mnfoodie

Are we fine dining? Yes, however I feel the days of strict dress codes are fading. If im about to drop 350.00 for two I want to wear anything I want. If I am about to drop $350.00 on dinnner for two, I want to be surrounded by pleasant, quiet, well-dressed people. I want it to be an occasion and I want the people around me to look as if they thought so, too. Along with the sense of occasion, dinner out at that price point suggests a whole lot of other things I felt were integral to the experience, but I found I was ranting when I started to list them. Yikes. That said, I can't wait to get to Chicago and try Moto. ((I hope I posted this readably; I'm having a hard time figuring out the interface here.))

Why, thank you! :-)

I imagine you've got a good point about the oven temp. My oven checks out spot on for temperature, so I'm still faulting the recipe. I have considered that this could well have been one of her early poorly-tested efforts.

Thank you; I've saved it and will try it. I think that perhaps clafouti just isn't the love affair I wished it to be. These things happen.

I suspect that this is more interesting to me than anybody else, but in case anyone wants a full report now or in the future, here's what happened today at the Great Clafouti Bake-off. I re-made the Martha recipe for Cherry Clafouti. Differences between last time (as outlined upthread) were three: using a larger baking dish to hold all the batter and adding the milk before the eggs so that the sugar could dissolve into the liquid. I also used the convenience of tinned cherries, since many clafouti recipes suggest this, and I didn't have the interest to pit another 1.5 lbs of cherries for this experiment. Results: an identical custard to the one I made the other day. It was oily, it had a mealy texture, it had too much fruit for the amount of custard. It puffed up the merest bit, and settled down as it cooled. The center of the clafouti didn't cook as well as need be, though I returned it to the oven for another 10 minutes over the recommended 45. I did this because the center was clearly still liquid. At the end of the cooking process, it looked a little brown on top, but didn't appear over-cooked. My husband and I both thought this custard was identical in character to the first one, and since there was no repeat of the problem of mixing the eggs into the sugar, I am not sure that Neil's assessment matters for the outcome of this recipe. Second, I made a peach clafouti using the recipe posted upthread by TrishCT. I used 1.5 lbs of tinned peaches and Cointreau in place of the cherry ingredients. This came out with a very pleasant custard, but the peaches over-powered it. Cutting them into chunks and not wedges would have improved things. So would, obviously, using real fresh peaches. The custard here didn't have as much flavour as the cherry dish, but maybe would be better with a little cinnamon. We had a dinner out this evening with 7 foodie friends, and then brought them back to the house to try the desserts. No one liked either clafouti very well, and the most dedicated cooks in the group declared the dish not worth attempting to perfect. Earlier, in the afternoon, I took the peach juice from the cans, and added some sultanas and "zante currants" and dried cherries and dried blueberries and the extra cherries from the clafouti. I cooked this down until all the dried fruit revived and it became thick, then made it into a cobbler. Everyone liked this well enough, so I was gratified to make something decent, and pleased to invent a quick dessert than can be made from ingredients I always have on hand. A little ice cream would have been nice, but we managed. A last comment to Sinclair: I didn't find any recipes that involved tempering; everything was at room temperature. Also: the two batters were about the same thickness.

But this recipe says in two places that it is supposed to puff up. And another cook upthread said that theirs puffs up as well. But this recipe says it makes a thick batter. I used fresh fruit, and pitted the cherries myself. I've yet to have any recipe of hers work out, but my sample size is small, and I haven't yet determined if it is this recipe at fault or if it is pilot error. It's Sunday... maybe I should make two or three clafoutis this afternoon. Neil has probably identified the failure point in my previous attempt, but who knows if it is the only possible problem.

How perfectly excellent! Easy-Bake Oven technology! The guys in the lab at Hasbro would be so proud! :-) I'm absolutely certain that's true. I was just expressing my surprise over it, because all my cooking experience was with a bunch of roughnecks not unlike those Bourdain so charmingly describes in the early chapters of "Kitchen Confidential." I was surprised by a moment in this kitchen that was clearly, "You didn't hand me that spoon I asked you to and now I will disembowel you with my eyes." It just felt sort of over-the-top and a little mean. I'm making much of very little here: the kitchen was quiet, well-ordered, and efficient, and a pleasure to observe for the entire evening. Of course they do! But one guy let me know that he cared about my reaction to it. It wasn't the common and unwelcome (though this didn't happen at Trio) waiter's question, "So, how's everything?" It was more: "I made that for you. Did you like it?" Not in the sense of running a business and insuring customer satisfaction (important though those things are). The query was more like, "Do you like the food I made? Is it as good as I think it is? Isn't it wonderful?" For a second, the whole show-stopping business of a high-end restaurant really crystalized, and that moment was simply about the food. Not the swank surroundings, nor the knowledgeable and pleasant waiters, nor the thoughtful presentation of ... well, everything. Just the food. Chef G. came to talk to us after they were cooked out, and he asked questions and listened to what we had to say and was thoughtful, interested in our reactions and interesting in what he had to say. That he cared about our impressions was never in doubt. Am I making any sense here?

