Featuring: Portland Chefs Gabriel Rucker of Le Pigeon (and soon to open Little Bird) and Naomi Pomeroy of Beast. Pomeroy won 2009 Food and Wine Best New Chef, and was a 2010 James Beard nominee - her restaurant Beast, also an award winner, is intimate and inventive, and fully displays her quirky and self-described 'refined French grandmother cuisine'. Rucker, winner of the 2007 Food and Wine Best New Chef award and a 2010 James Beard Nominee, takes traditional French techniques and modernizes them, while playing with offal and traditional American foods.
This chef session pushed the synergistic envelope with Naomi Pomeroy and Gabriel Rucker in the kitchen side by side. Two culinary black belts bounced ideas off of each other, but each pursued their own flavor pairings. Pomeroy: balsamic caramel & salt, Armagnac soaked prunes, St. Germain ganache, rose wine gelee and tomato. Rucker: carrot caramel with curry, vanilla corn butter, harissa ganache, rose petal, fresh bay laurel and baby turnips.
Ingredients prepped and waiting for our chef sessions # 6 & #7!
The chefs have worked with each other in the past, and both own their own restaurants in Portland. Naomi said, 'Rucker's always the boss, and the person I call when I forget how to prep pasta'. Their collaborative spirit was apparent as we chatted at the beginning about possible directions.
Gabriel Rucker was really excited about the corn, butter and vanilla pairing. We all agreed this nostalgic essence of summer paired best with white chocolate ganache. After cutting the corn for the first pass, we agreed, MORE corn! We made a quick trip to the store for more fresh ears of summer corn and organic corn nuts for garnish.
Gabriel and Nathan (from Theo) measure just the right amount of vanilla.
Theo chocolatier Steve had prepared two carrot caramels in advance; one with a carrot reduction and cream, and the other with straight juice - both with a touch of curry. We loved the color the fresh carrot juice infused into the caramel and the byproduct from juicing the carrots in house was a whisper thin carrot 'paper' of sorts that popped when used as a garnish. The corn and carrot flavors were Rucker's choice. Now, team Theo tweaks the recipes to maximize flavor, and waits for final approval from Gabriel and his staff.
One of Naomi's signature dishes is a pork liver and shoulder pate with Armagnac soaked prunes and green peppercorns. She wanted to approximate this in a ganache. We prepared by soaking prunes in the Armagnac and folding them into ganache as a base. This was a great start, but Naomi said "up the Armagnac, and don't be afraid of the prune!" We hope you'll agree, prunes are so much more than the old digestive aid - elegant, rich in flavor, and easily paired. Along with upping the Armagnac in the prune ganache, Naomi liked the idea of pairing it with a caramel that had been cooked a bit longer to develop the slightly stronger (dark caramel) flavor. Alder smoked sea salt and brined green peppercorns brought us closer to her creation. We'll be playing with this one more in our kitchen.
The other pairing that surprised us was the tomato paste puree with the balsamic caramel and salt. Beautiful Miami beach coral tomato color was an awesome contrast to the dark balsamic caramel.
Naomi watches as Steve tempers the tomoato & white chocolate ganache
Chocolatier Steve described the experience working with two different chefs at the same time as 'tons of chaos, great flavor pairings!' Truly, everywhere you looked around our kitchen you could find a different treasure - chocolate dipped glazed baby turnips, harissa ganache, sweet corn simmering in butter. Pomeroy and Rucker bounced ideas off each other, but found inspiration in different places. They were a kick to work with, and we can't wait to share the final creations...
View the full set of photos from our session with Chef's Pomeroy & Rucker on Flickr
Comments