking through. They are curious about us and come to the fence, offering some great pictures, and then take off running, ears flopping and giving chase to each other.

It was not long after we arrived that we all headed into a winter chicken house converted for our use during the event. We had breakfast and introduced ourselves and our purpose for being there and went outside to get to work. Fires were lit under a large cast iron cauldron and an old cast iron bath tub, heating water for scalding the pigs after the slaughter. Mark gives a demonstration of the use of the captive bolt stunner and then divides us into groups.

Enter the Weisners: Christoph and Isabell. Christoph and Isabell demonstrate the first pig to be slaughtered. The first pig is led up a ramp and arrives at a dead end to find Christoph waiting and Mark directly behind. Christoph fires the stunner just north of between the eyes and the pig drops instantly. They hastily remove a metal pole serving as a barricade and pull the pig out. Christoph turned the pig on his side and pierced the throat with a slender knife and severed the jugular artery. Isabell was quick to catch the blood with a bowl securing our supply for blood sausage and red headcheese in the days to come. Still atop the pig he explained you must take hold of the front leg and pump it back and forth to aid with the proper and complete bleeding out of the animal. Start to finish, maybe 5 minutes. Probably less than that. While we wait for nervous activity to cease, Isabell retrieves a bag of pine pitch; dehydrated powdered sap that she dusts and works into the fur on all sides. With some of the water from the scalding pot dumped on the pig and the pitch applied, they hoist the pig up and into the bathtub for scalding, 170F. Lying across the tub are two chains, used for initiating the removal of the fur by resting the pig on top of them and with a sawing motion the chains catch the fur now sticky from the pitch and begin to pull it off. After a few moments of the chains the pig is lifted out of the bathtub and placed on a ladder over the tub and the bell scrapers are used to finish the job.

While Christoph and Isabell wrapped up the scraping Mark moved a front-end loader closer toward the site. Once the scalding and scraping was accomplished, Christoph took a large propane torch and singed off all the remaining hair. Nothing like the smell of burning hog bristles in the morning. It was now time to eviscerate and split the pig.

Christoph tied the pigs feet and threw the bindings over the front of the tractor and Mark lifted the front end up to bring the pig to a workable height. Christoph began with some introductory score marks to line his path and began cutting. First, the removal of the bung and bladder was shown. The removal of the viscera and specific instructions as to the cutting to avoid damaging the organs was thoroughly explained and demonstrated with a few different approaches. After the organs were taken he removed the tongue and used a meat saw to halve the pig, finishing the job with a cleaver half way through the head.

Following Christoph and Isabell's demo, the groups took turns following their example and processed 3 additional pigs. Eric Patterson of The Cooks' House had prepared dinner for us using the first pig and it was delicious. The last job finished up at around 6 pm if I remember correctly and shortly after we loaded back into the bus and headed back for TC.

The ride back was an unexpected surreal experience. People had known each other better by the end, engaging in conversations about the events that had taken place throughout the day. Nearly all of us had shared a new experience for the first time together and we were all excited about the days to come. The clouds in the western sky burned amber on the way back blending perfectly with the fall leaves and the smell of the fires clung tightly to our clothes. This was such an appropriate, even perfect setting for the onset of the traditional pig killing season, and the end to an amazing day.

Headcheese 2

Sorry for the delay in posting. I know the legions of head cheese fanatics have been waiting with bated breath. For the rest of you Grand Rapidians still on the fence and letting this headcheese go disregarded on Reserve's shelves, let me assure you again that you are missing something truly outstanding. Headcheese is one of the most enjoyable ways to make use of the whole beast, an ethic every carnivore should probably feel at least a little compelled to embrace. But believe me, it's not difficult, not as scary and weird as you might think. So take a chance. You'll be glad you did.

For those who make charcuterie, headcheese is also challenging and incredibly fun, the kind of fun you find in Halloween. A little dark and disturbed. Wrong but so right.

This deliciously macabre photo was taken after our brined pig's head spent several hours on the stove simmering in an intense broth of pork stock and aromatic vegetables, herbs and spices. Brandon is picking off the flavorful and tender meat and the broth has gone back on the stove to reduce. One thing we learned from trial and error is that head cheese is at its best when no outside gelatin is added. Instead, we reduce the cooking liquid and add additional pork skin to the pot to make our own gelatin and intensify the head's natural flavor. The gelatin content is important in binding the pieces of lean meat together in the finished sausage. To help matters along a bit more, the cooked skin is scraped clean of fat, finely ground and added to the mix.

