The Confabulist

Valentine's Day 2009 Menu

I didn't have much of a plan when Saturday morning rolled around and I threw on some clothes to head down to the Farmer's Market.  It's been a busy month, so Valentine's Day came upon us as a bit of a surprise.  We aren't romantics, generally speaking, but it's become a bit of a tradition for me to make a Valentine's Day meal.  Normally I have some idea what I'm going to do, if not some explicit recipes, when it's time to shop.  This time, I only had one:  somehow, I was going to find a place in the menu for an egg cooked sous vide.

I got a bit of a late start because I'd spent the previous evening drinking and getting my ass kicked at various board games, which only caused me to do some more drinking.  The farmer's market was crazier than normal, which was unusual because the weather was terrible, and neither situation did anything to help my mood.  I took a slow loop through the market to assess what was available to me.  Many vendors were already packing up to leave, but there were enough that looked like they were there for the long haul, despite the threatening skies and the lateness of the hour.  

My first purchase was a bag of stinging nettles, which, here in the Bay Area, were the New Hotness for awhile.  I'm sure farmers rejoice anytime they can turn a pesky weed into a cash crop.  Though I've heard that some California farmers have to plant nettles on purpose, because they don't thrive here the way they do in other parts of the country.  What I love, though is the fact that some of the stalls have the nettles sitting in bins along with all of the other greens of various kinds, all of them unlabeled.  I keep imagining some poor soul looking for "microgreens" for an afternoon salad and sticking his hand deep into the bin.  I even waited around to see if this or some other entertainment might eventually happen, but eventually I lost interest.  In any case, I'd been seeing recipes for nettle soup and risotto popping up here and there, so there it was:  one dish down.

Since I was at the stall with the greens, I picked up some mache for a salad.  I noticed the next stall had blood oranges, which I love beyond all reason, so that was decided:  Blood Orange salad.  I bought an Asian Pear to round that out.  At a nearby vegetable stall I saw some lovely little orange turnips.  No, I don't mean rutabagas; these were actually turnips with a soft yellow-orange color somewhat reminiscent of a creamscicle.  I thought I might make a seafood stew with these, so I picked up some good looking fennel as well.

Now all I needed was the seafood for the stew, and a protein to serve with the risotto.  I dropped by the San Francisco Fish Company and picked up some stock and some miscellaneous shellfish.  On my way to the other end of the plaza, I passed by Boccalone, the new porcine concern started up by Chris Consentino of Incanto fame.  They have all kinds of things that I have made mental notes to use in the future --  lardo, guancia, salted cured pork liver -- but today it was the sanguinaccio that caught my eye.  I picked up a couple of links and jumped back out into the sea of people.  After picking up some good-looking lamb noisettes at Golden Gate meat company, it was time to head home.

Here's how it went down:

Blood Orange Salad

with Cashews and Asian Pear

This salad was extremely light and fresh, almost summery.  For the dressing, I shook together the fat from the wild boar slab bacon I cooked for use in the next dish, some rice vinegar, dijon mustard, spices, and blood orange juice, which turned out fairly well.  I'd intended to add some cheese or creme fraiche to the salad, but in retrospect, I think it turned out fine as is.  The only modification I'd make would be to toast the cashews.  

Seafood Stew

with Sanguinaccio

To prepare this dish, I sauteed the fennel until soft, added the turnips, which I'd cut to a brunoise, some salt and pepper, and sauteed until the fennel started to turn golden.  I then added a little white wine, a dash of Pernod, and a combination of lobster and veal stock, and cooked this, covered, on low for about 30 minutes.  Twenty minutes before serving I threw in the sanguinaccio and let it cook in the stew.  Five minutes before serving I sauteed the seafood in butter.  I then plated the stew in shallow bowls and placed the seafood on top.  This is a very tasty stew base and a very straightforward technique; I'm sure I'll be using it again.

Sanguinaccio is the Italian equivalent of Morcilla, which is the Spanish equivalent of Boudin Noir, which is the French equivalent of the English black pudding.  In other words, it's blood sausage.  It has a mild, rich, earthy flavor that I thought complemented the seafood stew well, where a normal sausage would have just taken over with its spiciness and meatiness.  Scientists have concluded that blood sausage is the least photogenic of all sausages, so I apologize for not including a picture, but you'll have to trust me when I say that it was very tasty and that you should head to Boccalone and get your own at your earliest convenience.

