Coq Au Vin

Finally, my heavy work assignment has come to an end, and I’m back in the kitchen, kittens! To celebrate, I decided to take a few days off, and cook something grand on one of those days. Because I had a spare chicken in the freezer (I love that), I settled on the grand and delicious sounding coq au vin.

Coq au vin is, basically, chicken (usually an older, tougher chicken) stewed in wine until it is tender and flavorful. The addition of bacon, mushrooms and pearl onions only added to the allure of the dish, and I thought it was a perfect way to get back into the swing of cooking my way through this lovely book. A quick trip to the Whole Foods for the aromatics and some wine, and we were set to go.

First things first--marinate the chicken. Easy enough--I chopped up the aromatics (onion, carrot, celery) and bundled up the herbs and spices, plopping them all into my biggest kitchen bowl with the chicken, and then poured a bottle of cheap French red over the top. This is where I ran into my first problem, however. Tony calls for the wine to fully cover the chicken which... it didn’t. The legs of the chicken are rising above the red pool. After scouring the kitchen for any more bowls, I realized that anything else I had was either too small to fit the chicken, or too big to let the wine come up more than halfway around the damn thing, so the bowl would have to do. I chucked it into the fridge to marinate with a hope that it would be enough.



A few hours later, the chicken was kind of a ghastly red color which, I figured, meant it had soaked in enough wine. I separated the liquid marinade from the solid veggies and herbs, then patted the chicken dry and set about browning it in my dutch oven.


Zombie chicken?



Here is where I ran into some problems. According to Tony, you’re supposed to brown the entire chicken--whole. My dutch oven fit the thing fine, but where I was struggling was turning the darn thing over so it could brown evenly on all sides. Now, in my admittedly beloved Ad Hoc at Home cookbook, Thomas Keller warns against using tongs, since they cut and tear at the food you’re trying to move. I scoffed (YES I SCOFFED AT THOMAS KELLER) because who the hell was he to tell me not to use my beloved tongs, aka “bacon nippers” as that is what they are generally used for at my house. Well, I repent, Mr. Keller. The tongs I was using tore into the chicken’s skin as I struggled mightily to turn the damn thing over in the pot. Admittedly, my large kitchen spoons and spatula did pretty much the same thing, so really, not much improvement. Anyway, by the time the thing was browned, it was also torn and kind of gross looking. Oh well, I figured, it’ll taste good anyway.


Ew but yum (??).

Next I browned the carrot, celery and onion that I'd used in the marinade. This took a little while, as they were still a bit damp from the wine.


At least these look appetizing...

Once browned, I sprinkled them with flour, then added the chicken and the marinade liquid, and set it to cook over low heat for an hour and fifteen minutes.

Okay, second problem. Low heat barely touched this pot-o-gunk. After the first few minutes I took a look at the pot, then cautiously stuck a finger in. Despite the flame at the bottom, the stuff at the top was ice cold! Not a good cooking technique, especially for chicken. I raised the heat in order to get things going, which seemed to work all right.

Then I cubed up the bacon and crisped it in the pan, set the bacon aside and fried mushroom tops in the grease. This smelled divine, and it was all I could do to keep from munching on bacon bits and mushroom tops and calling it dinner.



Okay, last part of the recipe! Time to cook the pearl onions and--wait, what? I'm supposed to fill a pot with enough water and butter to cook the onions, boil it down under a parchment lid, then once the liquid is gone, brown the onions in the leftover butter? When I saw this I facepalmed, because if you're cooking the onions at a simmer, not a boil, this is going to take ages.


Parchment lid = this takes for freaking ever.

And hey, I was right. The chicken finished cooking long before the onions even halfway boiled down, but I just clapped the lid on the dutch oven to keep it all warm, and kept the onions going. Finally, the water receded, and the onions began to brown a little in the butter. Then? They fell apart. Completely. Like, all that was left in the pot was this weird onion mush. Only thing was, the mush tasted buttery, sweet and AMAZING, like ambrosia onion mush.


Mmmmm delicious mush.

There was no fond in the pot to speak of, but I reduced some of the wine anyway, and made the sauce with the marinade as specified (though I had to use a little corn starch to fake the thickening after Husband J began to complain about how hungry he was). I was so demoralized by that time that after I got the whole freaking thing plated, I couldn't be bothered to take a picture of the ripped up chicken with onion mush in a too thin sauce.

But you know what?

It actually tasted pretty good--and even better the next day after I shredded the remaining chicken meat and served it, and the sauce, over some buttery linguine. Just goes to show that you shouldn't write off a dish just because of some initial failure.

Still, it got me thinking that maybe I shouldn't dive in to these difficult recipes so soon... maybe try something a bit simpler and try to get more in the swing of things.

