Eden

Wow! this is the first chance I've had to look at the Bao thread & it's really inspiring. Y'all have posted such beautiful photos! I will have to play catch up at some point and try making them myself, taking tons of tips from what's been posted here, but for now (having finally finished my cassoulet frenzy) my questions is: What's next? I know there was discussion of Boeuf Bourguigonne, Paella and several other dishes, but I don't see anything having been chosen (unless I somehow missed a post) we could even do a sweet if we moved it over to the pastry forum. In fact can I pre-nominate croquembouche for December 2005? I've always wanted to make it, but it seems a bit late in the season to do it now (plus here in the PacNW it's positively summery right now ) I'm ready for almost anything that's NOT cassoulet Eden

in the chocolate covered cherry arena, we make "happy cherries" every year (Cherries soaked in vodka or brandy with sugar for at least a month or two) and recently dipped these in chocolate for a dessert garnish. Truly wow! I have trouble with the idea of doing a dessert for only some of the guests. there must be something that's practical to do for everyone... cherry compote in a prebaked pate sucre tart shell with a bit of creme fraiche on top?

I got them at Ballard Market a few years back.

Here are the pictures of the final assembly & the finished product(s): Overall it turned out beautifully. Saturday night I noticed the pork chops were a bit dry sunday night I carefully broke them up into smaller pieces before cooking which seemed to help... These are a mix of photos from Saturday & sunday night so you are seeing two different bean pots... layering ingreadients - it's awfully hard to fit everything into the pot (good thing those "emu" legs shrank down in cooking!) adding the sausages final product saturday. Menu: Pepper gournay cheese, olives, bread: fremont sour, Cassoulet, my friend David made salad with prosciutto roses & parmiggiano, David's Lavender/pear sorbet , chocolate truffle tart garnished with brandy soaked cherries dipped in chocolate . Plus of course, much wine, prosecco & port at various stages of the evening. Final product sunday. Menu: St Agur & pepper brie cheese, olives, bread: 3 sisters' rustic baguette, Cassoulet, baby greens salad with vinaigrette, more of David's Lavender/pear sorbet, miniature chocolate bundt cakes, again garnished with brandy soaked cherries dipped in chocolate (because they were SO good!). And possibly even more wine, prosecco & port round 3 tomorrow (with great white northern beans instead of soisson)

cool pics! Do you remember what was in the bowl that's on the cutting board for the mise en place? From the photo I'd have said onions, carrots & maybe toms, but his recipe only calls for sliced onions... It's actually amazing how much you CAN demo in one day of a multi-day dish. When I learned to make it the class took 3-4 hours, and covered every single step in detail, but since it was in the chef's kitchen he could just put the new batch of brined pork into his fridge to soak for the next day's class and pull out one that was ready to go, whereas Bourdain's next demo would have been in a different kitchen, probably in a different city...

Can you get tarbais beans anywhere around Seattle besides ChefShop? (They're out) Turns out I just used up the last of my haricots de soisson for the first batch of cassoulet & have another batch to make on Monday, so while I could just use great white northerns, if anyone in town had Tarbais I would love to experiment... Time to go back to Paris & buy more soissons!

Almost done! I cooked the beans today. This is the only part of the Cassoulet that does not seem to be a dish on it's own (the way the lamb ragout, the sausages & the duck confit all are) I wonder why... I use Haricots de Soissons, which absorb flavor beautifully, and are just HUGE! The dry bean was about 7/8" long, the soaked bean about 1-3/8" long. About 3X the original size. Here are all the ingredients: Brined pork chops, confit'd duck legs, brined pork belly, quartered pigs feet, Haricots de Soissons, garlic, fresh thyme, fresh bay, onion studded with whole cloves, carrot, chicken broth. Ingredients mounding up in the pot Tommorow I combine everything & bake the first batch in the cassoulet pot I have to go rummage in the wine cabinet & decide what to serve with it... Eden More pics: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=mo...album&album=643

I just called & the tastings are from 4pm to 7pm on thursdays. The wine is complimentary & usually paired with specific cheeses. For example next thursday will be Spanish wines to go with a selection of spanish cheeses.

The Lamb ragout has been set (carefully!) in the sink in an ice bath so it can cool, but in the meanwhile, here are the few pics I took (I got wrapped up in browning & cooking so the middle part didn't get well documented I'm afraid ) all the ingredients ready to go: duck fat for sauteeing, lamby bits (shoulder?), brined pork belly, carrots, onions, garlic, tomato paste, bay leaf & thyme. Duck stock was still re-reducing at this point... simmering ragout, making kitchen smell amazing! I always make extra of the Ragout because it's so good on it's own that we have to have enough for a bowl or two on it's own beyond what goes in the cassoulet. Lamb-y tomato-y richness

