FrogPrincesse

July 4, 2011

While my daughter was having dinner, I made a quick batch of fromage blanc that I plan on using to make raita to go with the lamb kebabs.

Half a gallon of organic whole milk from Trader Joe's, 1/2 packet of direct-set fromage blanc starter.

I get all of my cheese-making supplies at Curds and Wine. Their cultures and enzymes are from New England Cheesemaking supplies.

I heated the milk to 86F, then added the culture and mixed.

Now it's covered and setting at room temperautre for 12 hours. I will be draining it first thing in the morning.

July 4, 2011

I undertook another meat grinder project this afternoon.

Yesterday I ground meat for sweet Italian sausage. Today I made an Indian lamb sausage, based on a recipe from Vij's, a great restaurant in Vancouver. My brother lives there so we had a chance to go to this restaurant.

Here are the ingredients for the lamb sausage.

For the meat, I used lamb shoulder, which was surprisingly hard to find. Also, the butcher refused to debone it (they were quite busy as the store was flooded with people shopping for the celebrations on the 4th) and tried to convince my husband - who was doing the shopping - that he should be buying leg of lamb instead for the sausage (which would have been a very expensive sausage).

But we got the shoulder in the end, and I was able to debone it relatively quickly.

Ingredients ready to go. I was a little optimistic with my large dice for the onion, and ended up having to cut it finer for the next step.

Pureeing the onions in my mini food processor. I had to do this in two batches.

Frying the onions in peanut oil

Then everything was combined together, chilled in the freezer for about 45 min, and then went in the grinder.

It came out of the grinder super fast at first, and then about mid-way through, I got up close and personal with sinew again as a large piece got stuck in the blade. But overall it went relatively fast. I guess I just need to be more careful when I trim the meat.

July 4, 2011

Our daugther had her favorite meal tonight - oeufs a la coque, aka soft boiled eggs, with "mouillettes", which are strips of toasted white bread with butter, used for dipping.

Her French grandmother gave her the little "egg cosy". The cat egg cup belonged to me as a child.

July 4, 2011

After 99 Ranch, we came back home and spent some time in the pool.

Then I decided a tiki drink was in order. I settled for an Ancient Mariner from Beachbum Berry Remixed, which is my go-to book for tiki drinks.

This cocktail includes lime juice, grapefruit juice (the recipe calls for white, but I used a star ruby grapefruit from my farmers' market bag), simple syrup, allspice/pimento liqueur, Demerara and dark Jamaican rums, with a mint and lime garnish.

This was my very first attempt at scoring lime for the garnish, and I need a little practice.

July 4, 2011

We had to do a quick run to 99 Ranch today after Stone. One of our guests doesn't eat red meat, and I wanted to get some head-on shrimp. Initially we wanted get them at Catalina Offshore, however they were not open today.

So we ended up going to 99 Ranch, which has a pretty amazing seafood section (amongst other interesting things).

99 Ranch is a an Asian supermarket chain, primarily Chinese.

We only spent about 10 minutes there, but here is a sampling of the seafood section.

Live blue crabs

There is a large selection of fish that you don't typically find in other places.

Oysters and stone crabs

For a quick meal tonight we bought some cockles.

Everything looked good but there was little, if any, local seafood which is why we generally prefer Catalina Offshore, Point Loma Seafoods or Bay Park Fish, which is next door to Siesel's and five minutes from our place.

The cockles were from New Zealand.

July 4, 2011

This is what we ended up buying today at Chino Farm.

Yellow and bicolor corn for tomorrow's barbecue, yellow peaches, and raspberries.

July 4, 2011

Hi Elise,
Great start! I knew I'd enjoy this blog when I saw the cookbook lineup. It will be fun to see how French and So. Cal food cultures mix.
Though I will say, it's hard for those of us in the northeast not to be consumed by envy when we see your farmers markets.

Hi LindaK,

We are lucky in San Diego, but I am sure your area has a lot to offer as well.

July 4, 2011

My mom cooks a lot of traditional French dishes (beef bourguignon, etc), so that definitely had an influence on me. My style of cooking is mostly French bistro and I try to incorporate fresh & local ingredients as much as I can. I belong to a CSA. I enjoy making things from scratch, so you may see homemade bread, fresh cheese, pasta, ice cream or charcuterie make an appearance sometime this week.
Wow, this paragraph caught my attention. Will be very interested to see how much you can cover in a week, because it sounds like you have a lot to offer! I'm especially interested in fresh cheese and homemade bread, but would love to know how you use your CSA produce.
I LOVE the Food Blogs!!!!

