The Confabulist

First Recorded Dinner Party of 2006

This past weekend we broke the dinner party moratorium.  We invited one of our favorite people over and set about the business of cooking.  I didn't actually start planning the menu until the morning of the meal, and I knew that I wouldn't have more than a few hours to cook once I got back from the store, so I designed a menu that I could prepare quickly but that was classy nonetheless.  I think I succeeded admirably.

We had some technical problems with our digital camera.  Rebecca did a great job with the camera on my phone, though.

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Marinated Octopus
atop Bean Sprout, Pea Shoot, Daikon Radish, and Asian Pear salad 

OK, this was an easy one. considering that I bought the octopus already marinated.  I put together a salad of sprouts, pea shoots, and julienned Asian pear and tossed it in a Japanese-style dressing.  I then topped the salad with the octopus.  It was actually fairly good for a low-effort salad starter.  Next time I may try marinating my own octopus, as it's usually available in Chinatown fish shops.  (Well, the one I frequent at least.)

The recipe for dressing is worth remembering, so I'll put it down here:

• 3 parts soy sauce
• 1 part Shaoxing wine
• 1 part brown sugar or to taste
• 1 part rice wine vinegar or white wine vinegar
• 1 part sesame oil
• 1/2 part minced ginger

Make sure to use high quality light soy sauce.  I made the mistake of substituting dark soy sauce one time, and the result was somewhat less than delicious.

I made a version of this dressing later on in the week that went on a salad topped by pork loin that had been glazed with maple syrup.  Instead of using the brown sugar, I poured off the excess maple syrup into the dressing.  It was worth doing.

 

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Bluefoot Mushroom and Artichoke Ragu
in Puff Pastry

Bluefoot mushrooms are the cultivated version of (wild) Blewit mushrooms.  I've always wanted to taste Blewits, as they are reputed to have a stronger flavor than Bluefoots (feet?).  However, like many tasty wild mushrooms, Blewits have several poisonous dopplegangers.  This is why (no joke) the leading cause of death among mycologists is mushroom poisoning.  Think about that the next time you're tempted to pick a wild mushroom or become a mycologist.

Bluefeet are tasty nevertheless, and have a distinctive but mild flavor that make them perfect for many uses.  One disadvantage is their distinctive blue color, which means that the person in the checkout aisle is 87% less likely to mistake them for other kinds of mushrooms.  In contrast, I have been the recipient of the Fungal Ignorance Discount several times upon purchase of very pale, thick-stemmed Chantrelles, which are sometimes mistaken for trumpets by the foolish and unwary.

This dish was inspired by a recipe in James Peterson's Vegetables, which, like most of his books, is useful, informative, and entertaining.  The procedure is fairly simple, and I'll reproduce it here just so I can remember it:  Prepare some bacon lardons.  Cook some fresh artichoke hearts. (That's the tricky bit, but I'll leave it to others to explain that.  In a pinch, you can used frozen or canned (in that order of preference), but if you're using canned or jarred, make sure they're stored in water, not vinegar.) Cut puff pastry into squares or rectangles and bake until done.  In the meantime, saute mushrooms and shallots with herbs in butter (or, as I did, in duck fat).   Add the lardons, cream, and stock and reduce until the sauce is relatively thick.  Add the artichoke hearts and warm through.  Split the puff pastry down the middle and spoon the mixture between the two halves.  Drizzle the top of the mixture lightly with truffle oil.

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Seared Duck Breast
with Coconut Creamed Corn and Grits
and a Balsamic Strawberry Reduction

The duck breast itself was prepared simply:  rubbed with salt, pepper, five-spice, and herbes de provence and then pan-seared in duck fat until medium-rare. 

The strawberry sauce was also very simple.  I pureed a pound of strawberries with 3/4 cup of balsamic vinegar, pushed it through a fine mesh strainer, and then began reducing.  After reducing by half I added more balsamic vinegar and some brown sugar to balance the tartness of the vinegar and strawberries.   I reduced it again by half and swirled butter in just before serving.

The coconut creamed corn and grits were inspired by a recent meal at Azie, where we had a coconut milk risotto with duck and (as a separate side dish) creamed corn.  The risotto (we all thought) didn't pull its own weight, but the creamed corn was fantastic.  When I was considering what should go under the duck, I got an image of the two being combined.  I'm not sure how the risotto became grits in my head, but the result was very excellent and I think this will become a dinner party staple.

