Dorie suggests plating these sealed vegetable packets and letting each guest have the pleasure of savoring the first fragrant puff of steam when the seal is broken. My friend, Ruth, enjoyed the moment.
My! My! My!
Everything about this week’s FFWD recipe was a delicious, winning, you-must-make-this, choice. Let’s just forgeddabout last week’s not-so-good and race quickly on to better and best: Brown-Sugar Squash and Brussels Sprouts** en Papillote.
The cubed squash, apples, halved Brussels sprouts, olive oil, salt and pepper are easily and simply mixed together.
Dorie echoed my original thought when I first read this recipe. “I don’t thinkI’d ever have put the squash and Brussels sprouts together if they weren’t packed into the bin side by side,” she said. “And it was just a stroke of luck that I had both an apple and fresh sage, which is perfect with the vegetables and fruit.”
Divide evenly between four non-stick, 12-inch squares of aluminum foil. Frankly, this was the hardest part and, yes, I counted!!!
To my surprise and Dorie’s, what pleased her most about this serendipitous side was ‘the play between earthy and sweet’.
I sprinkled brown sugar over each bundle and topped with fresh sage. Earthy. Sweet.
Although this is really a recipe for your Fall menus, it is tasty in Winter also. Once again, our Doristas who live in South America and Australia, where it is Summer, are very, very good sports.
I sealed the packets, leaving room so the ingredients can steam, and put them in the refridgerator.
Because I am particularly busy right now, I bought a pound package of pre-cut, cubed squash so it took only 15 minutes to throw this together. I also made the packets in the morning, refrigerated them and added a few minutes to their baking time.
Luckily my veggie-lovin’ Colorado friends, Peter and Ruth Frey, joined me for this week’s successful taste testing. The Freys, enroute to a two-month stay in Cambria, California, stopped to observe my January 31st house-closing (or to “manage” my emotional fall-out if there was a closing glitch).
To accompany this week’s FFWD recipe, I served a green salad and Yotam Ottolenghi’s “Very Full Tart”, a delicious recipe from his cookbook, “Plenty”.
Fortunately we enjoyed two sunny days of exploring Nevada’s outdoors fueled by wonderful food, drink and friendship. Plus, we were able to celebrate yesterday’s successful house closing/sale before their leaving for Callie this morning.
The reason Peter is not smiling is that he had already begun to open his packet before Ruth and I scared the hell out of him by telling (well, yelling at) him to STOP. I needed a photo, of course. A long-time professor at Northwestern University, he understands ‘learning experiences’ and patiently re-sealed his packet for picture-taking. But, he’s all-business so couldn’t smile.
Peter’s silent compliment to the cook.
To see how my FFWD colleagues handled their tinfoil this week, go to our group link. If you want to try this recipe, and I urge you to try it, go here.
I enjoyed introducing my Colorado friends to Nevada’s outdoor hiking opportunities. Nevada is over 80% public land, forty-eight million acres of that land is administered by the Bureau of Land management. Since Ruth and I are both volunteer forest rangers in Colorado’s High Country, she especially enjoyed our hikes at Lake Mead, the Red Rocks National Conservation Area and Black Mountain, a totally different experience from hiking in the Rockies.
** These tiny cabbage-like vegetables are named after the Belgian city of Brussels, which has an “S” on the end. The correct spelling is “Brussels sprouts.”
It seems rather bizarre that my grocery list for this week’s French Friday with Dorie recipe had me scrambling for cellophane noodles, Chinese tree ear mushrooms, Asian toasted sesame oil and Chinese five-spice powder. Ms. Greenspan even urged us to pull out our woks.
Shrimp and Cellophane Noodles is this week’s French Friday with Dorie’s recipe choice.
I wonder if Joel Robuchon, Alain Ducasse or Guy Savoy even own woks? I spent hours in Julia’s kitchen at the American History Museum at the Smithsonian. Cannot remember a wok. That’s why I love Dorie – she crawls out on a limb, never glances back and successfully coaxes us along.
This week, Shrimp and Cellophane Noodles is the FFWD recipe choice. If you’ll remember, early last year I joined Wok Wednesdays, a group that cooks from Grace Young’s cookbook, Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge. Although the food was delicious, I was a Wednesday wonk. To my mind, wok cooking is a mad dash to the finish. I enjoy the prep but having to make it all happen so quickly, for a tasty result, makes me crazy.
A small, finely chopped onion is the first ingredient for the heated wok. Cook for only a minute until it’s translucent.
But, for the sake of Dorie, I made friends with my banished wok, tossed together a batch of Shrimp and Cellophane Noodles and washed it down with a bottle of Tsingtao. Well, maybe two bottles.
Now it’s time for the rehydrated mushrooms and garlic. Cook for another 30 seconds.
Truthfully, perhaps the French should leave these one-dish wok meals to the Asians. The soft, slippery noodles mixed with Asian toasted sesame oil could have stood alone. They were delicious. Who doesn’t love ginger, cloves, cinnamon, pepper and star anise blended together into aromatic Chinese five-spice powder? That spice, along with a few other ingredients, helped the shrimp be mighty tasty.
