Cooking projects for today

I’m working on crab cakes today, and Dave wants chocolate ice cream and we have all the ingredients so that is next. He’s doing all the vacuuming today, and he already did the laundry, so he deserves a treat. The crab cakes will be a first course for duck prepared “sous vide.” I'll use the induction burner for that. Sauce will be a duck stock reduction, probably with some of my cherry-plum syrup added. Some nice carrots from the farm on the side they will like that sauce, too.

Last night we made fettuccine and had crab fettuccine. That involved 2 T minced shallot, ½ clove minced garlic, 1 T tarragon sautéed in butter, then add about 1 C cream and simmer to reduce a little bit. Add 1.5 C crab and ½ C grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. Add cooked pasta to pan with sauce and toss. Serve with a little more parm on top, and a Chardonnay/Pinot-based sparkling wine. Then those red wine-poached pears for dessert.

Yes, dinners next week will be light to offset the richness of this weekend!

An amazing birthday dinner

Dave is celebrating a "significant" birthday this month. I'm spending most of the week cooking many things that he enjoys, but on Sunday we decided to go out to dinner. But not any dinner -- Chef Celinda at 94 Stewart (and her sous chef Jeff) planned and prepared this one especially for us. She seems to have had a pretty good time taking the budget I gave her and putting together a five-course meal with paired wines.

We started off with figs with an ale-washed cheese and balsamic. The wine, which was quite sweet, paired really well with it, even with the balsamic.

I think my favorite course may have been the "soup" -- a red and yellow tomato gazpacho with Dungeness crab and fresh horseradish. It was both beautiful and tasty. The Graves we had, which tasted of a lot of wood initially, harmonized perfectly with it, and the play between the tangyness of the tomato, the spice of jalapeno, and the sweetness of the crab was just plain fun.

Next we had two different meat courses -- veal medallions with poached pear and wild muchroom risotto, and moulard duck breast rubbed with pistachio and spices. The risotto was subtly scented with allspice, and it all went with a 2001 Chatea Ste. Michelle Cold Creek Merlot. With the duck (which you can see was cooked perfectly) we had an Australian Shiraz.

Finally, we closed with a dense vanilla cheesecake topped with a Colheita port caramel sauce, and a glass of the same 1980 port alongside it. Overall, we had a great time and a great meal, and I think Chef had about as much fun as we did.

If I'm going to eat something sweet...

...these days, it's got to be incredible. The dried peach and pistachio baklava we made in "Peachy-Peachy Quack-Quack" class absolutely fell into that category. The theme of the class was combining duck and peaches in a full-course dinner. So for the baklava, we brushed the phyllo sheets with duck fat instead of butter, and duck stock formed the base for the sweet syrup that you pour over the baklava. Absolutely irresistible! I brought a piece home for Dave to try, and he seems to ask every day when I'm going to make it. Unfortunately, I won't make that unless we've got a crowd coming, because I know we'd eat it all and that's just not good for us, even if we weren't cutting out sugar and wheat. Maybe I'll have to add that to the Thanksgiving menu...

Duck pasta

I've been experimenting with duck confit as part of pasta dishes. A few weeks ago, I had some leftovers: Brussels sprouts leaves, duck confit, and fresh pasta sheets. I shredded the leaves, sauteed them in duck fat with shallots and fresh sage, and added shredded confit. Cut the pasta sheets into pappardelle (wide ribbons) and cooked it, then tossed it with the duck "sauce." It was really good. But a bit heavy for spring -- though that day was one of those cold rainy days that pass for spring here in Seattle much of the time.

Took another try at it this week, as I had just confited some duck and once again had fresh pasta sheets. This time the veg on hand was asparagus, and the herbs were the blossoms of chive and sage out on my deck. I sliced the asparagus very thin on the diagonal and gave it a quick saute with the duck, added a couple of spoonfuls of duck glace (can you tell I was cooking with duck a lot last week?) and then added the pasta, this time cut into 1/2 inch ribbons. After giving that a toss, I added the whole blossoms and a little bit of minced chives. Finally, topped it with some asparagus tips and a sauteed round of goat cheese (my thinking here was that the tanginess of the goat cheese would offset the richness of the confit).

