Woo, this one was chef-y; at least the main course. I cannot for the life of me locate the Food & Wine recipe for Grilled Black Cod and Herb Bundles with Elk Spice online anymore, but it’s probably not up your alley unless your alley runs behind a Michelin-starred destination restaurant on an island in the Pacific Northwest with access to wild-caught black cod, a bevy of edible flowers (including chrysanthemums–don’t forget those), a shelf’s worth of exotic spices, and white soy sauce (???).
Here’s what I will say: the grilled herb bundles were kinda surprisingly awesome, and I do think it’s worth the effort to recreate them. It’s not horrible. Basically for each bundle you overlap 3-4 stemmed meaty green leaves (collard, mustard, or chard) left to right on the counter in front of you, stem lines vertical so they’ll roll up easier; then, you put a nice bouquet of greens and herbs (and sure, yeah, edible flowers for color if you’ve got ’em) on top of the left/first/bottom leaf in the stack; then, you roll up the bundle from that side, left to right, and tie it with a couple snug bows of kitchen twine like a bouquet (helps to lay the strings out first on a different part of the counter horizontally and then plop your little greens burrito down on top of the strings for tying). Brush the tied bundles liberally all over with whatever herbed/spiced butter you’ve got on hand or feel like making and grill covered over indirect (high) heat, turning very often, until they feel soft all the way through when you squeeze them with tongs (this will take a solid 15 minutes; recipe said 5-8, ha ha). They’ll be a bit charred in spots, but this is a good thing. After they cool for a few minutes, plate them, untie them (discarding the twine) then slit them from top to almost bottom, fan and fluff a bit, then ladle on a mix of equal parts soy sauce, melted butter, and lemon juice (Meyer lemon is nice if you’ve got it). It’s like the best hot salad ever.
The baked rice and grilled peach cobbler (can’t find the recipe we used, but this is close enough for government work) were much more normal recipes and very delicious. But the sleeper hit of the evening was the marinated anchovies with citrus, raisins, and chiles on toasts, which went great with the chamomile-forward Bumble cocktail. I wouldn’t do this menu again, but it did turn out great!
The Rookery 