Turn up the heat and add the shrimp to the pan.
Then along came the two cups of tomato puree. Say, what? Even the second bottle of beer couldn’t make that combination work for me. Je suis désolée, Dorie, but this week’s recipe gets a thumb down from this household. (A first for me.)
While this week’s recipe might not have been successful, the week was. I wasn’t sold on Shrimp and Cellophane Noodles à la français, but I was deliriously happy to hang a SOLD sign on my Nevada house. Yep, this week I signed, sealed and delivered my Henderson house to a happy buyer and will be moving back to Aspen, to live full-time, by early Spring.
After the shrimp is added, quickly add the spice mixture and then season with salt and pepper. Thirty seconds later, dump in 2 cups of tomato puree (purposely not pictured). NOTE: All this is accomplished in 3-4 minutes. Do you see why wokking makes me SO nervous? To move this quickly in the kitchen, I need Xanax.
Aspen has been our home since 1988 and, during this year of healing, adjustment and change as well as those that follow, it’s where I want to be. After being in Henderson eight years, I will be leaving wonderful friends, but there’s not a one of them who isn’t, for my sake, happy to see me Colorado-bound.
I hope my colleagues had a better experience with this recipe than I. Go here to see another point of view. Next week we’re doing a vegetable combo “en papillote”. Sounds good. The French being French.
The one thing you all must know about my French Friday with Dorie colleagues is that we try to be good sports. There are more than 300 recipes in “Around my French Table”, the cookbook we use that was written by Ms. Greenspan. We are committed to trying each and every one of these recipes, six years of Fridays. Including……
Sardine Rillettes.
Seaweed Sablés.
Roasted Jerusalem Artichokes with Garlic.
Seriously???
An unmolded chicken liver gâteaux served on a bed of butter lettuce tossed with champagne vinaigrette and pickled onions.
This week’s recipe choice, Chicken Liver Gâteaux with Pickled Onions. provided another “Seriously ?” Moment for me. In French, gâteaux means cake. A chicken liver cake? Dorie, however, treats this as a salad, “The idea of having cake at the start of a meal is too irresistible.”
When I stopped by my local grocery store to buy 1/2 pound of chicken livers, I was clueless. The butcher helped me find a carton of these squishy, runny, scraggly morsels. They didn’t look like anything I would ever place inside my mouth. After removing all their veins, fat, and green spots, according to directions (the yucky part), the gâteaux was ridiculously easy to put together. Throw everything in a blender, whir two minutes, pour into buttered ramekins and bake 40 minutes. The pickled onions were even easier, something I made the day before and will keep on hand to use often in other dishes.
The ingredients of the chicken liver mixture is the consistency of custard and pours easily into the buttered ramekins. To de-bubble the mixture (seen here) before baking, I rapped each ramekin on the kitchen counter. Worked like a charm.
I tasted one of the little cakes immediately, treating it as a warm paté and spreading it on rustic crackers. It was not particularly flavorful. I refrigerated the others overnight and unmolded them today to serve as a salad. They possessed the strong flavor you’d expect from an excellent paté. The vinaigrette and pickled onions kicked up the flavor even more. To my surprise, I enjoyed my cake-salad. Very, very much.
Chicken livers, anyone? To learn how to make this recipe yourself, go here. See what my colleagues thought of this week’s choice at French Fridays with Dorie.
A generous and delicious slice of Pizza with Onion Confit, the Tuesday with Dorie Baking with Julia recipe choice for today.
Tonight I’m celebrating and bringing in the New Year………with Dorie Greenspan, Steve Sullivan and Yotam Ottolenghi.
Let me quickly explain. I’ll be brief because I have to get back to my guests.
The Onion Confit, which can be made two days ahead, consists of 4 onions, red wine, red wine vinegar and seasonings. I added some Crème de Cassis to taste. It was New Year’s Eve, afterall.
Dorie, of course, is the well-recognized cookbook author and fearless leader of my Tuesdays with Dorie, Baking with Julia group. Greenspan wrote the cookbook, Baking with Julia, which was based on the popular PBS Series hosted by Julia Childs.
Steve Sullivan is a talented baker who successfully established his own bakery, Acme Bread Company, in San Francisco. His sourdough and levain breads are legendary.
Sullivan’s dough for this pizza “has enough texture and flavor to hold its own under any topping.” Although you first make a sponge before making the dough, necessitating two risings, this isn’t difficult. When ready, roll and work the dough until it is about 1/4 inch thick before transferring it to a baker’s peel rubbed lightly with cornmeal.
London Chef Yotam Ottolenghi who is becoming one of the most respected chefs in the world, owns five remarkable restaurants in that city and has written two well-received cookbooks, Plenty and Jerusalem.
This coming week’s recipe choice is the very tasty Pizza with Onion Confit. Julia Childs collaborated with Steve Sullivan to create this rather involved, somewhat complicated dish. After tasting the Provencal-inspired Onion Confit, as the base, I’m not sure I will ever return to classic tomato sauce again. Admittedly, it was a two-day process, a sponge and two risings, but perfect, I thought, for my New Year’s Eve supper. Champagne? Maybe not. Beer? For sure.
