Glassy Eats
March 7, 2007 5:39 AM   Subscribe

Verrines are described by the L.A. Times as layered luxury in a glass and are defined as appetizers or desserts that consist of a number of components layered artfully in a small glass. Feast your eyes on these uniquely prepared culinary items. Prepare your own at home by following these sweet and savory recipes.
posted by inconsequentialist (30 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Isn't this a new word for something that's been around forever? What is a trifle if not a big verrine?
posted by rhymer at 5:44 AM on March 7, 2007


Verrines are intended to be single serving-sized. So, a trifle could be prepared verrine-style.
posted by inconsequentialist at 5:49 AM on March 7, 2007


Not just trifles, either, but lasagna, jello salad, certain casseroles and the black-and-tan. Yay stacking!

Waits for a trendy Minnesotan restaurant to come out with single-serving hot-dish-in-a-glass.
posted by nebulawindphone at 5:55 AM on March 7, 2007 [1 favorite]


In that case at my net dinner party I am going to serve lasagna in a glass, followed by trifle in a glass washed down with booze in a glass, layered cocktails perhaps. Verrinelicious.
posted by rhymer at 5:55 AM on March 7, 2007 [1 favorite]


sorry next. I don't do web dinners.
posted by rhymer at 5:56 AM on March 7, 2007


I'd eat the living shit out of all of those.
posted by The Straightener at 5:56 AM on March 7, 2007


How are you supposed to eat these? A layer at a time or get every layer in every bite?
posted by basicchannel at 6:14 AM on March 7, 2007


Using a cookie cutter, you could probably verrine a Big Mac.
posted by rhymer at 6:20 AM on March 7, 2007


I suddenly got a craving. Wow do I miss that stuff.
posted by miss lynnster at 6:25 AM on March 7, 2007


Posters sure are hungry around here lately, aren't they?
posted by Terminal Verbosity at 6:58 AM on March 7, 2007


slight derail,

but I notice that several of the LA Time's examples feature foam. Is it just me, or does anyone else think that this culinary fad looks like someone just spat on the plate, or in this case, glass?

Nice post incidentally.
posted by johnny novak at 7:21 AM on March 7, 2007 [1 favorite]


Verrine is the demon of impatience.
posted by pracowity at 7:36 AM on March 7, 2007


My husband loves the combination of bleu cheese, walnuts, and croutons (the lettuce part he could skip) drizzled with my walnut oil- balsamic vinegar dressing. I could easily serve this in a glass.

Or pizza in a glass: foccacio bread cubes, salami bits, dried sun tomatoes in oil, parmesan cubes, and diced green pepper.

Or Korean dinner in a glass: Korean Bar B Q beef bites layered with rice and kim chee topped with a broccoli floret.

Or Mexican salad in a glass: chunks of chicken dipped in ranch dressing layered with black beans, cheddar chunks, romaine lettuce, diced tomato, and avocado slices.

Ok I'm done with the whole glass thing-- back to food on plates.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 7:36 AM on March 7, 2007 [1 favorite]


I totally was expecting to find food with glass in it. Oh well.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 7:39 AM on March 7, 2007 [1 favorite]


johnny novak, that's exactly what I thought! ack. Pretty pictures though, even if they did look like gourmet spit sometimes.

Some of those combos, like the caviar one, seemed unappetising.

But this one is my fave, with litchis, mmmm.

Verrine is also the demon of impatience.

A yoghurt verrine. Ah, the parfait, au chocolat.
posted by nickyskye at 7:53 AM on March 7, 2007


oops, pracowity beat me to the demon.
posted by nickyskye at 7:54 AM on March 7, 2007


any mention of food stacking's got to include a link to gotham
posted by phaedon at 8:13 AM on March 7, 2007


How are you supposed to eat these? A layer at a time or get every layer in every bite?

I was wondering about that too. It seems like I read a lot of reviews lately (lord knows I can't actually afford to eat at these places) of restaurants where the food comes with instructions on how to eat it. This would be a graceful solution to that problem — just make eating in the "right" order the path of least resistance.
posted by nebulawindphone at 8:21 AM on March 7, 2007


Mmm, FoodDessertPron... the best kind.

they do look difficult to eat since the 'bowl's they're served in look so narrow - kind of like shot glasses. At least with trifle (maybe the English word for verrines - I kid) you get it in a big enough 'bowl' to stick your spoon in. Cookie cutter size meals... heavenly

rhymer, nice post. Please invite me to your next dinner party.

Metafilter: Verrinelicious!

(which if you think of it, is true - tiny bitesized portions of linky goodness)
posted by rmm at 8:29 AM on March 7, 2007


Or pizza in a glass

It's been done.


That's right, Guy "Michelin Three Stars" Savoy: Navin R. Johnson beat you to this whole trendy ooh-la-la verrine thing by a quarter century.