OK took me a while to get pics uploaded, but here are the brining pictures from this weekend, which I will follow with today's sausage making. Salt, sugar, apple cider, fresh thyme, pepper, juniper berries, whole nutmeg, bayleaf, garlic which I forgot to put in the picture, and Tamarind paste. Bruce's original recipe called for whole tamarind pods, which I couldn't find the first time I made it but I did have tamarind paste in house, and since the result was quite happy I've just stuck with the paste ever since... [Oh and a bit of last years brine which I had stored in the freezer.] Brine ingredients all boiled together & cooled down ready to pour over pork 2 days of soaking in salty flavorful liquid later and the pork is ready to roll! the pork chops go whole into the bean pot, while most of the pork belly gets sliced into postage stamp sized pieces & distributed in the beans & the lamb ragout, but some of it gets ground into the sausage. And speaking of the sausage: the dark bowl with the white lump is the casings after soaking but before final rinsing. Getting ready to be ground up & stuffed we have Juniper berries, pepper, cognac, garlic, shallots, sage, parsley, pork shoulder & the brined pork belly. Here's the sausage mix all ground up, and with a bit of salt added, because the test piece I fried up was SOOOO good, but it needed just a bit of salt... and here's the first few sausages coming out. Fortunately Bill wasn't home so there are no shots of me perched precariously up on the kitchen ladder to make the sausage because when the Kitchen-Aid is set up on the counter it's too high for me to see into the hopper without a boost And here they all are ready to hang out in the fridge with their little ducky friends. small tragedy today: I had boiled down my duck stock, and put the pot in the sink so I could cool it down and go out for the afternoon, and as I was running the cold water to fill the sink I turned away for a moment, and the pot started floating & slipped under the faucet, adding buckets of water to my perfectly reduced stock The pot is now back on the stove & I am stuck here wallowing in self-recriminations because yes of course I know better & that just makes it worse... Tonight the lamb ragout which will make me all happy again, but for now I need a break from the kitchen. see link in previous post if you want additional pictures.

What about Le Gourmand? Bruce always has a couple different fish items on the menu, and when I have called in advance he's been willing to work around vegetarians for me. He has adjusted his tasting menu to be fish free for me a few times now, so I imagine he'd be happy to create one that was all fish/veg as well. My pescatarian (love this term!) friend is quite happy there, and of course as a Carnivore it's sheer heaven: Duck in black currant sauce, Beef Tenderloin in Merlot pressings sauce, Bunny with shitake mushrooms, and when Bruce does fois gras [edited for typo]

Grazie Marc & Kevin WHEN will I learn not to reag egullet on an emptly stomach. those descriptions of the food at Ca Vignotto are making me ravenous! With a bit of poking on the web I confirmed that Ca Vignotto is still open (or at least some students from Padova have an event planned there later this year) and I also found a german website that talks about the restaurant and has a lovely photo along with a few of their recipes. http://www.br-online.de/land-und-leute/him.../2000/0106.html I also found DaBruno, with plenty of fish-free options http://www.dabrunovenezia.it I'm so looking forward to this trip, but for now I must go hunt down breakfast before I start chewing on the keyboard

Finally made it into VT tonight. If you're looking for authentic Neapolitan pizza, this is the place! We ordered the Salumi platter to share - you can't go wrong with Salumi's salumi, and yes, great olives! $11 I had the Margherita on the theory that "ye shall know your pizzaiolo by his Margherita" and yes indeed, that's the real thing boys & girls! The sauce was light, the crust was thin (but cooked) the cheese was fresh & the basil pungent $10 Bill had the quattro staggioni - I agree that the mushrooms were boring, but the rest of of it was lovely. Good pepperoni, maybe a bit too much prosicutto? $14 Bill had the house wine, which was very Italian pizzeria cheapo house-wine, but what do you want for $3.50 I had a glass of Cannalichio? much nicer. $9 For dessert Bill ordered the Tartufo Affogato: perfect texture on the gelato and what a lovely blend of dark cofee & chocolate flavors, it was very potent (He may not sleep for a week!) but so good! $6.50 I orderd the Pastiera Napolitana - a rich moist riccotta and candied orange peel filled cake drizzled with creme anglais? $7 Total pre-tax/Tip $61.00 Yes it's a lot for pizza, so if you don't have a deep love for Italian pizza it may not be worth it, but for those who've been craving pizza napolitana it's way cheaper than an $800 plane ticket I sure hope those apprentice boys are learning well. I'd hate to see this descend to just any old pizza when the pizzaiolo purportedly goes home to napoli. The only negative was that we had to wait for our table near the smoking section, so now my clothes & hair reek of ciggarettes, but it certainly added to the Italian feel of the place and once we were seated in a booth towards the back it was just fine. Oh and the service was very friendly. Maybe it helps that it wasn't too crowded on a Sunday night...

Yesterday we boiled the little duckies in oil! Well OK I simmered them gently in a 70/30 mix of duck & pork fat, after wiping off most of the salt/herbs. I didn't order quite enough duck fat to cover the "giant mutant duck legs of doom" but I had some rendered duck/pork fat in the freezer from last years cassoulet which I pulled out when I realized I had emu legs to deal with and now there is a giant vat of duck confit in my fridge. As before there are supplemental photos in the album. http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=mo...album&album=643 Will post the pork brining pics next. I had a little pigfoot trauma that delayed things a bit, so more tomorrow... Eden

a little bird told me that their pizzaiolo may not be there too much longer. Apparently he wants to train a couple folks in how to make pizza properly & then go back home to Napoli, so we are advised to go in the next few months as after that the quality might change depending on how well the training "takes". Oh and I was also told that it was the best pizza in town, bar none, for those who want Italian style pizza...

