“Tongue in Cheek”

“Tongue in cheek” is a collective creation. I wanted to make a braised beef cheek salad, a first course that had a lot of character and also reflected the familiar pairing of roast beef and horseradish. Beef cheek is very succulent because of its fat content. The original dish was just the braised beef cheek salad, horseradish greens, and confit of tomato. But we had already come up with a lot of paired items—the “Bacon and Eggs,” “Oysters and Pearls,” “Coffee and Donuts”—and Stephen Durfee