Lamb Noisette

with Nettle Risotto and Sous Vide Egg

Working with the nettles was annoying -- you have to wear gloves when handling them, and this makes the delicate work of removing their leaves, already an annoying task, take three times as long.  But they have an intriguing green flavor that make for a very interesting risotto (or, I imagine, soup, as they are often used).  I blanched them in a small amount of boiling water for about 45 seconds and then shocked them with cold water.  I then took the blanching water and cooked the stems in it for another couple of minutes.  I added some chicken stock and wine to this water and used this to make the risotto.  I ran the cooked nettles through a food processor.  I added them about 10 minutes before I thought the risotto was done, like one recipe I read suggested, but this turned out to be a mistake.  You have about three or four minutes of cooking before it starts to lose its beautiful green color, so next time I'll add the nettles far closer to serving time.  The resulting risotto was very interesting.  I can't say it's my favorite risotto, but it's definitely a useful set of flavors.  Next time I may try combining the nettles with other herbs.

I've had a makeshift sous vide rig (made from a rice cooker, PID controller, and a FoodSaver) for quite awhile, but haven't been as aggressive about experimenting with it as I'd like to be.  But the ability to make eggs sous vide, it turns out, by itself justifies the necessary purchases and the room that the equipment takes up.  The texture of the egg is very difficult to describe -- luxurious and silky, with a bit more substance than a perfectly poached egg.  I'll definitely be doing this again.

A noisette is a trimmed, boned steak from the loin.  I'm not usually impressed with lamb steaks, at least the ones I've bought and tried to prepare myself, but these turned out to be very good.  I rubbed them with minced garlic, rosemary, and salt and pepper, and grilled them until medium-rare.

The sauce (not pictured) was made from a reduction of red wine with rosemary, to which I added veal stock and let it reduce again, and then mounted with a buerre manie.  I then finished it with a couple of dashes of soy sauce and oyster sauce.  The wine threw some precipitate when it was reduced, but this seemed to be re-integrated when the buerre manie was added.  The sauce had great texture; it looked and tasted very professional.  I should try this again and make better notes about proportions and times.

The Wines

The early courses was served with a 1999 Lakes' Folly Chardonnay.  Lake's Folly has a special meaning to us, because we visited the winery when we were spending time in Hunter Valley, Australia.  Very few wines from the Hunter make it to the U.S., so it's very rare to run across any, much less a winery that we'd been to and loved.  But strangely, at a wine tasting last week at Dee Vine, I spied three or four bottles tucked away on a shelf.  

The last course was served with the 2005 Pride Mountain Merlot.  This wine, a balanced but commanding effort from a benchmark Napa winery, is special to us because we're holding our yearly group wine vacation in Napa this year for the first time, and Pride Mountain will be very close by.  

Food I have made recently, Part I: Goat Carbonnade with Couscous

I'm cooking a lot these days.  For the first time in awhile, the rate at which I'm cooking postworthy dishes far outstrips the time I have to blog about them.  I've decided that I'm not going to let that stop me from posting, since I do need to some relevant details about the food, if only for my own purposes.  Be warned, though, that many of these posts will be spare, and the pictures may not be quite up to par.

One recent dish was goat stew with couscous.  The goat has been in my freezer for months now, and since I recently acquired a whole pork loin and several other items which demanded freezer space, I decided it was time to cook it up.  I used to occasionally buy goat in Santa Ana when Rebecca and I were in exile in Orange County.  I hadn't bought it while in San Francisco until last fall, when I ran across some at random in Draegers (of all places).

Stew Construction

The stew has a pretty simple construction:  rub the goat with salt, pepper, and spices, and sear it on all sides in a pressure cooker.  Throw in some crushed garlic cloves, peppercorns, a bay leaf, some rosemary and perhaps some other herbs, a bit of smoked ham hock or some bacon lardons, a tin of diced tomatoes, and 3 cups of lamb, veal or beef stock.  Add 12 oz of a good, dark, sweet ale, ideally something with a lot of depth, but not too hoppy.  I wanted to get a good porter, but wound up with Newcastle instead.  Put the mixture under pressure for 2 hours.

In the meantime, cube and roast some potatoes or other root vegetables (turnips would be good here) in the oven with salt and herbs.  Prep some snap peas, chop up a bunch of mushrooms, slice some carrots, and prepare any other vegetables  you might want.  Break out the wok.  (I'm all about the wok these days, but details on that will have to wait for another time.)  Cook them separately until they are not-quite-done.  Set aside.

When the meat is ready, open the pressure cooker and pull the meat out.  Strain the braising liquid and put it back in the pot.  Shred the meat and pull out all of the dubious / fatty pieces.  Reduce the broth a bit, add a little cornstarch slurry for body, and correct for salt.  Throw the meat and vegetables in, and you've got a stew!