Drove down Market (2320 NW Market Street) twice on Monday evening. Couldn't spot it. Probably their closed night and dark? What space did they take over? Or is it back in that icky little mall? ← It's at 24th & market, on the north-east corner right next to Kitchen & Things, in the place that used to be the Australian pie shop.

Coming in late to the cassoulet game (my annual cassoulet fest was already on the calendar for late January before this thread started) I salted the duck legs tonight. I hope you can tell how enormous these legs are. Bill says they slipped me goose legs, I'm voting for swans or eagles! If you're interested check my image gallery for more photos of the process. http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=mo...album&album=643 including my Cassoulet flow chart Tomorrow I cook the nice little duckies in fat, brine the pork bits, and run a batch of duck stock on the back burner since I'll be there anyway... Saturday or Sunday I'll make the sausage I do love this dish!

I plan to make Bill (long suffering husband) order the fegato so I can taste it - I'm not a big liver fan in general, though I certainly make exceptions for pate's and of course fois gras, which is clearly not liver, but manna from heaven so I have to at least give the Venetian rendition a chance. I adore tapas type snacky bits, so I'm looking forward to trying cicchetti now that the new anti-smoking laws give me a better chance at them (on my last trips the few cichetti bars that I looked at were too smoky for Bill who's seriously allergic) but honestly after a long day of walking my feet to bloody stumps around Venice's back streets, I do like me a chair sometimes so at least one or two actual sit down meals will be in order as well. I bought our plane tix yesterday! It will be so great to be back in Italy, and to explore a new part of it (We've never visited the veneto,only Venezia) Thanks for the various suggestions. Must head off to class so my prof can torture me with obscure italian verb forms...

If everything comes together for our prospective trip to Padova this spring we will also get to spend a little time in Venice. Now I adore Venice, but I have a little problem eating there - I'm violently allergic to all seafood & pretty darned allergic to all fish. Given that fish is what Venetian cuisine is all about, you can immagine the dificulties. Our last visit, we went to one highly reccomended place & my friends still rave about the most wonderful fritto misto they'd ever had (at Brodo di Giugglio?) and I got plain spagghetti with literally just a can of crushed tomatos dumped on it, and surly attitude from the waiter to boot, because there was literally not one thing on the menu that didn't include fishies. I have read the various threads here on venice extensively, and almost everything raved about that falls in my price range is naturally enough fish heavy. So beyond pizza & gelato (& apparently la Zucca, which sounds wonderful) where would be some nice, but budget conscious trattorie/osterie etc, that I could actually enjoy? Thanks for any help, I know this is a challenge, but I have a lot of faith in the egullet gang!

I just called Whole foods & the nice guy in the produce department says these are actually Bergamot oranges, he doesn't know why they got lablelled Seville... So PCC Greenlake is it for those of us seeking Seville oranges. (PCC Fremont doesn't have them) I'm trying to talk my friends into going in on ordering a case (38lb for $42!)

I don't know from Tarbais beans, but I use Haricots de Soisson instead of great white northern & they are significantly different in size texture etc. so I would definately try both & compare. In fact my cassoulet making starts next week & I'm thinking of making a small separate pot with the Tarbais if I can get them easily just out of curiosity... Eden - must call the butcher & pre-order my duck bits!

I picked up a copy today, and if the dates work well I would love to play too! The chickpea & spinach stew also looks wonderful, as do the fried gorgonzola bites! I confess to a certain caution re deep frying, but would be happy to do the prep if someone else dropped them into the boiling oil! Eden

Since the bundt pan was still out & I have another party tonight, I pulled out the Jan/Feb 2004 Cooks Illustrated (Thanks to Sandra's reminder above) and made their chocolate bundt cake. VERY good, although I would cut the instant espresso to 1/2 tsp in future, I think it comes through a hint too much... The recipe makes just enough batter to fill my fancy bundt pan & make 2 mini bundts as well, so one to test "just in case" and one for lunch tomorrow, plus the big cake for the party. Hmm I have another party next week. Any other fab Bundt ideas while I'm on a roll?

I once got decorative pot-holders with cutesy flowers on them that were not only so thin they wouldn't protect you from the heat, they had a floral potpourrie inside so they would smell "nice" when you used them as the warmth from the pan activated the flowery gunk inside! who would want to smell that over the lovely roast chicken or fresh bread etc they were pulling from the oven???

Is it possible that the dryness a few of you are experiencing is one of the reasons why some recipes add lamb ragout to the cassoulet - to make it moister? Or is it just the Bourdain recipe? I've used two completely different types of beans in my cassoulet with no noticable change in moisture so I don't think the bean type would be the issue. I'm so looking forward to making this year's cassoulet after reading this & the duck confit thread! It's good to have a place to share with other people who enjoy boiling duck in fat my friends who rate high enough to get fed cassoulet all love to eat the end product, but really they don't want to hear the details. (cowards!) Hopefully we'll have a digital camera again by then & I can take photos! Eden