Mission: Cochon

OOS: Return to Clambake Nation

2008-08-19T09:36:00.000-07:00

Above: A rendering of the culinary nations of North America. Modern political borders are shown in white. Note that culinary nation borders are in a constant state of change, and that many of these nations overlap one another. Also note that smaller microstates exist within these greater areas (e.g., The Scrapple Republic of the Greater Philadelphia Metro and the Lebanon Bologna & Peanut Butter Free State of Central Pennsylvania, to name just two), resulting in a patois of flavors and experiences, even in areas that are firmly within some larger nation. This graphic was originally produced for an article in the New York Times.

Imagine yourself in the rural, rolling hills of northern Lancaster county Pennsylvania. This is an area of traditional, small holding farmers and traditional small towns, with rolling hills that give way to the blue ridges of the Appalachians to the west. It is a bucolic place in every sense, but it is also a land of great conflict and difference. This is because northern Lancaster county is right on the borders of four different nations, each with its own tastes and traditions. From the North and West, Maple Syrup nation, sparsely represented but a real presence, following the rhythm of the seasons as they collect and process their harvest. From the South and West, Chestnut Nation, a mysterious gathering, who do battle with squirrels to collect the bounty of the mighty oak. To the South, stretching from the Chesapeake down the coast, Crabcake nation: a boisterous, welcoming people; well versed in the ways of the scuttling sea bugs, often as willing to eat a softshell on a bun as to go to the trouble of making a crabcake. These people are beer drinkers, boat sailors, friends, and neighbors. And from the east and north, the Clambake Nation. These are our people: our nation, our heritage, our tradition. We gather together to build fires and steam clams, to eat the best sweet corn on the planet, to consume mountains of cole slaw and piles of fresh tomatoes, and to - when it has all been eaten - follow it with a chaser of the butter we soaked our clams in during the meal.

These nations are not fixed, not separated by trenches or walls - no, the national borders are fluid, and as such a Clambaker could live next to a Maple Syrupian, an Chestnutter next to a Crabcaki. There are even some blended families; though for obvious reasons the sea-based nations are more likely to intermarry with one another than with a sylvan nation, and vice versa.

Now, while many of us are born into these nations, in the end nationality is an affiliation of choice. Some choose not to be a member of any of these nations, preferring instead to enjoy a patois of them. Some are members of tiny subnations, limited to a town or metro areas. Others switch from one to another as time passes. And still others find themselves orphaned, and as a result of some event, join a new nation, taking their tradition and tastes as their own.

This is how Jacob's family came to be proud citizens of the Clambake Nation. It was during the second world war, and due to a chronic health problem, Jacob's grandfather was unable to enlist. He was able to complete his patriotic duty building B-26's in Baltimore, however, and during this time he developed a taste for clams. Why he chose clams and not crabcakes is lost to history (though we suspect that the generous use of butter in clam eating had something to do with it), but no matter how it happened, to this day we annually gather from all points of the country to eat ungodly numbers of bivalves and renew our family ties once more.

Loyal readers know that we feel very strongly about food and fellowship. This is a core belief for both of us. For Jacob, this belief comes from many sources, but the annual gathering that his family refers to simply as "The Bake" is perhaps the primary font from which this passion flows. So today we're sharing a few moments from it with you, because as important as working through Chef Picard's opus is to us, at the end of the day this is how WE do it.

This is Pennsylvania, so we don't mis en place: we fill up our steamer. We start empty, adding a wooden bracket that keeps the food off the bottom of the steamer (and out of the water). Then we add potatoes, right out of the garden this morning:

And follow that with onions, from a roadside stand nearby:

Now, cover these sturdy things with a few layers of corn picked this morning:

Until the steamer is nearly filled:

Then, top it all off with about 12 quarts of clams:

And spread to even them out:

Now, we add about 12 quarts of water, cover, and take to the firepit, which as been burning for some time now:

While this is all steaming, we take the opportunity to melt a wee bit (about a gallon) of locally made butter:

And to prepare side dishes (tomatoes, salads, cole slaw, and the like) for the onslaught.

After an hour or so over the fire (about halfway through we add brats to the mix), everything's ready so out they all come:

Now we make sure to have the right beverage and "sauce" on hand:

And then, we assemble our plates from the platters of goodness:

And that, friends, is all there is to it. When everything turns out well (which everything did this year, and does most years) you end up with an orgy of flavors, freshness, and joy. The buttery goodness of the clams, the sweet pop of the corn, the tomatoes that have more to them than anything you'll find in the store, and a flood of other flavors and foods... and this year, the vegetable soup that starts the day's eating correctly (way to go Constance!).

Note to selves: Eat more clams.

Time, mis to eat: No real mis here. Time over the fire was about an hour; but there was a substantial amount of prep and harvest beforehand.

Blast from the past: A little more about him and her, in case you need context.

Next up: Tomato sauce! (Honest.)

P.S.: Special thanks to the entire Hagy clan for another wonderful, well-worth-the-trip, Clambake. See you in 2009!

Mission: Monster Lobster

2008-08-11T09:23:00.000-07:00

Consider the lobster: a primordial creature, scuttling along the bottom of the sea, constantly on the lookout for prey (or other lobsters), the proud carrier of some 100,000 neurons or so, unburdened by anything resembling a brain: essentially a giant, primitive bug.

The lobster, it is safe to say, has no inner life. It moves about, attracted by whatever it is that attracts lobsters, and eventually finds its way into a trap. The trapped lobster is tossed into a hold, transported to your area, and dunked in another tank with a bunch of other lobsters. At the market, some of those lobsters snooze. Some of them "fight." And some just scuttle around. But one of them eventually ends up on the scale, ready to come home with you, just so:

(Now this recipe is called "Monster Lobster," and in the book Chef Picard uses a 5 lb bruiser for his work. After due consideration we decided to go with a smaller specimen - about 1 1/3 lbs - instead. Neither of us have much experience cooking these little fellows but we have heard that larger lobsters are often rather tough; and beyond that (and more importantly, frankly) 5 lb lobsters do not seem to exist for sale in Northern California. So we compromised. Seeing that (spoiler alert!) we were stuffed after eating this size, we think it was the right decision.)

Back to business. Quare: What goes well with lobster? Butter, or even better, hollandaise! So while our friend the lobster - Valentino Metallica is what we named him - enjoys the confines of a cardboard box inside our fridge, we got to building the sauce. Now: there is some dispute on the proper hollandaise base. Tradition, and Chef Picard, use clarified butter. But Jacques Pepin (in Complete Techniques) uses simply melted butter, which while waterier does produce a sauce (he says) that is more heat tolerant and less likely to break. (Faithful readers will remember that we do have a problem with breaking sauces in our kitchen.) We went with tradition on this one - because we TICP, and because Jacob wanted to make a "proper" hollandaise, and because... well, it is Chef Picard's recipe, not ours, eh?

So first we clarify:

Over low heat for a bit, until everything is melted, and then we skim to see this:

It was in focus in real life, we promise. From here, we have a brief pause for a "meez:"

Again with the focus! Well, it had been a long day, we suppose. Anyway, from this point we take our fabulous new ball whisk and bust on it 'til white meat shows:

Then, when done, we put it into a vessel and kept it warm.

Now, while Jacob has been furiously working his sauce thang in the hot, hot kitchen, Valentino Metallica has been chilling (as it were) in the cool, cool fridge. He's had quite a life, but now it's about time for him to sacrifice himself for the good of the order. So after a pep talk from our mascot:

And our dog:

Into the steamer he went. Being a lobster, he felt nothing; but he did turn a wonderful shade of red after the appropriate time:

Meanwhile, we had steamed some asparagus. At this point we were ready to take the tomalley from the thorax and mix it up with some of the hollandaise (so we did that). Next we removed the tail meat and filled the tail up with hollandaise and then replaced the meat. Then we drizzled some hollandaise-tomalley over the shell, put some potatoes down along with the rest of the asparagus, and stuck it in the broiler for a moment. Then out it came:

And then into our bellies.

Now a few words about this meal. Actually, just one: RICH. As if we should be surprised, right? But really: RICH. Whoa. Boy. As we mentioned - what you see plated here was more than enough for the two of us. And we had had a long and busy day and were hungry, so that should tell you something.

Other things: as mentioned, this was Jacob's first time making a hollandaise, and he was very pleased at how it turned out (and how not-difficult it was). Sure, we've made bechamel, we've made aioli, we've made mayonnaise; but there's something intimidating about hollandaise (and that something is called the bain-marie, and the resplendent warnings to closely watch temperature so the egg yolks don't scramble while you're making the sauce) and something very satisfying about making a darn good one. Which this one was. (Sorry, Chef Pepin: we won't be trying your version for awhile, at least.)

The tomalley-hollandaise was... like lobster flavored hollandaise. Neither of us had had tomalley before (Jacob had always heard that people ate it, but never knew anyone who actually did, and Melissa was unfamiliar with it) and we were a little put off by it; but it was quite nice.

The dish on the whole, aside from being RICH (did I mention this was a RICH dish?), was very good. Definitely excellent overall; the asparagus played very well with the lobster and hollandaise; giving an excellent base flavor for the others to take off from.

Note to selves: Why are lobsters so expensive? Is that they must be kept alive and in a controlled environment during transport? Or is it prestige? Or what? Also, if they're so expensive, then why did the lobster fishing version of Deadliest Catch fail to be even slightly interesting? Couldn't they afford writers at these prices?

Time, mis to eat: Well, we didn't have a formal mis this week - except for the hollandaise. So let's say about 75 minutes, including steaming times.

Next Up: Tomato sauce. Using 30 lbs of tomatoes from the farmer's market. Yeah, you heard us.

Blast from the past: Watching a sauce break is like watching a car wreck in slow motion.

Rock on Pork!

2008-08-06T17:18:00.000-07:00

In case you were wondering... THIS is how we feel about pork! Rock on, pork!!! Rock out with your trot(ter) out!

We'll see you soon, little piglet... in the KITCHEN.

Mission: Fish & Chips

2008-08-04T09:46:00.000-07:00

It's August already, again; it's the height of summer. You can tell because it's typically grey and brisk here in SF - while the rest of the country doubtless bakes, we wear heavy clothes and hats, because... well, I'm not going to say it's cold. No, not compared to other places. Not compared to Montreal, certainly. But it is not short weather. That's for sure.

So what do you do when it gets chilly in the middle of the summer? You turn inward - which for us means you head to the kitchen and start making stuff. That's our big mutual hobby - spending time in the kitchen, collaborating on food, keeping each other company, automatically switching roles from chef de cuisine to sous chef and back. Melissa always says that she was never able to share a kitchen until she started cooking with Jacob. Jacob similarly never allowed "help" when he was making food until he started working with Melissa. Neither of us had much interest in doing so - having encountered many well meaning but clumsy or inattentive or easily flustered "helpers" in the past.

We've been making food together for just under five years now, and at this point we talk very little about the tasks at hand - unless it is a fiendishly complicated recipe (as some of these have been - we're talking about you, lamb shank confit) we are able to split the work wordlessly and talk about other things that strike our fancy, or entertain our (safely isolated and out of the workspace) guests with whatever gabble we can come up with. We have far too good a time in the kitchen. We laugh a lot. We drink a lot. We visit a lot. For that hour or so, we and whoever's watching us (just watching - we don't take help!) are completely in the moment. Which is where you're supposed to be, right?

That actually is the point. Sure, right, you gotta eat. And we wouldn't do this if the food didn't taste good. And yeah, okay, we do like sharing it and seeing that people from all over the world are spending time with us (we do welcome your comments, by the way). But really the reason we keep doing this week on week is because it's a hell of a lot of fun to spend time with friends and family this way; even when things aren't going as well as they should in the kitchen or in their lives or in ours. That's fellowship, and there are few things better to share than that.

