Far Breton / Batter Pudding with Prunes

I'm only a few weeks behind in finishing up the Valentine's post. Much like the dinner of Cornish hens, dessert was okay, but not spectacular. Far Breton is similar to a clafoutis, but more substantial. It is designed to be cut up into wedges like a cake. I'm not wild about eggy desserts in general. Creme Brulée can be easily ruined if it tastes more like scrambled eggs, and I've never been a big fan of flan.

The general gist: pour a batter over prunes that have been soaked in boiling water and bake until it's set (about an hour and a half).







It's definitely something that can be done easily, as long as one has the necessary baking time. The far had to share the oven with the Cornish hens, so it was baked on the bottom of the oven. I'm sure that contributed partially to the final texture. I feel like I'm saying that a lot lately. Couldn't have anything to do with the new schedule, I'm sure... It felt like the edges got overdone before the middle was set. Even if the batter left something to be desired, the prunes were delicious. I feel a little sad that prunes have such a negative reputation. I shouldn't be so surprised that I liked them so much. I love plums and eat my fair share in season. There's not reason I wouldn't like the dried version, but they have, for as long as I can remember, been associated with old people. Silly, I know. I wanted to pick the prunes out of the bottom of the rest of the dish and just eat them. They were that good. I made plum jam last summer and think that I might see about drying some this year too.





Even if our Valentine's dinner left a little something to be desired, it still gave us a little extra time together. And in the end, that is the whole purpose of this project. We wanted to do something that made us set aside time for each other when life got a little hectic, and I feel like we've succeeded. It's not always easy, especially with homework deadlines on two sides pressing down, housework piling up, workouts calling and jobs to take care of, but it's worthwhile. If nothing else, a mediocre meal also gives us something to laugh a little about.

And as an update to the previous post about the Cornish hens, I tried the mustard/creme fraiche again on a roasting chicken. It's definitely going to rotate in with the usual thyme and lemon. I was quite happy with the results.

Four posts coming up soon if I can get around to them. We went a little crazy last Sunday.

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!

Poischichade / Chickpea Dip

Monday through Thursday evenings at our house are now a little hectic. Scott has class Monday through Wednesday evenings from 6PM-9PM, and music with the boys on Thursday nights. It's often too much to get dinner ready before 5 o'clock, so that means that I have to make things that are easy to heat up or eat separately. This is definitely going to make it into our rotation, especially as the ground warms up and more local produce is available. I almost want to have a small bowl of it in the fridge just to have handy for snacking. It was that good.

This is the Provençale take on hummus. No tahini, but keep the lemon juice and cumin. You roast one large bell pepper and blend it up with two cans of chickpeas, lemon juice, a full tablespoon of cumin, cayenne and a little olive oil. I'm pretty good about keeping with seasonal vegetables, but bell peppers are my weakness. In the middle of winter when the only things available that might be local are winter squash and onions, I have an easy time avoiding tomatoes, cucumbers and most of the fruit that's being trucked up from far, far away. Peppers are the one thing that my body tells me to keep buying. This dip doesn't make it any easier to avoid them.



The book recommends serving with pita or grilled Merguez sausages. We had whole wheat pita, radishes, carrots and snap peas (the veggies organic & from California). I'm in love. I love the homey flavor of cumin, and it played well with the heat from the cayenne and the tang from the lemon juice. Filling, but light enough for the late hour of the meal. I happily took it to work for lunch a few days later in the week. I just signed up for my own classes to get ready for school in the fall at NNU, and I'm most definitely going to be keeping some chickpeas in the pantry for busy nights. Next time, I'm attempting my own pita with Canyon Bounty Farm's whole wheat flour to go along. I'm sure it'll be delightful.

Supreme de Poulet a l'Estragon / Chicken Breasts in Tarragon Cream Sauce

This was another that fell under the tried before and not quite as good the second time around. The difference: creme fraiche. The extra tang offered by creme fraiche over heavy cream helped to elevate it before. This particular recipe is one of the variations listed. We made the decision to cook the variations as well as the regular recipes because they generally have enough changes to make it worthwhile. The original in this case is Chicken Breasts with Crayfish.



I cooked this as part of the celebrating the start of Scott's semester back at Boise State. Scott's usually done the recipes involving flambé in the past. More because he likes it. A lot. I got to try my hand this time around. I'm lucky I didn't catch the house on fire. Maybe I'll leave lighting dinner on fire to my husband.



