Tapas Tuesday

So I run the kitchen at a small cafe in an art museum and every Tuesday we stay open late and run a tapas menu. I've thought for a while that it would be fun to see if Veeky Forums would be interested in participating. Do you have any ideas for small plates that you'd like to see executed? Curious how your original ideas would fare on a menu? If anyone is interested in playing I'll pick one or two of the ideas I think will work in our space and do my best to re-produce it and put it on tomorrow night's menu. I'll post a few pictures of some recent plates to give you an idea of what we've been doing lately.

First up is red and gold beet's napoleon. Layers of roasted beets with herbed goat cheese, crushed pistachio and palmeto honey.

We did this a few weeks back. Tempura fried Japanese eggplant with basil pesto and sweet chili mascarpone.

We got a bunch of free edible orchids from our produce purveyor last week so we did a couple Hawaiian themed plates. This one is teriyaki ham with jalapeno pepper water, pineapple, starfruit and coconut lemon grass cream.

Our other themed tapas. Pickled green mango salad with coconut shrimp and an orchid blossom and strawberry vinaigrette..

Copy pasta newfags ignore

It really isn't. I've just seen some really interesting and delicious ideas posted in "if Veeky Forums ran a restuarant" and similar threads. I thought it would be interesting to see if anyone actually wanted to try a real life version.

Did these little endive boats for one of our Valentine's day tapas. Chevre mousse, edible violas and fennel. Honey pearls.

You've made this thread before stop lying

I've posted some of these pictures in threads about food we've made recently. That's true enough. This is the first time I've tried this whole interactive Veeky Forums business though.

Bacon wrapped shrimp on a black bean salad with red pepper corn coulis.

Bullshit lying faggot. Whatever I'm out fag boy keep sucking dicks at your imaginary museum

looks cool. ill pass on the orchids

idk just spitballing, what if you deconstructed a chowder?

Kind of like this anons deconstructed gumbo? I don't think I can pull off something as pretty as this but it's definitely a cool take on soup. How would you go about deconstructing chowder? And what sort of chowder would you choose?

looks tasty.
clam probably, gumbo or paella would be good too. i love corn chowder with bacon ham and veggies too

honestly detail oriented dishes like this are not my thing. i am but a simple line cook bumpin the thread.

chef johns shrimp provencal could be in one of these

Nice work, and beautiful plating. But this isn't what I think of when I think of tapas. I think of boldly flavored snacks that go well with drinking. This looks more like courses from a tasting menu than drinking snacks.

this
Don't get me wrong, id love to eat everything posted in this thread but seems a little over top for tapas

Nice and traditional things like
>Croquetas
>Pimentos del Padron
>Olives that you prep inhouse- with interesting additions like anchovy, lemon, chilli, garlic, szechuan peppercorn, etc.

And small yet satisfying things like
>braised pork belly on tartines with something spicy/astringent/sour to cut through the fattiness
>Garlic/chorizo soup with parmesan-puff pastry sticks to dip.

I know that these are by no means Fancy, but are good things that you can make fancier.

>that picture
>tapas

what are you doing

Aren't Tapas supposed to snacks not just small portion?

You are both correct. Every week we do something that's more traditional as well (Pinchos, boquerones, etc...). Some of these are indulgences on my part just because I've never gotten to make food like this before and because the owners of my company like seeing this stuff come out of our tiny little art museum kitchen.

Boquerones from a couple weeks past.

make some gribenes, one of the best drinking snacks

>Gets Veeky Forums to do the grunt work
>Cherrypicks the best ideas
>Takes all the credit

Yeah fuck that noise, and fuck you. Go do your own job.

I like the layer cake mini cube thing. Do one with absinthe jello, lamb pastrami, toasted haloumi and a sweet potato mousse

That's more like what I expect. But I get what you're doing. If I had the chance to play at being a Michelin starred chef doing tasting menu dishes I'd take it. But I wouldn't be so modest as to pass it off as tapas.

Yeah unless i get a piece of op's $9/hr im not going to impart my superior culinary knowledge

That's an interesting combination of flavors. Although I really don't enjoy absinthe I do like that anise flavor. I'm partial to fennel as a result.

If you think that brainstorming ideas and discussing flavor combinations is the grunt work in a kitchen you're woefully mistaken.

Really I think it's just a matter of scale. We sell al a carte, hence the idea that it's tapas. As I said, we have a really tiny kitchen. Myself, one of my two cooks and a dishwasher. As it's in an art museum we're not allowed open flame of any sort. So our equipment is two induction burners, one tabletop steam well, two sandwich presses, and an oven big enough for four half sheet pans. From home I've brought my own anova circulator, a kitchen aid with a few attachments, a pasta roller and various sundry hand tools. I'm proud of what I do but I feel in a proper kitchen things would be better. Also, we run a regular menu alongside the tapas so our time for plating properly is pretty crunched.

Curry chicken skewers with turmeric cream and red cabbage green apple slaw.

I would love to but unfortunately our purveyor only has 40lb. cases of chicken skins available and I have neither the storage space nor the volume of business to accomodate that.

>40lbs of chicken skin
sweet jesus that sounds fantastic.
understandable though.

You could do Edward Lees BLT pate with toast points
little chicken pot pies

Sounds like some real grace under pressure. Looks like you're in the right business.

These are all great ideas, some of which we've played with, others, sadly we can't. I'd love to utilize pork belly but I don't have an oven to cook it in. The pimentos del padron are definitely something I'll work with. Thanks for the heads up.

I love everything Edward Lee does. My former boss bought me a copy of Smoke and Pickles and I've cooked just about everything in it. We played around with the idea of making a little walkup dimsum joint in the drinking district here that does soul food inspired dimsum (ox tail gyoza, fried pickled mustard greens, etc...)

This, I've seen this thread before

>tapass Tuesday
hnnnngggg

>no oven for pork belly
breh, you have a sous vide
throw a slab in there, have it in the fridge, cut off a slice when you need and crisp in a pan. works pretty well.

>soul inspired dimsum joint
i would eat the fuck out of that, open in socal please

A lot of this conversation happened in a previous thread about food we've cooked lately. I didn't start it, only participated

We also have no hood system so it's difficult to get a proper sear on anything. The museum gets real bent out of shape when you smoke up the hallway. I learned that when I did the brisket. I do really want to utilize some pork belly at some point though, just have to figure out the logistics.

beef rendang taco

Oddly enough this was actually done sort of by request and ended up being an incredible seller. The one in the picture is the last one we had left after service, almost didn't get a picture of it.

Pear and brie tarts with local honey

ive done just pork belly and spices in a sous vide and ate it without crisping or anything and it was still good.
would be better a little crispy though.

I did pork loin for Valentine's day in the sous vide with sorghum and cinnamon. Turned out pretty good with only a light sear on the sandwich press. I could probably make that work with pork belly as well.

mint liquor if you're afraid of the absinthe

I'm not at all against the absinthe jelly, it's just probably not something I would have considered since I don't partake of it. I bet absinthe would be killer in a gravlax cure.

If you wanna do his job for him, be my guest.

No I think you're a lazy prick who'd rather outsource brainstorming sessions to cu/ck/s here who have nothing better to do than to do shit for free.

Your spoon flair is shit.