Top Ten Songs of 2009 - Evening Recap Images: Courses 6-10

Course number six was based off of Grizzly Bear's "Two Weeks." To be honest, this dish was a last minute change. Tyler and I were going over the menu on Friday and he mentioned how many dishes were sweet. I realized that 7 of the dishes all had something sweet in them, and 6 were entirely sweet. So I made a few changes and one large one - this dish. Originally this dish was going to be a Urfa Biber cake with Chicory Chocolate Chantilly and dehydrated Bacon. At the last minute I decided to switch it out for a savory dish to balance the meal. And so I still used the same ingredients, only in an entirely different dish. The inspiration for the dish was based on color. For some reason, whenever I listen to ANY grizzly bear song, I immediately think "brown." Before I even committed to doing this dinner, I thought about doing this dish out of primarily brown elements. This whole dish was much more of a instinctual reaction to the song as opposed to a well thought-out "this is why I did this dish this way" sort of thing. So brown. Yeah...that's about it.

Course number 7 was based off of "I'm an Animal" by Neko Case. I thought it would be cheeky if I did a course called "I'm an Herbivore" and served only plant eating animals. Then I realized that mostly everything we eat is a plant eating animal. But I'd already bought the quail. So be it.

 

Course Eight was based off of the "Ego's Last Stand" by the Flaming Lips. Ashley was describing the song to me after hearing it for the first time on a drive to our butcher shop. As she was describing the way it sounded, I realized that I wanted to take those descriptions of the song and apply them to the texture of the food. I wanted to create something with a muffled and yet sharp feel in the mouth.

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Course Nine was based off of "Brother Sport" by Animal Collective. This was the funnest dish to come up with. The chorus of the song goes, "Open up your, open up your, open up your throat..." so obviously I wanted to do a dish that required you to open up your throat to enjoy it. My first thought was to do some sort of shot, but wanting to stay away from alcohol, I moved on to the next obvious thing...oysters! 

Course Number 10 was based off of "Useful Chamber" by Dirty Projectors. I chose to end the meal with a cheese plate, which is a pretty traditional way to end a meal. Dirty Projectors may look like your typical band, guitar, bass, drums, lead singer, back up singers - but they are anything but normal. They are creating some of the most interesting, sublime, catchy and fun music I've heard in a few years. So I tried to do the same thing with my last course. I took something pretty normal, yet good - a cheese plate - and tried to reinvent it in to something different and new, or at least unexpected.

 

All photos be Laurel's!