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.