Tiny Birds for Thanksgiving 2011

We give thanks for the leisure to explore culinary experiments while taking care of necessary tasks like putting the garden and pond to bed for the winter.  We give thanks for small birds who provide tasty morsels of flavor.  This Thanksgiving dinner, our centerpiece was the mighty squab, the anti-turkey.

And the method, in order to push our technological limits, sous-vide, based on some suggestions from Thomas Keller.
First, the breast was separated from the body of the squab.

The remainder of the squab (back, wings, etc.) went into the stockpot for stock and then sauce.

First the pieces were browned, then vegetables added, and they all simmered with water.

Meanwhile, the legs were placed in a sealable bag with some olive oil, and then sealed in the vacuum sealer.

Then they were placed in the pot of simmering water, with an ideal constant temperature of 69 degrees Celsius, and there they floated for two hours.

The ingenious temperature monitoring system uses an instant-read thermometer stuck through a plastic cork, floated on a Gladware plastic top.

Meanwhile, we prepared the acorn squash velouté, recipe courtesy of Hannah and Joshua, acorn squash courtesy of the Moore Family Farms, moldering in the wine cellar.  Time to use it up.  There must be a better way to peel acorn squash, and in any event, all the typos here are due to my slicing off a bit of my middle finger trying to peel them.

Once peeled, they are cubed, and added to some sauteed onion along with minced ginger.  Saute and then simmer them in chicken stock for about 30 minutes.

 and then blend with the immersion blender from last Christmas.

Add some tomato paste, salt, and cayenne, and work on the rest of the dinner.

For the squab breast, we decided to flavor it (in the absence of truffles, foie gras, and other requirements of the Keller recipe) with olive oil infused with star anise, coriander pods, and peppercorns.  The reserved olive oil was added to the breast piece in its packet, and then vacuum sealed.

(This is an action shot. Imagine you can hear the machine sucking all the air out of the bag.)
Meanwhile, the legs, having been in their 68-69 degree C. bath for two hours, are removed and placed in ice water.

The breast goes in for 40 minutes (Keller said 30, we left it a little longer, maybe 5 minutes too long?) Remove from the water bath and go on to the next steps.

At the end, the legs and the breast will be briefly sauteed in the flavored olive oil, and topped with sauce.
For the sauce, we cooked up the squab livers, and sieved them.

We also sautéed some chanterelles that we had bought at the Lincoln Park Whole Foods on Wednesday morning.

For the rest of the vegetables and side dishes, we made roasted sweet potatoes (Cary's Garden) with fried sage (a recipe from a 2008 Gourmet: cut the potatoes into 1/2 inch rounds, marinate in garlic-infused olive oil, roast in a single layer at 450 degrees F. for 20-30 minutes, and top with the sage - the last of the year from our herb garden); buttered Brussels sprouts (Blue Moon); and puree of parsnips (Whole Foods) (recipe from Simon Hopkinson: cook the parsnips in milk, pass through a food mill, and whisk in the milk, butter, and some mustard).  Here is another action shot of the whisking:

Our Thanksgiving meal is just about ready.  First, the soup, with its garnish of sauteed cumin seed and mustard seed.  We served it with a South African chenin blanc.

Then the main course:  the squab sliced and sauced with the chanterelle-liver sauce:

The trio of vegetables:

We served this with a 2005 Steltzner (Stag's Leap, Napa) cabernet sauvignon.  Not sure what is the big deal with these fancy and pricey Napa wines.

Instead of the usual Thanksgiving post-prandial walk, we opted instead for an anti-capitalist movie at the Art Theater, Margin Call, by a new director, J.C. Chandor, with Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, and Demi Moore.

Then back home for dessert, persimmon pudding (recipe from Chez Panisse fruit; persimmons from Cary's Garden).

R. made this while I was away conventioneering in DC.  Here is the pulp that goes into the pudding:

And the final presentation, in all its gooey glory, with Prairie Fruits goat milk gelato on the side.

A sweet and fitting end to a day spent partly outdoors, filling the bird feeders, and fertilizing the lawn for spring; and partly indoors in the kitchen with all the enticing smells.  Here we are on the sunny day after Thankgiving. Let it snow, if it must!