You know what else is good to share? Deep fried things. Let's get to cooking, huh?

Mis! En! Place!

So, this week we're doing fish and chips with two batters: a scotch batter which uses stout (Guinness) and baking powder, and a blond batter that uses a pale ale (Anchor Liberty) and what seems like an outrageous amount of yeast (seriously). The fish, which is wrapped nicely in the paper there, is halibut; as called for directly in the recipe. We started with about 1.75 pounds of it.

So, first we mixed up one batter, and then the other, and then we put them aside for a while:

These both doubled in size. Yes - that's a LOT of batter. Meanwhile we had peeled and cut the potatoes, and soaked them for an hour. (Chef Picard leaves the reader to their own devices when it comes to making the chips - so we followed the excellent recipe in America's Test Kitchen Best Recipe) Then we put them in for the first fry, and drained them:

Then, we turned to the fish:

Which we sliced into strips, and salted them, just so:

Then we battered two ways. First we tried the blond batter:

And within moments all we had left was this:

So much for plating, eh? (Oh, that's the tartar sauce we made in the background. It was good too.) Okay, okay, we did plate. Blonde batter is on the bottom, scotch on the top:

This was fantastic overall, though the blonde battered fish was the consensus favorite. Its was much lighter than the stout based batter, flakier, and tastier overall. The fish was perfectly cooked with a three minute dunk (that's what quality deep fryers get you, I suppose) and the chips were great as well (thanks, ATK). All in all this was an extremely easy dish, one that allowed us to do some serious visiting with our good friend who came over to help us wolf it down.

Note to selves: Next time we will skip the stout batter and just go with the blonde batter. Sorry, stout: you're better for drinking than you are for making fish batter.

Time, mis to eat: All told, about 90 minutes - half of which was spent waiting for the batter to rise.

Next up: Unclear! We're still kinda in fry heaven right now.

Blast from the past: Fiendishly complicated? Fiendishly good is more like it.

Mission: Foie Gras Pizza

2008-07-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

Everybody loves pizza! You do! We do! The Ramones did! We mean... it's pizza. Everyone loves it.

Everybody loves foie gras, too. You do! We do! The Ramones did! It's foie gras, people! It's heaven!

(What's that you say? Some people may have serious ethical concerns regarding foie gras, you say? Bah! Consider this: if those people were to eat foie without knowing where it came from what would they think? Would they want more? Or would they not?

You know what they'd think. They'd love it and they'd ask for more. And if it were us, we'd serve it to them. And if they asked, we'd call it meat butter.)

So this week we're going to put two great tastes - foie and za - together. Let's see what happens.

Mis en place!

So there's some salted foie we made a week or so ago, and pizza dough, and prosciutto (the book calls for lonzo, but we weren't able to source it easily: and the book does suggest going with prosciutto if needed). And figs!

Wait, figs?

Anyway, first we put the dough in the pan:

And then we sauce it up, adding figs and goat cheese:

And then we fired it for a while. When we were satisfied that it was about done, we put arugula (which we cannot spell correctly) on it and fired it again for 15 seconds or so to wilt it. Then we laid the prosciutto on top of that, just so:

And then we put the foie on top. Here's a slice:

And then we ate it up.

And the only word that came to mind was... meh. This wasn't an epic fail or anything (unlike, say, a certain cotton candy machine) but the dish was somehow a little less than the whole of its parts. We both got the feeling that the foie was added here because it could be added, not because it really brought anything to the party. Oh well.

Note to selves: We sure did have a good time at Melissa and Alex's wedding last week! Wahoo Melissa and Alex! Congratulations! Yay! Also, when salting foie, be sure to wrap it in plastic to keep it from drying out.

Time, mis to eat: About 45 minutes or so.

Next time: Fish and chips.

Blast from the past: Who cares where it comes from? It's good!

Mission: Maple Ice Cream with Maple Cotton Candy

2008-07-16T08:06:00.001-07:00

This week we continue Jacob's maple education with a dessert that was redonkulously easy on one hand, and redonkulously frustrating on the other. We're going to make some ice cream (easy!) and cotton candy (frustrating!) and put it all together in a bowl. Let's see how that works out.

First, the ice cream - or, more properly, custard - meez:

Simple, eh? The first thing we do is put the maple syrup on heat and start to reduce it. While we've done a little bit of this kind of thing before, this was the first time we realized that Maple Syrup is essentially sugar, and heating it is essentially candy making - an action that both of us have been alternately fascinated by (ain't it cool that small differences in heating can have such an impact on the cooled product! That's super awesome chemistry!) and terrified of (ain't it scary that small differences in heating can have such an impact on the cooled product? I'm scared now!) for some time now. Anyway, here's the syrup coming up to temperature:

Once we got it to the right temp, we took it straight off the heat and started mixing the rest of the custard ingredients into it, stirring vigorously the entire time. We added the eggs last:

From here we did some more stirring to combine everything, and then we took the whole thing and put it in the fridge overnight.

The next day, we invited two of our ~~favorite test subjects~~ friends over and they JUST HAPPENED to bring their ice cream maker along with them. So we poured the custard into it:

And then we set it and forget it for 45 minutes or so. What could be simpler? This recipe has everything going for it: chemistry! Sweetness! Eggs! Sugar! Simplicity! Our expectations were soaring! We couldn't wait to try it! All we had to do now was make cotton candy - and how difficult could that be?

Oh.

Yeah... about that.

The cotton candy aspect did not turn out quite the way we hoped it would.

So for this dish we bought a cotton candy machine. We're usually not into unitaskers - in principal at least, we agree with Alton that the only unitasker one should have in the kitchen is the fire extinguisher - but we thought that in the spirit of the project! We should! Make our own! Cotton Candy! We MUST!

(And where would we find maple cotton candy, anyway? It's hard enough to find maple sugar around here! Clearly, we HAD to make it ourselves! That is what Chef Picard would want us to do!)

We did research and found a very cute (and pink! hello!) cotton candy machine on Amazon. It seemed reasonably priced, and seemed to promise a certain... level of performance, lets say. It came in the mail the day before we were going to use it, and we read through the instructions, which made still more promises regarding a certain level of performance:

I mean, look at Figure G!! What a massive quantity of cotton candy! I'm getting a stomach ache just looking at it! Not that I won't eat it up and ask for more! Gimme!

And here's where the wheels, as it were, started to come of the wagon. Maybe we should have expected that, considering this warning label:

We had read that the machine's performance gets better the longer it was on - that is, the first batch was kinda sucky, but the second would be great. So the first thing we did was add just pure granulated sugar to the machine. Just to warm things up, you see. Just to make sure it worked, you know. So we added a tablespoon of sugar to the machine, and then another, and then another, and after about 20 minutes we had this much cotton candy:

Okay. Well, the second batch will be better, right? So now we added the maple sugar to the machine. And then we added more. And a little more. And got no candy. NONE. So we went back to the computer for more research. It seems that the machine likes granulated sugar the best. The maple sugar we had was very finely granulated, so at this point - as a last gasp - we mixed up a batch of half maple and half plain sugar, like so:

And after three scoops (tablespoons) of that we took what we had and compared it to the plain cotton candy we had made earlier:

Epic, huh? Well, we did have enough for one dish, and so here is the final product:

Then we split up the candy into four teensy little bits and ate up our portions.

And holy cow. This was good. The cotton candy added a nice dryness to the ice cream. The ice cream was very sweet, but not cloying, and we all enjoyed it. So maple ice cream? Great! Maple cotton candy? Super, thanks for asking! However...

Note to selves: Cotton candy machine? EPIC FAIL. Seriously. We're returning it. If we ever make cotton candy again we'll just rent an industrial version.

Time, mis to eat: Not including the overnight chill on the custard, about 90 minutes for the ice cream. The cotton candy took about 45 minutes or so.

Next up: We're going to throw together a little thing called Foie Gras Pizza!

Blast from the past: We've loved foie for a long time... and this was truly two great tastes that went great together.

OOS: Respect the Tip Jar

2008-07-10T12:27:00.000-07:00

Ripped from the headlines of our neighborhood, we have a sad tale to tell about something we bore witness to - kinda - at our favorite butcher.

Last night we went to Avedano's to pick up some sausage and steak for dinner. We drove up and came right in - and the butcher locked up the door behind us! Turns out that they had just - just! - been robbed. Well, the tip jar had been stolen. (Yes, our butcher has a tip jar. And yep, we tip - they're really good to us, and are great about sharing knowledge and butcher lore, and... we're food bloggers, for god's sake, what do you want?) Apparently, some drunk came into the shop, asking for money, and then produced a knife and ran off with the tip jar.

So while one butcher was explaining it to us, the other one was calling 911. And the cops were there within about 30 seconds. Some response time, huh?

Anyway, we ended up getting our sausage (one pork, one lamb; we ate'em straight after putting on high heat for a few minutes - delish) and steak (grass fed flank, which we seared and ate up with some pita) and it wasn't until we left that I realized that there was something really idiotic, and almost hilarious, about robbing a butcher... wielding a knife.

Since no one was hurt, let's call it funny. And let's reflect for a moment. It's a well known fact (among the underworld types... I'm told) that one is to be especially cautious - and perhaps even not to trust - a man who keeps pigs. I would think that one would always be on one's best behavior around shop run by women who no doubt know many men who keep pigs.

And on the other hand, a knife - of all things? Against a butcher? It's well-established that bringing a knife to a gunfight is a bad idea; what level of bad idea-ness would we call bringing a knife against a butcher?

Mission: Tomato Tart

2008-07-09T10:34:00.000-07:00

This week we're off to a mysterious land known as Connecticut, exploring one of its darkest corners - known by the locals as Grennitch - to visit two dear friends who will soon be transported off to the British Crown Colony of Bermuda; where apparently there are all sorts of devilish things in store for them. (Things like rum, linen suits, reinsurance, expensive lemons, and the like.)

Our mission this week was to create the Tomato Tart - using an unfamiliar kitchen and untried (by us) tools. All missions require planning, and so we first created our mis en place:

As you can see, unfamiliar territory - but we shall prevail! As you can see we've prepped our pastry and had it chilling since the night before, wrapped in wax paper, assuming the proper consistency. It's still a smidge early for tomatoes in Connecticut - at least in Grennitch - but we were able to find some lookers at the local ~~Whole Foods~~ grocery mart, as seen here:

And so we were off! Melissa kindly took to slicing the tomatoes wafer thin while Jacob patiently plucked the teensy little leaves off an otherwise unsuspecting herb:

And during this, our host Kris kindly whipped up the bechamel base for us:

Isn't that ball whisk a looker? We're definitely going to get one. Because the three whisks we have are suddenly obsolete. Anyhoohah, once that was placed in a chilled bowl, we were ready for the second meez:

Now comes the time on Sprockets when Jacob does battle with the pastry. Continuing to learn from previous ~~disasters~~ experiences, we had kept the dough in the fridge until the very last moment, and then once we got to work, we worked as quickly as possible, so quickly that there's but one picture of that process:

And we are happy, beyond happy, to report that we were able to not only get the dough rolled out properly and quickly, we were able to get it up off the granite and onto parchment for the assembly, just so:

And so assemble we did:

And then into the oven at high heat for a very short period of time (20 minutes or so) and then out it came, looking like this:

For a moment it looked like that. Then we ate it up. Greedily.