I decided to prepare the grits and the corn separately and combine them at the end.  I took the corn from four medium-sized cobs and cooked them in butter.  I added 3/4 c of coconut milk and a shot of pernod and cooked it down.  I then added pepper, parmesan, mascarpone, and chopped tarragon and cooked it through.

For the grits, I just warmed 2 tbsp of butter, 3/4 c stock, 3/4 c milk, and 1/2 c coconut milk and whisked in 1/2c of instant grits.  It cooks in about six minutes.  I then combined the two dishes.  Voila!

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Ginger Cake

Rebecca made this very tasty ginger cake to cap off the meal.  It used fresh ginger, candied ginger, and powdered ginger.   The topping was (I think) based on ginger jelly, put it was pleasantly tart -- probably had lemon juice in it.

It's great to be cooking (and blogging!) again.  I think I'm going to try to do it again this coming weekend, so stay tuned!

Inspiration Optional?

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:

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Duck and Yellow Beet Salad
with Sage Walnut Romano Dressing

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.

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Strangely Uninspired Fish Stew

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.

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Maple-Glazed Pork Tenderloin with Dried Fruit

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.

--//--

Grilled Goat Cheese Sandwich
on Raisin Bread with Honey and Basil

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. 

First SF Dinner Party: Menu

In Irvine, I had a bad habit of throwing dinner parties and forgetting to take pictures of the dishes as they went out to the table.  Worse yet, sometimes I would take pictures and forget to blog about them later.  After moving back to San Francisco, I promised myself I'd photograph and blog every dinner party I threw.  Well, I nearly fell off the wagon on the first go-round.

Two weeks ago we threw the first dinner party in the new place, and I only took one servicable picture, and I nearly forgot to write the whole thing up.  Here's the lone picture and what I remember of the dishes.

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Amuse Bouche:
Dates Stuffed with Stilton

I was going for something unexpected and fun here.  There's a delicate balance which, when achieved, it tastes pretty good.  If one of the flavor elements dominates, which is easy to do with the stilton, it tastes one-dimensional and flat.   In truth, I think it needs a third ingredient to tie the two tastes together more tightly, but I'm not sure what it would be, especially given that it would have to fit inside of a half of a date that's already stuffed with cheese.  Interesting, but I don't think I'll be pursuing it further.

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Tomato Porcini Soup
with Olive Tapenade on Crostini

I haven't made a tomato soup in a long time, so I thought I'd break it out for this party.  This soup is made with porcini mushroom stock, the reconstituted porcinis themselves, white wine, good canned tomatoes, some herbes de provence, a little sour cream and one lone carrot.  There is enough porcini flavor to come through as a dusky, brooding undertone, but not enough to drag the focus away from the  bright, acidic tomatoes.

The epitome of tomato soup, for me and for a surprising number of people, is from Bistro Jeanty.  For me, it's nearly an ancestral memory, since it's been five years since I had it last.  I remember a number of great things about it, but one of them is a particular indescribably round, golden, delicious flavor that I've never known how to even attempt to duplicate in my versions.  This time, I remembered an email that someone sent me years ago that made some suggestions as to how to improve my soup.  I used a couple of them and tripped across the answer.

The "secret", as it turns out, is merely to swirl a metric sh--load of butter into the soup just before serving.  That's it.  Am I a dullard or what?  The thing is, when you taste it in the soup, it doesn't come across exactly like butter.  That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.  Anyhow, if you make a tomato soup, try it the next time you have a dinner party.  It is totally worth the calories, at least when you're making it for guests.  Don't just do it for your own dinner unless you're terminally skinny, because it's quite addictive.

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Baked Goat Cheese Salad
with Frisee, Mache, Lardons, and a Truffle Vinaigrette

I use Cook's Illustrated's approach to making the goat cheese rounds -- freeze a log of goat cheese, cut it into rounds, roll it in herbs, egg, and then Melba Toast crumbs, and bake.  It generally turns out well.  (Though I'm not nearly as enamored with the magazine as I was when I first started cooking, I find that I still use it quite a bit, and this is exactly the sort of preparation that it is useful for.)

This is another dish I haven't made in awhile.  Last time, I used roasted white asparagus and a basalmic redux.  This time, I just tossed the greens with truffle oil and good port vinegar.  I prefer the reduction, but I think the tossing method works better with loose greens like this.