Is it just me, or has haute cuisine entered its High Modernist, fuck-the-function-and-just-gawk-at-my-forms-you-proles phase?
posted by gompa at 1:16 PM on March 7, 2007


Well, I'm slightly disappointed that the "stacking food on enormous plates into tiny-but-very-tall towers" is being taken over by a different fad as I was just about to take delivery of a tiny wrecking ball.

Now, we're throwing food into glasses (how wacky!), throwing foam on it (someone owns either a Cuisenart or a cappuccino machine - woohoo!) and presenting it with instructions on how to eat the damn thing - just in case you weren't insulting the diner enough with your prices.

I await the day when the wheel turns full circle again to when food is about the FOOD.

/rant
posted by ninazer0 at 1:29 PM on March 7, 2007


Yeah, the one looks like it has green snot on it.

And I'm not sure layering things in a cup is fantastically mind-blowing. Maybe I'm just jaded.
posted by Green Eyed Monster at 2:09 PM on March 7, 2007


I await the day when the wheel turns full circle again to when food is about the FOOD.

It seems to me that this style of food prep could be the sort of thing that draws attention to the variety of ingredients that go into making complex desserts, appetizers, and maybe even entrees instead of hiding them under a mound of bread, a pile of cream, or some other topping/encasement.
posted by inconsequentialist at 3:09 PM on March 7, 2007


Or Mexican salad in a glass: chunks of chicken dipped in ranch dressing layered with black beans, cheddar chunks, romaine lettuce, diced tomato, and avocado slices.

Ack!! No! Please stop putting cheddar cheese on "Mexican" food. All cheese ever used on Mexican food should be white. At least get Monterrey Jack (similar to "queso manchego") instead of cheddar.
posted by CrazyLemonade at 3:40 PM on March 7, 2007


Oh and, great post. I'll definetly show this to my sister, she'd love to try these things out at a dinner.
posted by CrazyLemonade at 3:40 PM on March 7, 2007


No disrespect to the well-formed post, but many of those look extraordinarily unappetizing to me - as though some terribly diseased space alien excreted in a sample cup for analysis. Not that I ever eat at these places, but I grow weary of pictures of foams and emulsions.

I suppose that may make me unsophisticated. I don't care. A few days ago I invented my own dirty brown mushroom rice, with lots of garlic, a few shitake mushrooms broken in, bullion, a lot of black pepper and just a bit of brown sugar. Last time I added a few tablespoons of toasted sesame seeds for a little extra nuttiness. Mmm. More spicy umami than good teriyaki or bbq, lots of caramelized garlic notes but not too cooked, very peppery but not burning at all and nearly zero fat. I could eat it until it came out of my eyeballs it's that good. It probably only costs about 50 cents to make.
posted by loquacious at 4:56 PM on March 7, 2007


No disrespect to the well-formed post, but many of those look extraordinarily unappetizing to me - as though some terribly diseased space alien excreted in a sample cup for analysis. Not that I ever eat at these places, but I grow weary of pictures of foams and emulsions.

None taken.

Though I take it that the verrine style could be used for any sort of food type, even sans the foam and exotic colored emulsifications.

I'll eat your rice out of a small glass any day!
posted by inconsequentialist at 6:03 PM on March 7, 2007


First you make a huge sedimentary pile of the stuff, and then you take a core sample to dump into the verrine, right?
posted by grobstein at 10:17 PM on March 7, 2007


inconsequentialist: Fair point, but (personally, obviously) what happened to displaying the stuff on a plate so you could see it properly? One of the best meals of my life was a square of beef in aspic trimmed and served with warm baby carrots, some fresh steamed french beans, and some amazingly tiny new potatoes in their skin which had been drizzled with a little herbed butter. On, and a little side salad of greens with a vinaigrette. It was all arranged on the plate like a still life and everything was just focused on the most perfect ingredients.

There was no pile in the centre of the plate with the surface of the plate being used to draw squiggles in...oh..I don't know...truffled crayfish reduction. It wasn't stuffed in a glass with foam (yes, that did look like snot) on top dripping over it.

Some dishes would be great served in a glass (oysters bloody mary, for example, or a butterscotch pudding with proper single-malt scotch) but it's just another novelty that detracts from the food IMHO, rather than adding to it.

Ach, who knows. I'm just in a grumpy mood. You kids just keep off my lawn!
posted by ninazer0 at 12:40 AM on March 8, 2007


I think that most great meals can be served in the way you describe. I think that one of the reasons this food prep style is interesting is that it is generally limited to deserts and appetizers (the former of which it makes or at least can make a great deal of sense to serve in this way) instead of entrees. I'm not sure why serving tiramisu for example in a small glass like this would detract from the food itself unless there really is a difficulty in eating it.
posted by inconsequentialist at 5:51 AM on March 8, 2007


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