When the stock is sufficiently reduced we add it to the lean and skin and pack the whole mess into a large casing. The casing is tensioned to fill it as tightly as possible then hung to chill and thoroughly set overnight. Two days is better. The longer the rest, the more mature and cohesive the flavor becomes.

When head cheese is made properly, when each detail has been attended to carefully, it can be sliced paper thin and this is how we like it best. When eaten, it yields without protest, melting almost instantly and releasing waves of flavor. No pork tenderloin can hold a candle to it.

The Importance of Paul Bertolli

I have a lot of cookbooks that I don't use. I have maybe ten that I've actually used in the last year, of which there are three or four that I consider indispensable. Cooking by Hand by Paul Bertolli is far and away the number one book on my list. This is a cookbook that actually brings tears to my eyes. I am really struggling trying to figure out a way to tell you what this book means to me. It has great recipes, but also philosophy, essays, ideas, resources, and techniques. More than any other book I have come across it will teach you how to cook. It will teach you how to think about food. It will teach you how to live a better life. Skip the self-help section at the bookstore, just pick this up and go to your kitchen.

Bertolli presents a culinary philosophy of food made by hand, with care and attention to detail. Bertolli on pears:

To neglect a pear on the table and then return to find it ripe days later is merely a lucky coincidence. But to keep a pear in mind as it ripens is to practice cooking in its simplest form. It is through such observance of any food from the point of purchase throughout its preparation and later in the act of eating itself, that cooking is purged of lapses of attention, imposed formula, impatience, or expediency. Like a fresco restored to its former glory, food reveals what we wish for or remember it to be.

Why is Bertolli important? He articulates what we have in our hearts here at Reserve, and he does it more eloquently than I, at least, am capable of. Cooking starts in the mind, with thinking about the ingredients, trying to understand how best to reveal their essence, before we ever get to the part of shaping them with steel and with fire. We pay attention to food, we buy the best ingredients and we strive to honor them. It's simple and it's very complicated. We take our time and we cook with our hands.

Reserve & 1913 Room: two views into the kitchen

I grew up in Kalamazoo, about an hour south of Grand Rapids, and up until I started working at Reserve I had been up here maybe five or six times in my life. So I don't necessarily know all the cool things to do in this town, but I bet I can tell you one cool thing that you haven't done yet.

We're in the Windquest building on the corner of Monroe and Lyon. Directly across Lyon from us is another great and completely different restaurant, the 1913 Room in the Amway Grand. I know that there is a good chance you've been to either our restaurant or theirs, but what you probably don't know is that if you walk halfway down Lyon St you can look into the windows of both of our kitchens and see the chefs at work.

This is the view into the 1913 Room's kitchen.This is the view into Reserve's kitchen. That's Tyler looking at the camera, me with my back to the camera, and Ed off in the distance. Thanks Blair for the pictures.

I think it's really cool to be able to get a behind the scenes glimpse into the hearts of these two restaurants. There are not a lot of place where you can do that. The best time to come down would be on a busy Friday or Saturday night when the kitchens are working hard. Start over at the 1913's window, come across the street and take a peek at us, then come inside Reserve and warm up with a glass of wine and some pork belly.

Home Made Hot Sauce

The picture above was taken about a month ago. This is a collection of Thai chili, cherry bomb, habenero, serrano, and jalapeno peppers. The jalapenos and serranos were segregated and the red and orange chilis were ground and tossed with a generous amount of garlic, salt, and a little vodka, and were set aside to ferment. Adding salt to vegetables causes the onset of lactic fermentation, the same biological process at work in Kosher pickles or sauerkraut, producing a pleasant tang and causing a host of complex flavors and aromas to develop. Fermentation is one of my very favorite ways we manipulate food. It gives us spirits, wine and beer, dry cured sausages, cheese, bread, soy sauce and miso...all the things I love to eat most. It can be tricky to control and early efforts often end in failure, but when it works, remarkable things happen.

