Month: September 2007

Categories
Fish and Shellfish The Book

97. Sole Meunière p.284

No recipe for this one.

This is one of the simple and elegant classics that make French food so revered. It’s the first dish Julia Child had in France, and she credits that lunch of sole meunière as the catalyst for her cooking and eating career. This is about the simplest possible fish preparation there is, a fillet of dover sole is dredged in flour, then pan fried in browned butter and parsley. A quick sauce is made of the pan juices with a bit more butter, salt, and lemon juice.

When the ingredient list is short it’s a good cue to make especially sure that everything you’re using is of the best possible quality and freshness. If you use butter that has picked up a bit of flavour from the fridge, there’s no way you’re going to be able to hide it here. Unfortunately fresh local sole isn’t really a possibility in North America. Dover sole is sometimes available, but it’s fished in Europe. Gray sole is much more readily available, but it’s not actually in the same fish family, and the taste is different. Nevertheless gray sole is what I used, and I was thoroughly pleased with the results.

The simplicity and balance of the flavours here are the reason it’s a classic. It wouldn’t be half as good if you didn’t brown the butter properly, the nutty aromas make the dish. The lemon simultaneously adds sweetness and acid, and the faint flavour of parsley actually serves a purpose in a dish this subtle. The dredge in flour means you get a crispy coating, and the aromas of just baked bread are a bonus. The fish was moist and succulently flaky. My only complaint is that cooking the parsley along with the fish makes it kind of black and ugly by the end. I added a little fresh just for looks. The flavour of the fish is very mild, and it takes a delicate preparation to allow it to play the lead. Everything in the dish is there to support the fish, and they do a great job of highlighting it without stealing the spotlight.

I’ve been eagerly following this season of “Top Chef”, and I’m waiting with baited breath for the finale. One of the contestants, Casey, has had her food called “soulful” by half a dozen of the best chef’s going. The bravo forums have been abuzz wondering what soulful actually means. The best definition I’ve heard is that the food is well seasoned, balanced, thoughtful, and instantly familiar. It should tap into our collective sense of childhood favorites and family classics. This dish is a quintessential example of soulful. It’s not fussy, it’s just good.

Categories
Fish and Shellfish The Book

96. Salmon Burgers with Spinach and Ginger p.291


The recipe

I rarely make recipes from The Book for lunch, but this was an exception. I happened to be home, and to have a salmon fillet lingering in my fridge, so I decided to go for it. It wasn’t the greatest thing I’d ever tasted, but it certainly wasn’t bad. It’s a simple burger made of diced salmon, spinach, scallions, ginger, salt, and pepper. It’s held together with an egg white, and a dash of soy, then shaped into patties, fried crisp, and topped with pickled ginger. As you can see I happened to have some neon pink pickled ginger in the fridge, and I used it. It didn’t look great, and it wasn’t the best pickled ginger I’ve ever had, but this was lunch and I was alone, so who would ever know? I still had a bunch of the dill and crème fraîche mixture I used in the Rye Crispbread Crackers with Pepper-Dill Crème Fraîche and Smoked Salmon, so I added that and the burger to a slice of Russian bread and called it a meal.

The burger cooked up nicely, and developed a crispy crust. I often worry about fish burgers falling apart in the pan, but that was not an issue. The flavours were a bit aggressive. Salmon can stand up to intense sauces, but this was pretty much a ginger burger with salmon and spinach. It tasted quite nice, but not much like salmon. Unfortunately my kitchen still smelled like pan fried fish. I’ve also got to deduct points for the boring “let’s make it Japanesque” flavours they’ve gone with. Ginger and soy are a great combination, but leaving that as the only flavouring in an Asianoid dish smacks of foreign food of the ’50’s. And not in that quaint kitschy way I love.

Overall the burgers were fine. Not particularly inspired, but totally edible and even enjoyable. I definitely don’t think this should be the definitive salmon burger, or the only fish burger in The Book, but it’s not bad at all. The nice thing about lunch is that it’s held to a lower standard. This burger might have been a disappointment at supper time, but having a burger for lunch is a treat no matter how it tastes.