Lessons Learned: Read the whole freaking recipe before you start, so you can figure out what part of it will take for freaking ever. Even disastrous recipes can taste pretty good, especially when they've been left to meld for a while.

Next week: Tartiflette

A Confessional Post and a Simple Fall Meal

So for the past few posts, I started most of them off apologizing for not blogging every week which was my stated goal. That's pretty boring, so I won't do that here, but I do feel the need to explain a bit why I've been so lax about posting about meals since July.

First of all, it's been a pretty intense work year for me, with most of my projects coming up essentially last-minute. This has been causing a lot of interruptions in my domestic life, particularly the project that started up at the end of July, and is continuing into November. I'm commuting to another city daily (when I'm not spending the night in hotels) combined with working extended days, and it's just exhausting. Husband J is picking up a lot of the ensuing slack around the house, and that includes packing lunches and making dinner. He's been amazing about it, but it has kept me out of the kitchen for the past month and a half.

Second, I haven't had much kitchen motivation lately, even when I have a little time to be in the kitchen. The last time I cooked something intense (Parisian style herb gnocci from the Bouchon cookbook) was a month and a half ago, and since then for some reason, flipping through cookbooks (once a favorite pastime) has left me feeling overwhelmed and depressed rather than energized and excited. I think this has a lot to do with me just being tired in general, and will pass once my schedule returns to a more reasonable level. But it's not a nice feeling when you can't get excited about something that used to give you so much inspiration.

Finally, I just have to say it... it's fall. And I hate fall. Everyone and their mom loves fall because of the crisp weather and the feeling in the air, but all I can think of is the end of warmth and sunshine, and the ensuing horrible, grey, gloomy winter. This is causing a little bit of a mood disconnect in the house, as Husband J loves fall. (In six months it will be my turn to gloat--I love spring, and Husband J hates it.) So, I'm doing my best to think about good fall things, and keep optimistic. I hope that with a little effort, I will be able to get my energy and my desire to cook back! So, even though I'm feeling pretty ill today, and even though it's a rather nasty, cloudy, rainy day, even though I spent much of yesterday crying because I missed the sun, and even though I have to be away from home all week next week, I'm going to make a very easy meal for tonight's dinner and get inspired again.

So, here we go. Roasted poussin and sautéed spinach.

First thing. I went all gaga over Tony's roasted chicken at the beginning of this experiment, and the only excuse I can give is that it was really my first ever roasted chicken. I have since seen the light. No no, it is Thomas Keller's roasted chicken that truly wins.

I 'splain. And I must admit in this blog dedicated to Tony Bourdain that Thomas Keller will always be a better chef. Of course, it is to Tony's credit that he freely admits this, and never tries to compete. So when I tried Thomas Keller's favorite roasted chicken recipe, I had no doubt it would be better than Tony's and it was. And there's just one simple secret to it: no moisture.

Yeah, Tony's recipe has all these mouthwatering ingredients like lemon and herb butter, but the thing is, all those lovely things add moisture, which is death to roast chicken's crispy, crunchy skin. So for Mr. Keller's roasted chicken (here a poussin, that is, a young chicken under 2 lbs), all we do is take the chicken, pat off all the moisture, and season the skin with salt and pepper. That's it!



Then put it in the oven at 450 for an hour and when you take it out, there's this golden brown deliciousness all over the bird. My god.



For a side dish, I wanted something green, so since spinach was the only veggie I had in the house I decided on spinach sautéed with garlic. This is another crazytown, dead easy recipe. Warm some oil in a pan, add some chopped garlic, then a bunch of spinach leaves til they get all coated with oil and garlic and deliciousness. That's it. Then you serve.



Husband J admitted while we ate that he doesn't necessarily crave roasted chicken, and that he always hearkened back to the rotisserie chicken of his childhood--you know, that junk in the plastic clam shell from the grocery store, or the Boston Market. But this is much better, with its salty, crunchy, peppery crispiness, and makes him want to come back for more. I tell him he needs to learn how to roast the chickens, and make them for me!

So that's my simple fall dinner. I hope that will jump start some cooking in the near future, and that, at least, it makes you hungry for more. It did the trick with me.

Rôti de Porc au Lait and Parsnip Puree

Phew, I don't know about you all, but it is really hot this evening, and has been all day. Not much to do but hang around the apartment drinking water and laying under the ceiling fan, or if you are me, cooking with full burners and the oven on. Yep, I'm crazy. But I figure it will take a couple of very delicious dinners to convince Husband J to start fanning me with palm fronds and spritzing me with Evian all day.

Few weeks back I made a dish much more suited to the cooler weather--rôti de porc au lait (pork roasted in milk) with parsnip puree. If you'll all turn your hymnals to page 173, you'll see a very mouthwatering picture of a golden pork roast being basted in creamy milk. The reality of this dish is not exactly how that picture makes it look, but it is tasty.

