Dinner! 2002

[Jinmyo]

cabrales, I'd go with Sandra's advice. A whisk is easier than a fork but a fork would do.

Maggi on duck eggs? I've never thought about that.

Are you having any starch with meal?

[Sandra Levine]

Jinmyo is right, a fork is fine, but without a whisk, I would probably use a wooden spoon.

Yes, I am making my mushroom tonight, with a little sour cream and paprika to accompany sauteed veal cutlets.  

Also, asparagus, salad.  To finish the wine, we'll have a bit of yesterday's blue cheese on a lovely hard-crusted fig bread.

[Jinmyo]

Sandra, that reminds me. Have you ever crumbled a nice blue (like, oh, say a cabrales) over sauteed mushrooms?

Heh heh heh heh...

[Jinmyo]

So sorry, cabrales. By lots of butter, I mean lots of butter. (Oops. That was on another thread.) Anyway, lots of butter. Add more if you need to. Lots. Mushrooms are sponges. One needs to first release the water in the mushrooms and then give them flavourful liquid to absorb. A bit of chicken or mushroom stock on hand is good. Or wine. Or more and more butter. Timing is all. And it can't be legislated. The mushrooms will tell you by colour, fragrance, and texture when the right moment is.

Anything unpleasant about a wine will become exponetially more unpleasant as it reduces.

Not sure about the burnt bits. How burnt? Was it fond (good) or charcoaly crud (bad)?

Non-stick pans are great for eggs, useless for so many other things.

Good to slip the eggs into a pre-heated oven to set a bit.

[cabrales]

Jinmyo -- I didn't know non-stick pans could lend themselves to so much charring (i.e., the bad, charcoal-resembling variety of little burnt bits, over the bottom of the pan and adhering to the mushroom pieces). Is Circulon a sufficiently good brand, such that the pan did not contribute to the problem? If more butter is warranted, I'll try to use more when I next attempt mushrooms. It appears to not be a phenomenon specific to the chicken mushroom variety. :confused:

[Sandra Levine]

Or, you can clap a lid on the pan for a few seconds to firm up the yolks.  I usually start mushrooms in butter, then add some flavorful liquid to allow them to cook until the desired stage of softness before finishing with some more butter.  (I try to keep my butter intake down as much as possible, while still getting the benefit of the flavor.)  You have learned tonight why it is important to use a wine to cook with that you would not object to drinking -- a lesson every cook learns sooner or later.   I urge to plunge right in.  Buy some ordinary button mushrooms and try sauteing them as an experiment.  You will learn only by trying and there will be many mistakes and mishaps along the way.  We've all been there.

[cabrales]

Sandra -- Thanks for the encouragement.    I am going to look over some basic culinary techniques before another attempt. Perhaps pan-fried salmon with no special saucing might be feasible. :confused:

[SobaAddict70]

I would add that try to use UNSALTED butter whenever possible, when cooking or making a sauce, the reason being that you will usually add salt later in the cooking process and salted butter will only add an undue level of saltiness to the final product.

I third the motion for LOTS (aka vats) of butter.

I like butter...

[Jinmyo]

cabrales, perhaps you were also cooking at too high a heat (thus the burning). I always start mushrooms on high and then reduce the heat to medium.

I've never used Circulon but believe it is a very good brand.

[Wilfrid]

Cabrales, you might prefer the duck eggs over easy.  It is tricky to cook the yolks right through.  How are your flipping skills?

Meanwhile, still duckless - where can I get a duck in midtown? - last night was poulet au Riesling from my Paris in a Basket book.  Robust, market recipes.  This had an old-fashioned white wine sauce, thickened with a little flour and cream.  Licking it off my fingers.  And a piece of a mild cheese from Vosges called Le Montagnard - looks a bit like a camembert but with a reddish rind.

[SobaAddict70]

Last night -- nothing glamorous, folks.  Broiled chicken breasts dusted with a mix of salt, pepper, chopped rosemary, EVOO; roasted brussel sprouts and carrots; steamed rice; fruit.  Deglazed the roasting pan with white wine vinegar and a dollop of cranberry honey mustard for a nice minimalist sauce.  Mark Bittman would've been proud.

Tonight's gonna be a late night (joy), so its going to be bad cafeteria food (if you call the slop they serve in the cafeteria downstairs food).  Ok, I'm exaggerating, but there are HIGH SCHOOLS that serve better stuff.  *sigh*

[Jim Dixon]

Man, does this thread move fast...

A couple of pages back, Soba asked if I'd been to Craft re the fried sage leaves...short answer, no, but they sound good and I may try something similar...

Liza...the sage and Parm seemed made for each other (other flavors were salt and olive oil, also complementary, but I've come to realize that I eat almost everything with salt and olive oil)...like Jinmyo said, basil gets ugly when cooked hot like this.

These mutant sage leaves seem a little odd to me, too. I just the stuck the plant in the ground (and the leaves looked pretty normal when I bought it), didn't fertilize (altho' I have caught the pugs lifting their legs in the herb patch, which is right outside the back door), and haven't applied anything radioactive. I'm trying to work in a Soylent Green reference here, but running out of time and brain cells.

Oh, and dinner....Sunday brined some boneless chicken thighs for about an hour (water, salt, brown sugar), tossed with a packaged dry rub my brother sent from Texas, and grilled hot over wood...we get thighs because they don't get so dry as breasts, but these were especially moist.

