A new version of one of my favorite desserts. Sweet Cream French Toast. Brioche is battered and deep fried in clarified butter. Yup. Deep fried in BUTTER.
We are serving it with bacon infused caramel sauce, toated oatmeal ice cream, granola, caramel bananas and maple-whiskey sauce.
We had a doughnut photo shoot today, (ya, that’s a thing,) and after the shoot I called my staff out for what will forever be known as the Best. Meeting. Ever! The topics were the same… blah blah blah. But the snacks were, well, just check out the picture 
Oh, and the two lovely chefs in the photo are Hannah and Chris, my super duper sous chefs. They work so hard the least I could do is set them up with some coffee and doughnuts, right?
I grew up in Hawaii and when I was a kid we spent a ton of time at the beach. There was a woman that would walk up and down the beach selling popsicles. I always went for the creamsicle. It was vanilla ice cream in the center, surrounded by orange sorbet. Heaven.
Kyle and I don’t like to waste anything. It’s a chef thing… I’ve never met a chef that wouldn’t freak out if they saw onion scraps in the trash or day old bread getting tossed. There is a use for everything! Onions can go into pretty much any stock. Day old bread becomes bread crumbs. Every piece of food that goes in the trash makes the food cost more to make. We strive to give value to our guests and saving by not wasting allows us to keep costs down. It’s that simple.
Opening GBD has left us thinking about all the chicken bits and pieces that we will have left after we butcher the chicken. Bones and feet go to stock. Skin becomes chips. Livers become mousse. Gizzards… What about gizzards? Kyle has that covered.
In the south they boil gizzards and deep fry them. It’s kinda disgusting. Chewy, no flavor. I guess you had to grow up eating it to truly appreciate it. So Kyle wanted to re-create that idea but WAY better. He cured the gizzards like you would duck legs for confit, then slowly cooked them until tender in duk fat. Then he breaded and fried them like the traditional deep fried gizzards in the south… But sooooo much better!
Just one of the reasons I love him.
If you see sticky toffee pudding of any kind on any menu get it… Never met one I didn’t love.
We use dried black mission figs in place of the classically used dates. Gives it a richer flavor and I love the mini crunch from the fig seeds. It’s served with sour cream ice cream, walnut flan, candied walnuts and a caramel roasted seckel pear.
Winter on a plate!
We know our cooks can cook. We are constantly impressed with their work ethic and talent, working 14 hours a day to make food they are proud of. But besides family meal, (which they take very seriously,) we haven’t see what our cooks at Birch and Barley can come up with from scratch. So naturally we were really excited when NRG decided to do an iron chef style contest at each restaurant. The winners will compete in a BBQ-off at the company picnic in a few weeks.
Each restaurant was to come up with their own rules for their contest. We decided to give a nod to Cochon 555, a pig centric cooking competition held yearly, by having our own version, Cochon 666. Get it. With all the whole pigs we have been getting in at Birch and Barley, it just seemed appropriate. The rules were as follows:
Oh, and did I mention each restaurant had to get a “celebrity judge”… We were lucky enough to lure in Nycci Nellis, who offered a great, positive energy sprinkled with just the right amount of critique. Perfect.
So it began. Pastry Assistant Jes Kearney, Meat Cook Mike Hanney, Entremet Gennaro Esposito and Hot apps cook Paul Kostandin spent 90 minutes cooking and I was one of the lucky taste testers! Pork & black garlic sausage with pan seared gnocchi and pesto, stuffed pan roasted loin with fried green tomatoes, shaved ice – Philly style and half smoke with the most perfect spaetzel I’ve ever had. Hanney even rigged a smoker out of two pots and a beer pipe. In the end it was Paul that took the prize, (although it was close… everything was really really great!) His menu was amazing! Appetizer of tortelloni stuffed with cranberry bean purse served with seared bacon/veg and pan seared deviled pork liver. The liver was so creamy. The entree was seared pork loin with grilled watermelon, a spicy stir fry of bok choy & sugar snap peas, and a biscuit puree. For dessert Paul made a puree of plums and ginger which he drizzled over shaved ice then topped with whipped cream and candied ginger.
