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I guess we were really braising, in duck fat, since the meat had already been brined and roasted. Left-over pork loin rejuvenated into a barbeque sandwich. I had some duck fat in the fridge, so I brought it to a boil on the stove and threw in the pork. We covered it, and in a 210 F oven it cooked for 4 hours. The resulting meat was tender and flaky and tore up easily for sauce slathering and sando assembly. The sandwiches provided no photo opportunities as they were quickly munched down by the hungry inhabitants of our household. Jaybill was available to pose with his barbeque sauce, which was delicious. I used some of Chef’s chorizo vinaigrette to make a paste with mayonnaise, we spread that on the toasted buns. The tastiest morsel of the meal was found on the side of the dutch oven we used. An incomprehensible ducky-pork flavored paste stuck to the inside rim. It was like eating candy.

It’s a Chorizo burger, actually. People who don’t enjoy this are stupid. Tomato bacon jam, pickled shallots and fried hen egg. The Chorizo sausage has a good spice, and egg yolk melting all over everything is a fucking mouthgasm. Easily takes this month’s Creative Presentation of the Week. Created one night for staff by line cook Mark, we knew it was a keeper.  Sitting tall on the bar menu this burger is the best thing you ever tasted. I recommend dipping each bite into srirachanaise, and washing it all down with cold whiskey. Man, we’ve been putting out good food. Peep this Squab. Seared and served with crab-zucchini salad and Hollandaise? Yes, Please! How about an english pea crepe to sop up that sauce? Delicious!!

I’ve been mentally putting this cake together for two months. When I finally attached the last rose, and stepped back, taking it all in…I was quite pleased with myself. After 12 or so hours total prep time over 4 days, the thing looked pretty damn sharp. I could hardly remember all the baking and prepping of the fillings and the 6 a.m. rolling of the fondant. It all seemed like a dream now. At service time, I pulled off the lace so the newlyweds could get the first slice. It felt like foreplay as the thin black fabric fell away. Watching the bride and groom grin and cut into it and stuff each-others faces, I knew I had a silly smile, too. I waited in the the crowd with a sharp blade. Foreplay was almost over. And you know what that means. This was the first cake that I’ve made that I also got to cut and serve, and while intimidating at first was easy and fun to do so. There was a certain bent appeal to spending so much time to get this perfect, then just wheeling over and hacking it apart. In spite of the fondant, I knew also this cake tasted great. Two of the layers were Grand Marnier soaked chocolate sponge with chocolate mousse. One was lemon pound cake with lemon pastry cream, and finally a vanilla sponge with vanilla pastry cream. With sticky hands I plopped piece after piece onto to an endless line of plates being rotated in front of me. As I cut it, the servers ran pre-sliced chocolate truffle cakes from the back. 200 people were caked in about fifteen minutes. The rest of the food we put out for the party was really nice as well. From sushi to prime rib, they ate it all. It was a good day. Days like this remind me why I love this business, why I have no problem with the long-hours and sometimes less than ideal conditions. We came, we cooked, and it was good. That’s F&B, baby.

After months of waiting, my manager finally let me have iPhone. I love this baby. A tricorder sized computer, mp3 player, movie player, and tracking device. A balls-deep, bad ass little piece of hardware. Sure, sure it’s way more phone than I’ll ever need, but to me, that’s half the point! Expensive? So, what! Just some more dollars towards , the singularity and human augmentation. Seriously, I’m O.K. with it. If I had the ability to Borg myself out I would. Optical readouts and enhanced performance, biosoft learning environments, and bionic arms and shit? Sign me up!! I guess I got a little off topic there but this phone has possibilities. The available applications are beaucoup. I’m already reading the New York Times on the shitter, and the full sized touch pad keyboard has got me texting with 3G Of giggerram. It makes beautiful music. I don’t know how it does what it does, and I don’t much care. It is the most intuitive phone I have ever used. Within 15 minutes of owning it, I was tracking myself on Google Maps. I was reading webcomics. I was making light saber noises while I whirled it around.