Jim

[tommy]

jim, thighs are my new favorite part of the chicken.  BJ's warehouse sells 'em boneless and skinless for pennies.  for flavor and moisture, i don't know why anyone would buy breasts.  of course, the boneless skinless thighs are pretty hard to come by, so i find myself with breasts more often than i'd like.

i'll probably do the simple and delicious thai chicken thighs this weekend (coco milk, lemongrass, kaffir leaf, fish sauce, honey, and some thai chili paste, then on the grill.  yummy)

[Jinmyo]

Fingerling potatoes roasted with garlic cloves in a mixture of butter and EVOO, left to cool enough to picked up with the fingers, dipped into taramasalata (cured cod roe mixed with fresh mayonaisse) and chopped chives; butter wilted spinach with the roasted garlic cloves mixed in; thin slices of rare seared prime rib with a pan dipping sauce made with brandy and Dijon.

[Sandra Levine]

of course, the boneless skinless thighs are pretty hard to come by, so i find myself with breasts more often than i'd like.

Tommy, the thighs are very easy to bone and skin yourself. That doesn't sound right, but yo know what I mean.  Use a small sharp knife, and cut down to the bone from the messier side of the thigh, (the inside, without the skin) exposing it lengthwise.  Cut the full length of the thigh. Then, just scraping and cutting, release the bone and discard.  Turn the meat over and just pull off the skin, using a towel to get a grip if you have to.  You'll have a squarish piece of chicken that you can pound here and there to even it out.  Once you get the hang of it, it goes very fast.

[Priscilla]

Niman Ranch super-thick rib-eye coated with sage, rosemary, olive oil, salt and pepper, as per Mario Batali, grilled on the old Weber, sliced on a bed of dressed arugula from the garden.  Also spinach puff, a Mario recipe new to me, delicate, and a foccacia with pine nuts.

Priscilla

[Sandra Levine]

Scrod filets dusted with a mix of flour and curry powder, sauteed in butter, pan deglazed with lime juice, sprinkled with chopped fresh coriander. A dollop of tromato chutney. Steamed, buttered sugar snap beans, this and that salad greens, included amaranth and pea shoots,  from the Greenmarket.   Cheese course: camembert with a crusty whole wheat raisin bread.  Dessert:  the last of Rachel's fabulous mango sorbet.  Is my fish dish fusion, travesty, or just delicious?  It is based on an old Craig Claiborne recipe.  His name has come up quite a bit lately here.

[Orik]

Orik, did you see this panko discussion?

Priscilla

Yes, it was a reference to that discussion, just as butter makes better, panko makes perfect.

[Wilfrid]

Sandra, I have never developed a taste for white fish cooked with curry-type flavors, but its certainly been fashionable around New York over the last year or two.  So, it's a trendy travesty!  

Old London recipe last night: braised duckling with lettuce and peas.  I thought it was from late 19th/early 20th century, but having cooked it, I wondered if it was much older.  The manner of cooking the lettuce and peas, and using an egg yolk as one of the thickening ingredients in their sauce, gave the vegetables almost an Asian accent, and the duck was finished with a dusting of nutmeg.  It all began to seem quite mediaeval, but the book I got it from didn't have any scholarly sources for its recipes (T. Fitzgibbon, A Taste of London - probably long out of print).

Too much duck, of course.  What shall I do with the leftovers?  Shred it over a salad might be wise counsel.

[tommy]

Too much duck, of course.  What shall I do with the leftovers?  Shred it over a salad might be wise counsel.

duck loooooves salad. and duck and salad love slices of blood orange, cilantro or mint, red onion, and a zippy dressing made with lemon juice.  

for how long did the duck braise?  does it come out med-rare?  i really don't fancy med-rare duck.  i prefer it roasted for hours and hours.

[Wilfrid]

The recipe was hopeless on the latter question.  I was invited to braise (simmer) a duckling for one hour and twenty minutes in half a pint of stock.  As you can imagine, it was still pretty bloody at the end of that exercise.  Since I wasn't planning to present it on the bone (as a festive centrepiece), I took it out of the broth, let it sit for the length of time it takes to walk a couple of blocks and drink two pints of beer.  Then I removed the legs, breasts and wings and finished braising them gently in the stock.  It was a little more cooked than medium rare, and it was extremely tender.  A D'Artagnan duckling.

[tommy]

where did you eventually get the duck?

i don't suppose you got any crispiness from the skin, did ya?  did a good amount of the fat under the skin render?

[tommy]

...

[Wilfrid]

Dean and Deluca.  $20, which is not bad by their standards.  I wasn't looking for a crispy skin with this dish, but I was invited to brown the duck first, so certainly rendered some fat.  The skin was okay - it was not flabby and rubbery as you might fear, but reasonably cooked through.

The peas and lettuce were the highlight.  They drank up the veal stock and duck juices and were very flavorful.  Mint and marjoram in there too.

[Priscilla]

i prefer it roasted for hours and hours.

Me too, Tommy, at the risk of the dread me-too post.

But I do remain open to counterexamples proving whatever it is they prove.  (Not that your dish, Wilfrid, didn't sound fantastic, especially with all those Clues to History making themselves apparent.)

Priscilla