First things first, obtaining a pork loin roast. Obviously the only place I can ever go for pork is my trusty vendor, Cedarbrook Farm. At their stall I learned the difference between a European pork loin roast (bone in, skin on) and an American pork loin roast (skinless, boneless, but with a very nice layer of fat lining one side). Since the recipe calls for boneless, I went with the American roast. I carted this home, and put it in the fridge, and then into the sink in an ice bath, to thaw.

To cook the roast, first brown it on all sides in a large pot.



Pork bubbling away in a mix of olive oil and butter.

While searing the pork, I chopped up the veggies used to create the milk sauce: carrot, leek, onion and garlic.



Mise en place for the veggies. The upper right bowl contains garlic confit, which I threw into the parsnip puree on a whim.

After the roast had been seared, I set it aside, and added the chopped veggies to the pot to caramelize over high heat.



Next, I added flour and the milk, and a bouquet garni.



This whole mess gets brought to a boil, then the pork is added, and the pot turned down to a simmer. Then the lid goes on the pot to cook for 1 hour.



So far, so good. While the pork cooked, I made the parsnip puree. This is insultingly easy--just chop the parsnips, boil until soft, strain, and pulse in a food processor while adding some salt, white pepper, and a full stick of butter. (Yesss.) I also added some garlic confit, as I said earlier, for a little kick.

After the hour, I removed the pork from the pot, and set it aside to rest. I decided to skip straining the sauce, and instead pureed the entire mess, veg and all, with my stick blender, until it formed a creamy orange sauce.

Then I cut into the pork, and was met with this:



Oh good lord... the pork didn't cook more than half an inch into the roast! At this point our dinner guest had already arrived, and I started panicking. I shoved the entire thing into the oven for a half an hour, and was met with still rawish pork coming out of the oven. In a despair spurred by not desiring to make people sick and get sued, I decided to cut the pork up and saute the slices until they were done. This seemed to work, so I slathered the sauce onto the meat and served.



Not the prettiest shot of dinner ever, but hey, nobody died.

The pork was very succulent, the sauce was delish, but the real star of the dinner was the butter--I mean parsnip--puree. I haven't eaten many parsnips in my time but this has made me a convert, as they are sweet, creamy and delicious.

I was a little sad that the sauce was not the white, creamy, milky sauce featured in the photograph, but other bloggers who have made the dish before me have also come out with a rather chunky orange sauce instead, so I figure I must be doing that bit right.

It took me a while to think of why the pork just did not cook at all according to the recipe, but I think it's because the massive chunk of meat just didn't defrost properly in the time I gave it. Next time I guess it's straight into the ice bath as soon as it's brought home, rather than into the fridge first.

Lessons learned: Do a better job at defrosting. Parsnips are freaking fantastic, especially with a stick of butter mixed in them.

Next week: Steak au Poivre.

Easter Dinner

Blech. Yeah I know ages since I posted anything. Long story short, work is kicking my ass and both the cooking and posting have slowed to a crawl these days. I'm looking to pick up a bit more again in about a month so please stay patient!

You guys, I am such a bonehead! In the whirl of getting ready to head to the suburbs to Mom's to cook easter dinner, I remembered my dutch oven... I remembered my scalloped tart pan... I remembered my ovenproof gratin dish... and forgot my CAMERA. Can you believe it? Of course I couldn't just not cook easter dinner due to lack of camera, but I feel pretty terrible about leaving you guys with no pix.

Anyway, the plan for dinner was gigot a la sept heurs, that is, seven-hour leg of lamb. I love lamb for easter, and never got it as a kid, because my mom always hated lamb. (Anyone sensing a pattern here of me making up for things I wanted as a kid but never got? Oh my life was soooo hard...) Usually we get a ham, but since we had a non-pork-eater joining us for dinner, mom agreed to let me cook the lamb... and the whole rest of the dinner, too. This was my first holiday meal flying solo, you guys! After much deliberation on the appropriate sides and dessert, I decided on the following:

1. Gigot a la sept heurs, from the Les Halles Cookbook
2. Gratin Dauphinois, from the Les Halles Cookbook (I know this is a repeat but the fam didn't want mashed, and I couldn't help but think how wonderful this dish would be with leg of lamb as I wiped the puddles of drool off my cookbook)
3. Nantes carrot stew, from Ad Hoc at Home
4. Asparagus coins, from Ad Hoc at Home
5. The most extraordinary lemon tart, from Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours

Pretty ambitious, wouldn't you say? Well, let's see how it goes...

