if pork and quenelles had a love child, i imagine that it would be these meatballs. not that i've ever tasted quenelles (a delicate sort of french dumpling that is made of a mild white meat or fish, and poached), but i've always thought that they would be a much more sophisticated version of chinese fish balls. these meatballs arose from pure opportunity, as i had exactly the amount of ricotta needed leftover from the homemade ricotta.
this recipe is especially excellent because each of the ingredients plays a clear role (note: this analysis may or may not be exactly correct, but it is generally correct). the binding ingredients are the eggs and the parmesan, while the ricotta and pork combine for flavor and texture. notably absent in this recipe is breadcrumbs, which are typical in most meatballs. however, the strained ricotta replaces the breadcrumbs (this is why you have to strain it - so that it doesn't render your meatballs unable to stick together) and the delicacy of its flavor contrasts extremely well with the pork, which is truly the dominant flavor. have you noticed how meatballs invariably taste like meatballs? these meatballs still taste like meatballs, but they taste undeniably like pork meatballs - there's nothing to muddle up the flavor. the ricotta gives the meatballs a very light texture that's still meaty - ie, there's something to bite into. they're not heavy like other meatballs, and the ricotta renders the meatballs edible hot or cold (ie, right out of the refrigerator for breakfast).
so essentially these are meatballs for people who like pork, and don't like heavy meatballs (where heavy relates more to their weight in your stomach rather than their fat content). the other really great thing about them is that by some combination of the circumstances of their ingredients and the fact that they are rolled in flour, they brown extremely well and tastily, without those little bits of meatball that stick to the pan and get ripped away, then burn. so these are meatballs for people who like flavorful, non-heavy, and easy to cook meatballs. despite the lengthy directions, these are pretty easy to make, and rather more rewarding than is normal for an out of the ordinary recipe.
pork and ricotta meatballs (adapted from the new york times)
1 lb ricotta (storebought or homemade)
2-3T sour cream if you're using homemade ricotta
1 1/2 lbs ground pork, room temperature (this makes it easier to mix into the ricotta)
1c parmesan
2 eggs
1t salt
freshly ground pepper
1/2c flour, plus more if needed
vegetable oil or corn oil (not olive oil, which has a low smoking temperature)
~3-4c mild, homemade tomato sauce (so as not to overpower the meatballs; do not use any sort of jarred or canned sauce - we made ours as we waited for the meatballs to chill)
1. if you're using storebought ricotta, weight the ricotta overnight to drain it of most of its liquid. Layer cheesecloth in a colander and put the ricotta inside. tie the ends of the cheesecloth together and weight with a plate and something that's moderately heavy (like a pound of butter); put the colander on a tray to catch the liquid and refrigerate. the resulting strained ricotta should be like tofu in appearance. if you're using homemade ricotta, let the ricotta come to room temperature and mix the sour cream into it with a spoon or in a food processor, to get rid of the lumps.
2. mix ricotta, parmesan, and eggs in a large bowl until well mixed. add ground pork, salt and pepper and mix with your fingers (not a spoon, and yes, it is messy) until it's mixed together well. don't worry too much about overmixing. cover the bowl and chill for 1/2 hour.
3. line a baking sheet with foil and put the flour on a plate. shape pork mixture into balls (we did ours at about 1 1/2" to 2" diameter) and roll in the flour, tossing gently in your hands to get rid of excess flour. place on the baking sheet and repeat until mixture is all used up. cover the baking sheet with plastic wrap and chill for at least half an hour, and ideally a full hour.
4. when you're ready to cook the meatballs, heat 1 1/2 to 2T oil in a large skillet over medium to medium-high heat (if your smoke detector is sensitive like ours is, use the lower heat). brown the meatballs and remove to a plate; cover loosely with a piece of foil to prevent heat loss. continue until you're done with the meatballs, adding more oil as necessary. take care not to break the meatballs apart when you turn them.
5. return all of the meatballs to the pan and add tomato sauce; shake pan from side to side to coat. keep heat on medium and simmer the meatballs in the sauce for 20-30 minutes, until meatballs are completely cooked through. adjust the seasoning and serve with pasta (you can also make the meatballs smaller and make them as an appetizer).
[serves 4-6]
15 juin 2007
11 juin 2007
a little speed (homemade ricotta)
no, not speed with respect to the homemade ricotta, but rather, with dinner made from the ricotta. however, despite the lengthy instructions, the actual production of the ricotta is very easy and short. most of the work is prep work. the best ricotta i have ever had was in a salad at chez panisse (the restaurant, not the cafe) - it was light, creamy yet with definitely definable curd, pressed into a triangular slice. i think it was drizzled with olive oil, which is, i have to say, a really excellent way to eat ricotta. but if my memory is failing me, then i definitely had ricotta drizzled with olive oil on bread at some restaurant in the past.
i was thus particularly excited about homemade ricotta because it looked so easy to make. i shouldn't have been surprised, as jessica and i made paneer in much the same way in our cooking class (paneer is a slightly different mix of milk and yogurty ingredients, and is pressed and weighted instead of allowed to drain). this ricotta is richer than supermarket whole-milk ricotta, even though it's also made with whole milk, but is a bit hard in the curd - i wonder if letting it drain less would have been more ideal.
the accompanying recipe that uses the ricotta is pretty fast (maybe half an hour at most) and is prety excellent. the rotini is key, unless you have a suggestion for another pasta shape that holds ricotta as well as it does. the bell peppers and shallots provide some counterpoint to the ricotta, and the pasta essentially acts as a starch...you could also just spread the ricotta-pepper mixture on bread.
homemade ricotta (adapted from michael chiarello)
1 gallon whole milk (or some mixture of 2% and whole milk)
1 quart buttermilk
1 package of cheesecloth
candy thermometer (optional)
herbs (optional)
1. combine whole milk, buttermilk, and herbs (if using) in a large saucepan (ideally, some kind of stockpot). heat over high heat, scraping bottom of the pot with a rubber heatproof spatula to prevent the milk from scorching. it will seem like the heat is too high, but it's not. it would be good to use a heavy-bottomed pot. set up a large-bottomed colander lined with a large piece of cheesecloth, folded to a thickness of 5-6 layers (it will be about 1 1/2 feet square).
2. when the milk is warm, stop stirring it (you can give it a stir very infrequently if you're a compulsive stirrer) so the curds can form.
3. when the milk reaches 175-180F, the mixture will curdle so that you can clearly see white curds and slightly cloudy clearer liquid (the whey) around the edges of the pot. the surface will look like a white raft of foam and curds. remove from heat immediately. place the colander in the sink and ladle the curds and whey into it, making sure you don't break up the curds. when most of the liquid has drained, tie the ends of the cheesecloth over the faucet and let the curds drain weighted by its self-weight for about 15 minutes.
4. scoop ricotta into an airtight container and let cool. when cool, cover and refrigerate. the ricotta will keep for about a week.
[makes 3-4 cups]
rotini with ricotta and red peppers
1 lb pasta
1 T olive oil
2-3 large shallots, chopped finely
2 red bell peppers, sliced into small 1/4"x1" batons
1 1/2 to 2c ricotta, either whole or part-skim, or homemade
salt and pepper, and a little bit of sugar
1. heat water in a large saucepan to boil, for the pasta. add 1/2T of olive oil to a medium skillet and heat on medium-high. add shallots and saute, stirring every now and then, until shallots are translucent, about 8 minutes.
2. add remaining 1/2T oil to the skillet with the shallots in it, and then add the bell peppers. saute until soft (but not too soft), about 10-15 minutes. when water boils, add pasta and stir every now and then.
3. if your ricotta is fairly hard (this will be the case with the recipe for homemade ricotta), add to the bell pepper mix in the skillet and heat to soften for about five minutes. keep the mixture warm over medium-low heat.
4. when pasta is done, drain and return to saucepan. add bell pepper mixture; if you have not yet added the ricotta, add it now. season with salt and pepper, plus a bit of sugar to balance the salt. serve while warm.
[serves 4-6; can be halved]
i was thus particularly excited about homemade ricotta because it looked so easy to make. i shouldn't have been surprised, as jessica and i made paneer in much the same way in our cooking class (paneer is a slightly different mix of milk and yogurty ingredients, and is pressed and weighted instead of allowed to drain). this ricotta is richer than supermarket whole-milk ricotta, even though it's also made with whole milk, but is a bit hard in the curd - i wonder if letting it drain less would have been more ideal.
the accompanying recipe that uses the ricotta is pretty fast (maybe half an hour at most) and is prety excellent. the rotini is key, unless you have a suggestion for another pasta shape that holds ricotta as well as it does. the bell peppers and shallots provide some counterpoint to the ricotta, and the pasta essentially acts as a starch...you could also just spread the ricotta-pepper mixture on bread.
homemade ricotta (adapted from michael chiarello)
1 gallon whole milk (or some mixture of 2% and whole milk)
1 quart buttermilk
1 package of cheesecloth
candy thermometer (optional)
herbs (optional)
1. combine whole milk, buttermilk, and herbs (if using) in a large saucepan (ideally, some kind of stockpot). heat over high heat, scraping bottom of the pot with a rubber heatproof spatula to prevent the milk from scorching. it will seem like the heat is too high, but it's not. it would be good to use a heavy-bottomed pot. set up a large-bottomed colander lined with a large piece of cheesecloth, folded to a thickness of 5-6 layers (it will be about 1 1/2 feet square).
2. when the milk is warm, stop stirring it (you can give it a stir very infrequently if you're a compulsive stirrer) so the curds can form.
3. when the milk reaches 175-180F, the mixture will curdle so that you can clearly see white curds and slightly cloudy clearer liquid (the whey) around the edges of the pot. the surface will look like a white raft of foam and curds. remove from heat immediately. place the colander in the sink and ladle the curds and whey into it, making sure you don't break up the curds. when most of the liquid has drained, tie the ends of the cheesecloth over the faucet and let the curds drain weighted by its self-weight for about 15 minutes.
4. scoop ricotta into an airtight container and let cool. when cool, cover and refrigerate. the ricotta will keep for about a week.
[makes 3-4 cups]
rotini with ricotta and red peppers
1 lb pasta
1 T olive oil
2-3 large shallots, chopped finely
2 red bell peppers, sliced into small 1/4"x1" batons
1 1/2 to 2c ricotta, either whole or part-skim, or homemade
salt and pepper, and a little bit of sugar
1. heat water in a large saucepan to boil, for the pasta. add 1/2T of olive oil to a medium skillet and heat on medium-high. add shallots and saute, stirring every now and then, until shallots are translucent, about 8 minutes.
2. add remaining 1/2T oil to the skillet with the shallots in it, and then add the bell peppers. saute until soft (but not too soft), about 10-15 minutes. when water boils, add pasta and stir every now and then.
3. if your ricotta is fairly hard (this will be the case with the recipe for homemade ricotta), add to the bell pepper mix in the skillet and heat to soften for about five minutes. keep the mixture warm over medium-low heat.
4. when pasta is done, drain and return to saucepan. add bell pepper mixture; if you have not yet added the ricotta, add it now. season with salt and pepper, plus a bit of sugar to balance the salt. serve while warm.
[serves 4-6; can be halved]
05 juin 2007
foodie peer pressure
This article is really kind of saddening. People should listen to their stomachs and just make what they want - chances are, it's what their friends want, too. This is from the NY Times:
Dinner at the Foodies’: Purslane and Anxiety
By KATHERINE WHEELOCK
Published: June 6, 2007
RICHARD FAULK still recalls, with a twinge of shame, the day he and his girlfriend, Jeanine Villalobos, served store-bought tortillas to guests.
“We were mortified that we hadn’t made our own,” he said.
The two, who live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, make most of the elements of the meals they serve from scratch, and spend whole days going to farmers’ markets, cheese shops and specialty stores. They would no sooner dress a salad with a store-bought vinaigrette than serve a suspicious-smelling piece of fish.
“We’re a little self-conscious about being the foodie couple,” said Mr. Faulk, who teaches at Berkeley College in Midtown Manhattan. “But we don’t make everything. I haven’t started curing my own olives or making my own cheese.”
Dinner parties have been fraught with performance anxiety for as long as people have given them. Soufflés, cribbed from the pages of glossy food magazines, have been attempted and botched. Painstakingly wrought amuse-bouches have received lukewarm receptions.
But for some hosts in the age of the armchair Boulud, even a laid-back dinner with friends can be a challenge to their sense of self-worth. They may not care whether they wear Gap or couture. Their place in the Hamptons might be a share. But they would no sooner serve their guests grocery-case Drunken Goat cheese than a Vogue minion would wear an Ann Taylor dress to a party given by Anna Wintour.
Especially in New York, where there are fewer status indicators (like cars and landscaped lawns), adjectives like local, organic and free range are signifiers of taste. In some homes, primarily midcentury modernized homes in metropolitan areas with his and hers subscriptions to The Art of Eating and an embargo on iceberg lettuce, the pork, the mesclun, the salad dressing — they’re all under scrutiny.
“Entertaining and cooking have become an integral part of how certain people demonstrate their cultural cachet,” said Joshua Schreier, a history professor at Vassar College who lives in Harlem and says he is a victim, and a propagator, of culinary anxiety. “There is a specific cachet that only a fiddlehead fern can convey. Saying, ‘I got this olive oil from this specific region in Greece,’ is like talking about what kind of car you have. And people don’t want to be associated with the wrong kind of olive oil. It becomes less about having people over and more about showing off your foodie credentials.”
Colleen McKinney, a freelance food writer and editor who lives in Brooklyn, said: “Food is cocktail party conversation. You cook it and then you talk about it all night long.”
Ms. McKinney is generally confident in the kitchen, except when it comes to one particular couple. When they have her over, dinner might be asparagus three ways, fresh pasta with sausage they made themselves and rhubarb pie with vanilla ice cream — homemade vanilla ice cream. When they go to her house for dinner, they take their own pickled ramps.
“It’s become very important to be all Alice Waters,” said Serena Bass, the Manhattan caterer. “Everyone wants to know where the poor pig you’re serving came from.”
Ms. Bass also pointed out that the new strain of entertaining anxiety extended well beyond food. “You can’t just serve purslane,” she said. “You have to serve purslane on Limoges you found in a Connecticut consignment shop with a fork that has a carved ivory handle you found in a flea market somewhere.”
