My soon to be mother in law was in town recently; a week of wedding planning and sight-seeing and dining out.   She had to try Ten-01.  I knocked off work around 6:30 or so, and as our reservation wasn’t until 7:30, I saw a perfect opportunity to sample some of Kelley’s new cocktails.  I started with a Seelbach, an old recipe from the southern hotel of the same name; crisp and refreshing.  Enjoying this and further perusing the drink menu, I realized I had never had a Negroni before.  I had no clue what I was missing!  When Kate and Carol arrived I felt a familiar groaning pang: hunger!  We sat down at table one amongst the tingling of glassware and the splashing of bubbling wine.  I knew as we toasted that this was going to be a meal to remember.  The ladies and I looked over the menu, but I knew Chef was going to throw down some dishes for us, regardless of our order.  We picked out a few things and told or server Chris to let the Chef do his thing: cook us up a multi-course menu of all his best.  Sommelier  Erica Landon uncorked us a bottle of dry Reisling; we drank and talked as the first dishes started to arrive.  Deep fried Piquillo peppers smothered in parmesan needed nothing else, a sumptuous start.  Next was clams and mussels in a rich buttery garlic broth, a duck confit and arugula salad, Heirloom tomato salad with Ancient Heritage Feta.  We caught our breath briefly, then a chilled gazpacho with a nice subtle bite.  Talk faded to sounds of smacking lips and scraping flatware.  Next a huge platter of steak tartare, two preparations.  I was in heaven.  Looking around the table, I knew my guests were, too.  Raw hand diced beef and fixings with toasted brioche, I can still taste it if I close my eyes.  Chef Benjamin popped over to check on us before our entrees, he was laughing and joking, excited we were having such a good time.  Our main courses arrived as we cracked yet another (third?) bottle.  As the lamb dish landed in front of me, the first thing that got me was the smell.  The gamey lamb mingling with the spicy merguez sausage and corn/farro.  I picked up the merguez and took a bite before I even snapped a picture; very unlike me, the aroma overcame me.  Looking to my left I smiled at Carol; deep into enjoying her scallops, and across the table Kate was wide eyed, mouth agape with a huge forkful of halibut.  Little was said over the next few moments as I recall; conversation gave way to deep sighs and glazed eyes.  Still to come, dessert!!  I’m always a little nervous when people I know eat my desserts, but I really believe in this menu.  I also knew Chef would be plating them to the letter with his expert hands.  We had everything on the dessert menu (except cheese,) and enjoyed them all.  Chef plated the napoleon better than I could have, the simple smear of sauce taking on a life it’s own.  I didn’t even get to taste the chocolate and peanut, Kate and her mom had made short work of it.  As an employee of this restaurant I can proudly say this was a truly amazing meal.  Start to finish, every detail of food and service was exceptional.  It’s very important as someone who works in a restaurant to experience the product, to know first hand the goal of all the hard, monotonous, behind the scenes work.  It serves to remind and encourage why we do what we do.  Sure, I probably got a bit of special treatment because I work there. Looking around that dining room that night however, I saw we weren’t the only ones.  Everyone there was made to feel like VIP’s.  Check out all the pictures from our meal on the Ten-01 facebook page.

Back in January I was contacted by Anne Nisbet, Culinary Director of the International Pinot Noir Celebration to be a guest chef at this year’s IPNC event.  I agreed, of course, excited to be involved in such a prestigious and fun event.  I was asked to prepare dessert for three hundred and fifty people at an outdoor plated lunch at the Linfield College campus; where the week long Pinot Noir Celebration was taking place.  I began preparing a week before, making and freezing White Chocolate Panna Cotta’s forty-eight at a time in flexible silicon molds.  The blueberry compote was also a huge undertaking, washing and cryo-bagging over six flats of Viridian Farms berries took me several hours.  The week leading up to this event was the busiest of the summer for Ten-01 so far; with several large in-house parties, a block party, and Chef Benjamin doing another IPNC event earlier in the week.  By the time I was packed up and headed out on Saturday morning, I was ready to home run this lunch and then relax and enjoy the celebration.  I brought my good buddy Mike Perez with me, his talented hands were a huge asset.  We set up in the busy kitchen and started to spread out our custards to thaw under refigeration.  The panna cotta came out perfectly, the compote; thick and rich.  Our course was third in an outdoor lunch; other courses prepared by John Taboada of Navarre and Brian Scheehser of Trellis. Our own Sommlier Erica Landon was on hand to pour wines for each course.  We had many able hands to help us plate up, the whole thing was over in about fifteen minutes.  We took much deserved naps in the provided college dorm room, recharging for the coming nights events.  When we arrived at the Salmon Bake, so did about 500 others.  The fire raged a long trench of coals roasting salmon, a sweet smoke filling the air.  We ate amazing foods prepared by other guest chefs and drank wines poured by local sommeliers.  The event was a smashing success, I was glad to have been a part of it.  Check out the pictures Ten-01’s Flickr page.

I watched Chef Benjamin throw down this vegetarian special awhile back and found myself salivating.  As a dedicated omnivore and eater of all things it was easy for me to get excited about this simply stunning dish.  The smell overwhelmed me as it hit the pass, and all this without any animal protein.  Who knew?  Later that same week we had a local blogger and food writer eat with us and ordered all vegetarian.  Chef Benjamin put out some amazing courses, all on the fly, with nothing off the regular menu.  The food writer loved his meal, and posted all about it on his site and on portlandfood.org. Come down to the Pearl and enjoy our food.  We serve all kinds of good stuff.