Prep for the meal got started the week before (I know, I know, I'm crazy) when I started with the lemon cream for the tart. The lemon cream (based on a Pierre Herme, recipe, by the way) is different from the usual lemon cream used in tarts, and different from the lemon tart I made a few weeks back, in that the butter is added in a blender after the rest of the cream is put together. This keeps the butter from melting into a curd-like structure, but emulsifies the butter to make a very fluffy, light cream. I've had trouble emulsifying before (see my aoli fail) but this lemon cream came together perfectly. I'm definitely going to try another aoli or mayonnaise endeavor using my hot new blender, instead of my old-ass food processor, to see if it will work better. The lemon cream recipe is around the internet, but I do recommend getting the Dorie Greenspan book, as it has a lot of great recipes and is a wonderful baking resource.

With the lemon cream freezing away nicely, I undertook two parts of the asparagus recipe from Ad Hoc at Home: chive oil and parsley water. The cookbook explains that asparagus flavor generally leaches out into the water in which the asparagus is cooked, so for the Ad Hoc recipe, it is cooked with parsley water to retain its flavor, and to add the herbal parsley flavor as well. I won't go into too much detail on these (more detail to be had when I make basil oil or parsley oil from the Les Halles Cookbook in the not-too-distant fugure), but suffice to say they were super easy and took next to no time at all.

On Saturday, after a fun morning negotiating a DC metro system that was OVERRUN with tourists going to the cherry blossoms, I chucked my cooking supplies (sans camera) into a suitcase and headed to the suburbs for Easter with my mother, grandmother, and sister.

I woke up at the crack of dawn on Easter Sunday morning to get the lamb in the oven. Mom had gotten a lovely big leg of lamb from the local Whole Foods, and I set to work trimming it of fat and silverskin before putting it into the dutch oven. Only when I attempted to do so... of course... my dutch oven was too small to fit a full lamb leg with its bone in. I knew it would be, of course, but I only had the one dutch oven, with no time to buy a new one, so what's a girl to do? After some hilarious, and aborted attempts to trim the bone with a handsaw, I ended up seaming the leg, carving off the meat, and stuffing the meat into the dutch oven with some herbs, white wine, and a ton of garlic shoved into the lamb folds. With that in the dutch oven, and the lid on, I mixed some flour and water together to form a seal where the oven lid meets the pot. This mucking around with floury goop got some arch comments from my mother and grandmother, but I soldiered on, and shoved the entire mess (perched on a baking sheet) into a 300 degree oven.

Following this, I made Dorie Greenspan's sweet tart crust, a process not unlike the tart crust I made for a plum tart earlier in this project. The main difference is that it was meant to be pressed into the tart pan, rather than rolled out, so in a way it was an intentional Frankencrust. This went into a freezer for the rest of the day until it was ready to be baked.

That was all of the big prep to be done for the day, so I spent most of the rest of the afternoon relaxing with my family, eating copious amounts of licorice, and making pysanky (Easter eggs dyed and then painted with wax, then dyed again for colorful pictures).

When it was almost time for dinner, I first made the potatoes gratin (featured from my holiday recap post), and then made carrot stew. I sauteed the carrots in a knob of butter until they began to release their juices, then added some sweet white wine (in place of sherry), and then some carrot juice, curry powder and coriander. After a few minutes, I removed the carrots, and cooked the liquid down to a glaze, which became intensely sweet and fragrant. This got the nice addition of a knob of butter whisked in, and then I put the carrots back into the pan over low heat to keep warm.

Next, I made the asparagus coins by slicing asparagus into thin rounds, and sauteing it in the chive oil. When the coins were barely cooked, I added the parsley water and simmered the mess until the coins were done.

By this time, it was time to take the lamb out of the oven, which I did with a little trepidation. The entire house was by this time smelling of delicious, savory lamb, garlic and herbs, and everyone who came in the house commented on the wonderful aromas. I had Husband J haul the dutch oven on its baking sheet out of the oven--the amount of meat plus the heavy enamel-iron pot made for an incredibly weighty. Then, I tried peeling the now browned flour and water slurry off of the dutch oven... but it was stuck on tight. Husband J to the rescue again, he grabbed mom's heaviest kitchen implements and used them as a hammer and chisel to chip the mix off. This was pretty arduous, but eventually it all came off, and we lifted the lid. The meat had broken down and looked like tender bits of brisket, and we spooned it out of the pot and onto a serving platter.

All in all, dinner was a huge hit. The meat could have been a bit more tender--I think it was a little overdone, since we had to cut the bone out, but it was very tasty with all that garlic and herb flavor. We included some organic mint jelly at my grandmother's insistence, and it tasted wonderful with the lamb. Of the sides, the potatoes gratin was the biggest hit (obviously, I mean who doesn't love potatoes gratin?), but the carrot stew and asparagus coins were devoured just as quickly.

