The Last Meal 2011 Recap
As the year draws to a close, we all have a tendency to look back and reflect on what happened in 2011. For Studiofeast, it was a great year filled with events where we had the privilege of bringing people together with food. You can surf this site to see the things that ensued in 2011–through prose, video, and photo–but a less visible reflection of our year comes in the form of the responses to that question on our invite form, “You’re about to die, what’s your last meal?”
Studiofeast Sunday #1 Recap
For the past few years we’ve been doing events that have become more and more ambitious in scale, concept, and execution. This has been a good thing, as we’ve been able to push ourselves to create some really great dining experiences for our guests. These events have been our way of continuing to explore the culinary & social gray area between a high concept restaurant and dinner at your best friend’s house.
The Last Meal: Death Row Class of 2011
See the recap of this feast here.
I hope this message finds you well. As the end of the year draws near, I have the pleasure of inviting you to our final meal of the year: The Last Meal 2011.
For nearly 5 years we have had a question on our mailing list form that asks, “You are about to die, what’s your last meal?” Over time we’ve collected some great responses from all of you and last year, we created a meal using the top 20 ingredients from our entire dataset.
This year we’ll be creating a meal inspired by the “Death Row Class of 2011′s” submissions. To do this, we’ve sliced and diced the dataset into segments and will prepare dishes inspired by the favorites from various segments: Brooklyn vs Manhattan, Male vs Female, Spring vs Fall, Gmail users vs AOL users, etc.
Which Studiofeast segment has the best taste in death row food? You decide:
- DATE: Sunday, December 18th.
- TIME: 5:30pm – 9:30pm
- LOCATION: Brooklyn, NY
- FORMAT: Five courses that deal with duck, chicken, lobster, sichuan peppercorns, bourbon, whipped foie, more.
- WINE: Two wine pairings; BYOB if you wish
- DONATION: $100/pp
Seating is incredibly limited, so act quickly to secure a spot at the table by visiting this link: http://sflastmeal2011.eventbrite.com/
Participants will be emailed the location 24 hours before the event. Reservations are non-refundable and are first come, first serve. We cannot make any menu substitutions, nor do we have vegetarian options.
I do hope you’ll join us, but if not, have a great holiday season and we’ll see you in 2012 for more ridiculousness.
–
Photo by: David Christiansen, http://pop-up-studio.com
Studiofeast Sunday #1
See the recap of this feast here.
“And on the seventh day, we ate awesome”
On Sunday, Dec 4th in Williamsburg, we will be kicking off the first in a series of intimate Sunday dinners that we’re simply calling “Studiofeast Sunday”
These dinners will be 10 person affairs, with seating in close proximity to an open kitchen. Our aim here is to cook awesome food for you while holding an informative / hilarious / titillating dialogue with you about everything and nothing, all night.
We’ll be doing brand new recipes for you over five courses with two wine pairings for $100:
- Raw: scallop + foie + oyster + tarragon
- Salad: broccoli + shallot + sichuan + pork floss
- Soup: cauliflower + apple + salsify + chive
- Main I: rib cap + asparagus + mushroom
- Main II: ribeye + scallion + kimchi + tteok
- Dessert: brie + honey + lavender + cranberry
- Wines: two pairings + you are also welcome to byob
Please RSVP with your donation at this link: http://studiofeastsunday01.eventbrite.com/
Participants will be emailed the location 24 hours before the event. Reservations are non-refundable and are first come, first serve. We cannot make any menu substitutions, nor do we have vegetarian options.
I do hope you’ll join us and can’t wait to cook for you.
Studiofeast on Food[ography]
Check it! Here’s the Food[ography] segment I was featured in on the Cooking Channel. This episode’s focus was sugar and I made a Sweet Corn Financier, with Passionfruit Pop Rocks and Powdered Caramel. For more info, visit the Food[ography] website. Enjoy.
