Raccoon and Lobster

I was informed too late that today is National Chocolate Cake Day, a day that I am sorely unprepared for. This cake, tucked at the back of Bouchon, is one that I had been eyeing as a project to tide me over until the arrival of my cake book. It has absolutely no chocolate in it. Damn. Just a few hours after I had purchased the ingredients for the cake and the strawberry coulis to go with it, I was informed that the intended recipient of my cake is allergic to strawberries, or as he calls them, murderberries. It also pairs pretty well with meyer lemon curd, in case you were wondering.

Strawberry Coulis

12 oz hulled strawberries
1/4 cup water
5 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a blender and puree until smooth. Strain with a fine mesh strainer to remove seeds and cover and refrigerate until cold.

Gâteaux aux Amandes adapted from Thomas Keller’s Bouchon

7 oz almond paste
1/4 cup granulated sugar
4 oz unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
2 tablespoons honey
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon almond extract (or 2 tablespoons amaretto)
1/3 cup (I used 1.5 oz) all purpose flour, sifted
pinch of salt
1/2 cup sliced almonds, toasted
confectioner’s sugar
sugar syrup (1 oz sugar and 1 oz water, heated to a boil in a small pan) or amaretto

3/4 cup  crème fraîche, whipped to soft peaks

The original recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of amaretto in the batter and more to brush on top of the cake. Here, it has been replaced with almond extract and sugar syrup, respectively.

Edit: I have since obtained amaretto and baked a cake using it as the original recipe intended, and it was even better, so it is totally  worth your time to pick some up.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter and flour an 8 inch pan and line the bottom with a circle of parchment paper. I only have a 9 inch pan so my cake is a bit thinner than intended

Beat the almond paste and sugar in a large bowl on low speed until the paste is broken up. Increase the speed to medium for about 2 minutes, until the paste mixture is broken into fine particles. Add the butter and beat for 5 minutes until the mixture is light and airy, stopping to scrape down the sides as necessary. Beating enough air into the mixture at this stage is key to avoiding a dense cake.

Mix in the honey and add the eggs one at a time, beating until each one is fully mixed in and the mixture remains fluffy. Add the almond extract, flour, salt and mix until just combined.

Pour the batter into the pan and shake or smooth the top with a spatula. Bake for about 25 minutes for an 8 inch pan, or until the cake is golden and springs back when pressed. It took me about 30 minutes in a 9 inch pan. Let cool on a rack.

When the cake is cool, invert the cake onto the rack, remove the parchment paper and invert again. Brush the top of the cake with sugar syrup and sprinkle with sliced almonds. Dust with confectioner’s sugar. Serve with a dollop of the whipped crème fraîche and the strawberry coulis or lemon curd.

Shortly before I succumbed the the death plague that landed The Boyfriend in the ER for a few hours, I managed to bake up a loaf of bread. I knew that chances were good that he had managed to infect me with his germs with all of his abnormal insistence on breathing so I stocked up on groceries and made up some household staples so that when I got sick as he was getting better we would have something to eat besides dog food and ice cubes.

I halved the dough intending to make two loaves but it didn’t look as they were going to rise enough to fill two loaf pans, so I rolled them into 2 round boules and dropped them into a pan. This amused me greatly because it looked an awfully lot like a butt (which, by the way, is a totally legitimate bread shaping technique). I’d tell you that I was already a little feverish at this point, but to be honest I would be giggling even if I wasn’t coming down with something that would eventually swell my lymph nodes up to the side of golf balls.

The recipe is Nancy Silverton’s Pain de Mie, baked in a regular loaf pan instead of a pullman pan. Pain de mie is a pretty dense bread, and I’m not entirely sure that I’m sold on it as a day to day sandwich bread since I prefer an airier loaf, but the flavor was good and it worked very well as french toast the next morning.