Here we are a month later, bottled and ready to burn. After fermenting, the sauce was pureed and strained and a little cider vinegar was added. It has a great tang, a ton of garlic, and a fairly generous amount of heat thanks to our friend the habenero. Not so spicy that the full flavor of fermentation and the character of the peppers is obscured.

This process mimics the one used in making Tabasco, thought theirs takes three years and happens in wooden barrels. One day...

Stop into Reserve and check it out with some oysters. Right now we have Kumomoto, Fanny Bay, and Misty Point. The Misty Points are from Chesapeake Bay, are a bit salty, and have a celery like flavor. Perfect vehicle for hot sauce.

Intrepid Sous Chef

This Sunday our charcutier/sous chef Brandon Sturm heads to Traverse City to attend Pigstock, a three day homage to the Mangalitsa, an endangered Central European "wooly" hog that is now being brought back to prominence by a few aficionados. The event features slaughter, butchery, and processing of six hogs at Baker's Green Acres Farm where they were raised. Christof and Isabel Wiesner will lead a tutorial on seam butchery and the group will proceed with charcuterie production led by luminaries Rey Knight, of Knight Salumi Company in San Diego, and Michigan's own Brian Polcyn, author of Charcuterie, The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing and chef owner of Forest Grill in Birmingham, Michigan.

Stay tuned for Brandon's posts and photos from the event.

Chorizo Verde

Sometimes you find things when you least expect them... Chorizo Verde is such an example.

Over the summer, before Reserve was any concern of mine, I had taken employment at a Holland restaurant offering Latin American inspired dishes. Not any one particular region was a focus, but took elements from Central and South America, Cuba as well. I chose this style of cooking as a change of pace knowing it would only be temporary. The restaurant was in the wake of the departure of their chef, and the menu stayed nearly static for my three month stay. The food and the concept quickly became only work, petty tasks, and my enthusiasm fizzled. I noticed that many of the employees (a safe 90% Hispanic) would not typically eat from the menu, instead making dishes they knew from their homes and were never very similar to what we were putting out in the dining room. Already a fan of chorizo and an active home sausage maker, I brought in a few pounds of a chorizo I had been fine tuning. Nearly all of my co-workers were surprised, and delighted. Even while they had exposed me to many things concerning their food culture, none were making their own sausage, and only a few had relatives that did. El Popular was the brand of choice.. I never did try it but they said there was no point for me to do so if I was able to make what I had brought in.

Over the following two months until I had left the restaurant, I continued to take food education and culture in from my co-workers. We would talk about Mexico and the atmosphere of the villages in the morning from the tortillerias; the smell of hot masa filling the air for hours. Debates over whose grandmother made the best chalupas or tamales never ran out of steam. I learned a little Spanish, I ate what they put in front of me, and over time was able to eat habaneros like a jalapeno. Ialso came to understand the chile/heat aspect of their food as well, a topic for another discussion however.

My interest re-ignited, yet my prime interest stayed with sausage, and charcuterie. Does Mexico have charcuterie? Would a climate with no harsh winters need to develop this type of food preservation? My search for an answer took a little while, necessitating a full departure from English speaking websites. Indeed there are techniques, and more than I would have thought. Truly inspired now, my search lead me down the road to an odd chorizo I hadn't seen or heard of before. Chorizo verde de Toluca. A specialty of the region of the same name. I asked my friends at work the next day, no one heard of it. This was perfect! It was also very vague and confusing. Translation problems and the obscurity of the recipe made interpretation a challenge. I had spent countless hours on the internet, gone to several supermercados in the Holland area, inquiring and investigating. In the end, it took several formulations, lots of willing taste-testers, and some clever sourcing when I figured out what I wanted.

At the end of August I said goodbye to that job and my good friends that had played an important role in my new discoveries that I never expected to make. Good food can and will be found everywhere, and if you keep your eyes open and remain receptive to new ideas, they will present themselves. Chorizo verde was a souvenir I took from a time and place where I was not entirely happy and not excited by the food I was making. Today that chorizo is available on our menu, paired happily with Manila clams. I'd make the claim it is at its best right now, largely composed of ingredients found at the Fulton St. Farmers Market. The best cilantro I've ever used, a unique pumpkin from Trillium Farms that forms hull-less seeds, spicy serrano chiles, and Visser spinach fresh from the ground. It's a good time for chorizo verde, and an even better time for you to come to Reserve and make some new discoveries for yourself.

