Inspiration Stimulus Package

Well, Sweets, you said you needed a little inspiration, and today I reached the halfway point of the Charleston Grill cookbook.  It's kinda lightweight, but I definitely got 4 great ideas out of it.  The recipes themselves are kind of imprecise, but the ideas....

#1) Salad of Veal Sweetbreads, White Asparagus, Fried Black Trumpets, and Citrus Truffle Vinaigrette
      Not so much on the salad angle, but the black trumpet-white-asparagus-truffle combo is hot!  And imagine if you considered the sweetbreads to be interchangeable with poultry.  You could have Crispy Confit Duck Hearts with a Saute of White Asparagus, Black Trumpets, and Truffle Jus...

#2) Salad of Bresaola and Porcini with Arugula.
      Remember bresaola?  That's the air-dried beef loin, like steak prosciutto.  That with porcini (AKA ceps) the most earthy mushroom ever.  Dank, mineral-y flavors abound.  The kicker, though, is that the book recommended this with a white Burgundy.  Rich, robust white wine with gamy salty dry meat and the funkiest of shrooms...   Lemme get that.

#3) There is a recipe for garlic soup, which is cool, but we both know Susan Spicer's is pretty damn good.  What I thought was cool about this recipe, however, was that it called for roasted garlic AND sauteed garlic...  Got me thinking, garlic has so many faces.  We should devise a dish that calls for garlic in all three of its forms.  Think about the savory, even boldness of roasted garlic, the mild complexity of blanched garlic, and the metallic twang of raw garlic.  If we could separate the flavors enough for them to be distinct, and then recombine them in a way that doesn't let them get lost...

#4) There is a recipe for fennel soup, and it talked about cooking it with vermouth.  Its not a new idea, I used to see Grant Achatz doing it WAY back in 2001, but it is still a cool move.  Fennel has that spiced-wine flavor to it, so vermouth will reinforce that note.  Gotta play with that one.

So that's three unanswered posts, boo-boo.  Where yat?  You can't possibly be as busy as me...

p.s. I hope this Supreme Court thing goes your way.  There will be some funny looks on some Louisiana faces....