Tourterelle

Just north of Middlebury, VT on Rt. 7 used to be Roland’s Place. This past summer, a new establishment took over the location. Last night was a friend’s birthday, and eight of us met up to celebrate with some classic French cuisine. The menu is intersesting, with a section devoted to appetizers, one to crepes, an entree section, and then bistro fare. They have soup and salad, four different kinds of crepes, entrees like pork tenderloin, bouillabaisse and salmon, and also have steak frites and two different burgers.

Looking over the menu, I decided to start with an appetizer portion of the bouillabaisse and a glass of Clean Slate Riesling from Germany. For an entree, I chose one of the specials, a pan-seared cod served with quinoa, zucchini and squash.

The Riesling was pleasant, but was a little sweet for my taste and was not all that complex. The bouillabaisse came with scallops, mussels, “fin fish” (most likely cod as it was the special), and shrimp served in a tomato broth with a saffron aioli. The fish was all well cooked, very tender, but the tomato broth was a little heavier than I am used to for a bouillabaisse and that was not helped by the aioli. It is not easy to cook the different pieces of seafood correctly together, and I was very satisfied with how this was done, but the broth could have had a bit more in terms of the depth of flavor. In my opinion, more attention could have been paid to what the fish were swimming in.

The cod was simply seared, served on top of quinoa mixed with zuchini and squash. The dish was served with a sage brown butter sauce. I enjoyed the dish very much. The quinoa was simply prepared, but was cooked well. The zucchini and squash were cooked through and were certainly not overcooked, still holding on to some of their texture. The cod was cooked perfectly. It had an nice, hard sear on the outside, but was extraordinarily tender and as moist as any piece of sashimi. It almost melted in your mouth and was a joy to eat.

Overall, I was happy with the meal. The atmosphere was very pleasant. They have a nice bar, although I might like to see more than the three beers they have on tap with all of the local Vermont brews around. The tables were elegantly set, and the owners were attentive. Our waitress could have impressed me more as she made a couple of mistakes in my eyes, asking a couple of uncomfortable and unnecessary questions. In terms of the food, I was impressed by how well the ingredients were treated, the only thing lacking being the bouillabaisse broth. It is certainly worth trying out if you are in the area and looking for an upscale meal interspersed with bistro fare.

Emptying the Fridge with Friends

This past weekend, I invited a couple friends from college to make the 45 minute trip from Middlebury to Burlington for dinner at my house. They said that Wednesday worked great, but that they would have to find a car. They asked around, and come Wednesday afternoon, I hadn’t heard anything final. So I didn’t end up making a trip to the grocery store. At about 5 o’clock I got the final word that three of them were coming up after going for a short run. They would arrive around 7:00. I thought for a second that I might be in trouble, until I looked in the fridge. Working with a butcher leaves me with an abundance of meat products, so the proteins would not be a problem. I had two NY Strip steaks, three and a half chicken breasts, two house made veal and apple bratwursts, a half pound of shrimp, and two very fresh-looking whole mackerel.

The easy solution to me seemed to be the grill. I readied the meats for the grill, seasoning the steaks with salt and pepper, and the chicken with a dry rub consisting of salt, cayenne, garlic powder, cumin, coriander, and paprika. I cleaned up the shrimp, gutted the mackerel, and seasoned them with salt and pepper as well. Everything was ready for the grill, but I was still unsure about what else we would be eating. I looked around and found the kitchen staples: onions, garlic, and carrots. I also had bought a couple of fairly large leaks earlier that day.

So I started with chopping up a few strips of local applewood smoked bacon. I rendered the fat out of these in the pan, and removed the crispy bacon pieces. I diced up the onions and garlic. I sliced the carrots into thin rounds, and chopped up the leaks pretty finely so that they would become tender relatively quickly. I started sweating the onions, garlic, and carrots in the bacon fat and a bit of extra virgin olive oil. Shortly after, the leaks entered the pan as well along with a couple tablespoons of chopped fresh thyme. I seasoned as I went along, and threw some fettuccine in a pot of boiling water because I knew a group of cross country runners would need it…

The pasta was cooking and before I knew it, the sautee of the vegetables had turned into a braise (through the addition of about 2/3 of a bottle of a local Oktoberfest) with aspirations of turning into a hearty “condimento” for the pasta. While the alcohol cooked off, the pasta finished cooking. Well, I drained it just shy of being done as I wanted it to finish cooking in the sauce. The vegetables were now nice and tender, and the alcohol had cooked out of the beer. I added a tablespoon or two of honey, a handful of grated parmegiano reggiano, some salt and pepper, then added the fettuccine. I turned the pasta around in the pan, covering each strand with the beer, honey, cheese, and vegetables. After a minute, I removed everything to a large bowl, drizzled a few tablespoons of olive oil over the top, and the dish was finished.

