Dense rhubarb custard cake served warm with whipped cream
As promised, here are some photos of the new desserts created by pastry chef Allyson Lanter and featured on the Spring 2018 menu at Café Presse. Enjoy!
Warm Yakima aspargus served with Dijon mustard cream, chives and cripy country ham
Cafe Presse chef de cuisine James O’Hern unveiled his new menu for Spring 2018 today with the traditional staff tasting. The staff tasting is sort of a cross between a dinner party and a training class on all the details of the new menu; food, friends and lots of talk about the dishes.
Here are some photos to whet your appetite. Hope you will come by Cafe Presse soon to try the new dishes for yourself.
And watch this space for photos of the new dessert menu coming soon! Continue reading
Fresh, live periwinkles ready to be cooked
Getting ready for tomorrow’s Quarterly Chef’s Dinner at Café Presse includes preparing periwinnkes. Know as bigorneaux in France, small sea snails are poached then picked straight from the shell using a pin and dunked in mayonnaise. Accompanied by a glass of pastis, preferable facing the Mediterranean. Ah, another time perhaps.
These beauties were beach gathered (they are a nuisance species to the mussel and oyster industries, so we can feel good about eating as many as we can!) so we took the extra step of soaking over night in sea water to get all the sand out. Next they are poached in salted water with parsley, bay and black pepper.
Finished cooking. still in their steaming broth
If you would like to give them a try, there are still a few places left for tomorrow’s dinner. Give us a call at 206.709.7674
Quarterly Chef’s Dinner at Café Presse featuring the food of Normandy
Tuesday March 20, 2018, 6:30pm.
This morning I made a trial run of cooking teurgoule normande, the dessert to be served as part of a menu of specialties from the region of Normandy at our Quarterly Chefs Dinner Tuesday March 20, 2018 at Café Presse.
Teurgoule is a traditional, grandmotherly dish made with raw whole milk, short grain rice, sugar and cinnamon, baked in a heavy earthenware dish for 4-6 hours in a low oven. Although not very photogenic, this was more than compensated by the wonderful aroma that filled our apartment all morning while the teurgoule slowly cooked. It smelled exactly as if I were baking snickerdoodles!
Although I had heard of teurgoule and am aware of its iconic place among sweet dishes from Normandy, this is the first time I have cooked it. Yum!
March 2018 Chef’s Dinner at Café Presse
Tuesday March 20, 2018
MENU
Huitres crues au citron, bigorneaux mayonnaise,
crevettes rosé au beurre à l’ail
Local oysters raw on the half shell with lemon; periwinkles and whelks with saffron mayonnaise; wild caught Gulf prawns with garlic-thyme butter
Tripes à la mode de Caen et ses crêpes au sarrasin farcies aux poireaux et à l’artichaut
Beef tripe simmered for 12 hours with calf’s foot, cider, onions, carrots and calvados, with buckwheat crepes stuffed with leek-artichoke compote
Sole à la Dieppoise sur lit d’épinards et de champignons
Sole filets baked on a bed of spinach and mushrooms, served with a creamy white wine sauce, mussels, clams and bay shrimp
Tarte au Pont l’Evêque, salade à la frisée, aux noix et aux pommes
Tart filled with Pont l’Eveque cheese and crème fraiche, served with a salad of curly endive, walnuts and apples
La fameuse teurgoule normande
Rice baked with raw, whole-fat milk and cinnamon, served with calvados and sablé cookies
Dinner including beverage* $90
*paired wines or non-alcoholic beverage
For this special event, No Substitutions Please.
Reservations by phone only at 206.709.7674
Price does not include service charge and WA State tax
Our next quarterly Chef’s Dinner features the food of the region of Normandy. Blessed with the culinary bounty of its cold coastal waters, its lush pasture-lands and its famous orchards, Normandy offers a cuisine of unparalleled richness and generosity. Join us as we celebrate late winter in Normandy!
What: 5-course family-style dinner
When: Tuesday March 20th, 2018 6:30pm sharp
Where: The back room at Café Presse
Cost: Dinner including beverage* $90
*your choice of paired wines or non-alcoholic beverages
Visit our website for complete menu
Reservations by telephone only at 206.709.7674
For this special event, NO SUBSTITUTIONS PLEASE
Price does not include service charge and WA State tax
Rolled pork belly, oven roasted, served with a sauté of Corona beans, leeks and dandelion greens, and a creamy apple purée.
On Saturday, during the French Ligue 1 match between Paris Saint-Germain and Montpellier HSC, Laurent Bourscheidt of PSG Fanclub Seattle presented Café Presse with signed jerseys from the two clubs. The PSG jersey had been signed by Brazilian former PSG man Maxwell, while the Montpellier jersey had been signed by the entire team.
Our thanks to Laurent and PSG Fanclub Seattle for this honor! And see you all at Cafe Presse on February 14th for Real Madrid v PSG.
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