Pain de Mie adapted from Nancy Silverton’s Breads from the La Brea Bakery

makes one 9×5 sandwich loaf

7 oz water
8 oz milk
2 teaspoons yeast
24 oz bread flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon butter, softened

Combine the water, milk, yeast, flour, and sugar in a bowl and mix for 2-3 minutes. Add the salt and butter and continue mixing until the dough is smooth and elastic, about 10 more minutes. Place into an oiled bowl and cover until the dough doubles in volume, about 45 to 60 minutes.

Turn the dough onto a floured surface and gently deflate. Roughly shape into a boule and cover with a cloth and let rest for 15 minutes. If you want to do any shaping, cut the dough into the sizes you need before you shape the dough and let it rest.

Grease a 9×5 loaf pan and set aside. Shape the dough into a loaf and place into your loaf pan. In my case, I simply formed two boules and dropped them into the pan. Let the dough proof one last time until the dough just barely springs back when poked, about 90 minutes at room temperature. Of course if The Boyfriend has seen fit in his fever delirium to turn the heat up to 85°F, it may take a lot less time and you may end up with slightly overproofed bread that has a dimple in the butt.

Bake in a preheated 475°F oven and bake for 40 minutes, or until the bread sounds hollow when tapped and has an internal temperature of 200°F. You may need to tent the bread with aluminum foil after 30 minutes to prevent the outside from browning too much.

Submitted to Yeastspotting

I was so delighted when a friend of mine offered to buy me the cake book I was looking at.  I told him to choose a cake when the book arrived as a way of saying thank you. He marked two recipes and then passed the book on to a coworker. This is what greeted me when I went to go pick up my prize.

I foresee a lot of time spent in the kitchen in the near future. I’m just grateful that no one selected one of the multi-tiered wedding cakes!

This fragrant risotto was so delicious that I went back for seconds and thirds and then made it again the very next day. Even now I am fighting the urge to make more. One minor adjustment and I could eat this every day until I die of the inevitable heart attack. A local restaurant makes a risotto that is brought to the table in a enormous wedge of parmesan. As the server stirs, the risotto is crammed with cheese, and then when portions are doled out, you are offered a sprinkling of even more cheese if you like. If someone were to buy me a giant wedge of parmesan, I would never leave my house again. By which I mean I will soon grow too fat to fit through the door. But don’t let that deter you from being a generous person and making a dream come true.

Mushroom Risotto

1/2 tablespoon butter
1 bunch green onion, finely chopped
6 oz crimini mushrooms
6 oz Arborio rice
2 oz white wine
2.5 cups chicken stock, heated
heavy cream
3 oz (or more!) grated parmesan cheese

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the green onions and mushrooms and cook until soft, stirring often. Add the rice and stir until translucent.

Add the wine and stir until it is cooked off. Add about a cup of chicken stock, stirring frequently until it is absorbed. Add the remainder of the stock a half cup at a time, stirring until all the liquid is absorbed before adding more. Continue until the rice is tender but still firm, approximately 20 minutes. Add a few tablespoons of heavy cream and the parmesan cheese and remove from heat. Stir until combined and season to taste with salt and pepper.

What started as a simple roast chicken has turned into a multi-part cooking project. First, there was brining, roasting, and carving the chicken, which was a brief lesson on avian anatomy. Then I turned the chicken carcass into a homemade chicken stock, which meant making a mirepoix. Finally, I used the chicken stock to make a delicious mushroom risotto.

Mirepoix is just a fancy name for onions, celery, and carrots, and since I am looking to improve my knife skills, I actually did the small dice on all the attendant vegetables. As a quick aside, Knife Skills Illustrated has been a good resource for learning proper techniques. Each chapter has instructions and lots of pictures for both right-handed and left-handed cooks. This seemed slightly redundant to me, but it’s probably a godsend for lefties who are often ignored as the sinister deviants they are. There’s a sample chapter here on how to cut onions if you are interested. I ended up picking up a giant bag of onions and an even giant-er bag of potatoes at Costco to practice my skills on.