Andy Birsh, owner of a letterpress print shop in Brooklyn, would rather make a mad, stressful dash to Brighton Beach for smoked sturgeon an hour before guests arrive for dinner than serve the kind he can buy from a market around the corner. And for him, serving a dish that is on the menu at several good restaurants in the city right now — a fava bean salad with shaved pecorino, for instance — would be like being caught reading “The Lovely Bones” right after Oprah Winfrey endorsed it.
“As soon as something becomes overpopularized, I don’t want to serve it anymore,” Mr. Birsh said. “I wouldn’t want anyone to be able to identify something I made as being from a book or a restaurant. I don’t want anyone to be able to say, oh, I see where he got this idea to put microgreens on top of his fish fillets.”
As a graduate of the French Culinary Institute and restaurant critic for Gourmet in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Mr. Birsh may have above-average pride when it comes to his cooking. But it is not out of the ordinary for hosts in this intensely food-cognizant dinner party circuit.
For them, home entertaining can become the white whale. It turns docile cooks into aggressive obsessives, the way an engagement can turn a well-meaning woman into bridezilla or how fatherhood can make a laid-back guy an apoplectic soccer dad.
“My ex got caught up in it,” said a Brooklyn woman who is going through a divorce and asked that her name not be used. “For a while, it was great. Until it wasn’t. We had a birthday party for our 1-year-old son and I ordered pizza. He spent another $1,000 on food. There were plates and plates of cheese and cured meats from this gourmet place. For a 1-year-old.”
Alan Palmer, co-owner of Blue Apron Foods, a specialty store in Park Slope, has seen the new strain of culinary anxiety in all forms. “Some people come in and ask for the most expensive cheese because they think it’s going to be the most impressive,” he said, recalling a time when Carr’s was the must-have brand of cracker.
“But a lot of people come in and ask for help because they’re afraid they’re going to make a mistake. They want raw-milk cheese because they heard it was better, or something local because that’s the new byword. I say: ‘Look, there really is no right or wrong here. People aren’t going to throw rocks at you if you serve the wrong cheese.’ ”
Wise counsel from a cheesemonger. But there is a flip side to this breed of home entertaining agita. Serve the right kind of cheese often enough, and you can end up holding the oven mitt for life. Professor Schreier, the self-proclaimed olive oil zealot, has found that certain friends of his, cowed by his Chez Panisse-style presentations, have given up trying to compete with him in the culinary arena altogether.
“People see the potential conflict and bow out,” he said. “If you’re the biggest foodie in the group, people will have you over and say, ‘So what should we get?’ We went to one couple’s home and they hadn’t even gone to the store yet.”
Dinner at the Foodies’: Purslane and Anxiety
By KATHERINE WHEELOCK
Published: June 6, 2007
RICHARD FAULK still recalls, with a twinge of shame, the day he and his girlfriend, Jeanine Villalobos, served store-bought tortillas to guests.
“We were mortified that we hadn’t made our own,” he said.
The two, who live in Park Slope, Brooklyn, make most of the elements of the meals they serve from scratch, and spend whole days going to farmers’ markets, cheese shops and specialty stores. They would no sooner dress a salad with a store-bought vinaigrette than serve a suspicious-smelling piece of fish.
“We’re a little self-conscious about being the foodie couple,” said Mr. Faulk, who teaches at Berkeley College in Midtown Manhattan. “But we don’t make everything. I haven’t started curing my own olives or making my own cheese.”
Dinner parties have been fraught with performance anxiety for as long as people have given them. Soufflés, cribbed from the pages of glossy food magazines, have been attempted and botched. Painstakingly wrought amuse-bouches have received lukewarm receptions.
But for some hosts in the age of the armchair Boulud, even a laid-back dinner with friends can be a challenge to their sense of self-worth. They may not care whether they wear Gap or couture. Their place in the Hamptons might be a share. But they would no sooner serve their guests grocery-case Drunken Goat cheese than a Vogue minion would wear an Ann Taylor dress to a party given by Anna Wintour.
Especially in New York, where there are fewer status indicators (like cars and landscaped lawns), adjectives like local, organic and free range are signifiers of taste. In some homes, primarily midcentury modernized homes in metropolitan areas with his and hers subscriptions to The Art of Eating and an embargo on iceberg lettuce, the pork, the mesclun, the salad dressing — they’re all under scrutiny.
“Entertaining and cooking have become an integral part of how certain people demonstrate their cultural cachet,” said Joshua Schreier, a history professor at Vassar College who lives in Harlem and says he is a victim, and a propagator, of culinary anxiety. “There is a specific cachet that only a fiddlehead fern can convey. Saying, ‘I got this olive oil from this specific region in Greece,’ is like talking about what kind of car you have. And people don’t want to be associated with the wrong kind of olive oil. It becomes less about having people over and more about showing off your foodie credentials.”
Colleen McKinney, a freelance food writer and editor who lives in Brooklyn, said: “Food is cocktail party conversation. You cook it and then you talk about it all night long.”
Ms. McKinney is generally confident in the kitchen, except when it comes to one particular couple. When they have her over, dinner might be asparagus three ways, fresh pasta with sausage they made themselves and rhubarb pie with vanilla ice cream — homemade vanilla ice cream. When they go to her house for dinner, they take their own pickled ramps.
“It’s become very important to be all Alice Waters,” said Serena Bass, the Manhattan caterer. “Everyone wants to know where the poor pig you’re serving came from.”
Ms. Bass also pointed out that the new strain of entertaining anxiety extended well beyond food. “You can’t just serve purslane,” she said. “You have to serve purslane on Limoges you found in a Connecticut consignment shop with a fork that has a carved ivory handle you found in a flea market somewhere.”
Andy Birsh, owner of a letterpress print shop in Brooklyn, would rather make a mad, stressful dash to Brighton Beach for smoked sturgeon an hour before guests arrive for dinner than serve the kind he can buy from a market around the corner. And for him, serving a dish that is on the menu at several good restaurants in the city right now — a fava bean salad with shaved pecorino, for instance — would be like being caught reading “The Lovely Bones” right after Oprah Winfrey endorsed it.
“As soon as something becomes overpopularized, I don’t want to serve it anymore,” Mr. Birsh said. “I wouldn’t want anyone to be able to identify something I made as being from a book or a restaurant. I don’t want anyone to be able to say, oh, I see where he got this idea to put microgreens on top of his fish fillets.”
As a graduate of the French Culinary Institute and restaurant critic for Gourmet in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Mr. Birsh may have above-average pride when it comes to his cooking. But it is not out of the ordinary for hosts in this intensely food-cognizant dinner party circuit.
For them, home entertaining can become the white whale. It turns docile cooks into aggressive obsessives, the way an engagement can turn a well-meaning woman into bridezilla or how fatherhood can make a laid-back guy an apoplectic soccer dad.
“My ex got caught up in it,” said a Brooklyn woman who is going through a divorce and asked that her name not be used. “For a while, it was great. Until it wasn’t. We had a birthday party for our 1-year-old son and I ordered pizza. He spent another $1,000 on food. There were plates and plates of cheese and cured meats from this gourmet place. For a 1-year-old.”
Alan Palmer, co-owner of Blue Apron Foods, a specialty store in Park Slope, has seen the new strain of culinary anxiety in all forms. “Some people come in and ask for the most expensive cheese because they think it’s going to be the most impressive,” he said, recalling a time when Carr’s was the must-have brand of cracker.
“But a lot of people come in and ask for help because they’re afraid they’re going to make a mistake. They want raw-milk cheese because they heard it was better, or something local because that’s the new byword. I say: ‘Look, there really is no right or wrong here. People aren’t going to throw rocks at you if you serve the wrong cheese.’ ”
Wise counsel from a cheesemonger. But there is a flip side to this breed of home entertaining agita. Serve the right kind of cheese often enough, and you can end up holding the oven mitt for life. Professor Schreier, the self-proclaimed olive oil zealot, has found that certain friends of his, cowed by his Chez Panisse-style presentations, have given up trying to compete with him in the culinary arena altogether.
“People see the potential conflict and bow out,” he said. “If you’re the biggest foodie in the group, people will have you over and say, ‘So what should we get?’ We went to one couple’s home and they hadn’t even gone to the store yet.”
04 juin 2007
pork = love
after having dinner made for me on consecutive days (tuesday, bread pudding at 44, and wednesday, really excellent thin fettuccine with a roasted tomato and sausage sauce, at 24), i made dinner for 24 and 44. i wanted to do something fairly involved, so i did a chard tart from the joy that sonia had made a few months back - kind of like a quiche with much less egg and a whole lot of parmesan; braised pork ribs with sage and coriander seeds; arborio rice with onions and sage; roasted skinny asparagus; and a ginger cake with pears in a cognac-caramel sauce.
anyway, this was a totally unhealthy (ok, not that unhealthy, but it wasn't great for you either, what with the massive amount of parmesan and the ginger cake's caramel sauce) dinner, but it was really excellent - the coriander seeds and sage are a really excellent combination. after having made braised ribs more than a few times, they turned out especially well this time. and i think this was due to the cooking time, which was close to three hours. this is my favorite pork dish because it requires so few ingredients, and always tastes good, no matter what you do to it. this is essentially due to the cut of meat being pork that's bone-in - that's where all the flavor comes from. it's also a cheap dish to cook, as ribs often go on sale in all seasons, and are a cheap cut even when not on sale. add the onions and some herbs, and it's pretty sublime.
the chard tart was excellent as it was the other time i had it - it's a really easy thing to put together, like the pork - it turns out beautifully, as well, as it cuts neatly and is completely flat after being baked. the crust gets a special mention - the olive oil seems to make it extra crispy without generating too many crumbs - vaguely chewy and nicely crispy. the crust gets prebaked, and then baked with the filling inside. the filling is fairly dry for an egg mixture, so it doesn't soak into the crust too much, leaving the crust nicely crisp. even a day later, the crust is pretty excellent...mmm. this is one to make over and over again.
finally, a few words about the cake. i bought the pears at star market, and they were inauspiciously cheap (the cheapest, in fact) and pre-ripened. i wouldn't have bought pre-ripened fruit, but they were cheap...so i did buy them. but these pears turned out to be juicy even after sauteed, retaining their firm texture despite being cooked through. the cake was pretty good - not too heavy, and sufficiently ginger-y to overcome the molasses that provided much of the cake's moisture. it gets more gingery as time goes on, fyi. anyway, we had the cake with whipped cream - which, with the cake the pears with their caramel sauce is nothing short of a fantastic combination. i failed to read the recipe before i made it, and was expecting a cake that had the pears baked into it, but this was just as good. also, seemingly like everything else i made that day, really easy to make.
braised pork ribs
2T butter
1-2 T coriander seeds
1/2 package sage, chopped fine
3 large onions, halved and sliced into thin strips
chicken stock or water
2T butter
salt and pepper
2-3 lbs assorted pork ribs (country or southern style), bone in
1. pat the ribs dry and rub with salt and pepper. heat the butter in a large skillet and sear the ribs over high heat to brown. remove ribs to a plate with tongs.
2. reduce heat to medium-high. melt the remaining 2T butter in the skillet and saute onions, sage, and coriander seeds until onions are translucent and slightly browned, about 10 minutes.
3. add ribs and any accumulated juices back into skillet and add chicken stock/water until ribs are covered or skillet is almost full, whichever comes first. bring mixture to a simmer over medium-high heat and let simmer 1 hour. turn heat to medium and simmer 2 more hours. for the last 15-30 minutes, turn heat to medium-high to thicken the sauce.
[serves 4-5]
ginger cake with pears and caramel sauce
1/2c unsulfured molasses
1/2c sour cream
1/2c brown sugar, packed
1 stick butter, melted and cooled slightly
2 eggs
3T microplaned grated peeled fresh ginger
1t lemon zest
2c flour
1t baking soda
1/2t salt
pears with caramel sauce
8 medium pears
1T lemon juice
6T butter
3/4c sugar
12T water
3T cognac
12T heavy cream
1. preheat oven to 350F. butter and flour a 10-inch round baking pan.
4. serve slices of cake with pears and sauce, and whipped cream if you really want to punish your heart. if you like pears, you might want to up the pears per serving.
[serves 10-12]
anyway, this was a totally unhealthy (ok, not that unhealthy, but it wasn't great for you either, what with the massive amount of parmesan and the ginger cake's caramel sauce) dinner, but it was really excellent - the coriander seeds and sage are a really excellent combination. after having made braised ribs more than a few times, they turned out especially well this time. and i think this was due to the cooking time, which was close to three hours. this is my favorite pork dish because it requires so few ingredients, and always tastes good, no matter what you do to it. this is essentially due to the cut of meat being pork that's bone-in - that's where all the flavor comes from. it's also a cheap dish to cook, as ribs often go on sale in all seasons, and are a cheap cut even when not on sale. add the onions and some herbs, and it's pretty sublime.
the chard tart was excellent as it was the other time i had it - it's a really easy thing to put together, like the pork - it turns out beautifully, as well, as it cuts neatly and is completely flat after being baked. the crust gets a special mention - the olive oil seems to make it extra crispy without generating too many crumbs - vaguely chewy and nicely crispy. the crust gets prebaked, and then baked with the filling inside. the filling is fairly dry for an egg mixture, so it doesn't soak into the crust too much, leaving the crust nicely crisp. even a day later, the crust is pretty excellent...mmm. this is one to make over and over again.
finally, a few words about the cake. i bought the pears at star market, and they were inauspiciously cheap (the cheapest, in fact) and pre-ripened. i wouldn't have bought pre-ripened fruit, but they were cheap...so i did buy them. but these pears turned out to be juicy even after sauteed, retaining their firm texture despite being cooked through. the cake was pretty good - not too heavy, and sufficiently ginger-y to overcome the molasses that provided much of the cake's moisture. it gets more gingery as time goes on, fyi. anyway, we had the cake with whipped cream - which, with the cake the pears with their caramel sauce is nothing short of a fantastic combination. i failed to read the recipe before i made it, and was expecting a cake that had the pears baked into it, but this was just as good. also, seemingly like everything else i made that day, really easy to make.
braised pork ribs
2T butter
1-2 T coriander seeds
1/2 package sage, chopped fine
3 large onions, halved and sliced into thin strips
chicken stock or water
2T butter
salt and pepper
2-3 lbs assorted pork ribs (country or southern style), bone in
1. pat the ribs dry and rub with salt and pepper. heat the butter in a large skillet and sear the ribs over high heat to brown. remove ribs to a plate with tongs.