Today marks one year that I’ve been writing this blog. From humble beginnings mrjeffmccarthy.com has soared into the blogosphere, with faithful readers in 29 countries and over 400 average monthly visits. Maintaining this blog has helped me get jobs, learn Photoshop, improve my writing skills, and become an international superstar. Well that last bit is an exaggeration but you get the idea. I’d like to thank everyone for reading, the comments and celebrity visits have been highly enjoyable. The feedback, copious. Special thanks goes out to Jaybill for making this site possible, the guy created a monster. A hairy, sarcastic, irreverent, sometimes foul-smelling monster. For the next year I’ve got big plans. Guest writers, an expanded recipe section, finishing Butterhead and of course, more genius. Lots more genius. For anyone that wasn’t aware my blogday was today, never fear!! Mrjeffmccarthy.com will be accepting 40 oz’s all week!!

So I took the chocolate flour-less cake recipe that I used for Chocolate Whiskey Cake, and I piped and swirled some NY Cheesecake batter into it and I’m calling it Marble Cheesecake. I discovered this process by mistake at Carlyle, where I had the two batters ready at the same time. Funny how stuff comes together sometimes. I learned one recipe from Tony, and one from Mark, it’s as if I delivered their bastard child. The creaminess of the cheesecake flirts with the fudge-like chocolate, blackberry coulis and delicate horseshoe chocolate garnish sells it. Pretty cool looking I thought, and hell of decadent. I used this cake for a recent off-site event, and it was well received. Some people even want it for their birthday. Right now Bramble-type berries are so good in Oregon, and these blackberries are no exception. Viridian farms delivers, and the berries don’t disappoint. Take for example their blueberries, which are an integral part of the Lemon Blueberry Tart, below. This is an extremely simple dessert, pate sucre, lemon curd, the blueberries and coulis, a bit of chantilly. It’s selling well. I didn’t know how it was going to work until I had it on the plate. Simple and delicious. I’m also using their raspberries for the new Bread Pudding set, with raspberry caramel ice cream, a different but delicious frozen treat. Also new this menu is Funnel Cakes. I wanted to try these again to see if I could actually produce them, instead of just piping a few like I originally did. I can. I can also serve it with roasted banana anglaise and call it a day.

I eat good at work. At about nine-thirty, or ten o’clock, I’m about to get fed. One night Perez made me this slider, it had foie torchon and a fried quail egg. I practically inhaled it. Arturo loves to cook for everybody. One morning when we were all hungover he cooked up some rib tacos with black bean sauce. Perfect hangover food. One night, at the end of service, he brought me this tasty pork loin dish, it had this great spicy salad on it. Niell also cooks for me sometimes, like stuffed chicken breast and bacon shallot mashies. I asked him what he could throw together for me real quick and he shows up with a perfectly seared, feta stuffed goodness with smooshy taters. It made my night. He made me a big fat steak one night, too. Still another night, Tony 2 Fingers had a duck tit mac-e-chee for me, with stinky blue cheese. He’s always got some project going for me to taste, like a bacon wrapped terrine. One night I ate this delicious duck confit, Perez made that one, too. But you know, I get hungry. Doing what I do, you can catch an appetite. The kind of appetite that requires a healthy portion of mayonnaise, butter, duck fat or cheese. I wonder what my cholesterol looks like these days. I imagine a delicious looking sludge pumping through my veins, a river of fetid creaminess that would make a good sauce were I to mount some butter. Ah, gluttony…GIMME A RIB!!

Yes, faithful readers, that, unfortunately, is Foie Gras. A cold lifeless hunk of fatty fat-fat, alongside a pile of stinky aspic. This pathetic terrine was crap, and so was our entire meal at a brasserie in Paris, France. The 27 euro prix fix was just shit. The service staff hovered annoyingly, the dude eye-balling my fork, just bent on that moment when I put it down so he can snatch it away. Our salad, hands down the best course, reminded me of middle school. I felt the bearded cigar smoking lady from 6th grade lunch line watching me from the kitchen as I ate slimy lettuce and hard tomatoes. Even the cream corn was present. Kate had salmon, a flesh colored mass that arrived at the table amidst a broken hollandaise and rice pilaf. The only texture in the fish came from the numerous pin bones. My lamb chops showed up overcooked with no sauce, the “chips” were the only thing more embarrassing than the foie terrine. And what the fuck was that salad? Even Ground Round did it better than that!! At least they dressed the cunting thing. We sat in the middle of the dining room, in sight of the (shudder) dessert table, which housed the included sweets of the evening. A kind of enclosure or sneeze card covered the room temp plates I could almost reach. The profiteroles came from the kitchen, however and the imported Hershey’s syrup the saving grace of the meal. My lemon crap-tart arrived quickly, as it was stored less than a meter from my face in the center of the crowded room. It had the tip broken off of it’s stale meringue. The fucking tip was broken off!! Show some pride people!! This is Paris!! Putain de merde!!

