Ive been on A Razor A Shiny Knife's mailing list since May 2009 and have been avoiding participating in it because they are on the higher end of the dining $$$ spectrum. With all these other supper clubs that are priced lower...I questioned if my money would be worth spent??
I finally decided to give it a go with the recommendation from Jordana.
And my consensus is that "Yes, A Razor A Shiny Knife is definitely worth your money". Especially if you RSVP for the Test Kitchen where prior to an actual event Michael Cirino and team experiment with recipes...and you get to help!
"Help" as in...pour liquid nitrogen...and shave $800 worth of truffles and pressure cook it for its juice...
I mean come on, how often do you get to work and learn in a 'chef's kitchen'? Your own mother has probably kicked you out of her kitchen in the midst of preparation asking you to set the table instead of interfering.
But with Michael, Andrew and Danielle...they teach you while youre on kitchen duty, hold a conversation and entertain. It truly is "an educational, social and theatrical culinary experience". This was almost as great as assisting at the James Beard Foundation and torching foie gras.
For last week's Test Kitchen, A Razor A Shiny Knife was held at Botanica in Red Hook.
We started at 6PM to 9PM prepping and ate our musings after.
There was a lesson on knife sharpening from Danielle...
And then everyone got to do a little of everything in the kitchen and multi-tasked. Danielle prepped the short ribs, I snapped the snap peas and another mashed potatoes with a chinoise which gives the mashed potatoes its smooth texture.
The end result as Danielle would say was "Fantastic!"
Meanwhile Andrew teaches us how to prep our main dish which will be crudo sea bass with pickled peaches (amazing!!)
Pickling is actually quite easy. And the sweet and vinegary taste of a peach is surprisingly palatable! Im going to start pickling everything now! Add some xanthan gum to the pickling juice and youll have a syrup like texture that you can drizzle over the crudo.
The end result, topped with some greens and black salt. Beautiful!
And then the most interesting dish of the night...smoked egg yolk with triple cream cheese and toast....
Smoked flavor egg yolks poached in a vat sitting at 62degrees.
Triple cream cheese (extra stinky) > Michael then pours liquid nitrogen over it to freeze it > and then the cheese is broken like shattered glass and blended into powder...
Plated with a piece of toast and topped off with black salt!
Youll definitely come out of this kitchen learning something new...
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