So the day before we made this dish we met some other friends in ~~Algonquin~~ Manhattan, and ate some really good pizza at a place on 3rd in the Mid-80's. It was really good - super good - a real good thin crust pizza, so good that you could just get a margarita or a white pie and be perfectly happy (we did actually get one of each, in addition to a pepperoni for good measure). It was one of those pizzas that makes an east coast transplant (like Jacob) suddenly sharp pangs of nostalgia and regret - nostalgia for the primeval feelings that for some reason surround pizza when you grow up on the eastern seaboard, regret because that dish really doesn't exist west of, say, the Susquehanna river - and maybe not even that far west - and no one has ever come close to having a reasonable explanation as to why that is, exactly. (Jacob thinks it's the water, but Jacob is full of it sometimes.) Basically which is to say, that those pizzas were freakin' good, much better than what we can get in the Bay Area at any price.

These tarts reminded some of us of those pizzas. Sure - okay - fresh pastry topped with fresh ingredients, made just across the sound from Long Island. Same air - different water, but same basic atmosphere; right? But there's no bechamel sauce on those Manhattan zas, nor is there nutmeg, nor did we fire these tarts in a pizza oven, or on a stone. But there was a resemblance, absolutely, and while there was some discussion about the cheese - gruyere was called for and used, half of us liked it, half of us thought maybe something different would be better next time - none of us were really unhappy about the result.

Not even close.

Note to selves: Get a ball whisk! What a clever device! And cute too!

Time, mis to eat: 45 minutes, not including the overnight chill for the pastry dough.

Next up: It's HOT in the Bay Area so we're going with... Maple Ice Cream with Maple Cotton Candy. Yeah, you read that right.

Blast from the past: The last time we made a tart, Jacob had a lot to learn - or, he claims, remember - about pastry.

OOS: Super Roll Up Surprise

2008-07-02T14:20:00.000-07:00

During the creation of our Pets Soeurs we noticed that we had some extra pastry left over after trimming. It just so happened that we were making some onion soup base - we had run out after a slight misunderstanding regarding its true identity and had a wealth of caramelized onions laying about, along with some lardons.

Melissa noticed this, and gamely decided that it may be fun to try something new to us - and maybe new to the world - by piggybacking the Pets Soeurs recipe onto a flash of inspiration all her own. Here's how that turned out.

First, we rolled the remnants of the dough into a rectangle. Then we sugared it up:

What to add? How about some nice lardons, from our friends at Niman Ranch, cooked somewhat to render their ~~goodness~~ fat:

Things do go better with bacon, after all! But what else to add? How about some delicious caramelized onions! Surely that wouldn't hurt! But we better stop at that - who knows what these could do together! The world could come to a halt! We better paint yolk on the end of the dough, to seal:

And now Melissa rolled it up, like this:

Getting a finished tube (sorry for the technical terms), which went into the fridge for a while:

And then, when we were ready to get the Pets Soeurs underway, we put our new creation on the same silpat with them - they are the smaller ones, on the left:

And now here they are all baked, out of focus, in the back row:

We ended up dipping these in the maple caramel sauce as well.

These were... amazing. The savory of the bacon did a good job offsetting the sweet of the sugar and the onions. These would have been very good at any time of day (we say) but in the morning, with the caramel sauce, pets soeurs, eggs, and some mimosas, they were really just grand. But how bad can something be when it comes from such great recipes like the ones in the PDC Album?

Note to selves: Experimentation is good! Real good!

Time, mis to eat: About 24 hours, including dough chill times; 40 minutes or so for assembly and baking, about an hour for the onions and maybe 15 minutes for the lardons, if that.

Next up: We travel to Connecticut for the holiday and take this show on the road!

Blast from the past: Next week we finally get to try these.

Mission: Pets Soeurs

2008-07-02T12:15:00.000-07:00

Another week, another recipe; and this time... it's personal.

This week Jacob will re-enter the terrordome known as pastry and baking - that area where, long ago and far away he first learned his love of making food as an adult - where he has (he feels) failed spectacularly in this project. He will once again do battle and this time he will bring all his tricks to the table... including his new found love of all things maple!

Let's see how this works out, shall we? Mis en place:

As you can see, we have smartly prepared our pastry dough ahead of time and chilled it for 24 hours prior to our work. And because we're able to learn - slowly - from our mistakes, J went and stuck the dough back in the fridge after this shot to keep resting until we were ready for it, fully.

Meanwhile, we got our farmer's market butter in to the Cuisinart and whipped it up:

Which took essentially no time but did make it much easier to spread in the end. Now it was time to lightly flour our work surface:

And get to working on the pastry dough, like so:

Until we have a nice, if somewhat irregular, rectangle like thing on the board:

Now we trim to fit, setting the extra away for a flash of inspiration to come:

As you can see, that dough - being chilled well, and being worked up on a nicely floured surface - is not sticking to the board. Thank goodness. Anyway, now we paint one strip with egg yolk, and add a moderate amount of maple sugar (granulated), and end up with this:

Which is ready to roll into what those in the know call a "tube":

Just so! And here's what it looks like when all rolled up, and about to be wrapped in wax paper before going back into the fridge:

Now we chilled it for a while. And when it was time to serve, we cut it into pieces like so, below - the larger ones are the Pets Soeurs, the smaller ones will be revealed in a subsequent entry:

And into the heat they all went, for short period of time. Coming out they looked like this before we drenched them in a simple maple caramel sauce (consisting only of maple syrup and 35% MF cream):

And then we ate them, and gave some to our friends.

These were very good, certainly worth the making. At the very least, Jacob was able to finally reassert his pastry knowledge and feel good about how the dough turned out. They were intensely sweet - one or two was enough for us and our guests.

Note to selves: Exercise caution when cutting! The granulated maple sugar had a tendency to fall out when we cut the roll (technically called a "tube") into medallions (technically known as "disks").

Note to selves, TMI edition: Soeurs aren't the only ones who get pets from these things.

Time, mis to eat: About 24 hours, including dough chilling steps, less than an hour for assembly and baking.

Next Up: Melissa has a flash of inspiration and creates something very new, using things we have learned during this project!

Blast From the Past: We had some trouble sourcing these, but now they're everywhere in the farmer's market! Live and learn, I suppose.

OOS: Wall Street Journal Article

2008-07-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

Proving once again that we never stop working for you - our far flung readers from all states and many nations - here is a piece of some very good news that we were alerted to this morning by loyal reader Lev:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121460185679911843.html

Bellota ham, recently decriminalized, is about to come to the states. Hurray!

Mission: PDC Maple Pig's Feet

2008-06-23T12:55:00.000-07:00

So... once again, back is the incredible, edible pig's foot. Now with more... maple?

We don't have a real set procedure as to which one of us (Melissa or Jacob) chooses the recipe of the week. It's usually a collaborative process - using our favorite problem solving tool (banter) - but this week, M approached J and simply said "it's your turn to choose!" And so he flipped through, looking at this and looking at that, but he kept coming back to this recipe. There was so much going for it. To wit:

1. It's primary ingredients are two pigs feet with shanks. (Yummy!)
2. It takes advantage vegetables that we can get at our favorite farmer's market. (Fresh!)
3. It requires a long braise. (Easy-peasy!)

But... it also prominently featured Maple Syrup. And despite our stunningly great experience with the pouding, Jacob was skittish about this. He's always been suspect of maple - and syrups in general - associating them with the two breakfast foods he least likes: pancakes and french toast. On too many Sundays mornings in his childhood, he would fruitlessly try to increase his enjoyment of those dishes by adding whatever syrup was available and ending up with a mushy, oversweet mess on his plate; and invariably he would end up going hungry after refusing to eat his creation.

So there was trepidation. For a moment - but then, it evaporated as he thought to himself: "Surely, Mrs. Butterworth has nothing on authentic Canadian Maple Syrup! I must Trust in Chef Picard! I must have faith! I must move forward! I must let go of my fear!"

And so it was that he chose PDC Maple Pig's Feet for this week.

In the beginning, there was mis en place:

Note that we had brined the feet and shanks for just under 24 hours, in the fridge, before getting started. (Many thanks to our very favorite local butcher - Avedano's -who miraculously produced these for us with about 5 minutes notice!) Now, at this point, we had nearly defrosted our "pig stock" - about a half gallon's worth - in our pan:

And so we started to put everything else into it. First the shanks, then the carrots and onions (fresh from the farmer's market):

And then some garlic. And now we added the (dreaded?) maple syrup to the mix:

And then it was time to braise. For a long, long time; with bastings on the half hour. Easy enough, right?!? So we basted once:

And again:

And a few more times for good measure:

Until it was time to pull it, and it looked like this:

So we pulled the feet out and put them aside. We took out the veggies and put them aside as well. While Jacob diced the carrots, Melissa strained the "stock":

It was at this point that we discovered that the "stock" was actually... ONION SOUP BASE! That's right! We had been braising the poor pig's feet in the extra onion soup base that we had made for an earlier chapter of the project! We panicked for a moment and then thought that, well... the base was, after all, made from pork stock... so perhaps it would be a happy accident! Perhaps all would be well! (And really, it tasted amazing, so we weren't all that worried.)

So, then we added the carrots and onions back into it and cooked it down a bit, like so:

At this point we put down a nice bed of PDC mashed potatoes (which take to freezing quite well, we found!), stuck a shank and foot on top, and poured some sauce atop the whole thing, just so:

And then we ate.

Oh my. The skin was delicious and sweet and crunchy (even though had been braised mercilessly). The sauce was salty-sweet, in good proportion. But the sweetness was not overtly maple. M said that she would have been hard pressed to identify it as maple, had she not known it to be so. Jacob thought very much the same thing.

Regardless, this was delicious, more than delicious - super muy licious. We have gone from being braising believers to being braising zealots. And we are considering what to braise in pork stock - or onion soup base - and maple syrup next. Cornish game hens? Salmon? Lamb? This will be revisited in an OOS, we are sure.

Note to selves: Just because it's labelled "pork stock" in the freezer, that doesn't mean that it's pork stock. Could be onion soup base, after all.

Note to selves, 2.0: Onion soup base makes a good substitute for pork stock!

Time, mis to eat: About 5 hours, not including brining (+24 hours).

Next Up: Not sure! It's Melissa's turn to pick! :)

Blast From the Past: Let's talk about stock, baby.

Mission: Pig's Feet Meatball Ragout

2008-06-23T10:51:00.000-07:00

So here we are, back again... and yet it feels like the first time we've ever been around.

We're going for the gold in the next two entries, presenting to you two recipes so unimaginably amazing that we're still not sure that we were actually able to pull either one of them off. One involved quite a bit of labor, planning, effort, and company - and the other was almost shockingly easy to construct and went down so well with a glass of champagne that we were nearly embarrassed to be eating it just ourselves.

In this entry, we present our attempt at Pig's Feet Meatball Ragout... a stunning dish, just the thing for a cold summer night in San Francisco. In the next entry, we will present Maple Pig's Feet... a wholly different thing altogether, an almost mysterious set of tastes from a simple set of ingredients.

We've kept you waiting long enough. It's time dive in. It's time to see if we can find, for just a moment, what it is about pied de cochon inspired Chef Picard so much.

Let's mis en place, shall we?

