Simplicity | 24 May

groceries

charcoal sack

local breads

Good ingredients, simply prepared. Sometimes it’s what you really want, not an elaborate plate that required days of work by a kitchen team. 

We’re back in the Gatinais, a land of plains dotted with small hills topped with tiny villages. Our village is so tiny it’s not even listed on most maps, nor do signs from the adjacent town point out its direction. Tourists don’t come here. It’s agricultural. No fancy cathedrals, no museums, no big department stores filled with expensive fashions. This is a place of fields, ancient stone churches, swallows that swirl and dive over the landscape and sky.

Luckily, there is a good butcher and a wine cheese and produce market in Puiseaux, about ten minutes away by car by tiny roads crossing wheat and sugar beet fields. 

The boulanger sold us a sesame bread and a type of baguette with a fancy name. Perhaps because of the weather, none of these had a terrific crispy crust normally associated with bread in France. We’d already noticed this from other bakers. A pretty big disappointment when you fly 6,000 miles and end up with the same quality of bread you’d get in your local supermarket in Sacramento!

We bought lamb chops from the butcher, along with some ham and a saucission. From the other store, we bought a large red coeur de bœuf tomato, tangerines, carrots, garlic, a lemon and a beet. We moved to the cheese section to buy cantal, a tomme de chevre, a muenster au cumin and a saint nectaire. We thew in a bottle of Mas de Mare l’Original 2010, a hearty red wine from the Pays d’Oc recommended by the owner.

We tasted most of the cheeses before we bought them. Perhaps because of my accent, we were repeatedly warned that some of them were very strong. This was especially true for the very mature tomme de chevre, something that was a bit runny, covered in a thick moldy crust with a flavor that hit like an enraged goat and stuck to your tongue with a vengeance. I could imagine someone, shocked by the strength of the cheese, scraping his tongue with anything available to free himself of the taste.

The supermarket furnished us with a label rouge chicken, fed only on grains and much tastier than the generic fowl adjacent to it. We added some yogurt and our shopping was complete.

Lunch was simple: a table in the garden, surrounded by passing bumblebees. We started with a salad of grated carrots with a bit of lemon, salt, pepper and chopped parsley, followed by ham, a bit of cheese and a tangerine for dessert. 

Dinner was only a bit more elaborate than lunch. We started with the salami. The lamb chops got seasoned with salt and pepper, oiled, and thrown on the grill. They were sprinkled with fresh chopped rosemary toward the end of cooking, then taken off to rest. The tomato was transformed into thick slices, seasoned and grilled while the meat rested. Afterward, the cheese, all washed down with the Mas de Mare. 

We sat and watched the swallows circle overhead, serenaded by a merle who sat on the adjacent roof, some tourterelles and a pigeon ramier or two, while the flavor of the tomme de chevre slowly faded in our mouths.

____

It's now the beginning of August, 2012. I wrote this over two months ago, and nobody ever read it. Not one person. Bad title, or is simplicity just not worth reading about in our over-complicated lives? I don't know - nobody comments on a post they never read.

Repas simple | 23 May

With all this driving around, it’s good to have a safety meal ready to go, so you can eat something good with virtually no preparation at all. 

A salami, a can of friture de canard or rillettes, a bottle of wine, some bread and cheese combine to create a meal that’s a perfect antidote to  post-route fatigue.

Chez Camille, Arnay-le-Duc | 23 May

“Let’s go there - they have a menu du terroir!” Annette said as we walked up the street in Arnay-le-Duc. 

I’d been tempted by another, smaller restaurant, but when we peeked in the lights were off and the place looked deserted. So, Chez Camille it was. The menu looked decent, and better yet, they had a pastry chef in addition to the chef and sous-chef (pastry chefs are quite rare in restaurants back home, at least restaurants that I can afford).

After asking for a table for two, we were ushered into a small, dimly lit lobby crammed with furniture. We sidled between pieces of furniture, wondering if someone found too good a bargain to pass up, brought the furniture to the inn and crammed it into the lobby.

The chef, a tall somewhat gaunt man, greeted us as he moved to another room, where he was having his lunch. The kitchen would survive without him.

We were given menus. A small plate of amuse-gueles arrived. Charcuterie in aspic, more charcuterie en croûte. 

We ordered two prix fixe lunches -  “Menu du Terroir”   -  featuring an appetizer, main plate and dessert (or cheese).  Other people with reservations were ushered quickly into the dining area, no lounging required.

We remained in the lobby. 

“Um, this ever happen to you before, being stuck in a lobby?” I whispered. 

“Non, jamais,” my wife replied.

“So presumably we won’t be eating in lounge chairs with bent knees off a too-small table?”.

“No. I think not.”

Happily she was correct. The lounge interlude was just a pause before entering. The dining area lay under a twisted ficus benjamina, pruned artistically to crawl along the underside of the skylights. The kitchen, with large windows open to the action, nestled against the far wall. An ancient stone stairway led underground to the wine cellar, leaving the waitress about two centimeters of clearance between her head and the keystone. 

The tables featured white tablecloths with large decorative plates bearing an illustration of the restaurant. As soon as we were seated, the fancy plates disappeared. It’s normal to have expensive display plates, but usually guests get to enjoy the artwork prior to the plates going back to their niche. 

Another waiter arrived with a basket of rolls: bacon, normal and grain. Bacon in bread always strikes me as a bit American, a gimmick to spend less time developing the bread’s flavor by adding a bit of smokiness and fat that wouldn’t otherwise be there. The plain roll was competent, if not exquisite.

