Amuse Bouche

En Papilote and a few odds and ends

Well it seems that running a cooking school takes the life out of blogging but I felt it was time to stop by and update on my world in a nutshell.

The transition of the business continues to move along.  I'm hoping to have all the loose ends tied up before the easter bunny comes hopping through. It's all just a matter of paperwork and signatures and agreements. Lots of great things are happening though, classes are going well, new business ideas are taking seed, potential 3rd kitchens are being plotted, espresso machines are arriving, satellite radio continues to enthrall me daily with cheesy 1970's pop hits making 10 hour days far more enjoyable than one would think.

Cooking dinner has a become a challenge since getting home at 8:00 really doesn't leave much time to prepare a full blown meal, but I have rediscovered the joys of cooking en papillote, a fancy term for cooking in a pouch.  Just give me some foil or parchment a few ideas and 10 minutes in the morning and I can make something that just gets tossed into the oven when we get home and 25 - 30 minutes later we are sitting down to dinner. Lay a heavy duty piece of foil down, place the ingredients listed below on top.  Place another piece of foil on top.  Roll up the edges to make a pouch.  Heat the oven to 400F.

A few recent successes are:

Mediterranean: chicken boob, boneless, skinless.  Toss on some salt and pepper, a few capers, some black olives, sun dried tomatoes, thyme sprigs, Valbresso feta, Aleppo pepper flakes and a drizzle of olive oil. Bake the aforementioned 25 - 30 mins. Serve on some nice egg noodles with a touch of truffle butter.

Chicken Vesuvio: peel a russet, cut in oven fry shapes, sauté until brown in olive oil.  Remove.  Toss in 20 pieces of garlic, sauté until beginning to brown, pour in some white wine, sizzle, reduce by half. Pour over a boneless skinless chicken boob seasoned with garlic powder and oregano. Lay the potato slices on top, sprinkle with crushed red pepper flakes, pour in a bit of chicken stock. Bake. Serve with a side of peas.

Chicken and chorizo: Again, lather, rinse, repeat. 1 boneless skinless chicken boob, season with salt and pepper, toss some slices of chorizo on top.  Add some strips of roasted red pepper, a few cloves of garlic slivered. Mince up some red onion and sprinkle this on top with some crushed red pepper flakes.  Add some chicken stock and serve the whole lot over rice.

That is some fast, moist and delicious dinner with the easiest clean-up ever.

How busy is busy you ask?  That picture above of my birthday dinner in November is effectively the last food photo I have taken.  I really need to remedy that. 

Cookbooks

I've been perusing some new cookbooks lately that i think are worth a look.

The Italian Slow Cooker by Michele Scicolone - I made her pork ragu and served it over oven baked polenta for me and fresh rigatoni for him. I also made a big batch of Giant White Limas in the crockpot with sage and garlic.  Both worthy of a repeat.

I'm finally getting around to reading Simon Hopkinson's Roast Chicken and other Stories. Gorgeously written.  I've made his Cod and chips for my Englishman and the chicken liver terrine with my homemade lardo.

Washoku: Recipes from a Japanese Home Kitchen by Elizabeth Andoh

Back with some real cooking soon.

Chili Rellenos Casserole

Chilli Rellenos Casserole or killer Stuffed poblano casserole.  A study in photos.

Roasted and peeled

 

The Spicy tomato sauce drizzled with crema

Poaching liquid with annato, chipotle en adobo, chix stock cumin, bay

The shredded chicken tossed with fire roasted corn ,parm, goat cheese and a little jack.

Stuffed.

Cover in more tomato sauce, poblano cream sauce, sprinkle jack and parm and bake.

 

 

Homemade Sausage: Chorizo, Brats and Chipolata

Those of you who follow me on twitter (joamuse) have heard me mention my 12-year 13-year old foodie friend who I take along with me on field trips.  He started out as a student at Create a cook with some of the other instructors and they all kept telling me you have to meet him. After 1 conversation Alasdair and I became fast food friends.

