A Corny Labor Day Menu

For our Labor Day weekend dinner, Ann and I brainstormed a menu, then she set a beautiful table and I cooked. The result: a wonderful evening.

Cheers!

Chicharrones with Rosé to Start

Blame the menu on Michelle.

We have all had a busy summer, going here and there. Labor Day Weekend was the first time in weeks that we were all in town simultaneously, so Ann set up a dinner. And we set about creating a menu.

Michelle's gluten-intolerance was a guide in forming the menu. Avoiding gluten was a starting point rather than a serious restriction. After so many years in the restaurant creating all manner of dishes, I find that restrictions help to set limits on my imagination, help to narrow my focus.

In our back and forth about ideas for the dinner, Ann mentioned a panzanella with fresh corn. Naturally, a bread salad was out, but the corn lodged in the depths of my mind and would not be banished.

My mind started riffing on corn so much that I couldn't get to sleep for hours. Lying in bed, I had no doubt that I would cook a corn-centric dinner. Still, the possibilities seemed endless: Blue corn, white corn, yellow corn, red corn. Tortillas, sopes, corn pone. Fresh corn, dried corn, hominy. Grits, polenta, cornmeal.

Before long, what had begun as a dietary restriction had become a theme.

I imposed another restriction, too. The menu should require little last-minute cooking so that I could spend time without our guests rather than in the kitchen. This, if it is not obvious, is exactly the opposite of how we cooked at the restaurant.

Quickly, I knew I wanted to do a quick shrimp salad for an appetizer, a re-do of a salad that Ann has been much taken with since pink shrimp came on the market in mid-summer.

And oddly, I wanted a soup course. Soup is most often a family meal, not a company meal. I am sure that after a hot dry summer, the weather influenced the menu. Sudden consecutive days of cool temperatures and copious rain put out Central Oregon’s raging forest fires and powdered the disconcertingly bare Cascades with a dusting of new snow. It was odd before Labor Day to turn on the gas fireplace to temper the chill in the air—soup weather for sure.

Ann had asked me long ago to make rajas con crema for a dinner party and somehow I dredged that request out of the depths of my brain. That would make a tasty main course that I could make long before dinner and keep warm in the oven.

That left dessert. I am not a dessert guy. I make them just fine, but because I do not really eat sweets, they are hardly top of mind. At Ann's urging, I put one of my spicy sorbets into the mix. I let her suggestion of apricot-chipotle ferment for a while in my brain to see what would come of it.

With those ideas sketched out, I finally fell asleep. That's when I do my best thinking. The results come to me after I awake.

Over the next days, I sketched and refined the menu, again and again, all in my mind. I finally jotted a few things down and over time, whittled and refined, following my own mantra from the restaurant: five ingredients make a dish. If a cook wanted more ingredients, I needed to hear a great justification. I hold myself to that too.

Of all the things that I did at the restaurant, one that brought me a lot of joy was creating special menus such as those for our wine dinners. I hoped that the hours I invested in creating and revising a coherent menu would be lost on guests. They should just be able to tell that the courses flowed seamlessly and seemingly without thought.

Creating and executing our Labor Day menu let me revisit what I loved about the restaurant years without reliving the turmoil. Creating the menu let me exercise a concept that I tried to teach my line cooks over the years: theme and variation. I tried to impart to them to learn a classic dish well enough that they could create meaningful variations of their own. Executing the menu let me revisit many techniques that I developed over the years, things that satisfy chefs but guests never see. 

Back to theme and variation. They are both highly embedded in the menu, there for those who look for them, but subtle enough to let the food shine through without the obvious hand of the author.

Corn and chile became the themes.

 

Everything else was variation.

I had a great time designing the menu; it scratched an itch from the restaurant days that I did not realize needed scratching. But more importantly, I enjoyed sitting with Ann and friends over good food and good wine without being tied to the kitchen.

Pink Shrimp Salad

There are lots of ways to add corn to a shrimp salad ranging from mixing charred kernels into the salad to serving the salad on a tostada to sprinkling corn nuts over the top for texture. The salad that Ann has been taken with, pink shrimp dressed with chipotle adobo and crema, is a bit liquid, so I wanted a container to corral any juices. A sope with its raised rim would be perfect. And blue corn would add a beautiful color contrast and a bit of nuttiness.

Pink Shrimp Dressed with Crema, Green Onions, and Chipotle Adobo
Nestled in a Blue Corn Sope
Wine Pairing: Patty Green Tempranillo Rosé

Sopes Just Off the Cast Iron Pan
Rims Pinched While Warm
Brushed with Oil and Reheated in a Moderate Oven

I have always made sopes to eat while warm, served just out of the pan. For this meal, I had to figure out how to make them in advance, cool them without becoming soggy, and reheat them without drying out. I ended up putting them, uncovered, on an oiled sheet tray to cool at room temperature. Once cool, I brushed them with oil and covered the sheet tray. Ten minutes before serving, I uncovered them and put them in a moderate 325F oven to reheat and crisp a bit. That technique worked—thankfully. There was no Plan B.

Tortilla Soup

I decided on a more-or-less consommé for the soup course, classic technique. I wanted guests to experience a deep and rich broth. They would never see that I made a chicken stock with a hint of cilantro stems and bay leaves, and using that stock and a lot of chicken bones and scraps, I made a second stock. And then I poached all the chicken for the soup in that second stock, essentially creating a triple stock before I defatted and clarified it lightly.

I decided to place all the garnishes in soup bowls and pour the broth over them tableside to keep the broth as hot as it could be. Each guest could add crispy tortilla strips to the bowl as wanted; this way, the strips would not become soggy. The chile component is a touch of chipotle-adobe added to the consommé before clarification. It added a subtle smoky taste and a hint of spice at the back of the throat. 