The lemon tart was... well, all right. After baking the crust I cooled it, then spread it with the thawed lemon cream. It tasted nice, though the cream melted on the still warm crust and glorped all over the place. Add to this that over dessert, my sister insisted that we watch her new favorite movie The Cove, so by the time I had finished, all I could think about was dolphin massacres, and that doesn't go so well with lemon tart. Next time at least I'd put the tart into the fridge to solidify the cream, and definitely wouldn't watch animal slaughter movies while eating it.

But, aside from that dessert debacle, the meal went wonderfully, and received great acclaim from the family, so I was happy about that! My first holiday meal, a success.

Lessons learned: Don't forget your freaking camera. Get a bigger dutch oven to cook big old legs of lamb. Don't watch dolphin slaughters with your dessert.

Next Week: Roti de Porc au Lait

Veal Stock

Okay so all two of my readers are scratching their heads and pondering where the hell I've been over the past two weeks. I'm sorry, guys! I got sick the first weekend and spent a day in bed alternatively wanting to 1) eat nothing ever; and 2) die, and the second weekend I had to work. So I've left you hanging! You! My public, you! So sad!

Anyway, this week I'ma make it up to you by making the very first "recipe" in the Les Halles Cookbook: veal stock. Now, I say "recipe" in cute quotation marks, because Tony does not provide a recipe. It's more of a free form suggestive section, where he recommends cramming some veal bones in here, chopping some onion and carrot there, dumping it into a pot and simmering for eight hours. It's kind of a big deal, because so many of the recipes in the cookbook call for the addition of either veal stock, or the faux demi-glace made from the veal stock (more on that later), and you basically can't make a lot of the recipes in the book without it.

Veal stock is kind of an issue,though, cos if you've been following me through this at all, you've seen me whine and gripe about the fact that I can never find any veal bones, ever, because there are no butchers in DC. Well as it turns out I was wrong, there is like A butcher in DC, and I found him, and he rules. He is in Eastern Market, where I high-tailed it this Saturday after a lunch at the Good Stuff Eatery (which is oh my god so good but I wanted to die after eating there). I grabbed 10 pounds of fresh (!!!) veal bones, chopped up into small pieces, just waiting for me to make some delicious stock. So hardcore! And they had chitterlings! YAAY!

Anyway. We lugged the bones home and in the morning, it was time to make some stock.

First, wash the bones with cold water and dry them off.



Apologies for the blurry pics this week, the camera is having some glitches or something, and we're not getting sharp pictures no matter what we try.

Then, line an oiled roasting pan with the bones, and roast at 350 degrees for about 50 minutes. However, as Tony says, "if you want to cheat..." OH MY GOD YES I WANT TO CHEAT TELL ME HOW!!! ...dollop some tomato paste onto the bones, sprinkle with a handful of flour, and work the stuff into the bones before roasting. Which I did.

While the bones roasted, I chopped up a mirepoix of 50% onion, 25% carrot and 25% celery, put it in another roasting pan, and shoved it into the oven. Roasting mirepoix smells like Thanksgiving!



Once the bones are browned, and the mirepoix is caramelized, dump both into a pot with some thyme and peppercorns, fill the pot with water, and bring to a simmer. The pot then goes on to simmer for a good eight to ten hours, while the house fills with the aroma of delicious meats. Actually I think this aspect of the stock making process is overrated. The stock smells great for a while, but then you just get kind of sick of the smell of simmering meat. Veal stock is a pretty oily, fatty stock too, so the house just gets to smelling unctuous. The smell gets literally everywhere, causing Husband J to remark, when time came to go to sleep, "my pillow smells like meat! I have a meat pillow!" Sounds kind of wrong, huh?

Anyways, once the eight-to-ten hours is over, it's time to get all the solids out of the pot and strain the liquid through a strainer lined with cheesecloth. This left me with a rich brown liquid with a bit of oily fat on top that didn't strain off, and which I left to gather in a layer on top of the tupperwares as it cooled in an ice bath for future scrapage.



Ladling stock out of the pot to strain.

Voila, now there is veal stock and I can make Husband J's favorite dish, onglet salad and like 75% of the other recipes in this book. Hooray!

Actually I ended up having to make two batches of stock, since the bones and veg didn't all fit into one that still had room for enough liquid to make a decent amount of stock. So another pot went onto the stove on Monday night, causing all kinds of havoc as we (well, Husband J) had to get up at 3:30 am to turn off the burner, and then again at 6:30 to strain the still hot liquid. The second pot of stock didn't quite turn out as well as the first, it was lighter in color and seemed almost greasy rather than gloriously fatty. However, I'm not going to cry over a ball-less stock, but will instead raise the bar by turning the stuff into Tony's makeshift demi-glace in the next couple of days.

Lessons Learned: Butchers are pretty awesome. Roasting mirepoix smells like thanksgiving but simmering veal stock just smells kind of viscous.

