Chef at the Wine School
Part of my job running the Wine School is to create the menus for our food & wine pairing classes. That includes our food and wine pairing classes, the Sommelier Smackdown, and my personal favorite, our wine & cheese pairing classes.
I’m working on a new dish right now. With butternut squash coming into the markets this week, I will probably do a caramelized squash with mignonette pepper. That will play on the sweet/savory elements I really love to play with. Just a dash of cinnamon will keep it nicely balanced and deepen the flavors.
A New Pork Dish
I’ve also been wanting to work with pork from Stryker Farm. They are a woodland pig farm in the Pocono Mountains that are flying under the radar right now. Amazing stuff. I am thinking of doing a pork tenderloin stuffed with quince and pine nuts and a simple pan jus as the sauce.
For the starch, I am thinking of making fresh orecchiette with a burnt butter and sage sauce. It would be effortless but would work very well with the squash and pork dishes. I believe that great pasta is about simplicity.
And for Dessert
For dessert, I am doing a cheese course. I have been working with some interesting fermentation and curing techniques lately. One of the coolest innovations has been to cure cheese in miso. Yeah, you heard that right. Curing butterfat-rich cheeses in miso, in particular Camembert. It’s an easy technique that melds sweet and savory in a mind-blowing fashion.
