Yesterday I attended the Buick Regal Discovery Tour at The Delamar in Greenwich, CT. Apparently I didn’t do enough research prior to the event, so I was clueless as to what to expect other than it was sponsored by Food & Wine and Travel + Leisure magazines, and that I had a chance to sample food from Marcus Samuelsson. Here’s my recap of the event, food-related.
Cocktail class with Michael Green
Michael Green (Twitter handle: @mgwine) has the job I want – sampling various alcoholic beverages every day. Well, it’s more than that, of course. You can read more about him on his website. Now – on to what we did at his session…
The Coco Tonic was the mocktail of the morning (if we had some of the Skyy vodka on display, it would have been a cocktail). Shown on the left is a quick snapshot I took of our working space – a cute placemat outlining the ingredients needed to make a Coco Tonic, and recipes. I won’t post his recipe here, but I’ll tell you it’s a simple mix of coconut water, lime juice, basil simple syrup, pomegranate juice. Quite refreshing, and oh, so tasty.
Michael also showed us how to make the Urban Lady – swanky mix of vodka, grapefuit juice, Domain de Canton French Ginger Liqueur, and club soda.
Artisan chocolate with Chocopologie
Knipschildt Chocolatier‘s Chocopologie is a known chocolate brand, and cafe in SoNo (South Norwalk, CT). The chef prepared the most expensive chocolate in the world – the $250 chocolate truffle – a Perigord truffle – truffle’d.
These truffles are made to order. Once you place an order, they will order the truffle. After the truffle arrives at Chocopologie, they hand roll it with a ganache using real truffle oil and dusted with high quality cocoa powder. Shelf life: 7 days.
Unfortunately, I was not able to sample it, but I got a photo of it (see left). The proper way to eat it: Slice it up and share it with your dear friends. =)
Now what I did get to sample was a few of the regular Chocopologie truffles – white chocolate coconut, hazelnut, and milk chocolate truffles.
I also learned that white chocolate, although has the least amount of cacao in it, is the most expensive out of the family of chocolate because there is less of it in a cacao pod.
Roadfood.com’s Jane Stern
This session covered travel and food – my favorite combo. Jane and her husband, Michael, graduated from Yale. They decided to travel the US and rate every small restaurant possible – quite a feat, huh? Well, they realized that eventually and over time, they’ve published several books, and about 10 years ago, they created roadfood.com, a website that helps you find good, local eateries across the US (and Hawaii). I haven’t had a chance to fully explore the site, but I’ve become a member and have read a couple entries in their forum. Not bad, so far. Now, I’ve gotta see if I can enter my reviews on several local Hawaiian establishments.
Cooking with Chef Marcus Samuelsson
Chef Marcus Samuelsson (Twitter handle: @marcuscooks) is the chef and co-owner of Aquavit restaurant in New York City. Samuelsson was the winner of season two of Bravo TV channel’s Top Chef Masters, earning the title of “Top Chef Master.” During his session/demo, he covered several interesting points about food:
- Our palettes are changing.
- When dining out, people are eating more comfort foods – fried chicken, burgers.
- Later, fine dining will make a comeback – morphing to something different from what it used to be
- You can use simple ingredients to enhance the flavor of food
- Good cooking doesn’t require expensive ingredients
He showed us how to cook Coconut Fried Chicken, pictured left. Key takeaway when preparing fried chicken: soak the chicken in salt, lemon and pepper for a day to give it a flavor kick.
The fried chicken was served with collard greens, mixed with bok choy. Probably the best collard greens I’ve ever had.
These two dishes will be served at Red Rooster, Samuelsson’s new restaurant in Harlem, NYC opening this Fall. You can read a sneak peak on Grub Street.
Alas…This is the longest blog post I’ve ever written. But seriously, the event was a great discovery experience. If the Buick Regal Discovery Tour is in your area, be sure to take advantage of attending the free event.
Now, I’m looking forward to reviewing the free cookbook I walked away with – Marcus Samuelsson’s New American Table.
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