slkinsey

This morning's breakfast:

Most of it I buy at regular NYC liquor stores. The falernum and bonded Laird's I think I ended up finding at Spec's in Houston, TX the last time I was down there. If you can't find the Fee Brother's stuff (and it's fairly well available via online order), just contact them. They're good people: http://www.feebrothers.com/ And for bitters, don't forget Regan's Orange Bitters No. 6.

I'm barely conscious, but let's see if I can sum up. I just didn't have it in me to do this at 1 AM. . . First, a little bit more of the prep and cooking: Here we have some spinach and shallots before and after processing in preparation for being turned into creamed spinach. Always fun to see how much the spinach reduces in bulk. This is the caramel for the bread pudding at two different stages. Here's the bread pudding just before the custard went on to it. It's brioche cubes, caramel and Ghirardelli double chocolate chips. The custard was made from egg yolks, milk and cream. Here's some of the food cooking on the stove. Browning the porterhouse before standing it up on the end bones and moving it to the oven; German banana potatoes cooking with olive oil, pieces of whole garlic and, later, some rich chicken stock; mushrooms roasting in the oven with butter, thyme and, later, some bread crumbs and parmigiano-reggiano. Then it was time for a drink. 2 ounces of Laird's bonded applejack, 1/4 ounce of 2:1 demerara simple syrup, 2 bid dashes of Fee Brothers aromatic bitters. After we had that, a few of us were still thirsty, so I made a 2:1:1 Sidecar with Domaine Germain-Robin Fine Alambic Brandy, Cointreau and fresh lemon juice. Here are the two cocktails in the glass. The old fashioned applejack cocktail is on the left, the Sidecar on the right. Fat Guy brought over a dry kielbasa that we nibbled on with our drinks, along with some radishes ewindels brought. I've never had a dried kielbasa before. It was pretty good. Dinner proper started with a salad. Long julienne strips of cucumber, paper thin slices of red onion, chopped white anchovies, lemon juice and good Sicilian unfiltered evoo. Then it was time for the main event. Creamed spinach with crispy shallots (wilted/pressed spinach, cream, parmigiano-reggiano, crispy fried shallots). Russian banana potatoes. These cooked such a long time that the chicken stock I had added to the pan glazed on to the outside of the potatoes and caramelized/maillardized to much that the potatoes were like candy. The roasted mushrooms. The steaks. These turned out incredibly delicious. Really first rate. Just as tender as could be. And, at this thickness, cooked almost more like a roast. Each slice tended to be the same degree of doneness throughout, but there was a range of doneness available to satisfy most tastes. I preferred the rarer pieces, but even the tail pieces (which were cooked to a full medium at least) were juicy and delicious. By the time I got some food on my plate, I had lost the discipline to take pictures. Maybe later I'll take a few shots of the (shockingly small amount of) leftover steak to give an idea of how it looked in slice form. Since we found ourselves wanting something to drink, I was able to reach into my cellar and pull out a little something. This picture is after Fat Guy and I decanted it. As you can see from my avatar, I've been drinking the good French reds for quite a few years. Here is the finished bread pudding. ewindels also brought a strawberry tart. Both were most delicious.

So far this is what I have on the menu for this evening: Cocktail: An as-yet unnamed variation on the Tombstone -- 2 ounces of Laird's bonded (100 proof) applejack, 1 teaspoon 2:1 demerara simple syrup, 2 big dashes of Fee Brothers aromatic bitters, stir with cracked ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass and garnish with fat lemon twist. Fat Guy may bring something to munch on. Then a salad: Cucumber, red onion, mint, and a touch of white anchovy. Then the steak: um. . . this will be steak And the sides: I'm going old-school -- creamed spinach, German potatoes and roasted mushrooms. Dessert: chocolate caramel bread pudding.

I seem to have very powerful Fairway-fu. Probably due to the fact that I've got no trouble elbowing back. A little salt on the outside won't draw enough liquid out of a 3 inch thick steak to dry it out, but it will get a nice bit of flavor into the meat. Also, what liquid it does draw to the surface is then available for Maillardization. As far as I know, salting steaks the day before is a French technique. Mushrooms! That's what I was almost forgetting!

Exactly. I find that guests appreciate a break between a heavy dinner and dessert, so I often don't put the bread pudding in the oven until we've stopped eating dinner.

Actually, I find that the easiest thing to do is cube up the bread and put it in the cooking dish (along with raisins, nuts, caramel, chocolate chips or whatever else you're adding -- if anything), make the custard right before dinner guests arrive (this is just whisking egg yolks with hot cream heated in the microwave and some sugar) and pour it over the bread, then let it soak in while you're eating dinner. Half an hour before you want to have dessert, toss it in the oven. Very simple.