Somewhere In There You Will Need A Starch

I made my standard couscous, which is 2 cups of boiling chicken stock, 1 1/2 cups of couscous, some raisins,  dried apricots and a little orange zest thrown into a covered pan for 15 minutes, after which some toasted nuts (in this case, pistachios) are mixed in.  If you were serving this bare or alongside something, it would need to be a little wetter and saltier, but under the stew it actually works better this way.

Here's yer Martha Stewart hint for the day:  In pinch, a buttered ramekin can serve as a ring mold, as it did here.  Like you haven't thought of that already.  Ma always said you were the smart one.

Getting Your Goat

I've never understood why we don't eat more goat meat in the U.S.  It's one of those cultural blind spots -- we have no problem eating lamb, but goats, well, that's just ridiculous.  But goat is the primary food animal in some parts of the world.  I love a good steak as much as the next guy, but goat is far better for you -- about half the fat for the same amount of protein.  It has far less cholesterol.  Imagine having a red meat with the same nutritional value as chicken!

And you know what?  It tastes great.  Some imagine that goat tastes gamy, but it doesn't.  Young goat is lean but tender and somehow rich.  Adult goats do require marination and slower cooking, and is therefore less of a convenience food than, say, a New York Strip steak, but it is still very tasty, if a bit less versatile.  Check it out!

Seafood Chowder Deconstruction Project

I'd originally intended this to be a pan-seared Steelhead fillet with shiitake mushrooms in a light milk sauce of some sort.  Early in the day, though, word came down that one of my dinner guests did not like mushrooms.  At around the same time, I ran across a recipe for "almond milk" (not real almond milk; really just toasted almonds braised in milk), and I thought that toasted almonds might add a similar woodsy note that I was going for with the shiitakes. 

In a note to the recipe, the authors mention something about clam chowder, and my mind was off racing:  a milk-braised Steelhead fillet as the centerpiece in some kind of deconstructed chowder nouveau.  Well, maybe half-constructed.

The dish, at least in my opinion, succeeded far beyond my original ambition for it.  It may be a little fiddly, but it's nearly technique-free.  The light milk broth is an excellent stand-in for the traditionally heavy chowder base.  Roasted celeriac one-ups potatoes here -- celeriac is definitely an underused foodstuff.  The almonds and nutmeg provide an intriguing earthy backdrop.  I think this was great food, and I may groom it into one of my staples. But then, I'm always inordinately fond of my concept dishes.

Ingredients

• 1 smallish celeriac
• 1 leek
• 1 bulb of fennel

• 1/2 cup sliced almonds
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp flour
• 2 cups milk

• 2 cups cream
• 2 (additional) cups milk

• 1 Steelhead fillet, big enough four 4 small servings
• 10-15 cooked crawfish with body fat
• 3-4 strips of good quality bacon

• salt
• truffle salt
• pepper
• cayenne pepper

Mise en place

Peel the celeriac.  (Well, you don't really peel a celeriac as much as cut away the thick, dirty outer skin.)  Cut into small, evenly-sized cubes.  Chop the bacon into lardons.  Chop the leek into thin rings. Chop the fennel into medium-sized pieces about the same size as the celeriac cubes, or slightly smaller.   

Execution

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. 

Break out the Pyrex roasting pan.  Place the celeriac cubes in a pile in the center.  Salt and pepper the cubes.  Drizzle olive oil over the pile, and mix up the pile with your hands.  Spread evenly over the bottom of the pan.  Roast for 10-15 minutes, stirring and checking every five minutes.  The cubes should be glistening and toothsome.  Put them in a bowl and set them aside.

Saute the almonds in 2 tbsp of butter until they are nicely toasted, being careful not to burn them.  Stir in 1/2 tsp nutmeg and 1 tsp flour.  Take the pan off of the heat and let it cool off for 1 minute.  Add the 2 cups of milk, stir through, and put back on gentle heat, bringing it to just below boiling.  (Be careful not to let it boil, or it may curdle.)  Then lower the heat.  Add a pinch of cayenne, and pepper and truffle salt to taste.  If you have crawfish with the shells, you can add the shells with the milk.  If you are using frozen crawfish tails with fat on them, as I did -- you can pour the liquid that was at the bottom of the bag after it's defrosted.  If you are lucky enough to be able to easily get fresh or frozen crawfish fat, you can probably just substitute that for butter.  (And if you do try that let me know how it turns out.)

Pour the milk and the cream into a pot large enough to accomodate the steelhead fillets (but small enough that the 4 cups of liquid will submerge them).  Bring the mixture to just below boiling.  Place the steelhead fillets in the pan and cook until a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest fillet reads 135 degrees.

