Full & Buzzed

So today I'm going to be making a little hamachi crudo.

I'm going to be trying out a new sauce that I've never made before, because Michael's here and maybe he'll put it on the menu.

I'm going to also be making a little porcini pasta using the fresh porcini that my good friend Quang found for me.

Quang was nice enough to bring some porcinis.

Quang, what do you call them?

I count boletes.

Why?

Well, that's.

Boletus edulis is the scientific name for it.

And I'm not scientific at all.

Usually about anything, but it's one of the main reasons I'm in Colorado in the summer.

It's just so I can go hunting for these things.

You can't grow them that you have to go find them in the wild.

So.

But why can't you just call them porcinis?

I can.

Because every time you call me or text me, you're like, I've got some boleti.

I'm so used.

To saying.

I'm like, we just need to name porcini.

I'm going to try and make, like, a seaweed brown butter broth.

I'm going to put a little dried seaweed in here, and a little bit of water.

So almost like a dashi.

And I'm just going to get that like up to a boil.

And then I'm going to make a little brown butter.

So I have this the black seaweed.

I mean you can see it's like almost it's steeps even just in the cold water and gets soft.

But I just want it to be a little bit warm.

And then I'm going to put a little bit of butter in here and make a little bit of brown butter to put in with it.

When you make brown butter do you use a whisk?

My guy.

I just asked that because he actually taught me to use a whisk when I make brown butter.

By a little bit of butter, a fistful of butter.

That's the only way we cook.

Yeah, I love it.

Thats why restaurant tastes so good.

So I have our Hamachi here.

You use words like dashi and Hamachi and you're making fun of me for boletes.

Yeah, but you know what those are, for God sakes.

Come on.

So I have our hamachi here and I'm, I'm thinking that a little bit of like a little avocado and jalapeno relish on top.

So when you keep whisking the brown butter, all the milk solids from the the butter won't stick to the bottom of the pan and burn.

It helps to just yield more of the brown butter.

Youre actually letting it boil?

Oh yeah I'm going to let, it's going to start to bubble and splash everywhere.

But you can really start to smell it coming out now.

So I'm just about there because you can see it's just turned to light golden brown.

And you can see the solids in the bottom of the pan now are what's separating out.

Like do you see that?

So I have my brown butter I'm going to turn it off.

I'm going to want to stop the cooking.

So usually you want to add a little something to it to stop it from getting too dark because it'll continue to cook.

I have a little yuzu juice and this is going to get.

Now you can really smell that coming up.

Whats Yuzu chef?

Yuzu is like a lime from Asia.

So it's a little.

Citrus.

It's a it's like a lime citrus.

Do you know what it is?

No.

I'm just laughing because you you dance.

there saying lime from Asia.

You use you instead of bolete.

Oh.

Never mind.

No.

You're allowed to criticize me for sure.

So our seaweed has gotten nice and soft.

Oh, wow.

Yes.

Beautiful.

So I'm going to let that just sit for a minute.

I'm going to add a little bit of the yuzu, which is an Asian lime.

It's a little sweeter than the limes we use here.

Okay.

It's cool how it changed colors from.

Yeah.

It got, like, light green from that really dark that we had.

I've never made this before, so this is a first.

So you're along for the ride with me on this.

All right, let's go.

But I know that I'm going to need a little bit of heat with it, too, so.

Oh, baby.

Look at that.

A little jalapeno.

I'm actually excited for the saltiness with avocado.

And then I'm going to put a little bit of olive oil on top of this.

Cold pressed?

Cold press.

Extra virgin olive oil.

Cold press is the first pressing of the olives.

So it's really rich and yellow.

You don't usually use it to cook.

You just use it for like, sausage, for vinaigrette, or to finish a dish.

And it really has a little brighter, fruitier, more body to it.

That's great.

That's good to know.

Nice pinch of salt.

I love that.

Okay, so I have my salsa.

Okay.

So I'm going to put together our sauce.

And I'm going to blend this to try and like emulsify it.

So I'm not exactly sure of my ratios here.

But we're going to take some of this warm seaweed and that liquid with the yuzu.

Seaweek and Yuzu together.

Then I'm going to add in all my brown butter.

You sure you've never done this before?

No.

Michael, have you ever even heard of this?

I have never even talked about this.

One cool thing working with you is we don't use ratios?

Chef makes it by eye.

And.

100% of the time, he's usually spot on.

So I'm excited to see how this turns out.

Howd we do chef?

I think we're going to like that.

