new culinary invention

So I sort of invented something tonight, and the boys liked it A LOT. It's not exactly low-calorie, but it is full of veg.

Filling:

1 shallot

1 chopped onion (it was red because that's what I had)

1 8 oz pkg. mushrooms

most of a bag of frozen chopped spinach

goat cheese

grated parmesan

salt, pepper, nutmeg, a bit of butter and a bit of EVOO

1 sheet of puffed pastry

So I sauteed the chopped shallot and onion in some butter, added the chopped mushrooms, cooked them a bit, added the spinach, seasoned it with salt, pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg. Decided it needed some EVOO. Put in a big blob of goat cheese, probably about 6 ounces, until it melted, added a handful of grated parmesan.

Rolled out the pastry. Decided to cut it into pieces, ended up with 6, put a big (BIG) blob in the middle of a piece, folded it up around it and sealed it, put egg white on top, and baked them.

The boys really like them. (and they are full of veg...)

Decided I needed to write it down before I forget what I did. This way it's also online, not scratched on a piece of paper I'll lose.

Lillie

charcuterie

Cassoulet... I actually purchased a Cassoulet kit from d'Artagnan, largely because I wanted the Tarbais beans for cassoulet, and also couldn't find either Ventreche or French garlic sausage anywhere here. These are all things you need to make authentic cassoulet. So I made cassoulet, mostly using their recipe and ingredients. I have been making confit de canard (preserved duck legs) for some time. And we can get pancetta here, too. For the record, Ventreche tastes almost exactly like pancetta, as far as I can tell. The Tarbais beans are indeed seriously hard to find, and nothing I can find in Lexington even comes close. After I made the cassoulet from Ariane Daguin's d'Artagnan, a few observations. I/we didn't/don't like the French garlic sausage. It just doesn't taste like the stuff you buy in Southwest France. The cassoulet is very good, however. And I think it may be the beans...

The kit came, however, with six confit duck legs. I used either two or three of them (three, I think) in the cassoulet. I mean, there was all this sausage (there was some Armagnac duck and pork sausage, I think it was, as well as the French garlic sausage), the confit, the pork, and I may actually have used some lamb. I just didn't need all six of those duck legs for the cassoulet.

We had the last three for dinner tonight. They are already cooked, of course, as "confit" is by definition cooked. We had them (sauteed to brown them), with new potatoes sauteed in duck fat, sprinkled with chopped garlic and parsley, and a bit of salad and red wine. Typical southwestern France meal. I asked the boys what they thought about the duck legs. They both said they are "bland" and that they like the ones I make better, this despite the fact that my confit de canard (preserved duck legs) tend to be smaller and also tend to fall apart.

So there...

more food and other things

Other things:

the weather is still dreadful. I actually LIKE having a real winter. However, during the four years we lived in Michigan, with wonderful autumns that were colorful, spring that was lovely, but with very short, very hot summers ("so mild" you didn't "need" AC, yet so hot that they had to close MSU offices because the un-air-conditioned office spaces had temperatures in the 90's even with all the lights turned off...you can get an average temperature of 80, not so uncomfortable, by averaging a high of 60 and a high of 100, neither of which is comfortable in late July), and winters that seemed to last FOREVER, I was always either too hot or too cold. Kentucky has, as a rule, short, cold winters, short, hot and humid summers, and gorgeous falls and springs. This winter has been TOO BLOODY COLD. TOO MUCH snow. At least we haven't had a nasty ice storm, but it's been too cold for that.

Yesterday it got up to NOT QUITE BUT ALMOST 60 degrees. And the sun was out. Today it was back to 40 degrees, misty and temps falling. But hey, March is just around the corner...

My new batch of duck prosciutto is almost ready. And the last batch was really good. The jury is out on the sauerkraut. I don't think it's really ready yet (been far too cold out in the pantry, which is where I cure these things). If it's dreadful, though, I don't think I care much. It made a big mess, and it cost me about $4.00.

I am now curing some brisket to make corned beef. Put it in on Saturday, and it needs to cure until at least Thursday. At which point I will have a look, and if I decide it's ready to cook, I plan to cook half and freeze the other half. I hope it's okay to freeze corned beef. I bought half an un-trimmed brisket (7 pounds), cut it in two, and am curing it in a huge stock pot out in the pantry (the temperature out there isn't much higher than the temp outside...I have a thermometer on the counter there...it's in the low 40's right now...so who needs a fridge?!?)