Meanwhile, Saute the bacon lardons.  Remove, retaining 1-2 tbsp of the fat in the pan.  Saute the leeks and the fennel in the bacon fat.  Remove.  Gently reheat the crawfish meat in the bacon fat.

Now you can assemble the dish.  For each serving, put the fillet in the center of a heated, flat-bottomed bowl.  Ladle the milk over it, making sure that you include some of the almonds. Add a portion of the celeriac, bacon, leeks, and crawfish.  Eat immediately.  Serves 4.

Ingredient quality can really make a difference here.  It will taste good no matter what, but finding good quality fish, crawfish, and bacon can really make it stand out.

Allez cuisine!

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:

--//--

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.

--//--

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.

--//--

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. 

IMBB #17, Tea: Assam Creme Brulee Recipe

Living in Chinatown means never having to say that you're out of tea.  In fact, we have so much tea that for this month's IMBB, we decided to create a whole tea menu rather than a single dish!  Even so, one of the dishes stood head and shoulders above the others.  I've provided the recipe for it below; it's the last of the three dishes, so if you're feeling impatient and want to get to the good parts, you can just skip to the end right now.  Hey, that's okay, I won't be offended.  No, really, I'm sure you're very busy.

Cold Corn and Honeydew Soup with Lobster

I've made this dish several different ways, and I've been happy with it every time, but I'm convinced there's an even better soup in here waiting to get out.  It usually draws raves, but I know I can do better.  You'll have to wait until I'm completely satisfied with it before I give you the recipe.  I'll outline the general procedure, however, if you want to experiment with me.

Here's what I did this time:  Begin with six ears of corn.  Cut the kernels off of four of them and throw them in a blender or food processor.  Turn it on and leave the room for a few minutes.  Throw the corn liquid through a strainer.  A wet mass of corn will stay in the strainer.  Don't be afraid.  Roll the corn mass around in the strainer with a deft wrist motion and more of the liquid will strain.  Eventually you will wind up with a relatively dry mass of corn mush in the strainer. Put this back in the food processor.  Core half of the honeydew melon. Throw this in the blender along with the corn mush.  Blend this for a few minutes as well.  Strain this in the same fashion.

Pour the liquid into a saucepan along with 1/2 cup of white wine.  Add the core of four or five lemongrass stalks and some fresh ginger.  Bring to just below a boil.  Add a handful of good quality white tea (we used Drum Mountain White Cloud) and let steep according to the tea's instructions.  Refrigerate until cool.

In the meantime, remove the kernels from the remaining two ears of corn.  Add commensurate amounts of cucumber and honeydew melon in very small dice.  Salt to taste.

Remove the cool soup base.  Add freshly ground cardamom, white pepper, and a dash or two of cayenne pepper.  Whisk in 1/2 cup or more of plain yogurt.  Add lemon juice and a judicious amount of salt.

To serve, pour the soup in the bottom of a wide, flat bowl.  Mound the vegetable mixture in the middle, and top with chunks of lobster.

Everyone seemed to like this incarnation very well, but I couldn't help but feel that it didn't quite live up to its potential.  I remember liking the original version, which doesn't add tea or cook the soup at all, a little better than this one.  I think cooking removes this soup's freshness, which is one of its primary assets.  It seems to kill the color as well.  The hints of white tea in the soup were definitely interesting, however.  Maybe I can figure out a way to add tea flavor to the soup base without cooking it.

Duck Bastilla

Bastilla is a perfect dinner party dish.  It's unusual, impressive-looking, tastes great, and though it requires a fair amount of preparatory work, much of it can be done ahead of time, and it doesn't take long to cook once assembled.

The filling of a bastilla consists of meat (traditionally pigeon; we usually use chicken) and scrambled eggs along with ground almonds and spices.  For this variation we added ground Lychee Black tea and cut back on the sugar a bit.  In the end, the tea flavor didn't come through as much as we wanted, however.

Assam Creme Brulee

Ingredients:

4 egg yolks
2 cups whipping cream
1 tablespoon rum
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup Assam black tea
Raspberries

Directions:

To begin with make sure you are using a good quality Assam tea.  We used Assam Sessa Estate, Second Flush.

Mix cream and sugar in a saucepan.  Heat the mixture to just below a simmer.  Add the Assam and let steep for 7 minutes.  Strain out the tea and pour the mix back into the saucepan.  Whisk the egg yolks in a large bowl.  Add the cream mix to the yolks a bit at a time so that the yolks don't curdle, whisking as you do.  Add the rum and the vanilla.