Hi FauxPas,

You are right, there is a lot to cover. It's my first food blog so I will be trying to cram in as much as I can!

I should have time to cover fresh cheese this week. I make ricotta almost every week so I should be able to fit that into the schedule (after tomorrow's barbecue). I'll see what I can do for the homemade bread.

July 4, 2011

We also had some food with our beer. While Stone is not exactly a gourmet restaurant, they make a point of using local organic produce.

The bold flavors of the food reflect their beer.

Our lunch started with a bowl of garlic cheddar and Stone Ruination IPA soup for me, and wild boar baby back ribs with apple slaw for him.

I had another order of the ribs as my main, and he had the duck tacos.

The food is unpretentious and fun, and we always have a good time there (the beer helps!).

Before leaving we filled our growler in preparation for our barbecue with Cali-Belgique, a Californian-style Indian Pale Ale with a Belgian influence.

July 4, 2011

After Chino Farm we went to Stone Brewing in Escondido.

We've been frequenting Stone since its earlier days in San Marcos. Five years ago they moved to Escondido and opened a large restaurant in their new location.

The restaurant is a good place to go with kids as it's in the middle of a large garden.

So, if service is sometimes slow, kids can have fun running around in the garden.

Their style of beer is not exactly subtle but we enjoy their very hop-forward beers. They also have hundreds of choices from other local breweries and around the world. But one thing they don't serve is anything resembling fizzy, yellow beer.

It's also fun to visit the brewery and see how everything is made.

Today we both ordered from the very extensive list of beers on tap.

I had the dark (almost black!) Stone BELGO anise imperial russian stout, a 2011 release.

My husband had an "Iron Fist" saison from another local brewery, Off Hand in Vista.

July 3, 2011

This morning we went to Chino Farm, which is located in Rancho Santa Fe, amongst the most expensive real estate in San Diego. It's always been farmland and luckily the locals like to keep it that way.

This small farm is legendary. It provides top-quality produce to a number of restaurants in California, such as Panisse in Berkeley, and Spago in LA.

There is no "Chino Farm" sign when you get there. What you see is farm land with this sign.

The little farm stand is very unassuming but the variety and freshness is quite remarkable.

They got a little nervous when my husband started taking pictures with his big camera, but he managed to take a few shots of the beautiful produce.

The most beautiful squash blossoms I've ever seen

I was there to buy some corn for our barbecue tomorrow.

They had 3 kinds - yellow, bicolor, and white.

I got half a dozen each of yellow and bicolor.

Here are the fields they come from.

July 3, 2011

Major Market in Escondido and Jonathan's in La Jolla tend to have Puy lentils (and sometimes Whole Foods in LJ). And since you mentioned unusual meat cuts, e.g. pork liver, asian markets as Ranch 99 and Lucky Seafood are good sources. Two other good butchers who tend to have those cuts are Tip Top Meats in Carlsbad and Bisher's Meat in Poway.

Thanks for the tips, Honkman.

I've never had much luck with Whole Foods in LJ for Puy lentils but you are right, Jonathan's is a good place for that kind of thing.

I am familiar with Ranch 99 and Lucky Seafood. Actually I was just there today (more on that later).

They do have a great selection of meat and seafood, but I am not always sure about the quality.

Tip Top and Bisher's Meat are good too, but a little far for me.

July 3, 2011

Hi FrogPrincesse! I'm loving your blog already, but one thing you said makes me curious: you have a hard time finding lentils? Are you talking about some special kind of lentils? Because I can find lentils in every grocery store here in Seattle. Thanks for doing your blog and thanks to your husband for the wonderful photos!

Hi SusieQ,

You are right, I should have been more specific. We can also find lentils in grocery stores in San Diego.

I was referring to the Puy lentils, which are green lentils from France. They are so delicious that they are the only ones I use. They keep their shape better after cooking and have a wonderful taste.

My favorite thing to do with them is a warm lentil salad with a drizzle of red wine vinegar and some herbs, especially in winter.

July 3, 2011

Here is the equipment that I use for grinding. I just bought this Kitchenaid as a birthday present to myself in May, and also got the grinder attachment.

Even with the careful trimming, there was still some sinew left, and I had to clean the grinder once during the process.