Return of the Giant Puffball

Last year about this time, when taking some compost to the pile in the back corner of our lot, I noticed what looked like a 16-inch softball thrown over the fence.  On closer inspection, though, it was a mycological growth of some sort.  Some research on the internet and looking through our mushroom hunter's handbook, we were pretty sure it was a Giant Puffball.  We peeled it, cut it up into pieces, and sauteed it, and it was pretty tasty!
So naturally, this year we have been keeping our eye out for the return of the puffball, with no luck until yesterday, when R found this beauty in the back, beneath the maple trees and the burning bush.  A week ago, there had been NOTHING there.

Last year's model had not yet split its top, and was more spherical.  This baby weighs about 1 pound and 4 ounces.  We decided to turn half of it into mushroom soup and the other half into breaded puffball slices.  Our own hundred-yard found dinner.
For the preparation, it is necessary first to peel the puffball.  This is pretty easy where the skin is thick, toward to bottom of the ball, and it peels away by hand.

At this point, a paring knife can finish the job. (The little black knobby thing on its left is the point of attachment to the earth.)
Once peeled, you can cut it up any old way.  It has the texture and feel of styrofoam, which is pretty weird.  (Maybe that's where the chemists got their idea.)
First we sliced the ends, which would go into the soup.

Our soup would be Julia Child's cream of mushroom soup, from Mastering, volume 1.  We know it well and it's delicious, so using the puffball in this way would provide a controlled experiment.  We sautéed some minced onion in butter, then added flour (equal amount to the flour), and cooked the roux for a couple of minutes, then added boiling chicken stock, and once smooth, added the mushroom pieces, some thyme, bay leaf, and parsley, to simmer for about 20 minutes.

They do float, just like chunks of styrofoam (or tofu?).  Meanwhile, we sliced the rest of the reserved pieces into thin slices, as we would the mushroom caps in the original recipe.  These we sauteed, covered, in some butter.  Puffballs, it seems, are more like eggplants - they really absorb the butter and we needed to add quite a lot more.

Eventually, they cooked down. We strained the stock, added the mushroom pieces, made a mixture of cream and egg yolk, and poured some of the stock into that, then the whole thing back in the pot and simmered a little more.

Then we served in soup plates.

The flavor is definitely and delicately mushroom; the texture of the mushroom pieces not as dense as with champignons.  But very delicious indeed.

For our main course, we decided to take 3/4-inch slices of puffball, and bread them using egg and panko.

Now the slices look like some bad industrial cheese as well as styrofoam.  In order to fit them better into our big sauté pan, we decided to cut them into half moons.  Here they are, breaded, and ready for the pan.  The yellow, of course, comes from those free-range eggs from the Moore Family Farm, with their colorful diet of insects.

We sautéed them in a mixture of peanut oil and butter, and kept adding more butter.  As they cook, the puffball inside gets softer and sags a little.  Because of the breading, you can't cook it too fast or too long, so our last year's effort produced more tender cooked mushrooms.  This method adds the crunch of the breading.  They looked and cooked a little like French toast.

Inside the cooked cutlet, you can still see the styrofoam effect:

Or does it look like chicken fillet?

We served our puffball cutlets with beet greens braised with sautéed pancetta, garlic, and diced red onion. We had gotten two bunches of beets from Bracken's Farm at our farmer's market:  the greens were especially fresh and gorgeous looking.  In the morning, we roasted the beetroot, and reserved the greens for dinner.  Here we followed a method from the Chez Panisse vegetable cookbook (who use dried currants instead of pancetta), separating the leaves from the stems, chopping the stems into 1-inch pieces, and the leaves into a chiffonade.  We added the greens to the sauteed pancetta, and cooked covered until tender.  We finished with a little balsamic vinegar.  I would say that I preferred last year's method for the puffball, with parsley and garlic.  You might add some new potatoes, too.  But the cutlets went well with the delicious greens.

During the earlier part of the day, we made another batch of tomato sauce.  The plum tomatoes from Blue Moon Farm have been fabulous this year:  deep red and meaty.  We've been buying 4-8 pounds a week and making various sauces:  mostly Marcella Hazan's Tomato Sauce I from her first cookbook, but also Patricia Wells's rustic roasted tomato sauce from her Vegetables book (tomatoes, oregano, salt - nothing more - roasted until soft and then pureed in the food processor).  This week we tried the roasted tomato sauce from the Chez Panisse Vegetable cookbook, which is about half tomatoes, and half sliced onions, leeks, carrots, and garlic, along with some olive oil.