Categories
Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

95. Rye Crispbread Crackers with Pepper-Dill Crème Fraîche and Smoked Salmon p.38

The recipe

This is a funny recipe, it’s a play on the old standby of lox and cream cheese on pumpernickel. In this version you bake your own crackers, use dill infused crème fraîche, and dress them up with fresh dill and orange zest. I’ve never made crackers before, and my first experience suggests it’s exactly as pointless an activity as it seems. The recipe waxes on about how great the crackers are, and how they really make the dish. If that’s the case why is this recipe in the hors d’oeuvres section? They have a perfectly good Breads and Crackers section.

The crackers are made with a yeast dough using both white and rye flour, kosher salt, and toasted caraway seeds. The dough is allowed to rise, rolled into thin sheets, and allowed a brief second rise before baking. The final texture was unusual. It wasn’t cracker crisp, it wasn’t bready soft, it was crunchy on the outside, and tough and chewy on the inside. I wasn’t impressed with the final texture at all, and I actually had to gnaw through a couple of them. My sister, who was appalled at the amount of time, effort, energy, and cash recipes from The Book seem to require, quite liked the crackers. She felt that if you were going to go to the bother of making your own, at the very least they should be softer than boxed crackers. I felt that if they’re called rye crispbread crackers the least they could do was to be crisp. The flavour was very nice, the caraway seeds added a lot, but frankly these things just weren’t worth it.

The crème fraîche layer had a structural issue. The crème was mixed with chopped dill, salt, and pepper, then added to the crackers. Unfortunately, crème fraîche is barely gelled when it’s scooped out of the container. Stirring in the other ingredients moved it back to the liquid side of things. It was prone to running off the crackers, and onto people’s laps. Not exactly ideal in a finger food. Once again the flavour was good, but the texture was off. Maybe a combination of crème fraîche and sour cream, or cream cheese would have provided the richness and flavour, while staying where I put it.

The flavours in the dish were right on. The crackers were delicious, rye and carraway are old friends. The dill and crème fraîche played well with the smoked salmon, and the orange zest set the whole thing off, making it lighter and brighter, and cutting some of the oiliness of the fish and richness of the crème. I also thought these appetizers looked great, despite the odd dribble of crème fraîche. Unfortunately the texture of the crackers left a lot to be desired, every grocery store has much better substitutes for hardly any money and no effort. The rest of the dish was pretty standard fare, the crackers were the make or break aspect of the dish. In this case they didn’t break easily enough.

Categories
Hors D'Oeuvres & First Courses The Book

94. Roasted Garlic Pea-Purée on Sourdough Croûtes p.35


The recipe

The next couple of appetizers were a co-production with my sister for a family party. These seemed to appeal to the adults, but the kids were a bit put off by the green mush. I tried some of the leftovers out on a friend’s three year old, but the baguette croûtes were too tough for her. She licked the pea-purée off, held in her mouth for a bit, then spat it all over my dining room table. This puzzled me, because the pea-purée is pretty much baby food. Maybe three year olds aren’t great fans of garlic and Parmigiano-Reggiano?

I thought these appetizers worked well. The pea-purée was flavorful with sweet roasted garlic, salty cheese, and lemon juice coming through clearly. Topping with a slice of Parmigiano-Reggiano and baby arugula leaf made for a nice colour counterpoint, and the baguette croûtes provided some much needed crunch.

I’m always happy to find appetizers that transport well. I was able to mostly make these ahead, and then just do final presentation at the party. I made the pea-purée and croûtes at home, and then just had to slice the cheese and assemble them once I arrived. Unfortunately these were a little bit hard to eat, the croûtes tended to crack in largish pieces, and a couple of people dropped dollops of pea-purée onto my uncle’s carpet. He’s a neat and tidy kind of guy, so I cringed at every splat. I think using a smaller loaf would work better, maybe a baguettine, or a ficelle if they’re available. Pairing these down to one or two bites each would be easier on the wall to wall.

The recipe warns that using fresh peas is a waste of time, as the frozen ones are much easier and will result in a less starchy dish. I used frozen but still found the pea-schmear starchy. I’m not sure if I undercooked them, or that’s just the nature of peas. I think a little more olive oil in the purée would have made a better emulsion, and the starchiness would have been less noticeable.

