bilrus

Tonight I started a few of the tasks that could be done in advance. Things started well, but I've had one slight problem. First the setting: this is my kitchen - not very big - probably 8 x 12, but I do have a pretty good amount of counter space. As they say on MTV Cribs when they enter the bedroom - "This is where the Magic happens." And here is the cookbook in its usual spot, right above my molcajete. But this week it's more than a decoration. I made the vegetable stock for the pea soup - seems pretty standard, although I've never used fennel in a stock before and this is the first recipe I've read that has you sauté the vegetable before adding the water. Here it is going through the chinois I will be using so many times before Saturday. This is going in the freezer tonight. I whipped up the Honeyed Mascarpone Cream, mainly because I wanted to taste it. I have to admit that I did cheat (don't tell) and use the whisk attachment on my stick blender. I pureed a bunch of beets with about a cup of water to produce both the juice for the vinaigrette and the pulp for the beet powder. My hands appear that they are going to be red for several days. But so far, so good. I decided to reduce the juice to make it a little thicker and more flavorful. Finally I took about 1/4 of the pulp and put it in the microwave for a half hour to dry it out before putting it in the spice grinder. Unfortunately... I misread the recipe and had the microwave on high instead of low power. Not only did I burn the pulp (the rest went down the disposal) but I appear to have blown something in the microwave as it is not currently working. So, after day one I've gotten a start on several dishes that turned out well and I might have broken one of my major appliances. We'll see what day two brings tomorrow.

Sorry, I forgot to copy my menu over from the other thread. As I mentioned, I am trying dishes that look challenging, but not too challenging. I did try to pick dishes I'd want to order if I was in the restaurant and tried to pick fairly "Spring-y" dishes, too. The menu I am looking at is as follows: Soup: Puree of English Pea Soup with White Truffle Oil and Parmesan Crisps, page 37 Appetizer: Dungeness Crab Salad with Cucumber Jelly, Grainy Mustard Vinaigrette, and Frisee Lettuce, page 92 Entree: Roulade of Pekin Duck Breast with Creamed Sweet White Corn and Morel Mushroom Sauce, page 172-173 Cheese: Ashed Chevreaux with Slow Roasted Yellow and Red Beets and Red Beet Vinaigrette, page 239 Dessert: Lemon Sabayon - Pine Nut Tart with Honeyed Mascarpone Cream, page 294-295

I was out of town for a few days and somehow missed all the most recent posts. Thanks for the feedback on all of this. I thought rather than hijacking this thread about the cookbook itself, I'd start a New Thread and start posting the rest of my "adventure" there.

This is a continuation of a discussion and challenge that I threw down on myself that started on the French Laundry Cookbook thread. Rather than hijacking that thread I thought I would start a new thread here. Last week, I was inspired by the Cookbook You've Never Used thread to pull out my French Laundry Cookbook. My wife reminded me that I've never actually made any of these recipes, so I've committed myself to making a full five course (soup, appetizer, entree, cheese course and dessert) meal from the book. My hope is to document my progress and post some pictures here of the food in process and the final results. I have a few reasons for doing this: • I want to see if the book is really as difficult to use as many have said it is (I'm not doubting that it is, but I want to try it out anyway). • I'd like to give my cooking skills a good test - I feel like I've been coasting lately, and want to give myself a challenge. • I'd like to integrate some of the lessons in the eGci Plating Course into my cooking. In looking back at my posts on the Dinner thread - most of my dinners are of the one-bowl variety - pastas, asian stiry-frys, stews, soups, salads. This is the way I prefer to eat, but it tends to be of the "plop it in the bowl" style of plating. • And not least, I want to get an appreciation of just how much work does go into a meal like this. I've eaten at both TFL and Per Se (in addition to many other similar places) and this sort of task might help me get more out of those meals and not take them for granted. (Yeah, I know how jaded that sounds - see, I need help here). Besides, I'm not a total dope. I'm going to make things easy on myself. I'm only cooking for two (me and my patient, grateful wife, jenrus) and I'm not going to have the pressure to have everything come out at a perfect interval, although I am going to try. I'm trying to pick "relatively" easy recipes that can be prepared over the course of a few days. Several users were good enough to give me some feedback on the original thread that I am taking to heart and making part of my planning - the current plans call for dinner to be Saturday, April 16, (although a possible change in plans could push this back to Sunday). I've started doing some of my "sourcing" - I call it going to the grocery store(s). A few issues I've come across so far after two grocery stops (Wegman's and Whole Foods) • I couldn't find beet juice at either store so my plan for now is to buy extra beets and juice them myself as zeitoun suggested. We'll see about the beet powder (which Busboy referred to as ‘fairy dust’). I was thinking about skipping this step, but it's too early to be copping out at this point. • Neither store has had yellow beets, so this may end up being a monochromatic salad, but it shouldn't lose much in the translation. • No Morel mushrooms yet either - if they aren't enough in season to actually find any, I guess I have two options - 1) use rehydrated dried morels or 2) use some other mushrooom. Anyone have any thoughts on this? • My one short cut I am resigning myself to is that I am probably to use a veal/duck demi glace from d'Artangan as the basis for my "quick" duck sauce. Only Keller could call a sauce that starts with two separate stocks and four rounds of reducing and deglazing a "quick" sauce. I know he likes to use a lot of "quotation marks" in his menus, but this is just overkill. Besides, I'm doubting that I am going to find duck bones soon enough. Over the next few evenings, I am going to start some of the early preparations - like making beet juice and fairy dust. I'll start posting pics as I do. I hope a few people enjoy following along (actually my first goal is for me to enjoy this, and then my wife who has to eat the dinner, but you are all a close third). Please give me as much feedback, encouragement or discouragement as you’d like.

