eG Foodblog: FrogPrincesse (2011) - From tartines to tikis

[Kim Shook]

I am so much enjoying your blog. My BIL lives in AZ and spends lots of time in San Diego and just raves about everything there. He's not much into food (he seems to live on oddly colored smoothies), so I'm thrilled to get THAT aspect of the area! Everything you are making and buying looks incredible and please tell your husband that he's a wonderful photographer.

Happy Anniversary!

[andiesenji]

Your blog is terrific and the photos excellent.

Love your depiction of sausage stuffing. There are so many varieties of sausage that it is almost impossible to run out of combinations.

I used to prepare a lot of wild game sausage when I had an arrangement with some hunters but as most have moved away, I now have very little chance at it.

I am a big fan of the San Diego area and used to get down there a couple of times a year at least, either for dog shows or for visits to friends who live down that way, Lemon Grove, La Mesa, El Cajon, National City and Imperial Beach (all Basenji owners). I also recall some wonderful meals at various restaurants but unfortunately can't recall the names, except for the Beach grill and a Mediterranean place that I think was in El Cajon. I also recall a dinner at a Nepalese/North Indian restaurant in a little strip mall, next door to a UPS store in which the food was excellent but the service a bit rattles because there were nine of us and it was somewhat confused until the tables were arranged and everyone settled. There were three servers working our group, which caused a bit of confusion in itself but as I said the food was well worth it.

You are correct that San Diego and the surrounding area does not get the kudos it deserves, especially since there are more really great restaurants in a much smaller area than in the L.A./OC area which means a lot less driving.

It is also great that there are some terrific farms and fruit growers not too far away to make it difficult to drive out to the farm stands. One of my friends owns an avocado grove in Vista but doesn't have a roadside stand, she sells to a co-op that in turn sells at local stands and to restaurants.

I simply can't wait to see all that you have planned for this week to delight and inspire us.

Phoned my friend who lives in El Cajon. The restaurant is Himalayan Cuisine and is on El Cajon Blvd in La Mesa. The Mediterranean restaurant is Haritna Mediterranean Restaurant, also on El Cajon in La Mesa. She says the baklava is the best she has ever tasted and she has traveled extensively in the middle east.

She says that when you visit, have a big appetite because the portions are extremely generous.

Edited July 4, 2011 by andiesenji (log)

[FrogPrincesse]

Really enjoying the blog so far! Happy Anniversary as well! Ours is the 7th. It's nice to know that it's not user error on grinding in the KA...I had a less than satisfactory experience when I tried, but I'm pretty sure that it was gristle that did me in.

What else do you use Piment d'espelette for? I bought a jar for a recipe from Around My French Table, but I'm not sure what else to do with it, and it was waaay to expensive to just sit there looking pretty...

Hi Genkinaonna,

Thank you.

I just use piment d'espelette in recipes that call for cayenne. I find the flavor more nuanced and interesting.

It's excellent in the Basque dish piperade (bell peppers, onions, and tomatoes).

[menuinprogress]

What vertical stuffer do you use?

We use a 5lb Northern Industrial vertical sausage stuffer, and have been really happy with it.

[FrogPrincesse]

I am so much enjoying your blog. My BIL lives in AZ and spends lots of time in San Diego and just raves about everything there. He's not much into food (he seems to live on oddly colored smoothies), so I'm thrilled to get THAT aspect of the area! Everything you are making and buying looks incredible and please tell your husband that he's a wonderful photographer.

Happy Anniversary!

Thanks Kim! I am glad you are enjoying my blog. I am having a lot of fun doing it as well.

[FrogPrincesse]

Here is a summary of my morning.

I started by draining the fromage blanc that I made last night. After about 12 hours it was quite thick and ready to go into the colander.

I am using a synthetic reusable cheesecloth that I got at Curds and Wine.

I drained it for about an hour. It can be drained much longer depending on what texture you want. Since I was doing to use it to make raita I wanted to keep it pretty loose.