My friends, realizing I had not used a recipe, decided they would fittingly name the dish "beer noodles"

While all of this was happening, I had filled the grill with a variety of meats. The chicken came off just cooked through and juicy. One steak I took off at medium rare, and the second I let cook a bit longer than i would have par the request of a guest. The bratwurst had started to release some of its juices into the grill, causing some excellent flare-ups to occur. They came off with the smaller chicken breast and the medium rare steak.

First of three plates of meat to come off the grill

The meat was all charred and delicious. I served the chicken with a homemade barbecue sauce I had in the fridge. The mackerel was flaky and flavorful; full of bones, but I didn’t mind eating around them. The pasta was excellent, with the crispy bacon bits served in a bowl on the side. My friends slowly but surely made their way through the absurdly large bowl of past, and by the time my parents were home, it was gone. The “beer noodles” definitely held the malty flavor of the beer, and this was complimented well by the sweetness of the honey and the fruitiness of the olive oil. An equally successful dish may have evolved from a local hard cider braise (holding the honey might be necessary in this case).

At the end of the night, we had each eaten beyond our heart’s content. My mother, returning from a trip the New York City for work, was very grateful to see empty space in the fridge. I guess I need to find ways to get friends over to the house more for dinner. It certainly helps diminish the ever growing stock of meat that we have, thanks to my work with Frank the butcher at Healthy Living Market.

How Easily a Day Off Turns Into a Lot of Work

Wednesdays are the only day of the week that I can truly consider a day off.  On every other day, I have either class or work. It becomes a long day when I have both.  Wednesdays are completely free, and what do I do with this free time? I cook a five-course meal for my family and two friends.

It started this morning with an idea to cook a little something new. Then I got going. I went to the store and came back with onions, shallot, herbs, carrots, chicken livers, two pork tenderloins, and some heavy cream. I have had a couple of different chicken liver mousse lately, and I wanted to put my own little spin on the dish. Not that I did anything too crazy, but I also thought that the mousse might be made a little more healthy than most. I generally like to try and eat a healthy diet, excluding occasions when I am around food that is new to me or something special. So in this puree, I wanted to try and include no cream, butter, or egg yolks. I also had to decide how I would cook the mousse. I could either puree the raw livers with other ingredients and cook them in the oven in a hot water bath, or I could cook everything and puree at that point.

I started by sauteeing shallots and garlic in olive oil, adding some thyme and the chicken liver, then deglazing with a good swirl of white wine when the livers were still a bit pink in the middle. Next I took and apple, the type is not too important, but I wanted one with a good bit of sweetness that was not too tart, and I sauteed half of it sliced in in a little olive oil. I added some garam masala, ground cardamom, a touch of ground clove, and some fresh nutmeg that I ground with a microplane. I let the apples get a little soft, then added a good bit of some port wine. I let this reduce some and let the alcohol cook off. I had two different mixtures, and they both were heading for the food processor. I pureed the mixture, adjusted for seasoning, and that was it. I was pretty surprised. The bit of sweetness from the apples, the flavor and acidity provided by the white wine and port, and the spices all complimented each other well. What was also important to me though, was that they complimented the flavor of the liver. They certainly did while also letting the flavor of the liver remain very much at the forefront. This was my first chicken liver mousse, and I know I will be making it again. My friends were a little skeptical, but both had more than one serving. My mom and step-dad were already fans of liver mousse and pate, and they were both pleasantly surprised. It was a good way to start the meal.

Next was a very simple yet flavorful carrot ginger soup. I wasn’t sure I was going to make this, but the carrots at the store looked great, and I knew I had some ginger at home. I started with some chopped onions and garlic sauteed in olive oil with grated ginger. I chopped and added the carrots and cooked then with the aromatics until a bit soft, then I added some chicken stock from the fridge. I let it all cook together for a while until the carrots had softened sufficiently, then pureed the whole thing with an immersion blender, and looked for some coconut milk. To my surprise, we had one can left. Even more surprising was the fact that when I opened the can, there was not milk but some kind of solid that I had to immediately throw away. So I added some whole milk and a couple squeezes of lime, and adjusted for seasoning. I have made the soup before, and it is fairly simple, but I knew that it would go well with the meal, and it went over very well at dinner.

