Best Dish Served To Date.

Frisee Salad with Beets, Pancetta Lardon, Celery Leaves, Soft Fried Yard Egg.

It was the look of two well cooked fresh eggs on a green canvas painted by the soils of Louisiana, splintered with the red of the beets which gave my nod to this being the best dish so far.  Simplistic Complexity.

Chicken Fried Chicken.

Just a chicken, and some more chicken, with a little chicken.  Here goes.  Farm fresh never frozen chicken, boned out, leaving all meat attached to skin in one piece.  Peel off the dark meat, cube and season with fresh tarragon, mustard green buds, leek tops, thyme, rosemary, sage, celery leaves, and carrots, season with sea salt directly before stuffing.  Butterfly out breasts, leaving a little fat on outside for rolling purposes.  Combine an egg yolk with the thigh mixture until it holds together, maybe even use a little chicken glace whipped into the yolk.  Spread onto the chicken breasts, roll into a cylinder, wrap in plastic, tighten, and let sit in refrigerator until set.  Remove plastic, season skin, smear with schmaltz, wrap in plastic wrap, wrap in tin foil, remaining a tight cylinder throughout the wrapping process.  Poach in water until almost cooked, place in ice bath until completely cooled.  Slice into disks, then battered and fried, maybe served with a Well-Made Hollandaise, Gruet Rose, Vanilla Sweet Potatoes, Waterfront View, Burgundian Aligote, Monkey Man by Toots & The Maytals on the Juke. Done.

Chicken Stock.

I like stock, and find perfecting the flavor and clarity to be the equivalent of a true artist drawing a perfect circle with the ease of no worries and muscle memory.  Bone out and skin a chicken, cut the back bone into chunks, and leave the leg pieces whole.  On sheet tray place skin in a pile, reducing as much surface area as possible so it will render while the bones roast, creating an amazing lipid to be used throughout the making of the stock.  Once the bones are amazingly roasted, remove the bones, and reserve the chicken fat in a bowl.  Deglaze the roasting pan with aromatics and liquor, flambe, reserve.  Heat chicken fat in skillet and saute vegetables until nice - do not season with salt, as this draws out the moisture, which we want for the flavorful stock (and moisture hinders browning niceness).  In a clean pot, combine vegetables, chicken bones, aromatics (star anise, konbu, roasted shallots, bay leaf, lemon grass, cilantro, corriander seed, etc.) and a little salt.  Bring to simmer, and stay constant with steady simmer, skim and degrease the top with meticulous attention; these impurities degrade the final palate portrait.  Strain, reduce until desired thickness, then season.  Or, if too busy keeping up with the "Jones's", you can buy it in a can designed by a guy in a lab coat from industrial chickens harvested by migrant workers.  A simple decision of taking time to make pure stock, affects the world.

Roasted Strawberries Terrine?

Cream together a little butter and sugar, mix with chopped strawberries.  Place inside small terrine mold, into oven at 300F covered for fifteen minutes, uncovered for ten, remove.  Crank oven up to 500F, place whole, trimmed strawberries on tray, season with sugar, salt, rice vinegar, roast until the color is bright bright red, remove and cool in refrigerator/freezer.  Once cooled, mix the roasted strawberries into the terrine, add enough gelatin according to desired texture, refrigerate.  Sliced with perfect symmetry, they can be served with a sweetened sour cream, and garnished with Lemon Balm or Basil Flowers or Borage or  Candied Lemon Grass or Lemon Zested Sugar or Smoke Cured Lemon Slice or....