Monday Lunch
weather
Lightening strikes and the power goes off. I'm trapped in the french farmhouse with only candlelight to see with. I perch neath the doorway and read by candlelight and wait for the rain to stop. The strike takes out all of Les Chauss. We wait.
I fry a day old baguette in fresh pressed walnut oil, with a touch of sea salt and serve it hot and crunchy with orange marmalade. It's incredible.
my bike
rain
I wake up to the sound of rolling thunder. Then dull grey rain makes a steady beat over the french farmhouse. The sky turns a watery grey. I supp on leftover baguette with simple marmalade.
I find Scottish farmhouse cookery book in the french farmhouse
Plums
10 days in France (a cooking, eating, painting sabbatical)
Polaroids (my favorite art)
[caption id="attachment_216" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="If you stick a raw chicken breast into the leftover pickle 'juice' from any old jar of pickles and leave overnight (leftover dill pickle juice is great) then place in a pan the next day adding a little sweetness to balance the brine, (like adding a dash of honey or sugar) and a half can of crushed tomoates it tastes damn good. Great with some fried potatoes.
My polaroid wall (things I've eaten, seen, captured)
Test Shoot on a hot July day. What to feed the crew?
SWEET PEA SOUP: Saute half a cup of finely diced white onion, and 2 sticks of finely diced celery in a pan with a knob of unsalted butter. Add 1 teaspoon of freshly ground pepper and 1 teaspoon of kosher salt. Add to the pan 1 teaspoon of bottled capers with a splash of their juice as well. Put mixture in food processor. Add to the processor a quarter cup of chopped fresh mint leaves, 1 packet of *frozen garden peas (preferably organic) and 2 cups of chicken stock slowly in as you grind. *Note the frozen peas will crackle when you grind them. Using the pack of frozen peas makes the soup instantly cold, but if you would rather use fresh shelled peas go for it, the soup will require refridgeration though to get it chilled. Add a half teaspoon more of ground pepper (or to taste). Pour the mixture through a fine meshed sieve. Add back some of the leftover pea pulp to make the soup more plentiful, rustic and to add texture. (I add about a quarter of the pulp back in at the end).
The rest of the pulp I mix with soft goats cheese and spread on grilled Stirato bread, (the best is from Grandaisy bakery, http://www.grandaisybakery.com/)
Fette Sau BBQ
Art I love
- Trey and I worked together at JCrew way back in '94 . He left the company to pursue his dream of being an artist. You can now buy his work at Anthropology stores nationwide.
Salted caramel custard
“The Bridge” 6/29 Catering Gig
3 to 1: DM (My partner in food crime and co-partner in D and D Food) and I are hired to cater a 50 person party for two NY Based architects who just won a design competition to build a bridge in a region of China. Using the bridge as our theme we decide to do dumplings... shaped like a bridge, using regionally inspired ingredients that would be typical of the province where the bridge is to be built. To keep it local, with a seasonal edge, we ponder the idea of serving the dumplings with rhubarb, made into a spicy chutney "dip". It does not feel authentic Xinjing Chinese, but it does feel authentic to D and D. We end up using local Brooklyn market rhubarb (that we bought a few weeks before and froze) made into an almost Indian style chutney-like compote with hot sauce and soy for dipping.
Take 3 ingredients and make it 1: Duck, pork or shrimp with pork?
Now how to cook them? Take 3 methods and decide on 1: Pan fried then steamed, steamed or just plain old boiled.
I read the blog of http://userealbutter.com/ (Which is awesome by the way) She describes all the steps clearly in making your own dumplings and mentions that her mother mixes the dough for the dumplings with chopsticks. (Can you imagine? I can barely aim towards my mouth with chopsticks, let alone mix together a useable dough)
We taste test a couple of days before the gig, also drinking a cooling gin cucumber cocktail that DM makes up that we hope to serve on the party night with the dumplings.
The test:
1) Duck --plain off BBQ duck from Chinatown, stripped off the bones and minced.
