2011.02.24 Cassoulet Creation

Today was the day!  Cassoulet!  On the bright side there was remarkably little cooking.  everything was accomplished over the last two days.  The downside--I was exhausted.  But, it all came together wonderfully.  The day started by making two loaves of no knead bread.  As usual, the recipe worked perfectly.  The reason for two loaves is because one of them was going to be scraficed to make great bread crumbs for the cassoulet's crust.

No Knead Bread

Thank you Jim Sullivan, again and again for the no knead recipe.  What a lifesaver.  The only problem with the no-knead recipe is the need for a lidded ceramic crock (Cochette)--which is the same crook I would need to bake the cassoulet in.  So, bread got baked first, then the cohette was washed and Cassoulet assembly began.

Cassoulet Components

From top left, counterclockwise, we have the seasoned beans -> tomato-lamb stock -> bean cooking liquid -> roast pork -> lamb, sausage, and duck.  The beans and meat got placed into the crock in alternating layers (beginning and ending with a layer of beans).  The tomato-lamb stock was poured over top and then enough bean cooking liquid just to come to the top. (which happened to be all of it).  I covered this up and stuck it back in the fridge until 2 hours before dinner time.

Uncooked Cassoulet

All that was left to do was cover this guy with bread crumbs and bake.  It came out with a delicious and crusty brown crust.

Baked Cassoulet

Yeah, that cooks like it was worth all the effort.  We let the crock chill down for about 15 minutes, during which time Nicholas made his way in and directed the setting of the table like a military campaign.

Cassoulet DInner Party

Cassoulet

The general consensus was that it was an excellent Toulouse-inspired Cassoulet.  I have to agree, I thought it came out exactly as it should have.  Great savory meat flavor, a nice bite of salt tender but not soft meats with a wonderful variety of fine french proteins.  It was good no doubt.  But, 3-days worth of work good?  I don't know about that.  I think that there are simpler dishes with even more flavor reward.  No doubt, though, it is a fine meal.  Now, I am going to go eat Cassoulet until I take off for Amsterdam on Monday.  Hopefully there will be some updates from the road!  If not, I'll see you next week.  Until then!

2011.02.23 Cassoulet Part Duex

People are not kidding when they say Cassoulet is an undertaking.  I think I am on pretty solid ground in saying that if you don't have too much experince with kitchen logistics, you should stay away from this dish.  It is about as intense as a dish can get.  That said, once you break everything down into component steps, it is fairly easy.  You just have to think ahead and be aware of how many pots / pans / burners / time you have.

I started today at 3 after class.  I was hoping things would just slowly simmer away on the stove as I studied--that was not the case.  From 3-9:20 I was basically standing in front of the stove or doing some prep work.  It seems that 6-hours of attentive kitchen work are required for this dish once the Fonds Brun has been made.

The day started with more meat.  This time on display we have, a breast of lamb, 2 duck leg-thigh combos, 3 Toulouse sausages, some extra lamb bones, and about 1.5 pounds of salt pork with rind attached.  I also had some pork bones, but they went bad.  It seems like our fridge is really underpowered.

 

Meat

 The Duck looked really nice, a gorgeous dark burgundy color.  A quick confession, this is the first time I have cooked duck since the Christmas disaster of 1998.  I am now older and wiser, and realize it was a horrible idea to make duck off a recipe I found on an AOL food community page.  Enough said about the year I ruined Christmas.  This time everything turned out perfectly.

Duck

 Toulouse Sausage (expensive)

I am not going to post the recipe--its just too complicated and I would totally just be copy-right infringing Julia Child's estate.  That said, there are probably more modern and clearer recipes out there, sorry Julia, but you could have used a tad more narrative on this one.  In any event, the first step was sorting some white hericot vert, putting them in a pot, adding some water boiling and waiting an hour.

Sorting Hericot Verts

 

While the beans are soaking, the rind is simmered a few times to soften it and leach salt.  Once boiled, it is cut into strips and then into triangular shapes.  Why triginal, who knows?  If anyone does know, please drop a comment.  The rind does throw a fair amount of scum, but this can be ignored as it is drained after a minute of boiling.

Rind added to water

 Rind throwing Scum

Rind Cut into small Triangles

The small triangles are then added to a small amount of water and boiled for half an hour.  At the conclusion of the simmer, the water and rind are added to the soaking beans along with the salt-pork and other aromatics.  This pork stew is then simmered for 1.5 hours until the beans are just tender.