Tortilla Soup
Garnishes: Chicken, Cilantro, Avocado, Tomato, Radish Slices, Tortilla Strips
Wine Pairing: Eva Fricke Riesling Trocken Rheingau

Rajas con Crema

Poblanos are my favorite peppers, hands down. I am not a huge fan of bell peppers because their green vegetal flavor displeases me and worse, that flavor clashes with red wines prone to pyrazines such as Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon. I vowed never to serve anything at my restaurant that I would not eat myself, so we never ever served a single green bell pepper. We did use vast amounts of poblanos, however.

I love rajas con crema. At its heart, this is a dish of roasted poblano strips (the rajas) cooked in cream. The typical dish includes strips of wilted onion as well. Some add flour to thicken, some add cheese, some add spices: there are many variations on this theme. For my part, I love to cook the rajas and onion with a touch of garlic in cream until it is thick. Then, I add fresh corn kernels, raw, to add a hint of sweet freshness and texture.

Taco de Rajas con Crema
Pepita-Cilantro Salsa
Wine Pairing: Durin Rossese Riviera Ligure di Ponente

I love tacos and short of baking rajas con crema in individual ramekins, I cannot think of a better way to serve and eat this dish. I stirred a bit of cotija cheese into the rajas, to add salt without adding salt. Then I put it in a casserole and topped it with queso chihuahua, a stringy Mexican quasi-mozzarella. It stayed in the oven, hot, until we were ready for it. All I had to do at service was reheat the tortillas.

When I make a taco, I want salsa for it. The idea of pumpkin seed and cilantro came quickly. The execution took a bit more pondering. After considering all the salsas verdes I know how to make, I finally decided to not make a typical Mexican avocado-tomatillo sauce. I ended up with a chimichurri-like oil and vinegar salsa (toasted pepitas, cilantro, crushed red pepper flakes, Greek oregano—not Mexican, shallot, garlic, red wine vinegar, and olive oil). The toasted pepitas gave it a wonderful smokiness that I was not expecting, an experiment gone right. 

This is one of my great variations on a theme, the theme being the classic green sauces of Europe, such as pesto or Tuscan salsa verde. These green sauces even have a South American variation in classic Argentine chimichurri. I merely changed the vocabulary a touch. Pepitas for pine nuts. Cilantro for parsley or basil.

The herbaceous flavors of poblanos and cilantro call for an interesting wine with similar herbaceous notes. The position of the course in the menu called for a red wine. The abundant rich cream in the poblanos called for a high-acid wine. Rossese is a somm favorite: high-acid, interestingly herbaceous, brightly fruity, and pairs with almost anything, including fish and in this case, vegetarian courses. The pairing is fantastic.

For a small batch of poblanos, I torch them with a handheld propane torch, then peel them. But for five pounds of poblanos, that would never work. I borrowed a technique from the restaurant, one I have never documented before. Poblanos generally have three sides that lend them to being cut into three slabs after the cap is cut off and the seeds discarded. These flat slabs roast brilliantly on sheet trays under the broiler. The caps get diced and used for other dishes.

Roasting Poblanos Efficiently

Caps Diced and Used in Other Dishes

Guava-Chipotle Sorbet

Sorbet is something I can make in my sleep. I made a new one each night as an intermezzo for our tasting menu. Adding chipotle to my sorbets is something of a trademark. Nothing bores my palate more than one-dimensional dishes and a fruit sorbet runs a great risk of being one-dimensional. To help it become more interesting, I deepen its acid profile to counter the sugar, broaden its flavor profile with a touch of salt, and hide a sneaky chile bite way in the background. Each bites becomes something new, a little electric, exciting rather than boring.

Deepening the acid profile means more acid, according to the type of fruit. I like lime with tropical fruits, lemon with more temperate fruits, and balsamic vinegar works incredibly well with strawberries.

Guava-Chipotle Sorbet, Tajín Dusting
Lime Polvorón

Because this was a party, I wanted to make a garnish for the sorbet. Naturally, shortbread came to mind and as I thought about it, I recalled the Mexican variation called polvorones. Except, thought my mind, I could make them with white corn masa—instead of flour; remember to blame Michelle—and flavor them with lime zest.

But sometimes it is a long way from an idea to a finished product. Gluten is critical in forming shortbread so that it holds together, so I knew I would be in for a battle.

I researched similar gluten-free doughs enough to understand the basic butter to ersatz flour ratio. But when I started there, the dough wouldn't hold together. I've made enough shortbread to know that I need much more butter to get a dough that would be workable. I added more butter until I got a ball of dough that held together, barely.

After letting the dough rest overnight in the refrigerator to let the masa absorb a little fat, I brought the dough to room temperature and rolled it between two silicone baking pads keeping the dough thicker than I would typical shortbread. I thought the extra thickness would help them hold together in the absence of gluten.

After being sliced into fingers, they went into the oven. The baking was technically successful, and the cookies held together, but the taste test remained. Sadly, the polvorón was chalky, dry, floury, yet without any flour—not good enough for my restaurant standards by a long shot. But then, I would have never served a gluten-free cookie at the restaurant. For gluten free customers, we would have substituted something entirely different, like a stick of oven-dried pineapple.

Yet, I would not be serving it in a restaurant and Michelle deserved a cookie, something her diet normally precludes. I thought I could rescue it a bit by adding moisture in the form of a lime juice, lime zest, and powdered sugar glaze. Besides adding flavor, the acid in the glaze would make people's mouths water, helping to counter the dry cookie. It worked enough for a home dinner where the thought counted more than the execution.