I'd like to try this recipe with an aged goat cheese.

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Open-faced Salmon Wellington
with Caramelized Leeks and Fennel,
  Artichoke Creme Fraiche,
and a White Wine Tarragon Cream Sauce

Yes, you read that right, leeks and fennel.  In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court of home ruled that in this instance it was okay to cook these ingredients and add them to the dish as long as Rebecca's didn't have any in hers.

This was basically a rectangular slice of puff pastry underneath a bit of salmon fillet, with the artichoke bit in between and the sauteed leeks and fennel on top.  The "artichoke creme fraiche" was essentially a modified version of my baked crab artichoke dip, but that isn't nearly a fancy enough name for this dish, now, is it?

I chose this format partially because I thought it might be easier to prep than a regular wellington.  It actually turns out to be a lot fussier, because the elements are cooked separately and then assembled at the end, so you have to worry about timing everything properly.  By the time I got everything to the table, nothing was at the right temperature.  Nevertheless, it has its advantages in dinner parties because portion control is far easier, and because the puff pastry won't get soggy.

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Maple Ginger Coffee Glazed Pork Loin
on Molasses Coffee Rounds
with Roasted Figs and Root Vegetable Brunoise

I found the flavor of these cookies so intriguing that I thought they might be good in a savory recipe, perhaps as a pie crust.  This was my first attempt to use the recipe in a savory context.  I cut back on the sugar and the baking soda and pressed them a little thinner.

The resulting dish was, I thought, a success.  Arguably, the flavor of the rounds is a bit too strong for pork.  One of my guests suggested lamb or venison, which I did try later on that week.  It was also good, but not the dream combination of flavors that I was hoping for.

I may try to groom this into a signature dish.  It's unsual enough that people will remember it, and if I can get the balance of flavors just right, it could be very good.  It's the sort of dish that people talk about.  A few weeks later, at a Labor Day Barbeque, I was the "Pork Cookie Guy".

IMBB #14: Orange You Hungry?

Orange is the theme of this month's IMBB, and what a theme it is!  An inspired bit of  lateral thinking by Foodgoat has left us with a  color, not an ingredient, to work with this month.  I am, as always, very curious to see how other people approached the theme.  Until then, here's my attempt:

Vertical food:

Some say it's trendy, some say it's already passe,  but I  think it's here to stay.  There's something special, something uniquely gratifying about vertical food.  Is it a protest against the entropy of the universe and the disorder and decay that seem to dominate our lives?  Is it the phallic nature of these towering constructions that is the source of their appeal?  Or is it a destructive impulse?  Is it that we take pleasure in toppling, dismantling, and then consuming the creations that our hapless hosts have  painstakingly built for us?  Perhaps.  All I know is, some food tastes better when it's taller than it is wide.

The recipe below should make four salads.  You may wish to increase the amount of the dressing you make, though, to suit people's preferences.

Tower of Orange:

• 1/2 small papaya
• 4 small (orange) tomatoes
• 1/3 head savoy cabbage
• 1 lb fresh salmon fillet
• 5 slices thick cut bacon
• 3 (orange) bell peppers
• 1 c chopped pea shoots
• fresh basil
• fresh tarragon

Render and reserve the fat from the bacon.  Chop the bacon into bits.  Sprinkle salt and pepper on the salmon fillet and pan-fry in 2 tbsp. of the bacon fat.  Remove the skin from the fillet and shred the salmon with two forks.

Chiffonade the basil and mix with the papaya.  Chop the tarragon and mix with the shredded salmon. 

Take a 16 oz plastic cup -- you know, a "beer cup" -- and cut out the bottom.  Grease the inside with nonstick spray or olive oil.  Turn the cup upside down on a flat-bottomed plate or bowl.  Drop a few tablespoons of each mixture into the cup and pack it down gently with the spoon.  We alternated the orange layers with the non-orange layers like so:

• Orange bell pepper
• Pea shoots
• Bacon bits
• Orange tomatoes
• White bean ragout
• Papaya/basil mixture
• Savoy Cabbage
• Salmon/tarragon mixture

But of course most any order will do.  Spoon the dressing around the sides of the cup and gently remove the cup.  The resulting tower is surprisingly stable and very impressive.

The 16 oz. cup results in a relatively large salad.  If you're serving this as part of a three or four (or more) course meal, you may wish to use a smaller cup.

