Goose Island Dinner

Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with so there are no pictures of the food. The actual dish changed slightly from what appeared on the menu.

The tomato dish was 70% there. Still needs tweaking. It was a chilled parfait with a simple raw strawberry puree at the bottom, dotted with a nicoise olive-white anchovy puree. We spread the rest of the olive puree thinly over a silpat and dried it until crispy. A very light tomato-water-gel over the top. We seasoned it with salt, sugar and sherry vinegar and added just enough gelatin so it would hold up the peeled and marinated baby tomatoes and tiny strawberry balls that went over the top. It got a little drizzle of the marinating oil (garlic, thyme). The tobacco foam went on right before serving with a few sprigs of thyme and the anchovy-olive chip.

We cured the lamb loin in coriander seeds, black sesame seeds, chili flake and orange peel for 2 1/2 hours. The warm parsnip puree was made without cream because we didn't want to overpower the lightness of the dish. Simply sweated thinly sliced parnsips in a little butter, adding milk periodically to prevent burning. Eventually the whole thing falls apart into mush. We fold in the peeled raw pears at this point and puree the whole thing. The carpaccio was seasoned with an orange-infused olive oil, garnished with citrus confit, mint sprigs, coriander leaf and seasoned with a coriander infused flake sea salt.

We juiced all the corn for the cobia dish and set it aside. We made a stock from the cobs and reduced it to a thick syrup. We dried out the husks overnight. For service, we heated the corn juice with cream, salt, sugar and cayenne pepper until it thickened. Then we thickened it just a little further with corn starch slurry (right?). We sliced fresh lobster mushrooms thinly and sweated them in butter. The cobia was smoked with the dried corn husks. We brushed the fish with the glaze made from the reduced corn stock, a little honey, reduced wheat beer and fresh beer. Garnished with puffed barley and wild rice and tarragon leaves.

I was not allowed to touch the ravioli, that was Tara's dish. Although I made the sherry foam. We found a dry oloroso sherry which is perfect because we could control the sweetness. We made it pretty sweet anyway. Salt, sugar and soy lecithin. You have to flame off the alcohol or it won't foam for whatever reason.