Thank you, Cynthia, for putting together such an enjoyable evening. The food was great and, as usual, the LTH-company even better . . .


Amuse of cauliflower cream and caviar . . . classic combination of bold flavors in novel form, which really popped and worked fantastically. I think that bottom layer was some sort of meat consomme.



Combination of cold and seared foie gras with fig compote and truffle dressing . . . in all the lead up to the foie gras ban, these 2 classic preparations were almost forgotten, as chefs tried to incorporate foie gras into their menus in all sorts of unorthodox and "creative" ways. The bottom line for me is that nothing really satisfies quite like a properly seared slab of foie gras, served with some fruit and a touch of truffle. Here, the fig compote and truffle dressing were the perfect accompaniments and the cripsy-melty foie gras was dead solid perfect. The torchon is another favorite preparation and it was delicious, served with some tender green beans that were covered in a well-balanced, creamy-acidic dressing.



A closer look at the seared foie gras



Lobster Chartreuse with Mauresque sauce . . . there were a lot of comments about this stunningly delicious dish and especially the complex, rich and aromatic mauresque sauce, which was just fantastic. For me, one minor negative here was that my piece of clawmeat still had the cartilage in it.



Pear William Sorbet . . . a nice palate refresher. The sweet and crunchy pear chip was delicious.



Combination of lamb loin en croute and rack of lamb with provencal sauce, vegetable assortment and couscous . . . another great combination. The rack was cooked to a perfect medium rare and it was very tender. The loin (bottom, center) was almost "wellington-like," although I never could really discern what the delicious mixture between the meat and the pastry was.



A closer look at the perfectly cooked rack component of the lamb combination.



Tender green salad with 3 morsels of cheese . . . perfectly dressed greens and tasty cheeses.



Assortment of desserts . . . in the center is raspberry sorbet. The layered pastry item on the left contained some raspberry, some hazelnut and some chocolate. The small urn contained a coffee creme brulee and the small cake in back was chocolate, with some other notes (including possibly coffee). These were very tasty and I liked how the individual flavors were introduced, carried through and combined with the others.



Petit fours and chocolate . . . delicious macaron-style sandwich cookies were outstanding, as were the flatter, cream-filled bites. I was just too full to try the chocolates.



Chef Chabert and the LTH'ers

Again, it was a great night and I want to thank everyone, specifically at our table, who was so generous in sharing their wines. Being involved at LTHForum provides a lot of great culinary opportunities and none of them are more compelling for me than special one-time meals like this where a chef steps in and creates a custom meal that may never be served again. Much like a concert, it's a chance to hear the notes played in a singularly distinctive way, once and only once. Last night's dinner was one of our private LTH concerts and I'm so glad I was there to experience it.

=R=

I was waiting for Ronnie's amazing pictures before I added a few words. I was very impressed by the confidence of the chef in his preparations. They were not experimental by any means, but several of the dishes were stunning and others operated on a very high order.

The highpoint of the meal was the opening course - a little substantial to be an amuse. The cauliflower cream (soup) with caviar on top (not beluga, but still quite nice) and a wonderful beef consomme below. The combination of tastes was remarkable, and the flavors changed as one ate the soup and the rich, creamy cauliflower mixed with the densely flavored beef (or veal?) stock. This course was truly memorable - classic, and revealing that even today that classic cuisine can still be magnificent.

The other wonderful course was the Lobster Chartreuse with Mauresque Sauce. I do not recall having a Mauresque sauce, and googling it, it appears to be a seafood sauce based on Pernod or curry. Ours was the latter. It was as perfectly made and as intense as anything served at La Francaise. My dish had no wayward cartilage, and the flavor lasted throughout the meal.

The foie gras course was pleasurable in its simplicity. Two preparations of foie gras in which the surroundings did not attempt to overpower the richness of the liver itself. Both were prepared properly and the fig compote made a suitable flavor match. Perhaps this is not a dish that is showy or dramatic, but it certainly was impressive.