2. reduce heat to medium-high. melt the remaining 2T butter in the skillet and saute onions, sage, and coriander seeds until onions are translucent and slightly browned, about 10 minutes.
3. add ribs and any accumulated juices back into skillet and add chicken stock/water until ribs are covered or skillet is almost full, whichever comes first. bring mixture to a simmer over medium-high heat and let simmer 1 hour. turn heat to medium and simmer 2 more hours. for the last 15-30 minutes, turn heat to medium-high to thicken the sauce.
[serves 4-5]
ginger cake with pears and caramel sauce
1/2c unsulfured molasses
1/2c sour cream
1/2c brown sugar, packed
1 stick butter, melted and cooled slightly
2 eggs
3T microplaned grated peeled fresh ginger
1t lemon zest
2c flour
1t baking soda
1/2t salt
pears with caramel sauce
8 medium pears
1T lemon juice
6T butter
3/4c sugar
12T water
3T cognac
12T heavy cream
1. preheat oven to 350F. butter and flour a 10-inch round baking pan.
2. in a bowl whisk together molasses, sour cream, butter, brown sugar, egg, ginger, and zest until smooth and add flour, baking soda, and salt. stir batter until just combined and spread in baking pan. bake 25 to 30 minutes until done.
3. peel, core and slice the pears into eighths. melt 3T butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat and saute half of pears until mostly translucent, about 5-8 minutes. add half of sugar and saute a few more minutes. remove pears with tongs or a slotted spoon to a bowl. add the remaining butter and saute remaining pears. add remaining sugar as before, and remove pears to bowl. caramelize sugar until dark amber. add water, cognac and cream; the mixture will foam and bubble frighteningly but will dissolve within a few minutes. let boil for a few minutes, then reduce heat to medium and add pears back in. simmer for 5 minutes, then keep warm over low heat.4. serve slices of cake with pears and sauce, and whipped cream if you really want to punish your heart. if you like pears, you might want to up the pears per serving.
[serves 10-12]
03 février 2007
review: disappointed at hamersley's bistro
i've heard great things about hamersley's bistro, and i've always wanted to have dinner there. i got my wish when i suggested it as our january cutcat dinner destination. i had high hopes when we entered and i saw that it was a restaurant fitted into an old house - the dining room is irregularly shaped, which is always fun because it subdivides the restaurant into smaller "rooms." the decor is really nice - high ceilings, colorful but not too busy curtains, bright but mellow colors, an orange banquette along one wall. if i had to give the style a name, i might call it "new colonial." to go with hamersley's bistro's "new american" food.
i would say that the food was pretty good - i thought the first two courses were really good, though the dessert was slightly hit or miss. i started with a grilled pizza appetizer with "creamy salt cod" and a black olive tapenade. i was trying to be adventurous - i don't always like salt cod, but was intrigued by "creamy salt cod" - how, exactly, was it going to be creamy? and salt cod and tapenade? technically that should work together - those two salty ingredients combined would theoretically create an even saltier whole. i guess the bread part of the pizza tamed the tapenade, though, as did the creaminess of the salt cod. it was a little salty, but not excessively so. and the crust was perfect for an appetizer-type pizza - slightly chewy, but also very crispy, so it didn't get soggy with the cod on top. and really, the cod was slightly salty, but the creaminess of it balanced the saltiness of the olive tapenade - i felt that the cod was there for a texture contrast, not just for flavor. not only that, but the pizza came with a small salad of field greens with some sort of very acidic but buttery (probably from the olive oil) vinaigrette. normally i don't like my salad dressing to be so piquant, but in combination with the pizza it was really great - it's like having wine that complements cheese. rarely does one have a perfectly dressed salad, but i would say this is it. and it was an interesting use of a salad. all in all, a really fantastic first course.
as a main course both eric and i had the cassoulet. it crops up so infrequently on restaurant menus that i've only ever had canned cassoulet. this isn't as disgusting as you might think - after all, i bought it from cardullo's so it was not only canned cassoulet, but gourmet canned cassoulet. as gourmet as one can get from a can, that is. it was really hot when it arrived from the kitchen - perhaps a bit too hot. it was a large, shallow bowl of beans with large pieces of meat in the middle: a chunk of pork shoulder, a pork and garlic sausage, and duck confit (what seemed to be a leg and a large chunk of breast). on top - and this is a pet peeve - there were a few sprigs of parsley. i hate it when garnishes are just garnishes - when they're not a part of the dish you're meant to eat. sprigs of parsley on a dish to me indicates that i'm not supposed to eat it, since it wasn't minced and sprinkled over my dinner. so boo to parsley!
the cassoulet itself, though, was terrific. i'm realizing i'm not a huge fan of sausage where the forcemeat is really coherent and homogenous, but the flavor was great. i was surprised by how pink it was (not because it was uncooked, but for some other reason i don't know). the pork shoulder was very flavorful and tender, though, and the confit was crusted with some fantastically crispy breadcrumbs, which provided a welcome texture contrast from the overall soft stewiness of the dish.
i actually didn't finish the cassoulet, because before the first course i had three pieces of bread. sorry, i was really hungry! i'd just walked from cutcat to the restaurant (about 2.6 miles), too. and the first piece was this soft cheesebread - a soft bread with medium-sized air pockets, crusted with grated cheese on top. beyond the shock that it was cold - the cheesebread i had at pomodoro last sunday was warm - it was really good. the other bread was light brown with tiny dark brown flecks - like vanilla flecks, but smaller and brown. perhaps it was the type of flour? whatever it was, it was addictive. it had a sweet, slightly sour, nutty flavor to it that made it irresistible. but i have to say that i wish restaurants would stop serving cold bread, at least in the winter. i come in from the cold, and all you have to offer me is some cold bread? you've got to be kidding me.
we decided to have dessert, and i got the caramel bread pudding with a rum raisin sauce. i don't know where hamersley's gets its raisins, but they were huge! twice as big as normal raisins that we peons eat. sadly, it wasn't really that great. i should have asked if the bread pudding had raisins in it - i'm not a fan of raisins in bread pudding. this one was also too eggy, though the rum raisin sauce was excellent - so i felt like i was eating a fragmented egg custard, rather than a rich and slightly creamy bread pudding. carrie fared better with her savarin with apple compote and cider sabayon. apparently the pastry chef is a master with dessert sauces, because the sabayon was thick, airy, and perfectly (ie, not too ostentatiously) packed with apple, cider, and calvados flavor. it was a perfectly tailored and classic couture gown (oxymoron, but bear with me) rather than the melodramatic showy pageant dress.
so where, you ask, is the disappointment? well, beyond the fact that as i think about it more, i dislike that bread pudding more, the service was awful. i admit it: i'm two years out of college. i still look pretty young. but the waitstaff is still supposed to treat me like i'm an adult, because i am an adult! just because i'm young doesn't mean i know nothing about food, or that i don't know the ins and outs of a nice restaurant. i forgive the erratic and careless refilling of water glasses (ice cube on the table, refilled glasses left two-thirds full). i even forgive the haste and clatter with which the busboy cleared and reset tables, even though i consider it to be jarring and distracting for the waitstaff to hurry around like chickens with their heads cut off. i understand - it was a busy time on a friday night, and both kitchen and waitstaff had gotten slammed. however, i expect to be treated well when i go out, and a little friendliness would have gone a long way to erase the technical difficulties of the waitstaff. our waiter started out fairly friendly, if a little patronizing, but it got worse as the night went on. when we were ordering dessert, keith asked what the cheeses were on the cheese plate, and our waiter said he'd ask what the exact cheeses were, beyond the general types. he came back five minutes later, without cheese names. his response to keith asking what the cheese were: "do you really want to know?" i mean...people don't ask frivolous questions at restaurants because they're usually afraid they'll look gauche or like an idiot. so yes, when i ask a question, i really do want to know. i don't care if you've got too many tables! it wasn't an unreasonable request.
i guess i just thought that i was done with being patronized by waitstaff because i look young; as a result i've probably overreacted a little bit. but just that one flaw was enough to seal the deal for me: i don't think i'll be going back to hamersley's bistro. did i need to present a list of all of the restaurants i've been to or something to prove my restaurant worthiness, my pedigree? i needed to mention that i've been to alinea, l'espalier, aujourd'hui, craigie street, chez panisse, french laundry? i'm not dressed well enough, and i don't have the hauteur and pretention of a wealthy snob? great. i'll go somewhere more deserving without another thought.
i would say that the food was pretty good - i thought the first two courses were really good, though the dessert was slightly hit or miss. i started with a grilled pizza appetizer with "creamy salt cod" and a black olive tapenade. i was trying to be adventurous - i don't always like salt cod, but was intrigued by "creamy salt cod" - how, exactly, was it going to be creamy? and salt cod and tapenade? technically that should work together - those two salty ingredients combined would theoretically create an even saltier whole. i guess the bread part of the pizza tamed the tapenade, though, as did the creaminess of the salt cod. it was a little salty, but not excessively so. and the crust was perfect for an appetizer-type pizza - slightly chewy, but also very crispy, so it didn't get soggy with the cod on top. and really, the cod was slightly salty, but the creaminess of it balanced the saltiness of the olive tapenade - i felt that the cod was there for a texture contrast, not just for flavor. not only that, but the pizza came with a small salad of field greens with some sort of very acidic but buttery (probably from the olive oil) vinaigrette. normally i don't like my salad dressing to be so piquant, but in combination with the pizza it was really great - it's like having wine that complements cheese. rarely does one have a perfectly dressed salad, but i would say this is it. and it was an interesting use of a salad. all in all, a really fantastic first course.
as a main course both eric and i had the cassoulet. it crops up so infrequently on restaurant menus that i've only ever had canned cassoulet. this isn't as disgusting as you might think - after all, i bought it from cardullo's so it was not only canned cassoulet, but gourmet canned cassoulet. as gourmet as one can get from a can, that is. it was really hot when it arrived from the kitchen - perhaps a bit too hot. it was a large, shallow bowl of beans with large pieces of meat in the middle: a chunk of pork shoulder, a pork and garlic sausage, and duck confit (what seemed to be a leg and a large chunk of breast). on top - and this is a pet peeve - there were a few sprigs of parsley. i hate it when garnishes are just garnishes - when they're not a part of the dish you're meant to eat. sprigs of parsley on a dish to me indicates that i'm not supposed to eat it, since it wasn't minced and sprinkled over my dinner. so boo to parsley!
the cassoulet itself, though, was terrific. i'm realizing i'm not a huge fan of sausage where the forcemeat is really coherent and homogenous, but the flavor was great. i was surprised by how pink it was (not because it was uncooked, but for some other reason i don't know). the pork shoulder was very flavorful and tender, though, and the confit was crusted with some fantastically crispy breadcrumbs, which provided a welcome texture contrast from the overall soft stewiness of the dish.
i actually didn't finish the cassoulet, because before the first course i had three pieces of bread. sorry, i was really hungry! i'd just walked from cutcat to the restaurant (about 2.6 miles), too. and the first piece was this soft cheesebread - a soft bread with medium-sized air pockets, crusted with grated cheese on top. beyond the shock that it was cold - the cheesebread i had at pomodoro last sunday was warm - it was really good. the other bread was light brown with tiny dark brown flecks - like vanilla flecks, but smaller and brown. perhaps it was the type of flour? whatever it was, it was addictive. it had a sweet, slightly sour, nutty flavor to it that made it irresistible. but i have to say that i wish restaurants would stop serving cold bread, at least in the winter. i come in from the cold, and all you have to offer me is some cold bread? you've got to be kidding me.
we decided to have dessert, and i got the caramel bread pudding with a rum raisin sauce. i don't know where hamersley's gets its raisins, but they were huge! twice as big as normal raisins that we peons eat. sadly, it wasn't really that great. i should have asked if the bread pudding had raisins in it - i'm not a fan of raisins in bread pudding. this one was also too eggy, though the rum raisin sauce was excellent - so i felt like i was eating a fragmented egg custard, rather than a rich and slightly creamy bread pudding. carrie fared better with her savarin with apple compote and cider sabayon. apparently the pastry chef is a master with dessert sauces, because the sabayon was thick, airy, and perfectly (ie, not too ostentatiously) packed with apple, cider, and calvados flavor. it was a perfectly tailored and classic couture gown (oxymoron, but bear with me) rather than the melodramatic showy pageant dress.
so where, you ask, is the disappointment? well, beyond the fact that as i think about it more, i dislike that bread pudding more, the service was awful. i admit it: i'm two years out of college. i still look pretty young. but the waitstaff is still supposed to treat me like i'm an adult, because i am an adult! just because i'm young doesn't mean i know nothing about food, or that i don't know the ins and outs of a nice restaurant. i forgive the erratic and careless refilling of water glasses (ice cube on the table, refilled glasses left two-thirds full). i even forgive the haste and clatter with which the busboy cleared and reset tables, even though i consider it to be jarring and distracting for the waitstaff to hurry around like chickens with their heads cut off. i understand - it was a busy time on a friday night, and both kitchen and waitstaff had gotten slammed. however, i expect to be treated well when i go out, and a little friendliness would have gone a long way to erase the technical difficulties of the waitstaff. our waiter started out fairly friendly, if a little patronizing, but it got worse as the night went on. when we were ordering dessert, keith asked what the cheeses were on the cheese plate, and our waiter said he'd ask what the exact cheeses were, beyond the general types. he came back five minutes later, without cheese names. his response to keith asking what the cheese were: "do you really want to know?" i mean...people don't ask frivolous questions at restaurants because they're usually afraid they'll look gauche or like an idiot. so yes, when i ask a question, i really do want to know. i don't care if you've got too many tables! it wasn't an unreasonable request.
i guess i just thought that i was done with being patronized by waitstaff because i look young; as a result i've probably overreacted a little bit. but just that one flaw was enough to seal the deal for me: i don't think i'll be going back to hamersley's bistro. did i need to present a list of all of the restaurants i've been to or something to prove my restaurant worthiness, my pedigree? i needed to mention that i've been to alinea, l'espalier, aujourd'hui, craigie street, chez panisse, french laundry? i'm not dressed well enough, and i don't have the hauteur and pretention of a wealthy snob? great. i'll go somewhere more deserving without another thought.