Pour the mixture into five ramekins.  Put the ramekins into a shallow baking pan and fill the pan with water halfway up the sides of the ramekins.  Bake 30 minutes or until the center of the custard is nearly solid.  Refrigerate for at least two hours.  Press brown sugar through a strainer to create a thin layer of sugar on top of the custard.  Broil until the sugar melts and covers the custard -- this shouldn't take but a minute or so.  Refrigerate another hour or two.  Serve topped with raspberries.

Evaluation:

The Assam adds an incredibly rich flavor to the custard that is difficult to describe.  It's surprisingly coffeelike, actually, but it's where it's different that it's most interesting.  The musky, earthy flavors are quite beguiling.  When such a simple variation can make an old saw like creme brulee be described as "beguiling", it's definitely worth taking notice.

Reuben Sandwich Recipe

If I were marooned on a desert island and the menu from the only restaurant within swimming distance consisted of three types of sandwiches, I would want those sandwiches to be:

1. Soppressata with aged pecorino, ripe roma tomatoes, mayonnaise and dijon mustard on ciabatta,
2. Prosciutto, Stilton, and fig preserves baked into a sourdough round, and
3. A Pastrami Reuben between thick slices of toasted pumpernickel.

These closely edge out Banh Mi Dac Biet, Muffaletta, and Croque Madame, which would probably be next on the list in that order.  (Of course, if you ask me next week, that might all change.)  This weekend, for my last meal cooking for friends in the Orange County area, I decided to whip up some Reubens.

The traditional Reuben sandwich consists of corned beef, Russian dressing, sauerkraut, and swiss cheese on rye bread.  Contemporary versions sometimes use Thousand Island instead of the closely related Russian dressing and pastrami instead of the closely related corned beef.

An incredible amount of lore surrounds the sandwich and its primary condiment.  No less than three different creation stories exist for the sandwich itself.  If you're interested in contemporary food folklore at all, take the time to check out this incredibly fascinating article by Jim Rader of Merriam-Webster that evaluates the credibility of these claims.  The section on the Reuben begins about halfway down the page.

As far as why the dressing is called "Russian", it is asserted that it's because

• Early recipes included caviar [link].
• Early recipes included yogurt, which at the time was thought of as being a food that Russians consumed [link].
• it was pink, and in America at the time of the dressing's invention, Russian salads were thought of as having pink dressings [link].

The Bread:

The Reuben is most at home on dark Russian rye.  Pumpernickel will do, though, and quite frankly I don't exactly know what the difference is.  For this occasion, however, I decided to go in a non-traditional direction.  I bought the meats and other ingredients at a grocery store that caters to a Middle Eastern clientele, and they bake gorgeous flatbreads and sell them to you straight out of the oven.  As you can see in the picture above, I used these to wrap the Reuben filling, pinning it together with a toothpick.  This worked out very well.  The flatbread's flavor and texture worked spectacularly with the Reuben filling.  Sacrilege?  Maybe, but it's very tasty sacrilege.

The Contents:

• Pastrami (about 1/3 - 1/2 lb per sandwich)
• Gruyere or other Swiss cheese
• Sauerkraut

The Dressing:

There's no reason to use bottled Thousand Island dressing when you can make a much better Russian dressing at home in short order.

Russian Dressing:

• 1 c mayonnaise
• 1/4 c sour cream
• 1/4 c ketchup
• 1 tbsp horseradish
• 2 tbsp good wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp finely chopped garlic
• 1 tbsp celery seed or fennel seed
• 2 tbsp finely chopped dill pickle
• 2 tbsp finely chopped shallots (optional)
• 1/2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

Makes about 1 1/2 cups of dressing, or enough for 6 sandwiches.

The Assembly:

Normally, the sandwich is assembled, a little butter is put down on a hot pan, and the whole sandwich is grilled until the cheese melts and the bread is toasted.  My procedure is quite different, partially due to my preferences, and partially due to the constraints provided by the wrap.  I enjoyed the result immensely, though, so I may use this as the model for all of my future Reubens.

1. Shred the Gruyere.
2. Shred the Pastrami coarsely with your hands.
3. Mix the Pastrami, the Gruyere, and half of the sauce together in a bowl.
4. Microwave the mixture for 45 seconds per serving, or until the edges of the pastrami crisp.
5. Squeeze all of the liquid out of the sauerkraut.
6. Put down a thin layer of sauce on the bread.  Add the pastrami mixture and top with sauerkraut.
7. If you're using regular bread slices, grill the sandwich in a pan with a bit of butter.

