Let’s talk about the menu. Since we’re new at this whole restaurant thing, we haven’t really figured out how to simultaneously serve a secret supper and photodocument it, so bear with us on the pictures!

We started with a red wine oxtail and beef tongue stew, served as chilled, jelly hemispheres, with a layer of homemade Momofuku pickles on a toasted baguette round.

Probably the most challenging dish of the evening, our tongue-and-tail amuse bouche was cast in a mold designed and cut by Amin. Pretty cool, huh? We value the use of all parts of the animals we eat, and wanted our guests to do the same. To our surprise and delight, nobody tried to escape the event while we described this dish, and everyone cleaned their plate! On a side note, those pickles are so addictive and delicious – definitely at the top of my these-are-so-easy-to-make-i’ll-never-buy-them-again list.

For our starter, we served the dish that has been our pride, joy, and near-undoing for the last several months: pork belly with butternut squash polenta. Cured for two days in a mix of brown sugar, sea salt, cinnamon, cloves, star anise and black pepper, and then braised for upwards of three hours in a pot of chicken stock and Delirium Tremens (famed as the best beer in the world), this local pork from Autumn’s Harvest Farm is tender, buttery, and melts in your mouth. The butternut squash polenta is cooked on the stovetop and then baked (or is it fried?) on cast iron with a lot of butter. We made our sauce out of a reduction of the braising liquid and some Cornell Orchards cider. This isn’t actually the pork belly we served, but an earlier incarnation that looks mostly alike:

We also served some cider mulled with the same spice mix that we cured the belly with. Still with us, even through the bad flash photography? Our other three dishes, after the jump…

Our third dish was a palate cleanser: quenelles (a.k.a. football shaped lumps, originally and traditionally made of meats or fish, but now just any mushy substance) of fresh grape sorbet. We seeded, peeled, and pureed the grapes, then added lemon juice and simple syrup, and stirred in crushed dry ice. Voila! Sorbet. Pretty cool. Sadly, no pictures this time around, but we’ll do a recipe post soon enough!

Our main was a wilted arugula salad with walnuts and figs, surrounded by brined, pan-fried chicken breast, graced by a quenelle of goat cheese whipped with shallots. I’m never eating normal, non-whipped, no-shallot goat cheese again.

That green puree you see is a mixture of spinach and arugula, and has a wonderful, tangy bite. Did we competitively squeezee-bottle it into our mouths in the kitchen after the dinner was over? Maybe. Here’s a closeup of the entree.

Finally, we served a dessert of chocolate torte over crisp madeleine biscuit with chocolate ganache, raspberry coulis, and earl grey-infused whipped cream. Best at room temperature, torte is flourless and crazy-rich. The photos speak for themselves.

All in all, it was a beautiful two nights. Our guests were gracious and generous, we didn’t have any major disasters in the kitchen, we didn’t break any dishes, and dinner-table conversation didn’t lull once (lulz). Thank you to everyone who joined us. Here are some final action shots!

Irene, interrupted while considering a bed of very green and flavorful arugula while trying to pretend she’s not drinking a milkshake during dinner preparations.

Daniel and Amin, straining cider through a cheesecloth.

Max, performing some classic gesticulations while describing a dish.

Daniel, laughing at the sheer volume of dishes to be done.

Can’t wait for the next event!

The whole flourless chocolate torte thing started for us with Daniel Barbolobew’s birthday. We had espresso in the first incarnation of this absurd dessert, but eventually cut it out, adding instead raspberry coulis underneath and chocolate ganache on top. Here’s another peek:

Another project we took on last semester was the celebrated and scrumptious pork belly. Lots of people think of stomach – tripe, really – when they hear us talk about pork belly. No, no, no, no. Don’t get crazy. All we’re talking about is the cut of meat – the tummy, not the stomach – from which the holy grail of meat and fat and tasty (BACON) comes.

Uncured, dry-cured, beer-braised, cider-braised, torched, roasted, we did it all. The only really important part is that we braised it for three hours. (The reason we know that’s important is that we failed to do it twice, and with terrible, chewy, tough, no-fun results). Here’s a look at the belly before curing: shiny, fatty, and, if you have good spatial reasoning, obviously identical to bacon.

And here’s a shot of the pork belly, after curing, browning, and a little bit of braising.

Next, as we all know, we love Julia Child (but not that whiny Julie!) and so when we came home from the farmer’s market with a dozen fresh eggs, it was obvious to us that we needed to learn to poach them. This is one recipe I’m definitely posting. There seems to be a few different groups of people when it comes to poached eggs – those who’ve loved them forever and ate them all the time as kids, those who have never had them, those who hate them because they don’t understand the beauty of runny yolk, and those, who, like me, have recently become completely obsessed. It doesn’t hurt that Daniel is an egg-poaching pro.

Look at those wispy sheets of delicious egg white. Daniel and JC (you know which one) have so much in common. I think that’s why I like him so much. Anyway, poached eggs are also great because you can eat them in any number of ways: with traditional breakfast food, smooshed into a mini pita, next to your standard meat and potatoes, or on a salad with a plop of caramelized onions and some hollandaise sauce. Who invented this shit: take an egg, and then cover it with more egg – but not the whole egg, just the best, fattiest, most disgustingly tasty part – and mix that egg with butter. Crazy.

Finally, I won’t rehash all the gory details of our deer killing/butchering/eating experience (but you can: here!), but let me tell you: venison is awesome. We made bourguignon, curry, stirfry, but more often than not, just panfried little bits of steak (or, alternatively, heaven) and ate them with our fingers. To save you all that nonsense, here’s a rather unattractive pictures of the most attractive thing we’ve done with that animal so far: balsamic glazed frenched rack of ribs. Check it:

That concludes our review of the fall semester. Already, the spring has been extremely fruitful (or, to be more accurate, meatful), so look out for a recap of our Deadpan Entree Smackdown, and our first Deadpan event!

In approximately three weeks, Deadpan Restaurant, Ithaca’s newest secret supper club, will be hosting its first event.

What’s a secret restaurant, you ask? Good thing we already wrote a post on that: big sister lays it down for the uninitiated.

We’ll be serving a three course meal at a to-be-revealed location. Look out for more announcements!

After all, who wouldn’t want to hang out with and experience the epicurean adventures of champions such as these…

Max

Amin

Dan

Irene