It was very pretty and very good. As I mentioned, I went through another one of my ducky stages last week. The duck who gave its legs for this confit also contributed to this seared duck breast plate, where I deglazed the pan with maple syrup and hot pepper sauce, and served it with a puree of sweet potato and a green salad with blue cheese:

Working with foie gras

So the great experiments began on Friday. I picked up the foie, but of course wanted to wait to play with it until Dave was home to share in the adventure. I pulled out more than a dozen cookbooks with references to and recipes for foie, so I felt like I did a pretty decent literature search and research. I settled on two apps to begin: a salt-cured torchon of uncooked foie, to be served with brioche, and seared slices to be served with pomegranate molasses and an apple-rosemary compote. For the first app I used a recipe from "Jacques Pepin Celebrates" but I only used the small lobe of one foie, not an entire 1-1/2 pound liver. The second app I pulled together from several sources, getting the idea of rosemary with fruit from two different recipes and the idea of using the pomegranate molasses from having had pomegranate seeds with a raw foie app in my class. But first came the cleaning of the foie. I am *so* glad that I got to try this in class last summer, because it can be really scary how the thing is just ragged after you pull out all those nasty tough veins. And it did make Dave stop and do a double-take, I could tell he was wondering if this was the way it was supposed to be. But then you just sprinkle it with salt, white pepper, and cognac and roll it up in plastic wrap. A day in the fridge and the salt-cured lobe is nice and firm. That's for eating on Sunday after the brioche is cooked. For the seared application, I just rolled the big lobe back up after the cleaning (not as thorough for this one, as the small veins just shrink up when cooked) and wrapped it in plastic wrap. Put it in the fridge overnight for prep on Saturday. When Saturday dinner time gets here, I start getting nervous. This is very confusing to me, as I know exactly what I am doing. And I've even seared this stuff in class. But for some reason I have a significant panic reaction, I can feel it in my gut. Annoying as all get out, I must say! So I screw my courage to the sticking point and move ahead. The "surf and turf" was the seared foie and seared sea scallops. So I got the sea scallops seared off and put them in a low oven, then the foie slices went into the very hot skillet for about a minute and a half total. I think I would slice them even thicker, on the thick side of 3/4", next time I do them. But they turned out just fine. The plan was to serve baby greens with a vinaigrette of dijon, shallots, sherry vinegar, and walnut oil, and at the last minute I decide to candy some walnuts to go in it. That was a good move, there were too many soft things and not enough texture in this meal without that. Three scallops and three slices of foie on each chop plate, the salad at one end, a little of the apple-rosemary compote on the other, and a little of the pomegranate molasses drizzled at the side of the foie. Looked very nice, and tasted even better. Served with a Quady Essencia wine, as I didn't have a bottle of Sauternes. The sweetness worked well. And the apple compote was absolutely great with the scallops as well as the foie. I'll do that for another scallop meal another day, I think. Time to go, the brioche smells done...

Duck-fat poaching of potatoes and mushrooms

Last November, when I made my first batch of pancetta, I took some of it and made a confit of it in duck fat. There was still some left on Friday night when I was looking to do some kind of a side for steak. So I took the rest of that and put it and the duck fat into a saucepan. Then I added tiny fingerling potatoes and some crimini mushrooms that we halved. Poached them for about 45 minutes, very low heat, while I did other stuff in the kitchen. Poured it through a sieve, broke up the pork and served small tenderloin steaks beside the "ragout," sprinkled with coarse salt and minced chives. Not bad, not bad at all!

Sous Vide: not that hard

Sous vide: under vaccuum What it really means is that if you have a FoodSaver, you can cook sous vide. You don't need one of those fancy Japanese or French vaccuum boxes, and you don't need some fancy immersion cooker as long as you're willing to pay attention a little bit. I have a FoodSaver, and I finally realized that sous vide cookery is just a fancified version of boil-in bags! My approach? I bagged up some duck breasts with salt and herbes de provence. In fact, the duck ended up in the freezer for a couple of weeks. Then into the pot they go, bring the water up to a simmer at 140 degrees. Use a big pot with a lot of water, the mass of the water means the temp stays more stable. You can pretty much keep it there indefinitely, but it does require watching if you don't have something with a thermostatic control. I put a probe thermometer into the pot, with the alarm set to go off if the temp got a few degrees too high. What do you do with something you cook sous vide? Well, consider the texture. Proteins cooked that gently are very soft -- they don't have the "trauma" of heat that makes them get springy. So go for either a big contrast with something crunchy, or complimentary. I took the latter route, and served the duck breasts sliced over Shanghai noodles, with duck stock flavored along the lines of pho. Added some steamed baby bok choy on the side of the bowl along with some shiitake mushrooms, and it was a very nice meal. Up next? I will try my hand at foie gras preparations. I just read about chef Alan Wong's kalua pork and foie gras sandwiches, and so I need to make some brioche before Dave gets home from his trip tomorrow so we can try that out!