Kitchen Experiments: 2 out of 3 ain't bad

I was feeling experimental tonight and had a few ideas kicking around in my head so I tried some out:

1) Rosemary candy - we've been garnishing our pain perdu with a sprig of rosemary, but I've been wanting to change to an edible garnish so I made some caramel, mixed in a bunch of rosemary, let it set on a silpat, and sprinkled on fleur de sel. It had great rosemary flavor but I realized it would be impossible to eat on the dish, hard candy stuffed with rosemary sprigs, what was I thinking? I smashed it up, threw it in the food processor and ground it to a powder. Sprinkled on top of brown butter ice cream it is delicious.

2) Speaking of brown butter...Chef has been talking about a brown butter sauce for our agnolotti for a few days trying to figure out a makeover for this dish. It got me wondering if I could make brown butter pasta. So between tickets tonight, Tyler, Sean, and I made a fresh pasta dough (3 parts flour, 2 parts egg. Thanks Michael Ruhlman). We browned a pound of delicious Mooville butter, strained it through a cone filter, and mixed all the solids into the pasta dough. I have to say I'm proud of this one, it turned out really well.

3) Another experiment inspired by Chef Millar...He mentioned one day that American country hams like the Benton's that we serve at our charcuterie bar were developed purely for preservation purposes. The dry aging process allowed the ham to be put up for a long time, but unlike their European cousins, American country hams were usually re-hydrated by soaking in several changes of water and then baked just like a wet-cured ham. So, I figured I'd try that out. I took a leftover chunk too small for our slicer and soaked it for about a week, changing the water once a day. All that really has to be said is that it may be a great method for preservation, but I'd rather eat my Benton's sliced paper-thin on our hand cranked Berkel than re-hydrated and baked.

End of Service on a Saturday Night

A few years ago my wife and I went to LA to visit some of her family. We were lucky enough to be there at the same time as a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks who were creating a sand mandala at an art museum. If you've never seen this, it's an amazing thing. There were 3 or 4 monks working at a time placing grains of colored sand in an intricate pattern on a low table probably 5 feet across. It was beautiful and astonishing. They had been working at it already for two days when we saw it. At the end of the week, when the design was finished and everything was filled in, they would brush it all away to demonstrate the impermanence of life and the world we live in. Nothing lasts forever.

This is exactly what working in the kitchen of a professional restaurant feels like to me. We work really hard to create something extraordinary that only exists for a very short time. In creating and preparing those dishes we learn about food, our craft, and each other. We create a community in the kitchen and in the dining room. We leave only a memory of something that will never exist in quite the same way again.

Michigan Olives?

Over the course of the next few weeks, we will be trying our hand at making cracked green olives. These are raw, uncured olives, right from the tree (no, not from Michigan) which in their current state are inedible. They are extremely bitter and soapy tasting. We cracked them open a bit with the end of a rolling pin and have them soaking in water to leach out the bitter phenols and soften the fruit. The water gets changed twice a day and in a week or so we start tasting, stopping the process when the olives have a pleasant bit of bitterness left, then they'll get moved to a salt brine with whatever flavors we choose. Right now we're thinking garlic, rosemary, preserved lemon, dried chili...

Going through the labor of making your own olives has several rewards. One, you start to understand them better by being hands on, getting to know what makes them what they are. This can help you judge the quality of other olives, speak more intelligently about them, and inform how you would serve or cook them. It also gives you complete control over their flavor profile and connects you to the history and tradition of a food that was at one time always hand made.

Look for these to make a brief appearance on Reserve's menu in about a month.

An Unfortunate Barbeque

Heard through the grapevine that the Iberico we've been waiting on had some trouble with customs. Apparently the size of the hock or some such nonsense was outside the parameters deemed acceptable to U.S. customs officials and they were denied entry, taken off the boat and lit on fire!

Don't know for a fact that's true (couldn't reach the importer today to verify), that's just what I heard.

