The Chronicles of Worth Kitchen: The Cheese, The Fig, and The Balsamic Vinegar

I must confess, keeping up with my "real" job and this blog in the past couple of weeks has become more difficult than originally planned. I do apologize for the tardiness in this post, but I will use this weekend to get up-to-date. For anyone working in advertising, I am currently in what is known as "production hell." So I have been hard at work and somewhat ignoring my blogging duties (definitely not ignoring my chef duties, I actually believe that in the past 3 dinners I have significantly stepped up my cooking, more on that in the posts to follow). And this works as a great transition to the pictures and recipes of our 14th dinner, where I ignored to place the chicken in the oven (I am sure you read about this in Tamy's post last week).

Dinner #14 was by far a fantastic success. Our guests brought something incredible to the Worth Kitchen table and the conversations lasted until the far reaching hours of the night. And even though I did neglect to put the chicken in the oven in a timely manner, the food came out excellent. It was a triple theme night as far as the kitchen is concerned, in every plate we used figs, balsamic vinegar and cheese (pasteurized cheese of course due to the fact that one of our guests was pregnant).

Our appetizer was a goat cheese stuffed fig wrapped in prosciutto sitting on a bed of arugula

This version of the salad without the prosciutto was made for Mireia our pregnant guest, but truthfully makes for a much better presentation. Once the figs are stuffed with the cheese, they are broiled for about 5 minutes with honey on top.

The famous chicken I forgot to place in the oven in time and delayed the meal by 30 minutes. It was was stuffed and rolled with mushrooms, rosemary, shallots, figs and mozzarella. The rosemary twig was used to "sew" the chicken together while in the oven.

The sauce that accompanied the chicken was a fig and balsamic reduction. The pasta was a cilantro based pasta that was definitely the most popular recipe of the night. Adam and Eric definitely requested the recipe so I have added the full recipe below. This plate is very unique and I am very proud to say that is come from Colombian origins. Very easy to make, yet the taste is something totally unexpected.

Cilantro Pasta

2 cups of chopped cilantro
1 cup of olive oil
2 tablespoons of mustard
2 egg yolks
Linguini/Spaghetti

Place chopped cilantro, mustard, egg yolks, portion of olive oil, salt & pepper into a food processor/blender. Begin to process at slow and slowly pour in the olive oil (should be a hair thin pour) sauce begins to take form and gets thick.
Cook pasta & drain. Replace hot pasta into pot and mix in cilantro sauce (pasta needs to still be hot). Sauce will cook onto the pasta.

The dessert was a frozen mascarpone and fig mixture stuffed inside a frozen (hollow) fig served with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream and balsamic reduction sauce. The result was fantastic. A definite repeat.

I want to thank all of our guests for making dinner 14 such a fantastic and memorable night.

A very special thanks to Erik for the fantastic Thank You note you wrote us.

Hope to see you all soon at another Thursday.

Even if you try, you will never be TOO ready...

...was the big learning coming out of Thursdays at Worth Street, dinner #14. After the experience of dinner #13. where I will say we "lacked organization" to keep this as free spirited as possible (it really was a bit chaotic), we decided to get a head start and do the grocery shopping as well as the dessert, one night before the dinner. This was MONUMENTAL, we were surprised at how ahead of the game we were, we felt we had it all figured out, we were ready to go, our upcoming Thursday dinner would turn out to be impeccable! It had to! We were inviting editor and creator of Tribeca Citizen, who wanted to write about us and had even asked if he could take notes and pictures. The pressure was on, and this time, I wasn’t about to use wine as a resource again (another learning from the last dinner). We also had invited Lee, the director of strategy at 360i, who I had only met once, and his wife, an art historian and now interior designer, who I was going to meet for the first time. The other two guests were good friends of ours, there to ease some of the tension and bring with them a familiar element. So there we were, Felipe and I, 7:30 PM on Thursday, already prepping for the food with dessert done and an appetizer that was almost ready to go. We couldn’t believe how little we had to do and how small the chances were that things could go wrong with the plates. To be completely honest, we had also played it a bit safe with the food, making figs and balsamic vinegar two of the overarching ingredients (how can one go wrong with figs!).