Sorry for the unappetizing picture! But this is what happens when sinew gets stuck on your grinder blade.

It has a detrimental effect on the texture of the sausage so I tried to avoid it as much as possible.

Overall, it was a much smoother process than my first attempt at sausage last month.

The key was to keep the meet very cold before and during grinding. I put it in the freezer for about 30 minutes pre-grinding.

I was very happy with the final texture.

I will be stuffing the sausage this evening, so wish me good luck!

Now, on our way to Chinos farms to get some things for our barbecue.

July 3, 2011

Then I added the garlic. I use a press for large quantities of garlic, because I am rather slow at mincing garlic by hand.

All the ingredients are now together.

Mixing everything. It was a good idea to use a metal bowl as it kept everything cold during the process.

July 3, 2011

Then I started breaking up the shoulder. I am using a Forschner knife which is a little low-weight for the job. Also it's not quite as sharp as I would like. It needs to be sharpened. I will be doing a little sharpening session on the EdgePro when I have a chance.

So at some point I switched to a heavier, sharper Messermeisster which was a better fit for the task.

While dicing the meat, I got rid of anything that looked like "sinew". This was the main problem during my previous attempt at making sausage, the sinew was getting stuck around the grinder blend and I ended up having to clean the blade a dozen time during the process which was a nightmare. So this time I was more careful.

July 3, 2011

Why was I up until 1 am last night? I was making sausage.

We are going to be hosting a 4th of July barbecue party, and I've decided to make sausage. It's only my second time making sausage, last month I made breakfast sausage. I am doing the chacutepalooza challenges and June was stuffed sausage (I am a little behind!).

There will be two kinds of sausages, a sweet italian sausage and lamb kofta kebabs.

For the sweet italian sausage, I am using the recipe from Charcuterie.

Here are the ingredients.

I got the pork shoulder and back fat at Siesel's.

Here I am weighing the back fat and dicing it.

At some point I realized that I had mixed up the recipes for the sweet and hot sausages, so I had no used enough of the back fat and had to dice more.

It's interesting that the spicy sausage uses 225 grams of fat for 2 kg of shoulder, whereas the sweet sausage uses 450 g of fat for 1.8 kg of shoulder.

July 3, 2011

OK, so it's almost 10 and we are about to head out of the house.

We are not big breakfast people, so this morning the adults just had a cappuccino. We have a nespresso machine which is very easy to use.

There is no mess thanks to the coffee pods, which is a good thing because I am not a morning person.

Charge pod, press button, and coffee is ready in a few seconds.

That's all I am able to handle before 8 am :smile: .

The picture above shows our basic setup. The machine on the right is what we use to foam the milk.

You just add the milk, press a button, and voila...

Our daughter had a glass of milk and nutella on toasted bread, and a banana.

July 3, 2011

I love San Diego, it's a beautiful place. And it's nice to see that another "princess" is blogging this week! I just have a couple more wrap up posts and I'll be clearing out of the blogging scene. Look forward to reading your blog!

Hi toolprincess,

It's indeed funny that one "princess" follows another.

Good job on your blog, it's been fun reading it!

July 3, 2011

Thanks for taking the time to blog this week. Corsica was a food epiphany for me as a young teen. Did the cuisine from the island influence your current style of cooking and eating?

Hello Heidi,

I can't say that I am very familiar with the cuisine from the island, however some of the local specialties made a big impression on me.

In addition to my sea urchin memories, I still remember the wonderful rock lobsters, sheep cheeses flavored with herbs from the "maquis", fresh brocciu cheese, coppa sausage, and the small blueberries we used to gather.

July 3, 2011

Elise - looking forward to your blog this week.
Do you travel to France often? Are you able to find other 'obscure' european speciality foods in San Diego?

Hi Kerry.

I travel to France a couple of times a year on average. I just spent a two-week vacation in Paris last month and go to Europe regularly for work.

Regarding specialty foods, 10 years ago this was often a challenge, but nowadays I am able to find most items between Trader Joe's (mustard, olives, cheeses) and Bristol Farms (chocolate, demi-glace, French butter).

For the more obscure items, we have Euro Food Depot which unfortunately closed their brick-and-mortar store, but still takes online orders. It's a local company that sells to restaurants and has a great variety of hard-to-find items including lentils, saucisson, escargot, foie gras, super-fine French beans, pommes dauphine, petit suisses, etc.