This is awesome.

So I'm just going to keep that in a pan to keep it warm.

Is this a is this the sauce.

That's going to be the sauce for it.

So I'm going to take our hamachi.

Probably do four nice slices per order.

You just want to clean off.

There's a bloodline here that runs on the bottom and you want to clean that off.

I like to leave a little bit.

So you see that nice color from it.

And you're trying to just cut probably like eighth inch strips.

You know, Frank, I still remember the, the, the first time, I think the first few months that you took over Aubergine and we came in for a dinner and you made us a few appetizers that to this day I can still remember.

One of them was an egg with truffles, and it was just came in this little glass thing.

It was like, what the heck with foam on it.

Remember that?

Oh, yeah.

That was 24 years ago.

Yeah.

And it was like, what the hell did I just eat?

It was amazing.

How cool is that?

That you remember something?

Yeah.

from 24 years ago.

It was art.

It was pure art.

Is that about when you started to paint for us, too?

Well, it took about 3 or 4 times.

I came back 3 or 4 times.

And then I had I took up, you know, I had the nerve to ask if I could just paint the kitchen, because when I'm eating, I'm seeing all this movement going around those living painting right there.

And I'll never forget, Frank said, actually, we know who you are because we saw you on our on our, you know, reservation list.

And and we'd love for you to we, we would love for you to paint our painting.

And in fact, this dinner's on us tonight.

We'd like to have a painting of yours, you know, sometime down the line.

So I was, it was so much fun.

So since then, how many years is that?

20, 24 years?

24 years ago.

Wow.

And I've.

My paintings have changed and progressed in that time.

So I mean, your style is so different.

I feel like mine is so different too now.

Like I'm just so much more simple.

Simple?

It says, I say simple, but I feel like.

Yeah, I get it.

Less is more.

Believe it or not, it's very similar to painting.

When I was younger, I would put every color on the table that I have out there.

Palette would be full of colors.

Now I could do a painting with just three colors.

Right.

You learn to be a little bit more simplistic or you get the most out of the color, right?

Yeah.

I'm going to finish this off with a little Maldon sea salt.

Visually, that.

Looks beautiful.

Yeah, that looks awesome.

Let's get you guys a little white wine to drink with this.

This is a little Gruner.

It's a slightly effervescent, which I think will go really well with this.

All right, all right.

Let's hope that this worked.

Let's hope this worked out.

Cheers.

I can't wait to try this sauce that you just.

See how I'll eat it is.

I'll just dip the piece of fish into the sauce.

That's where I'm going.

What in the world?

That is so good.

So different.

Beautiful.

I think it works, though.

The nuttiness is the secret.

That's the ingredient that you know.

But you don't know, right?

Brown butter is the best secret weapon ever.

But the seaweed do though is real subtle.

Yeah, right.

I never would have guessed that was seaweed.

Finishing with the Maldon salt is just like.

Chef's kiss.

That is.

It's amazing.

So, Kwang, you were really nice, and you brought some for you hunt for porcini or boletes?

boletes boletus edulis, they call it.

And you were really nice because you dehydrate some for me.

So when I knew you were coming.

And I wanted to use mushrooms that you brought me.

So I'm going to make a pasta because, you know, I love to make pasta.

I'm going to take the dried ones you gave me and make almost, like a tea out of them or a little broth.

So I have just some, some boiling water here.

I'm going to drop these in and just let them steep.

Reconstitute them.

Yeah, I'm going to strain them out though because I'm just going to use a broth for making this pasta.

I'm going to I'm going to bulk a little bit with a little bit of Crimini mushrooms, because I want some different textures of the mushrooms.

How long does it take you to forge these mushrooms when you.

Well, you know, this is one of the main reasons I'm still in Colorado in the summer is because I live in Pennsylvania most of the time.

But I taught a workshop near Aspen one year, and one of my students went off to after class and she came back with a bag of mushroom.

Like, are you crazy?

What are you doing?

She said, you have no idea how good these are.

So she taught me that the Colorado mountains full of in the summer.

Porcini or boletes and chanterelles and.

Porcini is not even in my vocabulary anymore.

It's boletes.

Well.

Yeah, we're going to be at the restaurant saying boletes to everybody, and they're gonna be like, what are you talking like that?

But there is like, it's like Easter egg hunting for adults for me.

You know, I go up and some year, one year, I found 80 pounds of them in one spot.

Some years I hunt for.

I hike five miles back and forth.

Found two of them.

They start around late June, maybe mid July, and they start low.

