Top Ten Songs of 2009 Menu and Dish Images

So I've talked about Laurel before. You can meet her here, here and here. And I've asked her to shoot some of my food stuffs too, here and here. What I haven't mentioned before is that we've been putting our heads together for years, combining our perfectly paired grab bag of skills to yield some imaginative results. There was the time we created large scale collages using our friends as models and famous paintings as our guide, and the other time when we secretly designed a book of the past year's memories from within the cavernous depths of what should be an office but is, in fact, her room, and then there was Saturday January 9th. Which, I do believe, has been my favorite collaboration to date. I think we've finally hit it on the head. Both of us doing so well, what we love. With a little help, of course, along the way.


A little back history on the following photos. Like in any of my previous Two Week dinners we made the meal the day beforehand. Laurel and Ash showed up around 10ish with coffee in hand - ready to work. Laurel and Tyler mainly worked the front room where we had the photo equipment set up - Ash and I ran the kitchen. I served the first dish at 10:30am and served the last one around 12:45am. That's about 15 hours for one meal. And yet there was so much energy, so many ideas. From Laurel and Tyler trying desperately to figure out how to make the dry ice "work" to Tyler insisting they utilize the visualizer on itunes in one of the photos to Laurel improvising environments and literally creating one from her own handwriting. And then, of course, there was the food. What follows are the result of that 15 hour day and the efforts of everyone involved. Thank you all, it was incredible.

Top Ten Songs of 2009

Each of the following courses was based on one of the songs from a list of my top ten favorites from this past year. The following lists out the songs first and then the course that went with them.  I structured it like a countdown, starting with my tenth song as my first course and ending with my tenth course as my number 1 song. Enjoy!

#10

Ring The Bell - YACHT (See Mystery Lights)

Course 1

Hell: kiwi caramel covered in blood red dark chocolate with hickory candy spears

Heaven: pear gelée, English white cheddar, arbequina olive oil and radish chip 

_________

#9

Quiet Dog - Mos Def (The Ecstatic)

Course 2

Date, chipotle and bacon corn dog on pine sprig, purple condiment, persimon ketchup

_________

#8

Walkabout (featuring Noah Lennox) - Atlas Sound (Logos)

Course 3

Strawberry rose milkshake with rose laced cream; kobe beef, mimolette with quince mustard and vanilla aioli in steamed bun

_________

#7 

Moody Tower - The Intelligence (Fake Surfers)

Course 4

Bourbon, pine, citrus, orange blossom, cream, egg whites, tonic water, generous shaking

_________

#6 

Knotty Pine - Dirty Projectors & David Byrne (Dark Was The Night)

Course 5

Pork tenderloin with a prosciutto crust, fondant potatoes, Spanish Olive smoked Salt, foamed hickory, pine geleé

_________

#5

Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear (Veckatimest)

Course 6

Urfa Biber and chicory rubbed filet mignon, bordelaise, turnip chips and dehydrated bacon

_________

#4

I'm an Animal - Neko Case (Middle Cyclone)

Course 7

Quail breast and leg confit, poached kumquats and "yellow lime" confit, mornay sauce, tempura basil and sage

_________

#3

The Ego's Last Stand - Flaming Lips

Course 8

Blackberry whiskey sour marshmallows with candied orange olive oil

_________

#2

Brother Sport - Animal Collective (Merriweather Post-Paviliion)

Course 9 

Oysters shell, burrata, english cucumber sorbet, mango pureé, lime, basil oil, sea salt

_________

#1

Useful Chamber - Dirty Projectors (Bitte Orca)

Course 10

Asagio cup with apple gelée and cave aged gruyere, blue cheese ice cream with maderia poached fig and wildflower sage honey, Brioche macaron with Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog goat cheese

_________

All of these beautiful photographs are compliments of Laurel Dailey Photography.

Here are some extras of the Blackberry Whiskey Marshmallow course - because they are so fun!