A good thing to remember is that tomatoes do not like the cold! Please keep the poor things out of the fridge unless they are already diced up for salsa or the like. Rarely will a Grocery store, specialty market or even restaurant have a great tasting Heirloom because the tomatoes have seen the inside of a refrigerator. The best tomatoes are from the farmers market or straight from the garden. There are many ways to prepare them but just sliced up on a platter with some nice salt is pretty tasty. I fix mine sprinkled with flaked pink salt from the Murry River in Australia, along with Villa Mandori Balsamic, some good EV Olive Oil, and some fresh ground white pepper. A nice loaf of bread and bottle of wine and you’ve got a party.

One restaurant that does an outstanding job with this summers best is Marche Moderne http://Marchemoderne.net where my friend and fellow chef Florent Marneu is cooking up fantastic things. It is located in the old Troquet space in South Coast Plaza on the third floor near Nordstroms. Reservations are a little tough to get but well worth the effort.

The sound of teamwork…how can that be defined? A kitchen working with focus and passion towards a common goal excites me. I love being apart of the team executing a large event of platted dishes that are composed artfully. Such is the occasion above where my friend Chef John Sharpe and I were creating Native American inpired dishes of sustainable foods. Seeing the plates being wisked away in a blur after they are completed is very telling of the moment. A commoradorie forms when chefs join together to cook a meal and I believe in the efforts of planning, communicating, preparing and plating, we grow stronger!

Once a Californian, John is now the Chef/Owner of the Turquoise Room at the La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona. www.theturquoiseroom.net He is a dear friend, mentor, and chef. No doubt you will hear more about him in future blogs because he does amazing things with Native American foods like Churro Lamb, Tepary Beans & Piki Bread.

It all started with a sit down menu for 8 people here in Long Beach on a warm summer evening. 9 courses over several hours with my friend Chef Anita Bergmann helping me out. Prepping the day before, I had a few scraps after portioning the Hudson Valley Lobe of Foie Gras. Anita and I verified it was good enough to serve. The evening of the dinner party I had a few extra portions so I served the best looking ones to the guests.  Anita and I again struggled though tasting the delicious  seared Foie again because we didn’t want it to go to waste. The next day I cleaned up another lobe of Foie, this time to make a torchon. Chef John Johnston from Ritz Carlton had taught me a method of whole roasting, rapid cooling, forming into a cylinder several years ago but I wanted to try it like Thomas Keller did at the French Laundry. Cleaned, Formed, rolled in cheesecloth and poached. Now a few days later we had dinner at Marche Modern…Florent & Amilia Marneau’s new restaruant in South Coast Plaza. On the menu was both seared and cold preparations so we tasted them both. An excellent thick slice of Torchon on top of a sheet of carmelized Pineapple with good bread. My wife shared a few precious bites of the seared preparation with me. I got lost in the rest of the good food and found myself at home in Foie Gras Dreamland. Next day my Torchon had to be tasted…the best flavor was with a Vanilla Fig compote I had made last season. Next morning it was just a slice for breakfast on toasted Walnut Raisin Bread, in the afternoon a Beef Burger w’ Frome d’Ambert Blue Cheese, homegrown Heirloom Tomatoes, mustard, lettuce, and…you guessed it, a few little slices of the Torchon. The first trip to Marche Modern my friend Patrick could not make the dinner so we had to reschedule another dinner there just last night. This time I got the Seared Foie Gras, over a large Toasted Brioche Cube, served with Sylvie’s Huckleberries. Outstanding. Now my biggest problem…I still have one Torchon left in the fridge so I will have to have it with some egg dish for breakfast tomorrow. Ok, next week no more foie for awhile…but really,”How can there be too much Foie Gras”?

When I leave the gardens and hit the showers, I love being GREEN!