Feast: Ma Peche Style 6 Courses of Beef — The Gourmand Film Writer

Ma Peche's 9 courses of beef is a great tasting menu. Based on the all beef dinner in Vietnamese culture, I decided I wanted to tackle trying to make this type of meal myself. Most of the dishes were huge successes. Borrowing from several different great chefs, including Anita Lo for her Edamame bread pudding. But the true idea behind the meal is how do you balance beef, such a dominating flavor, that it enhances and grows throughout the meal. Also, I had the privilege of working with Chad Eschman again, who created the paired cocktails. Here is the menu:

Martini Salad Cocktail: Gin, Dolin whie vermouth, cucumber, orange bitters.

1st Course: Starting with Beef Carpaccio, and beginning with raw beef, that is rolled in five spices and then seared in a searing hot pan on each side for less than 30 seconds each. Then sliced thin and topped with Radish, Ginger, Scallion, and Cilantro, topped with Fluer-de-sel.

Ginger Old Fashioned: Bourbon, orange simple syrup, ginger simple syrup, angostura bitters, spritz of soda.

2nd Course: Most Vietnamese Beef Dinners have some form of lettuce wrap. This is my version. A marinated Ribeye Steak (marinade: Soy, Ginger, Garlic, Sambal, Xiao Xing Wine) and seared then sliced thick. This is served with a second type of beer: homemade Asian sausage. The sausage a combination of pork and beef mixed with lemongrass and Thai basil. It was served with pickled daikon and carrot (traditional) but I also included three dipping sauces that are some of my favorite: Homemade plum sauce, fish sauce caramel, green curry.

Braised Oxtail with Edamame Bread Pudding and Wasabi puree

Cajun Asian American: Bourbon, Black Pepper, Star Anise, Lemongrass syrup, Dolin red vermouth.

Third Course: Braising the oxtail like my grandmother did with soy, sherry, ginger, sesame oil and toasted seeds, can sugar. This is a huge step up in richness from the previous course. The edamame bread pudding has a miataki and matsutake mushroom custard along with the edamame.

Beef Shank with Homemade XO Sauce and Crab Stuffed Mushrooms

Grassy Mule: Vodka, shaken with fresh lemongrass, ginger beer.

4th Course: How do you top in flavor and richness the previous dish? The answer. Bring on the spice and the umami. XO Sauce is a spicy sauce made with dried shrimp, dried scallops, Chinese sausage, and chilies. It is incredible rich. To cut through that a little, mushrooms roasted after being stuffed with crab, tossed in aioli with scallion, chives, ginger and lime.

Clean Greens: Gin, Jasmine green tea, ginger simple syrup, splash of soda

5th Course: Traditionally in this type of meal, consume is the final savory course. It is used as a palate cleanser at the end. Consume can take days to make well and this beef consume cooked for 4 days, breaking down those beef bones and then ladling it through a egg white raft to catch all of the impurities, to create a perfectly clean liquid. Chad's cocktail with this was also similarly clean and refreshing. Wonderful.

Intermezzo: This is the French / Italian training that I simply cannot strip myself of. In this type of meal, the consume is typically the palate cleanser, but, I can't help myself from doing a traditional palate cleanser as well.

Desert Cocktail: Bourbon, Cinnamon-orange loose leaf tea, orange simple syrup

6th Course: These egg tart pastries I have grown up eating at Dim Sum my entire life. I learned to make them a long time ago. I had to rack my brain for how I was going to incorporate Beef into a desert. I finally came up with this idea of using Beef lard as the fat in a pastry dough. Every dinner usually has one thing go slightly wrong. So while these tasted good, the Beef lard never held the dough together in a way that butter did. So the crust fell apart. But, they tasted good.