Wednesday, May 1, 2019
A different tack for Playground in Santa Ana. www.playgrounddtsa.com. Frederic Petrossian od Petrossian , www.petrossian.com. approached Jason about doing a caviar tasting in the 2.0 Room. Nothing but dinners have ever been done there before. From the results we may see a bit more of these quick impromptu tastings. 18 quests tonight. Full house. I bought the first ticket and was really looking forward to tonight. It did not disappoint me
While we waited to seated they poured Champagne for us outside in the waiting area. A nice touch while we waited for everyone to arrive. We sat down and a plate with 12 small plastic spoons filled with 6 different kinds of caviar was in front of us. Very impressive. They also served us house made blinis with creme fraiche, very crisp house made potato chips and some crispy cheese balls. Everything they served went exceedingly well with the caviar.
These sturgeon fish that they harvest for the roe are "farm" raised. Wild sturgeon are endanger of becoming extinct due to over fishing for the roe. They are raised in huge lakes and it takes several years before they know the sex of the fish. Not a cheap undertaking.
When the roe sack is harvested they do not kill the fish until after harvesting. They put the fish to "sleep" then harvest the roe . If they take the roe when the fish is dead the chemicals that are produced as soon as the sturgeon dies can ruin the roe. A complicated and time consuming effort to bring high end caviar to our plates.
Caviar is the roe of the fish. It can come from trout (orange color) to Paddlefish (black and relatively inexpensive) to Sturgeon which is the royalty of caviar. I have been known to eat caviar right from the tin without anything but champagne.
We started out with "Classic Baika), very small, crispy and a very big fresh ocean taste. It may have been one of the cheapest but I personally like a very saline taste to my caviar. Very dark in color. $65 for 30 grams which is about an ounce. There are 28 grams to an ounce.
"Daurenki" was next. Medium size roe, light brine and almost a very dark green tint to the egg. $77 for 30 grams.
"Classic Shassetra", very small, multi shades of black, light brine. $63 for 30 grams.
"Royal Shassetra", medium size, lighter in color, medium brine. $98 for 30 grams.
"Classic Ossetra", small to medium size, juicy and briny dark with a smoke tinge. $82 for 30 grams.
"Royal Ossetra", medium size, very soft, velvety, light brine. Dark amber with deep jade highlights. Extremely good. $123 for 30 grams.
We were poured 3 types of Champagne. Pierre Gimennel & Fils, Selecton Belles Anniu, 1er Cru, Jean Lallement & Fils, Verzenay, Grand Cru and Geoffrey, Rose de Saignee, Brut, Premier Cru
But I still prefer my caviar with a bit of a crunch.Each one has its place. The softer ones would go well on top of a hollandasie sauce, the crunchier ones on creme fraiche. They all go very well with potato chips.
Frederic mentioned caviar on avocado. That has opened a whole new world for me. This weekend I will experiment with avocado in different forms to see what I like best. I have the avocados and caviar already.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment