A Feast for the Senses
Saturday, February 15th and Sunday, February 16, 2014
In a tiny chocolate shop in Manchester, New Hampshire, we crafted a dinner for 12, as surprising, delightful, and elegant as our minds would allow us to create and our bodies to execute.
Six months in the design, Sunday mornings often found Rich, Jeff, and Sam gathered around the stainless steel table in the Dancing Lion Chocolate kitchen noting on notepads, sketching on sketchpads; designing dishes, food, service, flowers, music. Crafting fans, cylinders, cups, skewers, and bamboo sticks, each from the appropriate couverture. And we’re EXPERIMENTALIST, of course. We use no recipe, but make each dish for the first time when we prepare it for the dinner. An exercise in insanity? Follow! The Guests arrive.
At the Table…
A sparkling green vase
Sprouts cubes of rich pannetone
On chocolate stems.
Amuse: Pork Tenderloin with Citrus
At your table, Savory Chef Jeff drizzles
Sizzling habanero oil atop Spice-rubbed pork
Sputtering blood orange fragrance.
Blood-red bamboo of rare Piura from Peru.
Soup: New England Chowder
A simple cod chowder coats throat silkily
With Grenada white chocolate.
A tart shell cup crumbles
Dark Ghana melting rivulets of crab
Onto plentiful pancetta.
Appetizer: Baked Brie with Balsamico Tradizionale
Balsamico is syrupy at 23! (A tiny bottle from Italy!)
4 drops, and Brie with chocolate from Pacari, earthy
Organic, raw, and compote of fruit folded broodily into
Buttery origami pastry with a tottery cup of
Chocolately
Balsamic
Concoction.
First Entrée: Cornish Game Hen Roulade “Sushi”
Calvin plays Chopsticks (or anything but)
While guests wield chopsticks on sushi (or anything but):
Roulade of game hen, basil, tomato cooked sous vide,
Cacao-dusted plantain dumpling, tomato-twisted chard, soft Italian cheese
Accompany.
Second Entrée: Rack of Lamb with Vegetables and 3 Sauces
Chocolate-circled painted palate plate: yuzu-drizzled brussels sprouts, stuffed purple potatoes baked twice!
Rare-seared lamb with three sauces:
Yellow Yuzu
Emerald Chive
Ruby raspberry
Dessert: Bananas Foster
A spectacle! Fiery flamed Foster of rum-soaked bananas
Let me begin at the bottom.
A glass jar. Buttery Arubian-rum-soaked pannetone beneath
Precious creamy complex milk chocolate from Guatemala beneath
Vanilla bean ice cream beneath
Rum-soaked bananas flambed with brown sugar beneath
A festive chocolate fan. Fini!
Retrospective
Master of Ceremonies
Master Chocolatier Richard Tango-Lowy
Chef de Cuisine
“Savory Chef Jeff” Volkers