29 janvier 2007
review: pomodoro, my love
pomodoro / 24 harvard street / brookline ma / 617-566-4455 / 11am-11pm / reservations accepted (and recommended, by me) / cash only / entrees moderately expensive ($18-25)
of all of the restaurants i've been to, pomodoro is possibly the fairest of them all. understand that The List is not a ranking of all of the restaurants i have ever been to. rather, The List is a ranking of the restaurants i would go back to. if it were the former, alinea and the french laundry would surely be on it; but i'm a student, and i'd rather pay my tuition than fritter away my summer savings on incredible, incredibly expensive food.
i've been to pomodoro twice: once when charles' parents were visiting, and this past sunday for my birthday. and my, oh my. the first time it was great: they had to add a table extension to fit all of the food on the table, and appetizers magically expanded to fit the size of our party and then some, without asking and without extra charge. and the food: the food is amazing. this is the best italian restaurant i've ever been to, and one of the best restaurants i've been to in general. this is the restaurant with the warmest service i've had - and for that flawless, generous service, i am really thankful and surprised.
for my birthday dinner, we started with some calamari. this is the first place i had actually ate calamari - i have a history of disliking it - and it's just fantastic here. it's not cooked too long, or too briefly - it's perfect. it comes with a tomato sauce that's nice and thick, impossibly and brightly red, and is the best such sauce i've had at any restaurant. they brought us some mussels just because, and they were amazing - this is also the only place where i will eat mussels. they were cooked in a sort of cream sauce with fennel sausage in it, which was a surprisingly good combination.
as a main course i had risotto with crab, mushrooms, and some sort of sweet, mild squash. it was rather delicate, almost sweet, and extremely good. didn't overtake the crab at all, and i thought it was an excellent and unusual risotto. i have a bit of a bone to pick with the pretty but useless crab claws that were in my bowl - they had meat on them, but the only way to get it was to gnaw at the claws. i generally dislike any food that's difficult to eat. i hate working too hard when i eat - i'm willing to work had to taste the flavors and texture, but i don't want to spend the whole night trying to extract the food so i can eat it. my mother had a steak with mac and cheese, which was also good - the steak was aged, so it had a pretty mellow flavor that i had some trouble identifying as beef. i wonder if it was the cut, the aging, or the source of the beef? at any rate, it was tender, but not too tender.
the weak point of many italian restaurants is the dessert, and when we came before, it was true. we had the creme brulee, and it was kind of watery and definitely too eggy. this time, we said no to dessert, but they brought us two, anyway: a fig bread pudding and a tiramisu. that tiramisu was fantastic - not too light, not too dense, with a perfect balance of coffee and creamy mascarpone. the fig bread pudding was a little bit less toothsome, since it had a bit too little liquid. i thought it tasted like their leftover bread made into bread pudding. i have no problem with this - i just wanted a bit more eggy creaminess to it. the chocolate sauce that came with the bread pudding was amazing, though - dark, not too dark, and not too sweet, with depth. mmm.
it's a little difficult to describe why i like pomodoro so much. it has to do with comfort, in a way - when you're having dinner at pomodoro, you feel like you're having dinner catered to you in your own very chic living room. it's like the chef is focused just on you, even though you know they're not. rarely is the service in a restaurant so warm - it can be very efficient, noiseless, seamless, friendly, but ultimately it's usually professional and a little cold.
i thought the food was better this time than it was last time - a little more interesting, a little more polished. this is also the only italian restaurant i've been to where so many of the pasta dishes look interesting. i guess i'll just have to go back.
p.s. i do have a bit of a pet peeve with the restaurant - one they've tried to remedy. in the winter, when it's cold, every time the door opens, the whole place gets a blast of cold air because the restaurant is small. there's a heavy curtain at the entrance, which gets some of the cold air, but it's too close to the door to do much good. your warm cocoon is thus interrupted by the cold, uncaring world outside at times, but not enough to deter you from feeling very, very good by the end of the night.
of all of the restaurants i've been to, pomodoro is possibly the fairest of them all. understand that The List is not a ranking of all of the restaurants i have ever been to. rather, The List is a ranking of the restaurants i would go back to. if it were the former, alinea and the french laundry would surely be on it; but i'm a student, and i'd rather pay my tuition than fritter away my summer savings on incredible, incredibly expensive food.
i've been to pomodoro twice: once when charles' parents were visiting, and this past sunday for my birthday. and my, oh my. the first time it was great: they had to add a table extension to fit all of the food on the table, and appetizers magically expanded to fit the size of our party and then some, without asking and without extra charge. and the food: the food is amazing. this is the best italian restaurant i've ever been to, and one of the best restaurants i've been to in general. this is the restaurant with the warmest service i've had - and for that flawless, generous service, i am really thankful and surprised.
for my birthday dinner, we started with some calamari. this is the first place i had actually ate calamari - i have a history of disliking it - and it's just fantastic here. it's not cooked too long, or too briefly - it's perfect. it comes with a tomato sauce that's nice and thick, impossibly and brightly red, and is the best such sauce i've had at any restaurant. they brought us some mussels just because, and they were amazing - this is also the only place where i will eat mussels. they were cooked in a sort of cream sauce with fennel sausage in it, which was a surprisingly good combination.
as a main course i had risotto with crab, mushrooms, and some sort of sweet, mild squash. it was rather delicate, almost sweet, and extremely good. didn't overtake the crab at all, and i thought it was an excellent and unusual risotto. i have a bit of a bone to pick with the pretty but useless crab claws that were in my bowl - they had meat on them, but the only way to get it was to gnaw at the claws. i generally dislike any food that's difficult to eat. i hate working too hard when i eat - i'm willing to work had to taste the flavors and texture, but i don't want to spend the whole night trying to extract the food so i can eat it. my mother had a steak with mac and cheese, which was also good - the steak was aged, so it had a pretty mellow flavor that i had some trouble identifying as beef. i wonder if it was the cut, the aging, or the source of the beef? at any rate, it was tender, but not too tender.
the weak point of many italian restaurants is the dessert, and when we came before, it was true. we had the creme brulee, and it was kind of watery and definitely too eggy. this time, we said no to dessert, but they brought us two, anyway: a fig bread pudding and a tiramisu. that tiramisu was fantastic - not too light, not too dense, with a perfect balance of coffee and creamy mascarpone. the fig bread pudding was a little bit less toothsome, since it had a bit too little liquid. i thought it tasted like their leftover bread made into bread pudding. i have no problem with this - i just wanted a bit more eggy creaminess to it. the chocolate sauce that came with the bread pudding was amazing, though - dark, not too dark, and not too sweet, with depth. mmm.
it's a little difficult to describe why i like pomodoro so much. it has to do with comfort, in a way - when you're having dinner at pomodoro, you feel like you're having dinner catered to you in your own very chic living room. it's like the chef is focused just on you, even though you know they're not. rarely is the service in a restaurant so warm - it can be very efficient, noiseless, seamless, friendly, but ultimately it's usually professional and a little cold.
i thought the food was better this time than it was last time - a little more interesting, a little more polished. this is also the only italian restaurant i've been to where so many of the pasta dishes look interesting. i guess i'll just have to go back.
p.s. i do have a bit of a pet peeve with the restaurant - one they've tried to remedy. in the winter, when it's cold, every time the door opens, the whole place gets a blast of cold air because the restaurant is small. there's a heavy curtain at the entrance, which gets some of the cold air, but it's too close to the door to do much good. your warm cocoon is thus interrupted by the cold, uncaring world outside at times, but not enough to deter you from feeling very, very good by the end of the night.
28 janvier 2007
it was worth my $3.79
one and a half cups of sugar for $3.79. fancy, super-molasses dark brown sugar (billington's dark brown molasses sugar). i'm behind on my issues of gourmet because of studio, and i flipped through the...november? december? issue and glimpsed a two-handled bowl-cup filled with some sort of unctuous, delicious-looking joyful thing. after all, who can resist eating out of such cute dishware? i happened to think about the pudding as i was at the supermarket one day, and invested in a package of billington's dark brown sugar, the designer sugar at star market that also happens to be very good.
i was thinking about the pudding in the context of my new oblong tart pan; i mulled it over for a few days before i decided it was a good idea to put a brown sugar pudding in a tart. i wanted to have a nice, buttery, flaky tart shell with the pudding, some sort of fruit layer, then ganache. make the tart shell with bacon fat, and you would have one of the richest desserts imaginable. as for the fruit, i thought about oranges, or berries, but ultimately decided to go with a seasonal (and cheap) choice: apples. i was sure that they would go well with the pudding, but i didn't know about the chocolate. since fondue always involves fruit and chocolate, and apples are often a part of the fruit selection, though, i thought i'd go for it.
i bought pink lady apples at star market because they were pretty, and i discovered that they're a great apple - they stand up to a lot of cooking and don't get mushy, and the texture is nice and firm. they're a fairly tart apple, too, which was a great contrast to the deepness of the pudding and chocolate.
unfortunately, the tart shell didn't really work out that well. i may have added a little too much water; and i thought there might be too little butter in the recipe. it turns out i was right - it tasted a bit floury, and a bit tough. it did cut well, but i've made better tart shells.
the tart filling was another matter entirely - i really liked this tart, as it was more adventurous that i've been in the past. i did it as a cold dessert, though i think the ideal way to make the tart is to bake the shell, then dump in very cold pudding, top it with hot apples, and drizzle chocolate on it. i had conceived of the tart as being cold, originally, because i wanted the ganache to entirely cover the surface - thus making the interior a surprise. this involves having a tart pan with high enough sides to admit that much filling, which is not the case with any of my tart pans - whoops! lack of foresight on my part...heh.
but the pudding is definitely a winner - i would make it over and over again, because it had a better texture than any other pudding i've ever made. i suppose it's the cornstarch? i'll have to revise my rather negative view of cornstarch - which is based on those all-too-viscous technicolor sauces that you get at bad chinese restaurants.
without further ado:
brown sugar pudding
(adapted from gourmet nov 2006)
2 cups half-and-half
3/4c packed dark brown sugar
2T cornstarch
2 egg yolks
1/4t salt
1. stir together half-and-half, brown sugar, and cornstarch in a 2- to 3-quart heavy saucepan and heat over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar is dissolved and mixture is heated through (don't let it boil).
2. whisk together yolks and salt in a medium bowl until smooth, then add hot half-and-half mixture in a slow stream, whisking. a good way to do this is to have nonskid bowls or to put your bowl on a silpat so it doesn't move as you pour with one hand and whisk with the other. i do not condone the use of kitchenaid mixers, pretty as they are.
3. return mixture to saucepan and cook over moderate heat, whisking, until mixture reaches a boil, then boil, whisking, 1 minute (it'll thicken). pour through a sieve into a clean bowl. press plastic wrap on the surface to cover the pudding and chill (or serve warm).
[serves 4-6; doubles easily, though the stirring time will be longer]
22 janvier 2007
i just ate three pieces of cake
it's a good thing i didn't eat breakfast. because i just made a cake that made me remember why millions of people survived without chocolate cake for centuries.
typically i'm not a huge fan of vanilla-flavored cakes; they tend to be overly dry, or have too much vanilla...essentially i've come to realize that i'm just not a fan of vanilla in general, unless it's ice cream. ice cream is one of the few venues in which producers manage not to go overboard (in the case of good vanilla ice cream).
i recently made shuna fish lydon's caramel cake. it had a gorgeous photograph: it was golden-brown (closer to a dark brown), somewhere between a golden cake and gingerbread, with a larger-than-normal crumb. it looked moist, but not too moist, not dry, and just...beautiful.
but when i made it, for some reason it didn't come out quite correctly - it was a beautiful goldeny color that usually doesn't happen, but it was not the deep dark color that i had been anticipating with a watering mouth. the disappointment was accordingly cutting. it had lovely subtle overtones, and gorgeous undertones of caramel...but i just couldn't get over the lack of color.
fittingly, the cake that made my day was french. ah, those french. i checked my food blogs today and discovered a good-looking cake : le gateau piege from chocolate + zucchini. i've been looking for a cake that can stand on its own, without needing frosting - that elusive one-layer cake that is stealthily delicious even though it's only one layer and has no frosting.
a cake like this has to be better than all other cakes, because with no frosting there's only cake. accordingly, that crumb better be good, it better not be too dry, and the flavor has to be more pure and stunning than normal.
and this is it. this is the cake to end all cakes. well, really i'm overexaggerating here, but this is a good cake. it's a light - but not in the way that angel food cake is light, ie, spongily light - orange-flavored cake. it's butter, sugar, eggs, and flour with an orange flavoring. (and this is why it's french: it's delightfully unadorned). it actually does have "frosting," too - you butter and sugar the pan, and it develops a lovely, lightly caramelized crust.
this is the cake.
typically i'm not a huge fan of vanilla-flavored cakes; they tend to be overly dry, or have too much vanilla...essentially i've come to realize that i'm just not a fan of vanilla in general, unless it's ice cream. ice cream is one of the few venues in which producers manage not to go overboard (in the case of good vanilla ice cream).
i recently made shuna fish lydon's caramel cake. it had a gorgeous photograph: it was golden-brown (closer to a dark brown), somewhere between a golden cake and gingerbread, with a larger-than-normal crumb. it looked moist, but not too moist, not dry, and just...beautiful.
but when i made it, for some reason it didn't come out quite correctly - it was a beautiful goldeny color that usually doesn't happen, but it was not the deep dark color that i had been anticipating with a watering mouth. the disappointment was accordingly cutting. it had lovely subtle overtones, and gorgeous undertones of caramel...but i just couldn't get over the lack of color.
fittingly, the cake that made my day was french. ah, those french. i checked my food blogs today and discovered a good-looking cake : le gateau piege from chocolate + zucchini. i've been looking for a cake that can stand on its own, without needing frosting - that elusive one-layer cake that is stealthily delicious even though it's only one layer and has no frosting.
a cake like this has to be better than all other cakes, because with no frosting there's only cake. accordingly, that crumb better be good, it better not be too dry, and the flavor has to be more pure and stunning than normal.
and this is it. this is the cake to end all cakes. well, really i'm overexaggerating here, but this is a good cake. it's a light - but not in the way that angel food cake is light, ie, spongily light - orange-flavored cake. it's butter, sugar, eggs, and flour with an orange flavoring. (and this is why it's french: it's delightfully unadorned). it actually does have "frosting," too - you butter and sugar the pan, and it develops a lovely, lightly caramelized crust.
this is the cake.
le gâteau piège (adapted from chocolate + zucchini)
For the pan:
1T butter
1 1/2 T sugar
For the batter:
1/2 cup plus 1 T unsalted butter, softened
1/2 cup plus 2T sugar
2 eggs
1 medium organic orange, scrubbed
1 cup flour
1 T baking powder
large pinch salt
1. preheat the oven to 350F. butter a 9" or 10" cake pan with the butter. dump the sugar in the bottom of the pan and swish it around until it coats the bottom and sides of the pan.