Let me introduce you to him by saying one of his goals is to get his parents to take him to a 3 Michelin starred restaurant.  At home he has his own personal kitchen set-up in the corner with his Cuisinart standing mixer a portable induction burner and more tools than most home kitchens. He and I can discuss any cooking technique, and cookbook, chef, etc., at length. He's eaten in far more restaurants than I ever have, in fact he's my 'date' for a friend's birthday dinner at Craigie on Main for Whole Hog night next Tuesday. He dined at Stir recently and Barbara Lynch was the chef that night. He schmoozed her up and told her he wanted a pacojet and a thermal immersion circulator so he can start trying out sous vide cooking but that he was having a tough time convincing his parents, Chef Lynch not only came to his defense saying of course they should get it for him, she also told him he was welcome to come spend a day with her at no 9 Park. Jealous! The boy is food mad.

A few years ago we started out by making a traditional Christmas Pudding at his house.  We hit farmer's markets, we went to Baza when they opened to ogle all the unfamiliar ingredients, we went to Kam Man a few weeks ago where I introduced him to banh mi with head cheese and pate and we wandered up and down every aisle investigating while he helped me pick up ingredients for some upcoming Vietnamese, Korean and Thai classes. There were two things he wanted us to make, brawn or head cheese and sausages.  I figured we could start with the easier of the two since finding a pig's head may require a trip to Maine to visit Heritage Hill Farm in October (more about my visit there later!) so sausages were the first choice.  

Through Kinnealey I picked up some fat back, pork butt and hog casings and then a perusal through Ruhlman and Polcyn's Charcuterie to make the final decisions.

I chose Mexican chorizo, Bratwurst and the 3rd recipe would possible be Italian sausage, but in a nod to Alasdair being British, not to mention husband, we went with the chipolata from the book Alasdair brought me as a gift Professional Charcuterie by John Kinsela.  He chose the book because he loved that all the recipes were charts.  I need to get him a copy of Ratio stat!

I knew it was going to be around 85 - 90F in my kitchen and about an equal percentage of humidity so I bought loads of ice, chilled down all the equipment in the fridge, left the fat in the freezer until the last minute and cut all the meat partially frozen. 

Alasdair acted as official Spice mix master.

We ground the meat into the bowl over another bowl of ice to try and keep it nice and cold.

Even with all these precautions to keep everything ultra cold we still had to pause occasionally and let things rest in the fridge before resuming the next step we sat down at the table with 1 fan aimed at us and 1 fan aimed right at the poor Kitchen-aid to try and cool the poor thing down.  You could fry an egg on the motor housing. Since he has been reading Eric Ripert's new book On The Line we were discussing the various stations in the kitchen and he was telling me how long it takes to progress down the line at Le Bernadin, today of course we were working the Garde Manger station.  I told him about Ms. Glaze's Pommes d'Amour and told him he really needs to look her up for a first hand account.

After it rested in the fridge and we gulped down more liquid, the meat and spices would go back under the mixer with the paddle attachment to add some liquid, in the case of chorizo it was ice cold tequila and red wine vinegar!

After we made all three sausage mixes, cooked off little patties of each to test for seasoning and chilled everything down it was time for the stuffing.  Alasdair referred to the hog casings I been soaking in water all morning as 'granny stockings'.

The first batch, the chorizo, took us over 30 minutes to stuff, by the time we got to the chipolata we were down to 10 minutes.  Sure, we overstuffed here and there, there were a few 'blow outs', but we just squished it back in the bowl and started again.

Alasdair took charge of the link twisting.

We started at 10:30 and finished the last of the sausages by 5:30.  We were both dripping and exhausted but it was a great day.   I sent home half with Alasdair and we kept half here to freeze later.  Even though the sausages were twisted when we cut them to cook them I tied each end off to prevent the sausage from oozing out the ends as it cooked.  Husband and I sautéed some onion and peppers from the farm stand we stopped by in Ipswich on Friday and grilled some of the Brats and I made some of the Cooks Illustrated recommended Yukon gold fries that you start in cold oil (novel, but it worked!) and all was well in the world.  I'm not going to give you the recipe here Charcuterie is well worth the investment. Stay tuned for head cheese. YIKES!