In addition to this, we also had a simple salad of greens and some herbs. I put together a vinaigrette that went along with the other flavors of the meal. I minced some shallots and garlic, turned the garlic into a paste with some salt, and poured in some apple cider vinegar. I then streamed in some olive oil while whisking. I tasted, added salt and pepper, and tasted again. It was an okay dressing, but it needed something. So I walked to the pantry, looked around, came back with some honey, and the vinaigrette was much more complete. One of my friends ask for it for her birthday.

For the main course, I grilled some marinated pork tenderloin. The two pork tenderloins were marinated for a couple hours in shallots, garlic, apple cider vinegar, olive oil, and mint. The next step was very simple. I turned on the grill, waited for it to heat up, and then put the tenderloins on the hottest part of the grill. I grilled them on all four sides until it was finished, a nice rosy pink in the center. I served this with an apple compote of some sort. I diced up a couple apples and threw them in with sauteed onions and garlic and put in a pinch of garam masala. I added a bit of honey and apple cider vinegar then let the apples cook down a bit. When it reached the consistency I wanted, some of the sugars had come out to bring it together, but I did not let the apples turn to mush. Overall, the pork with apple compote was what I was looking for, and it may have been even better when we added some of the vinaigrette to the equation.

For the last course, I made a vanilla custard that I had done before, but I added something that I knew at least one of my friends would love. For the custard, I whisked half a cup of sugar with six egg yolks until it became a light yellow and brought a quart of heavy cream to a boil with the seeds of a vanilla pod, also throwing the pod in to be removed a bit later. I added some sugar to the heavy cream, and when it came to a boil, I removed it from the heat. After it cooled for a few minutes, I slowly introduced the cream to the egg yolks and sugar as to not scramble the eggs. I then poured the mixture into a pan sitting in a hot water bath, and cooked it at 325 for 45 minutes. This was all done in the early afternoon, as I had to put this into the fridge to set for a couple hours. During these couple of hours, I took a can of sweetened condensed milk and boiled it in a pasta pot. After two and a half to three hours… dulce de leche. My friend’s Argentine grandmother would take cream and sugar and boil it down for a couple of hours, and he had great memories of eating it many different ways, so I wanted to do it for him in my own way. Boiling the can like I did is pretty much the equivalent of what my friend’s grandmother had done minus the cooking down of the liquid. In the can, it is already “condensed” and the sugar is added for you. So maybe some would consider it cheating, but I like to consider it a different means to achieve the same end. I had never done it before, but boiling a can in water was easy enough to do. When all of the other food was finished, I left the table for a minutes and opened the can. Inside was a dark, caramel colored syrup. I tasted it. It was sweet with a great caramel flavor, and I knew it would be perfect over the now completely set vanilla custard. I spooned out the dulce de leche and spread it on top of the custard. It was a big hit at the table, and I guess a new dessert that I will have to make in the future.

Overall, it was a long day, but a very successful and rewarding evening. When the end of the day came, I was tired, but I enjoyed the time spent with my friends. As always, it felt great making food for others. It’s fun to play around with new and old recipes, and seeing the fruits of your labor makes it all that much better.

Improv Night

As I was leaving work at 8pm tonight, I knew I wanted to make dinner, but I also knew that I wanted it quickly. The cafe had leftover brown rice and a couple veggie dishes that I grabbed. Buying a couple things for breakfast on the way out, I did a little impulse shopping in the Asian aisle, taking home some spicy kimchi and sake.

When I got to my home kitchen, I instantly grabbed onions, garlic, and ginger. I decided to go with the instincts that helped guide my impulses in the store. I chopped the aromatic vegetables and threw them in the pan with some oil. After a quick sweat, I put in a good portion of kimchi. Next came the sake, deglazing the pan and providing some nice acidity to the dish. I then added a touch of soy sauce and the brown rice I had from work. Thinking about the protein, I had poached some tuna in oil the night before, and I thought that this would be perfect. After the healthy dose of tuna and rice had heated through, I took the pan off the heat and added some chopped scallions and cilantro.