Our entrées were a lapin en gelée and a bouchée à la reine. The first was bits of cured rabbit put into a mold and covered with aspic and chilled. The bouchée is a columnar puff pastry filled with bits of meat and vegetables, typically in a béchamel sauce - although I think they might have used velouté here for lightness. Both were competent, with the edge going to the rabbit.

Our main course sautéed Charolais beef with scalloped potatoes and a somewhat sour version of Bordelaise sauce. We couldn’t drive by all those fields of grass-eating cows without dining on one. 

Dessert was a good Mousse au chocolate and a type of fruit mousse thing whose name I forgot.

The chicken will be for tomorrow. Placed on a bed of garlic, carrots and shallots and roasted, a sage-based sauce whipped up from the jus to drizzle over the meat. It won’t need anything more, since these chickens are bred and raised for flavor.

Foie Gras, a tale of two cultures

"How can the government tell you what you can and cannot eat?" people say, with an astonished look. I explain the typical arguments about force feeding (gavage), and how people in the California government use them to justify legislating an entire business out of existence, at the same time telling restaurants they can't serve the stuff, and intruding in everyone's choice of diet.

The anti-foie gras arguments typically revolve around the alleged cruelty of the force-feeding process, mixed with general animal rights issues.

People here in France then wonder about other food-related legalities that they consider questionable. Doesn't California allow chickens to be raised where they never see the sun or breathe fresh air? They wonder how large industries can serve genetically modified food, something they feel lacks sufficient information on its long term effects on human health. They hear in the press that medicinal antibiotics can be given to beef, allegedly creating dangerously resistant bacteria - yet this practice is apparently legal.

So far, some common questions repeat. One is concerned with lawmakers wasting time on what they consider a relatively minor issue; another is about legislating away personal freedom. Then there are the inevitable questions about the faction that so adamantly opposes the sale of this product.

Where is the government that is supposed to protect us from what many feel are unsafe and unhealthy industrial practices? Instead, they're busy legislating foie gras out of existence? Why?

Why did people in the government decide to stick their legal fingers into everyone's dinner, arbitrarily snatching an ingredient off everyone's plate while leaving other arguably more questionable foods untouched? Is America a free country or not? What will they outlaw next, and with what justification?

Some hear that people selling foie gras in California allegedly receive death threats against themselves and their families. They ask how can someone who would kill another person over their diet claim moral superiority, something I certainly can't answer.

Talking with people involved with selling and producing foie gras is interesting. The industry has quality standards and regulations. As long as people make sure the certification is valid these standards will have been followed. The birds - ducks or geese - are fed a grain only diet and live outside. For most of their lives, they're not force fed. They walk, quack (or honk) and eat. After a certain age, they're force fed - not as nasty as foie gras opponents claim, since birds can supposedly breathe with a feeding tube in their throats. Likewise, the process is supposedly not painful when done correctly - although I suppose you would have to ask a duck or goose to get the final answer. They don't seem to run away after they've been through the gavage thing, so presumably they either have short memories or it's not as bad as it looks. Producers say that torturing the birds leads to inferior product, and that they want happy, fat animals to get a top quality rating.

So far, I've only talked to one purveyor here in Paris. It was a long talk, however. Along with the questions, there was a bit of attitude concerning our respective styles of government. He felt that the French government would never interfere in people's choice of diet without a very good reason (prohibiting eating endangered species, for example). Domestic ducks and geese certainly don't fall into this category.

The French know where their foe gras comes from, what the birds are fed and how they're raised, or at least can easily find answers to these questions. Can we say the same about our chicken, pork or beef?

Baguettes

The flour for this bread was milled in La Ferte Alais, not too far from Paris. It said this on the bag. It added that the bread was made in the bakery. Not frozen and shipped there to get stuck in an oven and sold.

The funny thing is that other baguettes at the same bakery were not so specific, and could have been less soigné. It's not always clear exactly which breads are artisanal and which are just placed next to artisanal but in fact are anything but.

Strangely enough, even in Paris it's not always that simple to find an excellent baguette, slowly fermented from selected wheat, nursed from flour, water, salt and yeast (or starter) all the way to a cracklingly crunchy baguette with a wonderful sponge and a succession of flavors that form and reform as you chew.

Some neighborhoods have a number of award-winning boulangers - unfortunately they're all far from here, too long a metro ride just to pop in and fetch something to go with our Camembert au lait cru.

Croissants in Paris

There are two kinds of croissants at the boulanger down the street in Paris. Ignore the thing on the extreme left - it's a chocolate croissant, made with margarine. The middle croissant sells for about € 0.95, because it's a "croissant ordinaire". Paler, whiter, less glossy, with the ends turned 90°. On the right, a croissant pur beurre, golden, glossy, about € 1.10, with straight ends. It's more expensive because it's made with real butter.

Considering how croissants are made - by layering yeasted dough with fat (butter or margarine) - they can't be fat-free. So it comes down to butter vs. margarine. I guess "margarine" does not sell as well as "natural".

Maybe I'm strange, but it seems to be that butter - churned cream - is more "natural" than margarine - treated vegetable oils, process unknown.

A valentine's menu for carnivores

Some might think guys are the real carnivores, but sometimes this isn't the case. Although I enjoy a nice piece of beef from time to time, this meal was inspired by a woman. A woman who was craving red meat. Not only red meat, but marrow bones, cooked slowly in a court bouillon flavored with mirepox. Then a pan-seared steak served rare, with a side of cipollini onions and baby potatoes braised in beef stock. A bit of marrow-infused Bordelaise sauce and the second course was done. Dessert was an upside-down lime-apple crumble, sort of a Franco-American take on the classic tarte tatin.

I think she got enough marrow bones to satisfy her craving, and then some. There really are things that should be consumed in moderation. So, the dinner that followed was much lighter - too tasty to qualify as atonement and not quite healthy enough to qualify as totally restorative.