And then as by this time mid-August, they'll go up to 10,000ft.

That's crazy.

And it has to be just the right amount of moisture.

And if you get a fresh bolete and you slice it and you salt it and just butter, olive oil, salt and pepper, it's it's so wonderful.

So I really love doing that.

I mean theyre I mean that is like picture perfect.

That is a top tier mushroom.

Right.

Right there.

I mean.

This size, right.

This of all mushrooms.

The bolete or porcini are my favorite mushroom because you can eat them raw.

Yeah.

So if you hadn't if I had these, I actually contemplated making this in all porcini mushroom or bolete dinner for you.

And I was going to put a little bit of shaved raw porcini on top of that.

The crudo that we had, I'm going to just add these into some olive oil that I had in this pan and just start to get them toasty.

Curious to see what you do with you cook the frozen ones the same way.

Yes.

Yeah.

You do cook them the same way.

They're pretty much defrosted.

The only difference is with the frozen ones.

I'm not going to get any real color on them because they're so soft.

Why do the mushrooms before the aromatics like the garlic and shallot?

I'm a little worried that if I added the garlic and shallot at this point that it would burn because I'm going to get this is going to get pretty high heat.

So I'm just going to add a little more olive oil in here.

Chef why are you cracking the garlic.

I'm just going to mince it up.

And typically if you weren't here I probably wouldn't even be putting garlic in this.

But you love yourself some garlic.

What?

And he knows me too well.

That's funny.

He does.

He knows.

Every time we're talking, it's like, why did you put garlic in that?

And he's like, I always put garlic in it.

I'm like, okay.

So you would consider not using garlic?

I would, but he likes it.

And it's we're we're following porcini or kind of Italian.

And a little garlic is always nice.

Cheers to chef.

I'm not putting very much in, but by crushing it, I'm just going to make it a little easier to mince it up.

So those mushrooms, like you can see I did even get some color on those.

And I can tell they're nice and tender.

Even the criminals, like, I want them to have some texture.

I don't want to cook them down all the way.

Does it matter what kind of pan you use.

Do you need a stainless?

nonstick?

I mean.

I really like just a heavy bottom pan.

Like, if I wouldn't use like a nonstick pan because I'm trying to actually create what they call the fond, you can see like right there where it caramelized is to the pan so you can scrape it off.

Yeah.

Because you'll see when I deglaze it with the porcini broth Which I am just about ready to do, I am going to deglaze this with a little bit of red wine, just to give it a little depth of flavor.

And coincidentally, this is the red wine you guys will drink with it.

So if you want to pour me, pull your glass over here.

Okay.

Well, don't they always say if you won't drink it, don't cook with it.

Yes.

That that is a good, safe rule.

And this is just a little like table wine from.

It's a Barbera from Italy.

And it's just a nice it's not too strong.

And I'm just going to let that kind of cook all the way out which I didn't put much in.

So you can see.

So I have my porcini broth and you'll see how dark that got.

Yeah that's wild.

And that was just wow.

Beautiful and that was just mushrooms and water?

Yep.

When I reconstitute that, I usually eat the pulp.

And youre using.

Absolutely.

I'm not throwing that away.

All right, but I figured I don't need to put the dry mushrooms in here, since we kind of have the fresh mushrooms.

I think the texture would be a little chewy because they tend to get a little chewy when they're like that.

Right.

And I want these to be nice and meaty and really get into it.

Wow.

What kind of pasta you got for us chef?

I have Campanelli, so this is something I made at the restaurant.

So it's like a little flowery bell shaped pasta.

Beautiful.

It'll hold broth really well.

And because this is really going to be just a fork pasta, you don't twirl so you can get it.

Eat it like it's a meaty pasta.

Now I was just blown away that you make these at the restaurant because it looks pretty involved.

It's a really beautiful.

So it's fresh pasta.

I yes.

It's impressive I I don't know, I mean we have a machine that extruders them.

You do have to stand and cut them at the right time as they come out of the machine.

But it's a dye that we use that.

One at a time?

They come out three at.

A time, three a time.

Okay.

So it does take a little while.

To, I imagine.

To, to make this much pasta, but it's also probably a reason why we don't have them on the menu that often.

And I obviously just put some salt and pepper in here.

All right.

I'm just going to say I noticed that you always use a cracked pepper rather than just like a pepper that people buy.

I mean, if I had my yeah, I would never just have ground pepper pre ground.

And the stuff you buy that comes in the containers, it's pepper.

