Photos from the dinner party last night-Monday 12.13.10

Anna A. over at bananawonder.com was kind enough to take some pictures at the dinner last night and send them over to me as well, so thanks Anna. We had a great time and on the table you'll see some beautiful arrangements by Anna J. at annamaraflowers.com, so again, thanks Anna.

I get a little giddy when I receive product/go searching for little things at the market like the beautiful citrus in season right now from rising c ranch in California. This time I used Fork Revolution for the for the first time as a source and their stuff is AWESOME. Sea salt from the pacific coast ! The beef, crab, german butterball potatoes were amazing. Also got the buckwheat flour from them. Checkout the photos, most of the food pics are down towards the bottom. 

 

 Folks just starting to arrive, The Welcome Bite is set and ready. Dungeness Crab straight off the boat Friday morning, served with kelp juice, mint, persimmon.

Dessert is on the table, time to chill.

 That's the menu, not much else to say.

 Foreground: the beauty that Anna J. dropped.
Background: Chef Wogg's Sansai.

 Flowers, wine, beautiful ladies, I might have to frame this one.

 Buckwheat tartlet filled with creamy goat cheese, red vinegar/butter sauce, wheatgrass and fennel.

 Truffle and mushroom broth made with lemongrass, mandarin leaves and juice, filled with hedgehog mushrooms, seabeans, tatsoi, duck, truffles.

 Confit of short rib and onion, ginger/potato dumpling, caramelized potato, crispy kale and pomegranate.

 Honey-nut Crumble/toffee, mandarin curd and supremes, dwarf jonagold apples and red anjou pears.

Dinner coming up on the 13th of December

We are now taking R.S.V.P.'s for our dinner coming up Monday, December 13th. Those who are first to respond up to the maximum sixteen will receive confirmation and the directions to the space where we will hold this one.

As promised, a little more about the dinner:
We will collaborate with Anna Jorgensen, an excellent party planner and floral designer,who will do some design and decoration to enhance the total experience.

The menu will go something like this:
SEA: Dungeness, Exotic Fruit Stuffed in Herbs
FOREST: Mushrooms, Truffle Broth Sonic, Duck, Riverbank Leaves
PASTURE: Raw Milk Goat Cheese, Buckwheat Tartlet, Wheatgrass, Wild Rice, Smoked Peppers
FARM: Beef Cooked in Lemon and Olives, Ginger and Potato Dumplings, Pomegranate
ORCHARD: Apples, Honey, Milk, Oranges, Pears, Nuts each individually prepared to highlight it's own simple, natural excellence.

The menu, if I can, will be sourced exclusively from Oregon first, then Washington, Idaho and California. I'm talking down to the salt and sugar. The main ingredients will come entirely from Oregon, smaller, craftier farms preferred. I will also be trying to create an aroma to fill the room with, expressing the feeling of the title of each dish as it comes to the table.

You can learn more and get an invite, join our email list by contacting transportsocialdining@gmail.com

Our next dinner part 1 save the date

Hello all, 

Another beautiful experience with Trans_Port Social Dining will occur on the 13th of December. This next one we will do on a Monday evening in order to accommodate some of our friends who work service industry schedules. This update is for you so you may save the date, reservations will not be taken for this happening until next week and when the email goes out for the event we will have space for the first sixteen responses only. Once again we will be creating a custom menu that will express a feeling of comfort and coziness, highlighting seasonal, west-coast ingredients, solid technique and some new concepts.Among other things we will definitely be taking advantage of the interesting weather we have seen here this year reportedly making for an exceptional abundance of mushrooms and truffles popping up. Very excited about that!

 

Please join our email list for more info about the menu, those who will collaborate with us on this one to enhance the experience and for best access to limited reservation.

Chef Woggs

How to sign up for our events

The way to reserve a spot at one of our dinners is simply to reply to any of these posts or if you are on our email list (check your spam filters) reply to the invite we have sent you. Send your reply to transportsocialdining@gmail.com with your name and the name of those that are coming with you. We will send you back a confirmation with directions to the location of the dinner that you signed up for and any other info necessary as long as there is room left at the table. If you want to be on the contact list just drop us a line to the same email address and you will get updates as to when the dinners are coming up and invites straight to your inbox. Just a little FYI as we do things a little differently than most.

In other news I got some pretty chanterelles today, some gorgeous lady apples and Oregon grown, organic cranberries to go with the gnarly, Canby-grown celeriac I also found. Good day.


Chef Woggs.

Chestnuts, aromatic mushroom tea and comfort.- the upcoming dinner.

Some of things I've been working on for the next menu:

I've found that in creating a menu or any other artistic work, that I am better when I focus myself with a theme. A chef that I admire, Michel Bras, I think in a sense works this way. His innovative dishes are often accompanied by a poem, prose, or an artistic photograph of the beautiful region of France that he calls home and ultimately acts as his muse. He will imitate the beauty of nature to the point that looking at the dishes he creates reinvents the pleasure he receives from walking the fields and forest that surround him. His themes are nuanced, not overbearing, they don't embody cliche. One thing I have seen prevailing in all successful chefs is that they are able to express a feeling, pass on a momentary emotion with what they create. in order to do this one must move beyond recreation of the same old-same old and know the ingredients from the inside out.

The theme for the dinner coming up on the12th will unofficially be "Comfort." Not, obviously, a comfort from familiarity with the dish or even in this case the atmosphere around you, but one that is expressed by the dishes themselves that will invoke the sense of sitting next to the baseboard heater with the rain pattering on the roof, book in hand. Nothing too surprising for this season, but if I am able to convey that emotional feeling in the dishes that are served I will be successful in my own mind.
Some of the concepts I am working on are:

The welcome bite- Pickled butternut squash "baskets" filled with herbs, marrow and honeycomb.
First- Lady apple with a melting chestnut butter, bread, celeriac and cranberries.
Second- Living sprouts planted in bulgur then steamed in aromatic mushroom tea.
Third- Lamb shank braised with persimmon, crunchy, dry leaves and lemongrass.
Final- Yeast-pear clouds, more pear, quince and kombucha.

Some of the dishes will be paired, I'm thinking Momokawa sake for at least one.

As all of these dishes are experimental in some way, I do not yet have pictures of the completed concept so here is my sketch from where the first course began:

Looking forward to seeing you at a dinner table somewheres in Portland, OR

Chef Woggs.

Welcome!

Welcome to Trans_Port Social Dinings' web page. In these posts you will find interesting tidbits as to what we are cooking up for you in the upcoming dinners,our experiments with new dishes, ideas that may be intriguing and whatever else might we may feel the need to talk about. We will also post lots of photos from last dinners and dishes, either complete or in the development phase.

In the meantime here is a little information about myself and my background.

 

I've been cooking in Portland restaurants since before I turned sixteen, when I wasn't working my vacation time was spent paying the airfare to New York or Napa to learn and cook for free under chefs there. My off hours were spent studying new techniques, the hows, the whys, the nuances of mealtime as a positive social experience. Now I work part-time, still cooking but not in a restaurant, which frees me up to create dining experiences that maybe you'll never see in the spacial construct of a restaurant. I have created Trans_Port simply because it embodies ideally what I want to do and how I would like to experience a restaurant if I were on the other end of the table. I hope that you take a moment to get to know us in these posts and look forward to seeing you at dinner table somewheres in Portland,OR.

 

Chef Woggs..