Here is our freezer ready for winter!

(That's last Christmas's squash soup on the top right in the big container next to two containers of yellow tomato sauce [Hazan I], brandade on the middle left, and swiss chard risotto on the bottom right on top of the Russkii Standart vodka bottle.  The rest is pretty much tomatoes and nothing but.)

Tomatoville

It is high season for tomatoes, and they are better this year than any time in modern memory.  The Romas are meaty and deep red, and all the other varieties from Cosmonaut Volkov to striped Germans are also big and tasty.  We have been making and freezing sauce every weekend, and making other delicious tomato dishes too.

Last week we made Granny's Tomato Tart.

The following recipe makes two of these tarts. We made only one.

For the crust:
2-1/2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
3 tablespoons semolina flour
1 tsp salt
12 Tb (1-1/2 sticks) cold unsalted butter cut into 1/4 inch pieces
3 Tb chilled vegetable shortening
For the topping:
2 Tb Dijon mustard
8 oz Gruyère cheese, coarsely grated
12 to 14 ripe plum tomatoes, ends trimmed, very thinly sliced into rounds (we used three!)

1 tsp herbes de Provence (we used fresh thyme)
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp salt or to taste

1. For tart crust: In food processor, combine flours and salt. Pulse to combine. Add butter and shortening and pulse 5 seconds.  Pulsing, add 4-8 Tb ice water, until holds together.  Shape into a ball.
2. For two tarts, divide in half and wrap each in plastic wrap, and press into disks. For one tart, wrap in plastic in one disk. Refrigerate at least 30 minutes before rolling out.
3. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Roll out dough into two 9-inch disks or one 10-by-16 inch rectangle 1/8-inch thick.  Transfer to a baking sheet and crimp edges 1/2 inch high.

Refrigerate for 30 minutes. Prick all over with a fork. Place parchment paper or foil on top and weigh down with pie weights or dried beans.

Bake until lightly brown, 10-15 minutes. Remove foil and weights from dough, and continue to bake until golden brown, about 15 minutes.

Remove from oven and set aside to cool. Do not turn off oven.
4. For topping.

Spread mustard thinly over bottom of cooled shell. Scatter evenly with cheese.

Arrange tomatoes in even, slightly overlapping rows. Sprinkle with herbs, and season to taste with pepper. Bake until tomatoes begin to shrivel and cheese melts, 10-12 minutes. Sprinkle with salt, serve hot or at room temperature.  Cut into wedges and enjoy.  Also good as leftovers.

This afternoon we made a different tomato lunch (and made it again the next day.)

Pan Bagnat with Grilled Peppers and Basil Vinaigrette

For the peppers:
2 large red bell peppers - quartered, seeds and veins removed
1 tsp olive oil

For the vinaigrette:
12 large basil leaves
2 Tb aged Balsamic or red wine vinegar
6 Tb extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove peeled
1/4 tsp sea salt
freshly ground pepper
1 half oven dried tomato chopped coarsely (secret ingredient!)

For the sandwich:
1/3 cup pitted Niçoise or Kalamata olives coarsely chopped
1 Tb capers drained and chopped
4 baguette or ciabatta rolls (or ciabatta loaf)
4 scallions - white and pale green part cut into 1/8" slices
4 hard-boiled eggs - shelled and cut into 1/4" slices
2 medium ripe tomatoes - cut into 1/4 inch slices
1/2 seedless cucumber - cut into 1/8" slices (can be omitted for cucumber-phobes)
sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Preheat broiler (or grill).
Brush the peppers with oil and set aside on a tray. When grill is ready, place them skin side to the heat and grill until charred, about 4-5 minutes. Turn peppers and grill on other side until well charred, 3-4 minutes. Transfer to a tray and set aside.

For the vinaigrette: place all ingredients in food processor and process until basil is very finely chopped and vinaigrette is smooth. Transfer to a bowl and set aside.