We cooked at the Outstanding in the Field event at Domaine Serene Winery. The bus rolled up and set up the table in the middle of the vineyard, then we showed up and cooked on the hillside. Adam and Chef shucked over 200 oysters while the rest of us cut up melons. Soon after I cut my finger opening a bottle of truffle oil for the confit garlic and mushrooms. The sun baked us as the guests toured the vineyard and the servers scurried to ready the wines. The scene was set for an epic five course, including great food, wine pairings, and good company. As always we came prepared. We served up herbed melon salad with goat cheese and prosciutto. We heated the duck confit and cherry farro in a nearby oven, everything else was precariously perched on screaming hot grills. Chef seared of the duck tits and I grilled the pork loins. Our farmer from Sweet Briar Farms double fisted the meat as it was sliced up, gleefully telling all it was one of her pigs they were about to eat. It was as sweetly serene service, I drank chilled red wine and nibbled on everything. After the pork and lyonnaise potatoes we chatted and drank. People came up and clapped us on the backs and cheersed us as we watched the sun settle low on the trees. One guest was quoted “…fucking fantastic,” she would travel the country for three more Outstanding meals. A sepia coated everything as Chef told me to start the dessert. Everybody quickly plopped the cheesecakes on the plate while I mixed the berries and balsamic reduction. People ate, the elation was audible.

So a few weeks ago I received an email from a guy at Ile de France cheese company. They wanted to send me some cheese, and then write about it on the blog. Well eat the cheese, and then write about it. So here goes. I received my cheese in a small box containing a styrofoam container with some ice packs and bubble-wrap shrouding the cheese. My first thought was that great care was taken to get the cheese to me in good shape. After pulling away the packaging I must admit I was a little disappointed at the packaging. It immediately looked to me like an everyday mass-produced household cheese. I’ve been sampling a lot of good cheeses lately and most good ones don’t have a picture of cheese on the package. Our resident Frenchman also pointed out, here was an imported French cheese without a word of French on it. But cheese is good, and one of my personal favorite “cheeses” isn’t actually cheese at all and barely which meets the legal definition of cheese. I pulled it out and let it come up to room temp. Me and the boys sampled the cheese on top of some Pearl Bakery bread. The cheese smeared nicely onto the bread and had a subtle aroma. The creaminess hit me first, rich and buttery. The rind was slightly firm and reminded me of Brie, unsurprisingly. Camembert is the cousin of the King Of Cheese. A fun fact about Camembert: Salvador Dali got the idea for The Persistence of Memory from a wheel of melting Camembert. This cheese was that good. I wrapped what was left up, I wanted to enjoy it later with wine. When I got off, work, that’s just what I did. Since this cheese had such a buttery quality, I decided to finish the wheel in one of my favorite butter ways; on toast with jam. I poured some red wine as the bread toasted. I spread on the cheese, then scooped on some jam. My mouth watered as I sat in the evening sun. The cheese was just barely melting from the warm bread, and when warm, had a certain nuttiness. I read about Camembert later that evening and learned that it was one of the first industrialized cheeses, the advent of its wooden box dating back to 1890, making it possible to send the cheese over further distances. I started to make some connections. I guess the original Ile De France was one of the first refrigerated ocean liners, sailing the seas with cheese just 40 or so years after the wooden cheesebox was invented. Brie and Camembert were one of the first cheeses imported by America, and by this company. I guess between then and now they learned that Americans like their packaging flashy, and in English. And yes, a picture of what’s inside would be helpful. Overall, I really liked the cheese. A simple example of an age-old cheese. Not showing off, not falling behind. Right in the fat part of the curve. A cheese I would eat every day.