Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Chefs' showcase: Dish details from all-star dinner at Local Roots
Missed the guest chef dinner at Local Roots Restaurant in Roanoke? Here's a look at the ingredients and techniques used for the five-course meal.
Second course: Bryan Voltaggio's Artic Char
Third course: Ashley Christensen's Tomato Soup with Avocado and Dungeness Crab
Fourth course: Sean Brock's Heritage Pork Belly
Fifth course: Tarver King's Black Chocolate Sponge Cake
Photos by ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times
Chef Tarver King (middle right) and other participants help arrange his dessert on charred pieces of wood.
First course: Josh Smith's Lamb's Heart
Food writer Lindsey Nair
- lindsey.nair@roanoke.com | (540) 981-3343
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When I sat down last week to write Saturday's Extra story about a guest chef dinner at Local Roots Restaurant in Roanoke, I had limited space and a tough decision to make.
I could write in great detail about all the amazing food, or I could write about why folks saw that dinner as such a big deal for Roanoke and what it meant in the context of the local food movement.
If you read the piece, you know I chose the latter.
But then I got to thinking about how much I had to leave out of the story, and how much hard-core foodies might enjoy detailed descriptions of the ingredients and techniques behind every dish.
For those who missed the earlier story, chef Josh Smith organized the dinner as part of a series he hoped would draw attention to Local Roots Restaurant's new location beside Grace's Place pizzeria on Grandin Road. He originally hoped to persuade Sean Brock of McCrady's in Charleston, S.C., to cook in his kitchen. Brock is a Wise native and a rising star in the culinary world.
Turns out Smith was able to score not only Brock, but three other incredibly talented and well-respected chefs from our region. They were Bryan Voltaggio, a 2009 "Top Chef" runner-up who runs VOLT restaurant in Frederick, Md.; Ashley Christensen of Poole's Diner in Raleigh, N.C.; and Tarver King of The Ashby Inn and Restaurant in Paris, Va. Check out a slideshow from the event
The grub
This was a five-course dinner, with each chef preparing a course. Smith sourced most of the ingredients himself for two reasons: to throw some money at Southwest Virginia farmers, and to ease the load for the traveling chefs.
Much of the produce for the Aug. 25 event came from Good Food-Good People, a Floyd County-based consortium of local farmers. The pork belly came from EcoFriendly Foods in Moneta, and the lamb hearts came from Border Springs Farm in Patrick County.
Even Local Roots bar manager Matt Kirby's cocktail contained local ingredients. Dubbed a "Peach Fuzz," it started with beautiful Indian king peaches, whose flesh ranges in color from white to crimson. Kirby pureed those and blended them with Spirits of the Blue Ridge vodka, fresh local mint, a little simple syrup, soda water and a sparkling Spanish wine.
The first course was Smith's. It featured lamb's heart, which he enjoys cooking and I don't always enjoy eating. But his dish made a lamb heart lover out of me.
He brined the hearts and roasted them, then sliced them so thinly they were practically shaved. The color and texture of the meat was lovely, similar to filet mignon but with that lightly gamey lamb flavor. The lamb was served with roasted onions, an onion gravy, lemon thyme, sorrel and some clover Smith harvested from the lamb farm.
The second course belonged to Voltaggio, who chose to feature the highest quality Arctic char. This fish, related to both trout and salmon, is caught way up the east coast of Canada, and the season lasts only 13 weeks before ice drives the boats back to shore. Therefore, it is a sustainable fish that cannot be overharvested.
Voltaggio's char was brined, lightly smoked with applewood, then prepared sous vide, which means it was vacuum sealed and cooked in a warm-water bath at a very low temperature. It was served with tiny, pickled Pennsylvania beets, beet puree and a mixture of cream cheese and creme fraiche that had been frozen into a powder with liquid nitrogen.
The fish's texture was incredibly silky, and the flavor was delicious but not overly fishy. Anyone who dislikes eating fish should be challenged to try good Arctic char.
Christensen made a cold soup for the third course. She brined tomatoes, cucumbers, Vidalia onions and jalapenos in salt water, then roughly pureed the vegetables and emulsified the puree with a high-quality olive oil.
The rich, salmon-colored soup was topped with a Dungeness crab salad and sliced avocados. It tasted like four months' worth of summer packed into one spoonful.
Brock is a lover of all things pig -- he has even raised his own pigs -- so it was no surprise that he chose to serve pork belly for the fourth course. I thought it was a particularly fine pork belly, because my piece had a thick ribbon of meat and just enough fat to be decadent.
It, too, was cooked sous vide, then finished on the grill just before it was served. It was paired with local chanterelle mushrooms and a bed of cooked, herbed grains from Brock's heirloom garden in Charleston. Plump preserved blueberries added a pop of gentle sweetness to the entire dish.
Finally, diners watched in awe as King's dessert came out of the kitchen. Earlier in the day, King had used a blowtorch to char the surfaces of 70 blocks of spruce, which a friend had gleaned from a downed tree just for this purpose.
King explained that serving the dessert on the charred wood surface would add a smoky flavor and the "subconscious feeling of a s'more" to his dark chocolate sponge cake, which was made with roasted cocoa and then soaked in bourbon.
The cake was paired with soft dollops of sheep's milk ricotta blended with caramel, as well as peanut sauce with toasted cumin seed. The result was a dessert with complex layers of flavor, but no cloying sweetness.
The dirt
Now that I've got everybody's stomach rumbling, I ought to offer a little distraction. So here are my favorite quotes I couldn't fit in the newspaper on Saturday:
-- Ashley Christensen on the big city, celebrity chef rat race: "I enjoy getting farther and farther away from it."
-- Josh Smith on other Roanoke chefs: "I just think the competition in Roanoke has been for so many years so cutthroat. I think everybody has been in survival mode, and it's time for everybody to go out and have a beer, or a glass of bourbon, or water."
-- Bryan Voltaggio on Bravo's "Top Chef": "I have had people say they are inspired to cook because they saw me on TV. That blows my mind."
-- Sean Brock on Josh Smith: "Every city needs a chef that is conscious of his time and place. Every town needs a spokesperson for their products. ... Roanoke is very lucky to have one."
-- Tarver King on deciding to become a chef: "All the things your parents tell you not to do, they were doing in the kitchen -- playing with fire and knives and cursing. I loved it!"
Lindsey Nair's column runs Wednesdays in Extra.