Oooh, yeah. They gave us 5 kinds of homemade chewing gum each as a little take-away. They were all very good, and blew excellent bubbles.

A couple of observations from the meal Bruce and I had: I wouldn't want to work for one of the sous chefs. He gave his guys a look that would kill at least twice while we were watching. That felt momentarily really tense, in an atmosphere that's otherwise very calm and almost clinical. Only one of the line guys appeared to pay any attention to us at all. I looked up with this fabulous mouthful of truffle, and he was watching my reaction. He gave me the barest raised eyebrow of a question, "How is it?" It was unbelievably good, of course. I hope I communicated that without actually running over and leaping into his arms and promising to have his children. Knowing that this guy really cared that his food was wonderful made that little course even more enjoyable for me. It's cool to make it just the way you're supposed to, just the way you learned to. It's a whole other thing to care about the person who is there to enjoy all the talent, work, and inspiration.

Yeah, I thought that stopping mid-whisk was the failure point. I'd already combined the flour and sugar before adding the egg yolks, but with just 3 tbls. of flour in 1/4 c. of sugar, there just isn't that much flour in the mix. Bigger baking dishes I have, but I'm unconvinced about the amount of flour. What causes the puffing-up reaction, if not the flour? What I made was a custard, basically.

Thanks. Yeah, I was thinking the flour amount was too small. Maybe there's some peaches around here; I could try it again.

Yeah, yeah. I know. I tried making another Martha recipe years ago, don't recall now what it was, but it didn't work either.

Here's the recipe for cherry clafouti, as found on Martha Stewart's web site I didn't follow this exactly. I buttered the pan with salted butter. I used vanilla sugar that I had made previously (by burying a vanilla beans in a jar full of sugar). I started mixing the 2 yolks into the sugar, but got distracted by something and came back to find they had turned into a very stuff sweet yolk ball. We mashed that up with a fork, added the milk and cream and remaining eggs. This batter was barely thicker than cream, not the "thick batter" promised at the top of the recipe. We poured the batter through a sieve onto the cherries, but this strained out some of the egg yolk bits that hadn't been completely mixed in. The dish (I used one that I thought was identical to the one in the picture on Martha's web site) was full before we had poured more than 2/3 of the batter on. The dish didn't puff up at all, and ened up being a sweety eggy pudding with lots and lots of cherries in it. It was tasty, but it wasn't what I expected. Would getting the yolks mixed in properly have made this work out? Is the amount of flour just plain wrong? Is what I got what I was supposed to get? Other thoughts? Thanks!

So... The guests just left, and it was a lovely meal! I served: morel mushrooms vol-au-vent (puff pastry by Pepperidge Farms). The recipe I used was basically this: saute shallots in oil, add shrooms until they wilt, add 1/4 cup dry white wine (I used the Verget "Vaillons" Chablis 2001 white burgundy that we drank with the early courses), cook slightly, spoon into puff pastry cups, serve. This was delicate and truly fine, and easy enough that I recommend this to anybody. Next up was the salad: I made a version of this eGullet recipe. Starting with organic Romaine (check it three times for bugs!), I included snow pea pods, grape tomatoes, baby carrots, fava beans, and ramps. I bought a nice black radish and a jicama and ran out of time and enthusiasm for including them. The "twice-dressed" aspect of the salad was unusual, but the tarragon cream was wonderful. I followed that with a chicken dish. Of course I adjusted for local conditions, using thick slices of large, garlic-stuffed green olives for the smaller ones the recipe calls for. This was a delicious dish, and was all the better when our guests were late arriving and I turned the heat down and let them cook slowly. As a side dish I sauted some oyster mushrooms and chopped shallots in a little oil, and added a couple of bunches of red kale, chopped into bite-sized pieces. This sautes down wonderfully. We served a Domaine du Pegau with this. Dessert was a crashing disappointment. The taste was good, but the execution was terrible. On advice of a eGullet poster, I found a Cherry Clafouti recipe. It was (and I suppose this was stupid of me) a Martha Stewart recipe. The batter was as thin as milk and it set up into a custard-y sort of thing. Like I said, tasty, but not rewarding, and not what I expected. I had cheeses on hand to do a cheese course, but decided to skip it.

The guests are European and one of them fed me caviar at his house, so I don't think that's an issue. I was thinking the meal need not be a heavy one, and I am partial to fresh vegies these days. I think I've decided to open with a morel vol-au-vent. These something salad-greensy, then some sort of veg dish that includes some chicken or duck, because we believe that most vegetarian cooking can be improved with the addition of a small amount of meat. :-) Perhaps some variation of the enchanted broccoli forest. Ramps, fiddleheads.... um.... think think think. Certainly cheese, but probably also a lemon tart, because I like a little sweet, but am not interested in chocolate right now.