Tonight's Special Is...

Hi everyone, sorry it's been almost a month since my last post. I've been traveling these last few weeks but I am finally ready to blog again!


Every night at the restaurant, we offer a "fresh catch" special as well as a crepe du jour. Normally, Chef creates the specials but sometimes if he's busy or not around its up to the sous chef or line cooks to come up with something. It usually consists of  a starch, vegetable, fish, and a sauce. Chef was in the walk-in one night seeking inspiration for the night's special when I remembered the box of figs that were delivered the day before. We had ordered more than we'd need for the week so that was my starting point. Whenever I think of figs, I think of prosciutto (okay and Fig Newtons, too). Then I thought of this panini Giada DeLaurentis made one time with prosciutto, cantaloupe and arugula and we had cantaloupes in the walk-in for fruit salad. So, with figs, prosciutto, and cantaloupe I thought maybe we could make a fresh catch out of that. Since we were going with an Italian flare, I decided to make orzo pasta the starch.


Chef of course helped me take this concept and turn it into a meal. I would use cantaloupe in two ways: sliced and wrapped in prosciutto, and juiced. We would use the juice and put it into this thing that looked like a whipped cream can and call it "melon foam" ...FANCY. It's the bright yellow stuff you see in the picture. 

Here's a picture!

On the bottom, you'll see a bed of orzo pasta. We tossed it with the fresh figs and drizzled with balsamic vinegar, garlic and shallot. The prosciutto-wrapped melon was thrown on the flat top for a minute for color and flavor. There's also sauteed spinach in there (Chef said we needed something green on the plate). The fish is grilled mahi mahi, which was also drizzled with some balsamic vinegar. Oh and finally, the bright yellow stuff was the melon foam. I was having to foam each plate just as the servers were walking out the door because it would collapse under the heat lamp.


I'm not gonna lie, making the night's special really made me feel cool in the kitchen...and the fact that we sold out of it kind of helped too :)


Bon appetit!