I was in class on Valentine's Day this year, in case you were wondering why this menu appeared the day before V-day for a meal that happened two days before Eros came to town.

Raclette

Raclette is kind of like fondue's poor stepchild. Where fondue caught on in America to the point where virtually everyone has a fondue set of some kind buried in their closet, raclette seemed relegated to the "what's this?" category of strange appliances married to obscure dining methods.

It's a bit more complicated than than spearing some food with a funny-looking fork and immersing it in bubbling cheese or boiling oil. You need to steam some vegetables beforehand. Then you should have some sliced cheese, typically (no surprise here) Raclette. From France.

Raclette is one of those cheeses that's a bit fragrant, but very mild. It melts perfectly and its taste marries well with steamed vegetables. It used to be available at Trader Joe's, but as with all things from that market, you never know how long they'll be available. The more expensive cheese shops should have the stuff, too - or at least an acceptable substitute. Something earthy, a bit stinky. In a pinch you could use cheddar or Gruyere, but this would not be the rockin' taste of raclette.

We used Yukon Gold potatoes, kohlrabi and broccoli. I'm not wild about the broccoli, since the kohlrabi has a similar flavor and has the added advantage of faking people into thinking they're going to eat another piece of potato. I think turnips, potatoes, kohlrabi, sunchokes and maybe parsnips would be interesting to try, all steamed ahead of time. Cauliflower and broccoli work, too. Brussels sprouts would probably be worth a try, and maybe even Chinese broccoli or bok choy.

After that, things are simple. Take a slice of cheese and place it in the tray, then place the little tray under the top tray of the raclette machine. Nothing happening? Oh. Yeah, you have to plug the thing in and let it heat up.

Once your cheese is hot and bubbly, take out the little tray and dump the cheese on your vegetables, or on some ham or even some salami (saucisson, actually). Place another slice of cheese in the little tray and repeat the process.

Drink something appropriate, like a dry rosé, a Riesling, a Vin Gris d'Alsace, un Sylvaner...

So, that's it. Simple, easy, and virtually unknown here in the United States. We got our raclette machine in a close-out for half price. Our friends, who also lived in Europe, found theirs sitting dust-covered on a top shelf in a crowded cooking shop, where it had apparently lived for years. They, too got a good discount on their machine.

So, if you come across a dust-covered raclette machine while rummaging in a store, or perhaps receive one from an eccentric European friend or relative, you're now ready to invite some friends, fire the thing up and enjoy a simple meal.

Reveillon 2012

Uncork the Rose d'Anjou and put the bottle in a wine bucket.

Place a generous round of foie gras atop a bed of sautéed kale seasoned with a bit of four spice, salt, sherry, and a touch of beef stock for richness. Serve with individual French levain rounds.

Place the pommes Annette on a warmed plate.
Slice the chicken breasts on a diagonal, then overlap them on the pommes Annette.
Drizzle with the sauce (pan sauce made with a brunoise of shallots, sherry, pomegranate juice, a bit of beef stock, salt, butter and crème fraîche.
Garnish with pomegranate seeds.
Serve with slices of French levain bread.

Arrange some French cheeses on a platter: Camembert, Fourme d'Ambert, Petit Basque.

Pop the cork on the Asti. This wine is a little bit sweet, perhaps even sweeter than this rather tart pie.
Slice a piece of tarte tatin and plate it.

Enjoy.

Then, go to your friends' place and eat a pane con pavo.

Try not to explode.

In through the Open Door

Do the words, "Berkshire Pork Fat Mochi" give you any instant cravings? Or do you wince in disgust, thinking that only a pork-addled fool would even consider ordering such a thing? I hope it's the latter, because that leaves more for me!

The pork fused with the mochi by some alchemical magic, creating a smoky, umami mouth bomb accented with confetti-like nori. That shishito is more for looks than heat, since this is December after all: the plants need heat for heat. Dribbled over and around this marshmallow-shaped ball of doctor-scorned wonder lies a light ochre sauce. Maybe it's miso based. Maybe not, but it's the grace note that really makes the dish happen. This is not a regular menu item, so if pork is your thing be sure to order some while you can.

The scene is the Open Door Restaurant, a tiny izakaya nugget encrusted in a thick vein of mini-mall. Their take on this cuisine is fusion French-Japanese-everything else. You might find bone marrow logs sliced down the center and roasted. Perhaps duck confit tacos. Maybe something involving foie gras, maybe paired with sea urchin. You never know, but the odds are that the dish will indeed work, no matter how strange it may seem.

Whatever isn't on the menu gets scrawled in multicolored chalk on a large blackboard. Right now, Christmas lights provide most of the illumination, so diners would cross the dark room, squinting, to find their amuse-guele nirvana. Like those pork fat mochi balls. Heaven.

Adventures with small plates is what this place is about. Go ahead, mix it up. Everything is à la carte. Take some risks. If you don't like something, odds are someone else at your table will. There are twists on Japanese street food. Truffle butter edamame, takoyaki, inari... but they're elevated to fine dining status by an inventive twist where a sauce drizzles in, an extra step is applied. Often they pair ingredients, juxtaposing something unknown to your typical Samurai with something his obaa-san would have served.

We typically start with our favorite sashimi, white fish yuzu. They don't specify the fish - a wise move allowing them to pick the freshest white fish for their menu without getting locked in to a particular variety. The plate is a simple fan of thinly sliced fish, dabbed with something green, drizzled with yuzu, accented with a shiso leaf and a pickled cherry. At least I think it's a cherry. It's red, sour, and has a pit.