But it's so flat because it's dried out to like really cracking fresh pepper.

If you were to try them side by side you would not even know one was pepper.

Because one's got more heat, more oil.

It hasn't dried out.

So to me that that's really important because you want that okay.

So of course we're going to finish this off to thicken it up with a touch of butter.

Butter.

We're not cooking with chef unless we're using butter.

What are you made of?

Butter.

Butter.

Life's better with butter.

It's the binder.

You know it's our binder.

I mean, you can see though, just how thick that sauce got just from putting that little bit of butter in there or a lot of butter.

But.

So this is good.

It's not quite cooked all the way.

What are you restaurant people call that?

Al dente.

All right.

There it is.

Al dante goes perfectly with boletes.

It's perfect.

With the boletes.

But I'm going to let it kind of finish cooking in this sauce so that it absorbs the sauce in the last minute or two of its cooking process.

Wow.

So I'm used to like dishing out the pasta and dumping the sauce on top.

But no no.

No no no no.

No.

No no no.

Always you want to always try and put the pasta into whatever you're tossing it in because the last minutes of it, this is where the molecules are.

This is where it's the most porous and it will absorb whatever it is you're putting on it.

So you always so like, even if you're doing tomato sauce, like if I drain this and just put it back in this pot, I would always just put a little of the tomato sauce in there, then ladle it into the plates and then put the sauce on top, because it's easier if you're plating for a lot of people, right?

Or you're plating for just three of you.

And then but at least then the pasta has a chance to absorb some of that sauce.

Beautiful.

So we're about ready to plate.

I had Katie run out to the garden to get me the last touches for this dish.

A little bit of fresh sage and some marjoram.

And I don't want to add this at the very beginning because it'll get flat.

So I'm just going to Chiffonade this.

I'm just going to show up to your door with fresh boletes every time I, I find them.

I think Michael would rather you come to the restaurant.

I would love for you to come to the restaurant.

I'm good with that.

So I'm going to just finish this off.

Typically, we would just use extra virgin olive oil, but I have a little bit of Sep Oil or porcini oil.

What the heck?

I didn't even know.

That was a thing.

Obviously nothing goes better with porcinis or mushrooms than Reggiano Parmigiano.

This was the this was the part I was talking about right here.

Am I being shot right after this?

This is our last meal.

Is this my last meal?

And I tend to go a little heavy.

But because I don't like, I feel like you can never have too much parmesan cheese.

I was going to say never.

Yeah, just a bit.

Just pinch.

This is a pinch of parmesan cheese.

And then we'll we'll garnish because Michael's here with a few little pretty blossoms.

Because Michael's here.

All right.

Manja, as they say.

Can I, can I just rename this the Mount Everest of pasta?

Look at this snow on the mountain.

I love the snow.

Look at that.

How beautiful.

All right.

I feel really confident about this one.

I didn't so much about the crudo, but.

I can't wait for you to try the hawk wings.

See if it comes through.

I'm just going to eat a piece of pasta.

That is amazing, right?

Yeah, that's.

Oh My God.

None of my pasta ever tasted this good.

But it's a lot.

It's not a lot.

I mean, I just made this in 20 minutes, so.

But it's like drawing out the, the depth of the mushrooms, right.

By sauteing them by making making the broth of them a little of the sep oil or porcini oil on top.

So it's like three ways of mushrooms.

Yeah.

Well this is ridiculous how good this is because this is like I can hand my brushes and paints for somebody who's never done it before, you know, or a halfway competent painter.

And it's not the same as I hand it to somebody who really knows what they're doing, and they can make a masterpiece out of it.

This is amazing.

The depth of mushroom.

And also like, I want to touch on the the texture, the texture of the mushrooms is kind of what gets me like that's the Hawkeye.

Yeah.

Oh, man.

Hawk wing.

That's the hawk wing.

Yeah.

I had no idea the Hawk Wing really held like it's texture.

It's meaty.

Yeah.

So I mean, these three, the combination of the three mushrooms, because probably the porcini is the softest of all of them.

Yes.

And then the Crimini and then the hawk.

So you're getting three different textures of mushroom, which I really love and it is what we're trying to create when we cook food.

I'm going to hunt for some more porcini for you gentlemen.

It has been a pleasure cooking for you.

And I have a feeling you're my toughest crowd in the whole season.

So I really appreciate having you here in my kitchen.

And it is wonderful to cook for you.

And your feedback is great, chef.

This is amazing.

This is next level.

It's good.

I'm still.

Marinating it.