Nothing like starting off Sunday morning with a few cappuccini. On Sunday mornings at the slkinsey household, we tend to have either waffles or bagels. Since we have an additional day off, why not both? This morning was bagels. These are from Absolute Bagel on Broadway between 107th and 108th. We always get their "mini-bagels." Their hand-rolled mini-bagels are, many people agree, the closest thing going these days to the "NYC bagels of the old days." They're just big enough to fit in the palm of your hand, with a nicely chewy crust and just the right amount of the traditional toppings. Not sweet like H&H. Of course, an "authentic traditional NYC bagel" like this could only be made by a family from Thailand! Here's one with a schmear of lox cream cheese. This is the last thing I'll eat before dinner. On the agenda for today: get a haircut, try to spend at least 60 minutes on the stairmaster to pre-burn off a few pieces of steak, go to Fairway for additional ingredients for tonight's dinner, prep for dinner, eat myself into a coma.

When possible, I like to get my ricotta from Alleva down in Little Italy. I think they make the best ricotta in the City (although their mozzarella can't hold a candle to the product out on Arthur Avenue). When I don't have time for to go down there, Fairway sells an excellent ricotta from behind the cheese counter -- fresh, dense and creamy.

They'd have to be giving out gold ingots for me to get up early. It's all I can do to drag myself out of bed at 7:30. Well, strictly speaking that's not true. In civilized countries like Italy, I tend to get up at around 6:30. But that's because I get to take a two hour nap in the afternoon. Mmmmmmm. Nap.

I've long thought that reduction sauces and braises need just a touch of acidity for balance, so I've taken to adding a bit of vinegar. As it so happens, Fairway has been selling a really nice, very concentrated 12 year old balsamic vinegar. It's not aceto balsamico tradizionale, but it's very thick and full flavored. I don't tend to measure these things, but I'd guess I used maybe a cup and a half of demiglace and two tablespoons of the Fairway 12 year balsamico. Using balsamic vinegar has the added advantage of bringing some sweetness to the table, which is also often a good thing in a braise or reduction sauce. Anyway, I cooked the ribs bone-side-down together with the demiglace and balsamico on the stovetop at a bare simmer for a couple of hours until tender. Nothing to it.

The pork looks awesome, Marlene. How did you make it? Must have been good with the corn dish, which I gather still had a bit of crunch.

Oh, yea. I wasn't suggesting that there aren't plenty of places where one can get fresh-from-the-farm asparagus for a much better price. But I think you'll agree that the cost of living/usual income is quite a bit lower in Ottowa than in NYC. Even then, the Greenmarket stuff is very expensive. But it's a price I'm willing to pay to support local farmers and get the best. Anyway... here's the rest of dinner tonight. . . I also made some pearl onions to go with the short ribs and gnocchi. Simmered them in rich chicken stock with smoked paprika and a touch of butter until the liquid evaporated and glazed the onions. On to ricotta gnocchi. I make these more often than potato gnocchi because they're delicious and so much easier to make. Start with good ricotta (not the watery Polly-O crap), a few egg yolks, flour and, if you're me, plenty of nutmeg. Mix into a light dough, adding just enough flour to bind it together. Roll the dough into cylinders and cut it into pieces. Get a guy with thick fingers and hairy forearms to flick each piece over the tines of a dinner fork, and then you're done. Toss them into boiling water and they're done when they float to the top. At this point dinner was almost ready and it was time for a drink: I decided to make a variation on a rum swizzle. The Barbancourt white rhum has a nice finish, not unlike a rhum agricole. This I made with 2 ounces of white Barbancourt, 1/4 ounce Velvet Falernum (a lightly alcoholic flavoring with almond, ginger, allspice, vanilla and lime notes), an ounce of lime zest-infused simple syrup, 3/4 ounce of fresh lime juice,a dash of Angostura bitters, a few mint leaves and plenty of crushed ice. This is a not-very-good picture of the finished short rib dish. It's unfortunate that the short ribs don't stand out very well. We followed the short ribs with a salad: shredded romaine lettuce, red onion, julienned granny smith apple and pecans dressed with evoo, lemon juice and pumpkinseed oil.

I should point out that that's a high price for asparagus even for NYC. Although most things tend to cost more in metro NYC (and we tend to earn more here as well), asparagus can be had here for two bucks a pound (or sometimes less). The high price is the price for "just picked on the farm and trucked in to Manhattan at the crack of dawn this morning to be sold at the Greenmarket" asparagus. That sort of thing commands a high price around here.