Hacked Sous Vide: The Best Black Cod Ever
I don’t always post recipes to this site, but when I do, I post recipes like this. A good friend of mine, Anna Larsen from Eat Retreat, asked if I could write one for her recently founded Sustainable Seafood CSA, Siren SeaSA, and I happily obliged. The recipe below is for Black Cod, one of the wonderful offerings Siren SeaSA provides, and I describe a way to hack a sous vide setup without all the expensive equipment. It’s a great technique for this kind of fish and I hope you’ll give it a whirl. We’ll get to the recipe in a minute, but first a few words about the great stuff Anna is doing out in California.
Siren SeaSA connects young fishermen directly to customers, which encourages the fishermen to continue practicing sustainable fishing methods. Anna supplied all the seafood for Eat Retreat, and I can personally vouch for the gastro-orgasmic inducing powers of this stuff. You’ll never be able to stomach supermarket seafood ever again. On top of all her fishmongeress duties, Anna is also a prolific opera singer, which makes me feel bad because I got to hear her sing at Eat Retreat but she, being one of my roommates, only got to hear me snore. I hope my cooking made up for that awful injustice, and I hope you enjoy this recipe.
If you’re in the Bay Area or love someone who is, please check out Anna’s Siren SeaSA operation and buy a seafood share. Then you’ll be eating tasty seafood like a boss. And now, the recipe…
#IreneRecipes
Here in NYC life is pretty much back to normal post-Irene. Walking the streets of Manhattan, it’s hard to tell that the entire city was on lockdown for the better part of last weekend. To quell the boredom, I prompted people on Twitter to tweet me their Hurricane Irene disaster prep food items, to which I responded with totally killer recipes that will win Studiofeast a James Beard Award.
A recap of our Twitter antics is below. Take a look, have a laugh, and if you enjoyed them, please consider for a moment to donate to the Red Cross to help with the recovery effort in places that were way less lucky than NYC.
Again, Irene sure wasn’t the haymaker we all thought it would be to us NYC-ers, but don’t forget about those in places like Vermont, North Carolina, and Upstate New York where they experienced catastrophic flooding and even fatalities. Let’s all be grateful that we could sit back with a drink and some food while watching the rain out the window, but throw a little love out to those who couldn’t.
Here’s that link to the Red Cross again.
The Future of Food: A Video Interview on PSFK
I sat down with the fine folks at PSFK to talk a bit about this thing of ours and to give my take on the future of dining experiences. Check out the video here:
We have new dinner events in the works that will be a bit more intimate than what you’ve seen in the past, those announcements should be coming soon for the Fall.
Get on the mailing list and follow/like us on Twitter & Facebook to stay in the loop.
Video Excerpt: Google+ Hangout Cooking Class
Last Sunday was our first cooking class on Google+ Hangout–it was great. We had a handful of friends, old and new, in the hangout while Soo and I demoed the Marrows dish from our recent Doppelganger Dinner. Here’s a short clip of the plating where her meat version met my mirror image vegetarian version. More of these to come, Circle me up on G+ to stay in the loop.
Studiofeast Cooking Class on Google+ Hangout
We’ll be hosting a Studiofeast Google+ Hangout cooking lesson on Sunday, July 31st at 6pm EST. The URL to the hangout will be posted to G+/Twitter/Facebook around 5:30p that day. You can also add me, Mike Lee, to your Google+ Circles in advance so you’ll see the link when I post it to my G+ Stream or leave a comment below if you’d like to be kept in the loop on the Hangout details.
For this lesson, Soo and I will be breaking down the process behind the Beef vs Potato Marrow from our recent Doppelganger Dinner. We received a lot of great comments the night of the event from this dish so it makes sense to teach you how to make it. Soo will be doing the beef version from one Hangout square and I’ll be doing the potato version from another square.
6pm EST is approaching dinnertime on the East Coast (or Dunch on the West Coast), so if you’d like to cook along with us, you should purchase the following ingredients:
