[rjwong]

Abra, on Aug 27 2006, 12:20 PM, said:

Post the dishes anonymously, so we can vote without playing favorites!

Abra, puh-lease .... Anyone will be able to recognize a Ling dessert over a hhlodesign dessert 10,000 miles away.

uhh ... so offense to you, Henry, but I doubt that Ling has taught you everything she knows about desserts ...

Sorry to go back to the Iron Chef food item, but I'm changing my vote to: RICE!

Yes, it's a very common food item. It's a food item where both Ling & hhlodesign don't necessarily have an advantage. Rice (yeah, let's include rice flour ...) will give them a wide range of culinary creativity, in terms of what other ingredients each will combine with the rice. Since we won't be able to taste their creations, what we see included in their presentation is vital. And extra points for using green vegetables ...

Again, my final vote is: RICE!

[hhlodesign]

Here's a preview of our menu for tonight's dinner.

The story behind this dinner is that instead of buying a wedding present for both of these couples (who both live in the Lofts, or used to) I opted to cook dinner for them instead. I believe Miss Manners says that I have one year from the wedding for the present. I have since past that mark, so it is finally time to delivery the gift. Luckily, I have met a wonderful cooking companion in Lorna who so generously wanted to help with this meal!

The nature of the menu is for every course to represent one of the guest's geological backgrounds. Which makes for an ecclectic menu since we have Pacific Northwest, Australia, the South, and the Midwest represented. I think the Midwest course is my favorite. You can't go wrong with meat and potatoes!

The story of the Amuse Bouche is related to a speech I gave at a wedding comparing the bride and groom to foie gras and sauternes:

"When I think of the bride and groom, two things immediately come to mind... goose liver and rotten grapes. (pause for laughter)

You see, the French take the fattened liver of a goose, and call it foie gras. To taste it is to know that it is one of the most extraordinary culinary experiences known to man.

The French also use grapes that have been infected with something called botrytis, also referred to as noble rot. What noble rot does is dehydrate the grape, greatly increasing its sugar to water ratio. So when that grape is pressed for juice, the liquid that comes out is immensely sweet and complex. The wine that is made from this juice is called Sauterenes, and is one of the most rare, expensive, and complex wines on Earth.

Now, the incredible thing about both foie gras and sauterenes is that each of these things can stand individually as a remarkable thing. They would never need anything to add to the greatness they've already achieved own their own....However, if you take a bite of foie gras, and then a sip of sauternes, something remarkable happens. They each bring something out of the other that you didn't know was there before. Creating a whole which is somehow greater than the sum of its parts. This is a phenomenon many chefs refer to as "a Perfect Pairing." There are so few perfect pairings in this world that I feel honored and privelidged to take part in another such perfect pairing."

So that's the story of the Amuse Bouche.

Time to start cooking. We'll try to post our dinner photos tonight.

[hhlodesign]

rjwong, on Aug 27 2006, 01:52 PM, said:

uhh ... so offense to you, Henry, but I doubt that Ling has taught you everything she knows about desserts ... 

Et Tu Arje?

[Ling]

BryanZ, on Aug 27 2006, 08:42 AM, said:

I love Ling's cooking and loved hhlo's last blog and entire lifestyle.  When your powers combine...

Anyway, I, too, am looking forward to the Iron Chef showdown.  I might give the edge to Ling, however.

Careful, I think my head is getting WAY too big. I better win tomorrow, because Henry's friends (whom we've cooked for numerous times) are already cheering for "TEAM LORNA" and want to get T-shirts printed. I don't know if they'll have enough time to get the T-shirts printed, but we'll include a picture of that if it happens. They will be part of the live audience tomorrow.

We are (obviously) on a much stricter budget than the producers of Iron Chef, so we're allowing ourselves $50 to feed 5 guests judges 3 courses each.

[Pan]

I vote for garlic for the Iron Chef competition.

What is wattleseed? Is it a kind of bush tucker? Where do you get it?

[Ling]

^I got the wattleseed from Abra! I remember hearing about wattleseed on a Bourdain "Cook's Tour" episode, the one where he's in Australia. The package says it has chocolate, hazelnut, and chicory flavours...it is black, and the grains are really small. It has a nutty aroma, not unlike sesame...so that's where I got the idea to use it in the pastry dough for the lamb pies.

BTW--one of the guests has a mild allergy to dairy, so we won't have any butter or cream in any of our dishes (except for the cream cheese frosting for the cake, which he can eat a small amount or scrape off.) So we're going to be using beef fat and duck fat in all of our cooking tonight, which means....

DUCK FAT PASTRY!

(I am freezing it and then coarsely grating it into the flour. )

[ghostrider]

Thrice so far this blog has mentioned hazelnuts + chocolate (= my favorite flavor combo in the world). This bodes well.

I vote for peaches, my favorite fruit.

Carry on!


(Edited to change "twice" to "thrice" - the perils of speed-reading.)

This post has been edited by ghostrider: 27 August 2006 - 03:07 PM

[petite tête de chou]

"Studded with cloves and cinnamon,
And duly spiced and pickled,
That viand was as choice an one
As ever palate tickled!
And by those peaches on his plate
No valorous soul was daunted,
For oh, the more of them you ate
The more of them you wanted!"

Excerpt from -Mrs. Reilly's Peaches- by Eugene Field

I vote for peaches!

[Kouign Aman]

I'm with Pontormo - here's a write in vote for fresh greens (baby bok choy perhaps, or kale?
but if I have to stick to the list: peaches.
Have fun, y'all.

Thanks for blogging.

[tighe]

Since I nominated peaches, I vote for, uhhhh, peaches! I think there's real challenge and real potential for using them in great savory dishes.

Abra, peaches aren't local?!?!? Mother of God! Even the most strident locali-nazis I know consider anything within a 200 mile radius to be local.

[rjwong]

hhlodesign, on Aug 27 2006, 02:14 PM, said:

rjwong, on Aug 27 2006, 01:52 PM, said:

uhh ... so offense to you, Henry, but I doubt that Ling has taught you everything she knows about desserts ... 

Et Tu Arje?

Okay, Mr. Lo, my fellow Bruin, to make things interesting for you: Peaches.

For voting purposes, discard "Bacon." Choose "Peaches."

I suppose you can at least make a peach pie with peach ice cream (homemade, of course. No Cool Whip!). And extra points for using green vegetables, whatever they are ...

[Shaya]

Quote

It was nice to be greeted by the smell of Chestnuts at the store entrance (for numerous reasons: see previous blog  )

Henry, I remember the story of your memories of roasted chestnuts in Italy very well as I have a similarly wonderful memory of roasted chestnuts in Singapore during Chinese New Year (except I was with a girl friend, and not a "girlfriend" ).

But I always think of these as a winter treat...how is it that you have them in Seattle in August (I am beginning to think Seattle really is the magical culinary haven that you eGulleters make it seem...)

[tamiam]

tighe, on Aug 27 2006, 05:28 PM, said:

Since I nominated peaches, I vote for, uhhhh, peaches!  I think there's real challenge and real potential for using them in great savory dishes.

Peaches are awesome in savory dishes. With the help of a talented friend I canned some spiced peaches in a sweet sour vinegar using star anise and cinammon. They are amazing on pork, and with Asian flavors, like the braise in the oven right now.

I'd love to see all the amazing ideas HLo and Ling could explore with some of those beee-utiful market fresh peaches. You really cant go wrong with such a great fruit, so the only trouble is that it may not be difficult enough ingredient.

[Pontormo]

Since midnight is not far away on the Atlantic coast, I would like to say that my inner child has finished its tantrum and retrieved the Birkenstocks she kicked across the floor.

I am pleased that peaches are doing so well, but of all the possibilities on the official list, I am going to have to go with mushrooms, too.

After seeing the Forbidden Shots of the aisles of Asian foods, I am intrigued by the idea that there might be a battle of Chinese regional specialties in store for us with all the dried mushrooms packaged there. And if anyone can pull off a chocolate oyster mushroom tart with woodear cream, it's Ling.

I look forward to tomorrow's glimpses of Red Velvet cake made with duck fat!


ETA: Henry, while I'm not exactly Switzerland on this, I am not wearing a Team Lorna tee-shirt either. I am so rooting for you, too!

This post has been edited by Pontormo: 27 August 2006 - 08:16 PM

[handmc]

I vote OKRA!!!

[Ling]

Our dinner party is ending, as Atta and Michelle have newborn girl (Mayson!) who needs to get to bed. Dinner was a great success, if I do so say so myself. (BTW, Pontormo, the duck fat was used for the pastry, not for the Red Velvet cake, which contains oil.)

Dinner didn't take that long to cook, as our menu was pretty simple. One thing we had to change was the tomato confit, because Henry let them burn. (This does not bode well for the Iron Chef!) We just used sliced grape tomatoes instead.





Rootbeer sauce for the ribs...we followed the directions posted by Chef Jeff of Aurora Bistro in Vancouver. He posted the method and loose proportions (1 part root beer, 1 part stock, thyme, garlic, 1/8 part pureed tomatoes) in the Vancouver forum awhile back. I must say these ribs were INCREDIBLE! I wanted to add mirepoix and red wine like I do for all my braises, but decided to make the recipe as written, and was really glad I did! We did reduce the sauce before serving with an extra bottle of Thomas Kemper root beer and extra stock so the root beer flavour came through more.



lamb filling, wattleseed duckfat pastry



shelling peas for the soup...this was the most boring job ever!

[snowangel]

Pontormo, on Aug 27 2006, 09:11 PM, said:

After seeing the Forbidden Shots of the aisles of Asian foods, I am intrigued by the idea that there might be a battle of Chinese regional specialties in store for us with all the dried mushrooms packaged there. 

Given what the single most stocked item in my Asian market is, I'd vote RAMEN! Let's see what Lorna can do for dessert with a packet of Tom Yam Mama Ramen noodles!

[Pan]

How about this: Use both peaches and garlic! That would be a REAL challenge!

[Ling]

The main event:



For the edamame puree, I sauteed onions in the beef fat from the ribs and I think that really made it extra delicious.


The pastry made with the duck fat had an interesting, dissolving texture. It was not flaky...it just melted away on your tongue. Really good! The drizzle is parsley oil. (And perhaps I should explain that a pea floater in Australia is a meat pie in the center of a plate of mushy peas...so we took our liberties with this dish by changing it to pea soup.)


The ribs were sooooooo good. I urge you all to try this sometime! The only change I made was to add a chopped onion to the braising liquid.


Sorry about the pic quality...I am a little too tired to Photoshop them to make them brighter and sharper right now. I'll upload the picture of the Red Velvet cake tomorrow.

(BTW--the recipe I used is Jaymes's recipe, but with 1 cup + 12 tbsp oil, which is in between the amount of oil I found in similar recipes online and the recipe Jaymes's posted in Recipe Gullet, because the Red Velvet I made according to that recipe was a little oily. I do not use the cream cheese recipe, but used 2 eight oz. packs of cream cheese, 1/2 cup icing sugar, and 8 oz butter. I also reduced the sugar in the cake. The most significant changed was I wrapped the hot cakes with saran wrap to "steam" them a bit, which is a method I learned from a Scott Wooley chocolate cake recipe. I thought this Red Velvet cake was absolutely delicious...and probably the most fattening thing on earth you can eat!! )

edit: corrected amount of oil used in cake

This post has been edited by Ling: 28 August 2006 - 10:19 AM

[little ms foodie]

Ling, on Aug 27 2006, 10:16 AM, said:

tryingsomethingnew, on Aug 27 2006, 06:43 AM, said:

Ling, I'm sorry if you've discussed this before but how did your love of pastry start?  Did you go to culinary school?  Are you working as a pastry chef right now?

One of my fondest childhood food memories was eating my mom's cream horns (puff pastry she made from scratch, then rolled, baked, and filled with slightly sweetened whipped cream.) My mom baked quite often when I was younger, but when my two other siblings came along, she was too busy balancing her career and feeding our family three meals a day to bother much with baking. So I started baking when I was about 11 or so, using her dog-eared, stained copy of The Five Roses cookbook. My first cake was the mocha chiffon cake that I've since adapted as a coffee chiffon cake, b/c my parents didn't buy much chocolate when I was a kid.

So after the baking bug bit, my goal as a kid was to make a new cake (or cookie, or pie) each weekend from the cookbook. I went through a period where I became really discouraged as a child because my aunt gave me a fancy cookie cookbook from Australia and I didn't realize that the measurements were different from N. American ones.

I also had some pretty remarkable failures--in particular, I remember one of the first cakes I made at 11 was for my little brother's birthday. I always wanted to "experiment", so I made two banana cakes, stacked them, and filled and frosted them with a "banana" icing (which I believe was just mashed banana mixed with a 7-minute boiled frosting...I know! ) Of course, the banana in the icing started turning brown before we were finished with dinner, so I coloured it with yellow food colouring. The result was an unappetizing, mottled yellow-brown, lumpy cake.

I haven't been to culinary school and I haven't had any experience in professional kitchens, except for the odd stage.

Wonderful story Ling, thank you.

hhlodesign, on Aug 27 2006, 10:52 AM, said:

Obligatory Pocky Shot

Just picked up that melon Pocky last week...it may be my second favorite after the coconut chocolate. and also got the 'new' carmel flavor which we are eating right now!

[kiliki]

Peaches! It might help me use up the big bucket (literally) of peaches I bought for $4 near Mt. Rainier this weekend.

[little ms foodie]

Oh I forgot to vote!! I would like to write in corn or figs!

but if I have to go off the list I'd vote for mushrooms or bacon (I had bacon as a dessert before and it was GOOD!)

[mizducky]

Wow, take an overly-long nap and look what happens! Actually, it must have been a reeeeeeelly long nap--I totally missed the whole start of youze guys' relationship, let alone the start of this blog. Needless to say, I'm totally delighted--and very entertained--by both.

If I'm not too late to vote for an Iron Chef ingredient ... well, my brain is too tired to come up with any amusing ways to game the system by my choice, so I'm just gonna go with my gut and vote for the obvious: BACON!

[ludja]

It's after midnight, but I"ll slip in a vote for peaches.

Beautiful dinner last night, guys! I thought the plating artistry was exceptional.

[racheld]

hhlodesign, on Aug 27 2006, 11:52 AM, said:

Obligatory Pocky Shot

I just LOVE this blog---you two have enough combined energy to power a spaceship. And your cooking styles and choices mesh so well---great meals planned, I see.

DD brought me my first Pocky last week from our fave Asian grocery. I just looked at the beautiful box for a couple of days--I think it's the exact brown one in the middle row. They were chocolate-dipped crunchy sticks with ground toasted almonds. Then Chris somehow set a big camera case on the box, and it got smushed---but the crumbs are delicious.

Then I thought: Ling would make cheesecake crust with this!! Just a thought.

This post has been edited by racheld: 28 August 2006 - 08:26 AM

[I_call_the_duck]

Damn! This is what happens when I skip a blog or two. Congrats, Lorna and Henry. You two are so cute together, and I’m loving this blog so far.

hhlodesign, on Aug 27 2006, 03:03 PM, said:

rjwong, on Aug 27 2006, 11:55 AM, said:

What kind of vegetables are you going to serve? How about some pea sprouts with garlic? It's a nice change from spinach or Chinese broccoli.

What's "vegetables?"

HA! A match made in heaven!

[annanstee]

Pontormo, on Aug 27 2006, 11:19 AM, said:

Pacific Northwest/Vancouver.  (What, pray tell, do Canadians use to speak of that part of North America?) 

Well, the weatherperson calls it the South Coast, so that is as good as anything ; )

[hhlodesign]

Thanks to Pontormo for the official vote tally. See below:


Below are the votes cast before midnight, tabulated. Mizducky offered the final vote before midnight.

If anyone voted for more than one ingredient, the first item mentioned was counted, the second one ignored. One vote per person, period.

If anyone changed his or her mind, as long as a final vote was cast before midnight, the final vote counted and the earlier votes were ignored.

If anyone wrote in both an item on the list and one that is not, only the item from the official list appears below.

If someone votes only for a write-in ingredient and nothing official is named, only the new write-in ingredient is mentioned.

RESULTS:

Peaches: 12
Eggs: 1
Garlic: 1
Bacon: 3
Cheese: 1
Mushrooms: 4
Salmon: 0

Write-Ins:
Fregole
Cabebs
Rice
Okra
Ramen

This is being sent at 8:07 Pacific Time.

Peaches is it!!!

ALLEZ CUISINE!!!!!!!!

This post has been edited by hhlodesign: 28 August 2006 - 09:07 AM

[Pontormo]

One mistake: Omit the rice on the list above since vote was changed to peaches.

[Toliver]

Any pictures of the Red Velvet cake, yet? I'm anxious to see the red interior.

Okay, I'll be the one to vote for (wild) salmon. You're in the right neck-of-the-woods for it.

edited to add the vote.

This post has been edited by Toliver: 28 August 2006 - 09:52 AM