Culinary Externship: Hot Appetizers at Prospect
This week at Prospect, a SF fine-dining restaurant, I worked the Hot Appetizers “station” for the dinner menu. During the day I cooked recipes for those dishes, and during the evenings I plated them. It was super informative working a station in a professional kitchen for the first time.
The Menu
This a genuinely complex menu for just five dishes requiring hundreds of hours of professional work to prepare an evening worth of dishes. Each menu item has multiple components: different plates, different proteins, different sauces, different garnishes, different prep work, different purchasing & storage for ingredients, different modifications for food allergies, different to-go variants and much more. Before dinner service starts the sauces are made, the garnishes are picked daily, proteins are prepared & portioned and so on.
Spanish Octopus & Local Squid Fresh Shelling Beans, Nduja Sausage, Green Tomato Salsa, Toasted Levain, Micro-Cilantro, Bottarga.
This dish is a great example of a Hot Appetizer. The Octopus, Squid and Beans are cooked to order in a hot pan & plancha. Whereas other components for this dish are prepared prior to service: Bean & Sausage mix is pureed, Tomato Salsa is combined, the octopus is braised, the breadcrumbs are toasted, the beans are simmered, etc. The culinary concept of “à la minute” refers to ingredients cooked-to-order and this dish is a great example of combining prep cooking with à la minute cooking.
Seared Sea Scallops & Smoked Clams Celtuce Purée, Amarosa Potatoes, Braised Lobster Mushrooms, Watercress, Chowder Broth.
This dish has multiple components working together to highlight the primary component: scallops. The flavour of the smoked clams works beautifully with scallops. The clam chowder light foam rounds off the seafood theme.The celtuce & celery puree anchors each scallop to the plate. The texture of the lobster mushrooms & potatoes give substance to the dish. And the watercress and potato chips bring the presentation together. It all works to bring this dish together.
Caramelized Hudson Valley Foie Gras Bartlett Pear, Pickled Huckleberries, Long Pepper, Toasted Black Sesame Brioche, Pear Butter.
How to cook Foie Gras in a pan: Crosshatch score a piece of Foie and S&P. Get a small pan hot (without oil) and place Foie presentation side down. Foie should render fat immediately. After 30s start basting foie in rendered fat. Once the bottom has a nice brownish colour, flip over and sear the other side. The inside should be pinkish. For presentation slice or don’t. Before serving add finishing salt (Maldon) on top of foie as it radically changes the flavour profile for the better.
What if my Foie is uneven in height? Chef John Cahill demoed cooking a super uneven foie by starting to cook in a pan and then moving to a low-heat oven. The secret is only cook in a pan until the shallowest side is pinkish and then move the piece to a 200°F oven and let lower intensity heat finish it off. If you don’t do that you’ll either overcook the shallower parts or undercook the taller parts of the foie.
Beef Tartare Green Goddess Dressing, Little Gems, Alfalfa Sprouts, Pickled Mustard Seeds, Bread Tuiles, Smoked Caper Vinaigrette.
“Green Goddess” dressing prep: The big whiteish dot in the middle of that plate is a Green Goddess dressing that requires multi-day prep. Every few days we’ll make a Green Goddess Base (3:3:1 Mayo : Sour cream : buttermilk, lime, garlic, tabasco, S&P, smoked onion powder). Every day we’ll finish the Green Goddess dressing by combining the base with chopped chives, chervil, dill and parsley. It then goes into a squeeze bottle and gets plated to order. The takeaway here is front-loading the intensive part of making the base ahead of time and to finish it off daily by picking, chopping and combining herbs with it.
Crispy polenta with white balsamic compressed figs and ricotta.
Amuse-bouche: Surpassingly the Hot Appetizers station doesn’t just handle appetizers. We also make complimentary bite-sized dishes meant to set the tone for the meal and welcome VIPs. Amuses are relatively simple to assemble as they only have 5–6 steps.
Assembling and prepping this dish:
- Polenta Chip is deep-fried until crispy and broken into pieces before service. One for each
- Ricotta Cheese is whipped up and placed into a pastry bag.
- Compressed Figs are compressed and portioned into triangles before service.
- Watercress is picked and cleaned.
- Drop of white balsamic vinegar.
- Drizzle olive oil on the chip.
Gypsy Pepper & Serpent Cucumber gazpacho with Smoked Trout Roe and Dill.
The whole deal with Amuse is fast plating, great ingredients and front-loading work to prep. Here’s how to Assemble Gypsy Pepper & Serpent Cucumber gazpacho with Smoked Trout Roe and Dill:
- Portion gazpacho into tall shot glasses. Important to have equal amounts of gazpacho for all glasses on the same tray.
- Add Trout Roe with the tiniest teaspoon.
- Using Tweezers place a 1cm dill leaf.
- 3–4 drops of olive oil.
Simple, fast and good.
Fried Green Tomatoes & Local Squid Tasso Aïoli, Lemon.
Each dinner menu station at Prospect also handles a few items from the bar menu. It’s a good combination because it makes sure each station is always doing something. Early in the evening 90% of dishes are dinner menu and only 10% are bar menu. Towards the end of the evening that ratio equalizes to 50%-50% which makes everyone stay busy throughout the evening.
The Fried Green Tomatoes & Local Squid is a great example of a fine-dining bar menu item. It’s got hot cooked components in the form of deep fried octopus rings and sliced green tomatoes. It’s got weekly prep in the form of Tasso Aioli. It’s got daily prep for the mixt greens, sliced celery, celery leaves and lemon wedges.
I’ve made lots of Aioli this week: Prospect’s house aioli, Tasso Aioli, Sunchoke Aioli, etc. The Tasso Aioli is super interesting. Tasso Ham is brunoise diced and seared in a pan and then let to infuse the oil used to make aioli (base: egg yolks, lime juice, garlic and oil). The diced Tasso Ham is combined with sweated diced celery, jalapeno and onions and then mixed with a Tasso Aioli. The end result is a chunky, flavourful, and spicy aioli.
Did I mention I made lots of Aioli this week? It’s one of the first recipes I made at Prospect and I think it’s a great intro recipe for newcomers to the restaurant. The recipe really shows the Prospect way of making even simple recipes into complex flavour experience. The base has 9 yolks (super rich), microplaned garlic, champagne vinegar, mustard and lemon juice. The oil is a mix of two oils. And it’s made in a robot-coupe which isn’t a common household item.
Chef Rick Broering gave me this great protip on getting the last drop of Aioli from a food processor / robot-coupe. Using a rubber spatula quickly get as much Aioli as you can without cleaning the blade. Then close the food processor and pulse. All the aioli will fly off the blade into the food processor bowl. A dirty blade will clean itself in an near-empty bowl when pulsed as everything flies off it.
Read more about my culinary adventures by reading about my first week working at Prospect:
