she's the writer, he's the chef

 

The Hallway

 

...because every house needs a hallway.

 

 

 

 

December 10, 2006
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

culinary creations

 

it's not a menu, it's a portfolio

These are by no means the only things Sal's created in his culinary career. They're just the ones we remembered to photograph.
 

creations for western culinary institute

 

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creations for vivid

from left to right

#1 -- ahi sashimi in a soy-orange glaze and ogo

#2 -- salmon tartare layered with fresh avacado and celeriac crème fraiche

#3 -- sautéed halibut cakes served on a bed of mesulin greens with a lemon-mustard aioli

#4 -- lobster and snap pea risotto garnished with manchego tuille and meyer lemon oil

#5 -- scallop chasseur served with tomatoes, chanterelle mushrooms, fresh herbs, and a white wine sauce

#6 -- striped sea bass and mussels served with a spicy lobster bisque and scallion sauce

#7 -- napoleon of layered crème, Grand Marnier, marinated bananas, and caramel between two puff pastry squares and covered with orange coriander sauce

#8 -- lava cake made of rich dark chocolate coated with ganache and warm crème anglaise

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creations for crema (formerly florio)

from left to right

#1 -- blackberry and apple galette (a flaky, fruit-filled pastry; kind of an open-faced pie) with an apricot glaze

#2 -- same thing, different day

#3 -- wheat levain, which is a type of sourdough bread

#4 -- chocolate tart with a semi-sweet chocolate filling

#5 -- a mixed batch from the bakery, including (from left to right): croissants, blueberry danish, cinammon rolls, chocolate croissants (the squarish pastries on the second tray), praline cookies (ohmygood so very delicious), orange-ginger scones, turkey & smoked mozzarella croissants (the darker squarish pastries on the right-hand edge), and cowgirl cookies in the lower right-hand corner (they're like chocolate chip cookies on steroids, with rolled oats, coconut, and great big chocolate chips)

#6 -- chocolate eclairs with vanilla pastry crème and iced with ganache

#7 -- various loaves of ciabatta bread (with kalamata olives on the left), which is a light, chewy Italian bread

#8 -- almond mini-cakes with orange mousse and garnished with ground almonds

#9 -- peach Basque tart, which has an almond flavored crust and is filled with a vanilla pastry crème and peaches

#10 -- coconut crème cake with coconut pastry creme between the layers, iced with butter cream frosting, and coated with coconut

#11 -- apple-cinnamon galette with an apricot glaze

#12 -- more wheat levain

 

from left to right

#1 -- wheat levain in specialty shapes: braid, twist, and epi (a cut of continuous baguette rolls made to look the like the central flower in a wheat stalk, or "epi")

#2 -- wheat levain in another specialty shape called batard (French for "torpedo")

#3 -- challah, a traditional Jewish bread served on the Sabbath and on the Jewish holidays (NOTE: this bread was baked by one of Sal's assistant chefs, Andrea)

#4 -- Sal's first wedding cake -- a chocolate stout cake (a very rich and moist chocolate cake that they sell in the bakery as chocolate bread) with a bittersweet chocolate ganache and decorated with fresh daisies; the bride sent him a thank-you postcard and a lot of business from her guests who loved the cake

And here's the full spread on Florio from the December 2003 issue of Sunset magazine (the picture in the upper left corner of the 1st page is taken from the counter inside). The article is about all the wonderful restaurants in the immediate vicinity. (WARNING: the picture is 311K so it'll take awhile to open on a slower connection.)

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creations for hall house

This is an impressionist cake Sal made for the 2003 NWCM Company Picnic. It's a four layer chocolate cake with butter cream icing. I helped him do the tinting because he needed so many shades (there are 9 colors in it altogether, although it's hard to see the variation in the photo). He did all the decorating himself, of course.

It took him several hours from mixing to baking to assembling to tinting to decorating. When it arrived at the picnic, it was admired throughout the meal. And when we started cutting, it lasted about ten minutes.

 

We ordered 50 lbs. of fresh-caught Coho salmon from the Fish Landing fishery in Astoria. They sell it whole (head on or off), gutted (head on or off), or filleted; as you can see, we ordered ours gutted, head off, and Sal filleted them all. The first picture is just one of the four fish we ordered, then the first few fillets, then all the fillets we got out of that fish.

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