Merkado Menu ← Wow, what a menu. What do you call that kind of cuisine, ConFusion? ← This item about sums it up:

I am actually panning on going there this weekend if I get a chance. I drove past it last weekend and it is smaller than I had even pictured. But I figure it is worth a shot - I'll report back. ← Here it is ten months after this post and I FINALLY made it to the Mighty Midget this past Sunday. Beautiful day to sit at one of their picnic tables. The pulled pork was good, but nothing great - it had the right texture, decent sweet sauce (I like my Q saucy) and was a good sized sandiwch, but not quite as smoky as I would have liked or as good as I had hoped. As a side dish, I had a half-smoke that was crisp and flavorful, served with a honey mustard relish - really excellent. jenrus had the fried fish sandwich - a huge sub-like sandwich, and very well done - crunchy breading and light, flaky fish. I hope to get back to try the ribs, but they are only available on Friday and Saturday

I watched episode 1 last night and I only made it about 40 minutes in. I don't think that even in the super long, Ken Burns version alluded to above that a filmmaker could get to the heart of why people eat or don't eat, like or don't like food. Each of us, even in a self-selected group of food-lovers like eGullet, has different reasons and motivations for what food means to us. Is it about taste? Is it about hospitality? Is it about feeling full? Is it about sustinence? Who knows? That's what makes it hard to come up with a universal message about something so subjective and then to try and repeat that message six or eight times in an hour.

Interesting - it looks like you had the exact same appetizer entree and dessert that I did. I like sweeter desserts so I really liked the bread pudding, but it was very, very sweet.

This one tasted damn good, too. Since this was taken with a point and shoot it is tough to get the focus pinned down as well as I'd like. I take several shots making minor adjustments and pick the one that gave me the best focus. Any tips on that would be appreciated.

Ropa Vieja and Moros y Cristianos (Red Beans and Rice)

My dinner tonight was Spring Seafood Stew from Cooking Light and a simple Romaine salad with Green Goddess dressing from the CIA Professional Chef cookbook.

Congrats to Todd on his nomination for a Beard Award for Newpaper Columns.

That felt to me like the harshest Weekly Dish I can remember from Tom. Looking forward to the real review.

There is a slow cooker version of this in the Washington Post Food Section this morning.

I've always wanted to make the Zuni Cafe Mock Porchetta. I've heard good things about it here and elsewhere.

Thanks - you must have worked your way through a good portion of the book if you've tried two of my randomly chosen recipes, not that I ever doubted. See - I did try to start with recipes that don't have a full page of ingredients. And only one of those ingredients (quick duck sauce) refers me to another recipe.

The menu I am looking at is as follows: Soup: Puree of English Pea Soup with White Truffle Oil and Parmesan Crisps, page 37 Appetizer: Dungeness Crab Salad with Cucumber Jelly, Grainy Mustard Vinaigrette, and Frisee Lettuce, page 92 Entree: Roulade of Pekin Duck Breast with Creamed Sweet White Corn and Morel Mushroom Sauce, page 172-173 Cheese: Ashed Chevreaux with Slow Roasted Yellow and Red Beets and Red Beet Vinaigrette, page 239 Dessert: Lemon Sabayon - Pine Nut Tart with Honeyed Mascarpone Cream, page 294-295 Anyone made any of these or have any suggestions? Any help would, well, help.

And yet you don't attempt to be a true tri-athlete and make a stop at Del Ray Creamery? Weak.