A pasta pot with a built in colander is ideal for making stock as you can easily separate all the solids from the broth.

Chicken Stock

1 chicken carcass
4 carrots, diced
4 stalks of celery, diced
1 onion , diced
2 tablespoons whole peppercorns
4 garlic cloves
bay leaves
parsley
thyme
5 quarts of water

Combine all ingredients  in a large pot and simmer for about 4-6 hours. Skim the surface of impurities as needed. Sieve and chill in a water bath until cool enough to refrigerate.

Rocky: With great chicken comes great responsibility

Arthur: Chicken is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do

This chicken really blew me away. The meat is so tender and juicy that it puts every other roast chicken I’ve had to shame. It was so tender that a reheated piece of chicken breast was still moist and succulent. When I tried to carve it, a thigh bone came off  in my hand. It was so flavorful that Arthur spent the entire day standing guard in the kitchen, begging for scraps every time someone walked by. Thomas Keller knows his bistro food.

Brine adapted from Bouchon

1 gallon water
1 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup honey
6 bay leaves
1/2 cup garlic cloves, smashed
2 tablespoons black peppercorns
3 large rosemary sprigs
1 large thyme sprig
1 large bunch parsley
zest and juice of 2 lemons

Combine all ingredients in a large pot and bring to a boil. Boil for one minute, and stir to dissolve the salt and honey. Let cool completely before adding chicken. Can be made a day ahead and refrigerated.

Roast Chicken also adapted from Bouchon

The recipe calls for 2 birds, about 2.5 lbs each. I used a single bird that was just under 6 lbs.

Rinse the chicken under cold water and place in the brine. Refrigerate for 6 hours. My chicken was refrigerated overnight for 8 hours and it was just a smidge on the salty side.

Preheat oven to 475ºF. Remove the chicken from the brine and rinse with cold water. Pat dry and lightly season the inside with salt and pepper. If you have twine and know how to truss a chicken, now is the time to do it. Let the chicken sit at room temperature for about 20 minutes and then place on the roasting rack and into the oven. Check the bird every 15 minutes or so and rotate if necessary to ensure even browning. Roast until the internal temperature comes to 155ºF, should be about 40 minutes for 2 small birds and was about 55 minutes for my large bird.

When the bird is done, remove from the oven and baste with the pan juices. Let sit in a warm place for 10 minutes before carving, the chicken will continue to cook as it sits.

“We chefs all lie about our mashed potatoes. We don’t tell you we’ve used 1½ pounds of cream and butter with 1¾ pounds of potatoes. You don’t need to know.”

-Mark Peel, Owner and Executive Chef of Campanile

Over the winter holidays I spent a lot of time curled up with cookbooks and books about cooking. One of the books in question was Fergus Henderson’s The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating. In the introduction, Anthony Bourdain talks about the pilgrimages chefs would make to dine at St. John in London and experience the offal revolution. He has requested that his last meal before he shuffles off this mortal coil be the roasted veal marrow bones with parsley salad. I’m not sure that I would choose this as my death row meal, but it is quite unexpectedly delicious and stupidly easy to make. The parsley salad is tart and light and offsets the richness of the marrow beautifully. It makes a great appetizer, or even a full meal.

Roasted Marrow Bones and Parsley Salad adapted from The Whole Beast

veal marrow bones
flat leaf parsley
small shallot, finely diced
juice from half a lemon
olive oil
sugar plum tomatoes (skip for the authentic Henderson version)
capers
toasted bread
sea salt
pepper

Preheat oven to 450°F. Place the marrow bones in an oven proof pan and cook for about 20 minutes, until the marrow is softened and loose but not dissolved away. Meanwhile, prepare the salad by de-stemming the parsley and chopping it. Combine with shallots, capers, lemon juice, a light drizzle of olive oil, and the tomatoes. Serve by smearing the toast with the marrow and seasoning with sea salt. Top with a generous portion of the parsley salad and some freshly ground pepper.