Raggedy skin and burnt garlic

It all started well!  First, I had my beloved Katherine with me in the kitchen; she was changing the aquarium water:

And I had my beloved little Evelyn with me in the kitchen too; she was yelling her head off:

And I had a glass of wine:

But in the end, I found tonight's recipe a little frustrating to make.  It is the time for Ad Hoc At Home, one of my favourite recipe books by one of my favourite chefs.

Previously, I had made confit of pork belly from this book, and it was out of this world (photos here).  I also made beef stock (mentioned in a couple of previous posts), which was a great success.  This recipe is crispy braised chicken thighs with fennel, olives, and lemon.  I thought it would be quick and easy (as opposed to some of his more elaborate dishes).  I even thought that it would be related to the dish I do quite often at home, braised chicken thighs with garlic, rosemary, and white wine.  But there were several catches.

First, the chicken thighs are salted ready to be sautéed.

4 minutes on the skin side, 1 minute on the meat side, the recipe says.  But the problem is, after 4 minutes, the skin is always going to be stuck to the pan.  Now, perhaps I didn't have the temperature right.  Or perhaps my pan isn't good enough.  Or perhaps I didn't put enough oil in (or too much, or should have oiled the thighs first, or...).  But they stuck.  And seeing as the point of this recipe is that at the end you put the whole dish under the broiler to crispen up the skin ("Crispy chicken thighs..." is after all the name of the recipe), this was something of a disaster, since the skin basically came off most of the thighs.  I felt as though I just not a very good cook.  (I wonder whether this is why this version of the recipe calls for 10 minutes for the skin side to cook - but surely after 10 minutes the skin is already crispy so there's no need for the broiling at the end?)

Then, I had to sauté onion, garlic, and fennel batons in the pan (having taken out the sautéed thighs).  Again, Keller calls for the garlic to be cooked for one minute, and then sautéed with the onion for a further 5 minutes, and then with the fennel for another 10.  I couldn't stop the garlic burning, however much I kept stirring and however much I tried to keep the heat down.  ('Medium-low heat', the recipe said.)  Anyway, after adding red pepper flakes, olives, wine, lemon zest, and stock, the whole thing was smelling not too bad, and simmering away, as instructed.  "Put the chicken pieces back in the pan and let the sauce come to a simmer again".  Something was not right: putting the chicken pieces back into the pan didn't make any difference to the simmering broth: it just carried on simmering.  That's when you know things aren't going perfectly.

Anyway, the whole assemblage goes into the oven for 20 minutes to cook the chicken through.  I didn't add the chicken juices to the dish, because the recipe doesn't say you should, and because they were pretty much raw chicken juices.  I just kept my fingers crossed that the whole thing would 'come together'.  You'll notice there aren't many photos of these interim stages.  I was too annoyed and stressed to take them!

But the crisping up of the chicken pieces was a success (although one of them lost its skin altogether):

And the broth was delicious too:

With rice and green beans, the whole thing was very nice.  I mean that: very nice.  The fennel in particular was very tender and not at all overpowering.  But the dish as a whole wasn't the explosion of zesty flavour that I had expected.  I blame myself, and not Thomas Keller.  Surely the man who made the ratatouille for Ratatouille makes no mistakes!

Next up, Nigel Slater's Real Food.  I can't wait!

The, er, Lambs of Navarin

Well, this post is a bit late, because we had drama with our poor little one.  She suffered a torticollis attack on Saturday night, which terrified the hell out of us, so we went to the ER and ended up spending 48 hours in hospital.  The dish I'm about to describe to you was actually eaten on 23rd August.  You'll remember that it is from the Conran Cookbook:

The recipe we chose was Navarin of Lamb.  This is essentially a lamb stew with peas and - crucially - potatoes.  First, though, the lamb.  McCaffreys had shoulder and neck of lamb, as the recipe suggested, but although I asked the butcher to 'bone' the lamb, the neck still had bones in it.  Perhaps he thought I meant something different.  So I just cut up pieces of shoulder.  They looked very fatty and gristly, but they browned up nicely:

Then I prepared the aromatics and liquid for the stew: lots of garlic, beef stock (mentioned in a previous post), tomato paste, etc.  After 45 mins in the oven, I added sliced potatoes and peas, making sure to have a layer of potatoes on top.  The idea is that this layer will absorb the fat of the dish (a substantial amount, thanks to the shoulder pieces), and crispen up before eating.  The crisping never happened: this is because I started cooking late, thanks to an enjoyable afternoon spent at the swimming pool with Evelyn, the Coopers, and the Lorenzes.  This is what the final product looked like:

It was very good: home cooking, rather than gourmet cooking, but good nonetheless.  We ate all of it.  So, we had nearly two pounds of lamb, and two pounds of potatoes, let alone everything else.  But that's what recumbent rowers are for.  To drink: Franciscan Merlot 2007 (very good) and - aptly - a Guigal Côtes du Rhône 2007 when the Merlot ran out (the perfect match with the Navarin).