Besides bragging rights, which is the best prize of all, Paul won a gift card to Woodberry Kitchen, one of our favorite restaurants, and a trophy unlike any I’ve ever seen. A pig skull painted red with… well, you can see it in the pictures below.
It was a proud moment for both Kyle and I, watching our young, aspiring chefs create and be judged by us and themselves, (Kyle was sure to tell his cooks the self judging was going to be the hardest part… Having people taste your food when you know there are things that could be better.) I can’t wait to see what they come up with next!
Now, on to the show…
Kyle and I LOVE BRUNCH… Of course we like eating it but unlike most chefs we like cooking it as well. If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant with brunch you probably know that not many chefs love (or even like,) working Sunday brunch. You are exhausted from Saturday night service and you can count on the fact that someone will be late. The menu doesn’t include your normal mise en place so setting up the stations is a pain. You can count on every customer ordering at the same time. It basically has all the ingredients to create what is known as an epic sh*t show.
But the food is oh so good and the guests are all happy to be there. And it doesn’t hurt that at brunch it is socially acceptable to consume alcohol before noon…
Last Sunday, between frying doughnuts and baking sticky buns, I scurried around the kitchen snapping pictures of brunch service at Birch and Barley… Hope it inspires you to get off your bum on Sunday morning and get some brunch. If you come to Birch I recommend the Corned Beef Hash with Duck Eggs or the French Toast… I’m getting hungry just thinking about them!
Kyle and I couldn’t love our team at Birch and Barley more. They are one of the toughest, hardest working, talented kitchen teams in DC. They work their asses off 65+ hours a week and rather than lazing around on their days off they are out and about looking for good food. This past Monday Kyle and I took them on a foraging excursion in Virginia.
Our main goal was to find morel mushrooms. Alas no such luck but we did find all kinds of other edible goodies on our 3 hour trip. The sweet white flowers blooming from a black locust tree, mustard seeds, fawn mushrooms, young bamboo shoots and nettles. Our greatest find, however, was RAMPS! We found beautiful patches of plump ramps with the most beautiful greens I’ve ever seen. We gathered a few pounds and did our part to spread the love, planting a few of the harvested ramps in new spots during our hike.
And after the hike we had a BBQ, which featured our ramps in a beautiful potato salad. Kyle made Snapper Ceviche (one of my favorites) and I made my “famous” rice noodle salad, (Kyle’s favorite.) We were both really excited to taste everything our cooks made for the BBQ. A salad of Israeli Cous Cous, grilled clams and squid, (made by Tyler,) was super impressive. Then the cooks brought out cupcakes from Baked & Wired to celebrate my birthday early. See, our cooks are really the best! It was the perfect end to the perfect day.
Can you tell I’m excited for strawberries? Rhubarb marks the start of spring produce excitement but a few weeks later, when strawberries become available, is when I really get excited.
To kick of the start of strawberry season we put a new dessert on the menu at Birch this weekend. Olive Oil Panna Cotta, torn pieces of Poppy Seed Pound Cake, Macerated Red Strawberries, Versus Soaked Green Strawberries, Balsamic Reduction, Mascarpone Ice Cream and Strawberry Sorbet. Garnished with Sweet Pea Tendrils, Olive Oil Powder and Strawberry Dust. We made the dust from pureed strawberries, sugar and egg whites. We baked the mixture on a low temperature until dry like a chip and pulverized. It has a pretty shine to it that makes it almost like glitter. Fun!
Simple flavors that everyone knows. Fresh peaches dressed with lightly whipped cream. Maybe a drizzle of honey or a touch of vanilla. Here we present it in a new way. Creme fraiche panna cotta made with buttermilk and lemon for tang. Around it, a thin layer of roasted yellow peach puree, set lightly with gelatin. Served with the flavors of a classic peach melba trifle: crumbled home made nilla wafers, raspberry sorbet, peach sorbet, torn poppy seed pound cake, raspberry-lime gel and fresh fruit. Created for an Art Culinaire feature, (but I thought it would be fun to show you exactly how we did it…)
Perfect, simple flavors… slightly re-imagined.
Stay tuned for the full recipe when the issue comes out in June/July!