Then something perhaps a bit bolder, building up to bigger flavors. Chawanmushi arrives in a heavy bowl heated hot enough to burn Asian symbols in your arm, the custard inside heaving like something from Yellowstone. Hints of fish and vegetables infuse the soft custard. Another bite, a piece of shrimp this time, another.... shiitake. Another? Nope. Empty.

More food arrives. Takoyaki: little balls of something resembling pancake batter, topped with a bit of sauce, bits of seafood inside. Spicy weiners, really spicy. Hotter than those shisitos. Then eggplant miso cools things down again with simple eggplant rounds tossed in some kind of miso-based sauce and sprinkled with roasted sesame seeds. Then the yaki onigiri, triangular rice balls, fried, sitting on a sheet of seaweed (nori), topped with ume (pickled plum), shredded salmon or nothing at all. Break off a piece of the rice, wrap it with nori and enjoy. Yes, you need to eat the nori or the thing will taste flat. Besides, nori is good for you.

They don't stop with the food, either. Japanese micro-brews? How about a beer made from rice, like a gently bubbling very light sake? It's here. If you can pronounce it, it's yours for the tasting: koshinikari echigo. Say it just like it's written and you'll do fine. Don't expect big, bold flavor. It's extremely subtle, light and ever so sake-like. Some fools have called it bland, but pair it with delicate food and you'll find that it's the perfect foil to something like sashimi where you don't want an Arrogant Bastard who will grab all the glory.

Or, if you'd like a white ale that's a bit more Belgian, just say Hitachino Nest White Ale, o kudasai. There's even a cute red owl on the label. Sugoi!

Yes, they have sake. Probably more kinds than the beer, so if sake adventure is your thing, you'll be happy. But you get more beer for your buck.

Service is very attentive, and they will happily tell you of their current favorite dishes. You could get a comment like, "not many people dare to order that." Don't worry - if you like the main ingredient, you'll probably love the dish. My wife still talks about that bone marrow log, months after the meal (it's off the menu now, alas).

They don't allow photos of their food. There's a big sign on the door, then a notice in bold on the menu. No photos of any kind, not even blurry low-light grainy out of focus horrors snapped by cell phones. I would think that photos posted all over the place would be free publicity, but since those photos rarely if ever look appetizing they may have a point. They didn't say anything about doing an illustration afterwards, so hopefully they won't send Hideo* after me for retribution.

The Open Door sits in the back corner of a mini-mall at Atlantic and Garvey in Monterey Park (on the southeast corner if you're approaching from the South on Atlantic). Their address is 122 South Atlantic Blvd, but that may not help much unless you're just using it to program your GPS.

* Neuromancer.

Branzino dinner

Amazingly, one of our local supermarkets had fresh, reasonably priced branzino. Better yet, this is a farmed, sustainable fish - called striped bass in English. For some reason, the Italian name for the fish passed over the French and English versions.

By encasing the fish in a salt-egg white crust, you can bake it without the worry of pulling fish jerky out of the oven 30 minutes later. All the fish's moisture will be sealed in. The crust is a mix of egg whites and Kosher salt: 3-1/2 salt to one egg white by weight if you're someplace humid, 3-1/4 salt to one egg white if you're somewhere dry. I start by weighing the egg white in grams, then multiply to find how much salt I need. Don't worry about saltiness - you're using the whole fish, skin on. The skin will keep the flesh and salt separate. Stick some fresh thyme and bay leaf into the cavity of the cleaned fish, place it on a bed of Kosher salt, make the crust with some more Kosher salt, place it in a 375° convection oven for half an hour, peel off the salt (the skin will come off, too), fillet the fish and serve. Simple!

The velouté sauce is a bit less simple: blond roux, mushroom stock, some vermouth, some salt, some Pastis, some fresh thyme and bay leaf, strained.

The Israeli couscous is also simple - sauté some garlic in oil, toss in the couscous, stir it a bit, add mushroom stock until it's absorbed and you're ready to go.

The persimmon mousse needs some work - it was good, but it needed more persimmon, less cream, and more gelatin. The sugar content was about right - not too much but enough to avoid going too acidic. Luckily, our neighbor gave us a lot of persimmons so I can experiment.

Pies: One required. One fun.

I had to bake a pie for Thanksgiving, as part of a class. A complicated cake wasn't enough; there had to be a pie, too. So, I made my favorite French pie: Tarte Tatin. Then I made the required Good Old American Apple Pie (also a favorite).

So here they are, with a posting date before class. Just in case someone says that I missed another deadline. They're often rather vague and confusing. Late work isn't worth sweetened condensed armadillo spit, so it's best to turn in something crappy on time than something well done a bit later.

I also made a banana/ginger hand pie. But that's really outside the scope of this class.

J'en ai marre! La plupart des gâteaux faits dans ma classe contiennent des noix, des noisettes, des saloperies d'allergènes divers... et je ne peux pas les manger après avoir passé un temps fou à les préparer!

Magret de canard en gastrique de mûres, Yukon Gold smashed potatoes

seared duck breast with blackberry gastrique, garlic smashed potatoes

What do you do when sour, wild blackberries have conquered part of your back yard? Make them into a gastrique and pour it over some seared duck breast, of course! Make some smashed potatoes with duck fat and garlic, sprinkle some chives over the top, and voilá! A fancy French dinner.
Served with an '06 Yorkville Highlands Merlot. Organic, even.

Dessert was ice cream sandwiches, home made. You assemble them yourself, just before putting them in your mouth, so the chocolate cracker stays crunchy and the ice cream... well, it's messy and drippy. Once you've had an ice cream sandwich like this, there's no going back to those frozen, soggy things at the store.