I did make a modification. I wasn't quite feeling like making a rich side dish to accompany something with a full cup of heavy cream, so I chopped up a Japanese sweet potato and a few fingerlings to make life a little easier. I know there may be some who think I'm not being true to cooking through the book, but I was thinking the other day about why we haven't added a grading system to our blog like some of the others I've seen. Aside from my general distaste for rating things that are subjective (I'm notorious for doing everything I can to avoid giving a score to wine we drink, even in a blind tasting setting), I think it also has to do with my treatment of recipes as a good base off which one can make modifications. There is quite a bit of improvisation in our kitchen, and I like to keep it that way. Instead of deciding that a recipe deserves a C, D, or A, I'd rather consider what might be done to improve it. Sometimes, that's as simple as a little sherry vinegar, as with the pork with apples. Other times, it involves addition or substitution of ingredients. I'd much rather be able to think about what kind of adjustment will improve the flavor than write a dish of completely. Obviously, some recipes simply don't match with a person's tastebuds, and I recognize that, but I'm still happier in the kitchen if I give myself some leeway to cook something my way.

How did the modification work? Fingerlings were excellent. I added them right after the wine and the broth, so they were able to cook in the sauce. I'd probably go ahead and roast the Japanese sweet potatoes on their own next time to get a crunchy outside and cook them with thyme or rosemary or another more roundly flavored herb. Tarragon is so fresh and bright. It doesn't give the same savory edge to the sweetness of the potatoes.



The sauce and chicken went very well together, but I've long been a fan of the combination of chicken, white wine & tarragon. I think we might try it out again when the weather warms up again.



Both of us were generally happy with the outcome, but I'll take the extra time to find creme fraiche (a relative rarity here in Idaho) for the next time we make it.

Soufflé Moelleux Au Chocolat / Soft-Centered Chocolate Soufflé

Tuesday marked a shift in the Sprague household schedule. Scott started classes again at Boise State, so our lives have become a bit more hectic. Monday through Wednesday nights will be taken up with his class time, and that means it's time for me to work on getting signed up for my correspondence classes. Accordingly, our time for cooking together will be greatly reduced. This is actually why we decided to start cooking through the book. It's an opportunity to make time for each other. Monday night was the last night before the big upheaval, so we had to have one last dinner. We used two recipes. The second (and savory) recipe will follow with a post later. Scott's more diligent about posting than I am. I still have two more to get caught up for the week.

I did two new things in the kitchen this week. I cooked chicken skins to render the fat for a Hungarian dish that wasn’t from the book but reminded me about how much I like paprika. I also made my first soufflé. For as much as I’d been afraid of making one, it turned out to be much easier than I expected. And absolutely delicious. I’m tempted to make another one this weekend, but I’ll do my best to resist. There are two soufflé recipes in the book. We started with the chocolate one, and I’m looking forward to the savory cheese one.



Chocolate is melted with cream and then egg yolks, rum and vanilla extract are stirred in. Egg whites are whipped into a meringue and folded in. I absolutely love having my Kitchen-Aid mixer. It makes whipping whites so much easier than it was using the hand mixer. The decadent looking concoction is then baked at 425 for about 15 minutes. All in all, not long at all to make a dessert for a Monday night.



Not having made a soufflé before, I’m not sure how it compares to others. The directions say to only cook it until the top is set but shakes when the dish is moved. The middle wasn’t entirely set up, but the differences in texture made the whole thing even more delicious. I’m still a little in awe of how easy and delightful it was. Perhaps it was beginner’s luck, but I’m excited to have a new trick under my belt. I cooked the soufflé for the middle of the time range because our oven tends to run a little hot. I might give it a minute or two more next time, but there were some dark patches on the top that were bordering on burnt. It might be just as well to leave it as we did it before. I’d rather have a rich molten center than a burnt top.



My only problem with this recipe, or perhaps the book in general: the two soufflés call for two different sizes of dishes. We had neither soufflé dish nor something straight-sided that could be used as a substitute. I had to purchase a dish for the chocolate soufflé and will have to buy another one for the cheese soufflé. If only we weren’t already overflowing in the kitchen already… I think it might be time to clear out a shelf in the garage for our extra goodies. I think have to put a Madeleine mold, Kugelhopf mold or tube pan, and a terrine mold on the wishlist. Fortunately, we have an ice cream maker, and I have a sneaking suspicion my little sister might let us borrow her deep fryer. One of these days, we’ll have enough kitchen space to contain all of our gadgets and equipment. A girl can dream, right?

Gambas Grillés au Sel de Mer/Seared Prawns With Sea Salt

Happy Saturday!



Simple Saturdays call for simple dishes. We had a bit of a late lunch at one of our favorite haunts--The Front Door--and neither of us were feeling like much for dinner. We narrowed our choices down to two, and the selection at the Co-Op helped make our final decision for us. Aside from the time involved in peeling and deveining shrimp, this was one of the easier recipes from the book.