I was quite pleased with these as appetizers. They were fairly healthy, very colourful, tasted pretty good, and didn’t take too too much effort. I’d certainly make them again.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

93. Grilled Butterflied Leg of Lamb with Lemon, Herbs, and Garlic p.502

The recipe

Spring lamb simply prepared is one of the best rewards I can think of for having suffered through a long winter. Spring lamb comes from a younger animal than lamb without an adjective. Generally spring lamb is 3-5 months old, but it can be called lamb right up until a year old. As the animal gets older it’s flavours become more pronounced, so a piece of spring lamb is going to me more delicate and tender than an older lamb. My dining companion is a bit tentative about lamb, but she likes it in small portions. She’s quite sensitive to the goaty flavours it can take on. For her sake I choose spring lamb whenever possible. I appreciate those more intense flavours, especially in a stew. Occasionally I can get my hands on some goat for a nice curry, and if anyone can point me in the direction of some mutton I’ll be forever indebted to you. Even spring lamb packs a serious flavour punch though. In this dish a leg of lamb (spring or otherwise) is taken off the bone, rubbed with lemon, thyme, rosemary, parsley and garlic, then allowed to sit for an hour for the spices to penetrate before being grilled to medium rare.

This preparation shows off everything that makes lamb great. It’s flavourful enough to stand up to a bold spice rub, it’s fatty so it does well with high heat, it cooks quickly, and tastes best just this side of medium-rare. A leg of lamb like this is what grills were invented for. It developed a pungent, crispy exterior, with a melting, delicate interior. The spice rub charred, and smoked the dish, but enough of it got worked into little crevasses that it retained some of its fresh taste. My only regret is that I have a gas grill. If ever there was a time to break out the hardwood charcoal this is it. Some real wood smoke would have done wonders for an already wonderful dish.

I’d like to take a moment to thank my instant read digital probe thermometer. This was the first dish I used it with, and I can’t tell you how happy it made me. Being able to close the grill with the probe in the meat (it’s attached by a long wire to the display), and set an alarm for the desired internal temperature was a revelation. Our grill is on the flimsy side, so every time we open it it loses a huge amount of heat, and it doesn’t have the mass to bounce back quickly. Being able to keep the lid closed means that the top side of the meat is still being roasted and browning without direct exposure to the heat. Since I started using the digital thermometer everything has been coming out better, and I don’t worry about over or under doing anything. It also means I only need to stab one hole, and the probe is much smaller than my old analogue one. If you don’t have one of these things you really owe it to yourself.

This dish was just fantastic. Lamb prepared like this is an absolute classic, and dozens of cultures have their variations on it. This one leans towards the Greek end of the spectrum, and it works exceptionally well. Many many other flavourful spice rubs could work with this preparation though. The beauty is in taking the lamb leg off the bone and butterflying it so that it grills quickly. Increasing the surface area also gets more flavour into the meat, and gives you more deliciously grilled crusty outside bits. I love that this preparation is easy enough for a casual supper, but would work well as the centerpiece for an Easter feast too. Grilled Butterflied Leg of Lamb with Lemon, Herbs, and Garlic has earned its five mushroom rating.

Categories
Breakfast and Brunch The Book

92. Baked Eggs and Mushrooms in Ham Cups p.634

The recipe

The eggs are really pretty, taste great, and come in manageable individual sized portions. It’s not really practical to do fried eggs for a crowd, you end up spending all your time at the stove, and the toast gets cold. The solution is often scrambled, or poached eggs. Scrambled are nice, but a bit boring, and I really like having a yolk to dip into. Poached are great, and as my poaching skills improve I appreciate it more and more. I’m always worried about getting the eggs out of the pan, nicely drained, and onto the plate without breaking at least one of them though.

This type of dish is a nice option for a big brunch. Slices of ham are fitted into muffin cups, and filled with a mixture of sautéed mushrooms and shallots, fresh tarragon, and crème fraîche. Each cup is topped with an egg, and then popped in the oven at 400 degrees until the whites are set. They’re excellent little self-contained dishes that are easy to serve, and most of the work can be done ahead. They’re easy to make, the presentation is impressive, and quite charming.