Summer?? Tomatillo Salsa, Sundrops, Coorgi Pork Curry and Gujerati Sem

Solstice? Summer?  What is that?  We have barely seen peaks of the sun in the last 21 days, never mind on the day with the most daylight. Those sundrops are the brightest thing I've seen in days.  They practically scream out in the garden against all the gray skies and greenery.  A friend is in Iceland as we speak, I hope her solstice is going better than ours, I sent her off with a warning to watch Bourdain's episode and not to eat the fermented shark.  It's so cold around here and damp that I was even tempted to light a fire today, but mine would have been to keep warm, not to keep the witches away or the faeries and spirits. 

Instead of lamenting the distinctly English summer we are having here in New England I decided to dream of warmer and sunnier places and cook up some hot Indian for dinner tonight.

First I put a boatload of tomatillo, plum tomato, serrano chile, poblano and garlic under the broiler until they were nicely blistered.

I turned them into a salsa that will get a diced, rinsed white onion and become Mexican rice and something else Monday night, Sunday is all about prep for the week.  I roasted husbands lemon chicken for his sandwiches as well.

Next I popped the spices in my pan to toast them for the curry.

There aren't too many pork recipes in Indian cuisine, as you would imagine, but Goa and Coorg had some leftover Portuguese influence and some Christians kicking around so the occasional recipe crops up.  I could have made a Vindaloo, but husband really hates vinegar, which I could drink by the quart, so I made this one instead with tamarind and a bit of coconut milk, garlic, onion, ginger paste and those nice spices all ground up.  I'll make his favourite green beans (Gujerati sem) with loads of mustard seeds, garlic and chile and I have a bunch of diced potatoes kicking around upstairs so I'm trying to find a dry aloo recipe to put them to use, maybe sookhe aloo.  I'm hoping that we can at least generate a sweat on this 60oddF day in "summer". 

Remind me of this day in august when I'm bitching about the unbearable heat would you?

Stuffed pork Tenderloin Part III Hardwood Smoked

 

The idea began to seep into the back of my brain around 1:30 as the clouds thickened and began closing in and the winds that were drying my sheets earlier suddenly turned colder. My plan of dragging the Weber closer to the back door and setting out some chairs suddenly looked less appealing with every degree that dropped off the thermostat.  All day I had been considering the taste of a nice grilled pork tenderloin over some hardwood charcoal, but the idea of doing it in a coat and gloves just didn't appeal.  I have a gas grill in the kitchen, but i really wanted the smoke.  I looked over at my kitchen fireplace and the stack of hardwood in front of it and the wheels began churning.  

At first I started scouring the house for metal.  I was looking for something i could use to build a tripod in the firebox to hold up the grate to my Weber kettle grill.  I was wandering around muttering, metal, I need metal under my breath.  Husband looked up at one point and said, "Metal? What do you want metal for?" Never mind I said, you'll think I'm nuts.
As I was sitting at the table and watching the chipmunk race across the back garden over the stones it hit me.  Bricks!

I have tons of spare bricks around here from past gardening projects. They would be fireproof, for at least a few fires, and I could get the height I needed to be over the grate that holds the wood.
I donned my raincoat, grabbed the garden trolley and started stacking bricks.
I dragged them into the house and rinsed them all off in the sink and started building the structure.  I went out to the garden and got the grill from my Weber kettle and laid it on top. Husband just came up from the basement, shook his head and laughed.

I found my cast iron pan (I need to remember to bring Grandma's 20-inch one back from Maine after the summer) and even though it is fairly small I figured I could just put a curve on my dinner plans to get it to fit in the pan.

Then I had to decide what I was going to do with my tenderloins. 

I started raiding the fridge and I decided to take the two tenderloins and put a stuffing in the middle, wrap it in a bacon blanket to keep it moist.  I found some double smoked bacon  that I finely diced and it went into the pan with a little olive oil.  When it started to smell nice I added 2 finely minced shallots.  When they were translucent I added a few crimini mushrooms I had left over that I minced fine.  Over in the fruit bowl I spied an apple so I peeled and minced that and in the drawer in the fridge were a few clamshells of herbs so I chopped some fresh sage and thyme and tossed that in as well with some salt & pepper. 

While this cooked down I went to the upstairs fridge and brought down a bottle of French hard cider and popped the cork.  When the pan started to go dry I poured in a few TBS and let it reduce, stirred, added a bit more, let it reduce and then I tasted it.  I had some garlic confit in the fridge as well so I added a bit of that, but you could easily add a few minced garlic cloves.

