EAT. Your Best Friends: Top Ten Songs of 2009 - Evening Recap Images: First Few Courses

Let me take a moment to say that though this blog is currently titled "Your Best Friend" this blog is not the work of just one person. It takes a rather small army of creative, hard-working individuals to make YBF work. Tyler and I will be transitioning this blog over to encompass all the personalities and musings of this small gaggle of food aficionados in the coming months. You may have noticed that our web address has changed. We're no longer a dot blogspot. This is one of the few changes coming in the next few weeks.

Up next are more photos taken by the lovely Laurel of our latest YBF effort.

Ashley - my Sous Chef.
For all of you REAL chefs out there (if there are any real chefs who read this blog. Which I believe there are, in fact, none) - please just let me have my labels...no neither Ashley or I have ever stepped inside a culinary institute - nor have we seen the inside of a professional kitchen. But short of buying tall white hats and refashioning street jackets to look like reputable aprons - this is all we've got. So Sous Chef it is, crucify me for my flamboyant use of terms - so be it.

I also wonder what would happen if I paid her? Ashley works so hard she may as well be wearing a girdle.

More people show up!

I'm explaining things to everyone.

The first course was based off of a YACHT song whose chorus goes, "Will we go to heaven? Or will we go to hell? It's my understanding the neither are real." In the spirit of the song's cynicism I decided to do two tastes and title one heaven and one hell. My initial idea was to create two somewhat identical tastes and let the guest decide which one was heaven and which one was hell. Unfortunaltey, my heaven taste fell apart at the last minute and I was able to create something entirely new in it's place. It's still a fun concept that I'd like to play around with in the future, but for now this course was more about kitsch titles than conceptual consumption.

Course number two was based off of Mos Def's song "Quiet Dog". Again, this plate was more kitschy than conceptual. I liked the idea of creating my own hotdog, which I had never done, and making it look cute but making sure it had a nice kick to it. I ground dates, chipotle peppers, pork and bacon and stuffed them in to lamb casings. Then I smoked them in my oven over a low heat for a few hours. Then on the night of, Ashley stuffed them on to Pine sprigs, from my dearly departed tree, and we tempura fried them.