La Bocca Lunchers - Tasting #1

We're just about 15 hours away from our first menu tasting. (Very exciting - and a little nervewracking to boot.) We decided to enlist my co-workers (and their stomachs) at the dot-com where I work to preview and provide feedback on some potential menu items for La Bocca. Patrick and I headed down to Pike Place Market on Saturday, followed by a quick stop at the grocery store, to select the ingredients we'd need. And, then Sunday, we set to work creating the dishes. You'd think that after working at a restaurant six days out of every week, cooking on his day off (even if it is for our little dream of opening our own place) would be the last thing Patrick would want to do. Not so. He would truly rather cook than pretty much anything else. And, on Sundays, it just means he gets to cook whatever he wants. The tasting menu for tomorrow consists of:

• Warm goat cheese and hazelnut salad with a puttanesca dressing


• Roasted mushroom lasagna (with porcinis, morels, and creminis)
  
• Handmade ricotta-stuffed ravioli with a spicy crab and spinach vodka sauce


• Mushroom soy marinated flank steak (yes, we revisited this tasty marinade)


• Flourless chocolate cake with raspberries

The challenge is trying to re-heat this all for tomorrow and transport it to my office. Fortunately, I don't have a long commute. So, I'll be making a mad dash home around lunchtime to warm everything up and get it back to the La Bocca Lunchers while it's still nice and toasty. Somehow, I don't think the Easy Bake Oven we call a microwave in our office kitchen is going to do the trick.

Hoping this first round will be a hit.

Sunday Dinner and the Porcini

We just finished eating one of the most tender steaks I have ever cooked and I am going to tell you about the preparation.

You will need a few items that you may or may not have in your kitchen but they are easy to locate if you don't have them.

Coffee grinder: I keep one for coffee and one for herbs and mushrooms.

Mushroom flavored soy: Most good grocery stores will carry it. The Asian markets will have 4-6 different varieties, experiment to decide which one you like best.

Dried mushrooms: You can find these at almost any grocery store's produce department. I like to use a blend but any combination will do.

Mushroom Marinade:

1/2 cup mushroom flavored soy

1 tablespoon finely ground mushroom powder

1 teaspoon olive oil

2 cloves garlic minced

cracked black pepper

Combine all ingredients in non-reactive bowl and mix well. Let sit for 15-20 minutes. Rub on desired protein and refrigerate for a few hours.

I purchased some porcinis at the Pike Place Market from Frank's Produce and a couple of tenderloins from Fero's also at the PPM.

When you are ready to plate, get a medium saute pan fairly hot. Add some olive oil, just enough to coat the bottom of the saute pan, we don't want to deep fry the steaks. Let the oil heat up and then sear the steaks. We like ours medium rare. So depending on the thickness of your steak it could be a couple of seconds each side or a couple of minutes. How you like it is how you should have it done.

Put a small amount of risotto (or whatever side you choose) slightly off center on the plate. Add the tenderloins on the side of the risotto slightly overlapping or on top of each other depending what suits your fancy. We have some red wine demi glace in our freezer so that along with some sauteed porcinis made for a beautiful rich sauce. Then to really take it up I mounted the sauce with foie gras mousse and black truffle oil.

I hope you get the chance to try it out and like the new pics we posted of the meal.

An Obssesion

No this will not be an advertisement for perfume, there will be no man with six pack abs fawning over an anorexic female in black and white.

This is a peek into my obsession with food. Flipping through a food magazine , I found an article on Porcinis. Now I love mushrooms almost all of the edible ones to be exact. Not real fond of shitakes for some reason. They taste to much like dirt for me. Just one of those things.

Well on Sunday, my day off, I'm thinking of porcinis and how I can really up the mushroom component of or Sunday dinner. It's Wednesday and I am already planning the Sunday supper. Now I call Frank's and find out the price of the prized fungus. A good price for the Pike Place Market, but I'll get a little discount, remember relationships. I'll swing over to the meat market for some beef tenderloin or flatiron, something tender that will be the perfect foil for the mushrooms. I'm thinking risotto, herbs and wine or maybe some of the porcinis to this. We have some foie gras mousse in the freezer. I'll probably use the mousse to mount the sauce. Oxtail jus reduction with lots of red wine. As I'm working all this in my head I remember using a mushroom flavored soy with some pork that was delicious. What about a paste with mushroom soy, garlic and mushroom powder. Really push the flavors. Now for the vegetable and salad components. Lydia loves salads, especially Caesars. Maybe I'll do something with goat cheese. I saw a recipe the other day that really got me juiced up.

It's late spring early summer so maybe some zucchini blossoms with an asparagus mousse or a slightly grilled vegetable medley. I'll figure out some of the other components when I get to the market.

Even though I'm at work and doing a specific style of food my mind is always working on the next meal I'm trying to cook for us. Luckily I only get one day off or we would be spending every extra dime on extravagant meals.

Hopefully we can post some pictures after dinner Sunday night.

On Relationships

Whether it be family, friends, romantic or business, a good relationship is the basis for a successful endeavor. Any relationship takes work -- to build it with a strong base and a foundation of trust.

