DAMON BAEHREL, 4th Course

Clearly, this meal made such an impression on me that it is taking me literally years to describe (see earlier posts). And I'm not even halfway through.

For the fourth course, Chef Baehrel continued with the theme of using exclusively local ingredients, mostly what he harvests on his own property. We were served a playful "faux" sunny side up egg with a side of "bacon," in the manner of Wylie Dufresne's famous trompe l'oeil dishes. Baehrel called this "phony egg" dish "the essence of the native harvest."

The egg whites were made from cattail cones taken from the stem of typha plants that grow wild in wetland environments. This was emulsified with rutabaga and potato starch. This was flavored with the sour taste of clover juice (wild wood sorrel, and infused with grapeseed oil.

The yolk is half a sungold tomato poached for 2 hours in parsnip water. The "bacon" is actually made from jerusalem artichoke that is oven-dried and jelled, baked into a cake and cut into little slabs.

Finally, the dish is sprinkled with "pepper" made from shagbark hickory bark that is soaked, oven dried and scraped.