Petits Coquelets Dijonnaise / Cornish Hens in a Mustard Cream Sauce

It's been a while. School and workouts have officially taken over our household. Somehow, it's nearly March, and I'm not sure what happened to the end of January. There hasn't been a ton of exciting cooking going on in our house lately. Scott has classes three nights a week and music one night. I'm working on my correspondence courses in the evening and attempting to keep us caught up on housework. In our "spare time" outside of homework, housework and work, we've been going to the gym. Damned blood pressure anyway. We did get around to making two recipes out of the big book for Valentine's Day, but that ended up being scaled down from the three we had initially planned. What else has been going on? We threw a big birthday party for Scott up at his parents' house in McCall. It was a hit. We opened a 9 liter bottle of wine. Yep, 9 liters. I can't remember the end of the night bottle count, but it was huge. We appreciated all of our friends and family coming out to join us. I made two cakes out of The Gourmet Cookbook. They were delicious. And that's about the only other thing we've done outside of the normal lately.



Back to Valentine's Day. We'd already decided we didn't want to go out for dinner that night. It tends to get expensive, and it's incredibly crowded. We hit up one of our favorite restaurants for lunch earlier in the day. Not only does Bittercreek have fantastic food, but they also support local farmers (including my mom's business, Lazy Dog Gardens). We weren't smart enough to plan ahead on dinner, and finally got around to making a shopping list around 5:30 that evening. Go us. Scott has his heart set on the Cornish game hens, which turned into a bit of a run around to find. He'd thought that he'd seen them at the Co-Op, but they apparently don't have a source. We ended up with the frozen Tyson ones. Next time, we'll try to plan ahead a little better.



The recipe was pretty simple. Brush the birds with mustard. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and spoon creme fraiche or heavy cream over them. Roast until they're brown and delicious and turn the pan juices into a sauce with a little red wine and broth. There was an accompanying recipe for greens sautéed in a little bacon fat with garlic and splashed with red wine vinegar. We followed dinner up with a Breton pudding that I'll put in another post.



Needless to say, we ended up eating a little bit late that evening, and we didn't get our usual in progress pictures. We were just happy to be getting back to cooking a little. The end results were a little average. I know part of it had to do with the meat we ended up using. The texture was a little mushy. I do want to try the treatment again with one of the local chickens from Market this spring. I think it'll be amazing. Surprisingly, the greens ended up being our favorite part of the meal. Scott's always been a little wary of cooked greens, but these were delicious. He's actually looking forward to the Swiss chard my mom always plants. The red wine vinegar brightened the whole dish and played incredibly well with the garlic and bacon. We wished we'd made more greens.



We served dinner with a 2006 Gary Farrell Russian River Valley Pinot Noir. Not my favorite in style. While she wasn't a slutty wine, she was definitely a bit promiscuous. The wine was a bit over the top and ripe, but that's almost to be expected from Cali Pinots. I know not everyone would agree with me, but we cut our Pinot Teeth in the Willamette Valley.

We'll try to get back to cooking and blogging soon. We're just working on figuring out our new routine.

Cheers!

Potage Picard au Pois, Cell Phones, and Family

Night two of this project and we've already had a minor setback. This morning, we awoke and started planning today's recipes to tackle. Three were selected and a grocery list was made.



However, we were delayed by Scott's phone which decided to have a stroke and loose all simple motor functions - such as the ability to turn on. Instead, it displays the Verizon logo for about 3 seconds, goes black, and returns with the same logo. This cycle repeats itself until the battery dies or we detach the phone from its power source. Trust us, after several months of putting up with the LG Chocolate's faulty wiring, pulling the plug would be considered a "mercy killing" by anyone.

After a trip to the Verizon center where we were told they couldn't retrieve the phone's info, we drove down to the Front Door to meet with Scott's parents who had driven down from McCall for the wedding of one of his old high school classmates. The Front Door has some of the best beer and pizza in town, but this day the pizza didn't exactly sit very well with Michelle and she didn't feel like eating a bunch of rich French food.

So, we opened the soup chapter, saw the Split Pea Soup, threw away the old grocery list, and wrote up a new one that we hoped would cure an aching belly.

Scott's mom always had a can of Campbell's Split Pea Soup in the cupboard when he was growing up. Many summer weekends would find a young Scott coming indoors from adventures on his BMX bike to the breakfast bar holding a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of this soup. There is just something homey about this kind of meal that transports him back to the days of his youth.

With that in mind, and a bed-ridden wife at home, Scott collects the ingredients from the store and hurries home to begin the abbreviated, but very important second day of the project.



For anyone who has made this soup before, it isn't the most challenging recipe to follow. You soak a pound of split peas for an hour, drain, and toss them into a soup pot on the stove with five cups of water, 5oz of bacon, pepper, and a few sprigs of thyme.



Cover, bring this pot to a boil, then back the heat off until it is just simmering...for about an hour and a half. Check on it here and there to make sure it isn't drying out and add some salt about halfway through, but just let it go!



The most interesting part of this comes at the end when you fish out and set aside the bacon and throw away the sprigs of thyme.



You take the mixture, run it through a food processor, and then strain it so all the fibers and...well...gunk...doesn't get into the soup.



Scott has only attempted home made Split Pea Soup once before and this last step wasn't part of the process. Needless to say, it was like the aftermath of a wood chipper made its way into the bowl.

Texture-wise, this was a home run - rich and elegant all in one! We fried up some cubes of bread in oil to act as croutons (Scott enjoyed, Michelle didn't as much), and this ended up being exactly what both our taste buds and stomachs craved for the evening.



It's obvious this recipe is much more mature than the Campbell's canned version enjoyed those many years ago, but the combination of parents and Split Pea Soup in the same day is enough to make Scott a happy guy for the evening.