Morsel-sized fresh vegetables allow chefs to use different brush strokes as they paint the perfect plate for their diners. Whenever Chef Jamie Simpson uses petite-sized veggies, he imagines the impact he wants his dish to create and the story he wants to tell, and then he chooses exactly the right vegetables to include the ideal volume of flavor to make that happen.
Bar and Bar Snack: Petite Vegetable Dry Martini
Create your ideal martini, replacing pickle brine for olive brine. The pickling process won’t happen with vinegar. Instead, the process happens through lacto-fermentation where bacteria will break down the sugars in the petite vegetables. All you need: salt, water, and the vegetables.
Soup Course: A Perfectly Sliced Petite Vegetable
Let’s say that you have a deliciously chilled carrot soup on the menu—perhaps this one created by the CVI. Diners are accustomed to seeing bags of “baby” carrots on store shelves and so they may not realize what a true petite carrot really looks like. To clearly indicate this to guests and servers, cut one single petite carrot and plate it to amaze and delight them.
Plated Banquets: Lasagna with Salt Cured Vegetables
Cook a single sheet of lasagna noodles. Now, take salt cured vegetables (prepared as described above) and make a sauce out of them with olive oil. Chef Jamie would use a flavorful mélange of petite turnips, radishes, and carrots along with garlic and mustard greens. Cover the entire sheet of pasta with this sauce and then top with a selection of salt tolerant halophytes: perhaps sedums, crystal lettuces, and seaweed.
More About Petite Vegetables
Explore the cornucopia of petite root vegetables that are regeneratively farmed at The Chef’s Garden and harvested at the peak of freshness and flavor.
We hope you’ve enjoyed the latest installment of our “Plating Technique” series. Stay tuned for more.