Next up - I'm really excited about this - Ad Hoc At Home.  I'm thinking of doing the Catalan Beef Stew.  It only takes three days to make.

"Home Cooking"

This meal was from the Wheeler's Recipe Book.  A word about the book, first.  Wheeler's was an upmarket chain of fish restaurants in London which I would go to in my youth, with my mother or father.  I think of Wheeler's restaurants as being pioneering gourmet fish restaurants in England (as opposed to the ubiquitous fish-and-chip shops).  I guess my mother must have bought the book as inspiration for her cooking and then I must have taken the book when all her belongings were distributed.  In any case, it reminds me of her (and Dad too).  That's the good part.

The bad part is that the recipes are absurd.  Take the 'recipe' which I 'followed' tonight.  It's for Sole Meunière.  I was all excited about the dish, because of the memory I had of when Katherine and I went to L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Paris.  The fish then was unctuous, salted to within an inch of its life, buttery, fragrant, and dreamily delicious. (I don't think Katherine liked it as much as I did.)  But the Wheeler's recipe leaves much to be desired: "Flour the sole [no indication of how much flour] and cook in butter [no indication of how much butter] to which has been added a little oil [no indication of how much oil] and the juice of half a lemon [miracle!]... When cooked (about 12-15 minutes) [each side?  Does one turn the fillets?] place the sole on a hot dish, pour over the cooking juices and sprinkle with chopped parsley [Italian?  Curly?]".

Faced with this recipe, the fact that I couldn't get hold of Dover sole seemed like the least of my problems.  Instead, I went for Lemon Sole (from the same fishmonger mentioned in previous posts; when I went there with Evelyn this evening they were giving away their freshly baked bread for free, so I got some of that too.  Bread and fish go well together.).  So far so good.

But I couldn't bring myself to add the lemon juice to the butter and oil while the fillets cooked.  I mean, wouldn't they just end up poaching in lemon?  So I chickened out, and just added lemon to the pan juices (along with the parsley).  The result wan't bad at all - just, well, 'home cooked'.

Every Englishman needs to have his fish served with potatoes, so I did fried potatoes (slices of potato boiled to the point of disintegration, then fried in olive oil):

They came out looking good (pictured here alongside the fish recipe):

The final dish was sole meunière on a bed of spinach, with fried potatoes and bread

 and a 2010 Macon-Villages from Louis Jadot:

The meal was very good.  As Katherine said, 'we should have it again'; what she meant was: 'this meal was not so rich/gourmet/difficult that we should only have it occasionally'.  I was somewhat disappointed by the fish.  But that's what happens when you have tasted cooking by a chef of the century.

Next up, the third English recipe book in a row.  The Conran Cookbook is another cookbook from an English restauranteur, but this time, the recipe book is full of proper recipes.  Lucy gave it to me on my 28th Birthday (confirmed by the inscription inside the book), and I remember that she gave me along with it a couple of pans which I am still using (the large steel sauté pan, and the saucepan with steamer insert).  So all in all, today's book and the next book are very much a Morison family affair.  (The Southern cookbooks are looming on the next shelf, so Katherine's family will have their day...)

Anniversary Dinner!

Today's dinner is from the River Cottage Fish Book.

As mentioned in a previous entry, we have found a good fishmonger in Princeton, and so today (our 2nd anniversary!) we went to get some sea bass to do the 'Chinese Fish Parcels' recipe.

No luck.  So I got tilapia instead - a kind of cichlid, apparently (sorry Hendrik).  Tilapia struck me as a good idea since it would be neutral, rather like sea bass.  The fillets looked pretty good laid out in the kitchen:

I prepared the vegetables: carrot batons (which took forever), thinly sliced leeks, garlic, and chillies.  I forgot to get ginger: that would have been thinly sliced too!

Anyway, I then layered the fish fillets (cut in two) with the vegetables, soy sauce, and sesame oil, to make three heaps like this:

Next, I sealed the foil into parcels and put them in the oven for 15 minutes.  It was that simple!

The results were amazing.  This was a seriously good recipe.  The fish was delicate yet strongly scented with the aromatic vegetables, and the jus in the base of the parcels was intense.  Served with coconut jasmine rice (as in another previous entry) and spinach.  And a 2009 Mersault by Olivier Leflaive.

A true anniversary dinner.  As Katherine said, these recipes we are doing are substituting for (not sex but) going to restaurants, which we can't do because of the little one (go to restaurants, I mean).