2. cream together the butter and sugar. add the eggs one by one and mix until thoroughly combined. grate the zest from the entire orange over the bowl. juice the orange and add 1/2 cup of the juice (give or take a little) to the batter. mix until smooth.
3. in a small bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. whisk the flour mixture into the batter and mix until just combined. scrape into the prepared pan and bake for 20-30 minutes, until the cake is golden and starts to pull away from the sides of the pan. let cool on a rack for ten minutes (no more, or the caramel on the crust will harden and stick to the pan), then flip onto a serving plate. let cool completely before serving.
03 janvier 2007
preoccupations : the meat pie
looks like a muffin, but really it's a nicely flaky crust shaped like a muffin that contains a mixture of pork, beef, onions, carrots, peas, and other sundry things. and baked together for close to an hour, it definitely hits the spot. if we consider the shape of the pie, i find it a bit lacking - i think what is really needed is a muffin top pan (or, no pan at all) so that the pie is shallower. but let me start from the beginning. what i was aiming for was basically comfort food - but luscious, stick-to-your-ribs, mind-blowing, "this is just a meat pie??!" comfort food.
i especially love things that you eat with your hands, and that is what a meat pie is (yes, i realize the photograph has a fork in it). we eat with forks and knives so often that it's surprising and completely sinful to eat something with your hands, which hide the food object while you consume it furtively. a meat pie is different from buns, muffins, cookies, rolls, all of those other things that we eat with our hands. you can cradle it in your hands, and there is something about
a completely sealed pastry enclosure that makes you think it must hold something wonderful inside. because it's handheld, you can be completely selfish and keep it all for yourself, unless you're a generous soul, and this makes it all the more sinful because you don't want to share it with anyone. and this is what a meat pie should be.
i would say the pastry lived up to what the pastry should be: buttery, flaky, slightly thick so it was crispy on the outside, soft on the inside where the juices cooked into it. and the meat pie is one of the cases in which i will use an egg wash (fruit pies get the whole milk and sugar treatment). mmm. i used the pastry recipe from richard sax's home desserts, which is to say, i got the ingredient amounts from it; i always make the pastry the same way. and i'll tell you - i thought that it was going to be tough and rubbery this time because the dough was a little stretchy, but i think it was just that i didn't chill the dough sufficiently (it was on the top level of the fridge for an hour). unfortunately, the pastry was a little ugly shapewise, because i didn't cut the pastry into identical shapes and kind of patched them together, but i think i could work out a good system in the future.
the filling wasn't as good as the pastry, but i thought it did the job pretty well - it just didn't reach the heights that the filling is supposed to reach. once you've committed to doing the work to bite into the thing, whatever is inside better be good. i originally was going to leave the house and get some potatoes, so i could blend the mashed potatoes with the ground beef/pork mix that i had, but i decided not to because i was lazy (and poor). so i did some onions in bacon fat and thyme, with a bit of a sherry reduction as the onions browned. then i did the beef, adding some of the leftover pizza sauce (reduced crushed tomatoes, basil, and onions) i'd made for new year's and some sour cream to keep it from getting too tough. i did a bit of peas and carrots (frozen, sorry...) and mixed all of it together with a couple of eggs and breadcrumbs mixed with sour cream and the meat juices, and a couple tablespoons of maple syrup for good measure. fold that up into the pastry and pop it in the oven for an hour until the pastry is browned, and you've got your meat pies.
so let's talk about this filling. flavorwise, i thought it was great - the seasoning was right, and the meat to veggie ratio was good (i think it could have used a bit more veggies). i was particularly pleased that there was about the right amount of liquid in the meat pie - which is to say that there wasn't too much at all, so you don't bite into it and spill it all over yourself. but i think it was the wrong decision to use the ground meat - there's something about a meat pie that wants you to really be able to bite into it, and the ground meat just isn't quite assertive enough. so maybe little bars of steak with a little more chew would have been appropriate in this case. let me differentiate here between two different kinds of meat pies: the type i made today are handheld, but there is also the type that's large and that you eat slices of. the larger ones, i think, are best made with ground meat because it will slice more easily; however, for a handheld little beauty, i think it would be better to use more discrete pieces of meat.
and there you have it: my first try at meat pies. i think the most disappointing thing was the shape of the pie, and in the future i'll make them by hand without a mold, instead of using a muffin pan.
since the meat pie was such a hodge podge of stuff, i'm including just the recipe for the pastry here:
go-to pie and pastry crust
2 1/2c flour
1/4t baking powder
2T sugar
1/2t salt
2 sticks butter
5-8T cold water
1. mix all of the dry ingredients together in a bowl. cut half the butter into small pieces and toss in the dry ingredients. mix together the butter and dry ingredients with your hands, two knives, or a pastry blender (i prefer my hands) until it resembles coarse meal. it will turn slightly yellow. if you use your hands, then the motion you want is basically rubbing the flour and butter together between your fingers to moosh them together.
2. cut the other half of the butter into small pieces and toss into butter-flour mixture. rub into the flour mixture with your hands or a pastry blender until the butter is in pieces the size of small peas - the mixture will turn slightly more yellow.
3. add 5 tablespoons of cold water one tablespoon at a time, sprinkling the water into the mixture and turning it over so the water is somewhat evenly distributed. toss dough together until it comes together, adding more water by the tablespoon if you need more. the dough shouldn't feel overly wet - just very slightly damp.
4. divide mixture in half and press into a ball. flatten the ball into a disc on top of a large (18" long) piece of plastic wrap, then wrap tightly. make sure the edges aren't cracked - push the edges of the crack together. chill at least an hour. when you roll it out, put another piece of plastic wrap on top of the disc so you don't need to use flour (cheap trick, yes, but it does work wonderfully well).
[makes enough for a 9" pie - top and bottom crusts]
26 décembre 2006
winter spice cake
sometime (again, my memory is pretty much shot) after my final review, carrie wanted to make coq au vin from the latest issue of cook's illustrated. i offered to make dessert, and then cast about thinking of a winter dessert that would be suitable. i wanted something white, and something that didn't involve chocolate. so i thought a spice cake would do. i had a vision of a white cake (specifically, a bundt cake) that was spiced. to make it a little less predictable - the idea of a white spice cake seems kind of stuffy and overdone, for some reason - i wanted to somehow accent the cake with orange, to make it a little brighter and fresher. i think i might have a recipe for the exact cake i wanted in a cookbook at home, but i was in studio, so instead i consulted epicurious. the result of my search was a spice cake with a molasses cream cheese frosting.
i don't know why i didn't realize it wasn't going to be a white cake, but one of those applesauce-oil-based cakes that are light brown, but it ended up not being a problem. the easiest way to make any cake look really fancy is to split it into more layers; this also gives you a more favorable, easier-to-eat frosting to cake ratio. i ended up putting orange oil (a rather large amount of it) in the frosting and adding a layer of mandarin oranges on top of one of the layers of frosting. unfortunately, i didn't put a layer of frosting on top of the oranges before i put on the last cake layer, so the top cake layer didn't stick and also got pretty soaked with mandarin orange moisture (despite draining and drying them thoroughly). whoops. i would say that the orange layer was a good idea, in general, though.
so this cake is a pretty mild spice cake, in a good way. i think perhaps i would have liked a non-oil-based cake better, but this is the easiest cake to put together ever: throw together the wet ingredients, throw together the dry ingredients, mix and bake. doesn't even bake for overly long - 25 minutes - and it cools fast in the cold winter air. combined with a kicked-up frosting, it gets even better. and...eaten somewhat furtively out of the refrigerator the next day is really the best way to eat this cake.
in other cake news, i took a cake my mother made for my grandmother's birthday, split it into four layers, spread the bottom and top layers with raspberry jam, filled the middle with chocolate ganache, and filled the remaining two layers with a gelatin-stabilized white chocolate "mousse." i say "mousse" because a real mousse is made with beaten egg whites, and a "mousse" is made with whipped cream and melted chocolate. unfortunately, i put slightly too little gelatin in the "mousse," or perhaps i didn't let it set for long enough, but it tasted good and looked good, so that's really all that matters for a family birthday cake. oh, and it was covered with a thin layer of ganache. this is probably the best birthday cake i've made so far for my grandmother. mmm. wish we had the leftovers with us.
orange-scented spice cake
cake
2c flour
1 1/4c sugar
1t baking soda
1t cinnamon
1/2t allspice
1/2t salt
1c applesauce or apple butter
3/4c buttermilk
1/2c veg oil
3 eggs
2T molasses
frosting
1 1/2 lbs cream cheese, softened
2c powdered sugar
1-2T orange oil or zest of 1 orange
1/4c (1/2 stick) butter, softened
optional: 1 can mandarin oranges, drained and patted dry
directions:
1. preheat oven to 350F. butter and flour 2 9" cake pans.
2. combine first 6 ingredients in large bowl.
3. whisk together applesauce, buttermilk, oil, eggs, and molasses in a medium bowl.
4. stir applesauce mixture into dry ingredients. pour into prepared pans and bake until tester comes out clean, ~25 minutes.
5. cool cake layers, then make frosting: beat together the cream cheese and butter until smooth, then beat in powdered sugar. beat in orange oil or zest.
6. split each cake layer (level as needed) into two layers. put the bottom layer on a large plate and spread a layer of frosting (since there are four layers, you only need a 1/8" to 3/16" thick layer of frosting) on top. add two more layers of cake and frosting. top this layer with the mandarin oranges. spread a layer of frosting on the bottom of the top layer, then place on top of mandarin oranges, frosting side down. spread remaining frosting on top and sides of cake. chill and serve.
[serves 8-12]
note: i like this best when it's cold, but it can also be served at room temperature.
i don't know why i didn't realize it wasn't going to be a white cake, but one of those applesauce-oil-based cakes that are light brown, but it ended up not being a problem. the easiest way to make any cake look really fancy is to split it into more layers; this also gives you a more favorable, easier-to-eat frosting to cake ratio. i ended up putting orange oil (a rather large amount of it) in the frosting and adding a layer of mandarin oranges on top of one of the layers of frosting. unfortunately, i didn't put a layer of frosting on top of the oranges before i put on the last cake layer, so the top cake layer didn't stick and also got pretty soaked with mandarin orange moisture (despite draining and drying them thoroughly). whoops. i would say that the orange layer was a good idea, in general, though.
so this cake is a pretty mild spice cake, in a good way. i think perhaps i would have liked a non-oil-based cake better, but this is the easiest cake to put together ever: throw together the wet ingredients, throw together the dry ingredients, mix and bake. doesn't even bake for overly long - 25 minutes - and it cools fast in the cold winter air. combined with a kicked-up frosting, it gets even better. and...eaten somewhat furtively out of the refrigerator the next day is really the best way to eat this cake.
in other cake news, i took a cake my mother made for my grandmother's birthday, split it into four layers, spread the bottom and top layers with raspberry jam, filled the middle with chocolate ganache, and filled the remaining two layers with a gelatin-stabilized white chocolate "mousse." i say "mousse" because a real mousse is made with beaten egg whites, and a "mousse" is made with whipped cream and melted chocolate. unfortunately, i put slightly too little gelatin in the "mousse," or perhaps i didn't let it set for long enough, but it tasted good and looked good, so that's really all that matters for a family birthday cake. oh, and it was covered with a thin layer of ganache. this is probably the best birthday cake i've made so far for my grandmother. mmm. wish we had the leftovers with us.
orange-scented spice cake
cake
2c flour
1 1/4c sugar
1t baking soda
1t cinnamon
1/2t allspice
1/2t salt
1c applesauce or apple butter
3/4c buttermilk
1/2c veg oil
3 eggs
2T molasses
frosting
1 1/2 lbs cream cheese, softened
2c powdered sugar
1-2T orange oil or zest of 1 orange
1/4c (1/2 stick) butter, softened
optional: 1 can mandarin oranges, drained and patted dry
directions:
1. preheat oven to 350F. butter and flour 2 9" cake pans.
2. combine first 6 ingredients in large bowl.
3. whisk together applesauce, buttermilk, oil, eggs, and molasses in a medium bowl.
4. stir applesauce mixture into dry ingredients. pour into prepared pans and bake until tester comes out clean, ~25 minutes.
5. cool cake layers, then make frosting: beat together the cream cheese and butter until smooth, then beat in powdered sugar. beat in orange oil or zest.
6. split each cake layer (level as needed) into two layers. put the bottom layer on a large plate and spread a layer of frosting (since there are four layers, you only need a 1/8" to 3/16" thick layer of frosting) on top. add two more layers of cake and frosting. top this layer with the mandarin oranges. spread a layer of frosting on the bottom of the top layer, then place on top of mandarin oranges, frosting side down. spread remaining frosting on top and sides of cake. chill and serve.
