October 2010
10 posts
Intrepid Sous Chef
This Sunday our charcutier/sous chef Brandon Sturm heads to Traverse City to attend Pigstock, a three day homage to the Mangalitsa, an endangered Central European “wooly” hog that is now being brought back to prominence by a few aficionados. The event features slaughter, butchery, and processing of six hogs at Baker’s Green Acres Farm where they were raised. Christof and Isabel...
Chorizo Verde
Sometimes you find things when you least expect them… Chorizo Verde is such an example.
Over the summer, before Reserve was any concern of mine, I had taken employment at a Holland restaurant offering Latin American inspired dishes. Not any one particular region was a focus, but took elements from Central and South America, Cuba as well. I chose this style of cooking as a change of pace...
Kitchen Experiments: 2 out of 3 ain't bad
I was feeling experimental tonight and had a few ideas kicking around in my head so I tried some out:
1) Rosemary candy - we’ve been garnishing our pain perdu with a sprig of rosemary, but I’ve been wanting to change to an edible garnish so I made some caramel, mixed in a bunch of rosemary, let it set on a silpat, and sprinkled on fleur de sel. It had great rosemary flavor but I...
End of Service on a Saturday Night
A few years ago my wife and I went to LA to visit some of her family. We were lucky enough to be there at the same time as a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks who were creating a sand mandala at an art museum. If you’ve never seen this, it’s an amazing thing. There were 3 or 4 monks working at a time placing grains of colored sand in an intricate pattern on a low table probably 5 feet...
Michigan Olives?
Over the course of the next few weeks, we will be trying our hand at making cracked green olives. These are raw, uncured olives, right from the tree (no, not from Michigan) which in their current state are inedible. They are extremely bitter and soapy tasting. We cracked them open a bit with the end of a rolling pin and have them soaking in water to leach out the bitter phenols and soften the...
An Unfortunate Barbeque
Heard through the grapevine that the Iberico we’ve been waiting on had some trouble with customs. Apparently the size of the hock or some such nonsense was outside the parameters deemed acceptable to U.S. customs officials and they were denied entry, taken off the boat and lit on fire!
Don’t know for a fact that’s true (couldn’t reach the importer today to verify),...
Headcheese 1
This little piggy went swimmin’ in a brine.
One of the things I love best about charcuterie is its embracing of the stranger bits. In fact, charcuterie really requires it. The art of making sausages, terrines and pates, and other things from the “less desirable” cuts probably got into full swing when the peasantry, who worked the land, got what was left from a hog after the...
Truffle Terrine
This terrine represents a lot about what I love best in cooking. Black truffles for one. They are one of my very favorite foods, but can be one of the most frustrating. They can vary wildly in quality from week to week, region to region, season to season, and given the very fragile nature of their flavor and aroma, can arrive in an American kitchen several thousand miles from their home in very...
2 from the menu: Burrata and Roasted Peppers &...
Cider braised pork belly Pear sauce, parsnip, kale, Concord grape aigre doux
This one has been on Reserve’s menu since we opened. The pork belly was raised by our friend and farmer Nathan Creswick. We braise it all day long in Michigan apple cider we picked up at the Holland Farmer’s Market. We finish it in our deep fryer that is full of 100% lard (Yes, really. You should try the...
Hello out there
I’m Matthew.
A few weeks ago the doors opened at Reserve, a wine bar in Grand Rapids, Michigan with me at the helm in the kitchen. In tow are Brandon Sturm and Matt Green, our charcutier/butcher and sous chef respectively, long time friends and colleagues. The aim here is to tell the story of our kitchen: the trials of running a restaurant (the toilet in our employee bathroom is currently...