For those not in the loop, we brought in four Iberico hams for the first couple of weeks we were open. This is a very special dry cured ham from Spain that some consider the king of charcuterie and we were thrilled to have it. The hams are rare and expensive, made on a very small scale. We decided to bring more in as they sold well and people loved it, even at its premium price, but have been waiting. Apparently we will wait a bit longer.

Would be a shame if something so rare and exceptional suffered such a fate at the hands of an out of control bureaucracy.

Headcheese 1

This little piggy went swimmin' in a brine.

One of the things I love best about charcuterie is its embracing of the stranger bits. In fact, charcuterie really requires it. The art of making sausages, terrines and pates, and other things from the "less desirable" cuts probably got into full swing when the peasantry, who worked the land, got what was left from a hog after the nobility, who owned it, got the prime cuts for roasting or grilling. Farmers were poor as a matter of course, which meant no scrap went uneaten. The ability to cook with such skill that lungs and spleens and tongues and snouts were enjoyable is a testament to the skill, resilience, and cunning of the working poor. What's more, that skill was so finely honed through the generations that the products they inspired are held in very high regard by many people whose financial means don't necessitate the consumption of odds and ends.

Like most chefs these days, I love varietal meats, or offal. They offer cooks the opportunity to explore bolder flavors and less familiar textures and many culinary techniques that  aren't widely used with other cuts. Headcheese is one such opportunity, though to speak true, the flavor and texture of headcheese is not always challenging. Really, it's a collection of lean and very flavorful meats bound by a flavorful gel that's created during its long, slow cooking. It tastes more "porky" than pretty much anything else you can make with the animal, is literally meltingly tender, and visually stunning.

Making headcheese is a labor of love, and for Brandon and me, a badge of honor. It's not always a hot seller, so opportunities to make it have been few and far between. Over the years we have made some very good ones, but we finally feel like we've gotten it down. It's a procedure that takes a couple of weeks and requires a lot of attention, fraught with potential pitfalls at every turn. Stay tuned over the course of the next two weeks to see the stages of its production.

Headcheese begins with the curing of a whole pig's head, this one, as you can see, in brine, with a ton of aromatics: onion, garlic, celery, bay leaf, clove, juniper, pepper, mace, just to name a few. An aggressive spice profile is typical in headcheese, usually incorporated at several different stages. We are a bit more reserved in that department. We think the great thing about this sausage is the full flavor of pork and wish to keep that in the forefront.

Thanks again to Nathan Creswick for the pig.

Truffle Terrine

This terrine represents a lot about what I love best in cooking. Black truffles for one. They are one of my very favorite foods, but can be one of the most frustrating. They can vary wildly in quality from week to week, region to region, season to season, and given the very fragile nature of their flavor and aroma, can arrive in an American kitchen several thousand miles from their home in very poor condition. Not so with these beauties from Burgundy. They were pristine, full flavored and packed with that signature aroma that says truffle and only truffle. This aroma can be difficult to describe to the uninitiated. Yes, it is powerfully earthy, maybe mushroomy, reminiscent of the woods in Fall, but, the fact is, nothing else on earth smells like a black truffle and it must be experienced to be understood.

The black truffle has been too greatly associated with haute cuisine. To me it represents French country cooking with every fiber of its being. It elevates simple ingredients, like pork or chicken, without taking them out of their context. There is a rough edge wrapped around an elegant heart, like Greta Garbo smoking. Take away that cigarette and Garbo is not Garbo anymore. Anyway...

So, we got these great truffles and needed to do something to show them off. We poached them sous vide very slowly in some butter, garlic, shallot, bay leaf and thyme and decided to put them into a chicken terrine. Nathan Creswick has been providing us with outstanding chickens lately, very full flavored birds and they were the perfect vehicle. We took the skin off the birds in one piece and used it to line a terrine. The meat from the bird was diced and we added the truffle, some roasted garlic, and salt and let it stand overnight to marry those flavors. The meat was packed tightly into the terrine and roasted slowly until cooked, then weighted in the cooler overnight. The following day revealed another of my favorite moments in cooking: when four simple ingredients and a very straightforward but carefully executed technique produce something truly soul satisfying. Complex, but clear and recognizable flavors, flavors that have been paired together in this fashion for generations, soft, supple textures, and an immediate release of joy when it hits the palate. Simple food is often deceiving. The ability to turn four great ingredients into something remarkable is much more difficult than drawing from an unedited pantry and is the real mark of skill in the kitchen. I wish to cook like this everyday and maybe someday I will.