 Simmering the Hericot Vert with Salt Pork and Aromatics

While the beans were simmering away, I also roasted the duck and the sausage in the oven.  When they came out, everything looked great.  The roasting fat and fond were also reserved.

 Roasting Pan

 Roasted Meats

All right, all that was pretty easy--now for the first annoying part of the day.  The boning and browning of the breast of lamb.  For those who don't know the breast of lamb consists of the intercostal ribs, and the meat and fat which cover those ribs.  It's basically the spare-rib on pork.  I have never boned a breast before, but, it turned out to be fairly easy once i thought about the anatomy for a bit. 

Breast of Lamb

The really annoying part was browning all the meat and bones that resulted.  I used the congealed fat off the stock to form a hot oil and then went to town.  The whole process took well over an hour in my wok and yielded a lot of fat which was later added to the reserved duck fat.

Browning the Lamb

  

To the wok, which had some great fond, was then added some vermouth, the fonds brun that i made a few days ago, some tomato paste, other aromatics, and the browned lamb.  This was left to simmer for 1.5 hours.

Simmering the Lamb

O.k., now came the second annoying part.  You have to separate the beans from their cooking liquid and the lamb from its cooking liquid.  Then recombine each 2 more times in specific ways to infuse the beans with the tomato-lamb stock. I'm not going to go into details, check out Mastering the Art of French Cooking if you really care.  In any event, it was made worse by the lack of large vessels in the kitchen, but I got it done and everything is now totally separated and chilling on the roof outside my bedroom window.

After all that I had a quick dinner of store made ravioli with a quick butter-laurel sauce.  It was really quite nice.

Final assembly and baking tomorrow!  Until then.

2011.02.22 Starting Cassoulet

The gauntlet has been throw down.  Cassoulet.  I've never made it before.  The 5 pages of rather obtuse instructions in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, best executed over three days, has been, let's not lie, intimidating.  But, with Paul Bocuse's assistant's brother in attendance and a whole mess of hungry french people in the Apartment, there was only one logical choice:  Cassoulet.

Step 1, going to the butcher.  I don't have to remind anyone, but, Ireland is NOT France (or America).  The choice of meats is not what it could be.  That said, after going to two or three different butchers, I found mostly everything I needed.  And, with about 20 pounds of meat (mostly bones) the walk back to the apartment became quite annoying.  But here are the shots of the meat larder:

 Meat for Day I

Actually, this is only about half the meat.  All I did today was make brown stock (Fonds Brun) and roast the pork shoulder for the Cassoulet's secondary meat infusion.  Not pictured is the breast of lamb, lamb bones, pork bones, Toulouse Sausage, or Duck that will make up the majority of the dish's protein component.

Boston Butt Rubbed with Salt and Sugar

 Oxtail, Ready to make Fonds Brun

Nothing could be easier than roasting a pork shoulder. Rub a Boston Butt with salt and sugar, wait a few hours, place in a 325 degree oven for about 6-8 hours.  When the meat registers 195 degrees:  done.  The HUGE supply of internal fat and collagen does the rest. P.S. thanks, esp., to Monica to converting me from a braised to roasted pork fan, cause roasted boston butt is a glorious thing--its what we make Barbecue from after all.

Amazing Boston Butt

The fonds brun took just about the same amount of time to simmer down, but it was just as easy.  Step one, take the oxtails, some pork bones, veal bones, and lamb bones, and roast in a hot oven for 45 minutes.

Unroasted Bones and Oxtail

Roasted Bones, Oxtail and Veggies

Throw everything into a pot and simmer VERY gently for about 8 hours.  The house is going to smell lovely, esp. with the roasting pork.  In fact one of the French guys who is staying with us right now nearly fell over from the smell when he walked it.  Its really good, I swear.

Fonds Brun Simmering Away

Allright, so with all this said, what's so difficult, really?  The answer is logistics.  The fridge is already completely packed, and I only have a few pots large enough to handle the volume of food being cooked.  In fact the roasted pork and stock are sharing the same Cochette for the time being.  And do to lack of space, that Cochette is chilling (and i mean literally chilling) on the temple bar roof outside my bedroom window.

Roast Pork sitting in stock.  That Nasty Gray layer is congealed fat.  Normally I would skim that by this point, but, because the fat will act like a bacteria seal as the stock sits outside (under a lid) I thought it was good to keep.