I don't mean to discourage you, but I've spent quality time with this cookbook and, unless you are running a brigade of prep cooks and dishwashers YOU ARE INSANE to try to do a five course meal from it. Just a thought. ← I appreciate your positive thoughts. That's partially my point in this. I'm trying to get a few things out of it. 1) I want to see if the book is really as difficult to use as many have said it is (I'm not doubting that it is, but I want to try it out anyway). 2) I'd like to give my cooking skills a good test - I feel like I've been coasting lately, and want to give myself a challenge. 2b) I'd like to integrate some of the lessons in the eGci plating course into my cooking. In looking back at my posts on the dinner thread - most of my dinners are of the one-bowl variety - pastas, asian stiry-frys, stews, soups, salads. This is the way I prefer to eat, but it tends to be of the "plop it in the bowl" style of plating. 3) And not least, I want to get an appreciation of just how much work does go into a meal like this. I've eaten at both TFL and Per Se (in addition to many other similar places) and this sort of task might help me get more out of those meals and not take them for granted. (Yeah, I know how jaded that sounds - see, I need help here). Besides, I'm not a total dope. I'm going to make things easy on myself. I'm only cooking for two (me and my patient, grateful wife, jenrus) and I'm not going to have the pressure to have everything come out at a proper interval, although I am going to try. I'm trying to pick "relatively" easy recipes that can be prepared over the course of a weekend. We'll see how it goes (and barring my total humiliation, everyone will see via my pics).

I was inspired by the "Cookbook you've never used" thread to pull out my French Laundry Cookbook. My wife reminded me that I've never actually made any of these recipes, so I've committed myself to making a full five course (soup, appetizer, entree, cheese course and dessert) meal from the book. My hope is to document my progress and post some pictures here of the food in process and the final results.

I am generally pretty picky about the cookbooks I buy - I don't have a huge shelf crammed with books - so most of the ones I have I use fairly regularly. This thread has spurred me to one project, though. I mentioned the thread to my wife and I told her that I didn't really have any books I never use. Her first response was - what about the French Laundry Cookbook (as mentioned above by so many). I bought it as a souvenir of a dinner there in 2003. She was right - I've leafed through the book at least a dozen times but decided that each recipe was impractical or too difficult to do at home. But now I've decided to make a full 5 course meal for the two of us - soup, appetizer, entree, composed cheese course and dessert from the TFL cookbook. I'm going to document my experiment with pictures, etc and post the pics along with my thoughts on trying to cook from the book. Might be fun (then again... we'll see).

Behemoth - I'd be happy to be served that in any Italian restaurant.

So does Chef Boyardee. ← A new mall opened here last month in Jacksonville and we got a bunch of the high end chains. Cheesecake Factory - PF Changs - Maggiano's etc. We were planning to have lunch at PF Chang's - but when we got there at noon - we were told the wait was 90 minutes. So we tried Maggiano's (which I frankly hadn't heard of before). I had the whole roasted chicken. $10.95 for a whole roasted chicken! - with a rosemary lemon butter sauce - plus a side of pasta (took home more than half of the chicken for chicken salad). The chicken was - frankly - excellent. I wouldn't have been upset to have it at a bistro in New York. The pasta was nice - although the sauce was a bit dull. The bread was fabulous - it comes from a good local commercial bakery (I asked). It's the same bread that's served at the higher end restaurants in Jacksonville where you'll easily spend over $100 for 2 for dinner. My husband had a sausage and pepper sandwich. Very good also - on excellent bread. Came with a huge bowl of minestrone soup - tasty and not oversalted. This for $8.95. Everything served in pleasant - albeit outdoor mall terrace type - surroundings. I don't know whether this meal is typical of the chain. But - if it is - I think independent restaurants should be afraid - very afraid. I haven't had a good simple meal like this in a mid-priced independent restaurant here in a long time. By the way - I was impressed that the restaurant served a big half lemon with the chicken. Lemons are very expensive these days. In fact - at many middle of the road independents - they're giving you wedges of lime instead of lemon with your iced tea (until you complain) because they're too cheap to spend the money for lemons. Robyn ← That combination of three restaurants is also in the Tyson's Galleria here in Northern VA (along with several other "upscale" chains - Legal Seafood, Daily Grill). My college's local alumni chapter has our annual dinner there every year and I don't dread going (although when the alumni director asked me if I had other suggestions for restaurants I don't think she knew what she was getting into). The food isn't terrible - better than a lot of local pasta joints, but not as good as others - pretty middle of the road. The portions of pasta when you order off the menu are enormous and served family style.

A cliche can't really become a cliche unless a lot of people like it or believe in it to begin with. I still like all those things.

Tonight's dinner was a risotto with sweet onions, feta and parsley. Didn't turn out quite as saucy as I'd have liked but the flavor was pretty good and for a change I think I got the texture of the rice right.