Then I gave it a whirl in a blender, about one minute to make it smooth.

I followed the recipe from Vij's for the raita and grated my cucumber directly into the fromage blanc. Their recipe calls for yogurt but really I don't think that you can taste the difference in this recipe. I added salt, pepper, and garam masala.

Normally I would keep the whey and use it in smoothies, but since my fridge is pretty full, I discarded it.

[FrogPrincesse]

In the mean time, our daugther was enjoying her breakfast. She had one of the peaches we bought yesterday. She tried it both with and without the skin, and decided that she liked it better without the skin (like her mom! This is a source of constant debate in our household).

The peach was nice, altough it could have been sweeter.

She also had a glass of milk and nutella on toast, again, since it's the weekend (her rationale).

We had a couple of espressos.

[FrogPrincesse]

Hi Andie,

It's always good to have recommendations for restaurants in San Diego. Thanks!

We don't get out to East County very often, but we should explore that area more.

[percyn]

My oh my.... fresh Uni on the shell, homemade sausage, farmers market and fresh cheese all in 1 day !! This is going to be good !

[FrogPrincesse]

The shrimp from yesterday needed to get deveined. I had no experience doing this, but this was fairly easy. I tried using a knife at first but it proved inefficient and dangerous as the blade kept sliping on the shell. So I just switched to scissors.

From that point on, it went very fast.

[djyee100]

Wonderful blog! I love what you're cooking.

I decided not to form the links during stuffing, which may have been a mistake. When I twisted the links at the end of the process, a couple of them ended up bursting open...

Next time I will try forming them as I go.

When I make sausage, I stuff it rather loosely. Then I lay the tube out on the counter and gently even out the meat in the casing. A needle is handy to pierce air bubbles. I pinch and twist to make the links. With a looser packing, there's always plenty of room to apportion and twist the links. Make sense? The pinch-and-twist action will tighten the meat in the casing to form firm sausages.

I just use piment d'espelette in recipes that call for cayenne. I find the flavor more nuanced and interesting.

It's excellent in the Basque dish piperade (bell peppers, onions, and tomatoes).

I always think of piment d'espelette as a Basque product. I have a small jar of it in my cabinet, and I should check out more Basque recipes. If you're ever in the Bay Area, the Spanish Table stores sell piment d'espelette. They also sell by mail order. Though when I think of it, I would rather go to Paris to shop for piment d'espelette--or anything else, for that matter.

[FrogPrincesse]

Wonderful blog! I love what you're cooking.

When I make sausage, I stuff it rather loosely. Then I lay the tube out on the counter and gently even out the meat in the casing. A needle is handy to pierce air bubbles. I pinch and twist to make the links. With a looser packing, there's always plenty of room to apportion and twist the links. Make sense? The pinch-and-twist action will tighten the meat in the casing to form firm sausages.

Thanks for the detailed advice, djyee100, it is great to get some feedback. This was a step that was not really described in great detail in Charcuterie, so I was not really sure what to do. It looks like you have a lot of experience with this.

It makes sense to pack things a little loose so there is more room to twist and form the links properly. I am going to have to grill the whole sausage without cutting the links, as I am afraid they would burst if I cut them.

I always think of piment d'espelette as a Basque product. I have a small jar of it in my cabinet, and I should check out more Basque recipes. If you're ever in the Bay Area, the Spanish Table stores sell piment d'espelette. They also sell by mail order. Though when I think of it, I would rather go to Paris to shop for piment d'espelette--or anything else, for that matter.

I just could not bring myself to spend $20 (or more!) for a little jar. I think I paid 4 or 5 euros for mine, but you could buy a rather large bag for 12 euros or so.

[andiesenji]

The easiest way to separate the links is to twist the casing at the end of the stuffer when the length you want has been filled.

I get someone to help me - I have them feed the sausage meat into the stuffer while I catch and form the links. I used to try doing it alone but found that I didn't have enough hands to keep it going efficiently and it took way too long.

