cassoulet

You cant go wrong with Jennifer McLagan: This is her cassoulet, and the verdict tonight was that it soars above others. Of course, with a book entitled Fat, what could go wrong?

Jennifer's recipe for duck confit, while not pictured, is flawless and important. That process began days ago, leading to pork skin and then the skinned duck confit layered upon Great Northern beans, having been cooked with thyme, parsley, cloves, and leeks (a subsitution in the recipe for onions):

Atop that was lamb and pork belly, and another layer of beans. The beans are actually a mix of the aforementioned beans with cooked tomatoes, all of which forms another layer (which is actually less wet than the photo suggests). The beans are studded with andouille sausage:
 

Baked for three hours with bread crumbs and chopped duck confit skin (another modification: I thought that the skin would slowly render into the crust, and it works!), it becomes this:

I served this with kale stewed in chicken stock. As it is so rich, this was preceeded by fermented beets, raw fennel, and a mixture of olives. 

We ate this with the kale, garnished with parsley and Tierenteyn mustard. The mustard and parsley pulls it all together. 

With such a rich meal, a following salad course of endives and watercress in lime, olive oil, and pistachio oil made way for Miss Fat's fabulous apple cake with whipped cream and a fantastic walnut topping.

fresh lima beans

Growing up, my mother always shuddered in horror as my father would eat lima beans: she would recall clandestinely feeding them to her dog as a kid, only to be found out when the dog licked them clean of butter and left them in a pile under the table. Consequently, I never ate them.

And then I saw fresh lima beans at the farmer's market, and decided to give them a try. I cooked them in a reduced garlic-leek-chile de árbol broth with kale and ate them with a few pine nuts scattered on top. They were tender, creamy, and delicious. They are worth a second chance.

a simple salad.

This salad was somewhat inspired by the marinated kale salad at Urban Forage in SF; I've made one that seemed close tho theirs: kale marinated in vinegar and oil until it loses a bit of its crunch. This one here has no oil during the marination process and uses little vinegar. I cut red mustard greens and kale in chiffonade and julienned carrots. That was tossed with salt and a bit of ume vinegar (brown rice or cider or a good red wine one would work as well). That was pressed in the tsukemono ki for three hours (any container with a weight would do). N.b.: this moved along well as it's 75º out. I then squeezed out any excess moisture and drizzed the salad with sesame oil and garnished it with pressed bean curd and roasted black sesame seeds. The mustard greens have so much flavor that the salad needs nothing else.

a(n anti-) celebration

Once there was a time. And I posted this. I had made the decision to become a baker. And I took it very seriously, reading Calvel, Hamelman, Kaplan; I made more bread at home, I came to have intuitive understanding of bread.

And then, this winter, I've had more respiratory illnesses and flus than I can remember in a winter. Allergies? But I can eat wheat. Allergy to yeast? Then I'd never be able to eat anything fermented. Yesterday I was preliminary diagnosed with "Baker's Asthma," wherein I have asthma somehow triggered by all the fine particulate that I inahale on a daily basis (even with a mask for the last few months). And all that comes with an inhaler that "may increase the risk of asthma-related death."

Whoa.

So I needed something (and have been craving red meat, maybe I don't eat enough kale?), and I needed to recognize the comfort of knowing — after months — what is wrong, and I need comfort in knowing that I need a major change in my life.

And there she is — Julia Child — waiting to comfort me.

Biftek sauté au beurre — Pommes Anna — Champignons sauté à la Bordelaise — Chou frisé à la vapeur

First, these beech mushrooms need to be noted. Them come white, as picture, or this beautiful mottled brown. And are just wonderful.

So, pan-broiled steak : a sirloin seared in butter (with some of the rendered fat I cut off), mushrooms sautéed and tossed with scallions, garlic, breadcrumbs and wine (so 1960, but really f—ing good), Pommes Anna, and kale, steamed and tossed with some raw red wine vinegar. Even better, I had everything except the steak (a mere 8oz) and wine (a great Syrah-Grenache for seven bucks).