[serves 8-12]
note: i like this best when it's cold, but it can also be served at room temperature.
review: chocolate lounge @ mariposa
also several weeks ago, i had enough time (!!!) to go with carrie to the chocolate lounge at mariposa. on thursdays at 7pm, a mini-enterprise takes over the space at mariposa and it becomes a short ode to chocolate. because who wouldn't be excited by a chocolate lounge? yeah, that's what i'm talking about.
the chocolate lounge is fun, but is a little limited. there are some different types of hot chocolate, then a series of desserts and chocolate flights. the desserts are pretty standard: a chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, etc. i had the milk cake with chocolate sauce; the edges were really quite delectable, with the sugar-crunchy crust, but the cake was a bit dry for the amount of chocolate sauce (which was perfectly fine) that was poured on top of it. i may have also been expecting something different despite the accurate description by our waitress, since long ago at lmf, luis used to make a tres leches cake that was essentially a vanilla cake soaked with a mixture of milk, condensed milk, and evaporated milk. god that was good.
the most interesting thing about the chocolate lounge is the flights of chocolate. unfortunately, i didn't have one. chocolate flights are a curious thing, because you have to really be a chocolate buff to pay $8 for a flight of chocolate. chocolate is so compact that the american value of getting as much bang for your buck doesn't apply correctly here; yet it governed my choice to not get a flight, anyway. there's the fear that you don't know where the chocolate is coming from; the fear that you don't know if your palate is sensitive enough to taste the difference between various chocolates, etc.
sidebar:
that said, flights of chocolate are not absent from my life. i got a free ticket a few weeks back to a chocolate tasting of richart chocolate (located in copley) by the lab for chocolate science and mit-france. i went with celina, and of course, like in all lectures, i fell asleep for most of the lecture. but i had a nice nap, and i pretty much knew all of the information in the lecture anyway. the best part of the whole thing was the smell of a room full of chocolate. if you haven't yet experienced this, you should. because it's amazing. the chocolate tasting was quite fun as well - if you haven't had a good milk chocolate (the "upscale" symphony bar is not an example of a good milk chocolate) the richart one is pretty darn good.
back to the chocolate lounge. i would say that in general, it's a fun thing to do, but still kind of expensive. in an area full of students, i think that a menu of little $4-5 treats is the best way to go, with coffee and tea in addition to the chocolate (this may actuall exist already, but i don't remember).
the chocolate lounge is fun, but is a little limited. there are some different types of hot chocolate, then a series of desserts and chocolate flights. the desserts are pretty standard: a chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream, etc. i had the milk cake with chocolate sauce; the edges were really quite delectable, with the sugar-crunchy crust, but the cake was a bit dry for the amount of chocolate sauce (which was perfectly fine) that was poured on top of it. i may have also been expecting something different despite the accurate description by our waitress, since long ago at lmf, luis used to make a tres leches cake that was essentially a vanilla cake soaked with a mixture of milk, condensed milk, and evaporated milk. god that was good.
the most interesting thing about the chocolate lounge is the flights of chocolate. unfortunately, i didn't have one. chocolate flights are a curious thing, because you have to really be a chocolate buff to pay $8 for a flight of chocolate. chocolate is so compact that the american value of getting as much bang for your buck doesn't apply correctly here; yet it governed my choice to not get a flight, anyway. there's the fear that you don't know where the chocolate is coming from; the fear that you don't know if your palate is sensitive enough to taste the difference between various chocolates, etc.
sidebar:
that said, flights of chocolate are not absent from my life. i got a free ticket a few weeks back to a chocolate tasting of richart chocolate (located in copley) by the lab for chocolate science and mit-france. i went with celina, and of course, like in all lectures, i fell asleep for most of the lecture. but i had a nice nap, and i pretty much knew all of the information in the lecture anyway. the best part of the whole thing was the smell of a room full of chocolate. if you haven't yet experienced this, you should. because it's amazing. the chocolate tasting was quite fun as well - if you haven't had a good milk chocolate (the "upscale" symphony bar is not an example of a good milk chocolate) the richart one is pretty darn good.
back to the chocolate lounge. i would say that in general, it's a fun thing to do, but still kind of expensive. in an area full of students, i think that a menu of little $4-5 treats is the best way to go, with coffee and tea in addition to the chocolate (this may actuall exist already, but i don't remember).
review: restaurant pava
restaurant pava / 1229 centre street / newton ma / 617-965-0905 / m-sat 11:30-2:30 + 5:30-10pm, sun 11-2:30 + 5:30-10pm / reservations accepted (and recommended, by me) / entrees moderately expensive ($18-25)
yes yes, i know i've been remiss in updating foodlust. but in repentance, i will now add several posts (or, as many as my almost-completely-shot memory will offer up). i've been meaning to write a review of restaurant pava for several weeks now, especially given that i was there on nov 18 - more than a month ago.
i found restaurant pava through the boston globe restaurant reviews. i was initially attracted to the restaurant by the globe's review of its bread, which consists of three different types: a small chewy roll studded (cliched word nowadays, huh?) with caraway seeds and golden raisins; a french bread with a supersoft inside and a supercrispy crust; and a crispy flat "bread" that was somewhere between potato chip and bread, whose main ingredients i tried in vain to guess. all this comes with a dish of extremely green, extremely excellent olive oil. back to my initial thoughts: it is almost always true that any restaurant that does its bread so well is probably not going to disappoint. cold butter can sometimes be forgiven in the case of very good food, but mediocre bread is not a good way to start any meal.
restaurant pava is actually a companion restaurant to the Tess clothing store - by which i mean that it's located next to the clothing store in newton and it shares the same general decor. the decor is minimalist with overtones of boston - ie new york, but friendly. the interior is white, with black wooden tables and green accents. we were seated next to the front plate glass window, which i thought was going to be cold, but turned out to be just fine. this place is pretty small - seats maybe 20-30 - and the waitstaff is accordingly small, and thus friendlier. the menus are sheets of paper tucked under a band of green elastic that is attached to a heavy matte plastic board. the menus are kind of heavy because of this aforementioned plastic board, but i suppose i can forgive and forget.
because the food is pretty amazing. the chef is lydia shire, formerly of biba, and is known for being pretty adventurous. the food here is billed as "mediterranean" but is really the all-encompassing "new american," which is better described as "upscale cuisine (not "food") from any culture." we started with scallops and a small pizza; i've now forgotten exactly what the scallops came with, but i believe it might have been lobster sweetbreads (richer than normal sweetbreads) with some sort of crackery bread. mostly i just remember the scallops being very good. i liked the pizza better, though, which had smoked tomatoes and housemade pepperoni on it. 99% of the time, i despise pepperoni because it tastes like spiced plastic, but this pepperoni could do no evil - it was smoky, meaty rather than plasticky, and all together quite amazing.
when it came to entrees, i had a truly difficult time picking what i wanted, so let me give you a list of all of the things that sounded good: beet chitarra (short rib, candied ginger & blossoms); tagliatelle alla bolognese (which always looks really good to me, and which i need to make before my craving for it overtakes my life); pasta pyramids (fresh ricotta, pea shoots & pancetta); sole bianco (riso nero); chestnut crusted lamb (chestnut polenta and red russian kale); heritage berkshire pork (honeycrisp apple ravioli); wood oven chicken (black truffle, lovage, celery). so you can see that i had a serious dilemma here; usually i don't have this much trouble picking something.
i picked the chicken. and let me tell you: forget about hammersley's bistro. nothing could possibly be better than this chicken. the chicken is roasted and is superbly cooked. ok, it's on the verge of being too tender, but luckily it doesn't quite go there. i didn't think the black truffle was necessarily needed, but the addition of celery is amazing. celery, in the world of marissa, is having quite a comeback these days. the celery was in a cream sauce that came with the chicken, and it was divine. i don't think i can properly express how good chicken is with celery. it has a delicately vegetal flavor that makes the chicken taste like spring. one could argue that, it being fall, this is the wrong message for a chicken to give, but that's just sour grapes on the part of anyone who has not had this chicken. yes, it seemed more french to me than mediterranean, but in a good way. this is a chicken worthy of your daydreams.
to top it all off, we decided not to have dessert because my mother had made a cake - but tess, the owner (who dresses not like an owner but like a server), told us we should have brought it, because they would have served it for us. and there you have it: it looks like a new york restaurant, but it's definitely boston.
p.s. so now my top restaurants (for nice restaurants) in the boston/cambridge area are: 1. craigie street bistrot; 2. restaurant pava; 3. pigalle. yes, it's that good. i wish it was located in boston, but what can you do.
yes yes, i know i've been remiss in updating foodlust. but in repentance, i will now add several posts (or, as many as my almost-completely-shot memory will offer up). i've been meaning to write a review of restaurant pava for several weeks now, especially given that i was there on nov 18 - more than a month ago.
i found restaurant pava through the boston globe restaurant reviews. i was initially attracted to the restaurant by the globe's review of its bread, which consists of three different types: a small chewy roll studded (cliched word nowadays, huh?) with caraway seeds and golden raisins; a french bread with a supersoft inside and a supercrispy crust; and a crispy flat "bread" that was somewhere between potato chip and bread, whose main ingredients i tried in vain to guess. all this comes with a dish of extremely green, extremely excellent olive oil. back to my initial thoughts: it is almost always true that any restaurant that does its bread so well is probably not going to disappoint. cold butter can sometimes be forgiven in the case of very good food, but mediocre bread is not a good way to start any meal.
restaurant pava is actually a companion restaurant to the Tess clothing store - by which i mean that it's located next to the clothing store in newton and it shares the same general decor. the decor is minimalist with overtones of boston - ie new york, but friendly. the interior is white, with black wooden tables and green accents. we were seated next to the front plate glass window, which i thought was going to be cold, but turned out to be just fine. this place is pretty small - seats maybe 20-30 - and the waitstaff is accordingly small, and thus friendlier. the menus are sheets of paper tucked under a band of green elastic that is attached to a heavy matte plastic board. the menus are kind of heavy because of this aforementioned plastic board, but i suppose i can forgive and forget.
because the food is pretty amazing. the chef is lydia shire, formerly of biba, and is known for being pretty adventurous. the food here is billed as "mediterranean" but is really the all-encompassing "new american," which is better described as "upscale cuisine (not "food") from any culture." we started with scallops and a small pizza; i've now forgotten exactly what the scallops came with, but i believe it might have been lobster sweetbreads (richer than normal sweetbreads) with some sort of crackery bread. mostly i just remember the scallops being very good. i liked the pizza better, though, which had smoked tomatoes and housemade pepperoni on it. 99% of the time, i despise pepperoni because it tastes like spiced plastic, but this pepperoni could do no evil - it was smoky, meaty rather than plasticky, and all together quite amazing.
when it came to entrees, i had a truly difficult time picking what i wanted, so let me give you a list of all of the things that sounded good: beet chitarra (short rib, candied ginger & blossoms); tagliatelle alla bolognese (which always looks really good to me, and which i need to make before my craving for it overtakes my life); pasta pyramids (fresh ricotta, pea shoots & pancetta); sole bianco (riso nero); chestnut crusted lamb (chestnut polenta and red russian kale); heritage berkshire pork (honeycrisp apple ravioli); wood oven chicken (black truffle, lovage, celery). so you can see that i had a serious dilemma here; usually i don't have this much trouble picking something.
i picked the chicken. and let me tell you: forget about hammersley's bistro. nothing could possibly be better than this chicken. the chicken is roasted and is superbly cooked. ok, it's on the verge of being too tender, but luckily it doesn't quite go there. i didn't think the black truffle was necessarily needed, but the addition of celery is amazing. celery, in the world of marissa, is having quite a comeback these days. the celery was in a cream sauce that came with the chicken, and it was divine. i don't think i can properly express how good chicken is with celery. it has a delicately vegetal flavor that makes the chicken taste like spring. one could argue that, it being fall, this is the wrong message for a chicken to give, but that's just sour grapes on the part of anyone who has not had this chicken. yes, it seemed more french to me than mediterranean, but in a good way. this is a chicken worthy of your daydreams.
to top it all off, we decided not to have dessert because my mother had made a cake - but tess, the owner (who dresses not like an owner but like a server), told us we should have brought it, because they would have served it for us. and there you have it: it looks like a new york restaurant, but it's definitely boston.
p.s. so now my top restaurants (for nice restaurants) in the boston/cambridge area are: 1. craigie street bistrot; 2. restaurant pava; 3. pigalle. yes, it's that good. i wish it was located in boston, but what can you do.
11 novembre 2006
when the french do english, or i love it when you talk LU
so i saw these cookies at star when i stopped by a couple days ago, because of course the cookies are on the way to the vegetables. i passed by the cheese nips, oreos, fig newtons, and was almost home free when i saw...digestive biscuits for $2.39. do you know how much real digestive biscuits from england cost? $4/package, at least $1 too much for me to justify consuming them at the rate at which i would like to consume them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. consequently, when i saw these, i had to try them. i figure it's one for the team (of digestive biscuit lovers residing in places other than england).LU is a french company that makes the petit ecolier cookies, which i love - my parents used to buy them when i was a kid, so life without LU cookies is a cruel and hostile world. but they don't often come out with new varieties of cookie that i really want - case in point, the raspberry and lime pims cookies. some american executive at LU made that decision, for sure. so the french version of tastes kind of like...a french take on a british mainstay. they taste a little like a lighter version of le petit beurre cookies (think aero chocolate bars v. regular chocolate bars, but for cookies), with milk chocolate on top. and i wonder if these were also dreamt up by americans, because the milk chocolate is too milky - not even the milk chocolate on british digestive biscuits tastes so much of condensed milk.
however, as a cookie in general the digestive is really quite nice - the mildness of the cookie is balanced by the sweetness of the chocolate. (i would not, however, recommend dunking them in your tea/coffee/hot chocolate like the LU website advises you to do - it would simply make the cookie distintegrate into the given hot liquid). as a digestive biscuit, though, it misses the mark on every count but the appearance. the wonderful thing about digestive biscuits is the texture of the cookie - in which you can taste how coarsely the flour/grain was ground. (kind of tricks you into thinking you're eating something healthy, and forgetting that there's a layer of chocolate on top of your cookie.) the flour that the digestive cookies use is completely different from the real thing - i believe it's just regular refined white flour. i would prefer a dark chocolate on my digestive biscuits, and i'm surprised that LU didn't use dark chocolate, since dark chocolate seems such a french thing to do. also, as an eating experience, i hate it when milk chocolate melts on my fingers from cookies (from chocolate bars it's somehow ok) and this milk chocolate seems to melt especially fast.
but for $2.39, i'll take it.
p.s. "i love it when you talk LU" refers to the section of the LU website where you can learn how to pronounce the names of their cookies. and if this is kind of hilarious: http://www.jemarretequandjeveux.com (je m'arrete quand je veux).