Next Week: Well, I'm going to try to make demi-glace over the week, but the next weekend is another work weekend, and I'll be out of the country on business. So no cooking. But the NEXT weekend is Thanksgiving, after which I have promised to make my mother French onion soup. So there's that! Stay tuned!

Poulet au Pot

Phew, what a refreshing break! Thanks everyone for being patient, and coming back to read some more.

After the rather exotic coeur du porc last time, I decided to go with something a good deal more familiar and homey, and what better than poulet au pot--that is, chicken-in-a-pot?

Poulet au pot, as I discovered from the magic that is google, is a recipe that dates back over 500 years, and is a Sunday Staple in the French countryside. It's basically a stuffed chicken stewed in a pot with veggies, and served with crunchy cornichons, salt and mustard in its own broth. The internets even report that Henry IV declared that every French family ought to be able to have poulet au pot once a week, the start I suppose of that great political promise "a chicken in every pot."

I made sure to wake up extremely early on Sunday, so to take the best advantage of the farmer's market's bounty (particularly the whole chickens from Smith Meadows Farms, which are snapped up very quickly in the mornings). I got there so early, actually, that I had half an hour before the "starting bell" and had to grab a coffee at (uch) Starbucks to bide my time. It turned out to work well, because I was able to scope out which stands had the veggies I needed for the stew, and could map out the best route through the market in order to maximize my take. Farmer's market strategies... I don't know whether that's uperyuppie or megahousefrau.

I stopped first at Smith Meadows and asked for the biggest chicken they had (Tony's recipe calls for a 6 pounder; the biggest I could get was 5 lbs) and a pound of chicken livers. Only--disappointment--they had no livers that day. I'm beginning to think there's some kind of Smith Meadows conspiracy against me, where they don't have precisely the thing I need each week (because of course all farms must cater to my needs at all times). Oh well, at least I got the chicken. Next I stopped by the Cedarbrook Farm stall to pick up some sausage for the stuffing. They were out of "country rope," but did have loose sausage stuffing outside of the casing--perfect! I thanked them for the heart, and reported that it tasted like roast beef. They looked at me like I had sprouted two heads, but tried to be polite about it. I guess the thought of cooking pig heart is just a little too much crazy at 9:00 in the morning, even if you are a farmer. It's going to be fun when I ask them for pig livers for the upcoming pate....

Then I loaded up on veggies and hauled my take home. Next to Whole Foods for cornichons, livers, cream and bread while the chicken and sausage defrosted in the refrigerator.

In addition to the chicken-in-a-pot, I decided to go with the "pot" theme and make salted caramel pots-de-creme from a recipe I found on Tastespotting at the blog "A Bowl of Mush" and have been dying to try. I need to get on some of the desserts that are actually in the book, but they're so few, while the main courses are so many, I'm trying to space them out. So as a bonus, I'll tell you about my experience with this recipe, even if it doesn't exactly go with the theme.

After getting back from Whole Foods, I started the dessert by melting sugar, sea salt, and a little water in a pot til it got caramelized and liquidy. The recipe calls for stirring constantly, but I found that by leaving the sugar alone, then stirring it up a bit and leaving it alone again, the caramelization process went faster, but still didn't burn. Then I took the caramel off the heat to add the cream. This proved troublesome, as the caramel immediately turned rock-hard and stuck to the bottom of the pan, refusing to mix with the cream at all. I had to allow the cream to heat slowly and melt the caramel in order to incorporate.

While the caramel melted into the cream, I started preparing the stuffing for the bird. First I mixed a cup of bread cubes with some more heavy cream, then added parsley and shallot. Next I chopped up a half pound of chicken livers into a liver-y mush, and added them plus the pound of sausage meat to the mix. The stuff looked a bit slimy thanks to the livers, but I bucked up and stuffed the mess into the bird. There was a good bowlful of stuffing left over, even after I crammed the chicken to the breaking point, so I baked it in the oven as dressing.

Raw stuffing. Yup that red gobbety stuff is chicken liver and possibly blood. Mmm.

Tony calls for sewing the chicken's butt up with a trussing needle and thread, but by the time I'd overstuffed the thing to the point of livery stuffing oozing out of its cavity (nice mental picture there, right?), there was going to be no sewing, that was for sure. Also, I couldn't find a needle and thread at the Whole Foods. I figured once I got the stuffing in and propped the chicken up inside the pot, the stuffing would stay reasonably intact.

Finally, I chopped up the veggies (carrots, parsnips instead of turnips, celery, garlic, onions), and added them and a bouquet garni to the pot, and set them to simmer for two hours.

Chicken and veg simmering together

Back to the custards. By now, the cream had melted the caramel sufficiently so that I had caramel infused cream instead of rock hard caramel sitting in a pool of cream. I cooled the caramel cream and added it to a mix of egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla. The mix filled four ramekins reasonably well (enough for Husband J, Neighbor C, Friend I and me), so into the oven it went for about 50 minutes to bake.