The partnership/relationship Lydia and I have formed is one that started out as a romantic endeavor. As we have nourished and worked at our relationship, love has blossomed and bloomed from two lonely flowers into a rose garden.

As for some of our other relationships, they may have begun as small friendships or business transactions, but they grew into unfailing devotion. Take Frank's Produce in Pike Place Market, for example. I started using his services while I was the chef at The Red House in Renton. We wanted to use more local and seasonal produce and the major supplier couldn't get local at a reasonable price. It started slowly -- a few things here and there. Then, I was making a trip to the Market each week to see what was fresh and in season. Soon, Frank was calling a day or two before I placed my order each week to let me know what was new and fresh. Even though I have moved on to a different restaurant, I still shop at Frank's for personal use and experiments for La Bocca.

I know we have spoken at length about using local, organic -- the small producer -- but I also have developed a relationship with Chuck P. from Sysco. Before you condemn me for using the "big guy," read the article in the April '09 Saveur by Indrani Sen titled "Greener Giant: Can an Emblem of Industrialized Food Also Stand for Sustainability?" This is a great piece and if you get a chance, check it out.

It points out several reasons for my devotion to this specific person and the company he represents. Chuck is not just a sales rep; he is a student of the restaurant business. He is always happy to show me new products or bring me samples of interesting food stuffs. If for whatever reason I need something on the fly or I ran our (or just plain forgot to order it), he won't hesitate to bring it out to me. Not all reps are as willing to go above and beyond, especially when it's my mistake, but Chuck never gives it a second thought to run me out something, even if it's small. Chuck has built this relationship and has earned my loyalty.

I'd like to tell you about my current kitchen staff as well. They are a couple of young men who have become an indispensable part of my daily life. We started out a little shaky, not really sure if we could trust each other. But, the three of us have grown into an inseparable team. We work as one with very little conversation. They know I'm not going to ask them to do something I wouldn't do myself. Our relationship is built on the trust that I will do what I promise and so will they. I will not let them get in over their heads and will teach them as much as possible, and in turn, I trust my boys to do their best, show up on time and do as I ask.

So, to bring this all back to La Bocca -- essentially, we want all who work with us, from the sales reps to the dishwashers to the front-of-the-house staff to feel invested in our unique relationship to our customers. We want our restaurant to feel like a family or maybe a friend's home where dad is a really good cook and there are always leftovers. We want to be able to greet our customers by name, to know their likes and dislikes. And, we want every new relationship we form to add to our ever-growing circle of friends.

New Network

We have been doing a lot more "networking" over the last few days. Not on purpose mind you but through happy accidents and social events with lots of folks who are friends of friends and new neighbors. It seems that lately we are in more and more situations in which we can talk about the restaurant. Whether we are being out in social settings more often or "WE" have a voice instead of just "me" having a voice, I'm not sure.

My other thought is that Lydia is such a huge advocate of our dream. This is not to say that I don't want the same things, but she has more of a voice. Her marketing ideas and sense are what is going to get people in the door and my food is what will hopefully bring them back.

I also would like to point out that Lydia helps to keep me focused. Working 60 or 70 hours a week in a kitchen that doesn't belong to you makes things a little difficult. Coming home to do research and work on the computer is not always the first thing I think of when I walk through the door.

With Lydia's encouragement it doesn't seem like such a daunting task. Plus with the growing community of people checking in on Facebook and Twitter to see what we are doing, I want everyone to get as excited as we are, so that when we do get open we will have everyone clamoring for our pasta.

Thoughts on a Menu

I have been thinking about posting some sample menus just to get some ideas about a menu up so that folks can see where my head is. But, the more I thought about it and the more I wanted to create, the more I thought about space, time, heat and storage. It's great to be able to create in a vacuum, but what is difficult is to create beautiful, delicious food that is easily finished ala minute (at the last minute) and efficiently plated, then reproduced quickly for the next order if need be.

You can formulate and plan, trying to figure out the best setup for your station, mise en place (how to place the ingredients within your reach) but until the kitchen is in place, putting it together in your head, without the true crush of service is an exercise in futility.

Another complication, albeit minor is the issue of storage/cooler space. The kitchen we are looking at is very small. The entire restaurant is, in fact, small -- just under 900 square feet. So getting small enough pack sizes that will still be enough to get by may be an issue we will need to deal with at some time in the future.

Bitter Twitterer

UPDATE: Kim to the rescue... You can now see La Bocca tweets from Twitter on the right side of the page. Thanks, Kim!
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You'd think doing something like adding a feed of your Twitter updates to your blog would be simple. I see other people doing it. Supposedly, I'm supposed to know a thing or two about social media and Web marketing, that being my profession and everything. For the life of me, though, I can't figure out how to get a feed of La Bocca tweets on this blog. I found a few options but none of them are really great in terms of format.

I know there's probably one out there that everyone knows about (except me). If you're a Twitter expert and have any ideas, give a shout. For now, I think I'm going to drown my social networking sorrows in leftover bolognese.

I do think I managed to get these blog updates to post to Twitter though. One success for the day.