The gist: peel & devein shrimp, toss with a mixture of cornstarch and sea salt, sauté for 1-2 minutes on each side, and top with freshly ground pepper. Not much to it.





The results were a bit mixed. Some of the shrimp were entirely too salty, drink a half a glass of water to get rid of the saline taste in your mouth too salty. The book recommends using nice sea salt or fleur de sel in this recipe, and we used some Hawaiian salt we had. Scott swears that the solution would be to give the salt a little time with the mortar and pestle. It's also possible that we had shrimp that were too small, but pickings are slim in a landlocked state such as ours. We'll have to give it a try again to see if it works. The shrimp that weren't too salty were delicious. The touch of salt was a perfect complement to the sweet meat of the shrimp. The cornstarch turned into a chewy crust, and the pepper added a nice bit of spice. The only thing we weren't sure about was what kind of sauce would be good to go with them. Buerre blanc? That might add a little delightful decadence.



For tonight's pairing, we actually had two wines. We had a little leftover Mas Carlot Grenache-Syrah that went surprisingly well with the stolen bites as we finished the batches. The main wine of the evening was Joseph Drouhin's 2008 Macon-Villages. Joseph Drouhin wines admittedly hold a bit of a soft spot in our hearts. When we lived in Oregon, Scott worked just down the street from their sister winery Domaine Drouhin (my benchmark for Oregon Pinot Noir). When we went on our honeymoon to Paris and Beaune, Maison Joseph Drouhin was one of the wineries we visited. All bias aside, this bottle is definitely one seeking out. Running around $12 retail, the Macon is light and bright, with pretty apple and lemon flavors and a touch of minerality. It went very well with the sweet/salty shrimp.



We're looking forward to giving the recipe a second shot with some tweaks to work on the saltiness issue. We also tucked the shells from the peeled shrimp in the freezer to go towards fish stock when we need it.

Filets de Porc Normande / Pork Tenderloins with Apple

(Scott Here)

Coming home from a long day, we both wanted something we knew would be good. We've made this dish before and really enjoyed it, so time to knock it out, right?

First, we'll play a game called "Why Scott Shouldn't Be Allowed to go to the Store By Himself". I got the list for the grocery store and headed out, but something caught my eye. A beautiful sign on the right hand side of the road with plain red script and white background.

"Liquor Store"

Michelle and I don't drink liquor (though, I will enjoy a fine whiskey every now and then), but as I drove up to the sign I remembered something from the recipe - Calvados - something we didn't have.

Never mind we've made this before with the Apple Jack that's in the sideboard with great success. No, I just KNEW that authentic Calvados would make all the difference. So, in I went through the doors to pick up the only bottle of this stuff they had - at $42.50. You add in the cost of the Champagne we got for this meal and all of a sudden, we're talking some serious dough! Looking through the index of CCF, I have found two more recipes that call for this liquor, so I think I can justify the expense...sort of...



Anyway...

There is not a whole lot that's technical about this dish, aside from tying the two pork tenderloins together with twine. I've seen Alton Brown give a demonstration on this subject from the TV and there are handy frame by frame pictures to follow along with Thomas Keller in Ad Hoc, but actually doing this right without the bacon falling off or using way too much string is a challenge. Lucky for us, Michelle's know-how was tapped and dinner was back on track.





I LOVE to flambé and it was no less fun with $42.50 Calvados. Just thought you would like to know that burning expensive liquor is a gas.



After shoving the bacon-wrapped-pork (doesn't that just sound good?), I went about carmelizing the rest of the apples. Since we possess no apple coring device, I went ahead sliced the apples and carmelized them in wedges instead of the rounds suggested.



This made for a beautiful presentation on the plate when placed atop the pork.



The flavor was very different than the last time we made it - sweeter somehow. We poured over how this could be for about an hour. Then we realized the last time we didn't add the optional cream! I think I prefer this dish minus the cream, but Michelle added some Sherry Vinegar to the final sauce and that helped to give it a little more of a sharper edge, allowing the distinct flavors already in the sauce to be experienced a little more clearly. This is absolutely a comforting meal with a thick, creamy sauce poured over apples and bacon wrapped pork. All in all, great dish for a cold winter evening.

The Champagne picked for this was the Louis Roederer Brut Premier Non Vintage. Since this a creamy, yeasty style of bubbles (but not as much as Pol Roger), it went well with the creamy style of the dish. There is still enough great acidity that comes through, working well with the apples, that this combination was very well matched.



Next up, it could be a number of things, but I think we might start to get into the more "interesting" sides of Country French Cooking soon.

Until then, we'll be doing shots of Calvados.

Cheers!