First, our shanks, having brined, along with some pig's feet stock for braising:

Second, the rest of the mis, for the rest of the dish, just so:

Now, we get started on the meatballs, having done our slicing and dicing and whatnot, using that big red wedding present that seems to be getting more use now that we've started up on this project:

And after everything was nicely combined, we formed the result into little balls:

Which we then set to heating on our big copper pan:

Meanwhile, we got started in the greatest use of stock in the history of stock. Follow along with us... first, we used the stock to braise the shanks, which we then put aside. Then, we strained the stock:

And used it to braise those yummy little meatballs:

Which we then put aside. Then we strained the stock again:

And took some delicious potatoes and boiler onions and stuck them in it:

And once these were done, we put them aside and once more strained the stock - maybe we should start thinking of it as a sauce at this point? - one more time:

And got the flour that we had been browning out of the oven:

And added it to the sauce, to thicken it up. At this point, everything went back into the pot and got all stirry and delicious:

Then, to make any sauce worth making, the addition of a small amount of butter:

And, once the butter was melted, and all things were heated through, we put it to plate (along with our old friend, the PorKrispy Treat):

And served it to ourselves and two of our ~~test subjects~~ friends.

And oh, my.

Hélène is quite right to love this. We loved this. Our guests loved this. Our dog would have loved to love this, but she didn't get any.

As you may imagine, this dish was almost overwhelmingly porky. (Braising everything in pork stock will do that.) It really was just right up on the edge, but still on the good side; according to us and to our guests. The little cornichon was actually a perfect touch, it cut through the dish wonderfully, and we all ended up having several of them with each bowl.

Note to selves: Do NOT attempt to reheat this on the stove. Jacob, wanting more the next day, stuck the whole pot on the stove to warm it up... forgetting a fundamental of cooking: do not put heat on a roux and walk away. The entire leftover was ruined (more than half the dish) because the flour, which we had taken such care to roast carefully the day before, burned; producing an intensely smoky and unpleasant flavor that permeated the entire dish.

(Jacob's shame and humiliation from this experience partially explains the long delay in posting the recipe publicly. But he feels that he must own this mistake, and embrace the lesson with both arms.)

Time, mis to eat: A long, long time... more specifically, about four hours. Browning the flour took a surprisingly long time, but once it started to brown over it moved quickly... do pay close attention to this part.

Next up: Footy fun continues with PDC Maple Pig's Feet.

Blast From the Past: In what could possibly be foreshadowing: Onion Soup.

Mission: PDC Corn Relish

2008-06-23T09:48:00.000-07:00

So... we're back. There's been company, there's been madness, there's been mess... but that's all over, and we're back in the kitchen. Cooking it up. Canning it down. Doing it for YOU.

First up... some corn relish. No mis en place for this one - we were multitasking - but so you know, this dish involved corn, some delicious red bell peppers, vinegar, and some other stuff.

The first thing we needed to do was get the corn off the cob. And what better tool for that than... the CORN ZIPPER?

Then, we simmered the corn and the other stuff for a little while in our big red pot:

And after about 45 minutes it looked like this:

And was ready to go into the mason jar:

And then the mason jar went into some boiling water for a while:

And then... we took it out, and put it with its brothers and sisters in the canning pantry:

We'll taste it in about a month or so.

For this recipe we leaned heavily on M's early 70's era Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, which has a substantial and detailed canning section. It also had a recipe for corn relish that was much like the one we made here! But we're sure that it is not nearly as good as this will be.

Note to selves: We used about six ears of corn for this and got one mason jar out of it and maybe a forkful (each) to try. Next time we'll use more corn get more fresh to eat, because this was goooood.

Time, mis to eat: About two hours - most of which was either simmering the relish or boiling the can.

Next Up: Pig Feet Meatball Ragout. Really!

Preview -- Mission: Pig's Feet Meatball Ragout

2008-06-10T11:01:00.000-07:00

We have house guests at the moment, so blogging time is a bit limited, but here's a preview of this week's entry! It involved all sorts of porky goodness, front pig's feet, back pig's feet, pig neck, shanks, ground pork meatballs and fried pork on top. (Oh, and some potatoes and onions. To make it healthy.) Porktastic!

Mission: Zucchini Flower Tempura

2008-06-01T23:19:00.000-07:00

So finally, after a false start a couple of weeks ago, we were able to find some nice, fresh zucchini blossoms. And while we were at it, we got some squash blossoms as well. And with these wonderfully fresh items - procured from our new favorite farmers market - we went to our friends' house and went... to... town.

(Before we get started, a big 'what-up?' to our friends in Tucson who introduced us to squash blossoms on a trip to Del Mar some time ago... hey, what up kids?)

So first, our meez. As you can see, this one is kinda simple - just the blossoms, and some tempura batter. The Album doesn't provide a tempura batter recipe, so we found a simple one online and mixed it up! (Apparently, ice water is the key to success in a light, airy tempura.)

Meanwhile, the oil was getting toasty warm in a pot nearby. So the first thing you do is, you dunk the blossoms in the tempura:

And then you dunk them into the boiling hot oil (actually, it was just up to around 375)...

And then we put some more of them in there...

And waited for them to get golden brown...

And then we fished them out. And ate them.

Oh, and the taste? Kinda like deep fried candy except light and delicious and kinda like lava -- at least the first one was. (Our advice to you? Don't stuff the whole thing in your mouth at once.) But seriously, they were delicious. Kind of like moderately "healthy" fried bar food. The tempura was crispy and the zucchini was soft and the flowers added a unique texture. With a little maldon salt, it was perfect appetizer. Delicious, and easy -- minus the cleanup of deep frying. (Which we didn't even have to do because our rock star friends that we cooked for offered to clean up!)

Notes to selves: Things directly removed from hot oil are... hot. And they rock. And are really good and light and wonderful. And the tempura onion rings we made with the remainder of the batter were freakin' awesome, as well.

Time, mis to eat: 45 minutes. 30 of which were heating the oil. Or maybe not that long. There were some margaritas involved, and maybe a manhattan or two as well. Typical deep frying time, let's say.

Next Up: Honestly? Unclear. Depends on what we find at the farmer's market and how many dishes we feel like washing. TBD. But it will be good! Oh, it will be good!

Blast from the past: We were to understand there'd be punch and pie.

OOS: WSJ Article

2008-05-31T23:31:00.000-07:00

Much like Thursday is the new Friday, and wrapped in bacon is the new pink, according to the Wall Street Journal, "Cook the Book" is the new food blog. And it should be! You get to eat pork and foie gras and enjoy yummy food with your friends. Woot woot for cook-the-book!

Kudos to Carol for (re)starting the trend!

Mission: PDC Petit Cornichons Sales (Pickles)

2008-05-28T21:13:00.000-07:00

Who doesn't like pickles? No, not Mr. Pickles. No, not this Pickles, either. We're talking about pickles made from cucumbers. The kind of pickles that we have three or four jars of in our fridge of at any and all times. (We also have an emergency jar of ghetto pickles in the pantry: just in case.)

But really now: who doesn't like pickled things in general? What better unifier of cultures than vinegar, time, and the art of canning? Even tripe - tripe! - is good when it's pickled! (And certain people have shown us, recently, that tripe ain't always good.) Today we sally forth into our first batch of pickles and our first adventure with canning. By making pickles.

Did we tell you we like pickles? Let's DO IT!!!

First, we mis en place:

What's up with those cukes, you ask? Are those ice crystals, you ask? No, friends: those are rock salt crystals! To get ready for this recipe we got a couple of pounds of cucumbers and packed them in rock salt overnight:

And then, right after we took the meez picture, we put the cukes in some ice water to firm them up. We were dubious that this would work, but... trust in Chef Picard!

While this was happening, we got our jars and whatnot together for sterilization. This part involved a stock pot, boiling water, and was pretty much something you can imagine on your own. So here's a picture and a mystery: are these things sterile? Or pre-sterile?

The answer next week! Maybe. Anyway, we decided we wanted one jar of whole pickles, and one jar of pickle chips. So we got out the mandoline, and got to work:

And then we filled up the jars with the goods, just so:

And then we put them all to bed. Chef Picard recommends a month or more, and hopefully we can wait that long.

Notes to selves: Do we really have to wait a month? Really?

Time, mis to eat: A month? Or more? This is really sad.

Next Up: Something that's marinated in the tears we're shedding during this month or more that we're going to have to wait for these pickles... sweet, delicious pickles...

Blast from the past: Marrow ain't all that offal, is it?

Mission: Caroline's Pouding Chomeur

2008-05-27T18:40:00.000-07:00

This week we're going to head into the magical land of dessert, and we're going to see (SPOILER ALERT!) if the easiest recipe so far can be the most popular recipe, as well.

Let's get some mis en place, eh?

First we combined the butter and the flour, using everyone's favorite underutilized wedding present, BIG RED:

And then, we added some egg:

And flour:

And spread the resultant yummy in a lasagna pan:

And then we chilled it for 24 hours. Then we took some maple syrup and some cream and put it on heat for a little bit:

And then we poured it over the aforementioned yumminess:

And stuck it in the oven for a little bit. And then we taunted the dog:

And then we pulled it and took it to the party, looking like this:

And oh boy. This was goooood. Jacob said that it reminded him of one of his most deeply loved old timey dishes, the Moravian Sugar Cake. Melissa said that it was wonderful. So did everyone at the party.

This was a sugary delighty goodnessy deliciousness. The pastry bits had lifted gently, and the cream and syrup slurry was... is there a word that's stronger than "delightful?" We took this to a party and it was devoured - all "five servings" with such abandon that for a moment we felt some regret at having brought it (because there were some perfectly fine brownies that were being ignored because of it), but um, then we got over it and relished in the mapley ooey gooeyness.

Notes to selves: Um, so easy. If only maple syrup grew on trees...

Time, mis to eat: About 40 minutes (not including the overnight resting time) - maybe 20 minutes of cooking action, and another 20 of hot baking action.

Next Up: Uni gonads? Or not? Wait and see...

Blast from the past: Poutine with foie gras. Do we need to say more?

Mission: Foie Gras Poutine

2008-05-19T15:44:00.000-07:00

First and foremost... we're back! It's been too long, friends. Let's just say that there was a cavalcade of work and homeowner type things that came up over the last week or so that kept us pretty much outta the kitchen. But we called an end to those pitifully unimportant distractions on Friday, and whipped up something nice, new, rich, and foie-licious.

So forgive us our tardiness and come with us on a journey - a journey into a numbing amount of foie gras, a stupendous amount of potatoes, and a fan-diggity-tastic meal. As Technotronic might have said: Meez! Meez it up!

Behold! There's foie! There's heavy cream! There's peanut oil! There's tallow! There's cheese! There's all manner of fat and potatoes too! Oh, we are in for a treat today!

We cut up the potatoes from russets the night before and put them in an ice water bath over night, as so:

The next night, we got to making the foie-based sauce, by putting that wonderful stuff into the blender and setting it to "goo-ify:"

While meanwhile one of our guest sous chefs helped in making the poutine sauce. We made it using a demi-glace base, and it looked pretty good at first:

And then it looked even better when we added the goo-ified foie and put it over loooow heat:

Next we prepared our platter, putting down a layer of delicious fresh cheese:

And then we started on getting the oil heated up for the potato frying. Note that most of what you see here is peanut oil, and those big wobbly bits are... 100% beef suet. From the kidneys, people, the kidneys:

Soon, the suet had rendered (mostly), and it was time to boil those chips in oil:

But only for a par-cook. So we set them aside for a moment:

And got to searing some of the foie we had reserved for putting a-top the poutine once it was ready for such a thing:

And we were actually just about ready at this moment! So after another dunk in the oil, we put the taters on the the cheese:

Which immediately started to melt. More gooey! And so then we immediately set the foie atop the potatoes, and poured the (broken, somehow, booooo!) foie sauce on top of all of that:

And that, as they say, was that.

Now, yes, OK, we broke the sauce. This makes our second broken sauce of the project, and actually our second broken sauce ever. We think we overheated this one. The flavors were still very much there - and since this isn't a dish that's about being refined we aren't too upset. Well, not incredibly upset, anyway.

