Winter white Wisconsin menu

"A Star Chef's Winter Menu" boasts the blurb on the cover of the February issue of Food and Wine magazine. I flipped it open to discover that the chef is Madison's own Tory Miller of L'Etoile fame and the new Graze restaurant. The story — headlined "The Ice Follies" — opens with a big photo spread of Miller and the restaurant staff playing broomball on Lake Mendota. Then they all troop inside for a meal, of course.

Chef Tory Miller at Graze. Photot: Kristian Knutsen for Isthmus

If the story is a bit sweet, the menu is anything but. Only a confident chef would dare to make a white meal — winter or any other season. And only one as talented as Miller could create a menu this inventive. There wasn't a dish I didn't want to try and all the recipes are on Food and Wine's website. The dishes include Smoked Trout Toasts, Ricotta Blintzes with Lingonberry Syrup, Salad of Fennel with Grapefruit, Endives Braised in Orange Juice and Death's Door Gin (topped with salted, roasted pumpkin seeds), and Roast Pork Loin (bone-in) that has been brined in a mix of brown sugar and seeds and berries (fennel, coriander, cloves, peppercorns, star anise, allspice and juniper). The meal ends with a Buttermilk Cake served with Riesling Poached Pears. 

As always, the recipes contain lots of locally sourced ingredients, including the pork. According to the story, "Miller works with Uplands Cheese Company's co-owners, Mike and Carol Gingrich, to raise pigs that taste of Wisconsin terroir — they're fed local apples, hickory nuts and acorns, as well as whey and cream from the dairy."  

You can access Tory's recipes from the article here.

Comments

[Lisa at Greenbow]

I often tease my husband that I am making a certain "color" of a dinner. I didn't know people do it on purpose. Ha... Of course this meal sounds much more interesting than what my white dinner would be. I won't tell you what it would consist of I wouldn'twant to ruin your dinner. ;)

[Altoon]

Oh, my, I've got my eye on those blintzes. I've never tried to make them, but this tempts me. But this isn't a real white dinner. Years ago I was in Norway and was served fish balls and potatoes in white cream sauce; now that's a white meal!

[Julie Siegel]

How could one resist pumpkin seeds with Death's Door Gin? The poetry alone seduces. I am a fan of layers of white given our recent trip to Sweden...not just food and landscape, but in the paintings of world-renowned artist, Anders Zorn. Because no time to comment on individual posts, a general Big Thanks for such wide-ranging posts! I am a super fan of all your writing and Mark's photos and believe that your non-gardening posts make me better appreciate the others.

[LINDA from EACH LITTLE WORLD]

Lisa and Altoon — I think it is the norm for white meals to be bland and I know that is often the case with Norwegian food. I live in an area with a large Norwegian ancestry so I am familiar with this kind of food. A great Norwegian cookbook in a different vein is "A Kitchen of Light." Great photos and stories even if you never make a recipe.

Julie — Thanks for those kind words. You know the garden bloggers in Chicago all said you should specialize and blog about only one subject. But, with my generalized newspaper background and many interests, I could never limit myself. So it's always nice to know it's appreciated.