Behind the Scenes at a Lab Dinner, Part 4

Just as Nathan Myhrvold set out to write a 600-page book on cook­ing sous vide and wound up with the 2,438-page Modernist Cuisine, I started out with the sim­ple idea of writ­ing a blog post about what it takes to put on one of our din­ner events at The Cooking Lab. I real­ized early on that one post would never do and adjusted my plan to allow for three sep­a­rate posts, detail­ing shop­ping at the farm­ers’ mar­ket, prep­ping, and finally, the din­ner. All went accord­ing to plan until I started writ­ing about the din­ner itself. It turns out that 33 courses is not only a lot to make and eat, but also a lot to write about. So here is, at last, the fourth (and final) install­ment in my three-part series chron­i­cling the lab din­ner we held last November.

The guests’ enjoy­ment is always the best part

The tast­ing menu paired the 33 courses with six wines from the Pacific Northwest (click the menu at right to enlarge it),
not count­ing the cham­pagne that started off the evening dur­ing Nathan’s pre­sen­ta­tion. Needless to say, with the wine flow­ing and the food seem­ing to go on for­ever, guests were in good spir­its. The look of utter shock on Johnny Iuzzini’s face when he ate the Raw Quail Egg–described on the menu as sim­ply “a touch of pro­tein to invig­o­rate the appetite”–was a high­light. He was the last at his table to try it, so the other guests already knew that it was not actu­ally an egg, but a trompe l’oeil made from pas­sion fruit. Johnny laughed so hard, his head sank to the table.

Yet another sur­prise fol­lowed. The Polenta Marinara is a recipe found in Modernist Cuisine, but it’s titled in the book a lit­tle more descrip­tively as Strawberry Marinara. Another recipe straight from MC was the Mushroom Omelet, which was a great hit, as always. If you have a whip­ping siphon, it’s worth try­ing at least the siphoned egg foam that is used to fill the omelet. It is won­der­fully creamy in tex­ture but still intensely eggy in fla­vor. Nathan took a break from his work in the kitchen to explain to the guests the method we use to cre­ate per­fectly even stripes in the omelet.

By this point in the din­ner, some of the courses the team was plat­ing up were fill­ing enough to serve as entrees all by them­selves. The Roast Chicken was deli­cious, but many guests had to put down their forks before they had pol­ished off all of it. The pas­trami was also chal­leng­ing in its size and rich­ness, but even the New Yorkers in the group said they hadn’t had pas­trami this good; most of the guests gave it their all.

A we neared the end, the courses took a turn from savory to sweet. The Citrus Minestrone hap­pily com­bined the two by pair­ing a quenelle of cucum­ber sor­bet with vacuum-infused veg­eta­bles, all sur­rounded by a cit­rus con­sommé. I’ve never been a fan of cucum­bers, but I enjoyed this immensely! And of course, I also enjoyed the pis­ta­chio gelato (as I men­tioned in my last post, I never pass up a chance to eat it), which was served with macadamia and straw­berry fla­vors. Max explained that they were serv­ing far more desserts than they had at past events–part of the rea­son that this tast­ing din­ner was the widest in scope yet attempted by our team. Pastry extra­or­di­naires Pierre Hermé and Johnny Iuzzini were attend­ing, and we wanted to show them that the Modernist Cuisine team can hold its own when it comes down to sweets.

It was around this time–10:30 PM, and the guests had been eat­ing for about four hours–that MC coau­thor Chris Young walked in, like a prospec­tive father show­ing up at the end of a baby shower. Wearing jeans and a hoodie, he had come straight from the air­port, hop­ing to catch the tail end of the din­ner and greet the guests. As Max later explained to me, it was actu­ally a treat for the team to watch peo­ple eat. It’s not some­thing we get to do a lot. He said, “Because most of our food is com­mu­ni­cated through lan­guage and imagery, it’s a very unique–and I think important–moment in our process for us to share the mes­sage of Modernist Cuisine through taste.”

The din­ners also offer us a great oppor­tu­nity to see peo­ple who, owing to busy sched­ules and geo­graphic sep­a­ra­tion, we don’t get to see often enough. Oddly enough, Max and Nathan had just met with Pierre Hermé in Europe the week before, but due to projects of his own, Chris wasn’t able to make the trip.

The din­ner ended with del­i­cate snowflakes of vio­let sugar cut with a laser, Gruyère caramels, and olive oil gummy worms.

All 16 guests stood to give the culi­nary team an ova­tion after the meal. This was espe­cially con­sid­er­ate con­sid­er­ing that the act of stand­ing prob­a­bly required real effort at this point. Nathan thanked them for the applause and intro­duced each mem­ber of the team, from the chefs to Amy, our PR guru, to our pho­tog­ra­phers Melissa and Tyson, and even me, the blog­ger. It takes a lot of peo­ple to deliver a 33-course MC dinner.

After the din­ner had ended, I asked Nathan and Max to sign my menu. Max asked me which dish was my favorite. After a moment’s thought, I said “France in a Bowl.” At the time, in the begin­ning of November, the team was devel­op­ing my crazy idea of a Thanksgiving Stew, which Nathan had referred to as “Modernist cui­sine in a bowl.” So, it was my hope that per­haps the “in a bowl” con­cept was catch­ing on. There are, I thought, end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties. But I also liked it because the base of the dish was a foie gras cus­tard with hoisin sauce. The his­tor­i­cal ties between France and Vietnam, and there­fore the inclu­sion of hoisin along with the quin­tes­sen­tially French snails, frog legs, and chanterelle mush­rooms, proved in my mind that cui­sine is indeed always changing–even French cui­sine. The out­side influ­ences from other eth­nic­i­ties, the dis­cov­ery of new ingre­di­ents, the devel­op­ment of new tech­nol­ogy, and sci­en­tific break­throughs all pro­pel food for­ward, just as they affect so much else in human cul­ture. Cuisine evolves, and it is excit­ing to wit­ness the trans­for­ma­tions that are underway.

I then turned the table on Max and asked him what he would point to as a high­light of the evening. He said, “It was amaz­ing to share our food with some of our favorite chefs in the world, and to try to give back to them as much as they have given us through their inspi­ra­tion and con­tri­bu­tion to Modernist cuisine.”

While excit­ing, that aspect was also a bit daunt­ing. Max had been espe­cially thrilled to serve Andoni Luis Anduriz, a ground-breaking chef who flew all the way from San Sebastian, Spain. He also felt a lit­tle trep­i­da­tion about cook­ing for old friends like Johnny Iuzzini, Jeffrey Steingarten, and Scott Boswell. But he needn’t have feared; every­thing went won­der­fully. “I am extremely proud of the team,” Max said. “They came together after weeks of test­ing and prep­ping, and the effort they invested into each detail was appar­ent in all of the dishes we served tonight.”

Of course, just because the meal was done did not mean the night was yet over. Johnny Iuzzuni rounded up many of the chefs and guests to hit the town. I, how­ever, helped clean up, matched coats with guests, and went home to a wel­com­ing bed after a very long day.