White Bean Ragout:

• 1 can Cannelloni beans (or other white beans)
• 3 tbsp "bacon bits" (see above)
• 2 sprigs of thyme
• 4 cloves of garlic, finely diced
• 1/2 cup stock

Saute the garlic for 4 minutes in 1 tbsp of olive oil.  Add the beans, the stock, the thyme, and the bacon and cook over a medium heat for about 5-8 minutes or until the bean mixture begins to thicken.

Curried (Orange) Tomato Dressing:

• 6 cloves of garlic, rough chopped
• 1/2 of a sweet onion, diced
• 8 (orange) tomatoes, rough chopped
• 20 or 30 coriander pods
• 3 cardamom pods
• 20 or 30 cumin seeds
• 3 or 4 peppercorns
• 2 sprigs of thyme
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 1/2 cup vegetable stock
• apple cider vinegar

Toast the spices in a dry pan until you can smell them.  Grind them using a mortar and pestle or a spice grinder.

Saute the onions and the garlic in 2 tbsp of olive oil until the onions are translucent.  Add the ground spices and saute  for two more minutes.  Add the tomatoes and saute for two minutes.  Add the wine, the stock, and the thyme, cover, and let simmer for 20 minutes.  Let cool and puree.  Add vinegar to taste.

The result should be somewhat aggressively spiced and tart.  It may look like a soup, but it's really a salad dressing, so don't be afraid to add just a little more vinegar.

Conclusions:

I had fun making and eating this salad.  The various textural elements worked well together, I thought, and the flavors meshed satisfactorily.  The curried tomato dressing was quite good.  I do feel as though one or two of the flavors could be a bit more intense.  I may trade mangoes for the papayas the next time, for instance.

I count this as a definite success, if only because it has increased my confidence regarding vertical plating of salads.  The assembly was easy and fun and trouble-free.  And it was fun to eat, too!  This will definitely enter my dinner party repertoire.

Salmon Stuffed Tomatoes

The stuffed roasted tomato is definitely a part of my dinner party repertoire. I've filled them with tomato risotto and with beet greens, goat cheese and sausage, among other things. My favorite version, though, which I found in Simple to Spectacular, is a dessert. The hollowed-out tomatoes are stuffed with a mixture of candied ginger, currants, dates (in my version), and nuts that have been briefly cooked in butter and spices. It's elegant, unusual, and easy to make -- all important dinner party characteristics.

Last week I ran across a recipe for Tuna-Stuffed Tomato from Jacques Pepin via wine critic Robin Garr. It seemed like a good weeknight recipe -- quick, fairly healthful, potentially tasty -- so I thought I'd give it a try. My version used salmon instead of tuna and was flavored with ginger, hoisin, and soy sauce.

The verdict? So-so. Some of the issues were problems with my rendition. I didn't have nearly enough crunchy vegetables mixed in, for instance, so the texture was somewhat monotonous. Other problems seemed more endemic. Unless you're lucky enough to have a tomato with a wide base, the assemblage isn't very stable. The tomato rolls around the plate as you're trying to cut it. (If I was going to serve this again, I'd take a slice out of the bottom to make it more structurally sound.)

Unlike a roasted tomato, you can't eat it with just a fork. You must cut it with a knife in order to take each bite, and this is somewhat annoying. In the end, I decided that I'd rather have a cut-up tomato with the salad on top. Your mileage may vary.

As you can see in the picture, I served the tomato with a salad of romaine, dried cranberries, pepitas, bell peppers, and other bits, topped with a tomato and date vinegar vinaigrette.

rabbit redux

Farmer's Market

I spent $200 at the grocery store on Saturday. This is unsurprising, considering that I haven't made a real shopping trip since before I left town for the holidays. What is surprising is that I felt the need to go to the Farmer's Market yesterday. I spent maybe $35, but at the Farmer's Market, $35 goes a long way. For instance:

Ten ripe persimmons: $1.00
Enough wild greens for 7 salads: $2.50
Two largish Dungeness crabs: $6.00

While I was buying the crab, I noticed a bin of mackerel nearby. Ever since acquiring Peterson's Fish & Shellfish I've wanted to mess around with mackerel. I looked at the sign: $1.00/lb. They looked to be about a pound each, so I asked for three pounds. After a moment, I was handed a bag with at least 10 mackerel. (Apparently I am a very bad judge of weight.)