Vive la France! Bastille Day 2011

How's this for a French plate? Supreme de volaille braisé au sauce gastrique de mûres avec duxelles de champignons, servi avec pain de seigle aux graines de tournesol. Oui, that should put the Léon in your Napoléon! It was, after all, less work than making puff pastry or croissants.

Here's how it went together:

Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts, skin on
salt, pepper TT
a bit of oil for frying
filtered juice from about 1/2 cup of fresh blackberries.
red wine vinegar
dry white vermouth
chicken stock
butter
sugar

Method:
Sauté the chicken breasts, skin down, in the oil. When brown, transfer to baking dish with about 3/4" of vermouth, salt, pepper and chicken stock poured in. Place in oven preheated to 425°F, cook about 25 minutes.

To prepare the gastrique, deglaze the frying pan with some chicken stock and vermouth. Add some red wine vinegar and a bit of sugar (not too much!). Reduce this to about half, then add the blackberry juice. Stir to keep from sticking and reduce. At the last minute, add a bit of butter. This will reduce the astringency of the sauce - if you want to keep the astringency, leave out the butter. I wanted to soften the sauce because it was going on chicken, not duck. I would have left it more sour for duck, but duck is about $14 per pound in the supermarket whereas chicken is about $1.50. Chicken won.

The duxelles is just chopped mushrooms, chicken stock, salt, pepper, a bit of white wine and some chopped garlic reduced down to where there's almost no liquid left.

To plate, spoon some of the duxelles into the center of the plate and arrange the chicken breast over it. Spoon on the gastrique and serve. If you want to be fancier, you can slice the chicken breast and fan it over the duxelles. Or even fancier, make a potato purée with some butter and chicken stock, then arrange the sliced chicken and duxelles over it.

This sauce tastes really expensive, by the way. It should, because I took the idea from a fancy French restaurant, although my sauce was quite different than theirs.

Last note: my camera went off to Canon for repairs after the mirror detached from its carriage. Apparently it might be a month (hopefully not more) before I'm reunited with the camera, after a leisurely repair process. At least it should come back cleaned, re-mirrored and hopefully good for another 100,000 shutter activations. So, if the photo doesn't look as good as previous images that's because it isn't.

Marché Moderne, Costa Mesa

When they told me that the restaurant is in the Penthouse, I imagined a spacious entry filled with voluptuous leather armchairs filled with scantily clad yet fashionable women hobnobbing with someone with a strong resemblance to Hugh Hefner. Getting there did nothing to reduce this feeling, since the place is located in the billionaire wing of South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. Almost all the stores are French, although nobody working in them is.

Instead, it just looked like the typical upscale restaurant. Hostess at the front, bar along the right side, open kitchen in the back separated from the main dining area by a low wall. A patio garden through the back doors. No high level interior design anywhere evident. The thing that struck me was how un-bistro like the place looked. Are we in a steakhouse or...? Is this truly the home of what some critics are calling the best French bistro food in Southern California, perhaps the entire state?

Some people equate French food (and the French in general) with snobbishness. Although it's totally untrue in France it seems to be a pernicious evil here in California at least as far as French restaurants go. In France, if you're willing to adventure into the food, fall backwards into the arms of the chef and let his food carry you like the crowd in a rock concert, you'll be fine and will likely be treated more than well. Our first impression was an unsmiling hostess who made every effort to avoid eye contact, as though we were some sort of soul stealing gypsies instead of simple voyagers in search of a great meal. She led us past the open kitchen where people were plating in front and cooking behind, with a glowing wood-burning oven taking center stage. Our table sat in the garden area, served by a waiter whose job was to keep forty people happy, an amazing feat of front house juggling if there ever was one.

After being seated, we noticed that the menus, housed in not especially hygenic looking holders, were placed directly on our clean napkins. So, a potential smorgasbord of microbes was sitting there, atop a formerly pristine napkin, just to achieve an effect of what? Adventure mixed with anxiety perhaps? Why not just lay the day's menu on top of the napkin without the unwashed, padded holder? We looked at each other, thinking the same thought: is this the microbe du jour?

Eventually, the waiter managed to stop by our table and answer some questions. At this point, I was already thinking that the back of the house would have to carry the day. Luckily, the waiter was well informed and able to guide us in our selections.

Two of us chose the prix fixe menu du jour: an emulsified salad mixing greens and fruit heavily laced with tarragon. One of us skipped the first course, instead opting to take occasional stabs at my charcuterie plate: rilletes, country style paté, dry salami, Spanish style chorizo, prosciutto. The rillettes were ground silky smooth, not the more chunky rendition typical of France. Kind of like a porky foie gras, but without so much four spice. The best item was the country style paté; enough texture for a good mouthfeel, rich with flavors that evolved on the palate.

Since the wines were more on the pricy side of things than not, we opted for a Cremant d'Alsace. If you're going to pay for a decent wine and you're celebrating, might as well go with something bubbly that will complement most dishes.

Our main courses would be fish with a curry sauce, scallops in black butter, duck breast with a gastrique sauce and a tagine with preserved lemons, merguez sausage, mint, crème fraîche shrimp and couscous. The duck breast was served with fresh morel mushrooms, baby turnips and spring onions, all coated in a gastrique sauce to perk things up a bit. The scallops came with sautéd brussel sprout leaves, the nuttiness of the sprouts playing a counterpoint to the richer beurre noire coating the seafood. The white fish with curry was, well, forgettable. Just white protein from the sea lacking any of its own assertiveness or flavor, carrying the curry sauce yet not taking part in the melody. The tagine brought different flavors with virtually every bite, since you could opt in or out of the mint sauce, spear a shrimp or a piece of merguez, perhaps rub in a bit of preserved lemon...

