Saturday, September 06, 2008

Born out of abundance

This interesting dish evolved out of a brainstorm that centered around ordering too many melons, and needing an appetizer special for the week-end. No matter how hard I could have tried, this is something that comes to you while standing in the walk-in cooler staring at the condensation, opposed to sitting with a pen and paper. Plenty of odd dishes with abstract flavor combinations have come and gone with little notice, but customers actually enjoyed this one. We offered this last week-end: Hot Italian sausage, local summer melons, feta, truffle honey, borage flowers, leaves, and pickled stems, finished with fleur de sel.
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3 comments:

BOB said...

i really like the idea of melon and sausage with truffle.. never worked with borage flowers... how are they.... i was playing with parsnip roots the other day... seen them in some oy raymond blanc's recipes but just found them at giant eagle the other day lol.... i think i try the melon and sausage skewers at the next party i go to.... hope all is well

Michael Walsh said...

the borage is an interesting plant. the leaves and stems are hairy, almost prickly. I blanched them to tame this characteristic. The leaves are juicy like a spinach leaf, but have a cucumber flavor. The flower are sweet, and are one of the few naturally blue edible things. the stem i pickled, and it was a bit stringy, but it conveyed the acid of the pickle with respect to the whole dish. I don't know if i will be purchasing any more borage anytime soon.

Parsnips are great. parsnip-pear soup is a fall favorite. an even more rare find is parsley root. Makes a great sauce, and it's white so you can play the whole green on white game.

have fun!

BOB said...

im sorry im slow it wasnt parsnip roots i was so excited about it was parsley root