While this cooled I made a bacon blanket and put the two tenderloins in a yin and yang fashion, thick end to thin, thin end to thick and seasoned them with some salt and pepper.  I pressed the stuffing on to the bottom tenderloin, laid the other on top and then wrapped the bacon around and tied it up to hold it together.

In order to fit this in the pan I had to give it a curve which made some of the stuffing fall out, but I figured it would all just become good pan fond in the end for a sauce.

I threw in the rest of the the thyme sprigs, some garlic confit and poured the cider in the pan and onto the grate it went.  In total I think it took a little over an hour to cook and I flipped it once, added chicken stock to the pan periodically to keep it moist and to prevent the fond from burning.  I did flip it once just to see what it was looking like underneath and to get a nice sear on both sides. That is the picture you see on top, the picture below is when it was finished and resting on the board.

When a thermometer hit 137F I pulled it and let it rest on the board.  I strained the juices in the pan and tossed in a little oil and 1 minced shallot.  When it was soft I poured in some calvados and reduced that, then in went the pan juices and a shot or two of cream to bring it all together.  I think I might have added a squirt of lemon juice to brighten everything up and they seasoned with some s&p.

I wish you had smell-o-vision because this was incredible.  Bacon-smoke-apple-scented heaven.  The inside was perfectly moist as you can see from the picture and the pan sauce, oh the pan sauce redolent of smoke and onion, garlic and thyme, bacon and calvados, a definite repeat. 

My only advice to anyone with a fireplace is to rig it up right now, cook in it, you just may never use your grill again.

**Stuffed pork tenderloin I and Stuffed pork tenderloin II

Angry Chicken - Grrrrrr

Lately I've been on a real Asian inspired, Umami rich kick. We've been making loads of udon noodles with miso broth topped in assorted vegetables quickly tossed in a wok with tamari and sesame and sometimes a few slices of duck breast on top or Tori Kara Age.  We had yellow curry with Thai eggplants and pineapple. There was gan bian si ji dou (dry fried green beans with pork) and ma la zi ji (Numbing and Hot Chicken) it's all rather addictive.

Today I'm going to make a miso glaze with red and yellow miso and rub it on a duck breast, shrink wrap it and cook it sous vide at about 53C.  It will then be seared off and served with sautéed spinach, garlic and sesame oil and a side of cauliflower mash with mystery ingredients added.  Don't worry they are still a mystery to me at the moment.  Friday I'm going over to Porter Square to hit Kotobukiya market, since Super 88's recent decline, the Allston location is almost barren(!) I have to travel further afield to get ingredients. But today, today  I want to  tell you about Angry Chicken.

The recipe comes from the food porn cookbook that is Morimoto by Masaharu Morimoto .  For days I've been flicking through the book over and over trying to decide what I was going to pull out and cook and for some reason Angry Chicken just caught my eye.  Grrrrrrrr.

Morimoto has a restaurant in Mumbai and fell in love with Tandoor chicken and this was his interpretation,  I knew we would love it since we both adore Indian spices and it uses my favourite go to hot sauce.  Frank's Red Hot.*  Frank's red hot has the perfect amount of heat and vinegar tang with a big bold punch of pepper taste without the blow-your-taste-buds-out-of-the-water for every subsequent bite that some hot sauces pack.

As usual lately, I made it and didn't get a chance to take a picture, but I'm sure you can make one up nicely in your head.  Just picture some gorgeous laquered blistered skin chicken steaming on a plate with a side of darkly blistered long peppers.  Mmmmm.

Make a marinade of 1/2tsp each of black peppercorns and cumin seed 1/4tsp each of cardamom and coriander seed, and  grind in a coffee grinder or a mortar and pestle, add in 1tsp of chili powder, a little salt 1/2tsp of amchar or garam masala and pour all that in a bowl. Add 1-1/3 cups yoghurt (I prefer the Greek Fage), 1/2 cup cream, 1/3 cup tamari or soy sauce, we tend to have tamari in house and 1 and 1/2 cups of Frank's Red Hot. Yes, One and a Half cups of Frank's. Mix it all up.  Reserve 1 cup for sauce later and pour the rest over your prefered pieces of chicken.  We like thighs.  Let this all hang out for at least 8 hours or even over night.