The Dessert:

Balsamic Strawberry Shortbread:  an old standby, but it's quick and easy and sooo good.  Which, one presumes, is why it's an old standby.  Rebecca whipped up some shortbread, and between that and a little ice cream, you have a perfect dessert for company.  (The ice cream is in the center below the strawberries in the picture.)

The procedure is simple enough:

1. Slice 16 oz of fresh strawberries.
2. Pour 1/4 cup of good balsamic vinegar over the slices.
3. Add 2-3 tbsp of brown sugar and mix through.
4. Let mixture sit for 45 minutes in the refrigerator, tossing the mixture every 15 minutes.
5. Serve over ice cream, shortbread, puff pastry, cheesecake, or whatever you have lying around.
6. Top with a dollop of whipped cream, sour cream, creme fraiche, or whatever you have lying around.

I'm not normally the "fresh fruit and dairy" type of dessert person; I prefer my sins to be heavier and more decadent.  This is one simple dessert that is much greater than the sum of its parts, however.

Other resources:

• The Reuben Realm is a site devoted to reviews of the Reuben offerings from various restaurants.  Most of the reviews so far are centered around Indiana, so if you're nearby (and like Reubens) it might prove to be a valuable resource.
• Snopes has an entertaining discussion on the etymology of the word "pumpernickel".

Getting your goat

I finally remembered to marinate the goat this morning. I didn't have time to do anything fancy, as I was on my way to work, and I had an early meeting. In fact, I didn't have time to consider what the hell I was doing at all. I just grabbed the first ingredients I could find, which resulted in a hodgepodge of red wine, pomegranate syrup, currants, balsamic vinegar, a half of a bottle of flat beer (!), various spices, and several other things that I have forgotten but are probably best left unmentioned.

After work I chopped some orange zest, ginger, and garlic and sauteed them in olive oil in the base of the pressure cooker. I threw goat and the marinade in, brought it up to pressure, and ignored it for about two hours.

Goat is supposed to be fairly tough and benefits from marination and a long braising time. The exception to this is kid, a young goat, which requires neither; most kid recipes I've found require less than an hour to cook, though some take as long as two hours.

This made me wonder if my goat leg was from a kid or from something older, and if I was possibly doing my goat an injustice by cooking it for so long in the pressure cooker. When I went in to check on its progress. I discovered the the cooker had lost its pressure, so that my goat stew had basically just been simmering for two hours. After inexpertly judging the toughness of the goat meet by feel, I decided to cook it for one more hour under pressure and then call it done.

Unfortunately, I had to go out that evening, so I told Rebecca to take care of it, and I left for the night.

I came back around 1 a.m. and looked in the fridge. Sure enough, there was the goat stew. I wasn't hungry, so I didn't eat any, but I did sample some of the goat meat. It was lean and dense, with a character all its own. I had assumed that it would generally be like lamb. It isn't! It's much leaner and has a unique flavor. I was very excited. Rebecca laughs at how worked up I can get over something like cooking a goat.

I'll write more about it tomorrow, when we have this stew for dinner.

cauliflower and stilton soup recipe

Saturday, Rebecca and I had the pleasure of having lunch at Jeanty at Jack's, a great French Bistro in downtown San Francisco. One of the highlights of our visit was the Soupe du Jour, a Cauliflower and Bleu Cheese Soup. Bone-white, rich, and mild, it was an elegant, filling soup. Since cauliflower season is just coming on, I decided to take on the challenge of making such a soup the very next day. Here's the result of my first attempt.

Cauliflower and Stilton Soup

Ingredients

for the soup:

2 slices of thick cut bacon (or 3-4 thin)
5-6 cups cauliflower florets (1 to 1 1/2 large heads?)
1 large Yukon Gold potato, diced
1/4 cup flour
3 cloves of roasted garlic
nutmeg
cayenne pepper
6 oz stilton
milk

for the dumplings:

3/4 cup breadcrumbs
3/4 cup panko
1 egg
1/2 tbsp butter, melted
1/2 to 3/4 cup cooked fish or shellfish meat, shredded 

Directions

In a deep pan suitable for cooking soup, render the fat from the bacon slices. Remove the bacon from the pan, leaving the fat. Saute the diced potato and the cauliflower florets (as well as the garlic if you're using raw garlic) for five minutes, then add the flour and cook a bit longer. Add the stock, crumbled bacon pieces, 1 cup of milk, 1/4 tsp each of nutmeg, cayenne pepper, and black pepper. Cook for twenty-five minutes on low heat, stirring occasionally to make sure that it's not burning on the bottom.

