Spring Doldrums?

Very little activity on HotDish recently. I haven't had time to update the menu to the next lesson (which is Cheese Souffle, Poached Salmon Trout and a Clafouti made with Cherries). The menu is rather high in eggs, as usual, and because it was Easter Weekend, we were already rather overrun with egg dishes of other sorts, so we've put it off a week.

Instead we had a good old traditional meal -- for Thanksgiving, that is: turkey and stuffing, roasted vegetables, salad, with coconut cream pie for dessert. I used the Cordon Bleu method for cooking the turkey, turning it every 30 minutes, and it was a splendid bird. I also sort of roasted the veggies a la Cordon Bleu, except I refused to pre-cook everything (which I should have done, because in the end we had to hold dinner 15 minutes for them to finish).

Ne pas Cordon Bleu -- Cordon Au'Vert!

A day late and a dollar short, but here's my entry for the St. Patrick's day feast we ate last night. Green beer, corned beef and boiled veggies, with homemade Irish Currant Loaf with lots o' butter on the side. (I don't know why the recipe for the bread isn't called Irish Soda Bread, because it's identical, aside from being half whole-wheat, and not calling for the optional caraway seeds.)



And a moment of silence in memory of Father Bleu, who would have turned 85 today.

Not-Quite Real-time Cordon Bleu blogging by Vivi

Saturday night
I started Lesson #14 Saturday night after finishing dinner and dishes. I couldn't find any candied orange peel (for the orange ice cream) at the store, so I decided to make my own. I hadn't looked very hard -- I remember Blithe making candied citrus peel (was it grapefruit or orange?) in married student housing in St. Anthony Park, back in The Day. I also started the old-fashioned No-Knead Bread, (since my copy of the infamous Artisan Breads in 5 Dollars a Day hasn't come in from the library yet) so I had to get that stirred together 18 hours before second rise.

Sunday morning
This morning I completed the candied orange peel, which then required to air-dry for an hour (end of Joy of Cooking recipe) and then to macerate in Cointreau for another hour (beginning of the Cordon Bleu recipe -- I used my homemade 44 instead of Cointreau). Then I took a break from Cordon Bleu and made Breakfast Burritos for the gang who go out to play soccer at 8:30 a.m. every Sunday (from a recipe in The Week magazine).


Sunday afternoon
Half the afternoon was spent badgering, urr, encouraging Boy-Child to write up his Science Fair project. The other half seemed to go to making the Orange Ice Cream. First the base, which was egg yolks, sugar, and hand-squeezed orange juice (no diary in this ice "cream"). Then the chilling of the base. Then the freezing in the ice cream making machine (which has a place of honor on a drop-down shelf built by the resident Bleus Brother, outside the back door). Then the continued chilling of the thickened ice cream in the freezer.

And then the pureeing of the strawberries for the sauce. I used frozen (the fresh are hit -- bullseye hit -- or miss, these days). The recipe calls for something like 1 cup of confectioner's sugar with the puree, but remembering that Cordon Bleu is often too sweet for my taste, I used perhaps 1/4 of that (after ascertaining that the puree did need some sweetening). And It Was Good.

As early afternoon slid into late afternoon, I baked the No-Knead Bread and started on the main dishes for dinner.


Late afternoon, early evening
I'm still not having much luck with mussels. The Coquilles Saint Jacques Dieppoise was supposed to be mussels, shrimp and scallops -- but I discovered that the stink in the fridge was that every single one of my mussels were dead by the time I went to cook them. I bought them only yesterday, but I guess Fred Meyer is not the place to buy mussels. (Also, they were picked up early in my shopping run, and they may simply have gotten too warm while I finished my purchases. I feel badly for all those wasted little lives.) In the end, the dish was good, but I think it would have been better with the mussels -- the sauce (in Lesson #6) of mussels, shallots, butter, wine and parsley was amazing.

However, the Foie de Veau (or in my case, Pork Loin Chops) was delicious, and quite easy to make (relatively speaking). It is sautéed meat, with a sauce of the drippings in the pan seared with apple cider vinegar and beef broth (supposed to be veal stock, but you take what you can get). On the side, roasted potatoes and apples. Really really good potatoes and apples, and the meat was delicious, too. I fried up one slice of calf's liver, to try. We all dutifully tasted it (including, surprisingly Girl-Child, who hated it, but at least she tried), and gratefully returned to the pork. The sauce was perfect with the dark flavor of the liver, but you have to really like liver (which I don't).

The Porc au Vinaigre et aux Deux Pommes gets very high marks from the whole household, on a par with our very favorites, the Truite Amandine and the Fish Cassoulet.

Sunday night
We finished off with the ice cream, in its pool of strawberry sauce. It didn't entirely freeze hard, but even in softserve format it worked particularly well. I do not as a rule care for fruit ice creams, yet I went back for seconds, and even for thirds, and now am doubting I will ever fit into a nice dress for Daughter-of-The-Bride's wedding in only 2.5 months.

We think this dessert would be especially good in deep summer, when it's very hot outside -- on one of those days when we take hours to drift through dinner, and drink a whole pitcher of Sangria between us.

Back on track?

Yo, mes soeurs! Are we back on track for this weekend?

Frankly, I'm not so sure about the Foie de Veau -- intrigued, but I expect in this household, a main dish of calf's liver for 6 will have, after everyone has eaten their fill, about 5.5 servings left over. I am thinking of cooking one calf's liver (beef liver, actually) this way in a small side pan, and substituting another meat for the rest of it. Perhaps pork chops (I know, it seems a travesty, but the flavors would probably go together nicely) or maybe pork tenderloin?

But the starter and dessert sounds good! The meal needs a veg and a starch, from my point of view, too. Easy enough.

Any thoughts?

Irritably Crediting Cordon Bleu with Taste

Perhaps the primary lesson I appear to have learned so far from cooking the Cordon Bleu, is how bad food can taste when it's poorly cooked, or cheap. I am now halfway through my trip away, in a small town. I would expect that a small town would have one good restaurant, but I haven't found it yet. The recommended seafood restaurant used frozen vegetables in its seafood wine sauté, and the wine was cheap and the seafood may have been frozen too. I don't think I could have told before that the food needed something. Another's fish fry had bland batter and too much of it. I bought some locally cooked sandwich bread and have been eating in my room but the bread has as much taste as cardboard. The canned soup I'm eating lacks that extra dimension in the broth.

I have just this evening learned of an apparently superior Mexican restaurant in town. I will try that tomorrow.

How will I stay down on the farm, now that I've tasted Paris?