30 octobre 2006
chocolate chip cookies
i guess it's an urge ingrained in my head by years of consuming pop culture, but sometimes i really need chocolate chip cookies. occasionally i'll wait for someone else to make them, but generally if i want them, i'll go out of my way to get everything i need to make them myself.
i was no longer being productive in studio, distracted by a sudden yearning for chocolate chip cookies; so i went to star, bought chocolate chips (because sometimes i have a yearning for not only chocolate chip cookies in general, but chocolate chip cookies with chocolate-chip-shaped chocolate chips, as opposed to the chocolate chunks i could have hacked off our supply of callebaut), and went home to make cookies.
as it happens, i was trying to be responsible about my eating habits, and got sidetracked on the way to cookies. i needed lunch for the next day, so i made (boiled) some tortellini, and made a sauce, which i only mention because i think it turned out pretty well. it was essentially just onions and tomatoes, with a bit of thyme, crushed red pepper, white pepper, and port wine (plus a little bit of salt and sugar, but that's a given). i didn't think it was going to be that great because i had a few onions and a lot of tomatoes, and i thought the acidity of the tomatoes would outweight the onions, and i'd just have a very sharp-tasting sauce. but cooking the sauce for over an hour helped, as did the port wine, i think, in particular (added to the onions, before the tomatoes). anyway, i'm eating the leftovers for breakfast as i type this, and the early fire from the pepper has mellowed a little, and it just tastes better in general after a couple days.
back to the cookies: i really enjoy softening the butter for chocolate chip cookies, which i always make by hand regardless of how many batches i'm making. it's kind of like prepping butter for croissants: you cut up the butter into pieces and go at it with a meat pounder, or in my case, a wooden spoon. so i suppose i like it because it gets rid of excess tension and aggression.
now, i've tried different recipes for chocolate chip cookies, and i assure you that the tollhouse recipe is actually the best as a base. it has just the right amount of butter, flour, and sugar, and then you can just fiddle with the types of sugar, etc, that you use. i happened to only have white sugar and no brown sugar, which i thought was going to be a serious problem. as it turned out, i like all-white-sugar chocolate chip cookies a lot. they're crispier - perhaps as a result of the butter and white sugar melding better into "candy" than butter and brown sugar - and they spread just the right amount because i didn't bother refrigerating the dough this time. they're slightly more crumbly than your normal chocolate chip cookies, and i wonder if this is because of the elimination of the moisture from the brown sugar.
i'm not sure that i'm a total convert to all-white-sugar cookies; a day later i've still got very crispy cookies, which i like once in a while, but in general i like the chewy kind of cookies. cookies being cookies though, i'm not really going to complain about what kind they are.
i was no longer being productive in studio, distracted by a sudden yearning for chocolate chip cookies; so i went to star, bought chocolate chips (because sometimes i have a yearning for not only chocolate chip cookies in general, but chocolate chip cookies with chocolate-chip-shaped chocolate chips, as opposed to the chocolate chunks i could have hacked off our supply of callebaut), and went home to make cookies.
as it happens, i was trying to be responsible about my eating habits, and got sidetracked on the way to cookies. i needed lunch for the next day, so i made (boiled) some tortellini, and made a sauce, which i only mention because i think it turned out pretty well. it was essentially just onions and tomatoes, with a bit of thyme, crushed red pepper, white pepper, and port wine (plus a little bit of salt and sugar, but that's a given). i didn't think it was going to be that great because i had a few onions and a lot of tomatoes, and i thought the acidity of the tomatoes would outweight the onions, and i'd just have a very sharp-tasting sauce. but cooking the sauce for over an hour helped, as did the port wine, i think, in particular (added to the onions, before the tomatoes). anyway, i'm eating the leftovers for breakfast as i type this, and the early fire from the pepper has mellowed a little, and it just tastes better in general after a couple days.
back to the cookies: i really enjoy softening the butter for chocolate chip cookies, which i always make by hand regardless of how many batches i'm making. it's kind of like prepping butter for croissants: you cut up the butter into pieces and go at it with a meat pounder, or in my case, a wooden spoon. so i suppose i like it because it gets rid of excess tension and aggression.
now, i've tried different recipes for chocolate chip cookies, and i assure you that the tollhouse recipe is actually the best as a base. it has just the right amount of butter, flour, and sugar, and then you can just fiddle with the types of sugar, etc, that you use. i happened to only have white sugar and no brown sugar, which i thought was going to be a serious problem. as it turned out, i like all-white-sugar chocolate chip cookies a lot. they're crispier - perhaps as a result of the butter and white sugar melding better into "candy" than butter and brown sugar - and they spread just the right amount because i didn't bother refrigerating the dough this time. they're slightly more crumbly than your normal chocolate chip cookies, and i wonder if this is because of the elimination of the moisture from the brown sugar.
i'm not sure that i'm a total convert to all-white-sugar cookies; a day later i've still got very crispy cookies, which i like once in a while, but in general i like the chewy kind of cookies. cookies being cookies though, i'm not really going to complain about what kind they are.
28 octobre 2006
a short ode to leftovers.
in the world of restaurant eaters, "leftovers" is a dirty word. it's the moldy mac and cheese festering in a tupperware in the back of your fridge, pushed out of the way by pudding cups and beer. it's the smell of mold spreading throughout your fridge as you put off cleaning it out. it's the stuff you intended to eat, but then forgot about.
in the restaurant world, leftovers become family dinners: leftover chicken parts, excess inventory from a food order, etc. fewer people ordered a dish than you expected and now you have a lot of something leftover.
restaurant leftovers are a little more interesting: it's the food you didn't make that you have brought back with you. the fact that it's from a restaurant - and thus "better" than what you can do yourself - transforms leftovers into a sort of secondary takeout.
but, my friends, if you think leftovers are horrible, then you are mistaken. i am eating my lunch right now: a "salad" of braised red cabbage, roast turkey, ricotta, and olive oil. all of these things are leftovers: the braised red cabbage was leftover from cod that we had last week, the roast turkey was leftover from my mother, the ricotta was leftover from something (...a long time ago but it was still good). the contents of your fridge, in simple combination with your staple kitchen ingredients, can be transformed into joy. combining leftovers is a different kind of thinking than shopping at the supermarket for specific ingredients; it's a lesson in constraints. how can you put these things together so that they'll taste good? and this journey often leads to new discoveries about things that go together. cooking with leftovers in a non-chop suey way will further your education in how and what to eat, and you will be happier for it.
in the restaurant world, leftovers become family dinners: leftover chicken parts, excess inventory from a food order, etc. fewer people ordered a dish than you expected and now you have a lot of something leftover.
restaurant leftovers are a little more interesting: it's the food you didn't make that you have brought back with you. the fact that it's from a restaurant - and thus "better" than what you can do yourself - transforms leftovers into a sort of secondary takeout.
but, my friends, if you think leftovers are horrible, then you are mistaken. i am eating my lunch right now: a "salad" of braised red cabbage, roast turkey, ricotta, and olive oil. all of these things are leftovers: the braised red cabbage was leftover from cod that we had last week, the roast turkey was leftover from my mother, the ricotta was leftover from something (...a long time ago but it was still good). the contents of your fridge, in simple combination with your staple kitchen ingredients, can be transformed into joy. combining leftovers is a different kind of thinking than shopping at the supermarket for specific ingredients; it's a lesson in constraints. how can you put these things together so that they'll taste good? and this journey often leads to new discoveries about things that go together. cooking with leftovers in a non-chop suey way will further your education in how and what to eat, and you will be happier for it.
23 octobre 2006
palatal shock + awe
rob has been forwarding me google food emails, and the end result is that i increasingly want to work in what is essentially the google cafeteria. as in, i really, really, really want to work there. here's an email:
We have another new set of menus that culinary team put together for some palatal shock-and-awe action. The menu today features the cuisine of Provence, a French region whose cuisine shares marked similarities with Italian and Greek cuisines more so than cuisine we typically consider French. For example, as a mountainous region bordering the sea with little grasslands, grazing dairy-producing animals are not as common, thus the heavy reliance on olive oil as the preferred fat component. The dish Provence can lay the most claim to culinary fame is bouillabaise, which we have a variation on today. Typically the dish contains several types of seafood in a stew, however we did a filet in a boulllabaise sauce - saffron, fennel broth, etc. It should be delicious. There is also the tuna nicoise salad to consider, which the chefs turned into a quiche, an interesting twist. A wide assortment of salads and veggies are also available.
can you imagine a place where the engineers - but also the culinary team ("culinary team"? at a corporation??) gets to be creative? this is such a rare occurrence that it seems like an opportunity of a lifetime. i would gladly spend a summer working at google as a chef. or even as a food-related menial worker. let me weigh two dream options: working at google-food, or doing a stage at the french laundry...and the winner would be...ok, it would be the french laundry. but there would be a decision to make there.
p.s. i thought "palatal" couldn't possibly be a word (though thinking about it now, it's pretty logical that palate (n) --> palatal (adj), but the oed confirms that it is indeed a word, and it is used in the correct context here.
We have another new set of menus that culinary team put together for some palatal shock-and-awe action. The menu today features the cuisine of Provence, a French region whose cuisine shares marked similarities with Italian and Greek cuisines more so than cuisine we typically consider French. For example, as a mountainous region bordering the sea with little grasslands, grazing dairy-producing animals are not as common, thus the heavy reliance on olive oil as the preferred fat component. The dish Provence can lay the most claim to culinary fame is bouillabaise, which we have a variation on today. Typically the dish contains several types of seafood in a stew, however we did a filet in a boulllabaise sauce - saffron, fennel broth, etc. It should be delicious. There is also the tuna nicoise salad to consider, which the chefs turned into a quiche, an interesting twist. A wide assortment of salads and veggies are also available.
can you imagine a place where the engineers - but also the culinary team ("culinary team"? at a corporation??) gets to be creative? this is such a rare occurrence that it seems like an opportunity of a lifetime. i would gladly spend a summer working at google as a chef. or even as a food-related menial worker. let me weigh two dream options: working at google-food, or doing a stage at the french laundry...and the winner would be...ok, it would be the french laundry. but there would be a decision to make there.
p.s. i thought "palatal" couldn't possibly be a word (though thinking about it now, it's pretty logical that palate (n) --> palatal (adj), but the oed confirms that it is indeed a word, and it is used in the correct context here.
22 octobre 2006
the dinner party
what i have realized as i've gotten older is that i am, in fact, like my mother. every time she cooks for large groups of people (ie family), she spends almost the entire time in the kitchen. no level of exhortation gets her to stop jumping up every ten minutes to tend to whatever is cooking on the stove.
i am not quite the same, but when i surmise about why i like dinner parties as much as i do, certain similarities suddenly reveal themselves. i like dinner parties for two reasons: i like to feed people, and i like to mix my friends (to varying levels of success). but...i don't particularly like to join in the festivities myself, because the high point for me is really the cooking part. is that strange? perhaps. but no matter how well i plan, no matter how done i am with cooking when people arrive, i'm somewhat distracted at the end of the cooking, and all i really want to do is watch everyone else have fun. in fact, since i've already had my fun, i'd go as far to say that i'd cook for everyone and then go to sleep while they eat.
that said, last night i had some people over. i didn't set a menu until the day before: carrot-ginger soup, roast chicken and risotto with some sort of green veg (which turned out to be beet greens: "great alternative to spinach!"), and a pear-gingerbread trifle. as is wont to happen when i cook for large groups, the most important part is dessert, and everything else takes a backseat. the menu wasn't quite the most harmonious combination of flavors that i could have had, but given several factors: budget, how much i could carry back from star, how much i had left to give to the dinner mentally, which supermarkets i'd have to go to, etc. i worried a little that there were too many herbs and spices: ginger, then thyme (because a roast chicken should always be roasted with thyme), then ginger/cinnamon/star anise. kind of a lot, yeah? usually when i do a roast chicken, i overdo thyme because carrien and i love thyme - there's thyme in everything. but i attempted to show some restraint this time, so only the chicken (and the accompanying chicken gravy) had thyme in it. i think that given my weaknesses, i did rather admirably: the risotto was nice and simple, just rice, butter, onions, and stock.
now for some conclusions from the evening. the soup was a little chunkier than i would have liked, though i blendered it, so i should probably invest in a food mill (or rather, i should have just sieved the whole mixture). but the flavor was pretty good - it was very ginger-y because i probably threw in more than i was supposed to. the chicken was pretty good, though i'm still horrible at carving and i put a little too much paprika in the rub for the skin. gravy: check. i always forget how much spinach and beet greens shrink when cooked, so i think i should have probably gotten more, but oh well. for some reason the bit of cream i added didn't thicken quite right, so they were more liquidy than i like them. however, the risotto was really good - it was 1/3 wild rice mix, 2/3 arborio rice, which was quite a nice combination. the "really wild" (ie, with the skin on the outside of the rice grains) rice was a little crunchy still, which usually is a huge, looming, obvious sign of failure in terms of risotto, but which was fine by my book because it added a little texture. hard arborio rice in risotto: cardinal sin; hard wild rice: somewhat acceptable.
so let me talk a little bit about this dessert. i wasn't sure it was going to work: would the gingerbread overpower the pears? would the pastry cream set? would the pears actually taste pear-like (it's almost winter and pears are not a winter fruit by any means)? i made the pastry cream first: i tried the julia child recipe again because i wanted to see if i could get it to work again. the last time i made it, i didn't quite cook the flour long enough, and this time i made sure i did. where by "i made sure i did," i mean that i accidentally cooked if for long enough. i accidentally left the stove on low when i really meant to turn it off, though, so it thickened even a bit more than i wanted to, and became more like a cold pate a choux, rather than a thick-but-creamy pastry cream base. the trick with julia child's pastry cream is that you have to add things to it (beaten egg whites, whipped cream, you name it) in order to get it into a servable state. knowing this, i bought cream to whip. but man - folding that stuff into the pastry cream was a nightmare because i just didn't know if it was going to actually lighten up. luckily, four or five cups of whipped cream later, it did. so now we have an enormous amount of pastry cream. if it were summer i would just make copious numbers of fruit tarts (how can you resist anything that is essentially ripe berries resting on pillows of whipped cream?), but it's not and the fruit's not really worth having. so...if you have suggestions for what we should do with a large amount of pastry cream, i'm all ears.
back to the dessert....it turned out quite well! i am no good at estimating how much alcohol should go into these things, and given that the gingerbread was slightly denser than what i am used to using for trifle, i should have used a bit more alcohol (i used a half-rum, half-amaretto mixture). ah well. the unsurprising but surprising thing was that both trifle and risotto tasted better the next day as cold leftovers: it was unsurprising in that i like leftovers so i would automatically like them, however it was surprising in that both were an order of magnitude better the next day. i will say this: i love salt and pepper as seasonings, and i make sure i do it right every time (although since there is white pepper in our pepper mill right now, it's a bit harder to get the pepper correct).
in retrospect, i think that what i like even better than these informal dinner parties is cooking for two or three people who will come over and chat with me while i cook. they sit, occasionally do some small thing like chopping, but really they're just there to hang out with me while i make us food. besides, then you don't have the issue of only inviting some of your friends to the type of event where you would normally invite all of them if it were logistically and monetarily possible.