And next? (anyone want to foot the capital for pickle bar?)

autumnal

I've been thinking about parsnip pie — I'd like to make one (or some) for Thanksgiving — so I gave it a go last night. Two medium parsnips were roasted with salt and olive oil and then puréed with a clove of garlic, two eggs, milk and pepper. I baked them in small tart shells made with a sage-thyme crust.

And voilà... they were quite good. Not as cute as I'd hoped, but I thought quite delicious.

Then there was homemade pasta with sautéed purple cauliflower, purple kale and bâtons of sunchoke. Last week I made mashed sunchokes — this was a much better use of the sunchoke.


And then there was an ad hoc bosc pear crisp (we were out of apples): simple, very very good — and I tried whipping some crème fraîche that I had made and it was incredibly good. Tangy, not sugary-sweet like whipped cream. Really quite delicious.

tomato season

It's that time of the year when there's so much food that's fresh and local that it's overwhelming. Part of this is that you know that in a month it could be snowing.

Between this week and last I've bought and used forty pounds of plum tomatoes, twelve pounds of cabbage and all sorts of other wonderful things. The tomatoes ended up as a tomato tarte tatin (no photo! and it was the best I've made!), twenty-two pints of canned tomatoes and probably twelve or thirteen pints of sauce (we had a housewarming that involved the tatin and lots of sauce with fresh pasta and olives). Best of all, forty pounds of fresh local tomatoes for a total of $25.

Sauerkraut is fermenting in the back room in what was the best birthday present ever: a two gallon "bluebird" crock. All twelve pounds of cabbage made it in there and it's now covered in it's own brine. (I only added salt, juniper berries and caraway seeds). It doesn't taste like it's there yet, but it's only been a week.

And that delicious savoy cabbage in the photo made it into a great Deborah Madison creation: savoy cabbage sautéed with lacinato kale and white beans. Very very satisfying.

kimchi or pickle?

So I started with this:

And ended up with this:

Part pickle, part kimchi: I had some daikon left over from the last batch of kimchi, and a handful of Japanese cucumbers, so I thought to do a summery kimchi. Opps -- the cucumbers had gone off, and I was all prepared. I gathered a half dozen ripe lemon cukes from the garden. And there you have it. It's very tangy, I think from the sweetness of the cucumbers, and it has a nice bite. It does have pepper, a good handful of Thai peppers, but those won't turn it red. (I got some Korean pepper at Kim's Market in Hadley for a more traditional batch of kimchi with napa cabbage).


And then a few days ago I made spaghetti squash with parsley and kale from the garden and kale. That with some vegetarian bratwurst that weren't too bad. It was quite good, but even better the next next mixed with ricotta. Mnnnn.


Lastly, I've decided that natto and brown rice is even more satisfying than off-brand Cheerio's and raw milk for breakfast.

sans chouriço

I'm trying to make kale soup tonight... kale, potatoes, garlic, leek, onion, white beans and chorizo (etc.)-- too far from New Bedford here to get the real thing. Part of the lure was thinking of grilled chouriço this summer at A. & A.'s wedding (a ceremony on the sea, but with an amazing chouriço and karaoke after party). It's in it's last stages, and the chorizo is yummy and the broth rich, ready to be soaked up in bread...

I made my second load of Bittman's NYT "No Knead Bread" (interestingly, same title as my first bread from a Home & Garden red+white checkered kids' cookbook that got this whole thing started) today, this time with 1/3 whole wheat flour. 3 cups flour, 1 5/8 cups water, 1/4 tsp yeast and salt... a wet, sticky dough, rising for 24 hours (Bittman suggests 12-18, but 24 seems perfect), then cooking in an oval 3 1/2 qt dutch oven (I have no idea why he suggests a 6-8 qt -- it'd be flat). Nonetheless, it's the best bread ever. Great crust, soft inside, perfect structure.

Poilâne, you're dead and I'm far I way.

On another note, I'd been thinking of coq au vin, and went to a dinner of exactly that Saturday night. It's really good. Falls off the bone. That, plus wine and bacon, just might be ecstasy. A kale-potato galette was the side, and strawberries and raspberries in lemon juice fiinished us off. Damn fine dinner.