Crank the oven to 450F.  Place the chicken on a sheet pan, discard the marinade and roast it for 30 - 45 mins depending on the cuts of chicken and size.  165F internally with a digital thermometer is what your looking to hit.  Take 2 cups of chicken stock and reduce to 1 cup, I added some chopped leek and celery to the reducing stock. Off the heat add the reserved 1 cup of marinade and heat this gently being careful not to boil and cause the yogurt to separate. 

I also took his advice to serve a side of peppers for those who like more heat.  I took 4 nice Anaheim's rubbed them with oil and tossed them on a seperate sheet pan in the oven while the chicken roasted.  Once I pulled the chicken I turned the broiler on and let the peppers get nice and blistered.

We served this with a side of butter beans (sadly tinned - I need a new Rancho Gordo order stat!) sauteed with some nice olive oil and a minced shallot. There was much food silence and reverence around the table with only the occasional clink of a wine glass hitting the slate tablemats as puncuation.

Simple, amazing, and just the thing for a snowy January night.

*this is more for those following primal over paleo.  Too much vinegar in the hot sauce and the dairy would rule it out.

Lamb chops (lollipops) with baharat and harissa cream

Long long ago when I first married the Brit he deemed all lamb 'too fatty' and declared it not dinner material.

this statement from the man who came from fields and fields of glorious gorgeous sheep, the very land where I fell in love with both the man, and the cuteness that is baby lamb season. Country of mint sauce and mutton. How, I begged, could you not love lamb?

I have spent many hours over the years breaking down lamb legs, removing all the fell, the layer that lies between the skin and the fat that has that lanolin smell and taste, dissecting the leg into little pieces to remove every trace of fat.  I cooked it in spicy Indian curries and added it ground to burgers and meatloaf and slowly, slowly  he realised that eating lamb did not equal eating fat.

Still, when it came to the Cadillac that is rack of lamb he still grimaced and made faces. A couple times a year I would buy a rack and roast it for myself slathered in mustard and a lemony, parsley, persillade.  And smack my lips as I gnawed on the bones. 

I know, carnivore. 

My Mom and I both agree that the bone on a prime rib often tastes better than the meat itself. 

We're bone cleaners.

Finally one night years later when he was finally brave enough to eat most of the things I passed his way I made a batch of Baharat the gorgeous spice mix from the Eastern Mediterranean filled with earthy tastes like cinnamon and nutmeg, oregano and black pepper, bay leaf, cumin and clove.  I cut the rack into little lamb lollipops, cleaned as much surface fat off of his as I could without making the meat fall off the bone.

Then I rubbed it with the baharat and grilled each chop individually to his medium/well taste and my rare/medium rare taste and served it with some spicy hot harissa paste from Tunisia and damn if I hadn't finally won the battle!  Now it has become our date night dinner since a nice rack of lamb can set you back quite a few pennies.

Tonight we'll have it with some Brussels sprouts that I cleaned and blanched.  They will be crisped in some guanciale and shallots and we'll have some leftover boiled potatoes that I will sauté until the edges are all crispy.  A perfect dinner for a fall night.

Herbed Turkey Roulade

Sunday I am teaching a class at Williams-Sonoma in the Burlington Mall.  The theme this time is Quick and Easy Thanksgiving Dinner.  The menu is a nice one, Creamed Butternut Squash and Apple Soup flavoured with a bit of saffron and cream, Chestnut and Sausage Dressing, Garlic Mashed Potatoes, Ginger Cake with Warm Caramel Sauce and of course, the ubiquitous turkey (All recipes easily found on their website). 
Since the store only has 1 oven in the demo area and both the sausage and chestnut dressing and the ginger cake will be in the oven I am going to make the turkey here and we will try to gently warm it up tomorrow.
The original recipe calls for two 2-1/2 pound breasts to be seasoned and tied together and then roasted.
I could only find a 5 pound half breast so I have decided to butterfly it, make a nice compound butter to smear all over the inside and then I will tie it up in a nice roulade or sausage roll and roast it.
I thought it might be nice to put some links up here so anyone who attends the class can see how I put it all together.