Overall, a successful dish. It was just what I was in the mood for. Adding the sake and the kimchi was ultimately inspired by the white wine, red pepper flakes, and tomato of a traditional Italian pasta sauce. The cilantro replaced some julienned basil, and the scallions, soy sauce, and ginger helped round out the flavor that I was looking for.

After a long day including a nine mile running workout in the morning and 8 hours of work, I was tired. Some friends of mine look at me like I am crazy when I tell them I am going home to cook dinner. I might hear something like, “Isn’t that what delivery and take-out are for?” But ultimately, I know what I want to eat, and I have fun making it. This is what I like to do. It excites me to not know what I am making even while I am making it. When the dish turns out well, that is all the more exciting. Maybe I can make it again, or maybe next time another idea will come to mind, making the dish even better.

Veal Tongue Ravioli

The other day, I was at work and we were taking apart whole veal. The delivery came in the day before, and like usual, there was a little bag of goodies that came with it. This included the liver, heart, and tongue. My boss was looking for what to do with the various parts, and to my luck, I came home that evening with a fresh veal tongue. In addition to this, the most recent addition to my kitchen at home is a pasta maker. So, fresh pasta and tongue? Why not pulled veal tongue ravioli? My mom and I actually worked together in coming up with the idea for the final product. Two days later, I got out of work at four instead of the usual eight o’clock. My mom was going to make a fresh pasta dough while I was at work. In the dough was flour, egg yolks, salt, and a touch of milk to bring it to the right consistency.

The night before, I had boiled the veal tongue for a couple hours in salted water with some vinegar, onions, garlic, bay leaf, and black peppercorns. When I took it out of the pot, I removed the thick skin and pulled the meat apart with two forks. So we had pulled veal tongue, and I was to make a filling with it.

I didn’t have the easiest time with this, but as dinner came closer, so did the time to make the decision. I had taken home some watercress, almonds, and oranges from the store. With what we already had in the kitchen, I began to make the filling. I started with chopped onions and garlic in some olive oil on the stove, and I toasted the almonds. When the onions and garlic became translucent, I added some white wine to the pan, chopped the watercress, and then put the watercress in to start wilting. This happened quickly, and I added the toasted almonds that I had chopped finely. I threw in some freshly grated parmigiano reggiano, and the filling was done.

After my mom and I had rolled out the pasta dough into sheets and formed the ravioli, I wanted to come up with a sauce that would come together quickly. I had those oranges that I picked up at the store, and in my mind, this would add some nice sweetness and acidity to a butter sauce. So I chopped some shallots and added them to a pan with a little bit of olive oil and a clove of garlic (smashed and ready to be removed). I just wanted to sweat the shallots a little bit with some orange zest that I grated into in the pan. When the shallots were translucent, I added some white wine and the juice of the orange. I cooked everything for a minute or two to let the alcohol in the wine cook out. When I felt this had happened, and the liquid had just barely reduced, I added some salt and pepper and removed it from the heat. I added a few pads of butter, some chopped parsley and basil and the sauce was done.

While I was making the sauce, the ravioli had been cooked. My mom drained the ravioli, and I threw them in with sauce. The dish was complete, and we would now be able to see if the work we had put in was worth the time. There were four of us at dinner, and none of us had ever had anything like this. I guess my family and friends trusted me and the fact that the flavors I would come up with would work…? Would the veal tongue, watercress, and almonds work with the orange beurre blanc?

We sat down at the dinner table, and after we had each finished a bit of salad to start off the meal, we served ourselves homemade veal tongue ravioli. I dug right in while also being quite aware of the reactions around the table. To my delight, everyone was pleased. They seemed intrigued by the new flavor pairings they were experiencing. This is something I love to see when people taste my food. The veal tongue was a little more delicate than beef tongue, and this was entirely necessary in it’s combination with the bit of peppery watercress, the parmigiano reggiano, and the beurre blanc.

I was excited. Taking a risk in doing something that I had not only never made myself, but had also never seen anywhere, is part of what I love about cooking. That and being able to eat it with family and friends when you are done. The fresh pasta was great. The filling had a great meat flavor with some texture and nuttiness from the toasted cashews. The citrus beurre blanc brought it all together. People continually pester me to write down recipes when I come up with them, and I have actually tried to do so more. It is certainly a good idea, but I would hate to get too comfortable breaking out the trusted recipes when I cook at home. If I were to reach this unfortunate state, I would no longer come up with new and interesting meals. To me, there is almost nothing more fun than cooking without an agenda. As long as you have a stocked pantry and are willing to experiment a little, the combinations you can end up with in food are endless.

