Chicks with Knives January 09 Dinner

Chicks with Knives ("CWK") is a sustainable, organic, local and ethical ("S.O.L.E.") roving supper club run by R & P, two rockin' chefs who shall remain nameless in furtherance of their awesome yet illegal endeavor. The dinner is held at a differnt locale each time. This month it was at a now-defunct cooking school in WeHo, and February's dinner is apparently going to be held at a downtown art gallery. I'm hoping there will be knife-throwing, or some other culinary/performance art hybrid to round out the festivities. . . R is a gardner who (according to her) has too much time on her hands. She grew a number of the ingredients used in the dinner, concoted a few of the recipes, and seems to be brimming with guerilla supper-club inspiration. P was more reserved -- she seems to more of a behind-the-scenes kind of gal -- but her sure technique was evident in everything we ate. The tables were strewn with meyer lemons donated by a CWK patron and fan, and we were advised pre-dinner that our assistance in bussing the tables would be appreicated.

I wish I had discovered CWK before it hit the Daily Candy wire, but it still was a fantastic experience. I got the invite from my friend G, who took a class assisted by P at the New School of Cooking. As a white person (my obssession with the hilarious blog Stuff White People Like noted in this post continues), the idea of a S.O.L.E. underground supper club of course appeals to me immensely; it incorporates a number of things white people like including organic food, dinner parties, and as a BYOB event, wine. Moreover, it was fun to be a table with both good friends and complete strangers. There was plenty of wine to share, and although I lost a corkscrew to the experience I gained a few glasses of Prosecco and (hopefully) some new friends.



The menu for the January 09 CWK event consisted of the following, and as you can tell from the pictures, the presentation was fantastic:

Wild mushroom salad with red mustard greens, carrots, and a mustard-seed vinaigrette



Carrot and orange soup with homemade crostini and black olive tapenade



Beef short ribs with root vegetable puree; and



Lemon cake (made with potato starch) served with meyer lemon and orange syrup, goat cheese frosting, and meyer lemon sugar glass.



The roasted wild mushrooms in the salad were lovely, and we all appreciated the effort involved in creating a salad that was sophisticated yet approachable, and S.O.L.E.

The soup was a standout. The texture and taste were both fantastic, and the sweet carrot base blended seamlessly with the tart citrus flavor of the orange. The tapenade was just perfect; I want the recipe so I can eat it with EVERYTHING.

While the soup was delish, it was the short ribs that really stole the show. They were marinated in sassafras (grown in R's garden), cider vinegar and spices, roasted for 6 hours, and then served on the bone over a root vegetable puree (potato, celery root, parsnips, etc.). R told me that this preparation was modeled on a recipe in Grant Achatz's Alinea cookbook, and while I'm sure his chemistry-laden recipe would produce a fantastic result, I can't imagine anything that would top the CWK short ribs. The meat was cooked perfectly -- fork-tender and succulent -- and was accompanied by an intense, flavorful reduction. The root vegetable puree was like mashed potatoes times 10, but with none of the artery-clogging dairy additions generally necessary to achieving noteworthy potatoes. In a word: yum.

The cake didn't fare as well as the other items on the menu. The premise was admirable -- a gluten-free concoction capitalizing on flavorful (and in-season) meyer lemons -- but the cake itself was a little dry. As a Jew that is forced to make flour-free desserts every year for Passover, I'm probably being overly critical, but I like my cake to have a lighter texture. Nonetheless, I'm sure my friends with Celiac's would love any attempt on my part to recreate this dessert. In any event, the syrup and the meyer lemon candy were both fantastic, and I finished every last bite, the texture of the cake notwithstanding.

The verdict: if you can get yourself on the mailing list for this fun, exclusive (in a good way) supper club, do it! In a city like a LA, the chance to dine with a roomful of like-minded strangers is a rare one indeed, and the added bonus of supporting chefs who are dedicated to serving a gourmet meal created with S.O.L.E. ingredients will certainly make me an attendee at their next event.