In a small bowl mix the olive and capers.

Cut rolls in half. Light toast cut side under broiler or on grill. Drizzle both sides of the rolls with two thirds of the vinaigrette to soak the bread. (This is the secret ingredient!)  Top the bottom of each roll with the grilled peppers, olive/caper mixture, scallions, and egg slices.  Drizzle with the remainder of the vinaigrette. Top with tomato and cucumber slices. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Finish with the top-side of the rolls, press slightly with your hand, and cut sandwiches in half.

Serve with a leafy green salad with mustard vinaigrette (optional).  Also plenty of napkins (required).

Makes 4 sandwiches.

Market Baskets and Old Favorites

We returned home just in time for the monster heat wave, but our local Urbana farmers' market was in full swing despite the wet and cold spring.  Our larder, freezer, wine cellar, and refrigerator were all bare, and we've been working hard to fill them up.  We're having fun doing kinds of cooking again that was not feasible in London: especially barbecue, pizza, and pasta.  Of course, we miss the fish.
One of the new vegetables to appear in our CSA share and at the market this year: radicchio!  The Moore's have been growing them for the first time, and while Dianne says they are unpredictable (some form heads and others refuse to), they are great on the grill, cut up into quarters, whether marinated in olive oil alone, or balsamic and garlic and olive oil.
Here is the little beauty, raw and ready for grilling:

And here it is grilled (imagine the aroma):

Then we used it for pizza.  The basic idea for these toppings came from the wonderful Chez Panisse pizza and pasta book, an old favorite.  Pizza number one:  sliced grilled radicchio with roasted red pepper, and parmesan.  The rustic hand-rolled crust is part of the charm.

Pizza number 2: a layer of tomato sauce (last year's frozen Marcella Hazan Number 1), some grilled eggplant, and parmesan.

This is the most circular pizza I think I have ever made - obviously a fluke.

It has become customary, at the end of July, to observe a certain anniversary with lobster à l'Américaine.  We use the recipe that Raymond Oliver (La Cuisine)  learned from his father, and we reproduce it here.
For 2 persons
1 live 2 pound lobster (we used 2 one-and-a-half pounders, from Meijer)
2 tablespoons olive oil
6 Tb butter
1/4 cup Armagnac (or George Dickel to be truly "Americaine")
12 shallots minced (can be done in the cuisinart)
3/4 cup dry white wine
optional 1/2 cup fish stock
4 medium-sized tomatoes, peeled, seeded, and chopped
salt
cayenne pepper
1 Tb minced tarragon
1 Tb minced parsley

Start with your live lobsters.

Prepare the shallots and tomatoes.  This dish goes well with corn on the cob as a first course.

Kill the lobster by plunging the sharp point of a knife into its head. Remove the claws from the lobster and crack them.  Separate the tail from the body and cut the tail into 4 or 5 crosswise slives. Cut the upper body into halves and discard the sac behind the head and the intestinal tract.  Reserve all the coral and the rich inside liquid that some people call the lobster's "blood."

Heat the oil and 3 Tb of butter in a large deep skillet. Cook the lobster pieces in it over high heat until the shells turn red.

Drain the pan juices into a bowl.  Make sure Kima is paying attention.

(She was more interested in this dish than any we have cooked together so far.)
Sprinkle the lobster with the Armagnac (or other whiskey) and flame it.

Transfer it to a china dish. Return the pan juices to the skillet, add the shallots, and cook until they are golden, but do not let them brown.

Add the wine and return the lobster and its juices to the skillet, together with the rich lobster liquid.  If you have some, add the fish stock, but this is not essential.  Add the tomatoes and season with salt and a little cayenne pepper as well as the tarragon.  Lobster à l'Américaine should not be very hot: but it should be well seasoned.

Bring to the boiling point. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes.

Remove the lobster pieces from the sauce and put them into a hot serving dish and keep them hot. Bring the sauce to a quick boil and stir in the remaining butter mashed with the lobster coral. Cook for a couple of seconds longer, pour over the lobster, and sprinkle with parsley, "but only if it is very fresh and crisp. Do not bother otherwise."

Serve simply, with some sliced baguette and a crisp dry white wine, such as Sancerre. 

Make sure you have plenty of napkins!