The taste was out of this world, really. We cannot imagine what it must be like to grow up in a country where poutine is something that is regularly served; and it's even harder to imagine going to a place where foie poutine is the most popular thing on the menu. (Apparently it is the runaway favorite at PDC.) More power to the Quebecois and more power to Picard for this; but how are they not all housebound and/or dead?

Time, mis to eat: About three hours, not including the overnight soak on the potatoes. This was another one of those "it'll be quick and easy" recipes that was certainly not quick. (We would say it was easy but we did after all break the sauce, so...)

Next Up: Copper pot scrub and a player to be named later! We are definitely not doing another foie dish for a while, we can tell you that!!

Blast from the past: We served the poutine with beef hamburgers and it worked really well. We cannot imagine what it might have been like had we served it with this, however.

Mission: Foie Gras Tart

2008-05-06T14:14:00.000-07:00

This week, we're not only doing this recipe in a new kitchen... and we're not only preparing the dish using electric appliances (instead of gas)... we're also preparing it to serve to our mothers (both of 'em!) who came up for an early Mother's Day retreat at a friend's beach house in Gualala, California. Will Jacob and Melissa be undone by the confluence of a strange kitchen and the deep pressure of cooking for, and in sight of, their Moms? Let's find out.

First, there was a mis en place:

Whoops! That's the view from the kitchen! Sorry.

Here's the mis en place:

You'll notice that we have the dough all ready in the bowl there, as well as the balsamic vinegar reduction and makings for PDC mashed potatoes, all of which will be required this week: because basically, we're just assembling some previously done (but freshly made) ingredients this week! Easy right?

Right?

Anyway, first we made the potatoes by getting the curds under way:

And then got into peeling the taters:

Which we then sliced up and pushed through our new toy, the tamis. Here's what they looked like coming out:

And from here, it was just like the PDC Mashed Potatoes were before, with roasted garlic and the curds folded in; until we got this:

Now we made a quick bechamel, as we had before, but with different tools:

And with that done we were ready to get into the dough. This was by far the most difficult part of the recipe, as Jacob forgot once again virtually all of his hard won pastry knowledge of years gone by and made it much harder than it probably needed to be. Still, we eventually did get things rolled out:

And then we did eventually get six rounds out of the dough, all ready to be piled upon. And so we did:

And then everyone went into the oven just so:

We turned our attention now to the salted foie gras that we had so lovingly prepared earlier in the week:

And sliced it up:

Now we did the final assembly. The pastry at the bottom, with some bechamel, cheese, mustard, potatoes and a bit of the reduction; all topped by a few slices of foie:

So, as for the taste... whoa. Rich is the word. The foie, potatoes, and pastry all together were almost unbearably rich; and without the balsamic reduction to cut through the fat (somewhat) we're not sure it would have worked at all. We were too generous with the potatoes - we couldn't help it, we were so proud of them - and this probably weighed down the dish a little bit. While the moms were duly impressed, Jacob was a little disappointed in the pastry. But once again this was surely due to his still-rusty dough skillz and not to the recipe, which was vetted by both Moms on-site. (Note from wife: the pastry was great and Jacob should not be so hard on himself! Flour + Butter = delicious)

Neither of us were able to finish our tart - we so very wanted to, but we just couldn't - but both the Moms did or almost did, all while approving of their dishes loudly and often. We weren't sure if it was because they saw us slaving away over the hot stove and they felt sorry for us or if it really was that delicious. We choose to believe the latter.

Oh! And one more thing... this dish would be an awesome 2-3 bite appetizer, instead of dinner for 6, we'd probably make it as appies for a large dinner party. So. Very. Rich.

Notes to selves: Next time you prepare a new dish in a new kitchen for a critical audience such as your Mothers, consider leaving a little less to chance. We got lucky with this dish!

Notes to selves 2.0: Don't believe everything that you read! When it says something along the lines of "while your tarts cook for 10 minutes, make the potatoes"... it is a LIE. Luckily, we are suspicious by nature and made the potatoes well in advance -- which took us more like an hour, but that's because we, um, sort of undercooked them, which made the AWESOME tamis process a bit of a chore. But it still would have taken more than 10 minutes in a non-professional kitchen!

Time, mis to eat: About five hours all told, including making the salted foie, but we did it in manageable broken up blocks -- and that doesn't include 24 hours for chilling the salted foie or chilling the dough.

Next up: Copper Pot Scrub! (unless we find something more interesting at the Farmer's Market -- we're a little foied out this week)

Blast from the past: More foie gras? Yes please!

Mission: Salted Foie (Out of Scope)

2008-05-05T16:20:00.000-07:00

So, foie gras.

You buy a lobe of it at the butcher and you think to yourself... wow! This is awesome! Maybe expensive, but awesome! I'll just take it home and slice off a piece and stick it on some toast. Since it's so expensive, it must be ready to eat, right?

Well, you could eat it straight, sure. And we've been known to lop off a bit of it for searing and consumption. But it's probably better to salt it, a process that involves deveining the lobes and then reassembling them back into one piece. We did that in preparation for our tarts this week, and thought it'd be fun to walk through it here. So, let's go!

The first thing to do was to stick the lobe into some warm water and let it soak for a while to get it all loosey-goosey:

We let it sit for about an hour. Then we put it on a cutting board and started to devein it by hand, like so:

But that really didn't seem to be working. For one thing, as you can see, the foie kind of disintegrated while we were getting the veins out. And we really weren't confident that the result would be the kind of thing that we could re-form later - it was just kinda clumpy, and we're used to seeing this product as a uniform consistency. So to solve this problem we trotted out our new kitchen gadget, the tamis, like so:

And it came on through the device swimmingly:

And then we ended up with a a pile of it and we threw some salt on the bad boy:

And then we shaped it into a log and rolled it up tightly with cheesecloth, placing it in the fridge.

When we took it out to use it for the Foie Gras Tart, it looked like this:

All and all, a striking success. The consistency was great, and really? Doing it through a tamis made the process much much easier overall. So push it real good through the tamis when you try doing it at home, and you'll get great results.

Mission: Chicken Pie (now, with 20% more foie gras!)

2008-04-29T17:36:00.000-07:00

To go along with the yummy sauce gribiche, this week we made PDC Chicken Pie. We meezed it up good.

Knowing dinner was going to be on a Friday night after a long work week, we made the pie crust ahead of time so it would be all set when it was time to ROLL.

We weighed the flour. (PS - Michael Ruhlman has requested your comments about weighing via his blog . Go forth and comment!)

And we added in some cold butter...

All mixed up nice in the food processor...

And rolled into a log, and put in the fridge for a few hours...

We added the green beans to the carrots, onions, and celeriac (celery root) and chicken (which had been cooked in the same pan and deglazed with some white wine).

Note from wife: Celeriac was a fantabulous food-piphany for me! Not a fan of the texture of proper celery in hot preparations (hot, watery, stringy things... not so much), I've shied away from it, straining it out at the end before serving. But I have always liked the taste. (And I love me some raw celery with cream cheese and paprika. Hello? Who doesn't?!) Needless to say, the introduction to celeriac changed everything! It's got all the taste of celery, none of the watery boringness I was trying to avoid. Good taste and good texture. EVERYONE WINS! (OK, just I win, but still. That counts for something. THANK YOU, CELERIAC!)

After the celery after-party was celebrated inside aforementioned homemade pie dough.

Every pie pan got its share...

Then every pie got its lid... And a rub down with egg yolk!

Mmmm... and they baked up nice and toasty. But wait! There's more!!!!

Per an optional suggestion in The Album (which is basically what they do in the restaurant), we added a mind-blowing foie gras sauce, using the leftover foie gras fat from the foie gras burger, an egg yolk, cream, and some veal demi-glace.

So, the taste? Well, the addition of the sauce was... not a mistake. In fact: Oh.ma.gaw. It went from "mmm, this is a delicious, nice, fresh, homemade chicken pot pie" to "Agurlglurlrugg" (the sound of drooling, with eyes rolled into the back of the head), quickly followed by "AND furthermore (as dinner companion gets fork perilously close to aforementioned foie sauce), if you get your fork any nearer to my luscious foie covered chicken pie, I you make sure that you will seriously regret it. FOREVER. My pie! MY PIE!" Violence was avoided, but daaaaaaamn, was that chicken pie with foie gras sauce good!

Leaving the sauce aside for a moment, this dish did have a nicely familiar feeling to it - and while we were both really pleased with the results of the addition of cerleriac, and happy about the substitution of string beans for the more traditional peas in this kind of dish, it brought us both back, remembering pot pies we've had in the past. Which is all to say that this dish didn't expand our palates in major, significant ways - but it did give us a little more of the depth that we're doing this whole project for.

Note to selves: FOIE GRAS SAUCE ON EVERYTHING! ALWAYS! We're not sure we made the point clearly enough above, but this really made a positive impact on the dish, and we recommend it for anyone considering the option.

Time, mis to eat: About six hours, four of which were spent chilling the pie dough.

Next up: Mother's Day come early this year as we prepare us some Foie Gras Tart (#9)

Blast from the past: First time here? Check out why we're doing this from his and her perspective.

Mission: Deviled Eggribiche (Out of Scope) A Ménage à trois

2008-04-28T06:54:00.000-07:00

As mentioned earlier, we loved the sauce gribiche from PDC's White Asparagus with Sauce Gribiche recipe. We would eat it in a box. We would eat it with a fox. We would eat it here or there. We would eat it anywhere.

Asked to bring appetizers to a Sunday dinner party, we jumped at the chance to play with the Gribiche again. We monkeyed with the recipe a little to make Deviled Eggribiches, a Ménage à trois of recipes from Thomas Keller and Martin Picard, using a technique from Jacques Pepin's Complete Techniques. The results were amazing.

(This photo was taken fresh from the fridge the next day -- we saved a couple for home consumption, so it doesn't look quite as emulsified and delicious as it did the night before. But um, if you ate one for breakfast, you wouldn't be disappointed.)

They were a big hit and we were pleased with the addition of ideas from Keller (like dijon mustard and shallots) to Picard's original sauce and the super cute technique of Jacques to cut a little off the ends and bisect the egg across the equator to make little cups that stand on their own (instead of the normal oval half sections).

We used the ends and dead soldier egg whites (the ones where the yolk was in a funny place so it wouldn't work well as a cup) to mix in to the gribiche and we put it all through the blender/spice grinder for a smoother consistency. We noted that the fresher eggs we used (we mixed two cartons - one was a few weeks old and one was recently purchased) had much better yolk placement, and far less chance of the egg being oddly shaped by what appeared to be an air pocket (maybe they didn't have time for evaporation?) but were also a little harder to peel.

The trio worked well together and we now have a great new recipe for future egg appropriate events! Woo hoo!

Mission: White Asparagus with Gribiche Sauce

2008-04-26T12:10:00.000-07:00

This week we have a dual mission: a simple white asparagus salad with something called gribiche sauce, and chicken pie. Let's get into the sparrygas mis en place, shall we?

Both of us were intrigued by white asparagus. Jacob has dim memories of consuming some, from a can, at a family friend's place in the hinterlands of Virginia years and years and years ago. Melissa has similarly dim memories of eating white asparagus, also from a can, in Spain. Neither of us really remember what we thought of it, Jacob being about 10 when he had it and Melissa being in college.

But as it would happen, this dish is mostly about the "sauce," which is built on hard boiled eggs. The first step in making it involves taking the yolks and muddling them up with some vinegar, just so:

And after doing that, we whisked in some oil to make a basic emulsification:

And then we added the egg whites, which we had rough chopped, along with some other aromatics...