As the meal progressed, we chatted more and more with our waiter. As it turned out, he was from Durango. Not the ordinary place in Colorado, but the Durango near Copper River Canyon in Mexico. It turned out that the staff was mostly Spanish speaking, although the chef/owners are indeed French. It's always fun to go to a French restaurant and speak Spanish with foodies from far away lands. We also talked about restaurants in D.F. (a.k.a. Mexico City) and current trends in Mexican cuisine in Mexico.

The fancy, main menu desserts were an apple tart, thin-sliced apples served on crispy puff pastry, painted with a translucent glaze and something like a chocolate lava bomb. It arrived looking like a simple cocoa colored cylinder. When cut, flowing chocolate pahoehoe spreads onto the plate, solidifying as it cools. The prix fixe desserts were... I forgot to note them since they just couldn't hold a candle to the lava bomb or the apple tarte.

As we left, the chef-owner arrived. We ended up chatting a bit in French - he's from Fontainebleau, not far from where my brother in law used to live. A genuine French chef! So, a trilingual lunch that mixed the cuisines of France, Morocco (the tagine), Spain (the chorizo) and India (the curry). Fun.

Overall, it was an interesting meal, and worth the money. Any meal where I come away with at least three ideas is educational money well spent, and at the rate tuition is increasing in the community college, more and more a bargain. I've already used the salad dressing and gastrique, albeit in modified forms to work in different menus.

Summer Seafood Celebration

Champagne for starters

Italian Prosciutto and Alpina salami, fresh sweet basil

 Then on to the main wine: Soave

Rosemary & olive oil ciabatta

Swordfish with caper sauce, roast fennel, fennel purée, broiled heirloom tomato

We probably should have started with Pastis 51, considering that this was a birthday where we could match numbers - except I prefer Champagne and it goes better with food. All discussion of Champagne with dessert was quickly vetoed, since Annette already chose a nice bottle of Brut. Brut Champagne with sweet desserts tastes like vinegar mixed with lemon juice. Paired with savory dishes, however, the acid in the Champagne cleanses the palate and dances well with the food instead of peeing on its leg and stepping on its feet. This Champagne exuded aromas of fresh citrus with some grapefruit thrown in, not much yeast to speak of. It was destined for the charcuterie plate that came before the main course.

I love charcuterie plates, especially when I'm both chef and celebrant. All they need is decent plating, a garnish and people who aren't afraid of a bit of nitrites. These meats came via Claro's Italian Market, imported directly from Italy. Yes, there is a difference between real imported Prosciutto and that domestic stuff. Richer, fuller, perhaps a tad less salty. The Alpina salami is somewhat like the offspring of Prosciutto and Pancetta with a nice note of black pepper to keep things interesting.

We netted some nice bottles of Soave for the main course. This wine got lots of points from one of those Fancy Wine Guys, yet it's affordable (at least for now). Dry with nice notes of fruit, it's the ideal bride for most seafood. Since we hadn't yet been to the fish market, we would pick the fish to accompany the wine for an acid fruitiness tango with savory fin food.

The main course was supposed to be herb-grilled striped bass. Until we got to the fish market. Ugh. Those poor fish looked about four to five days old, slightly sunken eyes, gills removed, dull scales starting to present a rough appearance. So, 86 the bass. The Alaskan halibut looked nice - glistening thick steaks at $28 per pound. Ouch. How about swordfish?

Swordfish is one of those environmentally ambiguous fish species, going from Avoid to Best Choice, depending on its origin and how it was caught. If it's from the United States, odds are it's acceptable, so you can eat it without an extra helping of guilt. And it goes well with Soave.

Since the meal was centered on summer, the plate was finished with roast fennel, fennel purée and a thick slice of grilled heirloom tomato.

As it turns out, the fennel purée was the most complicated dish to prepare. First, the fennel was sliced into quarter inch slabs, placed on a parchment paper lined baking sheet with some garlic cloves,  sprinkled with EVOO, kosher salt and black pepper and placed in a 375° oven.

While the fennel was roasting, some chicken stock mixed with fresh thyme and bay leaves went on the stove, with a few sweet red peppers tossed in to soften.

The decorative, center sliced pieces of fennel were reserved for a garnish/vegetable. The rest got roughly chopped to medium dice, mixed with a bit of the stock, the baked garlic, and the rest of the sweet red peppers and puréed with a bit of EVOO added.

The heirloom tomatoes were cut into half inch rounds, sprinkled with a bit of EVOO, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper and set aside for broiling once the oven was free.

The fish was relatively simple, and could be done at the last minute. Sauté the steaks in a stainless steel pan, add white wine, capers, a bit of fine brunoise from the cooked sweet red peppers, sea salt, black pepper. Monter au beurre, add fresh squeezed lemon juice and pour over the fish when plating.

Next year, they promised to take me out for my birthday. I guess it's a balance between what this meal would cost in a restaurant and the fuss of preparing it at home (four people x charcuterie plate, Champagne, swordfish steaks. Two bottles of Soave. Dessert. Espresso coffee. Armagnac digestif = $$$$). Balance that with the risk of paying a lot of money and being disappointed - or cruising East L.A. for tacos, cemitas or tortas - or Monterey Park for dim sum and forgetting about anything fancy.

Duck on the wild side

Being in a culinary arts program is starting to have some perks. A friend got some wild ducks from a hunter friend, but didn't know how to cook them. So, I got invited over as guest chef. The ducks were nice birds, already cleaned and ready to go - unless you wanted the livers. Gone. Just as well, since you can't make paté and age it in 90 minutes.