I enjoyed the lamb loin en croute and rack of lamb with Provencal sauce, served with a few vegetables and couscous. Everything on the plate was well-cooked, and I smiled with each bite, and yet there was nothing startling about the dish. Here was a plate in which being unadventurous may have detracted a bit from its brilliance. Very good with tinged with the hope that when eating lamb spring will soon be here.

The nicest aspect of the Pear William Sorbet was the slice of dried pear that served as a crown. The flavor of the sorbet was intense, but perhaps it was not so different from many palate cleansers.

Our green salad had small wedges of cheese. The cheeses were well selected (blue, brie, goat), but it was a dish easy to imagine.

I enjoyed our petit fours (particularly the raspberry macaroon) more than the desserts, which seemed to be something of an afterthought. The glaze on the coffee creme brulee was properly crunchy, the raspberry sorbet was fine, and the cakes were pleasant but not sufficiently dramatic.

Still, in thinking about this meal, it was a very happy dinner. The soup and lobster will last in my memory, and nothing disappointed (except for the dessert a bit). When one considers that this eight course dinner was priced at $125 (including tax and tip, and was BYOB), it was a 3-1/2 star meal at 2-1/2 star prices. Granted the space was not Le Francais, but the company more than made up for it: we know that excellent food can be found everywhere. Wherever we are dining belongs.

Thank you, Patrick. Thank you, Cynthia.

Great to see everyone last night! I stopped by to see Patrick during service. A few answers:

- the amuse bouche base was actually duck consomme and Iranian oscetra caviar
- the Mauresque sauce did actually have fennel and curry
- the lamb en croute had a layer of spinach mousse
- the "Raspberry Silk Cake" had a base of almond dacquoise with white chocolate bavarois
- the chocolate cake was the French classic Opera cake

His seared foie gras technique was fantastic. He'd chilled the portions sous-vide, then tossed them lightly in flour before laying them on the smoking hot flattop for just a few seconds on each side. Can you imagine hashbrowns and eggs sunny side up cooked in that duck fat? If only...

Ronnie and GAF's comments are by and large perfectly on the mark. We agree completely about the caviar and cauliflower soup and the lobster as the high points of the evening. I would, however, point out that the lamb loin was enclosed in a kind of spinach(?) preparation which took the preparation out of the realm of the strictly predictable; moreover, the preparation was perfefctly done, meat as well as vegetables. The dessert cakes, by the way, were a fraisier (usually made with strawberries, as the name sugggests, but of course they were out of season) and an opera (the chocolate pastry). Both were a bit too sweet to our taste. The raspberry sorbet, however, which was precisely nicely acidic, was perfect, as was the raspberry macaron among the petits fours. One way or the other, this was definitely an experience to be repeated.

Louisa,

Perhaps you could commented related to the preparation of the foie gras served. Last night one of my companions commented goose liver foie gras cannot be seared, because the high fat content causes it to melt. Thus the seared foie gras could only be from duck.

The other foie gras served unseared, was it duck or goose? From the table conversation I learned there is so little goose foie gras, that what we likely had was duck, too. Was the unseared foie gras poached, chilled and sliced or was it also a sous vide prep without the searing?

The dual preparations from the lamb chops-Lamb Wellington-type and the two foie gras, seems to be a technique often repeated by Patrick. I like this very much for the comparision-contrasts of the various preparations using the same core ingredient.

Thanks!

Knowing that the consommé was duck has given me hope that Patrick can recreate a dish for me that I had once at Le Français while Banchet was there -- a hot double duck consommé with quennelles. I dreamed about it for months afterwards. Hmm. Maybe for our next LTH dinner with Patrick.

Louisa Chu wrote:His seared foie gras technique was fantastic. He'd chilled the portions sous-vide

Or, could he have just purchased the FG pre-portioned? I'm pretty sure it can be bought in this manner. If not, why would one chill the portion under vacuum seal, how does it improve the FG?

Thanks,

mel

mhill95149 wrote:

Louisa Chu wrote:His seared foie gras technique was fantastic. He'd chilled the portions sous-vide

Or, could he have just purchased the FG pre-portioned? I'm pretty sure it can be bought in this manner. If not, why would one chill the portion under vacuum seal, how does it improve the FG?