I was a big fan of the flavours at work here. The ham crisped up and showed off its bacony side, which paired well with the classic mushroom tarragon combination. The crème fraîche added a bit of richness and luxury, and the egg was a none to subtle reminder that this was a breakfast dish.

Despite my enthusiasm, the recipe had some technical problems. When buying the ham for this recipe it’s important to get slices without any holes, otherwise the filling will leak out. I decided that thicker slices should stay together better, but I failed to consider that they’re less malleable. I had trouble getting them into the egg cups, and ended up cracking some of them. In the end, a lot of the filling did run out of them. This isn’t really the recipe’s fault, after all it did warn me. But your ham should be neither too thick nor too thin, and the more uniform it is the better.

The real problem with the recipe came in the baking of the eggs. I put them in the oven for the recommended 15 minutes, but the whites weren’t even close to being set. It took an extra 10 minutes for them to set up. Unfortunately the yolks were fully set by that point, which was a real letdown. It’s possible that the broiler element came on at some point during the eggs’ cooking and applied too much direct heat from the top. Since you don’t really care if the eggs steam a bit, you could probably cover the muffin tin in the oven.

I’m not sure where I went wrong with the eggs, Teena at the other gourmet project made these recently. She didn’t seem to like them nearly as much as I did, but the eggs in her photo look like they have set whites and runny yolks. I may have messed up somewhere along the line.

These eggs looked and tasted great, and were really easy to make. Mine didn’t work out as well as they could have, but they were still delicious. Tarragon is a prominent flavour here, and not one you often find in breakfast dishes. For me that was a welcome surprise, I’m always happy to eat more tarragon. It doesn’t really jump to mind when you think of flavours to pair with coffee and orange juice though. I think these eggs work best as part of a less breakfasty brunch. I served them with baguette and a green salad, which worked really well. I’m excited to try these again, if I can find a way to maintain my ham’s structural containment and sort the eggs out, I think this dish could be a real winner.

Categories
The Project

Forever Behind

My goal for the summer was to get caught up on my backlog of recipes. I was attempting to write up one recipe / day for 60 days. The plan was to hit recipe #113 by today, I fell short by 22 recipes. When I originally posted this challenge I said that you could all mock me if failed, and I have failed. Nothing to be done about it but to keep on writing though.

Categories
Grains and Beans The Book

91. Smoky Black Beans p.267

The recipe

I was happy to find this recipe in The Book. I make my own version often enough because it requires no though, hardly any effort, and costs pennies per serving. I am not a great planner, and I rarely have the wherewithal to think through tomorrow’s dinner and get beans soaking the night before. The Book is full of overnight soaks, chills, freezes, and rises, which is one of the challenges of this project for me. Thankfully this recipe involves absolutely none of that. It uses canned beans, which are probably my favorite kitchen shortcut of all time. Sure they’re 15 times more expensive than soaking your own, but they still only cost 89 cents a can.

The ingredient list is all pantry staples, and the instructions pretty much come down to “simmer all the stuff together”. First you soften an onion in a bit of olive oil, then add some chopped chipotle, two cans of beans, water, orange juice, and a bit of salt. Break down the beans a bit with a potato masher, and let it simmer ’till everything thickens up nicely.

This is pretty much exactly my version of the dish, I usually add beer instead of water, and I hadn’t used the orange juice before. I like the dish mostly because I like the chipotles (I’ve written quite enough chipotle love poetry in the last few weeks, I’ll spare you any more), the beans are an ideal vehicle for chipotle flavours, and pretty much every savory dish starts with sautéed onion, so why not this one? The orange juice was a really good addition the sweetness and mild acidity complimented the chipotles perfectly.

I used these beans as a burrito filling, but they’d be equally good as a stand alone supper if you mixed in some left over pork, maybe topped with a bit of cheese and popped under the broiler. This dish was easy, versatile, forgiving, economical, and delicious. It satisfies a craving for Mexican without spending hours in the kitchen. If you happen to live in a part of the world with a taqueria on every corner, by all means go there. But, for me finding decent Mexican is a challenge. On nights when that’s just not a challenge I’m up for, this recipe is there for me.

Categories
Poultry The Book

90. Chicken in Pumpkin Seed Sauce p.360

No recipe for this one.

