Franken Food Cocktail Party

October 31st. 8pm.
430 Parkdale Ave "The Engine Room"
Cost: $50.00 All inclusive

Come celebrate Halloween with Essence Catering. We will be holding a cocktail part reception featuring "Franken Food".
This may sound outrageous, and it probably will be. We will be creating bites with some serious wow and scare. It will surely be a cocktail party to remember.
Make sure to dress up. No costume, no food for you!

Direct message me on Twitter for your reservation @chefjayl


See you there.....

MORE FROM "SMOKE"

PIcs from "SMOKE"

Here are the pics from Thursdays dinner. Hope you enjoy.

Smoke Dinner

Ok so here's the rundown of Thursday night's menu: SMOKE. This dinner will be performed by myself and Micheal Hay of the courtyard. We brainstormed last night over a few too many beers and came up with this menu. We do so wish you like it.
Remember this explores smoke as a flavour/aroma/ and a visual cue.

Canapes:

Black tea smoked salmon sashimi with carrot and daikon, lemon and soy

Smoking jacket a la tobacco blackberry

1st

Smoked and seared diver scallop/ avocado mosaic/ margarita/ lime cells

2nd

Smoked corn chowder

3rd

Vanilla parsnip sorbet with smoked salmon roe

4th

Brined and roasted pork belly/ edamame wonton/ smoked ham hock broth

5th

Smoked and seared duck breast/ smoked fingerlings/ plum/ pistachio/ and scallion

6th

Fruit salad/ many textures and flavours.

It will be held in the courtyard at 430 Parkdale ave. Being that there seems to be a bit if rain in our forecast, we will set up a tent for cover. OUr first dinner of this supper club will be free of charge. If you were lucky to get a seat, well count yourself as lucky. This should be a meal to remember. And a great one tog et the ball rolling on this new venue for myself and Essence Catering. We will not be hosting a bar this time around and will ask all patrons to bring something they would like to share with those attending. I will not be doing a pairing for this one. Rather I would like to see what shows up. Lets keep it light and fun. Also there will be another function on site this evening as some of the artists are part of the walking tour.
Also please keep in mind there is not parking enough for all on site. It would be better to park either on Wellington or at the Parkdale market and walk up. Less than a block. OUr sign will be out front, and you won't miss it.
Also please give Micheal a big thank you on twitter @michealthehay , he deserves it. This was fun to plan. I only hope the implementation is as fun.

See you there,
Cheers,
Jason

Blog out loud Ottawa

So the other day, I attended Blog out loud Ottawa, at Irene's pub on Bank St. An event I was attending because one of the "readers" was presenting an article he and his wife wrote for their Blog. To my astonishment the article was written about local chefs who give back to their communities. I had more than a passing byline in this article (or blog post). I was not surprised by the reading as I had been told before that they were going to read this particular piece. Still to hear it was a new experience for me. Let's say it's something you can get used to in a hurry.
We arrived early, to an empty room. It was more than just a little hot, where's the air conditioning? At least we got to choose a great set of seats near the front of the stage. Within about 15min. some bloggers started to show up. And pretty soon we were awash in a sea of bloggers of all types. Funny I didn't really know of anyone who blogged about anything other than food. Is it possible that people use this medium for anything other than food commentary? Well apparently there are those out there with diverse interests and most were not food related. The room was soon overflowing and getting hotter by the minute.
The schedule for the evening was distributed and the bios of each of the readers was scoured thoroughly. Funny, not only do I blog under a few different names (all food related at this time), but I also have become an addict to TWITTER. And to this end I met so many people from this social media venue. It was great to put faces to the avatars or handles. And can you believe it we all still conveyed our messages to each other in 140 characters or less. Ok I just couldn't resist that one.
Some highlights for me this evening were;
Pauline of Brightest blue. Her recounting of art class hell was truly entertaining.
Brie of Capital mom. Her short entitled "close your eyes" touched a spot in my heart and I thank her for that.
Nat from Nat's brain. Her telling of "waspagedon" was very very funny, F-bombs were levied with an alarming frequency, and I truly loved this one.
Foodie Print (Don and Jenn). Well they are the reason I was here. Their post "food and generosity" was a proud moment for me. It is especially nice when someone(s) take notice of what you are trying to help with. They too foster an ideal of community in their blog and twitter personalities, and should be lauded along with the rest of us in the food industry.

Thank you to all for opening my eyes to something so authentic. Everyone's voice was unique and interesting. I will certainly be back next year, and hope to be able to read something of my own. Though I would like to read something non food related, I will have to write some. Hopefully soon.
Cheers,

Random food shots of the week

Some random food shots from this past week. Have not had a lot of time to develop any new dishes lately. Hopefully this week we will be able to work on some new bites.

Keller's Quail in a Jar

Creativity ebbs and flows. And when I am in an ebb or down time, I will go to the bookshelf. From there I grab a book by either Keller, Trotter, Blumenthal, Adria, Achatz, Richards, Mina, and a bunch of others I have. Blindly open the book, and providing I haven't made it before, make it. I have found that this method usually works at breaking the log jam of creativity. When I am really lucky it involves methods or techniques I've never employed.
Such was the case today. Keller's sous vide book provided a new technique. Something I have never done, but have seen in some recipes. Just never thought of actually doing it. Cooking in a mason jar. Sure it's reminiscent of preserving. But oh so different. I started with a quail. Deboned it leaving just the wings and legs intact. Stuffed the cavity with foie gras. Wrapped in cheesecloth and into a mason jar. Filled with duck stock, and cooked at 147 degrees for one hour. I am somewhat worried in that it did cook at 156 degrees for a few minutes during the hour. We'll see the results in a few days. I still need to reduce the cooking stock with port. Add to that some gelatine and make a glaze. Then slice, and hopefully have a beautiful presentation for a cold appetizer.
This cooking method was fun and relatively simple. It also opens up some other avenues. LAtely I have been reading a lot from both Shola (Studio Kitchen) and Alex (ideas in food) as they have been doing lots of different things with mason jar cookery. We'll see if I go down some of their roads. But that's the point of this exercise. Breaking the rut by trying new things.
So once again it seems to have worked. But what will come of it.....