First Day at Osmosis (I’m on a break until dinner service)

So far, amazing and good!  I like my chef Frederic a lot, except that he has threatened to put “cinco kilos” on me before I leave at the end of the month.  Translation: he thinks I’m skinny and wants to put 10 pounds on me by the end of June.  No problem. I’ve already eaten his sweetbreads and artichokes with truffle sauce, tasted some of their cheeses from their cheese plate, and tasted the sour cherry and vanilla dessert  – all delightful.  Yep, I even liked the sweetbreads, but of course that was because they were fried and smothered in a delicious sauce on top of a fried artichoke.

I also like “little Joan”, the lunch chef. He is muy tranquilo (very calm) and he is a very good teacher. He explained everything and showed me how to plate everything. Granted, lunch service was not busy.  They tell me that as of next week, it’s going to get packed because that’s when tourist season officially starts.  Then, I don’t know how tranquilo things or chefs will be, but right now, it’s mellow.  And, of course, it’s my first day so everyone is ultra patient and nice.

I did a fun micro greens tasting and they made me guess at what I was tasting. Unfortunately, the first micro green I tasted was a cross between an onion and garlic, so that kind of blew my palette.  I was bad at guessing the rest, although I could use descriptive words such as “picante” to describe the pepper micro green.  I couldn’t guess mustard green for the life of me, although I knew what it was because I had tasted it before.  I think visually they were throwing me off, as well, as I hadn’t seen these versions of micro greens.  They really do add another dimension to the food, and they are all selected with particular dishes in mind.

I got an introduction to a new-to-me mushroom. It’s called a rollevones, or in Catalan, robellones.  It kind of looks like an egg. Here’s what it looks like whole:

Rollevones grow for only 2 weeks in the spring and they are something else. We use them in the risotto dish, but they are also commonly used in egg dishes, I am told. The meaning translates into “golden fungus of the gods.”

Here’s the English translation version of this week’s tasting menu (I crumbled it up and put it in my pocket, so that’s why it looks terrible):

The lunch menu starts with the Lobster salad. The lobster salad is poached lobster pieces underneath a micro green salad next to a slice of potato topped with fresh cow’s milk cheese, which is almost like a creme fraiche consistency, and then topped with salmon roe. Next to it is a big swoosh of mango vinaigrette. Here is the picture:

The recipe for the Mango vinaigrette appears very simple, but it’s all about the best ingredients:

2 ripe mangoes
1/2 tall, shot glass full of aged balsamic vinegar
4 tall shot glasses full of a very fruity olive oil
pinch of salt at the end

Directions: puree the mangoes and slowly drizzle in the balsamic, then the olive oil until it’s an emulsion. Strain through a fine sieve. Add salt to balance out the fruitiness. Delicious!!!

The second course on the lunch tasting menu is the Pumpkin cream with poached egg and sobrasada balls. The egg is poached in plastic for 6 minutes so it comes out this darling roundish ball. The sobrasada (spicy sausage) is rolled into balls and then fried. Then the oil from the sobrasada balls is used as a garnish on top of the pumpkin cream. Here’s a picture:

The third course is the mushrooms risotto with setas (mushrooms), in this case the rollevones and another mushroom that looks a lot like chanterelles, and fresh figs:

Fourth course: a mini terrine of caramelized onions, topped with fried artichoke hearts, topped with fried sweetbreads, topped with a truffle, cilantro sauce, and finally topped with a drizzle of miel de caña. Miel = honey. Caña is beer, so I’m missing something in translation on what type of honey it is in actuality. I’ll get clarification on that later. Here it is:

The finale at lunch is the cherry and vanilla dessert. It’s a sour cherry puree with liquor on the bottom, then a small spoonful of sour cherry marmalade, one fresh cherry, and one dried sour cherry triangulated around a cross section of bizcocho (cake) soaked in a cherry juice reduction, topped with vanilla ice cream and a vanilla “wafer”. Beautiful. The sour cherries are expertly complimented by the sweet ice cream. Here is the dessert:

The foie course and the second dessert course of 3 chocolates are added to the dinner tasting menu.

I’m about to run back to work for dinner service. I’m told it will be a lot more chaotic than lunch. We’ll see how I do trying to remember orders, since there is no ticket system. The waiters just run to the kitchen and quietly shout out how many orders of each thing they need when they need it. Can’t wait to see how this goes when it’s busy.