I could process four times as much in the same amount of time with an assistant.

[FrogPrincesse]

The easiest way to separate the links is to twist the casing at the end of the stuffer when the length you want has been filled.

I get someone to help me - I have them feed the sausage meat into the stuffer while I catch and form the links. I used to try doing it alone but found that I didn't have enough hands to keep it going efficiently and it took way too long.

I could process four times as much in the same amount of time with an assistant.

Having an assistant was the key for me. I don't think I could have made it without my husband. Maybe with the vertical stuffer it's possible to handle this solo, I don't know. The Kitchenaid works but requires more hands and constant attention to avoid pushing air.

[FrogPrincesse]

The fireworks are over and our last guests have left, so I am going to try to catch up with the pictures.

Our barbecue party was a great success, even though we had a few snafus. Everyone commented on the food and seemed to be having a good time. And it's amazing how few dishes we had to wash afterwards after the dishwasher had been all loaded up. We rarely have barbecue parties at our place for some reason, and have been doing mostly formal dinner parties. We just need to do this more often!

Let's go back to this morning when I was finishing up my lamb kebabs. I did the binding in the Kitchenaid with half a beaten egg.

The mixture became sticky fairly quickly and was a little on the wet side. I started forming the kebabs.

I used 1.5 cm wide (about 1/2 inch) skewers. The kebabs were easy to form as the meat was very sticky.

I stored them in the fridge suspended on the rim of a half sheet pan so they would not flatten.

[FrogPrincesse]

This morning I also made a batch of brownies from David Lebovitz's Ready for Dessert (Robert's Absolute Best Brownies). I've made many batches of these brownies since a post I made back in April.

The ingredients.

I used chocolate disks from Trader Joe's, which are very convenient. The taste of this chocolate is a little flat/burnt to me, though. This is not Valrhona or Scharffen Berger. Of course, it's only a fraction of the price.

I am looking for other suggestions for reasonably-priced baking chocolate if anyone has one, by the way. I use A LOT of chocolate at home. I love baking.

I did my best attempt at origami to line the mold. It helps to get clean edges in the finished product.

I used a dot of butter under the parchment paper to make it stick to the mold.

The chocolate melting with the butter. David Lebovitz says to melt the butter first, then to add the chocolate, but I don't understand why, so I just melted everything together. I put the disks on top of the butter, so the butter would melt first.

I added the sugar and the vanilla, then the eggs one at a time.

Finally, the flour, and probably the most important step - mixing long enough to get this really smooth texture.

After the nuts were added, the brownies were ready to go in the oven.

They only took 20 minutes to bake.

The house smelled ready good at that point!

[FrogPrincesse]

Because we did not have much time to have lunch (our barbecue party was scheduled for 5 pm), we got takeout from Rubio's, a restaurant chain that originated in San Diego and is known for its fish tacos.

Fish tacos are a specialty of San Diego that originated just south of the border, in Baja California.

The very first Rubio's restaurant is just down the street from us, on Mission Bay Drive.

These are the tacos especiales with guacamole, cheese, onion and cilantro.

To be honest, we've had better fish tacos at other places (we like Sharky's in LA better). Since the fish is fried in batter, there tends to be very little of it. And the tortillas are not that great. But it's really convenient for us.

[FrogPrincesse]

After lunch, we prepared the corn for the grill.

My daughter really enjoying peeling back the husk and removing the silk with me.

She was holding everything together so I could tie the husk.

She said at the end that it looked like "crazy hair day" for corn.

[FrogPrincesse]

One of the last things I did for our party was a big watermelon and feta salad.

This is a recipe from Nigella Lawson and my favorite summer salad. It is so refreshing, I could pretty much eat the whole bowl by myself.

I use Greek sheep feta because it has the most flavor.

Here are the ingredients - a finely sliced red onion steeped in lime juice, cubes of watermelon and feta, leaves of italian parsley left whole, some chopped mint, olive oil and black pepper. I omit the olives because the combination seems a little strange to me, and my husband does not like olives.