Thoughts on foie gras

I'm been deliberating for a few days now about whether to even mention this here, as it seems to be such a touchy subject. But dang it, I love foie gras. And I think it may be more humane to eat foie gras (from the right supplier) than it is to eat chicken. I even like it raw, now. I took a class on Friday night where we used about 7 pounds of foie, and it was just decadently wonderful. (Good thing I don't have a cholesterol test scheduled this week!) I learned how to sear it, which was a biggie for me. Also to make a mousseline, and to do a couple of raw preparations. (I had no idea how complimentary the textures of raw foie and perfectly ripe avocado are, and how well pomegranate works with that.) I'd already learned how to devein it last summer in another class. Now I feel prepared to deal with this luxury, if it ever comes my way. And a little birdie tells me it will, along about the middle of February...yum, yum.

Duck again?

Yep. Gotta face it, Dave loves duck and I think he'd eat it until he started quacking! Made duck confit this weekend, froze the breasts. Kind of a reverse of the usual routine. Also made duck glace, so now I have a nice supply of concentrated stock in the freezer. Poached some fingerling potatoes in duck fat to have with the confit legs, that was very nice.

Birthday dinner

Dave celebrated a birthday last weekend. He doesn't really "celebrate" per se, but he does like me to cook some of his favorite things and I am more than happy to oblige. This year that meant seared duck breast with Gorgonzola polenta. The duck is easy, I brine it in a brine seasoned with juniper, allspice, and garlic. For the polenta, I am a firm believer in the microwave oven as a great way to make polenta. I've seen some purists sneer at me about this, but you just can't argue with the results. I learned the technique and proportions from "Microwave Cooking" by Barbara Kafka and have since of course put a few spins on the recipe. I use medium grain polenta; you really can just use cornmeal (called for in the original recipe) but the texture isn't as interesting. Gorgonzola Rosemary Polenta 3/4 C polenta 4 C water 1 t minced fresh rosemary 1 t minced fresh thyme 1-2 T minced shallot 2 t salt 3 T butter 1/3 C Gorgonzola cheese, crumbled (or more if you really like it) Mix everything but the butter and cheese in a 2-qt. microwave-safe dish. Cook, uncovered, on high power for eight minutes. Stir and cook for another six minutes. Remove from oven and stir in butter and cheese. (Note: if you use regular cornmeal, only cook it the first time for six minutes.) The "birthday cake" was "La Bete Noire," the cover recipe from the September issue of Bon Appetit. Wow. Another in a string of flourless chocolate cakes, it got additional creaminess by using sugar syrup instead of granulated sugar. Better be sure you have quite a few people to feed, though, since it serves about 16 and it is really rich! Dave wanted it served with flaming cherries, but I decided that would not be a good idea since it would melt the ganache and it would run all over the place.

More cooking class thoughts

In all of my stress over the impending demise of my fridge (now repaired, finally, incidentally) I haven't talked about the latest coolness of my cooking class series. Last week, I learned how to bone a duck thigh as part of making confit. That was cool, because although I've made plenty of confit, I have not learned boning. So I am very happy about that, and because I then boned five hindquarters, I got to get some reinforcement of the learning. I also made tasso -- or at least did the curing and spicing of it before Gabe put it on the smoker. But because I went to an event there the same evening (more on that in my next post) Gabe had smoked it and we (Dave and I) got to try it the same day. Boy was it yummy -- thanks in much part of course to Gabe's recipe, which included allspice and marjoram in addition to cayenne and white pepper. But I was thrilled to have done the prep on this one. In fact, I just get very excited seeing the results of the things I've worked on in this class, since for the most part they are things I would never do/get to do in the normal course of life at home. I mean, making Camembert? Only in class. And it really looks like Camembert! And the prosciutto -- where would I have room to hang an entire ham? But there, oh, it's a thing of beauty. This weekend we will make some fresh sausages, and then eat all the stuff we've made in what seems to me to be an embarassment of riches :) and a surfeit of pork fat...YUM!!! What this cooking class series has done for me, though, is much deeper than just getting to make things I've never made. It has made me more confident in my knowledge, or at least made me aware that a lot of knowledge is living up in my head that I draw on instinctively. It's also made me (sometimes painfully) aware of what I don't know, and of how I am still lacking in confidence. But I'm going to continue on this journey, I've already signed up for another class and I think we're going to go to Provence with these guys next spring. I think Gabe has a lot to teach me, and I appreciate that he has the formal education that I don't and that he has a passion for sharing it. The first step was the hardest, now I have to keep myself from over-indulging in this.

