“Forbidden rice is a black rice that was supposedly forbidden to anybody but the elite of the Chinese aristocracy. We cook it, then put it through a meat grinder to release the starch and bind it; then we fry it so that the outside is crunchy and the inside almost creamy. It has a very earthy, terroirlike flavor.”
“We wanted to serve the rice with an oily fish, because I wanted some fat to offset the leanness of the rice. It’s poached in a bag in red verjus, which gives it a nice level of acidity and helps to balance some of the richness of the fish. We reduce the verjuice and then take some of that aside and thicken it with modified tapioca starch, which we then glaze the fish with.”
“That’s a puree of Virgil’s root beer and pitted Medjool dates. Virgil’s is a nice root beer, with lots of spices, no artificial flavor, and lots of nuance. We steep the dates in it, and then it holds the rice in place; it also provides a slightly sweet fruity note.”
“We blanch fava beans, shell them, and then pulse them in a food processor with salt and olive oil. They’re vacuum-packed and then scooped out to order and reheated in the microwave. The bright vibrant green crunch gives a nice bitter note to offset the sweet, the salty, and the sour.”
“That’s from Cyprus. I like the nice big crystals, the flavor, which has a slightly sulfury note and the fact that it’s visually striking. We like to give it to customers when they ask for salt, to freak them out a little.”