And then we put it in the fridge while we blanched the asparagus (which really? boring. we didn't take any pictures of that) and made a very simple vinaigrette and put it on some mesclun, and assembled as follows:

And we served it with the chicken pie.

And the "sauce gribiche" final verdict -- it rocked. It rocked hard. It rocked harder than Bret Michaels rocks cleavage baring pole dancers. (Which is pretty hard, if you um, watch that sort of thing. Which we totally would never admit to doing. But we digress.) We could eat an entire bowl of it straight! We could stuff it into hard boiled eggs like a super-flavorful deviled egg stuffing! We could smear it on toast! We could... you get the idea. While we did make several jokes regarding the non-saucy nature of the sauce the taste and texture of it was... uh... no joke. We did some looking to see what other takes of gribiche were like, and they all were much more saucy and refined sounding.

As you have seen from how clean we work in the kitchen, and how well we wipe our plates for service, we're not really all that refined. We like it rough. And we'll eat it that way too.

We'll be seeing you later, sweet sweet gribiche sauce. We are officially your gri-b*tch, and liking it.

As for the white asparagus... meh. Not much flavor brought to the party by this ingredient. "It tastes like a water tube," one diner said, and the consensus was that though it was stated with the eloquence and vocabulary of a first grader, this was an essentially accurate description. In the end, we all pushed it aside in favor of devouring the gribiche. Let us not blame the asparagus, however. It didn't really get a proper smooth, refined sauce to mix n' meld with and it had to stand all by its lonesome next to a really awesome sauce that could be eaten by the spoonful. Poor asparagus. Maybe next time...

Note to selves: Muddlers can be used like mortars! At the last moment we realized we needed to mortar and pestle the yolks, and in one of her trademark ninja kitchen moves, Melissa came up with using a muddler we won at a mixology class. Gooooo Team!

Time, mis to eat: About an hour, a great deal of which was hard boiling the eggs.

Next up: PDC Chicken Pie (#8)

Blast from the past: It must be stock week! Carol B. made some really good looking veal stock and we made a few gallons of yummy chicken stock ourselves. (Sorry, no pictures, we have to keep some things a mystery!) So in light of that let's take a look at some work we did in that sandbox not too long ago.

Mission: Foie Gras Hamburger

2008-04-23T20:59:00.000-07:00

This week we're going back a little bit to a slightly simpler recipe that - at least on the face of it - is little more than just assembly. Let's get our mis en place on, eh?

Our burger fixin's consist of tomato confit, sauteed mushrooms, cheddar (we used 3-year Quebec cheddar), balsamic meat glaze, mesclun salad mix, and a pickle.

Tomato Confit, you say? Does that just fall out of the sky, you ask? Have you read nothing from our previous entries? It's a thing to make, friends! The recipe was not provided by The Album, so we poked around, meshed a few recipes together and finally decided on olive oil, tomato, garlic, salt and a bit of sugar.

And roasted it up nice.

Now on to the balsamic Meat Glaze... which also did not fall out of the sky, and which made our kitchen smell really nice while reducing... and reducing... and reducing...

Mix it up...

More reducto!

It was thick enough to coat a spoon and smelled AMAZING. And gave us another opportunity to deploy the venison stock!

Next up, Senor Foie!

The foie: before

The foie: getting its sear on

Here we've piled on some of the assembly - that's the tomato confit, balsamic glaze (oh, we'll see you again later, balsamic glaze), and mushrooms on there...

And now, the final burger...

The foie burger was SUPERMUYDELICIOUS. Luckily, we split it, as it would have been almost too much of a good thing. Almost. The confit and glaze played really well together and made the fat almost seem light. (Yes, we said it made foie seem light. Maybe we just had a foie high, but that's kind of what it seemed like at the time.) We didn't really notice the salady mix or the mushies one way or the other, but we Trust In Chef Picard (TICP) and licked up every bite. It goes without saying (except that, well, we're saying it) that we would totally make this again!

Note to selves: To stay on schedule, be sure to post blog entries before undergoing major knee surgery!

Time, mis to eat: About two hours, 1.5 of those being dedicated to the balsamic sauce and the tomato confit. TOTALLY worth it! The rest was just assembly.

Next week: White Asparagus Salad (#7) and Chicken Pie (#8)

Blast from the past: Remember the La Coupe? So do we!

Mission: Pigs Feet

2008-04-15T16:20:00.000-07:00

As of this week we're putting the low-hanging fruit on hiatus for the week and going for one of the namesake recipes of he Album... along with, as you may have seen, some decadently mashed potatoes. Wish us luck.

Let's get ready to meeeeeeeeeezz!

Those are four, count'em, four pig's trotters and shanks, all from the front of the beast. We had the trotters and shanks cracked at the butcher, and stuck them all into our stock pot along with an undetermined quantity of pork stock.

Meanwhile, we whipped up a nice emulsion that will become part of the sauce a little later. Whisk it real good!

And then we stuck it in the fridge (to keep it away from the dog, mostly). After some simmer time, we pulled the pig parts to find these:

And it was at this point that Melissa started the important work of separating the meat from the bone of the shanks (easy!) and the meat and other bits from the trotters (not so much meat!). Sadly, Jacob was out running some errands while this was happening, so no pictures are available of this particular task; and perhaps that's for the better. Let's just say knuckles are not so photogenic. Maybe next time...

Anyway, at this point we took some of the stock that we had been simmering the shanks and trotters in, and started it on a reduction:

And while this was happening we took the trotter meat and bits (with a little shank meat added for good measure), stuck it in the food processor (knowing our "chopping" skills are not quite on par with a professional cook), and then put it in a bread pan, just like Rice Krispy Treats. PorKrispy Treats.

And then we chilled it for a little while. Now it was time to reassemble the shanks using caul fat, a process that Jacob had been gleefully looking forward to for some time. We got a pound of it at our favorite backup butcher, and soaked it in cold water for about 30 minutes or so:

And then we drained it, and put together our shank and fat station:

And then Jacob played with the caul fat for a moment:

And then he got to work. It was actually very easily done, and soon all four shanks were wrapped up in the stuff:

And it was time to move on to the sauce. And what a sauce! Like so many other things, this was based in tomatoes, onions, and stock; but this was all placed on top of the four shanks in our big copper pan:

And into the oven it all went. Now we worked on the potatoes for a while, and then we came back to our PorKrispy treats. We cut them into eight pieces (the original recipe called for four, but we thought that more would be better):

And then we got them ready for battering:

While Jacob was doing this bit, Melissa pulled the pan from the oven and set the shanks aside:

And reduced the sauce for a while (we should be used to this by now!) and eventually whisked in that yummy emulsion we made some time ago:

(Yes, our range is filthy at this point... we'll work on working clean in a coming post... maybe.)

The little PorKrispy Treats are now ready for the hot oil:

And so they go in. Now things start to happen very quickly as they turn golden brown in something like 60 seconds:

During this time we lay a base of mashed potatoes on the plates, and pull the shanks from the oven (they've been keeping warm there), and place them on the starch. Then we ladle some sauce over the whole thing, and put the piping hot little PorKrispies on top, and put a dollop of mustard on each one, and we come up with this:

The plating makes it clear how pressed for time we were at the end, but then it's not a bad thing when everything is ready at exactly the same time, right? The better to eat you with, my dear!

The PorKrispies were the consensus winner of this dish. They had the advantage of being deep fried - which can do no wrong, after all - but more than that, they had a surprising and somewhat delicate taste that was quite unique from the rest of the dish. They reminded Jacob of scrapple, which was strange since he's never had that, or at least thinks he's never had it. (Though the PorKrispies were probably of higher quality than the "bar mat of meat" which some members of this family believe scrapple to be.)

The potatoes were wonderful, as mentioned in our another post, and made a great foil for the excess of sauce that we piled on the dish.

There was some debate about the shanks. The caul fat did not render as we thought it would. This didn't bother some eaters, but it did bother some others. (Note from a not liker: It was sort of like pudding skin. Not offensive, just not a texture that improves upon anything. I want my fat crispy and rendered! So, this made the shank a little less popular than the PorKrispy.) The shank meat was, however, fall-off-the-bone tender, juicy, and perfectly cooked. In the end the consensus was that, if anything, it suffered only from comparison to the PorKrispies and the potatoes; and as time has passed our collective memory of the entire dish has improved significantly. (And one of us not-caul-likers might have even poked around the fridge for leftovers, before remembering that our lovely guests were actually given a Happy Meal of leftovers to take home. Darn us for being so nice!)

Note to selves: After a lot of discussion we decided (though we know close to nothing about caul fat, having never tried it to our knowledge and certainly never cooked with it, but decided nonetheless) that the caul fat didn't render for two reasons - first, that it wasn't at room temperature when we wrapped the shanks, and second, because we placed it under the sauce components when we put it in the oven, not really allowing the heat to penetrate through the layers and layers of tomatoes and onions as much as it should have. Next time we will be mindful of the rendering dynamics!

Time, mis to eat: About eight hours, four of those being the pig's feet boiling and cooling to the touch. And we also did take about a two hour break in between to clean the attic while everything was at a good stopping point. (Though, we should have brought things up to room temp before carrying on! That will teach us to have a glass of wine and get distracted by shiny objects!) So, maybe from start to finish... about 6 hours, only 2 being active.

Cost of the components of the dish: We give up! Tracking money spent on this project has become depressing and well, not really worth it because we're going to keep on cooking stuff, even if it's spendy. So from here forward we are canceling this section of the post. Adieu section of this post!

Next week: PDC Foie Burger (#6)

Blast from the past (or visit from the future, really): PDC Mashed Potato

Mission: PDC Mashed Potatoes

2008-04-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

Mashed potatoes.

Who doesn't love them?

Who hasn't made a volcano from them, or watched one be made?

Who hasn't cooed and clucked while Nana folds in a stick of butter and a little bit of cream to make her traditional mashed potatoes?

Who hasn't had Such-And-So's great garlic mashed potatoes at the potluck?

OK, we're potato homers around here, it's true. We love'em. We'd eat'em every day if we could. One of us has been known to eat entire bags of potato chips as a light appetizer. And to load up his plate with so much potato as to preclude all other elements (save the protein and lots of gravy). Baked, fried, mashed, who cares - let's eat'em. They're the best.

But why are mashed potatoes so good and so popular? We think it's because they are essentially a blank canvas. You can taste that butter and cream that Nana folds in there. You can taste the garlic that Such-and-So has dumped into them. They reward quality ingredients and - usually - are forgiving of mediocre ones. They make you feel like a successful cook with a minimum of skill or effort. (Plus you get to mash stuff up and make volcanoes, which doesn't hurt.)

So with all of that said, let's see what a truly gifted chef - Martin Picard - did to make some really, really yummy mashed potatoes.

Meez it up!

But wait! Where are the potatoes, you ask. They're already getting ready, friends:

Probably the most interesting ingredient in this dish - at least from a sourcing perspective - were the cheese curds. Melissa called several cheese outlets - 10 at least - and got some pretty curt answers - before finding these:

Oh, and in case you're wondering... they taste like cheese. So we shredded them, thusly:

And then we riced up the potatoes:

And then put them back into a saucepan, and added some roasted garlic and some cream, and stirred:

And then we added in those curds and a bunch o' Amish butter. And stirred some more until it got nice and creamy good:

And then we plated it just so:

And eventually we piled the PDC Pigs Feet on top of it. And they were goooood. With the pigs feet and without! (Not that we would take a swipe of them with our finger while plating or anything, but if we had, boy-oh-boy were they good! Hypothetically.)