I can't believe how lucky I am to have this beautiful woman as my wife!

Next up: Wheeler's Fish Cookery.  That's not going to be easy - it's another older recipe book (1984) with recipes that don't actually tell you how to cook the food.

American Cooking?

A few days ago we were up against a real challenge. We had to come up with a recipe from this book:

It's called The Illustrated Encyclopedia of American Cooking and there is a little story behind it. Basically it belonged to my beloved Grandmother (aka Mama Joyce). She was a cook-extraordinaire and probably owned hundreds of cook books. Anyway - when she sadly passed away her daughter, my Aunt Melinda, gave the book to me, along with a few other cook books. I never really looked at this one in great detail. So when Benjamin and I gave ourselves this challenge of making one dish from each cook book we owned we simply had NO idea how (first of all) enjoyable it would be to go through this book. Page after page of recipes you simply couldn't make up. But second of all how very challenging it would be to try out a recipe that was actually edible. The premise of the book is that it's listed in alphabetical order by ingredient. Apple, Apricot, Artichoke, etc, etc. You get the picture. This book was published in 1986 but honestly I can't help but wonder if it was somehow a copy of recipes from the 50s or 60s. I mean - I was a child of the 80s and I do not remember having to eat anything which resembles these recipes. Believe me - you would remember. Here are just a few gems...

Anyway - enough of the funny stuff. We did manage to find something in the end. Called Captain Chicken. Why it was called this we have NO idea. But basically it was a chicken curry with almonds and raisins tossed in at the end. I would give this recipe probably a 3 1/2 out of 5. Given that we have had some pretty remarkable dishes as of late, perhaps if we hadn't, this would have had a higher mark. Anyway here are a few snaps...

Ben toasting the almonds.

Pretty much the final product. 

Evelyn was in a foul mood that evening....

Next time: The River Cottage Fish Book

"Cordon Bleu" Thai Beef

The next book is Le Cordon Bleu Complete Cooking Techniques.

This book is more of a book about how to cook rather than a recipe book, although it does have recipes in it.  We opted for Thai Beef.  (Other possibilities included a delicious gnocchi recipe, and a braised stuffed lamb dish that looks to be a good dinner party dish).  This recipe calls for ingredients that we don't normally use: lemon grass (more on that later), mango, cucumber, coconut milk.  It is a salade tiède: a lukewarm salad.

I'm drinking a beer while preparing it, but it is going to be a hit with the Tavel Rosé I have in the fridge...  Katherine is upstairs initiating a new regime with Evelyn (giving her breastmilk from the bottle before putting her to bed).

I hit a couple of problems making the dish.  For instance, it calls for rump steak.  That cut does not really exist in the States.  Instead, I substituted (uh-oh - that dreaded culinary word) 'hanging tender'.  It's important to note that my substitution is not a like-for-like substitution (the closest to rump steak is apparently Top Round, but there's no way I'm finding a Top Round steak in McCaffrey's).  Rather, the substitution occurred to me because Hanging Tender (aka hanger steak) is a cut usually associated with Mexican cooking, which uses many similar ingredients to Thai cooking (chillies, coriander, lime, etc.).  Here is the meat seasoned and ready for the griddle:

The recipe calls for a dressing made with ginger, soy, garlic, oil, chillies, and sugar.  It came out of the blender tasting insanely good.  Fresh yet biting and subtle at the same time.  The next step was to start the rice: jasmine rice cooked in coconut milk (and water) with a hint of lemon grass.  (A stalk, the recipe says, to be taken out before eating.)  Hmmm.  Lemon grass.  No chance of finding that at McCaffrey's either.  I bought a tube of 'freshly chopped' lemon grass, which is all very well, but (a) it's hard to know what the equivalences are (how many teaspoons is one stalk?) and (b) even when I do add some to the rice, there's no chance of getting it out at the end.  I considered boiling the liquids together with the minced lemon grass and then straining, but in the end I thought just one teaspoon added to the liquids would be fine.

Finally, the most difficult thing of all.  Cutting up a mango and cucumber, for lining the plate on which the beef would go.  How do you cut up a mango attractively?  Answer: look it up on YouTube.  Here are the mango and cucumber ready on the plate:




The meat looked pretty good when it was griddled and seasoned and rested:

And even better when tossed with the dressing, and various chopped herbs, and some more minced lemon grass (1 tbs for 3 stalks), presented in the middle of the cucumber and mango:

To serve: coconut rice and extra dressing on the side.  It was delicious.  A winner.  Katherine wants us to serve it at a 'luncheon'.  Here is the whole dish on the table:

You can't really see the dressing in the bowl by the wine.  I think it was probably the best bit, and we are contemplating reproducing it just as a normal salad dressing (in an avocado salad, for instance).