Cochette Chilling Outside my Window

The lack of pots and pans, mixing bowls, refrigerator space, and stove space is all going to be an issue in this preparation.  The key, as always in a big cooking project is logistical management. Staying on top of that is whats really important.  Until tomorrow.

2011.02.20 American Dinner for the French

I have yet another International-short-term-roomate as my normal roomate is taking a long weekend in Madrid.  This time, the Gentleman is for Toulouse and his brother just happens to be Paul Bocuse assistant chef.  Which, if you don't know, Mr. Bocuse is the executive chef at a three-star michelan restaraunt in Lyon.

In any event, we had some cocktails on Saturday night, and it was evident this French fellow knew food, so, we agreed to get down to buisness on Sunday evening, which was perfect as I had just finished the heaps of left-overs from the week before.

During the day, we brain-stormed what to make.  I offered several suggestions, but my foodie-interlocutor was having none of my haute-french suggestions.  So, after some back-and-forth, it was decided we would go try to make some classic American dishes.


Now, the night before, I said we were going to make fried chicken, which is great.  But, one too many Jamesons wiped out that particular thought from the memory banks.  In any event, we finally settled on pain bouef--which translated into American is meat loaf--cauliflower gratin, hericot vert, and a simple salad with vinagrette.  Then is was off to the races.

I actually don't have a recipe for  meatloaf, but, I though my burger recipe would end up makeing a great meatloaf--which it did.  The cauliflower was just blanched cauliflower added to a quick sauce mornay (with chedder and Gruyere).  Hericot Vert sauteed in some olive oil and garlic.  Simple but really good.

Now, my burgar recipie is not your typical McDonald's fair.  There are 24-separate steps in this particularly detailed recipe.

Meatloaf Recipe

The picture above is taken from the mushroom-shallot-white wine reudction step.  Its kind of intense, but the results are excellent.  The recipie I gave above is for the hamburgers--I'm too lazy to rewrite it.  To change the from hamburger to meatloaf, just put the whole mix in a baking pan, add some bread crumbs, and bake at 375 for about 45 minutes.  Check for doneness with a thermometer.

Sauce Mornay for Gratin--Also great for Impromtu Fondu

Cauliflower Gratin

Everything on a Plate

Thanks also to Laura for doing the vinagrette!  It all looked lovely, but, my European salt-sense is still off.  The meat was a little bit bland, but when mixed with a little cheesy gratin it all mellowed out.  One thing that really could have helped was the ground pork and ground veal.  We could only get minced beef, and it ended up being a bit heavy and not as fatty as it should have been.   American ground chuck really has a better taste and texture.  But, it was still pretty good.

A bit disappointed with my performance,  I am aiming high for Thursday with Cassolutte.  Its a 3-day cooking marathon.  Today I roasted a pork shoulder and made a brown stock (Fonds Brun).

 Simmering Fonds Brun

Roasted Pork Sholder

I'll give more details and recipes tomorrow!  Until then!

2011.02.14 Leftovers

The bane of eating-for-one are the left overs.  I may not be back till Thursday or Friday until I finish them all!

2011.02.13 Macaroni and Cheese

I'm not having a bad day at all, but if I were, this would be the meal for it.  There is a classic quote about French cooking that goes something to the effect, that the secret to a good meal is hiding fat in every bite.  Think about mashed potatoes, or souffle, or a croisiant.  What's the basic idea?  Layering fat into a carbohydrate.  Fat by itself can be cloying or heavy.  Just think about the last time you ate a big chunk of cheese.  It was delicious, but, you probably were not thinking that the overall aesthetic was transcendental.  But, now, melt some brie inside of a puff pastry--or that first light, crunchy, airy, and saliva-inducing bite of a brioche in the morning and you get the picture.

Now, you can see why mac & cheese comes together to from the perfect meal.  Its the basic winning formula of fat layered into carbohydrate.  Problem is, as easy as the basic idea is, the execution can be pretty complicated.  After all, a giant bite of fat is kind of unpleasant, and a giant bite of carbs can be blase.  Execution is key.  It's why melting a stick of Velveeta and butter into some elbow macaroni just isn't going to cut it.  We have to take things back to basic and create a liquid medium to hold all the fat from the cheese we are about to layer into pasta.

Macaroni and Cheese Recipe

Things start off with the classic French white sauce, the Sauce Bechamel, which is basically just a roux to which milk has been added.  We up the fat ante-slightly in this dish and add cream to the roux, which technically creates a sauce Supreme.  This thick milk-cream sauce, sweetened with a little nutmeg is great on its own--and I want to stress the addition of the nutmeg.  Just a pinch adds a whole new dimension to the sauce which cannot be missed.  Addition of cheese to the milk-cream sauce results in a Sauce Mornay.