My daughter's bear decided to check things out.

The salad with everything mixed together.

[FrogPrincesse]

Since I still had 30 minutes before the arrival of our guests at that point, I decided to make a punch.

It goes without saying that I used the excellent "Punch, The Delights (and Dangers) of the Flowing Bowl" by David Wondrich as my reference.

For Thanksgiving last year, I made the wonderful Philadelphia Fish-House Punch. And then for Christmas, I made the delicious but powerful Chatham Artillery Punch. So the 4th was a great occasion to make punch again.

Because I finally managed to get my hands on Batavia Arrack van Oosten, and did not have time to make an oleo-saccharum, I settled for the O'Doherty's Arrack Punch.

As a side note, we had to get the Batavia Arrack in LA at Hi-Time Wine Cellars after searching for it all over San Diego for years, in vain. These guys are really friendly and have the most amazing rum collection, and a lot of hard-to-find cocktail ingredients. We got a couple of bottles and, sadly, I broke one of them some time ago in my kitchen after having used it only once. It's a good thing that it smells so good!

The recipe for the O'Doherty's Arrack Punch calls for demerara sugar syrup, lime juice, Batavia Arrack, dark rum, and cold water.

As I am reading the recipe again, I realize that I forgot to add the final touch to each glass - a little freshly grated nutmeg.

[FrogPrincesse]

To call it a night, here is a recap of our barbecue party.

The menu:

Snacks

Macadamia nuts and baby grape tomatoes

Tortilla chips and fresh tomato salsa (a must-have in parties in San Diego)

Salads

Watermelon and feta salad

Caprese (brought by my friend; it was wonderful)

Yellow beet salad (also brought by my friend, and equally delicious)

Mains

Lamb kebabs with cucumber raita and pita bread

Sweet Italian sausages

Shrimp

Corn

Dessert

Brownies

Pineapple with mint sugar

Drinks

O'Doherty Arrack Punch

Stone Cali-Belgique IPA

Heffenweizen

Karl Strauss amber ale (another local brewery)

Lemonade

I have only a few pictures as my husband and I were both busy with grilling & enjoying our guests' company.

We grilled the lamb kebabs first. We used a couple of bricks covered in foil to hold the skewers, so the meat would not touch the grill. However we quickly ran into a problem as the meat started falling onto the grill. Thankfully my husband managed to rescue everything.

It was very tasty (although a little charred in areas), and the cucumber raita went well with it.

We wrapped everything in pitas that were grilled for a few seconds.

The sweet Italian sausages were a success.

We grilled the whole string of sausages as I was afraid to separate the links, and cut them at the end.

I thought that these sausages had a wonderful flavor. The sweet paprika was not overpowering.

The texture was a little on the fine side for me though. Maybe next time I will grind using the coarser die.

The grilled shrimp was very flavorful and tender.

We made sure not to overcook them and took them out as soon as they changed color.

The corn was extremely sweet. We left it on the grill just a few minutes.

The pineapple with mint sugar is a recipe from Jamie Oliver. It was a pleasant way to finish the meal.

The combination of pineapple and mint is unexpected, but it really works.

I think that it's for tonight. I am not really looking forward to work tomorrow!

[FrogPrincesse]

One last picture.

Enjoying the fireworks from our place tonight.

[kayb]

Oh, that sounds like a lovely barbecue party! Dying to try the watermelon feta salad and the pineapple with mint sugar!

[kalypso]

Your daughter is adorable

Your menu looked fabulous. I'm really enjoying seeing what you're doing with the blog this week

[Genkinaonna]

That's a wonderful cookout menu! I'm doing a barbecue for my little guy's first birthday this weekend so it's nice to get some inspiration...although I'm leaving the sausage making to the experts since decorating the cake is going to take a lot of my time. BTW, your daughter is GORGEOUS! And we have the same bear, although it's usually the stuffed seal that supervises the cooking .