The first part is making a compound butter, or simply some grass fed unsalted butter like Kerrigold to which you have added some flavour. Fresh herbs, dried spices or herbs, zest of lemons or limes or oranges, maybe some liqueur or sea salt, truffles, powdered dried porcini, the possibilities are endless.  I never roast a chicken without making my house version which is usually some rosemary, thyme, sea salt, fresh black pepper, lemon zest and garlic confit (follow this link if you want to see how easy it is to make nectar of garlic heaven).

Next, take the full breast, boned, or a half breast-boned and lay it skin side down on the board.  Look at the shape of it and figure out how you can slice it once or twice so that it opens up to an even thickness.  I sliced from the front to the back of the breast once and then sliced that piece one more time again, front to back so it lay out in one long piece.  You could, if you wish, pound it thinner at this point.

Season with salt and pepper and smear on the compound butter.

Tie the roulade at 1 - 2 inch intervals, tight, but not so tight that it looks like the lines of a woman's corset when you take the strings off.

Season the outside with salt and pepper.  Take some of the oil from the garlic confit (I steeped some rosemary the confit when I made it) and mix it with some of the same fresh herbs from the compound butter and smear this all over the turkey.

It went into the oven at 350F.

Almost two hours later it was at 165F, the perfect temp for poultry to kill any instance of salmonella, I pulled it, let it cool and it's in the fridge resting for class tomorrow along with all those golden pan drippings.

To be continued...

LP Bisson & Sons Meat ,Topsham ME

When I was up in Maine with Mom last she told me about this new meat market they discovered in Topsham.  They are looking for land to build a house and finally relocate from VA to Maine permanently to be near the summer house and closer to all of us.
Since rte 295 was still closed I took the detour on 201 and decided to stop in to check out LP Bisson.
Take Meadow Road which is right off 201 in Topsham and just look for the power lines and the cows and you will be close. 

It was a bit odd to see the cows out grazing near the power lines, but they seemed perfectly content and barely gave me a second glance when I wandered over to take their picture.

On the opposite side of the street is a much larger field and enormous birds swooping around overhead in the thermals that I believe were turkey buzzards.

The shop is clean and quaint and gives off a real old fashioned vibe. The room is lined with cases of meat all raised, slaughtered and butchered on site. 

There are pictures of the family from the 1940's and an aerial view of the farm arranged around the tops of the cases. 

Bisson raises their own cows, but they also raise pigs but can't produce enough pork to keep up with demand so they do bring in some pork from Canada. 
I was tempted by the cases and I bought some of their house made kielbasa, bacon and I almost came home with one or their whole smoked chickens.  Just as i wsa headed out the door I spotted a case with their own raw milk so I brought husband home a pint of their raw chocolate milk.
You can choose what you want out of the case or make a special request and watch them prepare it in the room off to the side.

I happened to arrive just as he was breaking down a section and I watched him work for awhile while we chatted.

Not only is Bisson a meat market but they are also the local abattoir.  I asked when their busy season was and he said there were a couple times a year when things really got busy.  People were already starting to book for their home reared animals to be brought in for the fall.  There is a sign on the wall explaining all the costs for breaking down the animal along with an admonishment that if you don't pick up your meat when you say you will storage fees will be charged!

If you're in this neck of the woods, stop by Bisson some time, and don't worry Ballards, I'm never going to leave you, but I may stop by here once in awhile.

LP Bisson and Sons
112 Meadow Road
Topsham, ME

Fungus Amongus - Mushrooms in Maine

Sod it. 

It's raining at home, it's raining in Maine...so I said screw it and headed up to hang with Mom again for a few days.  Sadly, Mom and I managed to choose some real crap weeks for vacation.
But there is a bright side to all this rain.

MUSHROOMS!

Oh the mushrooms.

I'd tell you where I find em, but then I'd have to kill ya.

In all my years I have never seen the woods so full!

Lobster Mushrooms, really a mold not a fungus, but still yummy!

What you see above is again my stash from our local spot.  I only pick the ones I know, Chanterelle and Lobster.

I did pick one that I really, really think is a Trumpet Chanterelle OR a Pig's Ear Gomphus, but I need a good mycologist to help me out, and my favourite one passed away last year.

But sadly, it has a rather nasty guest.

Right now though, I'm making pickles.

Oh and dinner...Some lovely mussels with wine and scallions and garlic and all kinds of good stuff.  Yum.