The sauce Mornay is left to simmer for several minutes.  Then, we add the macaroni (I could not find macaroni in Dublin so I had to settle on ear-shaped dried pasta that went by the name gnocchi, but, which certainly were not gnocchi) and some sauteed wild mushrooms.  Stir this and lay it into a ceramic baking dish.

  

The next step is the topping, which is really important to get right.  Remember, we're not just making a cheese and pasta mixture to be baked, we are really making a layered pasta gratin.  The topping to that gratin is important to give the correct mouth feel and add one additional layer of fat-carb emulsion.  First step is a layer of comte cheese, which is delicious.  Onto this is added a good dose of homemade bread crumbs. 

To make the bread crumbs, I took left-over no-knead bread, put it in the food processor (which incidentially is the first time I have ever used a food processor).  Spun the blade a few times and made some home made bread crumbs.  The final result cannot even be comapred to store bought crumbs.  The effect is like biting into bread that has been sauteed in butter rather than just having a dry and crunchy crust.  Finally a tablespoon of fresh thyme made the whole thing gorgious and added a great herb background taste and smell which paired incredibly well with the earthiness of the wild mushrooms.

Bake for only 20-25 minutes at 375.  I found the top browned just fine by itself.  The final result was absolutely gorgeous.  Probably as good as mac and cheese can get.

Word to the wise--let this guy cool down for a good 20-30 minutes.  If you eat it piping hot, you are going to loose a lot of the more subtle flavor interplay between the cheese and herb and mushrooms.  Each bite is heaven--light and airy.  No feeling of grease or fat--the sauce is velvety and silky.  And, the crust is, like I said before, light, airy and crisp. The buttery top crackles and then gives way to the silken cheese and pasta below.  As good a dish as there ever was. Until tomorrow.

2011.02.12 Khao Phad Goong (Thai Shrimp fried Rice)

Typically, Thai food is not the first cuisine to come to mind in the winter.  But, Thai food is great year round and almost all of the ingredients are just as good in the winter as any other time of the year.  In particular, cilantro and scallion grow great on a cool window sill.  Limes are at great nearly year round, and garlic still looks nice in the market.  If you find using frozen shrimp distasteful, as they are not currently in season, the dish is still great if you skip them.

There are two things I particularly like about this dish.  The first is the texture and feeling as you eat it--there is nothing remotely "heavy" about the rice.  Every thing has a sort of light and refreshing feel.  The slightly salty rice combines with the lightness of egg and the refreshing zing of citrus and freshness of cilantro to bring a really refreshing dish.  The second thing is that the flavor profile shows off the classic Thai combination of the four fundamental tastes really well: sweetness of the rice, shrimp, and oyster sauce; salt from soya sauce; sourness from the lime juice, and heat from the Thai chili.  Thai food is really the only food culture that consistently hits all four of the fundamental tastes in most dishes--and this simple fried rice brings together a super-complex flavor profile with barely and work any simple ingredients.

Thai Fried Rice

And, the best part, from start to finish, the whole recipe can be done in about 20 minutes.

Until tomorrow.

2011.02.11 Recovering with Bread and Apricot

Like so many things in life, it turns out that the ontology of my project is a sham.  Also, like so many things in life, I found this out in reference to food.  Last night Laura and I finished the Alsatian coq au vin and retired to watch a movie.  Toward the end of two hours, I started to feel a rumble in my stomach--slight indigestion perhaps.  But, it got worse-and-worse as the night wore on.  By the time I turned the lights out to go to sleep, it was evident that this was going to be a rough night.  I woke from a tumbled sleep at 3, feeling exactly as I had the night I thought I came down with food poisoning from an Indian Restaurant.  While coincidences happen, two cases of food poisoning in one week was just too unlikely.

The mental gears started turning--blunt pain onset after meals, worse at night, better when not recumbent, responds to antacids--Sighh.  Peptic Ulcer.  Fearing the worse for my epicurean lifestyle, I made an appointment with Trinity's health service.   The doctor there sorted it out quickly.  The missing piece of the puzzle was that, in an effort to cure a sinus problem, I had been placed on a strong glucocorticoid (a type of non-anabolic steroid) two weeks before.  One of the side-effects of Glucocorticoid's is inflamation of the gastric mucosa which can mimic ulcer symptoms.  

