New Americana Cuisine

Fall.....? The calendar tells me its here...the cool mornings tell me it's coming...but the farmers around here are sending me mixed messages...tomatoes and pumpkins on the same delivery? Basil and Brussels sprouts?...I've all but given up on zephyr squash and tommy toes in abundance...but I'm not quite ready for butternut squash and kale...whats a chef to do?..

This seasonal purgatory is often skipped over by chefs...not because they can't come up with some creative use for what IS coming out of the soil...but simply (just a guess) it's hard to sell mid-season foods when Wal-Mart and the like are already selling Thanksgiving paraphernalia and fake Christmas trees. People are expecting cinnamon and spice, rosemary and sage, mini candy bars and fruit cake...I say to hell with that! Let mother nature decide when we stop eating tomatoes!

So...here at Ashley's we have pumpkin and tomatoes...peppers and broccoli, muscadines and fingerlings...Open all your windows at home...come on in for dinner and sleep soundly (in your naturaly cooled home) knowing that you stuck it to the man...well, maybe not...but you had a really good dinner!

My play on chicken and waffles: grilled duck breast with corn waffle, Michigan tart cherries and grilled cabbage.

Rabbit 'Pepper-dalle': house made pancetta wrapped rabbit loin, roasted carmine peppers and braised rabbit leg.

 
Fresh cheese agnolloti with duck, shiitakes, tomatoes and mint. 

Seared diver scallop with local fingerlings, muscadines, house made country ham and truffle.

Cassidee Dabney 
 
 
 
 

(fₔ nes´) n. 1 refinement or delicacy of workmanship, structure, or texture 2 skillful handling of a situation : adroit maneuvering 

Working in a kitchen we are confronted with many stresses and time constraints that can wear you down both physically and mentally. My personal struggle revolves around the need to do better, do more... and definitely time. Time to experiment and research, even time to inspire and allow my staff to realize their own ideas. But at the end of the day it is our passion and determination that helps us to overcome any of those obstacles and helps us to meet our goals and stretch our potential. 

Finesse, that is a word that I try to keep in mind, not only for myself but also for anyone that is on my staff. I think having a sense of order and control is important when working at a professional level. I don't always live up to it, but it is worth striving for. I've come to realize that it is the attitude that you bring, how clean you work, organization and the discipline of never compromising that allows us to execute our vision successfully. For us it has been a slow evolution, but over time with my dedicated staff, with each menu change, we have made concerted efforts to raise the bar, to push the envelope on our limits.   

Summer is over. At the moment I am working on the new additions for the Fall menu. Lately with the subtle changes in the weather, I'm reminded of how cold it is going to be very soon. And for some reason I thought about drinking Chocolat Chaud, (hot chocolate) for the first time in Paris. It was a really cold day and I went into this tré cool café just down the street from my apartment. I ordered the hot chocolate, but I had no idea how utterly delicious it would be. The first sip just blew me away, so rich and umptuous, creamy, chocolaty, and nutty. It teetered on the edge of being a ganache. Well, it ended up that I would go there many days just to have a cup and watch all the people busying by, it was one of my joys in life. So I decided to compose a dessert that featured some of my favorite chocolate desserts from Paris. "Chocolate Hazelnut Praliné Tart, Chocolate Profiterole with Malted Rum Ice Cream , and Chocolate Chaud" served with a chocolate diamond cookie.  

This is "Chocolate & Southern Peanut Praliné"; chocolate sacher cake with a salted caramel gelée and chocolate cremeux, southern peanut crunch and nougat ice cream.

And a true southern favorite, sweet potato pie. It has great flavor & texture, I like the earthiness of the sweet potatoes and maple syrup. A precursor of things to come and I'm happy to have it on the menu. "Sweet Potato Pie with Maple Ice Cream, Spiced Pecan Croquant, and Maple Gelée".

Pastry Chef

Super Easy Creamy Tomato Soup

3# ripe garden tomato

1 cup cream

Salt to taste

Oil for tossing

Core each tomato and cut in half

Toss with salt and enough oil to coat

Place cut side up on a sheet pan

Roast for 25 min at 375 degrees

Cool

Pass through a food mill (or just peel off the skins)

Simmer for 20 minutes on medium heat

Add cream (if you like it extra creamy add more)

Simmer another 10 minutes

Blend in a blender until very smooth

Strain and serve

Makes 6-8 servings

Best served with hot buttery grilled cheese sandwiches

If you have a ton of tomatoes, make a big batch and can the sauce before adding cream.  Give it to friends and neighbors to enjoy throughout the year.

Enjoy!

Tandra Watkins

Pastry Chef

Who ever said it was easy... a cake walk that is?

In a professional kitchen like ours, there is always something happening on a daily basis. From planning and changing menus, properly caring for all the produce that comes in, big dinners to special requests, each day is a challenge. I manage that situation with THE LIST, which by the way is revised constantly. But it helps me to stay focused and keeps the stress level down while juggling all those tasks.

So over the past couple weeks, along with my other projects, I've been working on wedding cakes for the local bridal show. We contributed three cakes, and at the end of handcrafting all of the sugar-paste flowers,(yes, they are edible) covering, assembling and decorating the cakes, we spent about 72 hours total on them all.

Regardless of the long days, I like being busy, it's certainly better than being bored. But it is that daily discipline & pressure, trial & error that is the steel that sharpens us as chefs. And I like the idea that being a chef means being a lifelong student pursuing the limitless knowledge of food and techniques. The fact is that in this business there is always something to strive for and albeit frustrating at times, it is exciting.

Tandra Watkins     

 Pastry Chef

 Just like capturing a beautiful scene by taking a picture, preserving is how we capture the beautiful flavors of the garden. This invaluable technique for eating well is the best way to enjoy your garden or "eating local" throughout the year. But at the same time, the art of preserving is no longer as common as it once was. Perhaps because we don't have the time, the availability of convenience foods, or we may have never learned how. Whatever the reason, preserving is easy once you learn the basics.

Recently, I was approached by Liz about making fig preserves. She recounted to me about making them with her mother back in Mississippi, and eating the preserves on a warm buttered biscuit. After a momentary pause, we were directly on the phone with "Momma", (Mrs. Barbara Howard-Brock) getting the recipe which was originally Liz's Grandma Howard's recipe. We made the adjustments for quantity, and in no                     Download Fig Preserves                     time Liz had our first batch cooking. Conventional methods of canning call for immersing the jars in boiling water to kill any of the mold, yeast, & etc. and it seals the jars. In our kitchen we have Electrolux "combi" (combination) ovens that allow us to cook our food with a combination of convection and steam.  So, I decided to use our combi oven at 100% steam, 212°F for 12 minutes, and I was able to achieve the same result with this new method. We have used the preserved figs for many applications in the kitchen. I particularly like them on the dessert cheese plate. And yes, they are really good on the biscuits too! Thank you Miss Barbara for sharing your recipe with us and keeping these traditions alive.

I love how food appeals to all of our senses, it evokes memories and is tied to our relationships with the people we love. When we cook and carry on these food traditions it allows us to relive those feelings of comfort and happiness, it tells about who we are, it bridges one generation to the next, and it inspires us to add our own flavor & style to the family food tree. In the same way that opening a jar of homemade preserves in the winter takes us all the way back to warmer days of summer, likewise, preserving these food traditions transports us back in time and allows us to access all those emotions and memories any time we like.

Tandra Watkins

Pastry Chef