While the mixture is cooking, prepare the fish dumplings. Feel free to use almost any kind of fish or shellfish you have around -- salmon, scallops, crab, lobster, should all work fine. I had a single Steelhead Trout filet in the freezer, so that's what I chose, and it worked fine. Mix all of the listed ingredients together. Don't be afraid if there's some clumping due to the small quantity of wet ingredents. Add milk in 1/8 cup batches, stirring through, until the mixture coheres enough to form small balls. Roll into 1/2 inch balls.

Once the cauliflower mixture is finished cooking, blend in batches and put back into the original pan. Add milk to thin to desired consistency. (After blending, the mixture may be like a thick porridge. Add a little milk until it's more pudding-like, then add a bit more.) Add the fish dumplings, submerging them completely. Crumble the stilton and stir through. Cook on low heat for ten more minutes. Salt and pepper to taste and serve.

Thoughts

There are many differences between my soup and the Jeanty at Jack's version. Some were intentional. The dumplings, for instance, were my addition, inspired by some research I did into similar soups. Other differences were not by choice. The Jeanty soup is completely white. All of their ingredients are probably white or clear. This made for a very elegant soup, but one which was beyond my humble kitchen. They must have used a consomme or a white chicken stock, I imagine. (Actually, it could have been a clear vegetable stock, I suppose.) I had none of these things, so I used regular chicken stock, and the brand that I use is quite yellow. As a result, my soup was light tan in color, rather than white. Similarly, they probably used white pepper. I thought I had some, but I could not find it. (I need a better system for spice organization!) My soup, therefore, had little black specks sprinked throughout.

Both in taste and texture, too, I thought my soup was a bit heavier, perhaps betraying the bacon fat and potato, neither of which, I suspect, were present in the Jeanty version. I also think that my soup has more bleu cheese than theirs, and is spiced more heavily. But I am satisfied with my choices in all of these cases. Heavier though it is, I think my soup is fairly well balanced. And it is not overwhelmed by the Stilton or the spices. (In fact, we both thought that the Jeanty version could use a little more bleu cheese.)

Finally, the restaurant soup likely benefited from the inclusion of onions or shallots, both of which are verboten in my kitchen due to Rebecca's strong feelings about them. If you're following this recipe, feel free to add an onion -- chop it and saute it in the bacon fat before you add the other ingredients.

This is a good soup. It's cheap, hearty, and flavorful. Check it out.

malaysian lamb stew

I am a cooking machine. Who darest challenge me? Menu for tonight:

Predator and Prey Salad
Shredded Rabbit on Wild Greens and Red Bell Peppers
with Persimmon Vinaigrette

Okay, so it wasn't a "vinaigrette" -- it the persimmon chutney I made on Sunday, slightly thinned. It made a satisfactory dressing on the salad. Not spectacular, but it got the job done. Which job, in this case, is encouraging the consumption of actual vegetables, which are normally missing from our diet.

--//--

Malaysian Lamb Stew
with Lentils and Eggplant

This stew is based on a fascinating recipe of James Peterson's; his version of a traditional Malaysian dish. I've never made any Malaysian-influenced food before; this was a gentle and interesting introduction, however authentic or inauthentic it may be. I enjoy it when a dish that I make is both well-received and unlike anything I've ever made before.

Ordinarily would take a bit too long to be weeknight fare, but I was home just early enough to start the lamb braising and still have everything done by 8:00.

Ingredients

3 small lamb shanks, or 1 lb lamb shoulder
5 cloves of garlic
2 cups chicken or beef stock
1 eggplant, peeled and cubed 
1 14 oz. can tomatoes
1 onion
1 tbsp finely chopped fresh ginger
1 cup lentils
1 cup coconut milk
1/8 cup white wine vinegar

Curry spices

1 tsp. Cumin
1 tsp. Coriander
1/2 tsp. Cardamom
1/2 tsp. Allspice
1/2 tsp. Cinnamon

Preparation

Brown the lamb in olive oil. Add three garlic cloves, 1/2 cup of wine, and two cups of stock. Braise the lamb in a covered pot on the stovetop for two hours, skimming occasionally. Turn the shanks halfway through braising.

Saute two chopped cloves of garlic and the onion in butter in a medium-sized pot over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Add the curry spices and the ginger and saute for 5 more minutes.

Pull the lamb out of the braising liquid and set aside. Pour the braising liquid into the pot with the garlic and onions. Add the lentils, tomatoes, and eggplant. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, pull the meat off of the shank and shred it. Throw away the bones and fat.

Puree the stew in a blender and, if you like, strain it through a medium-mesh strainer. Stir in the coconut milk, the lamb, and the vinegar. Season to taste (it will likely need salt). Let sit for 10 minutes over low heat, stirring occasionally.