By this time the chicken stew was smelling amazing, bubbling away on the stove, and the extra dressing had come out of the oven sizzling, and filling the kitchen with a rich meaty aroma. Husband J, Neighbor C and I all had bites, and the stuff was really out of this world.

Cooked dressing, glistening with delicious fat.

After the chicken simmered for two hours, I threw in a chopped up head of cabbage and a couple of red potatoes, and let the stew simmer for another 30 minutes. Then the pot came off the heat, the chicken came out of the pot, and I carved it up, giving everyone a chunk of white meat, a chunk of dark meat, a spoonful of stuffing, and some veggies, and some broth on top. Cornichons, salt and mustard went into the extra ramekins on the table for everyone to spoon out as much as we liked.

The result was better than I could have imagined. I'm always skeptical about boiling food, coming from the Irish tradition of "chuck it into the pot and boil it till it's grey" school of cooking by ancestry, but poulet au pot makes for one spectacular chicken. The meat was super tender, falling off the bone, but the breast meat was not at all dry. The stuffing inside the bird spilled out in a nice, well-cooked pile, adding some meaty richness to the dish. The veggies were all cooked to perfection, especially the very delicious cabbage and potatoes. All of it went wonderfully with the briny mustard and cornichons. Husband J feels that it is the chicken stew equivalent of a pastrami sandwich, with the meaty goodness nicely balances with the tart mustard and sour pickle. In fact, he liked it better than the poulet roti, because the meat was so tender and soft in this dish, and the combination of veggies and condiments were perfect. Everyone ate a big plateful, barely saving room for dessert (the dish is surprisingly filling).

The caramel pots de creme were again the big hit of the night (notice how everyone loves desserts best?) with everyone cooing over their salty caramely goodness. I topped them with whipped cream and a sprinkle of sea salt, and it was the perfect end to a great meal. The caramel cream was an even bigger hit than the fruit tarts if you can believe it.

Uh, and sorry about the lack of photos on this post. The dishes got snapped up before I could really take a camera to them. I'll definitely be making this dish again, so I might try to supplement this post with future poulet au pot photos.

Lessons learned: Sometimes chucking it into a pot and boiling it is the best way to cook. No matter what, everyone loves dessert best. Anything tastes good with mustard, salt and pickle. Chicken livers are pretty freaking tasty.

Next week: Frisee aux lardons (BACON SALAD, an oxymoron if I've ever heard one) and Coquilles Saint Jacques avec Champagne (sea scallops in champagne sauce). But what for dessert?

Soupe au Pistou and Basic Tart Dough

Last Monday after our extravagant turkey dinner in August, a day where we could hardly sit outside because it was so hot, the temperature suddenly dropped. I walked outside to go to work in a light summer dress only to find that outside, it was in the low 60s. I could not believe it... but it is a sign. Summer is almost over.

Husband J is thrilled. Fall is his favorite season, and he can't wait to break out sweaters, coats and scarves, and eat fall type foods like apples and sausage, roasted root vegetables, and rich braised meats.

I'm not so thrilled. Despite the oppressive humidity that characterizes D.C. summers, I really love the warm weather and the start of cold weather always makes me feel a little sad. It's time to have a last summer meal, veggie heavy, and full of the last of the best late summer produce. Soupe au pistou is definitely the best way to do that, as it is full of zucchini, summer squash, tomatoes, and basil.

This weekend, Labor Day holiday weekend, was an odd one. I ended up heading home sick from work early on Friday, and stayed sick through Saturday, leading to a very low key video game playing day. Sunday I woke up feeling better and headed to the market for veggies. When I got to the stand that sells my favorite yogurt and butter, they had a big sign out front: "WE HAVE MASCARPONE!" so I couldn't resist getting a tub. That gave me an idea for a mascarpone fruit tart, so I grabbed a load of peaches and blackberries (I think those fruits go very well together). The soup and tart will be very delicious refreshments for tonight's activity--visiting neighbor C's apartment for a double feature of the second season of Tool Academy (Husband J terms it "TA2: The Reckoning").

First, the tart crust. I was hoping for a better result than the pie frankencrust from two weeks ago, which turned out dry and patchy, and not very photogenic. Tart crust is not made in the food processor, which is good, as I've decided I prefer making crusts with my own two hands. Tart crust is also softer, sweeter, and more delicate than pie crust.

I started out by sifting flour into a bowl, creaming butter and stirring it into the flour, then adding egg, sugar, and vanilla.

Crust ingredients in the sun.

I mixed all of these with a fork old-school style, and the crust came together easily. I took a taste of the raw dough, and it's just astoundingly delicious, like the sugar cookie dough my grandmother makes for her Christmas cookies, and which I can (and have) eat(en) by the handful (salmonella be damned). I wrapped it up and set it in the fridge to cool for an hour.

