Vivi logs in on #12

Not much to say, after the Bride's accurate summation. We quite enjoyed our own version of fricassee (also made with chicken breast -- bone-in halves in our case). We had it with fresh fettucine (purchased, not homemade) which was really tasty. And the usual green salad and an apple salad on the side (and strawberries for the children). Very easy, very flavorful.

Why is this dish not a chicken stew? Or is fricassee another word for stew? Oh...Google can help. Look up "define: fricassee" and the many results include:

[French] stew made of chicken or veal cut into pieces and cooked in a gravy. Though chicken is the most common form of this type of stew, fish, vegetables, and other meats are prepared in this manner.
From recipegoldmine.com

and A white stew. From foody.com .

Which sort of applies, too. It's a little too colorful to entirely call "white" but the meat was white.

I haven't made the rice pudding yet, which I am looking forward to doing with the full trimmings, holding back on none of the gazillion steps nor the fat (and curious to see if it tastes any better than our plain ordinary rice pudding). I may put that off until this weekend, however, and make a chocolate heart-shaped Valentine's cake for the week night dessert.

The Bride finds Menu 12 Ho-Hum

No pictures because, frankly, it wasn't that special. I didn't do the Oeufs, used chicken instead of veal and canned broth instead of home-made (tasted great) and made a different, simpler rice pudding (less decorative, but divinely flavored). I served it with whole wheat couscous, not home-made fettucini, which I couldn't have eaten. But the result was, as The Son of COG pointed out, no different than our usual meals.

Therein lies the rub: if I cook the recipes as written, I can't eat them. If I make changes to be more consistent with our diet, they are not special.

I have no idea what to do about this. Does anyone else have any brilliant insights?

The Jacques Pepin rice pudding, was fabulous. Extremely simple to make, amenable to those watching their calorie intake, and delicious. It was, if possible, even easier to prepare than regular rice pudding. Here's the recipe:

Old-Fashioned Rice Pudding with Dried Fruit

4 cups whole or nonfat milk, plus additional milk if needed
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup long-grain white rice
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel
3/4 cup diced (1/2 inch) dried fruits (raisins, apricots, figs, apples, cranberries, cherries etc.)
3/4 cup yogurt or sour cream (optional)

1) Bring the milk, sugar, vanilla to a boil in a saucepan. Add the rice, mix well, and bring back to the boil. Cover, reduce teh heat to very low, and simmer for about 40 minutes, or until the rice is very soft. The mixture should still be soup at this point; if it is not, stir in enough milk to make it so.

2) Add the lemon rind and dried fruits to the pudding, mix and set aside until it has cooled to room temperature. At this point much of the extra soupiness is absorbed and it's wonderfully creamy.

3) Spoon into four dessert dishes. If desired, top each dessert with 1 or 2 TBSPs of yogurt or sour cream.

Lesson 10: Sautés

Crème Vichyssoise
(Chilled Cream of Potato and Leek Soup)

Poulet Sauté Basquaise
(Chicken, Basque Style)

Riz Pilaf
(Rice Pilaf)

Tarte aux Pommes
(Apple Tart)

Cooked about January 27, 2008
(Lesson 9 has been postponed until spring)

Soup: Though Vichy is a city in central France, this chilled leek and potato soup is said to be the creation of a French chef working in the United States in the early years of this century. It has since returned to France, where the term vichyssoise is occasionally applied to cold soups in general. At Le Cordon Bleu, only the whites of the leeks are used in making the soup and they are mixed with only a small amount of potato to produce a creamy texture and refreshing taste.

Chicken and Pilaf: Dishes in the Basque style typically contain bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, garlic, and ham -- and this one is no exception. Basque dishes can also be quite spicy (especially when they are seasoned with a local chili called piment d'espelette instead of pepper). At Le Cordon Bleu, a French version of the classic Turkish pilav (pilaf in French) accompanies the sauté.

Apple Tart: An apple tart can be as simple or as complicated as you like. At home in France, it is often made by layering thin-sliced apples over pie dough, dotting them with butter, sprinkling with sugar, and baking -- that's it. This Cordon Bleu apple tart is slightly more elaborate, but baking the dough blind and giving it an egg glaze before garnishing it ensures that the crust will never be soggy.

How much work, really?

If you discount mistakes (letting it get frozen, forgetting it on the stove)*, was the cabbage soup really such a lot a work? I mean, stocks are foundational cooking. I make them all the time.

Let me reframe the question: If we separate out the stock-making (which I believe was the purpose of the soup in Lesson #2) from the soup-making, it's not such a big deal. In fact, the cabbage-and-leek soup was intentionally chosen because it was so easy to make in its final form.

Okay, I just remembered the 27 steps to prepare the cabbage. Hmmm.

Still, my point is, the lesson was the stock (I think?). The soup was intended to be easy. And perhaps the lesson was also that with a great stock, even a simple soup can taste really good. But we are all reasonably trained cooks, so these basic lessons are not truly aimed at us. Making stock is not a surprise, nor that homemade offers great flavor.

By the way, the food critics -- urr, children -- ate and actually loved the plain boiled stock-cooked chicken, reheated with no other seasoning. Neither of them usually prefers homemade to frozen prepared breaded nuggets. Who would know they required French cooking?


*Not meaning to pick on Peaceable -- I have myself carefully strained all the vegetables out of a stock, letting the liquid flavor pour out down the sink drain.

Comments from the Left Coast...

Everybody loved tonight's meal. I thought the cucumbers were a bit too salty, but I was alone in that. We had our friend RJ join us this evening, to serve as an independent opinion. He has invited himself to join us for many of the upcoming Sunday dinners, looking forward in particular to the sweetbread menus. I am decidedly not looking forward to those, but I reckon I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Not much to "learn" in this lesson, I thought. The method of roasting the chicken was new to me, that of cooking it on its side for 20 minutes, turning it, cooking on the other side for 20 minutes and then putting it on its back for the rest of the roasting. It reminded me of positioning a baby for sleep, in the old days when you were supposed to lie them on their stomachs.

I can't find chervil, so instead I tied a chunk of fennel into the parsley in the peas, which gave it a nice subtle almost licorice flavor. Other changes: I also put the onions in first and let them cook for a couple of minutes before adding the peas and the lettuce, so that everything was cooked at about the same rate.

Substitutions: Frozen petite peas for fresh; canned peach (in juice) for fresh; English cucumbers for "European cucumbers", which might be the same thing. Also, we added a baguette on the side.

Our Royal Miss M took one look at the dinner and elected to eat a frozen burrito instead. Royal W was the sous-chef -- only two cuts on his fingers until we took him off apple peeling detail (he switched to using a potato peeler). He was very helpful with stirring and measuring. After helping me wash and prep the chicken however, he has returned to vegetarianism.