Note to selves: We did diverge from the recipe in one big way: we did not strain the potatoes through a fine mesh sieve (tamis), as directed. Of all the kitchen gear we have, we don't have one of those. And we looked, but had trouble finding one locally. So we carried on with our lumps. This means that ours were not as smooth as what you get at PDC - there was a bit of lumpiness to them that detracted from them not one bit.

But, that being said, PDC Mashers are components in a bunch of the dishes and next time, we'd like do it with a tamis, just for kicks! (Maybe there is a magical tamis secret that we aren't privy to just yet!) Anyone know where we can get a good tamis?

Time, mis to eat: About 45 minutes or an hour. Nothing really complicated or time consuming-- just boiling and mixing!

Next week: PDC Foie Burger (#6)

Blast from the past: PDC Pig's Feet

Mission: La Coupe PDC

2008-04-07T16:28:00.000-07:00

So by now you may have read about some of our exploits sourcing one of the key elements of this week's effort, but to put it in perspective: between the legwork and the actual preparation of the stock, there was about 20 hours of prep making that single ingredient. Add to that, if you want, the time spent making the pork stock (we're also that using this week) and obtaining the custom cut pork loins and... it all adds up to a fair amount of time.

Good thing it's worth every minute.

Let's get straight into the mis en place:

That's some good looking pig, ain't it? While it's coming all the way up to room temperature, we'll dive right into a simple Béchamel sauce, which will eventually become the base of a mustard sauce for the kraut:

The butter was melted and flour added to our petit saucier - which really has been a life saver in this project thus far after a long period of not getting much use in our kitchen. (The Album is sauce-a-riffic, just how we like it!) Then we added the milk and nutmeg, and it looked like this:

Once it was all done, we got our mis en place together for step 2 of the mustard sauerkraut sauce. (Notice the two mustard combo: the lower mustard is one of Jacob and Melissa's old time favorites... Plochman's. And that's the freshly made Béchamel to be added to the mustard sauce. Be forewarned that the recipe makes A LOT of Béchamel. We halved the recipe, and still had a good cup or so leftover. So being the resourceful folks that we are, the leftovers went into the mashed potatoes, along with the leftover garlic cream from last week. Mmm... leftover creamy creamy goodness potatoes. Oh, and our venison stock is finally getting in on the action too!)

What's going on with the pork, you ask? At this point, it's come up to room temperature, so it's time to give it a nice sear in some... what else... duck fat:

The pork might look normal sized in the pictures, but that's only because it is in a gargantuan sized pan. This pork was HUGE. Huge, like, if pigs were dinosaurs. Or something. But know it was really, really, big. We digress. And then we flip and sear the other side:

And then into the oven the whole thing goes. After a little bit of time in there, we check the temperature, and once it's where we want it to be (which is not the 73 degrees the thermometer is showing), we set the meat aside and go to work with what fat is left in the pan. (Of which there is a lot!)

This is a structured dish, or it will be: the pork will be placed on a bed of mustard sauerkraut, and atop the pork we'll have a mound of delicious mushrooms and onions. While the pork was in the oven, Jacob went to work slicing mushrooms... and while he'd like to report that he used the mandolin this time as well, he gave up on that and worked with his santuko instead - it went quickly and easily that way, and without having to worry about losing fingertips:

And once that was all done, they went into copper pan with onions and of course all that rendered fat that we left in there from the sear/bake of the chops themselves. We probably should have drained some fat off, but hey, we like to go big (not home!) so we left it all in.

At the same time, we're saute-ing the drained sauerkraut in a little bit of butter, and keeping the mustard-Béchamel sauce on low heat.

Now we wait for the mushrooms and onions to reduce, and then reduce some more in some wine, then some more with pork stock. During this time we combine the mustard-Béchamel and the kraut and keep it on real low heat during the continuing reduction. Did we mention there was some reduction happening? Lots and lots of it. Well, after things have reduced by half, and then by half again, it's finally time to construct our plate, just so:

And oh my, oh my, this was time well spent.

The recipe called for 4 bone-in loins, but we only served two and there was plenty of food for all involved.

The meat was perfectly cooked, tender, and juicy; a very fine representation of the pig in his grandeur. The mustard-sauerkraut had both bite and depth - amazing what Béchamel can do for a simple food (especially one so close to Jacob's Pennsylvanian heart). The onion-mushroom mix was superb as well, and brought a whole different league of sweetness that complimented the sour very well. The pork met rave reviews from the guests (and not just because of its ginormous size), and we would totally make it again, especially the mustard-kraut!

Note to selves: Ask the price when you call the butcher for a special order! While we were totally in love with the pork we bought and thought it was worth every dime, it was well more than we figured it would be. (We're still learning!)

Time, mis to eat: About three hours, not counting the stock preparation.

Cost of the components of the dish: $68 - again, the meat accounted for most of the cost (we used fan-dancy meat, and not a small amount of it). Totally worth it, and it probably could have fed more people, but hey, we were celebrating the pig, man.

Next Week: Pig's Feet (#4) and PDC Mashed Potatoes (#5). Two recipes in one week!

Blast from the past: Wondering what we are doing and why? Read about it from his and her perspectives.

Mission: Venison Stock

2008-04-07T16:20:00.000-07:00

One of the (many!) ingredients called for in this week's recipe was venison stock.

Venison stock!?! Yes, indeed: as will become clear, game is a big part of the menu at PDC; especially venison. Jacob has always liked this protein and was excited to make the stock - though in fairness, he's always excited to make stock - but we both were a little daunted by the prospect of making a few gallons of stock from bones that we had never, ever seen or heard of being available locally. Or not locally, for that matter.

So we started looking for the bones early in the week. Calls were made to our favorite butcher and to our best backup butcher and after several assurances, and a few days, we ended up with a double batch of frozen bones - about 15 lbs or so total - from which we ended up with about 2.5 gallons of stock. We improvised this recipe and it turned out well. Here's how we did it.

Melissa suggested that we roast the bones first, and so we placed them out as seen below and put them in the oven for a bit:

And then we pulled them, and they looked like this:

Roasty! So now we dunked the bones in cold water - always start your stock with cold water, kids! - along with some mire poix and aromatics:

And then we allowed all of this to simmer... and simmer... and simmer... for about 16 hours or so. And while the result was not as dark and obviously luscious as the pork stock we made the other week, it did have a good amount of flavor to it, and it did look good:

So after this strain, and then another, we placed the stock in our 1L vessels, and put it all down in the fridge. Of course, we made sure to label the stock clearly:

And that was that! Once again the house was filled with the smell of yummy stock, and Jacob was able to sleep soundly.

Note to selves: Call ahead! It was touch and go with getting the venison bones, and while we ended up with plenty - more than we needed - for a moment, we thought that we wouldn't get any. Sourcing will not get easier as time goes on - so making the calls early and often is the key.

As for the overabundance of bones we now have... we decided to keep them all, because we think (hope) we'll need to make more stock, and because we think it's more important to keep our commitments with the butchers on these items now... so that when we ask for other, stranger stuff later, we can get it.

Time, from mis to eat: 16 hours or so.

Cost of the components of the dish: $15 - about 4-5 lbs of bones at about $3.00 per pound, plus mire poix and aromatics.

What's next: La Coupe PDC (#3)

Blast from the past: Can get enough stock? Check out the Pork Stock we made a couple weeks ago.

Mission: Lamb Shank Confit in Duck Fat

2008-03-30T23:50:00.000-07:00

We are still working through the "low hanging fruit" category of the book - things that are easy to source, with tastes we are familiar with, and techniques we've used before, sort of. So this week, we made Lamb Shank Confit in Duck Fat. It's lamb cooked sous vide in duck fat. How delicious does that sound? Super delicious.

Sure, neither of us had done a confit before. Sure, we don't have a "proper" immersion circulator. But hey, we can get around that stuff easy, right? Right? So here's our mis en place to get things started -- right before the lamb shanks went into the brine.

We got started by vacuum sealing the protein, fat, and aromatics. Note that while this is not a recommended use for Foodsaver bags, we didn't have any problems. So we'll do it again. And again! And again! Bwwaaah ha ha!

Here, we have the garlic creme sauce simmering away in our saucier. This is sauce one of three for this dish.

Now we sliced up some tomatoes and let them marinate for topping two of three.

Several hours after getting dunked we retrieved the lamb-bags and separated the juices from the meat. We put the meat in the fridge and by now things are starting to smell gooooood.

Then we strained the juices... which we then stuck in the freezer for a half hour or so to separate the duck/lamb fat from the jelly.

Then we spooned the fat from the top of the juice and are left with this: "lamb jelly." This will be a part of sauce number three of three.

Speaking of sauce... remember that garlic sauce? We've blended it now and are putting it through that heroic kitchen tool, the chinois. It smelled so delicious, it was all we could do to keep ourselves from sipping on it. Mmmm... garlic cream.

Now we took the lamb jelly, added to some tomato sauce and homemade lamb stock (thanks for the lamb neck, Avedano's! you guys rock!), and set to reduce for a little bit. Look at that color!

Moments later, mushrooms get thinly sliced through the mandolin (good results, but somewhat nerve racking for Jacob and his fingers).

Shanks (split by the butcher for better access to the marrow) and sauce three of three in Big Copper and into the oven for a slight warmup.

Here the action really started to rev up. We had put some lentils on heat, and when they were done, we drained them and put them atop the sliced onions and the mushrooms to heat things through. Then it got a vinaigrette tossed in.

Then we started the hot plating action. First, lentil salad!

Then lamby, sauce one (tomato), two (garlic cream), and finally sauce three (marinated tomato), for the final product:

Well, wow. MMMMMMMMM.

This turned out awesome. The just-softened mushrooms and onions played well with the lentils. The fresh diced tomato sauce worked well with the warmth of the rest of the dish. The vinaigrette cut the richness of the garlic cream, and most of all, the lamb was fall-off-the-bone tender. Our guests were thrilled and so were we! We thought it would be a heavier dish but we were pleasantly surprised - it wasn't so heavy after all - and the sauces were all really quite wonderful. Well worth the effort! Jacob was especially happy with the garlic sauce, though he didn't want to pick a favorite.

Note to selves: Read carefully! We very nearly missed that we were to chill the lamb juice (which allowed us to separate the fat from the jelly). This would have resulted in some very greasy sauce! Luckily we noticed the seemingly throwaway phrase ("set aside juice to cool") just in time. Schwoo!

Time, mis to eat: About 24 hours, as there was some brining that we had to do the night before. Not counting that, about eight hours - six of those being the lamb sous viding.

Cost of the components of the dish: $56 (excluding things we already had in the pantry). The majority of that was spent on the lamb shanks - we went with fancy free range goodness. Oh, and goodness it was!

What's next: La Coupe PDC (pork loin with sauerkraut!)

Blast from the past: Check out our new feature, "Out of Scope," where we took the dive into beef marrow.

Mission: Marrow (Out of Scope)

2008-03-30T23:17:00.000-07:00

We've heard that bone marrow is God's gift to the serious eater.

We've heard that bone marrow is one of those things that people who like don't talk about... so that there's more marrow for them to eat. (We've also heard this about morels. And macaroni and cheese. But we digress.)

We've heard that bone marrow is, maybe, the apex of richness and decadence.

So when we saw some marrow bones at our friendly butcher, though not an official recipe of The Good Book, we thought we'd give it a try. They were cheap and good looking - a good combination - so we picked them up without much of an idea how to prepare them, much less consume them. But what the hell! Might as well! So we did.

We did a fair amount of research in an effort to find the best way to prepare our four little troopers. Keller was consulted. eGullet was consulted. Fergus Henderson was consulted. Various other Printed Authorities were consulted. And in the end we decided that a simple roast in the 400 degree range would do the trick. So we stuck those suckers in there and hoped for the best.