Boning a duck is just like boning a chicken, except that the wishbone is in a slightly different place and the bones are placed slightly differently. No problem making four nice magrets (duck breasts, skin on), fast confit for the thighs and drumsticks and stock with the carcasses.

Legs and thighs simmer in oil, orange peel and garlic on low heat. Carcass in stock pot with mirepoix.

Magret prepped, skin scored and tenders in refrigerator ready to go.

Tenders first, with garlic, a bit of sesame oil, and a fine julienne of leeks.

Take some stock and start reducing it at high heat with some red wine.

Then magrets, nice sear, hold in oven, deglaze with reduced stock, fresh rosemary, add salt, add butter, taste, more salt, ready!

Slice duck breasts and stack. Nice, medium rare wild duck; moist, tender and not gamy. Drizzle sauce over slices, garnish with quick confit and duck tenders with leeks. Rush to table.

That was an Easter dinner I'll remember for a long time. My only regret was that the hunter wasn't there to enjoy his duck three ways and get inspired to supply me with some more birds for future feasts.

Making sausages and quenelles

Italian style sausage, linguini, dandelion greens

Quenelles de truite

French style garlic sausage

The garde-manger class might be affecting me. This is where we learn to make sausages, mousseline, patés, galantines... After only a few short weeks, I no longer see things like pieces of roast or fillets of fish the same way. I have this strange desire to grind them up and transform them into something else. The sausages started out this morning as a piece of pork shoulder. The photo of the quenelles de truite was done in class, but I redid the recipe at home yesterday just to make sure I had all the steps down. So, a trout was filleted, boned, skinned and ground up with some other stuff and piped into boiling salted water, then baked with some nice white wine sauce to make quenelles.  Very French.

One thing I discovered was that making things into sausages and quenelles stretches them out quite a bit. Two trout fillets are more than enough to feed three people, since there are other things (like butter, some more butter, and then a bit of butter, and some cream, and some butter) that stretch them out. So, one meager trout, transformed into quenelles, can easily feed four people. Especially if they consume a lot of freshly baked baguettes first.

It's not that this wasn't anticipated. I found some natural sausage casings at Claro's Market in L.A. and couldn't resist. The thing is that I don't have a meat grinder (yet) so I have to process the meat in a food processor, which tends to make it come out too fine and pasty even when it's ice cold. I don't have a sausage attachment or anything fancy like that either - I have a funnel and a spoon handle. Slow but it gets the job done, although the meat in the casing has to be peristaltically arranged so that the casing is not overstuffed. Kind of like milking a goat, actually.

Trout-Salmon quenelles
These are like skinless sausages that you pipe out into boiling water, then finish in the oven with a sauce. Don't be shocked at the amount of butter and cream you'll use. This is classic French food, so just watch some Julia Child videos if you want to be comforted about the butter.

Ingredients

Mousseline
1 lb Fresh, never frozen trout (I'm using trout instead of salmon because it's supposedly sustainably farmed). Ice crystals made during freezing rupture the cells and make the fish unsuitable for making mousseline.
3 Egg whites
1 1/2 cup Heavy cream
Salt, Pepper, Nutmeg to taste
4 Shrimp (this can be frozen, since it's just for flavor). Cook, chop into 1/4" cubes and chill.
3 oz Panade, in this case pâte à choux made with milk instead of water, then chilled.
Ice cubes, about 4-5.

Sauce (quantities are approximate)
Butter
1 Tbsp flour
2 oz Whole milk or cream
1 Shallot, finely chopped
Some fresh thyme leaves (optional)
8 oz Fish or shrimp stock
4 oz Dry white wine
Salt, Pepper to taste

Process
Mousseline

1. Trim any major bones off the fish fillets, skin them if needed, and cut into cubes. I left the pin bones in since they were going to be ground finely - and this was trout, not salmon (I'd remove them for salmon).
2. I like to grind some ice cubes in the food processor. This gets everything nice and cold. I then either use the crushed ice for cocktails or discard it.
3. Put the fish and cold panade into a food processor fitted with a metal blade.
4.  Purée the fish/panade mixture.
5. Add the egg whites and process until smooth
6. Add the salt, pepper and nutmeg. You'll need more salt than you think, but don't skimp. The salt is required to alter the protein structure of the fish. If you used enough, the fish will form itself into a ball when you process it; if not, it will remain a purée.
7. Add cream in a stream with the food processor running.
8. Mix in the shrimp cubes.
9. Taste for seasoning and adjust before you cook the quenelles - you can cook a spoonful in some boiling salted water.

Sauce

1. Sauté the shallots in some butter until they're translucent.
2. Make a roux with the flour and butter.
3. Add white wine to deglaze, then add the stock, salt and pepper.
4. Reduce down so there's not much liquid left.
5. Add the thyme leaves.
6. Reduce the heat, add the cream slowly, tasting as you go. 
7. Adjust seasoning as needed, and reserve sauce.

Assembly

1. Preheat oven to 325°F.
2. Boil water in a fairly deep pot, add salt when it boils.
3. Butter a shallow ramekin and set aside
4. Place the mousseline in a pastry bag fitted with a large, plain tip.
5. Pipe the mousseline into the boiling water, straight down. Cut off 3 to 4 inch sections (depending on the size of your ramekins) with a thin knife, skewer or anything that doesn't stick to the mousseline. If you pipe it at an angle, the quenelles will be curved instead of straight.
6. Reduce the heat so that the quenelles just simmer in the water. They're ready when they're firm.
7. Fish the quenelles out with a spider (cook-ese for a wire strainer/spoon) and place them in the ramekin.
8. Pour the sauce over the quenelles - you don't need much. It's just there to give them a nice thick coating and add flavor.
9. Bake in a bain-marie for about 15-20 minutes until the quenelles just start to show some color. A bain-marie is just a shallow pan filled with water, into which you place the ramekins. Its function is to keep the cream based sauce from getting too hot yet allow the tops of the quenelles to brown a bit.
10. Serve immediately - if you have nice small ramekins, just place them onto a serving plate with a nice garnish and voilà.