So, with a prescription for an anti-acid drug in hand, I was on my way back to health and eating.  Only one problem--I started the blog to prevent me from eating out for fear of being food poisoned.  But, in reference to this, I'll stand with Oscar Wilde in noting that metaphysical inquiry's have little to do with the real world.  The human process of cooking is a marvelous thing and should be done and shared for its own sake.

That said, my meal today was very plain as my stomach remains a bit tender.  Just bread and butter and apricot jam (store bought).  But, what bread it is, my first loaf of no-knead-bread left to rise for the appropriate 18 hours.  The outside shatters like a cracker when you bite into it and coupled with the mouth-filling but soft and chewy crumb makes every bite so rewarding.  The high temp. at which the bread is baked also leads to the carbonization of some stray flour on the bottom of the loaf which results in a slight acrid, burnt undertone, like one finds in a great slice of new york pizza.  The addition of creamy-fat-butter and sweet apricot jam makes this simple bite one of the most rewarding food experiences possible.

There is a wonderful quote about bread in Bernard Clayton's book on the subject.  And, I will have to paraphrase, but it was from a nun in a monastery who once declared, "Bread is the one food you can eat 3 times a day forever and never get tired of it."  True.

Tomorrow something quick and easy, I think a Thai shrimp-fired-rice.  Until then.

2011.02.10 Alsatian Coq au Vin

Today, I took on an old classic coq au vin. This is a familiar dish to anyone who has ever made french food. An old chicken, preferably says Julia Child, a rooster, is braised in a slightly thick red-wine and aromatic sauce until the chicken is fall off the bone tender. It really is delicious and economical (if you have a 750 ml bottle of Burgundy to spare). I'm sure at some point coq au vin is going to be made. But, today is something a little bit more adventurous. We move just a little bit east from Burgundy into the Rhine valley and Alsace.

Alsace has an interesting history, buffering between the major powers of Germany and France. The region has often traded hands politically and the older Alsatian people speak Alsace, which is influenced by both German and French. The food, as well, takes something from both cultures. In this case, we are doing a classic preparation of coq au vin, but, with a dry Riesling, popular in Germany, and finished with creme fraiche. I have never made this recipe before and am a little concerned that the volume of wine called for in the epicurious recipe is too low, but, I made some modest adjustments and will see what happens.

Recipe for Alsatian Coq au Vin

When I woke up this morning, the first thing I checked was the no-knead bread dough I started the night before. As I was going to sleep I remembered a stupid measurement-by-weight versus measurement-by-volume problem that often comes up in converting Americn recipes to European measurement conditions that I forgot to take into account. As I suspected, I added too much flour to the bread and the dough had barely risen at all. I was upset until I remembered that Mark Bittman also posted a recipe for quick no-knead-bread. I whipped up another loaf and in 4-hours it was ready to go into the oven.

I baked the dough in a ceramic crock at the highest temp. available on this mini-european oven and the results looked fairly respectable, but, no quite as nice as what I expect back home.  The taste test was also a bit disappointing.  It was not a bad loaf of bread, but, certainly not as good as what the 18-hour recipe produce.:

While the bread was in the oven, I took a quick spin over to my local grocery store, which, by the way is really nice, and fairly affordable by high-end American grocery-store standards:
I got all the coq au vin ingriedents home and laid them out. Step one after that was browning the chicken:
Note that I really like to brown the chicken. As we are constantly reminded, the browning process is what creates the fond, which is what creates the whole basis for the flavor of the dish. People are far to scared to brown until the chicken is a deep brown, almost black color. But, don't be scared! If you are cooking at a medium temp, its nearly impossible to burn the meat.

I took care of the aromatics next, and de-glazed the pan with some brandy and then wine. Everything went into a ceramic crock and then into the oven. I'll let you know the results after dinner tonight!

Well, everything came out right on time. I was anticipating the sauce to be a bit thicker with the addition of the crème fraîche--but it was still a bit thin, so i made up a very quick blonde roux and thickened the sauce. The addition of lemon juice and crème fraîche is absolutely critical. The two ingredients work together to give and certain tang to the sauce which plays very nicely with the wine. Cream alone or sour cream could not produce the same effect. I used, only, a 1/4 of a lemon's worth of lemon juice. Next time, I will probably use half of a lemon. All-in-all, very good and cheap when served with boiled potatoes.