Tonight's dinner is going to be braised beef short ribs with ricotta gnocchi. I'll probably do a chopped salad as well. I ended up settling on beef short ribs because I found myself in the vicinity of Western Beef. At Western Beef you can get whole primal cuts of meat at deep discount, cut to order. They were selling whole slabs of beef short ribs for two dollars a pound. I had them cut into four sections. On the left is what they look like when I got them home. It's a double layer, with one short rib slab on the top and another on the bottom. You can see the lines where they were run through the band saw. On the right is after I separated them into individual ribs, removed the membranes and trimmed the fat and silverskin. Here they are browning off in the enameled iron casserole, and on the right is a pile of ribs that have finished browning. They are now on the stove at a bare simmer, moistened with some demiglace and a touch of aged balsamic vinegar.

It's not cheap, but keep in mind that each one of those bunches weighs around 2.5 pounds. So that's around $3.20 US per pound. Still not cheap, of course, but it's worth it to me when I can A) get very high quality and peak freshness, and B) support local farmers.

So. . . as mentioned above, I went to the Union Square Greenmarket this morning. I've either been out of town or otherwise engaged for the past few weekends, so I wasn't sure what they would have. Well, it was pretty disappointing. I was hoping there would be more Spring vegetables -- baby fennel, baby turnips, little carrots, shell peas, snap peas, asparagus and that kind of thing. All they really had was the asparagus and the turnips. One person was selling sugar snap peas. Oh well. The asparagus was lovely, and there were some good herbs. After stashing my greenmarket loot and slurping down a cappuccino, it was off to the butcher for tomorrow's steak. One thing we are lucky enough to have in NYC are a number of real, full-service butchers. You know, not a big display of pre-cut meat. The kind of place where they cut all the meat to order. One of the best places in the City that doesn't get enough attention is Oppenheimer Prime Meats on the UWS, my local. I told them I wanted prime porterhouse, and so they brought out a prime short loin so we could talk about how much I needed and how thick to cut the steaks. This is how it's supposed to be done. We settled on two big steaks for approximately 8 people. I think it says something good when one of the other butchers walks past the table where your steaks are being prepared and says, "Whoa! Whose are those? That's awesome!" And, I hope we'll all agree, they are an awesome sight indeed. Here is a picture with a ruler for reference, just to give some idea of the scale: I'm salting these babies and throwing them into the fridge until tomorrow PM.

Okay. I'm back now. Went to the Union Square Green Market and a few other places (more on this anon), and came back to have a little something before I venture back out to pick up a few more things. Around here, this is breakfast: That's a double cappuccino straight from the Rancilio, made with Sweet Maria's Liquid Amber Blend roasted a few days ago by yours truly. The milk is from Ronnybrook Farm Dairy, bottled on the farm in Ancramdale, New York. Their milk is not homogenized; they don't use pesticides, hormones or antibiotics; and it comes in returnable/reusable glass bottles. I've talked them up before, and will continue to do so. This milk is so much better than even the most expensive "grocery store organic" milk, that it's almost an entirely different product. Now I'm off to the butcher.

Dude. . . what makes you think my smoke alarms ever were connected?

Update: I've been informed by the good folks at Maker's Mark that they are no longer producing the Black Label bottling. They used to produce it for sale in Japan and duty-free stores but currently just produce the regular Red Wax bottling.

I can get Inniskillin Ice Wine, in fact I probably have some downstairs, but I'm not sure Sam can. I can get it, but an ingredient that costs upwards of 70 bucks for 375 ml is probably outside the scope of this blog.

WRT the "mystery ingredients" -- we'll have to take into account the different locations in which Marlene and I live and the extent to which that will effect the ingredients we can use. Fish and other foods from the sea may be a tough one for us to match up, unless we go in a very general direction (e.g., "whole fish"). It's not clear, for example, that we'd both be able to get high quality fresh crab.

Not quite sure yet. My mind automatically goes to beef short ribs when I think of braising, but Kathleen reminded me that this would be following beef on Saturday with beef on Sunday (not that there's anything wrong with that in my book!). So I might do a pork shoulder braised in milk. Or maybe lamb shanks. Or maybe osso bucco. Or, if I can get a whole one, maybe oxtail.

With anything that comes in leaf form, I think you're better off just muddling rather than making an infused syrup. And, when it comes down to it, it's probably a little easier to do. Give it a try: Make the mint-infused syrup and do a drink with that. Then make the same drink using unflavored simple syrup and a few leaves of muddled fresh mint. I bet you'll like the muddled version much more, and will find that it's less trouble than doing the infusion.

Since this was raised here as an aside....My understanding has always been that pasta was introduced to China by Marco Polo. Some however insist that Marco Polo brought it back to Italy from China. Pasta was developed independently by a number of cultures (the earliest known record of pasta in what is now Italy dates to something like the 4th century BC, so it's a sure thing that they didn't get the idea from China). Think about it: mixing flour with liquid, possibly drying it, and then boiling it in water isn't exactly a revolutionary concept. The argument could be made that pasta cookery was most elevated in Italy and China.