2) Duck -- with tamarind sauce. You can order this from your favorite Chinese/Asian place in a pinch. My local Chai in williamsburg (http://www.chai-restaurants.com/) has a great duck in tamarind sauce. and unknown to them but for our benefit they send the duck chopped neatly alone and the tamarind sauce in a separate container. That way you can mix as much sauce with the duck as you need.
3) Pork
Designer Erin Jang, (theindigobunting@blogspot) recommends the one dumpling wrapper I must use. She can't remember the name but sends me packing to Chinatown with instructions to look out of a distinct green and red packaging, and warning me that these ones are decidedly thicker, won't break apart if I choose to boil them and are foolproof no matter the filling. (Sounds good to me!)
The winner is duck. As for method of cooking I try all 3: boiling, and pan frying then steaming and just plain old steaming. The pan fry then steam comes out as the best method. Duck has a lot of fat in it, and when seared in oil first it gets luscious and the outside wrapper crispy.
- The Best wrapper ever for dumplings
- THE DUCK MIX Finely diced bamboo, water chestnuts, Napa Cabbage, Good old Chinatown duck, Sesame oil and Soy Sauce
- THE FINAL PRODUCT The 'Bridge' dumpling, (shot at the party with my crappy blackberry) DM had the best idea of spearing them with bamboo rods so they were easy to handle and then dip. (Little paddles of duck deliciousness)
I wish I lived in the golden age of spirits
- Sazerac! The beginning of a messy evening. We ended up doing the sugar syrup, Sazerac Rye Whiskey, Herbsaint, Peychaud's Bitters combo, with lemon peel. Sazerac: The official drink of New Orleans and (as it turns out) perfect with Gumbo Z'Herbes!
- The recipe. (It went for a dip)
Gumbo Z'herbes. The birthday dinner for 12.
Gumbo Z'Herbes, Brooklyn style (emulated from Mrs Leah Chase, New Orleans)
So for my birthday I nearly always cook for a crowd. This year I made Leah Chase's Gumbo Z'Herbes. It's also known as plain "Green gumbo" and it's prepared at her restaurant in New Orleans. The dish contains 7 greens and 7 meats. Ham, chopped brisket and Andouille included. She cautions the number of greens used must be an uneven number. 7, 9 or 11, for luck. She recommends using 9. They only cook this dish once a year and they have green colored t-shirts printed up to commemorate the event. From Francis Lam on the blog of New Orleans (http://blogofneworleans.com/blog/2010/04/01/gumbo-zherbes-and-holy-thursday-at-dooky-chase/) "...so complex, so bulky with ingredients that two bites are never the same. One minute beefy and tender, the next intensely vegetal and finishing with smoky, porky goodness and a hit of cayenne that warms the back of your throat"
From Kim Severson "Spoon Fed: How 8 cooks saved my life" a book I read and highly recommend, I learned that the act of cutting the 9 greens in your kitchen is akin to a chlorophyll bomb going off.
- The 7 different kinds of meats I used... I'm not in New Orleans so I decided it keep it Brooklyn local and sustainable. Cubed stewing beef, Green chorizo sausage, Fennel sausage, Spicy sausage, Smoked pork ribs, Benton Ham, all from The Meat Hook, Brooklyn NY (http://the-meathook.com/) and Andouille sausage from Marlow and Daughters (also Brooklyn) (http://www.marlowanddaughters.com/)
There is something cleansing and refreshing about the clean wet slice of taunt greens at the crack of dawn. I'm feeling insecure about my non-southern roots, and out of my depth. I have a sink full of more greens than could possibly be in one dish. I'm mindful of the women and the main women (Mrs Leah Chase) that went before me and hoping that I can do this dish justice. I re-read Kim Severson's chapter on this dish and am reminded that at the end of the day, when all is said and done: one just has to have a faith.
- 12 separate greens also went into the same pot... (You're meant to use an odd number for luck, but I had 12 guests so I figured each of them could use a bit of luck) They were cooked in batches first, then puréed. They were Kale, Arugula, Collard greens, Radish greens, Romaine lettuce, Parsley, Beet greens, Turnip greens, Carrot greens, Watercress, Green onions, and Spinach.