Every time I go to the Farmer's Market, I think: why do I ever buy produce at the grocery store? Convenience is the answer, but the premium paid is quite extravagant considering that I have a Farmer's Market within walking distance that, with a little foresight and a willingness to contribute an hour and a half on Sunday mornings, can serve to satisfy all of my produce needs.

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When I got home, I cooked and froze the crabs and made persimmon chutney. Then Rebecca and I had sex and played videogames until it was time to start thinking about what to make for dinner.

This is the life, I tell you.

Grilled Mackerel Salad
Wild Greens and Red Grapefruit Salad
with Grilled Mackerel and a Balsamic Vinaigrette

I rarely make salads. The salads I grew up with were mostly banal constructions -- vegetable barriers which had to be surmounted before one could get at the main course.

As an adult and a foodophile, I now know that building a truly successful salad requires sensibilities that I do not posess in large amounts: economy, balance, style. Salad-making, I've always thought, is very Japanese; food reduced to its barest essentials. Breathtaking when successful, but the slightest misstep is glaringly obvious.

Nevertheless, I've come full circle to the situation I faced in my youth. I need more vegetables in my diet, and salads are one of the easiest ways to do that. So I must resist my own laziness. With you as my witness, I pledge that if I ever catch myself throwing random greens and chopped vegetables into a bowl, dousing it with Ranch, and serving it up to someone, then ... I'll cut off my own hand. Er, a finger. No, that would make it too hard to cook. How about a toe? Maybe the little one.

Though this salad needs work, I think I'm on the right track. The sweetness of the grapefruit contrasts nicely with the strong, salty mackerel flavor.

--//--

Rabbit Ragout with Figs
Rabbit Ragout with Tomatoes and Dried Figs
Atop Parmesan Polenta
2000 MacRostie Carneros Chardonnay

I had a lot of trouble coming up with a rabbit dish to follow up the Rabbit Pie. I tried to think of what I wanted out of a rabbit dish. I kept coming around to rabbit and mushroom ragouts in creamy, roux-thickened, brandy- and madiera- laden sauces. Throw a crust on that and what do you have? Rabbit Pie. I was stuck in a rut.

I still think that ragout is the best way to present rabbit. That way you get the subtle gamy flavor and pleasant texture distributed through as much food as possible.

The other major direction for rabbit dishes is with a tomato-based sauce. I'd been resisting this, thinking that tomatoes would overwhelm the taste of the rabbit. If your game meat is too gamy, I suspect that a tomato sauce is a good idea. Otherwise, I'd say to avoid it.

But I couldn't think of anything else. Then I remembered a wierd recipe I'd run across a few months ago involving rabbit, tomatoes, and figs. Sure, why not?

Here's what I improvised:

Ingredients

1 large rabbit or 2 lb rabbit meat
1 rib of celery
1/2 c diced ham
6 dried figs
1 14 oz can tomatoes
2 tbsp tomato sauce
8 oz chopped fresh mushrooms
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
fresh basil, chopped 

Preparation

Chop rabbit into bite-sized pieces. Mix a cup of flour with salt, pepper, and sugar and coat the rabbit pieces with it.

Saute celery, diced ham, and garlic in olive oil. Add the mushrooms and dried figs. Once the mushrooms have lost their water, remove all ingredients from the pan.

Add more olive oil and a third of the rabbit. Saute until browned, making sure to keep the bottom of the pan reasonably clear of accumulation from the flour. Repeat for the other two portions of the rabbit.

Deglaze the pan with wine. Return the vegetables to the pan. Add the tomatoes and the basil and stir. Add half of the stock. Stir occasionally to avoid burning. Add the other half of the stock and stir.

Serve over polenta.

--//--

This dish was fairly successful. Sufficiently different from the pot pie so as not to attract unwarranted comparison, and moderately healthier, response was positive enough that I may experiment with it further. In the future, I think I'll focus on freshness and discreteness of the flavors rather than trying to cook them together. I'll still use dried figs, but I will parboil, peel, and chop fresh tomatoes instead of using canned. I won't saute them with everything else, but sprinkle the over the dish afterward. I won't flour the rabbit. I'll nix the tomato sauce and opt for something thinner but with more bite.