I had a very mixed reaction to this dish. I made it for friends along with some of the other recipes listed under Mexican in the index. It makes a good deal of food, and we weren’t able to eat it all. On the night of the party I had the chicken and decided it was delicious, I had some leftovers the next day and decided they were gross and that I’d never liked it in the first place. Some time passed and my memories softened, I recalled the chicken fondly again but with a queezy uncertainty. I’d frozen some of it, so I pulled it out when I saw it was time to write the dish up. The verdict? slightly freezer burned. In the end I think there were some really strong elements to the dish, and some fairly weak ones.

A chicken is divided into serving size pieces, and simmered with garlic, onion, cilantro, salt, pepper, and allspice. The chicken is then topped with a sauce of toasted pumpkin seeds, cumin, allspice, cloves, pepper, tomatillos, serranos, onion, garlic, cilantro, salt, and a poblano. The whole thing is then baked and served.

The sauce has some excellent flavours, I really liked everything that went into it, and the combined beautifully. The flavours were really complex, but cohesive. There are a huge number of flavourful ingredients in this sauce, and marshaling their forces this deftly isn’t easy. The sauce’s flavour was the strong point of the dish, It’s texture and appearance were pretty much awful. A light beigey-green sauce over some beige chicken didn’t do much for visual impact. The pumpkin seeds and spices are ground to a powder before being added to the sauce, and the sauce is pureed thoroughly, but it still ended up mealy and unpleasant. I think I just don’t like the texture of ground nuts or seeds in sauces. Maybe passing this sauce through a Chinoise would have improved it, but I don’t have one, and the recipe didn’t call for it.

The chicken itself was a bit of letdown. It’s topped with a flavour packed sauce, but the meat is absolutely bland. It simmers in a broth for ~50 minutes, picking up flavour from the arromatics you added. Unfortunately the chicken flavour is escaping to the liquid at the same time. 3 1/2 cups of the liquid get added into the pumpkin seed sauce, but the other ~3 quarts went into the freezer. The Mexican inspired chicken stock was a nice little bonus from making this dish, but you wouldn’t’ serve your guests chicken you’d used to make stock with first, so why do it here? In the end you have an exhausted chicken covered with gooey boiled skin, yum.

I should emphasize that the sauce for this chicken was really delicious, everything else about the dish is wrong wrong wrong, but it’s almost good enough to make up for it. If I were to make it again I’d grill the chicken instead of boiling it, grind the pumpkin seed mixture into a nano-scale powder, puree the sauce obsessively, then pass it through a hepa filter.

Categories
Sauces and Salsas The Book

89. Fresh Tomato Salsa p.896


The recipe

I’m pleased to inaugurate the Sauces and Salsas section of The Book with this recipe. This tomato salsa is about as minimalist as salsa can be. It focuses on clean flavours, but left me wishing for a bit more complexity. It’s comprised of diced plum tomatoes, white onion, serrano chiles, cilantro, salt, and water. It’s perhaps more notable for what it lacks. No garlic, no oil, and no lime juice. The garlic is entirely optional, it’s only a standard salsa ingredient for me because I have an unhealthy infatuation with the stinking rose. In fact I didn’t particularly miss it here, and leaving it out does make the dish taste lighter and cleaner.

The lime juice is a crime against humanity though. I suppose the thinking is that tomatoes are fairly acidic, and can stand up on their own without a hit of citrus. I agree that white vinegar would have been out of place, but lime juice adds a mild acidity and a linchpin of flavour. I imagine cilantro, chiles, and lime juice as a perfectly balanced triangle. They’re the mirepoix of Latin cuisine. I hate celery, but if you leave it out of the mirepoix I’m going to notice, and resent you for it.

The salsa felt like exactly the sum of it’s parts, without melding into a comprehensive dish. I usually add lime juice and a bit of olive oil, i.e. a very simple vinaigrette, which I find ties the salsa together, and provides a medium for the flavours to mingle in.

The instructions for this recipe read

Finely chop tomatoes.

Transfer to a bowl, along with any juices.

Stir in remaining ingredients.

It’s got a haiku like simplicity, but the ingredient list doesn’t have the balance those poems strive for. There’s nothing really wrong with this recipe, but a few little additions would make it much more appealing.