And for the few items that I can't find anywhere, I just buy them directly in France (piment d'espelette, Suze, tonka beans).

July 3, 2011

Hello FP,
Always glad to read about SD. My parents lived there for about 20 years, on College Avenue (don't remember the district name) during the 70s and 80s, so I got to know the city a bit. Lovely place. Not like the frozen northeast Ontario.

Hello Darienne.

San Diego is indeed a lovely place. I love it here. And it's hard to beat the perfect weather!

July 3, 2011

Looking forward to your blog. Which CSA do you belong to and are you planning to include any restaurants this week ?

Hi Honkman,

Glad to see you on this thread.

I use Specialty Produce's version of the CSA, aka "Farmers' Market Bag", which has the great advantage for me of being completely flexible. I can decide each week if I want to participate. Everything is organic and local. I've been happy with the quality and variety.

I am sure that there will be a few restaurants this week.

July 3, 2011

First, I would like to go over the teaser pictures.

The uni (sea urchin) in the shell

This has to be one of our favorite treats. When I lived in France, my parents used to harvest them from the shallow waters in Corsica and we would eat them right on the beach, with a squeeze of lemon juice (there, they are small and black with bright orange roe).

Luckily San Diego has some of the best uni in the world, as documented in Jeffrey Steingarten’s book, It must’ve been something I ate (chapter - “Prickly Pleasures”).

The books

I have a collection of about 50 cookbooks (total of about 75 food-related books) which reflect my evolving interests and skills in cooking. The picture shows part of my collection.

The first cookbooks that I bought while in the US were by Jamie Oliver. I still use them regularly.

One of my favorite books is Sunday Suppers at Lucques by Suzanne Goin, because it has a style that suits me well that is based on French dishes and techniques with seasonal Californian ingredients and influences from the Mediterranean.

Les Halles is heavily used for classic bistro dishes, together with The Country Cooking of France by Anne Willan for more specialized recipes.

The tiki

We love Hawaii and Polynesia in general. We’ve been lucky to go to Tahiti twice and to Hawaii countless times. And my husband grew up in Honolulu. So we are trying to keep the aloha spirit at home. You will definitively see us at the Tiki Oasis this summer in San Diego, and we never miss an occasion for a good tiki drink.

The cow at Iowa Meat farms

This is my butcher shop. I buy most of my meats there or at their other branch, Siesel’s. They are able to get the most "obscure" ingredients for me (things that would not be so hard to find in Europe but can be a challenge in the US), as a good butcher should (pig liver, hog casings, etc).

The view

We are fortunate to have this wonderful view from our backyard.

All these pictures were taken by my husband who is an avid and expert photographer during his free time. He has agreed to help me document my week so we should see a lot of pictures.

July 3, 2011

I guess it's officially Sunday now so it's time to start this topic!

Kerry Beal guessed correctly that this week's foodblogger was from San Diego, however nobody guessed the right person.

I am FrogPrincesse, also known as Elise. I was born and grew up in Paris, France. I moved to San Diego for work 13 years ago with my American husband. We have a 5-year old daughter and live in a house in Pacific Beach. I am a chemist and graduated from the same college as Herve This (ESPCI), although I did not study molecular gastronomy. I work for a pharmaceutical company.

I've always been interested in food. When I was growing up, I was the self-designated pastry chef at home. I spent a lot of my free time baking pretty much every chocolate-based recipe that I could put my hands on.

My mom cooks a lot of traditional French dishes (beef bourguignon, etc), so that definitely had an influence on me. My style of cooking is mostly French bistro and I try to incorporate fresh & local ingredients as much as I can. I belong to a CSA. I enjoy making things from scratch, so you may see homemade bread, fresh cheese, pasta, ice cream or charcuterie make an appearance sometime this week.

I use cooking as a form of stress relief after work, so it’s not unusual for me starting a large cooking project late in the evening, and tonight was no exception.

I am extremely excited to host the eG Foodblog this week. I’ve been reading these blogs for years and it’s a great way to get to know eG members better. So I hope that my blog will be an occasion for me to interact with all of you. Please feel free to ask any questions.

I am glad that I can represent San Diego. It’s a pet peeve of mine – I feel that our area has a lot to offer but that it’s often overshadowed by its big neighbor, LA. Hopefully my blog can somewhat change that impression. We do have a lot going on in San Diego as you will see this week.

_{edited to correct typos}

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