Great first weekend with the new spring menu

We just released the final portion of our spring menu here at Tastings and it is looking great.  Though our spring season in New England has lagged a little bit, we are still able to get our hands on some of the best of the best in local produce, meat and fish. 

One of my favorite dishes on the spring menu so far is the fluke!  We are getting fluke from a group called Wild Rhody.  This is a great group of guys who’s passion for fresh fish led them to develop a system where, using QRC codes we can see a picture of the captain, know the date the fish was caught, and know the waters from which the fish came from.  Working with Wild Rhody and this system of trace and trust gets us one step closer to being universally sustainable.  We are serving the fluke seared with a truffled English pea puree and some crispy fingerling potatoes.  The dish is finished with some plancha roasted spring onion.  It’s a very simple dish but such a wonderful combination of flavors.  It also reminds me a bit of having fish and chips in London years ago!

Another one of my favorites is the asparagus salad.  It plays with the idea of asparagus with a hollandaise sauce but we do it instead with a poached egg.  These are some really delicious eggs from White Barn Farm right down the street in Wrentham.  The yolk is especially thick and fatty making them perfect for this dish.  We are also putting some country ham cured in house  on the dish.  We sauce the dish with a parsnip vinaigrette and some Dijon aioli and finish the plate with a fingerling potato hasselback (basically a fingerling potato sliced thinly almost all the way through, so still held together).  It is another simple yet delicious dish.

I think that’s the whole point of a spring menu:  dishes that are very simple but highlighting the delicate and unique fresh flavors of spring!  I don’t feel its necessary to do a whole lot to screw with the flavors of these ingredients.  Just let them be.  We just came out of some really heavy winter dishes so its time for freshness!

More to come on the new spring menu!  Including but not limited to our new PORK and some rabbit depicted here!