My next project will be (I hope) garlic sausage. I have had all the ingredients and have been postponing actually leap into the sausage making project for a couple of months now. And I have a couple of pork bellies in the freezer (you buy the stuff frozen from Critchfield's Meats, and I have been putting it in the freezer to await my project...), which I need to turn into bacon. I'm not sure exactly why I've been dragging my feet on this, but I have.

I have cured salmon, however. My gravlax (which predates my Charcuterie book, a gift at Christmas 2009) has been really good. My cured salmon using the recipe in the Charcuterie book was very good, except that Phil didn't like it, as it tasted too much like fennel. It was cured with salt, sugar, pepper, fennel seeds, and slivered fennel, including a couple of other things; these were the active ingredients. Phil suggested that I try it again with dill flavoring, which I did, using dill seed, dried dill weed, and live dill fronds, etc., otherwise the same recipe. It was BORING with a capital "B". Stay tuned...

Stay tuned...but the guys at Critchfield's said that the pork Shoulder roast butt (I think it is) has enough fat to make decent sausage, and I will indeed try it, but based on a very small sample size when I made some Mexican sausage using the meat grinder gizmo on my Kitchenaid mixer, I am not convinced that it won't need rather more fat. And the only decent supply of pork fat I seem to find here in Lexington is the pork belly (from the part that is not lean...). We'll see, when I finally get around to taking a big gulp and making sausage...

food and things

Got yet another copy of Bon appetit in the mail yesterday. This is the wonderful mag I now get compliments of Conde Nast since they canned Gourmet. What's the cover story?!? One dish casserole meals. Tamale pie, staple of pot luck dinners in Texas. I'm underwhelmed by the recipe, too. Tuna noodle casserole, complete with crushed potato chips on top. Give me a bloody break.

The copies of Bon Appetit may make good kindling if I managed to roll them up. Mary Elizabeth gave me a subscription to La Cucina Italiana, which is promising. Now if that were paired with a similar magazine on France, it would go a ways toward replacing the gap in serious food writing created by the demise of Gourmet.

It's been too cold and nasty to cook; the kitchen is too cold. Cancelled my trip to Texas last week, actually postponed it to sometime in March. It will, I hope, warm up a bit both here and there. And maybe the snow will melt. I am seriously tired of trying to talk people into bring fire wood in so I can keep the den warm.

I may have found a fabric store in Cincinnati. And I have directions...now I just need to muster the energy to drive up there.

Cheers,

snow and other things

1. I think I'm glad I postponed my trip to Texas. We will go to Stephenville when I do go, and they had a foot of snow in Dallas. I remember a big snowstorm when I was about 8 and we lived in Fort Worth (there's a photo of me somewhere with a snowman), and we battled snow and ice up there in Fort Worth while MA and F still lived there. I'm not eager to do it again, and Stephenville is in that area. I'm sure they got at least a foot, too. Kentucky is bad enough. Lots of snow in north central Texas is something to be feared.

2. I remember being shattered when I was either in high school or college and I discovered that a penny box of matches no longer cost a penny, although I can't remember what it went up to. I now have some of those "penny boxes" of matches, and now not only do they cost MUCH more than a penny, but there's not enough of that red stuff on the ends to actually get them to light.

3. Many more winters of bad weather like this are likely to send the airlines out of business at this rate.

4. Why doesn't the United States have a high speed rail system. CHINA seems to be able to put one in; Japan has had one forever; Europe has one. Why don't we? Yes, yes, I know, everything has to be done by private business with minimal government involvement. NOBODY in Europe goes on long car trips, though. They get there by train or plane and THEN get in a car. It reduces the attraction of large family cars. Saves gas. Saves the planet. Ask any New Yorker why they don't own a car.

For that matter, a decent high speed rail system would even help New York out, not to mention the rest of the country. Some astonishing percentage of plane delays are caused by congestion in the New York area. It would be lovely to be able to get onto a fast train, say, in Cincinnati (I'd be happy to drive to Cincinnati to do this) and not too many hours later find myself in mid-town. Sarah and Aaron would get really tired of seeing me/us. It's relatively easy to fly into the area, but it's such an ordeal.

SO there..

weather and other things

I am trying to figure out how to track the number of hits to my posts. It is clear that people are reading it who are NOT "followers". I get emails about it. There must be a way to do this, and there is probably someone among my acquaintances who knows how to do this; I just haven't yet asked the right person.