At any given moment, Chef Benjamin Parks is being pulled in a hundred directions.  Menu planning, ordering, receiving, butchery, staff training, meeting with farmers, guests, other Ten 01 managers, sous chef, pastry chef, etc, etc.  He’s expiditing on the line.  He’s portioning more halibut in the back kitchen.  He’s discussing grilled pound cake with me.  How he keeps it all going and still manages to have a huge smile on his face mystified me at first, until I got to know him better.  Chef Benjamin loves work.  Chefness oozes from his pores, saturates his being.  He loves Fridays because he knows the following morning he gets to hit the Farmer’s Market.  He’s always showing up with arm loads of amazing greens and vegatables, or bringing me the most succulent peaches and strawberries.   You can’t help but be excited about food around Benjamin.  His exuberance for all things gastronomic is contagious.  His knowledge of techniques and ingredients is well past the border of normal, well into the fabled land of nerdiness.  His nerdiness isn’t just limited to food, however.  You’re just likely to overhear him jabbering away about the latest zombie movie or comic book he’s read.  He’s an easy going Chef with and easy demeanor that makes only one simple demand of his staff:  Make the best food.

As Chef was putting the finishing touches on this dish, I heard a muffled “Yesss!!” from his corner of the kitchen.  The look on his face said “If it were possible, I would high-five myself.”  We’ve been serving various versions of this soup as an amuse bouche for the past few weeks, but it wasn’t until today that Chef Benjamin felt it worthy to replace his popular Pork Soup.  The element that it needed turned out to be quite simple; a carrot puree.  The colors pop, the flavors elegantly compliment each other and when topped with edible flora and chive oil a light refreshing summer soup is born.  What better way to celebrate tham make the recipe available to you.  As a bonus, you could make the creme fraiche needed for the recipe quite easily yourself.  Combine 1 part buttermilk to 4 parts heavy cream.  Cover with cheesecloth and set in a warm place (like above your refrigerator) for 4 days, stirring every day.  After the alloted time cover and store in the fridge until ready to use.  A quick note on onion stock; you may notice the leeks are added later in the process.  This is to insure that thier flavor comes through, and doesn’t get lost in the stronger onion’s potency.

Chilled Pea Soup

2 cups onion stock (recipe follows)

4 cups fresh shelled or frozen peas

2 tblsp creme fraiche

1 bunch fresh basil

salt to taste

1.  Blanch and shock the peas and basil seperately.  Rough chop the basil to help it puree more easily.

2.  Bring the onion stock to a boil.

3.  Puree the hot stock together with the blanched peas and basil.

4.  Add the creme fraiche and season with salt to taste.

5.  Chill the soup immediately over an ice bath.  To maintain the best color, use an ice bath with a lot of surface area to cool it down as rapidly as possible.  Serve chilled with appropriate garniush.

Onion Stock

1 sweet onion

2 spring onion

2 leeks

1/2 cup white wine

3 cups water

1.  Thinly slice onions.  Sweat in olive oil over meduim heat until translucent, be careful to to get any color.  While the onions sweat, cut off the greeen part of the leeks and chop.  Set aside.  Thinly slice the white part of the leeks.  Set aside.

2.  Degalze with white wine.  Add the whites from the leeks.  Cook the stock until the wine is reduced by half, stirring occasionally. 

3.  Add the water ans simmer for thirty minutes.

4.  Add the green parts from the leeks and simmer ten minutes.

5.   Strain and cool the stock.  Store in an airtight container in the fridge.

It took about two hours to dismantle the pig; it’s awkward hulk covered three cutting boards, the whole back prep table.  Chef broke it down into it’s useful bits, happily smiling and dreaming up dishes.  A porcine arrival at ten- 01 is always a joyous occasion, and the weeks that follow simply explode with pork.  Our pigs come from Sweet Briar Farms in Eugene, free of hormones, antibiotics, and full of farm-fresh flavor.  Pulled pork, terrines, hams, double cut chops, loins and fatback.  So many possibilities from one noble animal.  The entire staff; front and back of the house were lingering and watching as the pig changed form, a headless piggy prone reduced to mounds of meat and bones.  Piles of potential delicious causing the mind to race and the mouth to moisten, marbled fat speaks volumes.

This is the first dish that our new Chef Benjamin Parks put on the menu that really caught my eye.  Actually, it was my nose that got caught, drawn in by the sumptous smell of dill pureed with artichokes and mushrooms.  The dish is simple to behold, elegant in design, and down-right delicious.  Chef Benjamin explained to me what Barigoule sauce is, which turns out to be a classical Provencal pairing of artichokes and milky-cap mushrooms, the latter giving the sauce it’s name.  This is typically a stew of sorts, but he purees it into a silky sauce.  We use local hedgehog mushrooms, and they add a subtle meaty backround.  This dish, along with a few warm, sunny days here in Portland, has mentally catapulted me into spring.  Light yet satisfying, enjoyed with a crisp white wine as the sun sets Big Pink ablaze in the early evening. 

Beating out hundreds of applicants, Chef Benjamin Parks has been hired to helm the kitchen at Ten-01.  On his first full day as a Portland resident, he was first among those at the Park Block’s Farmers Market, excited about local ingredients.    Owner Adam Berger had his work cut out for him making this decision.  He ate his way through over 30 courses prepared by some of the country’s greatest Chefs in a few short weeks. The web is already buzzing with his arrival, but not nearly as loudly as the staff at Ten-01.  We are all very excited to welcome into our family, and look forward to what he brings to the table.  Stay tuned for exciting new food and happenings at the Pearl District’s Ten-01!