10/27/2009

Pio Pio in New York, Upper West Side

So I went here the other night with a couple of friends (including a certain someone who may or may not also write on this blog). It’s a Peruvian place. I had heard a little bit about it, and one of the friends I was going with is a fan. We had a reservation for 8 o’clock on a Saturday night. When we arrived, they told us they would not be able to sit us until 8:30… So we walked up the block and came back a little less than ten minutes before they told us, and they had seated someone in our place already. Then, they told us that we were next on the list. This was about 4 minutes before they sat another group of four (it wasn’t us) at a table.

So this was not a good way to start, but I went to the bar and ordered an appetizer because my friend told me I should. I ordered a purple corn tamale. We were sat by the time I got it, so we shared it right before we ordered. The tamale was not that great. It was a little salty and lacked good flavor. It was a tamale with chicken too and there were two little bits of shredded chicken in it, so it was a little lacking in that regard as well.

When we ordered at the table, we got the chicken pio, a whole chicken marinated and roasted. It is a pretty good roast chicken. It was tender, not the most tender I have had, but pretty good. We also ordered the Camarones Cuzco, which was a shrimp dish with garlic and white wine and a creamy sauce served with yellow rice.  The shrimp was decent. The sauce was not too memorable, but was well seasoned and complemented the shrimp fairly well. My favorite dish of the night was the Arroz con Mariscos. This was a seafood dish with scallops, octopus, mussels, shrimp, and squid. It is served with a red sauce over rice. The seasfood was all cooked well, especially the scallops. Thery were very tender. The sauce went with the dish while allowing the seafood to shine. The rice was cooked  and seasoned well. We also had the sangria. It was pretty good, although may have been a little sweet formy taste. Overall, the food was pretty good. Nothing was outstanding, but nothing flopped (I wouldn’t call the tamale a flop, but I would not order it again). By far the most upsetting thing about the meal were the birthday celebrations. When someone has a birthday here, they have a recording that they blast in the dining room at an almost deafening volume. It is impossible to ignore. I noticed others in the dining room with their fingers in their ears. There were four birthdays…!

09/29/2009

Dan adds: Don’t forget we ordered a big pitcher of sangria for the table, and we all liked it very much. Also, in my humble amateur opinion, I thought all of the food was fabulous. You seem to have been more lukewarm about it, though. I’d go back.

American Bounty Restaurant at the CIA in Hyde Park, NY

I came here on a visit and a tour the other day. Besides being very impressed by the school and everything it has to offer, I was pleasantly surprised to get a 12:30 reservation for lunch just before noon. It was the last table, so we got lucky. The restaurant was great. Attention to detail is not something that is overlooked. Everything was very nice and professional, but not stuffy or uncomfortable in any way. Our server was great. Extremely nice and had a lot to say about the food. One thing about having servers who also spend time in the kitchen, they are very interested in the food and know a lot about it.

I started with a piece of their honey wheat bread, a melon and sweet onion gazpacho, and a blackberry spritzer, which was the drink special. The bread was excellent. It had a great texture on the inside, and had a good crust. The melon and onion gazpacho was fantastic. Cool and refreshing, the flavor of the melon was what really shined. The spritzer was also great. There was a hint of blackberry, blackberry liqueur, and prosecco in the cocktail. Every ingredient stood out. Prosecco is great alone, and that made up most of the cocktail, with the blackberry liqueuer and juice adding a good sweet flavor.

For an entree, I had a pan roasted cod fillet served with a couscous with peas and raisins and a red tomatillo sauce. The couscous was light and fluffy, well seasoned with a hint of curry flavor. The fish was light and flazy and cooked perfectly. The sauce was excellent. It had an almost roasted red peppery flavor with a light smoky flavor that reminded me a chipotle peppers. For dessert, I had a trio of sorbets (mano, lemon, and raspberry). They were great. Not too icy. Very smooth texture, and the flavors in each were all outstanding. I had a great time here, and I am excited to get back, as well as try what else the Culinary Institute has to offer. And, of course, to maybe end up there as a student.

08/17/2009