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Inspiration Optional?
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November 06, 2005
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I've been trying to put together a menu for this dinner party
all week. Nearly every evening for an hour or so, I pored over
recipe books and websites, looking for ideas. Normally, this
is enough to generate more ideas than I could ever pursue for
a single dinner party, many of them unusual and at least
somewhat original. I typically get very excited about the
possibilities and can't wait to start shopping and prepping.
Not so this time. For the life of me, I couldn't really come up with anything that I wanted to eat. I felt as though someone had taken away some part of my brain that is responsible for cooking skills and desire. Or perhaps I had been stricken with culinary impotence.
What kind of meal would this result in? The best I could do was try to rework some dishes that I've already made a few times. Here's what happened:
The salad consists of diced roasted golden beets, frisee, and shredded roast duck placed in equal volumes in separate piles in a bowl. The dressing is poured over each pile. This plating worked fairly well; my friend Eric commented that the dressing tasted different in each part of the salad.
The dressing began with a sage-walut pesto, made with sage, italian parsley, toasted walnuts, garlic, romano, and olive oil. To this I added Champagne vinegar, bacon fat, and prepared horseradish.
Originally I'd planned to duplicate my standard beet-orage salad, which uses cubes of beef, but with yellow beets instead of red. The dressing was going to be made from orange juice, pureed yellow beets, and prepared horseradish. But when things went awry with the sage-walnut pesto I'd planned for the pork dish described below, I decided to co-opt it for use as a salad dressing. This worked out very well -- much better than I'd imagined.
This is a fish stew with scallops, tilapia, squid heads, bacon lardons, a bit of smoked pork shank, green beans, shiitake mushrooms, and a few sun-dried tomatoes. I served it with a square of puff pastry.
I made something like this a few weeks ago as a weeknight meal composed mainly of leftovers. It was fantastic. I curse myself every day that I didn't write down the recipe. This version took longer to make, was more expensive, and was about half as good. It wasn't terrible...just strangely uninspired.
But one good thing did come out of it: an increased confidence with making good fish stock. This stock was even better than the first. Ingredients: lots of ginger, some garlic, daikon radish, a huge fish head of some unknown provenance, two small yellow croakers, lots of mushroom stems, some Napa cabbage, and a pinch of herbes de provence. Saute in some anchovy oil, olive oil, or duck fat. Add some bones from a roast duck, from a smoked shank of pork, or whatever bones you have in the fridge. Add 1/2 bottle of white wine and a lot of water. Simmer lightly for 30-45 minutes.
A simple preparation. I seared the tenderloin over high heat, then set it aside. I deglazed the pan with rum, and then covered the bottom of the pan with grade B maple syrup, which I feel is better for cooking than grade A. I put the tenderloin back in the pan, turned them in the maple syrup, and put them in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes or so, turning them in the syrup every five minutes.
For the dried fruit mixture, I sauted some dried cherries and chopped dried apricots along with the rest of the bacon lardons in butter, added a couple of tablespoons of brown sugar, a pinch of salt, and some brandy for good measure.
Another technique that I have increased confidence in as a result of this meal: brining. I used the Cook's Illustrated brine recipe: 1 quart of water to 1/2 cup of kosher salt to 1/2 cup of sugar. I substituted molasses for half of the sugar. I cut the tenderloin in half and brined it for about an hour and a half. The result was an unbelievably tender and juicy tenderloin.
The original title of this dish was "Pork Orgy", as it consisted of small servings of different cuts of pork with various preparations. Along with the tenderloin, I was going to serve loin chop with the aforementioned pesto, strips of Chinatown BBQ pork with julienned vegetables, and mashed potatoes with bacon lardons. But my lack of inspiration was taking its toll on my energy levels at this point; I was losing steam. So I just focused on one of the components.
Rebecca put this delicious dessert together and took the very excellent photographs pictured here. This was a great end to the meal and is a valuable addition to our repertoire, as it is very quick to make, and we don't always have the energy at the end of a meal to make a complex dessert.
Despite the lack of inspiration, I wouldn't count this dinner party as a failure. Except for the fish stew, the dishes were unexpectedly satisfactory -- good, even -- and each one built my confidence in a technique or approach that I don't use very much. Maybe inspiration isn't absolutely necessary for a good menu.
November 6, 2005 in main_dishes, menus, salads, soups_stews | Permalink
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Comments
I have no idea who you are, I just followed you from your Sillytech comment, but GOOD LORD IN HEAVEN does that meal sound delicious. And I don't eat non-fish meat!
Posted by: Mariana at Nov 7, 2005 9:05:56 PM
Your uninspired dinner menu still sounds delicious! Will you be cooking anything for the Thanksgiving holiday?
Posted by: Cliff at Nov 14, 2005 1:43:00 PM
