Straight from the farm (not the stuff in the glass fruit bowl)

Homemade Pizza

Pizza!!!

One of my favorite things to make.

Great Chef's Event

Held at Osteria in Philadelphia every year, this event brings together a slew of awesome chefs, mostly from Philadelphia, to benefit Alex's Lemonade Stand. Alex, by the way, went to my school.

Each chef has a station and gives out a small dish to the attendees. My favorite dish of the night was Michael Symon's pork belly and halloumi. List of chefs that attended can be found here.

Morimoto's citrus-cured hamachi. The fish was pristine; extremely fresh.

Michael Symon's pork belly with halloumi and pickled watermelon maybe? Best dish of the night in my opinion, but with anything containing pork belly, the objectivity of my opinion is in question.

A few chefs came all the way from Italy! They made this pasta with cured egg yolk.

Chef's from Arrows restaurant in Maine made this bbq'ed duck wrap.

Grilled tuna that I didn't try, cause it's well, grilled tuna.

Jose Garces carnitas tacos.

Jeff Michaud of Osteria's grilled rabbit sausage.

Michael Solmonov of Zahav's sweetbreads wrapped in bacon- highlight of the night.

Dibruno brothers' olive oil poached scallop. This was another highlight. The scallop was barely cooked and incredibly fresh.

Blue Hill's spring pea puree with yogurt. No Dan Barber was not there, I was disappointed.

Home-Cured Canadian Bacon

Pork Loin brined in salt, brown sugar, liquid smoke, peppercorns, and garlic for three days, then cooked sous vide at 150 for about 2 hours.

Yum, delicious, tender, succulent, great eaten cold on sandwiches, even better slightly rendered in a pan.

Yummy in an omelet with garlic scapes.

Asparagus Soup

Grilled Asparagus Soup served cold with chopped almonds and extra virgin olive oil.

I grilled asparagus then pureed it with my recently-made chicken stock, lemon juice and some garlic scapes (just cause I had them on hand).

I let the mixture cool then topped with chopped almonds and a drizzle of evoo.

The soup was kinda powerful. Next time I'll add a touch of honey for some sweetness and maybe a touch of cream, just for a little enrichment. The almonds were great in the soup.

Raspberry Curd

When making the raspberry tart in the previous post, I first thought that I would just cook down the raspberries into a thick jam-like concoction to put in a tart...

This didn't work. The mixture just became too watery, and there were so many seeds! I made the decision to pass the mixture through a strainer to remove the seeds, but what to do about the thickness of the mixture.

I decided that I would risk ruining the mixture by trying to make it into a curd. Would this work? I had no idea. I had never heard of raspberry curd. I picked out a lemon curd recipe, and found that with the lemon juice and melted butter and all, there was about the same amount of liquid as I had with the watery jam. The recipe used three yolks and three eggs to thicken this liquid, so I decided to try the same. I tempered the eggs, then cooked for a few minutes, and the mixture thickened beautifully! It came to the perfect texture, and now I had no seeds to worry about.

I let the curd cool, then spread it out onto some pie dough. I folded it up into a little package and baked for 45 minutes.

Raspberry picking

And for the pickers...