2 from the menu: Burrata and Roasted Peppers & Cider Braised Pork Belly

Cider braised pork belly
pear sauce, parsnip, kale, Concord grape aigre doux

This one has been on Reserve's menu since we opened. The pork belly was raised by our friend and farmer Nathan Creswick. We braise it all day long in Michigan apple cider we picked up at the Holland Farmer's Market. We finish it in our deep fryer that is full of 100% lard (Yes, really. You should try the french fries we make for ourselves, and no they aren't likely to make it to the menu anytime. Just chef snacks late at night.) Served on top of caramel pear sauce, kale and parsnips, with Concord grape aigre doux. This food traveled less to get here than our chef does.



Burrata
Roasted bell peppers a la grecque, Blis 9 year old Solera sherry vinegar

How do you replace a dish that you loved but is now past its prime? We said farewell to heirloom tomatoes on Saturday and took our best selling salad off the menu. We built a new dish around the burrata (a fresh mozzarella with a liquid cream center) that Giles from the Great American Cheese Collection in Chicago sends us. This exceptional cheese was featured on our heirloom tomato salad. Originally we were going to move on to a beet salad and had all kinds of plans and prototypes in the works. In the end we decided to put beets on hold until we can pair them with some good citrus, maybe blood orange or kumquat...and beets will be around for months to come.

After a few hours of throwing around ideas during service Saturday night, and a gin & tonic, we arrived at our new salad. We have preserved a taste of late summer by marinating roasted bell peppers in olive oil, lemon, capers, and oregano. It's all topped with a splash of Blis 9 year old Solera sherry vinegar. This is an amazing vinegar, by the way, aged in bourbon barrels that have previously been used to infuse the maple syrup that we serve on our pain perdu. It picks up all that bourbon and maple flavor as it sits in those barrels for a year.

We have a few more new menu items rolling out this week including some Rushing Waters trout, quail with rabbit sausage, and a roasted breast of rose veal. Art Prize is over so you can find a place to park now.

Thanks to our talented cooks B. Fouch, Scott Luecht, and Brandon Jones for making these dishes tonight and taking the pictures.

Hello out there

I'm Matthew.
A few weeks ago the doors opened at Reserve, a wine bar in Grand Rapids, Michigan with me at the helm in the kitchen. In tow are Brandon Sturm and Matt Green, our charcutier/butcher and sous chef respectively, long time friends and colleagues. The aim here is to tell the story of our kitchen: the trials of running a restaurant (the toilet in our employee bathroom is currently filled with hot water, an issue that took a day or two to notice, a day to believe it was actually happening, and god knows how long to fix), the joys of working with our suppliers and products, and what we are doing in the kitchen to tell their story.

Before coming to Reserve, I was owner of a restaurant called Journeyman in Fennville with my wife Amy. The name came from the stages of craftsmanship: novice, who learns basic skills related to his trade, apprentice, who studies under a master to hone his skills, journeyman, who goes out into the world to find his identity and purpose as it relates to his craft, and master, who knows enough to at least say he knows it all. I don't think it is possible to have mastery in food and cooking. There is too much to know and the field changes too quickly. Being a journeyman, being in the world and consciously absorbing what it has to teach you, that is rewarding.

At Journeyman we decided from the beginning that the food that came from the farms a stones throw away from us was of infinitely better quality than what we could source from an institutional food service provider and that sourcing from them would be the cornerstone of our culinary philosophy. We expanded that idea to include small scale cheese makers and other artisans from around the country and had some success getting noticed because of it. Ever since, the careful sourcing of high quality foods from smaller, hands on farms and producers has remained of primary importance in my kitchens.

I believe that foods that have a good story behind them actually taste better. That context is real, and luckily the powers that be behind Reserve believe that too. So over the coming years, we will search out and visit new farms and reconnect with old ones, learn new techniques and refine old, taste wine (and beer, and gin, and Irish whiskey...), dig vegetables, butcher pork, eat, talk shop with fellow chefs, and whatever else we can think of to help fuel our understanding of the culinary and agricultural character of West Michigan.