i am not quite the same, but when i surmise about why i like dinner parties as much as i do, certain similarities suddenly reveal themselves. i like dinner parties for two reasons: i like to feed people, and i like to mix my friends (to varying levels of success). but...i don't particularly like to join in the festivities myself, because the high point for me is really the cooking part. is that strange? perhaps. but no matter how well i plan, no matter how done i am with cooking when people arrive, i'm somewhat distracted at the end of the cooking, and all i really want to do is watch everyone else have fun. in fact, since i've already had my fun, i'd go as far to say that i'd cook for everyone and then go to sleep while they eat.
that said, last night i had some people over. i didn't set a menu until the day before: carrot-ginger soup, roast chicken and risotto with some sort of green veg (which turned out to be beet greens: "great alternative to spinach!"), and a pear-gingerbread trifle. as is wont to happen when i cook for large groups, the most important part is dessert, and everything else takes a backseat. the menu wasn't quite the most harmonious combination of flavors that i could have had, but given several factors: budget, how much i could carry back from star, how much i had left to give to the dinner mentally, which supermarkets i'd have to go to, etc. i worried a little that there were too many herbs and spices: ginger, then thyme (because a roast chicken should always be roasted with thyme), then ginger/cinnamon/star anise. kind of a lot, yeah? usually when i do a roast chicken, i overdo thyme because carrien and i love thyme - there's thyme in everything. but i attempted to show some restraint this time, so only the chicken (and the accompanying chicken gravy) had thyme in it. i think that given my weaknesses, i did rather admirably: the risotto was nice and simple, just rice, butter, onions, and stock.
now for some conclusions from the evening. the soup was a little chunkier than i would have liked, though i blendered it, so i should probably invest in a food mill (or rather, i should have just sieved the whole mixture). but the flavor was pretty good - it was very ginger-y because i probably threw in more than i was supposed to. the chicken was pretty good, though i'm still horrible at carving and i put a little too much paprika in the rub for the skin. gravy: check. i always forget how much spinach and beet greens shrink when cooked, so i think i should have probably gotten more, but oh well. for some reason the bit of cream i added didn't thicken quite right, so they were more liquidy than i like them. however, the risotto was really good - it was 1/3 wild rice mix, 2/3 arborio rice, which was quite a nice combination. the "really wild" (ie, with the skin on the outside of the rice grains) rice was a little crunchy still, which usually is a huge, looming, obvious sign of failure in terms of risotto, but which was fine by my book because it added a little texture. hard arborio rice in risotto: cardinal sin; hard wild rice: somewhat acceptable.
so let me talk a little bit about this dessert. i wasn't sure it was going to work: would the gingerbread overpower the pears? would the pastry cream set? would the pears actually taste pear-like (it's almost winter and pears are not a winter fruit by any means)? i made the pastry cream first: i tried the julia child recipe again because i wanted to see if i could get it to work again. the last time i made it, i didn't quite cook the flour long enough, and this time i made sure i did. where by "i made sure i did," i mean that i accidentally cooked if for long enough. i accidentally left the stove on low when i really meant to turn it off, though, so it thickened even a bit more than i wanted to, and became more like a cold pate a choux, rather than a thick-but-creamy pastry cream base. the trick with julia child's pastry cream is that you have to add things to it (beaten egg whites, whipped cream, you name it) in order to get it into a servable state. knowing this, i bought cream to whip. but man - folding that stuff into the pastry cream was a nightmare because i just didn't know if it was going to actually lighten up. luckily, four or five cups of whipped cream later, it did. so now we have an enormous amount of pastry cream. if it were summer i would just make copious numbers of fruit tarts (how can you resist anything that is essentially ripe berries resting on pillows of whipped cream?), but it's not and the fruit's not really worth having. so...if you have suggestions for what we should do with a large amount of pastry cream, i'm all ears.
back to the dessert....it turned out quite well! i am no good at estimating how much alcohol should go into these things, and given that the gingerbread was slightly denser than what i am used to using for trifle, i should have used a bit more alcohol (i used a half-rum, half-amaretto mixture). ah well. the unsurprising but surprising thing was that both trifle and risotto tasted better the next day as cold leftovers: it was unsurprising in that i like leftovers so i would automatically like them, however it was surprising in that both were an order of magnitude better the next day. i will say this: i love salt and pepper as seasonings, and i make sure i do it right every time (although since there is white pepper in our pepper mill right now, it's a bit harder to get the pepper correct).
in retrospect, i think that what i like even better than these informal dinner parties is cooking for two or three people who will come over and chat with me while i cook. they sit, occasionally do some small thing like chopping, but really they're just there to hang out with me while i make us food. besides, then you don't have the issue of only inviting some of your friends to the type of event where you would normally invite all of them if it were logistically and monetarily possible.
30 septembre 2006
sometimes you just need...
brownies from a box. there, i said it. i know you think i'm a stuck-up foodie. don't call me a foodie; i'm just a regular girl who happens to like food. "foodie" is a term for people who aren't me: who don't like fast food, who don't harbor secret cravings for wendy's, cakes from boxes, and brownies from boxes. i confess: a little bit of the foodie creeps back in when i qualify my tawdry love for "fake" food with the opinion that i don't consider it to be "real" food, and this is why i can enjoy it as much as i do. anyone who doesn't like brownies from a mix hasn't tasted them when you eat them, slightly undercooked, 15 minutes after they've exited your oven.
because after going for over a year without having encountered this forbidden pleasure (i'm afraid people will see them in my trash - five years ago i was once yelled at for making cookies from a mix), i had one. and then i had another one. and let me tell you: it was gorgeous. i think i died from my hellish week and went to heaven, a heaven filled with brownies and peach cake that's currently baking in the oven.
so these brownies were essentially an appetizer for dinner, which was chicken stuffed with ricotta, apricots, and craisins, and wrapped with bacon and baked; and a risotto (which was actually risotto and barley mixed together) with bacon, onions, peas, yellow bell peppers, and a little bit of sherry. but the brownies ruled the day. i'm going to the kitchen to eat another one.
because after going for over a year without having encountered this forbidden pleasure (i'm afraid people will see them in my trash - five years ago i was once yelled at for making cookies from a mix), i had one. and then i had another one. and let me tell you: it was gorgeous. i think i died from my hellish week and went to heaven, a heaven filled with brownies and peach cake that's currently baking in the oven.
so these brownies were essentially an appetizer for dinner, which was chicken stuffed with ricotta, apricots, and craisins, and wrapped with bacon and baked; and a risotto (which was actually risotto and barley mixed together) with bacon, onions, peas, yellow bell peppers, and a little bit of sherry. but the brownies ruled the day. i'm going to the kitchen to eat another one.
23 septembre 2006
anticipation
besides sitting at my desk in studio, fiddling with bits of chipboard all day, there's nothing i like better than planning menus. first you think of what you want to eat; then you think of what you have at home in the fridge, since you're a poor grad student, and try to reconcile the two.
contents of my fridge:
bacon.
a couple zucchini.
a couple of red bell peppers.
eggs.
leftover roasted broccoli from last week's soup
a pint of cream.
i wanted to cook this weekend, to preserve my sanity, so rocco and lauren are coming over tonight for dinner. rocco's making the main dish - a japanese chicken and buckwheat noodle dealio - so we thought up some things to go along with it. i'm going to do some dumplings (provided that my dumpling skins defrost in time) with pork, ginger, and garlic - i still dream about that pork-ginger-garlic pancake that i had in china... - and roasted butternut squash with kale, perhaps. i was trying to think of an asian vegetable we could do, and this is the closest i got within the budget. then for dessert, vanilla ice cream with langues de chat (which i've never made before) and a caramel sauce that's infused with star anise. i'm most excited about the dumplings, although it turns out that i have the wonton skins and i'm not at all sure how i'm going to cook them; and then the caramel sauce.
i'm so excited about cooking tonight that i'm going to tell you now what i'm going to do. well, prepping stuff of course, which also involves prepping for brunch tomorrow (more on that later), but mostly i want to see how the caramel sauce comes out. i'm going to get home from studio and straightaway i'll put some cream on the stove on low, with some star anise, and let that go, covered (dairy products absorb odors), until i need it for the caramel sauce.
tomorrow i'm doing a small brunch to use up other stuff we have in the fridge. the broccoli and bacon are going into a quiche, which i think i'm going to cook in the 22cm tart pan and some ramekins, and then i'll do some home fries with bacon and the red bell peppers (which i've also never done before, but my all clad pan gives me confidence), and chocolate-zucchini cupcakes. i'm thinking about putting nutella in the middle of the cupcakes, but really, i don't like the consistency of nutella enough to do it - it's too gooey. i wonder what i could thin it with. cream? hmm. evaporated milk? what really wants to go into those cupcakes is some fruit jam, like a cherry preserve, or chocolate pudding. or, whipped cream. but the whipped cream is definitely too extravagant for a brunch, given the presence of all of that bacon. hmm.
contents of my fridge:
bacon.
a couple zucchini.
a couple of red bell peppers.
eggs.
leftover roasted broccoli from last week's soup
a pint of cream.
i wanted to cook this weekend, to preserve my sanity, so rocco and lauren are coming over tonight for dinner. rocco's making the main dish - a japanese chicken and buckwheat noodle dealio - so we thought up some things to go along with it. i'm going to do some dumplings (provided that my dumpling skins defrost in time) with pork, ginger, and garlic - i still dream about that pork-ginger-garlic pancake that i had in china... - and roasted butternut squash with kale, perhaps. i was trying to think of an asian vegetable we could do, and this is the closest i got within the budget. then for dessert, vanilla ice cream with langues de chat (which i've never made before) and a caramel sauce that's infused with star anise. i'm most excited about the dumplings, although it turns out that i have the wonton skins and i'm not at all sure how i'm going to cook them; and then the caramel sauce.
i'm so excited about cooking tonight that i'm going to tell you now what i'm going to do. well, prepping stuff of course, which also involves prepping for brunch tomorrow (more on that later), but mostly i want to see how the caramel sauce comes out. i'm going to get home from studio and straightaway i'll put some cream on the stove on low, with some star anise, and let that go, covered (dairy products absorb odors), until i need it for the caramel sauce.
tomorrow i'm doing a small brunch to use up other stuff we have in the fridge. the broccoli and bacon are going into a quiche, which i think i'm going to cook in the 22cm tart pan and some ramekins, and then i'll do some home fries with bacon and the red bell peppers (which i've also never done before, but my all clad pan gives me confidence), and chocolate-zucchini cupcakes. i'm thinking about putting nutella in the middle of the cupcakes, but really, i don't like the consistency of nutella enough to do it - it's too gooey. i wonder what i could thin it with. cream? hmm. evaporated milk? what really wants to go into those cupcakes is some fruit jam, like a cherry preserve, or chocolate pudding. or, whipped cream. but the whipped cream is definitely too extravagant for a brunch, given the presence of all of that bacon. hmm.
17 septembre 2006
soup without vision
i was feeling kind of blah today after spending several hours in studio; not that many people were there and i missed my roommates, whom i haven't seen much of in the past week. since they weren't around, i decided i needed to cook. rather, to lovingly fashion some sort of food product; i've always found cooking to be therapeutic and this instance was no exception.
i didn't know what i was going to make, but celina was into the soup idea, so soup it was. we had red peppers and broccoli at home, and i thought i'd make something that i could put that in. when i cook for therapy, i like it to be a prolonged experience, so i can take my time. to me that means bacon and rendered bacon fat, or a roast chicken. i ended up making a soup with some stuff i thought might be good (but that i had no idea if it would be good): in addition to the peppers and broccoli i added some zucchini, portabella mushrooms, and sage.
it turned out pretty well. i also bought thick-cut bacon, which was an excellent addition; it was even slightly meatier than normal thick-cut bacon, but not quite canadian bacon or british bacon, so it was perfect for the soup. i cooked the bacon with sage to get some of the flavor into the bacon, then added a whole lot of (old, since they made me cry more than usual) onions to deglaze the pan. there's nothing like my all clad pan for utterly fantastic fond, by the way. other than the bacon, it was a basic soup: add onions, potatoes to thicken the soup (my favorite way to thicken soup), and extra veg. in the end, i wasn't sure how the mushrooms would go over; i thought of them as a meat "substitute" that would add body to the soup, but the more i thought about it, the more i thought it was a mistake. however, it ended up being ok - there were enough other vegetables to tame the strength of the portabellas.
last weekend carrien and i made these fantastic crepes for breakfast: cornmeal-cumin crepes that are filled with a ricotta-ham mixture and then baked, with a corn and scallion relish dealio. they were fantastic - the ricotta ham combo is not to be missed. we bought ham ends from star market because they were cheap, so to give them more flavor we fried the ham in some bacon fat (best thing in the world to cook with) and browned it a little, which to me, made all the difference. god those were good. i think i had more than my fair share of the leftovers.
i didn't know what i was going to make, but celina was into the soup idea, so soup it was. we had red peppers and broccoli at home, and i thought i'd make something that i could put that in. when i cook for therapy, i like it to be a prolonged experience, so i can take my time. to me that means bacon and rendered bacon fat, or a roast chicken. i ended up making a soup with some stuff i thought might be good (but that i had no idea if it would be good): in addition to the peppers and broccoli i added some zucchini, portabella mushrooms, and sage.
it turned out pretty well. i also bought thick-cut bacon, which was an excellent addition; it was even slightly meatier than normal thick-cut bacon, but not quite canadian bacon or british bacon, so it was perfect for the soup. i cooked the bacon with sage to get some of the flavor into the bacon, then added a whole lot of (old, since they made me cry more than usual) onions to deglaze the pan. there's nothing like my all clad pan for utterly fantastic fond, by the way. other than the bacon, it was a basic soup: add onions, potatoes to thicken the soup (my favorite way to thicken soup), and extra veg. in the end, i wasn't sure how the mushrooms would go over; i thought of them as a meat "substitute" that would add body to the soup, but the more i thought about it, the more i thought it was a mistake. however, it ended up being ok - there were enough other vegetables to tame the strength of the portabellas.
last weekend carrien and i made these fantastic crepes for breakfast: cornmeal-cumin crepes that are filled with a ricotta-ham mixture and then baked, with a corn and scallion relish dealio. they were fantastic - the ricotta ham combo is not to be missed. we bought ham ends from star market because they were cheap, so to give them more flavor we fried the ham in some bacon fat (best thing in the world to cook with) and browned it a little, which to me, made all the difference. god those were good. i think i had more than my fair share of the leftovers.
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