Thanks,

mel

I'm pretty certain Patrick didn't (and wouldn't) buy pre-portioned foie gras. When I talked to him late Thursday, he had just finished cooking the foie gras and was about to slice it, and when a few of us chatted with him after the dinner, asking about his technique, he mentioned cleaning the whole foie gras. So he probably vacuum sealed it himself to protect it until he needed it. Now, it may also be for some improvement in flavor -- perhaps Louisa can comment on that -- but I suspect that a lone chef cooking so many courses for 27 people has to rely on the occasional trick of technology to simply get everything ready on time.

Cathy - sure, goose foie gras can be seared. Duck foie gras loses fat too - how much fat is lost depends on the quality of the liver and how it's cooked. Here's a pretty good looking, simple recipe for seared goose foie gras (in French): http://www.linternaute.com/femmes/cuisi ... n/4r.shtml

The other foie gras was duck too - it was a classic torchon mi-cuit - cleaned, seasoned, rolled, sealed sous-vide (the entire roll), poached, shocked in ice water, chilled, then sliced - in this case the torchon was sliced, then the sliced sealed sous-vide. And yep, goose foie gras is really hard if not impossible for retail customers to get in the US.

mel - Cynthia's right. The sous-vide is just for convenience - to cook 27 orders, 3 by 9 - and so the foie gras doesn't oxidize.

Cynthia - Yep, just sealed to protect.

I am still tasting the seared foie in my dreams.
Although everything was wonderful- and the lobster was an extremely close second,
the seared foie has to be one of the single best things I have ever eaten.
The company was just superb and it was so nice to meet and chat with everyone.
So Now you are all going to be treated to my very first ever photo post:
I won't duplicate the food, since Ronnie's pictures turned out better than mine...

Here's Frank and myself...

BethAnne (spelling?)and ChrisW

Barb

Terry

and the lovely Laura...

Many thanks to Cynthia for making all the arrangements!

and just for fun, here's a picture of Ronnie taking all those great pictures!

Our font of foie gras knowledge, Michaela DeSoucey (writing her dissertation on the creation of anti-foie gras movements, state involvement in culinary politics, and the creation of markets for gourmet foodstuffs), informs me that with regard to foie gras:

Goose foie gras CAN be seared, but it has a much lower melting point than duck; duck is heartier and holds its consistency in heat a lot better. Also, all the chefs I interviewed in France (and French chefs in the United States) said they preferred (and prepared) goose-cold, duck-hot. Goose liver is much more delicate, and more expensive to produce, so cooking it hot is a waste of taste and money.

So, it CAN be done, technically, but it rarely is, and it is even more rarely done as well as duck. And in this country, fresh goose foie gras is almost impossible to source (there is a tiny farm in southern California, a tiny farm in South Dakota (that doesn't force-feed) and a tiny farm outside of Minneapolis).

mg

* * *

Anyone up for a road trip to Minnesota and South Dakota?

HI,

I very much enjoyed this event. It was one of the few in a long time where there were lots of faces I didn't know. I kept to my location with the best light and practically didn't leave that location.

Excellent meal, conversation and additional education in all matters related to foie gras.

Thanks Cynthia and Robert!

Regards,

And for those of you who missed this blow-out dinner, or for those who want more of Patrick's lovely cuisine, don't forget the "regular" dinners -- the ones for $70 (wine, tax, and tip included) that Patrick runs monthly.

These are not LTH outings -- you just call Patrick and ask if there's room.

Upcoming dates are Saturday 3/15, 4/26, 5/17, 6/7, and Sunday July 13 for Bastille Day.

These dinners, like our special LTH dinner) are held at Berruti's Italian Café and Deli in Buffalo Grove -- 771 S. Buffalo Grove Rd., at Dundee. (Patrick operates his catering business out of the back half of Berutti's spacious kitchen.)

The phone number for reserving a place for one of Patrick's "bargain" French dinners is 847-215-1931.