Duck redux

Well, as I was saying, I made duck confit last month. After four weeks, it was time to try it out. So I heated an iron skillet in the oven at 450 degrees and put four legs in there to crisp up. Then I put them aside, drained off some of the fat that had melted off the legs, and put in two bunches of chopped arugula with half a chopped sweet onion. Let the heat of the pan cook it, and finished it with a little sherry vinegar. (Not an original idea -- a riff on one from Alton Brown.) The bitter/sour of the greens were a great offset to the richness of the duck. And the duck -- ohmygawd. I could eat that every day! Beside the word "savory" in the dictionary is a picture of that duck. I am SO pleased with how that turned out. Juicy, seasonings just right, my mouth waters again to think on it. Drank a 1999 Milestone Merlot from Columbia Winery. Not something we'd been fond of last year when we tasted it before, but an extra year really softened it up and it was a great match. Still dancing around the chaos in the kitchen and the rest of the condo, but another day of touch-up painting and I can pretty much move everything back into the kitchen and go back to normal life in there. However --- now I don't have a bedroom for a couple of days because the paint we're using in there requires three coats+ to cover (it's a dark wine red). So the chaos continues for a while longer. Our painter just called me in to see the master bath, it's now rose pink and it's beautiful. Before it was sort of the color of a flesh-colored crayon. Now -- it pops.

My first cooking class!

Geez, you'd think someone like me would have been taking cooking classes all along. For some reason, I just haven't made the time. But I am now! I signed up for a six week course on "preserving." That means sausages, smoking, pickles, cheeses, jams, etc. The first class was on Saturday, and we were making sausages for smoking/drying. Eight students, and an entire pig! It had already been broken down, but we were using incredibly fresh, organic pork to make saucisson sec, spanish chorizo, salted air-dried ham, molasses-cured ham, lamb bresaola, and duck prosciutto (among other things). I was elbow-deep in pork fat for quite some time. It was a blast, though because everyone else had taken classes with Culinary Communion before, I felt a little outside the circle. I'm sure that will change over the course of the course. What surprised me the most was that as part of the five-hour session, we also cooked ourselves lunch -- roasted leg of lamb with a honey/garlic/cream sauce, braised artichokes, blanched asparagus and garlic curls, with pre-prepped ratatouille and mushroom/fennel/artichoke salad. So after about five hours of sausage talking and making, we all sat down to a substantial meal. Wow! It was energizing and exhausting.

Ducking again...

So I had one duck liver in the freezer, and two more from the ducks this week. So I tried Jacque's recipe for a quick duck liver pate: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/105586 Dang, that was easy and yummy. Had the other duck breasts last night. No cherry sauce this time, unadorned was very very good. Got the confit cooked and packed away to age for a couple of weeks. Initial reviews are positive :) Today, we're having lamb burgers for dinner. But before that I am trying to roast a whole chicken in the advantium. It is kind of messy, you have to accept that it's going to splatter all over the oven then you have to wash it out. I need to figure out a solution for that.

Duck!

Tomorrow the remodeling guys will be painting in the kitchen, so I have to get my cooking in today. Went and bought two fresh ducks this morning. Broke them down into leg-thighs, wings, and breasts. With the legs and wings from another duck in the freezer, I have enough to merit making confit. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/102313 seems to be a good recipe, I've tried a few. But I'm of course as usual not leaving well enough alone. I'm subbing herbs de Provence for just thyme, and instead of curing it in a single layer in a dish I'm putting it all in a ziplock bag. So that's in the fridge until Sunday morning. Good thing I have about five pounds of duck fat already in the freezer for this one. Now for the duck breasts. Tonite two of them will be duck with cherry sauce. I'm using the recipe from Epicurious as a starting point http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/232306, but using my home-brandied cherries instead of fresh cherries and red wine. I've made the sauce already, and it's interesting. We'll have polenta with gorgonzola and asparagus with it. The other two breasts we'll have on the grill on Sunday, if the weather cooperates. All four of them are in a light salt/herb cure for a couple of hours right now. Guess I'd better go find a nice Pinot to go with tonite's dinner!