--//--

Take my advice: buy (or make!) some naan before you make this dish. Nothing else will do. Well, except maybe some Roti Canai.

(Just for good measure, click here for an interesting article on Indian breads of all kinds.)

Beef Bourguignon

If you've never made Beef Bourguignon before, you owe it to your stomach to do so. It's more than just beef stew. Although it takes some time and costs a little more than you'd expect, it's not very labor intensive and takes next to nothing in the way of cooking skills. And it's absolutely delicious.

Even (or perhaps especially) if you've made similar dishes without the Burgundy, the brandy, or the bacon, you should give it another try with a recipe similar to this one. Your taste buds will thank me. (And I must say I'm looking forward to that!)

Beef Bourguignon
--//--

2 bottles of red Burgundy 
3/4 cup brandy
3 cups of beef broth
1 1/2 lb fresh mushrooms
2 small Turkish bay leaves
1 frond of rosemary
2 beef marrow bones
2 tbsp brown sugar
3 oz tomato paste (about 1/2 can) 
salt and pepper

3 1/2 lb of boneless chuck, cut into large cubes 
12 oz thick cut bacon
3 large carrots
4 celery stalks
3 large russet potatoes
1 large sweet onion
8 garlic cloves

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Slather the marrow bones with 
vegetable oil and brown in the oven for 10 minutes or so, turning
them over halfway through. 

Peel and cube the potato, peel the garlic, and chop the onion.  
Cut the bacon into 1 inch pieces.  Put 1/3 of it back into the 
refrigerator.  

Cook the bacon in a large dutch oven.  Set the cooked bacon 
aside.  Reserve most of the fat, leaving the rest in the bottom
of the pot.  Thoroughly salt and pepper the cubed beef, then 
dredge in flour.  Brown the beef in bacon fat in three batches, 
adding more fat to the bottom of the pot between batches.  

Once the beef is done, smash the garlic with the heel of your 
hand and cook the potatoes, the onion, and the garlic in the 
bacon fat.  Remove them from the pot and set aside.

Remove the pot from the heat for a moment.  Add the brandy add 
deglaze the bottom of the pot (putting it back on the heat).  
Add one cup of beef stock and reduce the mixture by 3/4.  Put 
the marrow bones at the bottom of the pot.  Add the two bottles 
of wine, the other two cups of stock, the bacon, the beef, and 
the potato/onion/garlic mixture back into the pot, and add the 
tomato paste and the sugar.  Make a boquet garni from the bay 
leaf, rosemary, and fresh thyme (if you have it), and add to the 
pot.  Bring the mixture to a boil, then put in the oven.

After two hours: quarter the mushrooms, and slice the carrots and 
the celery.  Fry the remaining bacon in a pan.  Remove the bacon 
from the pan.  Cook the vegetables briefly in the bacon fat until 
they just begin to soften.  Add the vegetables and the bacon to 
the pot.

Continue cooking the mixture in the oven for another two hours.
After this period is over you may, if you wish, remove the solids
and continue cooking the liquid on the stovetop to reduce it further. 

Serve over fresh linguini.

Some notes:

1. Don't skimp on the wine. Try this recipe at least once with real Burgundy from Burgundy. You're putting two bottles in, so the flavor of the wine will likely do more to determine the flavor of the dish than anything else that goes in. And Burgundy isn't cheap, I know, but if you have a decent wine store accessible to you, you should be able to find something drinkable for around $12/bottle. Expect it to be the most expensive component of the meal. But don't fret. Served with linguini, it should comprise about eight servings, which brings the total cost per serving down to around $5 or $6, which isn't so bad.

2. Serve it with a Burgundy. If you don't know what you like in Burgundy, or don't want to spend much money, just buy three bottles of the wine you're cooking with instead of two.

Full disclosure:

1. I forgot my plans and added the vegetables at the beginning of cooking. And they were, as you'd expect, a bit too soft in the end. Make sure to add them in the middle of cooking.

2. I actually used part of an elk roast instead of beef, but the meat was too lean and was, in the end, mealy and flavorless. I should have suspected this, having had this problem before, but I thought maybe things would be different if I cooked it longer. Apparently not. Stick with fattier cuts from fattier animals; they'll stand up better to long braisings.

3. The marrow bone part is entirely optional. I don't even know if this is how you're supposed to use marrow bones exactly. (Theoretically, I think you're supposed to get the bones cut for you at the butcher's, then roast them and scoop out the marrow.) But I saw them in the grocery store, but I was in a hurry, and figured what the hell. Plus one of the butchers assured me that she just roasted the bone and then put them in with whatever she was cooking. Next time, though, I think I'll have them split it for me.

Bon appetit!