Some minutes later we plated our four amigos, garnished with some chopped parsley and lemon juice and served with some home-made rosemary herbs de Provence salt:

Then we passed the plate around, removed the marrow from the bone, spread it on some crusty bread, and there it was.

And it was... rich. Like foie gras, but more so. It was pleasing, absolutely, and really very good, but none of us were sure that we could have more than the portion that was available to us (which we believe would be considered a half serving, traditionally). Undoubtedly this is a great food, one that really isn't like anything else, sort of like meat butter. And rich... so rich, as to be nearly overwhelming, such that we were at marrow-pacity when we finished eating it.

After our main meal (lamb confit - which could be termed rich as well!) was done, and our guests had retired, we discussed the dish further and agreed that we weren't sure we'd go out of our way to try it again in the future. As the meat buzz wears off, we then reassessed our position and would like to try it professionally prepared some day. Certainly as the first offal we've prepared for direct consumption it was quite an experience, and one that we were pleased to share with friends.

(Jacob felt some strange hesitation in eating this dish, having lost his father to leukemia about a year ago. But in the end, he ate and did so heartily, sopping up left over juice from his plate with a piece of crusty bread. He went forward because he was quite sure that his father would have appreciated the irony, and even more sure that his father would have snatched the marrow from his plate had he shown any hesitation in eating it whatsoever. Once again food reigns supreme at our house. Gene would be proud.)

Mission: Onion Soup

2008-03-27T06:12:00.000-07:00

We came home at the same time last night, and after a quick jaunt to a new-to-us local butcher (more about them soon, I'm sure) we dove right into our first proper mission: PDC Onion Soup.

First and formost: BEHOLD! The power of mis! Here's our ingredient depot, with everything ready for abuse. The brown stuff in the pitcher is the pork stock from a few nights ago: note the wonderfully gelatinous texture it has taken on.

So with all of these things ready and in hand, it's time to start the manly (or womanly) work of chopping up some funyons, thin style:

Even with how good this looks, Jacob was crying by about the halfway point. Luckily our friend Mr. Coppola has a special elixir to deal with such things, so everything turned out fine and ended up in the dutch oven. Low and slow for a couple of hours (really, this part took a little longer than we thought it would - thank goodness for pita and hummus to get us through) and we ended up with this:

At this point the onions are delightfully sweet and delicious and, we decided, at the right color. So it was time to add in some more components, which brought some protein, some fat, and some aromatic goodness to the party:

And after a little more time on heat it was time to add in the stock. This was the fun part for both of us, where we got to have an idea of what our soup was going to look like. And like most french onion soups... it doesn't really photo well. But the smell coming up from the pot? Amazing. Pleasing. Super-moo-rific.

Some more time on heat for everyone to co-mingle and for us to get settled in for our weekly Top Chef ritual (we're from the Drink Wine and Watch Church of Top Chef, Reformed). And then, after everyone put their utensils down and hands up in the quickfire, it was time to do the finishing work: putting the croûtons on top and cheese on top of it, and then putting the whole thing under the fire. Here it is before:

And after:

SUPER DELICIOUS.

As for the success of the dish, we liked it very much. It was different from what we're used to - the broth was definitely improved tremendously by the use of the stock we made. The onions ended up being quite good and the addition of the lardons to the recipe added some interest that we both remarked positively upon. (Though next time, we'll probably cut them a little smaller and remember to remove the skin! Ooops... user error.) Using croûtons instead of slices of bread was a great addition. It made them bite sized and super manageable in the broth - especially for any family members with braces. We loved the cheese - it was subtle, coming through just enough, and really added to the rest of the flavors. We ended up adding a bunch of salt at the end of the process, as advised in the recipe, and found it a welcome boost to what was there.

Some thoughts on the process: other than the length of time it took us to caramelize the onions - an technique that neither of us have really done successfully, until now - we were really pleased with the process aspects of this recipe. It was straightforward and demanded the level of expertise (a little, but not too much) that we thought it would. The next time we make the dish, we will be slightly more heat aggressive with the onions or start the process before, oh, 7:30 on a weeknight when we are both hangry for some yummy soup. (Jacob will probably opt to slice the onions with the cuisinart, or a mandolin, next time as well.)

All told, a successful dish. Perhaps the best part of all was that we both had little balls of warmth and happiness in our bellies for about an hour or so after finishing the meal. Mmm... onion soup.

Note to selves: no more starting long recipes on weeknights!

Time, from mis to eat: 3 hours

Cost of the components of the dish: $24 (excluding things we already had in the pantry), but um, at least half of that was cheese. We subbed a Tomme au Savoie for the Emmenthal cheese ... and would do it again in a heartbeat! "Go big or go home!" is a motto of our household, so we WENT BIG (on the cheese)! Melty and delicious.

What's next: Lamb Shank Confit (#2)

Blast from the past: Check out the super-delicious pork stock we made for this dish.

The Prologue: Pork Stock

2008-03-26T11:14:00.000-07:00

Upon initial review of PDC: The Album, we realized we may face some sources challenges. (Good thing we like a challenge!)

There's the "Can we find it?" kind of challenge. And the "I'm ready to start cooking! Oh, crap! I don't have any [insert ingredient we thought we might have but actually have to make it in advance instead] on hand" kind of challenge.

We have high hopes for beating the "Finding it" challenge, given that we live in a food-loving city with lots of resources. It may not be easy, but we can do it! There are some game dishes that we're already actively searching for sourcing for now. (Anyone know where we can get venison tongue in the Bay Area? Anyone?)

"Having it" is something different altogether. In reading the recipes, most involve some multicomponent item that needs to be prepped the day before or longer. (Another challenge that can be remedied by planning! Good thing we love lists! Woo hoo for planning!) One of these items is pork stock, and lots of it. It is listed in a good half the recipes (without a recipe for the stock itself), so by golly, we intend to be come experts on pork stock making!

Having never made pork stock before (we are mere chicken stock makers, but still firm believers in the power of homemade stock), we looked around for some guidance with the big G (a search engine that rhymes with zoogle) and found a promising recipe on Serious Eats. (They even mention the very soup we are about to make!) Coincidence? You decide.

So, we dove on in and made some pork stock to get this party started!

Pork Stock adapted from the Zuni Café Cookbook, adapted from Serious Eats.

Ingredients:

pigs feet
pork shoulder
water
garlic
onion
carrots
bay leaves
peppercorns
and of course, some white wine.

Here's what it all looked like before we began to fire it up:

Instructions (or at least how we did it)

Rinse the bones, then brown them with onion and garlic in a roasting pan for an hour or two while you talk with your potential future architect and trick her into believing you actually know something about cooking with delicious smells wafting from the kitchen. (Mu-ha-ha-ha!)

They come out looking like this. Mmmmm...

Move bones to giant stock pot, add more onions and garlic, carrots and spices, cover with cold water. Meanwhile, add some leftover white wine to deglaze the roasting pan. (Leftover wine? Yes. It's true. It was an accident, we promise it will never happen again.) Add the roasting pan bits to the stock pot.

Simmer (don't boil) the stock, and then go grab a beer and relax. Check in on the stock periodically and stir and skim as necessary. Get a solid 8 hours of sleep while the stock simmers and eventually the meat looks like this:

Then pull the big chunks out with your handy dandy pasta insert. (As you can see, it still has a bit of fat on it - we'll deal with that after it cools)

Then give it a good go with a chinois or some other fine mesh sieve.

Allow to cool and refrigerate and salivate at the idea of finally making the first recipe from this book!!!

Note to selves: Homemade stock ROCKS! We should remember to use it more often.

Time, from mis to eat: 14 hours

Cost of the components of the dish: $8 (excluding things we already had in the pantry)

What's next: Onion Soup (#1)

Blast from the past: Read about us and what the eff we're doing with this project from his and her perspective.

About Us: His Take

2008-03-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

She's right. We do love pork. And it goes back a long way for both of us. Ham steak was a staple when I was a little kid - one of the few things I would eat willingly, I guess. After that, sausage - I had the real privilege of growing up a block a way from a real live 2nd generation Italian butcher who made some of the greatest sweet and spicy sausages, real monsters at over a foot long per and thick as you want them.

The first dish I ever learned to make involved those sausages - and while fettuccine in butter sauce and grilled sausages isn't the most sophisticated dish ever, it was enough for a 10 year old to realize that he liked to cook. (And hey, it was good, I'd have a plate of that over a lot of other things I've eaten.) Later, I started eating another delicacy from this butcher: stuffed pork chops. These were big, thick chops with some really good stuffing stuck in there, the kind made from scratch with raw eggs and bread and yummy seasonings. It was a trick to cook these right - to get the stuffing warmed through and not end up with bone dry meat - but very much worth it.

It was around this time that I realized that a little pink in the pork* actually made it taste better, juicier, more... porky. And that's when the doors really started to open and I started an eating adventure that eventually led here.

I love this food. I really do. I hope that we're able to convey some of that joy as we work through these recipes. I hope that some readers (provided we get more than one) think that maybe they'll try something we've tried here. I definitely hope that some others decide to spring for the cookbook we're working from (it's worth every loony). But really, truly? I just want to make this food and eat it. I want to figure out the sourcing, the processes, and the little things that make this food so goooood. Sure, we're sharing it with you online, and we're sharing it with whatever friends come to help us eat it, but really there's nothing noble going on here: we just want to make it and eat it.

Now let's get started, shall we?

*Mandatory CYA: Fully 12 cases of trichinosis were reported last year in the US alone - and while these were mostly from bear meat, there was probably one of these that came from eating pork! Specifically, pork from a pig that was raised eating raw garbage. So if you think, or suspect, or imagine, that your pork provider is feeding his livestock raw garbage, then by all means cook that pork till white and dry. (Or consider paying a little more for better quality meat that wasn't raised eating garbage.)

About us: Her Take

2008-03-25T10:08:00.000-07:00

We like pork. And we like it with a vengeance. Our collective pork pedigree includes curing our own bacon (Canadian and American! We are so multicultural), making pork sausage and air curing chorizo. (Thanks, Michael Ruhlman!) We've had a membership to the Bacon of the Month Club and own uni-taskers for pork related production like this and this. We've shared our pork love with friends with pork themed parties, like "Pink or Pork" (with prizes donated by the National Pork Board) and the annual JTR Ranch Pig Roast.

All of our pork adventures have been awesome learning experiences. Some recipes had great success, some not-so-much. (Not recommended: Guinness & dark chocolate bacon, so many great tastes, not so great together.) But let's face it, Everyone Loves Bacon. It's time to take our pig love to the next level. The Pied.

We first learned about Au Pied de Cochon from our tiny, Singaporean friend (that can out-drink us all and devoured all the pig skin at The Pig Roast) who raved about deep fried things stuffed with foie gras and pork and duck fat and everything good in the world. Luckily, a few years later, our friends got married in Montreal (Thanks, Kris and Lisa!), so we were able to try the deliciousness. It lived up to it's fabled awesomeness and then some. So, when we found out about the cookbook in English, we decided to eff the crappy exchange rate and get one for ourselves. (Plus, it looks like we won't be going back to Canada any time soon, so we may as well bring Montreal to San Francisco!)

Where to start? What to cook? As founding members of TEAM Excess and longtime readers of the cookbook-at-home stylin's of Carol and her French Laundry Rock Starness, naturally, we decided to do it all. Because it's fun. And we'll get to get our learn on. And it's a great excuse to share good food with good friends. And c'mon, there's pork and foie gras involved. What other reason do you need? None, thankyouverymuch.

Come, let's celebrate the pig!

-M