Valentines Day - a (très romantique) dinner for 2 humans & 1 cat

First, there might be something to going out to a nice restaurant: no dishes. However, I doubt that we could have afforded this meal:

• Vol-au-vent avec crevettes, vent d'Asie: shrimp, snow peas, garlic chives, shrimp stock in bechamel inside puff pastry shell. Garnished with purple bok choy from our garden.
• Steamed Dungeness crab, Crabandaise sauce, baguettes à l'ancien.
•  Fourme d'Ambert blue cheese
• Meli-Melo de gourmandises: truffes au chocolate noir legerement orangés, fleurons de pâte feuillétée, Valentine's day candies.

___

Cremant d'Alsace rosé
Vin Blanc du Cotes de Gascogne

The cat got some steamed crab, no sauce.
Thanks Teresa for the Valentine candies!
Ripping apart recently deceased crustaceans with your (almost) bare hands and devouring them is sooo romantic!

The Cassoulet Chronicles

A chef at my school was the guest of honor at a local restaurant's Family Style Dinner. The main dish: Cassoulet.

This is a pot of beans from southern France. It always contains white beans. It probably contains pork. After that, it may have duck, goose, lamb, tomato and varying degrees of herbal seasonings. Bread crumbs with a bit of fat and cooking juice go on the top, that form a crust during baking. Cassoulet fanatics argue about the next point, but basically the crust should be broken up, mixed into the cooking liquids and allowed to re-form at least once. There are versions from Agen, Toulouse, Castelnaudry. All different, all authentic.

Our chef called it "French pork and beans". I'd seen the meats in various stages of preparation in the school kitchen. Confit de canard. Pork belly. It smelled incredible, yet I managed to resist grabbing a chunk and absconding with the evidence.

I was not sure I'd be able to attend the dinner, so I decided I'd try a piggy version of the dish myself. Instead of very expensive duck, I'd use slow cooked pork. The herbs would be the same: fresh thyme and laurel. There would be a bit of garlic, the beans and the bread crumbs with a bit of duck fat to make the crumbs interesting. Minimal and basic. No lamb, nothing expensive.

I've made my version of Cassoulet - something I prefer to call Haricot de mouton so as not to offend cassoulet purists. The main meat is lamb shanks, a bit of pork, garlic sausages, herbs, beans, etc. This time, I would not be able to fall back on the full flavored lamb to carry the dish. It would be a much more subtle beast.

As it turned out, I did attend the chef's dinner. The cassoulet was interesting. Less herbal than I expected, but with a nice porky note from all that pork belly. There were a few pieces of duck but they were cast in a supporting role under the porky lead. The beans were perfectly seasoned and cooked. Quite different than what I was used to, but a definite success nonetheless.

I'd already begun preparation for my cassoulet, so this was definitely my dish of the week. I'd already decided what I would do, so I knew the taste would be different than the chef's dinner.

I'll just say that it came out nice, not especially traditional, and that I ate too much both nights. So, without further ado, here's the recipe (my first in this blog, take note!)

Cassoulet de Carnitas

Yield: serves about 5-6 people - or reheats well for leftovers.

Ingredients

• 5 pound pork shoulder roast, bone in, cut into 3" - 4" pieces. Leave some meat on the bone.
• 7 cloves of garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
• salt, pepper to taste
• 1-1/2 cup of Cannoli beans.  If you love beans, use two cups. If you're a gazillionaire, use French Tarbais beans. Make sure you check the price first, because I'm really not joking about the millionaire part.
• 5 sprigs of fresh thyme
• 3 bay leaves, fresh
• stale bread cut into 1/2" cubes
• about 2 tablespoons duck fat
• 1 strip of bacon
• about 1/4 cup of herbes de provence, dry
• Water to cover the beans twice. If the beans are 1" deep, add 2" water.
• About 1/2 cup of sherry

Procedure
1. Soak the beans overnight in salted water with the herbes de provence and half the garlic (you can use dried garlic and save the fresh stuff for later - if so, don't peel the garlic until the day you add it to the pot.

2. The next day, pour out the salted water through a strainer.

3. Place the beans in fresh water with the garlic, bacon, pork bone and herbs and cook without salting the water until they're just tender.

4. While the beans are cooking, tightly place the pork pieces in a pan with just enough water to cover and some salt and cook at low heat until the pork is falling apart tender and the water has evaporated. Pay close attention toward the end so that you don't burn the pieces. The goal is for them to fry gently in the rendered fat. If this looks familiar, it's the basic recipe for carnitas.

5. Turn the pork pieces to brown them in the fat, then drain off the fat. The pork, basically Mexican carnitas, can also be considered a confit of sorts, just the thing to throw into a nice cassoulet.

6. Transfer the pork and the beans to an oven proof dish and mix them well. Either remove the meat from the bone or just toss the whole piece in. Massage the bread crumbs in the duck fat and press them down onto the surface of the meat & bean mixture.

7. Bake at about 300° F until a crust forms, then break the crust. Check that there is still liquid. You may need to add water or stock to keep things juicy.

8. When a second crust forms, you can eat. No need to be fanatical about multiple crusts since this is a non-traditional recipe.

9. Serve with a nice Cahors (a Malbec from France), a Côtes du Rhône or other Burgundy style wine like a Portuguese Dão. The only other thing you might want is some hearty, crusty sourdough or levain style bread.