After the hour passed, it was time to roll the crust out. This crust was just beautiful... soft, rich, delicious tasting, and rolled out nicely in a circle. The only problem was, despite the generous flouring I gave my silicone mat and the rolling pin, the crust just did not want to transfer to the pan. First it stuck to the mat, forcing me to tear it up and re-roll it, then an attempt to transfer it into the tart pan caused it to tear in half. I ended up pressing the crust together in the pan again, creating a Frankentartcrust which ended up being a bit more photogenic than Frankenpiecrust, anyway.

Frankentartcrust!!!

While the crust baked in the oven, I made the custard, using the recipe called for in the Tart Alcasienne (apple tart), replacing the called for heavy cream with mascarpone. Only I screwed the filling up by adding the eggs before putting it on the stove, and realized my mistake before putting the whole mess on the stove to heat. I decided to try it, hoping the egg wouldn't curdle if I kept whisking. One sore forearm and a mess-o-curdle later, I dumped the pot and made another batch of custard, this time keeping the eggs separate until I boiled the cream. That seemed to work well. Once the custard was finished and cooling, I sliced the peaches, arranged the berries in the crust, and poured custard over the whole thing. Into the oven it went to set.

Time to make the soup! The canellini beans had soaked overnight, so they went into the pot for 10 minutes, 5 minutes less than their package said to cook them. While they cooked, I chopped the zucchini, onion, garlic, tomato and fennel. Onion and garlic sweat in the pot first, then I added the rest of the veggies to soften in the oil.

Gorgeous veggies!

Once the veg were soft, I added the chicken broth, a bouquet garni, the macaroni and the beans, and set the thing to simmer for half an hour.


Meanwhile I made the pistou (basically pesto, without the nuts). This involves mashing six cloves of garlic and a bunch of basil leaves into a paste with a mortar and pestle, then adding olive oil a bit at a time, mashing until smooth. "If you are criminally lazy," says Tony, "you can use a food processor." Okay, done!

Mmmm... criminal laziness....

A bit of Parmesan, salt and pepper, and the pistou was finished.


This is where the problems in the soup pot began. The macaroni started cooking nicely, and was soft and delicious in a few minutes. The beans, however, remained rock-hard and kind of disgusting. Full disclosure... I'm not the biggest fan of beans in general, since my early days when beans came in a can and were covered in slime, and I've never worked with dried beans in a dish before. Not a good day to try....the clock was ticking for Tool Academy to start, and the beans were just not cooking! Finally I decided enough was enough--the veggies and mac were turning to mush, and the broth was cooking out of the soup. I took the soup off the heat, stirred in the pistou, packed it into a tureen, and trucked it over to Neighbor C's for a night of tools and prosecco.

Despite the great cannelini bean disaster, the soup went over very well, with everyone having seconds and lapping up even the nasty beans (I warned everyone about the al dente nature of the beans, but it ended up being too much trouble to pick them up or eat around them). Everyone involved loved garlic, which is a good thing, since with the pistou the entire thing had eight big cloves. It really would have been great if the beans had cooked properly, but as it was, the taste was good, even if the texture was a bit off.


The tart was of course the hit of the night. In my opinion the fruit was the best, followed by the nice sugar cookie crust. The tarte alcasienne custard was a bit too eggy and rich for a summer fruit tart, but it didn't taste bad. Husband J opined that it was better than the usual too-sweet custards in fruit tarts, so all in all, it worked out.

I tried to arrange the peaches artistically, but it didn't quite work out...

It's almost time to start stewing and braising, which means I need to make some veal stock. Alas, no veal bones were to be had at the market today. It's kind of depressing that there are no real butchers to be found in DC, though I have a promise from one of the farmers market stands that I can e-mail them on Thursdays to see if I can find some bones at the next market. I'm not feeling too sanguine though, since veal is a spring thing, right? I'm running out of recipes that can be made without veal stock and demi glace, though, so if anyone knows where I can find some bones, please let me know...

ETA: Forgot my lessons and future plans! Here we go...

Lessons learned: Cannelini beans take for freakin' ever to cook and don't taste that good al dente. Everything tastes better with 8 cloves of garlic. Never put the eggs in the custard before you put it on the stove, they curdle no matter how fast you whisk. Mascarpone tart is ok, but there are better ways to showcase mascarpone flavor, next time just use cream. Tart crust is delicious but delicate to handle. Veal bones apparently do not exist in DC.

Next week: Possibly salad nicoise, or if I am feeling very ambitious, whole roasted fish basquaise which has the added bonus of leftover bones so I can make fumet (fish stock). The soupe au pistou used up the rest of my chicken stock, so we'll probably have to roast another chicken in the near future so I can have more bones. Who is up for a stock making party?