The Macrostie Chardonnay was excellent. At $15, it's a revelation. It's got all the earmarks of an over-the-top California Chard: 100% Malo, 1/4 new oak, Hungarian wood -- but in the end, what you taste is lush tropical fruit and spices, with just enough oak and butter to fill it out.

impromptu curried chicken salad

Didn't know what I wanted to eat last night. Rebecca wasn't very hungry, so I figured I'd make something that she wouldn't like anyway. I've been meaning to try a curried chicken salad or sandwich ever since I had a great sandwich at a deli a few months ago. A quick fridge reconnaissance revealed the following:

Impromptu Curry Chicken Salad

1. large chicken breast

1. cup dry white wine

2. tablespoons garlic

1. can diced tomatoes 2-3 tsp curry powder

3. tsp olive oil

2. tbsp balsamic vinegar 1/2 c plain yogurt

3. tbsp mayonnaise cayenne pepper to taste honey to taste

1. small head of savoy cabbage

1. cup mache

1. cup mushrooms 1/2 cucumber golden raisins

Sear the chicken breast in a medium-sized pan and then braise it in white wine and water. Chop the cabbage and cucumber, mix with the mache and raisins in a large bowl. Set aside. Chop the mushrooms and set them aside. Remove the chicken from the pan and shred it. Drain the tomatoes.

Heat the oil in a pan. Add the garlic, cayenne pepper, and curry powder (and onions if you have any -- I didn't, due to Rebecca's aversion to them) and saute. Add the tomatoes and mushrooms and saute. Mix in the chicken. Remove the mixture to a cool bowl. Mix in the yogurt, mayonnaise, vinegar, and honey. Add this to the greens and mix together thoroughly.

--

Edible, but not striking -- not like the sandwich I had, which I can still remember. Not well enough to know what's different, except for the fact that the sandwich probably used all mayonnaise as a base, rather than yogurt as I've done here as a concession to my health. But that wasn't the only difference; the sandwich definitely had a more intense flavor. Do I need more curry powder? Some salt, perhaps? More vinegar? Some other ingredient altogether? The cabbage tasted a little raw; I think some time in the refrigerator after assembly would allow the flavors to mix better and the cabbage to become more tender. I still have half of it left over; I'll eat it again tonight and render a verdict.

these salad days

Made a salad last night. This is of interest because salads are not among Rebecca's favorite foods, being composed, as they are, of many different textures and flavors. But when I went to Trader Joe's and found that they'd stopped carrying duck breast (which is what I'd planned to cook) and started carrying Mache (which is Rebecca's favorite green), I took it as a sign.

Here's my first attempt at a salad in more than six years:

Ingredients:
--//--
Two chicken breasts or three thighs (boneless is best for your sanity)
3/4 cup port
4 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp minced fresh ginger
honey
truffle oil
fresh thyme (leave it on the stick)

12 oz crimini mushrooms
1 to 2 tbsp chopped garlic
1 cup chopped proscuitto
Mozzarella

Two red bell peppers
shredded carrots
A whole lotta Mache

Directions:

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Begin with a medium-sized pot with a tight-fitting lid. Sear the chicken breasts in a little oil, salting and peppering to taste, until the outsides are nicely browned.

Take the pot off of the burner. Turn the burner down to *low*. Wait for the pot to cool a bit (test it by putting a little water in the bottom; if it boils off rapidly, it's too hot). When the pot is cool, add the port, vinegar, and ginger. If the liquid doesn't cover more than 1/2 the height of the chicken, supplement with water or chicken stock. Cover the pot and let the chicken braise until the juices run clear and the meat is no longer pink. (You'll still be able to tell despite the color of the braising liquid. I think it's around 20 mins or so.)

Meanwhile, rinse the Mache, and julienne the bell peppers and carrots. Chop the mozzarella into small bites. Slice the mushrooms. Put a pan on medium-high and saute the garlic in a little bit of oil. Add the proscuitto and saute a bit. Add the mushrooms and saute until they lose their water, about 5 mins. Take this mix off of the heat.

Take remove the braised chicken from the pot. Remove the thyme and throw it away. Remove the lid and let the port mixture reduce by half. Meanwhile, shred the chicken. Taste the port mixture. Balance it out with port, honey, or vinegar as necessary. Add truffle oil to the dressing.

Combine all of the ingredients and the dressing, toss, and serve.

Verdict

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Enjoyable. A success. Some possible changes: use duck instead of chicken. Try pancetta instead of prosciutto. Add croutons or nuts or crispies. I'd also like to work on the dressing some, although I'm not exactly sure what I want to improve about it.