You are invited to join us at our home in Bedford Stuyvesant for a unique dining experience. In a relaxed atmosphere, you and nine other guests will enjoy a six course tasting menu of original dishes and a cocktail. 

The cuisine at Stuyvesant is decidedly Nouveau American, inspired by classic French technique, molecular gastronomy, and flavors from around the world. Whenever possible, we strive to make everything from scratch using organic, natural, and local ingredients.

Our next event will take place on May 7th at 7:30pm. For those with dietary restrictions, please know that both meat and seafood dishes will be served. There are 10 spots available, and the suggested donation is $45. Reservations are taken on a first come first served basis. If you’d like to enjoy wine with your dinner, we are BYOB.

If you are unable to join us on the 7th, please consider passing this invitation along to a friend.

For more information, to join our mailing list, or to RSVP for an event, please send a message to thehandmadekitchen@gmail.com.

We’ve been thinking about setting up a supper club/clandestine restaurant for a while. Our periodic dinner parties have been successful, and we love coming up with menus and meals to share with others. Tonight, we are hosting our first clandestine restaurant night with a five course tasting menu.

Menu

Opener

Homemade chicken liverpâté with prune & port mustard

Amuse Bouche

Sweet potato soup with maple syrup, house-infused roasted garlic oil

Salad Course

Onion tart with rosemary flecked crust, carmelized onions, sundried tomato, capers, carmelized pear, gruyere, cream served with fresh green beans, cherry tomatoes, smoked almonds and homemade sweet pickled onions

Fish Course

Chilean sea bass with butter sauce thickened with French pain d’épices and walnuts served with candied orange segment and fresh basil garnish

Meat Course

Veal two ways, East meets West edition: Veal medallion Marsala with wild mushrooms and Cantonese style salt and pepper veal sweetbreads

Dessert

The Golden Progression: Jasmine tea pearls, rose- & orange-infused sponge, Matcha & toasted brown rice merengue, hazlenut dust, homemade Tahini iced cream, honey almond tuile, vanilla ginger panna cotta.

Poulet craudine (Spatchcock or butterfly chicken in Engish) is a technique used to flatten the chicken so you can roast it faster, throw it on the grill, or even rotisserie. Basically, you remove the backbone from the bottom of the bird with kitchen shears, pull out the cartilage from between the breasts, and lay the chicken flat. (Save the backbone and cartilage for making stock, of course.)

To prepare the bird, this time, we decided to brine it. Our brine consisted of the following: juniper, cardamom, bay leaves, garlic cloves, cinnamon sticks, green, red and black peppercorns, star anise, fresh thyme, whole allspice, and salt.

Now to let it sit for several hours before we roast it in the oven later. More pics to come.

Making peanut butter is insanely simple. And, the result is infinitely better than store bought. In five minutes, you can made enough peanut butter to last for a couple weeks (depending, of course, on how much peanut butter you normally consume).

The peanuts we used were purchased roasted and lightly salted — ok, ok, we did buy these, but from a reputable place that we know uses no preservatives Surely, we will be looking to roast raw peanuts in the future. Many recipes call for a bit of salt, but since these peanuts were lightly salted, I omitted it.

I used about 250g peanuts, threw then in the food processor and then you have to add some liquid fat. Many recipes call for peanut oil (go figure), but I decided to try sesame oil for a little added flavor. And, instead of refined sugar, I used honey to sweeten the mixture.

One bite, and this peanut butter obsessed individual will only be making my own going forward. I am definitely looking forward to experimenting with flavor combinations, too. My only question is: why did I wait so long to make this? 

Mustard is surprisingly easy to make. And, it tastes really good. We borrowed a recipe from one of our favorite food blogs, Choosy Beggars, for this amazing prune and port mustard. Original recipe can be found here.

The recipe is simple: mix up the ingredients, let sit for several hours, then mix up in a food processor until desired texture is achieved.

From the reading we did, we learned that mustard seeds, when they touch liquid, undergo a chemical reaction which releases the spicy flavor from within. The original recipe we used called for yellow and brown mustard seeds (yellow being mild, brown spicy, and black really spicy). This go around, we only used yellow. Not because we are afraid of spicy food, but because we couldn’t find any brown seeds. That being said, we are still on the lookout for brown and black mustard seeds, and will be experimenting more with homemade mustard. Eventually, we would be making the prunes, as well, for a recipe like this, but we’re still easing ourselves into the ‘all homemade’ lifestyle.