I think I am still patting myself on the back for not going to Texas this week. It is evidently bloody cold down there. The DFW area has had more snow this winter than Toronto (if you're reading this and don't know that Toronto expects buckets of snow every year, like feet on the ground all winter, not inches, now you know). Rumor is that the DFW area had about a foot of snow yesterday or last night or sometime. And pretty much everywhere I would be in Texas if I were there, the weather is seriously nasty. HOWEVER, here it is STILL COLD. SERIOUSLY COLD. It's tough on my joints, and while I'm the first to admit that I like having a legitimate winter, this one needs to be over with and done. Everything hurts, our electric bill is astronomical (heat pumps, folks), I've no idea how much propane we've used in the last six weeks trying to keep the temperature in the whole house somewhere in the 50's, and did I mention that all my parts hurt?!?

On top of which, the kitchen is so cold I can't stand to cook. Sometimes I complain that it's a lifestyle issue that I can't chop like I used to be able to and like to do. I have lately purchased a new can opener (even Martin can operate it, and it's less trouble for me); I dug out my small Cuisinart chopper gizmo and use it all the time; got a juicer attachment to my Kitchenaid mixer for Christmas (much easier to use than the one we got for a wedding present); purchased a pasta attachment gizmo for the above mixer and gave my hand-cranked one to Sarah; and bought a new easier to use Cuisinart food processor. Unfortunately the new food processor is so sophisticated that I haven't been able to figure out how to use it without a manual, which was missing from the box, and the one I asked to send me appears to something I'll never get. Ah, well...

I really have difficulty cooking in a kitchen that won't warm up to at least 60 degrees (F).

I have managed to make a batch of canneles, those wonderful things indigenous to southern France. They are sort of a cross between a brioche, a muffin and a cooky, and are highly addictive. Unfortunately I have only one cannele mold (this situation will be rectified this summer...) as I didn't believe I would actually be able to make competent canneles in the US. I am also making some more duck breast prosciutto, which requires little time in the kitchen, but some weeks hanging in a "cool" place. They are hanging in the pantry, where it hasn't gotten up near 40 degrees for some weeks. Excellent curing spot.

The current problem is that there is yet another seriously cold cold front, complete with snow (not a very big deal...) and nasty cold temperatures following (ThIS is the big deal). I am well and truly tired of this. I guess the problem is that this is the first winter since I haven't been working that it's been so cold. Always before, I was working, and for 6-8 hours/weekday, I was usually in a warm building. Now I'm not...

Trips, weather and food

So I was supposed to leave this afternoon for two weeks in balmy Texas. Trouble is, there's a storm going on; in northern Kentucky it snowed overnight, now is raining, supposed to turn to sleet momentarily, and then return to snow. And I was supposed to fly out of Cincinnati. As of this morning they were saying we should avoid the roads, and while the flight was not yet cancelled, it was "delayed" 40 minutes. I cancelled the trip. Will try again next month.

I do wish the house weren't so cold.

At least Phil took the Volvo to Lexington today, not the Buick.

The duck prosciutto I made is really good. My second attempt at cured salmon not so good. The first salmon I cured was good, but Phil didn't like it much. I cured it in fennel with fennel seeds, actually followed a recipe. Second one I did with dill seed and dill weed, and it is seriously mediocre. Actually "was" mediocre; I tossed the rest of it.

I might thaw out that duck in the freezer, make more prosciutto out of the breast and cook the rest for dinner. This weather has one serious advantage: the laundry room/pantry is ice cold, and makes an excellent curing shed. It's too far away from the boiler to get a reasonable amount of heat from the system. We just keep it closed off, and it's a great place to hang prosciutto...

Cheers,

back to food

So last night Martin ate sweetbreads. He didn't know it was sweetbreads (if you don't know what this is, it's the veal thymus gland). I salted and peppered them, coated them with flour, and sauteed them in a combination of EVOO and butter. Told Martin it was chicken, put a slice of lemon alongside on his plate. He not only ate the stuff; he asked for more.

Am making sauerkraut, and have managed to make a big mess on the counter in the pantry with my sauerkraut bowl covered with a dish towel. Ended up with salty water all over the counter. bummer.

The duck breast prosciutto is very good, albeit a bit salty if you eat it alone. I think I tend to leave things in the salt cure a bit too long. It is definitely seriously good, though. And my latest batch of cured salmon is better, dill this time instead of fennel.