Pilaz de Riz Traditionel au Fenouil / Traditional Rice Pilaf with Fennel

I’ve avoided fennel in the past. The mention of a licorice-flavor was enough to turn me off without even giving it a chance. Black licorice ranks right up there with artificial banana as one of my least favorite flavors. I’m happy to report that this project opened me up to the idea of using fennel in the future. We even added it to our favorite olive oil, red pepper flake and garlic pasta. It’s always nice to have new vegetables to use in the kitchen.



The pilaf starts with sautéing fennel with onions until they caramelize. The rice is toasted, and fennel seeds and saffron are added. Cook the mixture in chicken broth until the rice is cooked through and fluffy.



We sometimes struggle with getting rice to cook all the way through at our house. I suspect it has something to do with atmospheric pressure, though it might also be attributed to our stove’s difficulty in functioning at low level temperatures. Rice will go ages without cooking through, sometimes to the tune of an hour and a half. The rice and liquid mixture will be hot, and there will be steam, but the rice doesn’t absorb the liquid. It’s probably the stove itself, as I can transfer to our rice cooker and be okay. I need to get better at remembering to transfer the contents to the cooker instead of cursing the rice when it’s not ready, but I never seem to remember until I’m muttering obscenities. Oh well. The end product was a little crunchy, but I’d be happy to try it again. It tasted great for lunch the next day with some of the chicken’s sauce spooned over the top. The only minor quibble is with the fennel seeds. The crunch is a little too much like the sound of squishing a bug, with a little pop in your mouth. I might eliminate them if we were to try it again.



The subtle flavor of the saffron and fennel complimented the Domaine Drouhin Arthur Chardonnay we paired with dinner, and the pilaf was a great match with the Chicken with Forty Garlic Cloves. I really enjoyed the combination of the three. Overall, the flavor of the pilaf was delicious, and I’ll be sure to use the rice cooker next time so that it gets done in the suggested time frame. And we’ll excitedly use the fennel Mom’s planting in the garden this year.

Gâteau au Chocolat Lyonnaise / Light Chocolate Cake

We had a busy cooking night last Sunday--four recipes in one evening! Scott made a cheese brioche. We had chicken with forty garlic cloves and fennel rice pilaf for dinner, followed by a light chocolate cake for dessert. Why is dessert first in the posting? Well, because Scott made the bread and has to give his observations himself, and because of this:



Yep, I managed to turn on the wrong burner on the stove and melted part of the cutting board the bread was sitting on when I melted the chocolate for the cake. The resulting mess meant that we had to adjust the cooking method for the chicken. I don't often make mistakes that stupid, but Scott was kind about it. After a lot elbow grease and a few minutes on high a few days later to burn off the bits I couldn't get off, th burner is back to normal. The best part was that I told myself to move the cutting board maybe 3 minutes before I turned on the burner.

Back to the cake: This definitely is not your typical chocolate cake. It does not have any flour to it. Rather, the whipped egg whites and chocolate are held together by potato starch--something I've never cooked with--and given heft with ground almonds. I believe there is at least one other recipe in the book that requires potato starch. As for the almonds, I opted for the easy way out and purchased Bob's Red Mill's almond meal. I've heard that you have to be careful when blending nuts to avoid making butter and thought I'd make life easier for myself. Both the potato starch and almond meal are sitting in the freezer awaiting their next recipe.









Much like the soufflé, egg whites are folded with a chocolate mixture and baked, this time in a spring form pan. This is definitely not a soufflé though. Willan suggests that the cake is best when slightly underdone and gives a caveat that it is easy to go too far. I confess that I did not watch closely enough and over-baked. The resulting cake is cooled and served with a crème Chantilly.



The resulting cake was very crumbly. The almond meal gave it an interesting texture and flavor. Perhaps it would have been better if it had still been creamy in the center, but it seemed like it went from goopy in the middle to dry. I may attempt it again on a night with fewer distractions. The cake is supposed to firm up if it is left for a day or so, and it can keep in an airtight container for 3 days. We had leftovers the next night when our friend, Leil, came over for a little wine and The Hangover. The almond flavor was a bit more pronounced, and the crème Chantilly helped with the dryness. The description of the cake in the introductory paragraph says it can be thought of as resembling a chocolate mousse with a crisp crust. If that is the case, I think I may attempt it again.

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?