The night started out beautifully. Since we had done much of the prepping, we were able to take the time to enjoy the guests, ease drop on the conversations, contribute on the topics of discussion, and sip on the beautiful bottle of Champagne Lee had brought over. We sat down for dinner at a very reasonable hour for us (9:30!) and opened up the dinner with an appetizer that was small and perfect to open the appetite. Things were going so smoothly, I began feeling we were really starting to get a hang of this, we were discovering the right combination, the right process to go about these dinners, the perfect formula! After making some time between plates, I got up and began picking up the plates so that we could start serving the second course. And as I was almost on the last plate, I turned around to see Felipe wave to me, asking me to come closer. He had a small, mischievous smile on his face so I figured he was just as relaxed as I was, and was just enjoying the night. As I got closer to him, he asked me to get closer, close enough to whisper in my ear. As I leaned over, I heard the words which I was not expecting at all: "Honey, I forgot to put the chicken in the oven". I pulled back, we looked at each other and all of a sudden, we were both caught in an uncontrollably, non stop laugh attack. It was a nervous type of laugh, it was also a laugh of disbelief, how can that have happened! There was so little we had to do, putting the chicken in the oven was if not one of the only cooking activity, the main one for sure. After we were done laughing, I asked Felipe exactly how much more time he needed and he replied 13 minutes, which I calculated would really be about 15 to 20. So after trying to figure out what to do, we decided to just be open and honest about it. We held hands as we walked to the table, where all our guests were wondering what in the world was going on with us. Felipe sat down to deliver the confession and began with - “we got something to tell you”, which scared everyone for a moment and also made everything that came afterwards so not a big deal (good strategy Felipe!). People cheered and were happy to keep drinking and talking.

The chicken turned out tasting delicious and the night ended up being a remarkable one filled with great company, great wine and food, and great stories. We left to go to Mexico early the following morning, and the chicken became the topic of conversation. What turned out to be an ordinary stuffed chicken made it into conversations overseas, lucky chicken and lucky us!

The thread that holds everything together...

Finding a theme for any great dinner is the most important yet probably the hardest thing to do. You do not want your plates to feel random or disconnected, however making something overtly obvious is probably not your best bet either (after all this isn’t Iron Chef!). Subtlety is always the best way to go. Whether it’s a taste, and ingredient, or even a smell, keeping your foods linked is key to creating an outstanding meal.

This is a great transition to this weeks dinner. We usually try to create a theme based on the people that we have invited. This time around we had planned to have an Ecuadorian couple and her sister, which was visiting. Well with such an obvious theme, one would think that Ecuadorian food would be the continuous link, however, as mentioned above, the obvious isn’t really the best way to go. First off, I am not too sure what is the most typical Ecuadorian food, and with 3 Ecuadorians, why give them something familiar? Better serve something new and different. So with that ruled out from the get go, what would this weeks dinner be based on?

There you see me, on Wednesday night going through my collection of cooking books (not to use the recipes, but for inspiration), Alain Ducasse has some amazing books, and I will tackle his cooking soon enough, just not this week. Gaston Acurio from Peru has some amazing dishes, and his books are inspiring but I feel that last weeks use of aji amarillo would seem as if I am overdoing it on the Peruvian food. Nothing was working. I had 7 books laid out in front of me, and inspiration came through one treasure of a book from Villegas Editores called Sabor + Color (Maria Villegas). Skimming through it, I came upon a recipe for a very common dish, tuna tartar. But it was the use of the fruit that really struck a cord, and like that I found my theme for the night… fruit! The use of fruit in Latin America is very prominent so why not create dishes that revolved around fruit.

At once Tamy and I started brainstorming ideas. She had told me once of a rice with fruit that she ate in India and never ever saw again. Immediately I thought I could use the amazing Indian spices that I have and create a curry. Done a delicious Indian curry with her rice with fruit. For appetizer, a salad with aged balsamic caramelized figs and a fresh strawberry vinaigrette. It was amazing how the ideas started to roll out the second I knew what that one connection was. Our menu was set in stone and ready to go.

That very same night I got going on grinding various spices, that were brought to me from a friend and my mother’s trip to India, together to create my version of an Indian curry. Now, I do not pretend to know an authentic recipe for Indian curry, nor is the one that I will provide you with pretend to be authentic. This is just my take on a classic. So, I took a mix of spices, some of which I knew and recognized, others I had no idea what they were or called (please see picture). Placed them in my version of a mortar, a coffee cup, and began grinding them with my makeshift pestle, a caipirinha fruit masher. After about 20 minutes of grinding and a tired arm, I ended up with the red powder that I was expecting and set it aside for the night.

With the grocery list ready to go, we were set for a goodnight rest.