After preheating the oven to a toasty 475 degrees, I transferred my pizza topped with precooked pancetta lardons, roasted artichoke hearts and Parmigiano Reggiano Cheese, from the peel to my baking stone which had been also preheated in the oven.
Intriqued by Ottolenghi’s culinary talent and impressed by reviews of his recently-published cookbooks, I ordered both of them last month. Unfortunately, they’d been shoved aside on my kitchen counter, victims of the holiday hustle and bustle.
New Year’s Eve has never been a hoop-and-hollar event at our house. And, this year, especially, I needed quiet. To me, it felt right to just cook something delicious and settle in with a good (cook) book.
The finished product. Everything about this pizza —- perfect.
I must return to my friends, Dorie, Steve, Yotam (we’re channeling Julia). I’ll let my pictures speak for the pizza. Thanks to our host-with-the-most, Paul of The Boy Can Bake, for providing the recipe for this delicious pizza-confit combo to all of you. Check out his link. To see how my colleagues did this week, go to our Tuesdays with Dorie link.
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013, FAITHFUL READERS AND DORIE COLLEAGUES. MAY THE YEAR AHEAD BE HAPPY, HEALTHY and OVERFLOWING WITH THE FELLOWSHIP OF FAMILY, FRIENDS, AND GOOD FOOD.
Do you recall watching automobile ads where late-model cars race up dangerously narrow mountain roads careening around the curves at breakneck speed? At some point during the ad, a cautionary crawl appears, Do Not Try ThisAt Home. That’s exactly how I felt about this week’s FFWD recipe choice, Herb-speckled Spaetzle, a chewy, baby-sized pasta that is more German and Austrian than French.
Herb-Speckled Spaetzle, this week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe choice.
I knew spaetzle spelled trouble when Cher, who is subtle in understatement, commented on the FFWD Questions&Problems Link, using terms such as “sticky dough” “patience” and “a spaetzle cutter would be helpful.”
That very same day, Betsy, who shares FFWD administrative duties with Laurie and me, asked if I’d made my spaetzle? She volunteered that she had completed the recipe, her first time making spaetzle, and noted that it was delicious.
“How did you make it without a spaetzle maker?” I asked.
“Oh, I actually found a spaetzle maker in the basement,” she replied casually.
Now, Readers, what are the chances that you’d have a spaetzle maker hanging out in your basement? In Germany, Austria, perhaps. Betsy lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.
On Thursday Robert spent the day working and painting at my house. (That is, when he wasn’t involved in his taste-testing duties.)
Undeterred, Thursday morning I gathered my ingredients, bowls, spoons and patience to begin making Herb-speckled Spaetzle. The egg dough, easily mixed together by hand, was sticky but manageable. However, I had a total fail with the next Step: “pushing the dough through the coarse holes of a grater, a slotted spoon or a colander” into a pot of boiling water.” (Dorie’s instructions.)
I tried all three methods and two more I won’t discuss here. In the end, my sticky dough landed in the roiling, boiling water, producing a spaetzle of my own design. I won’t disclose how that happen because no sane cook would want to repeat it.
I had just put all the spaetzle pieces in a large buttered bowl to cool when my Realtor, Charlie Fahr, stopped by. It was a lightbulb moment. My real estate agent — who is German, who has family living in Germany, who knows a thing or two about spaetzle. After spending 10 minutes helping me pronounce the word correctly, Charlie walked over to look at my buttered bowl of spaetzle, and with a small smile (not a smirk), suggested that it’s probably “essential to have the right spaetzle making equipment .”
May I just add here that Charlie is a really, really good Realtor!!! I took no offense at his dissing my spaetzle.
Robert, who would rather be painting, is obviously thinking, “Wait ’til the guys hear this one.” That’s me, in the mirror. being bossy, telling him how to pose. These would be better pictures if we hadn’t ended up laughing so hard. This was a bonding moment for Robert and me. He enjoyed my spaetzle. Really he did.
Charlie left me to soldier on with my recipe. To finish it off, giving it some Dorie dash, Dorie suggests adding mushrooms and onions after first softening them in a butter/olive oil combo. Next I mixed everything together, cooking it until the spaetzle started to brown. I then added seasonings and a cup of chicken broth, simmering it until total evaporation.
Do you believe in miracles? What didn’t look particularly pretty, tasted delicious. Really, really flavorful and good. Therefore, on Valentine’s Day I am giving myself a $6.99 Spaetzle Maker. When not in use, I will keep it in my basement.
After a day of making spaetzle, I joined Adriana Scrima, Susan Best and Ellen Fahr for an evening cooking lesson at Maggiano’s Little Italy, located on the Las Vegas Strip. Ellen (r), also my Realtor, treated us to this fun and funny girls-night-out.
Interested in making your own spaetzle? Here’s the recipe. I know that my colleagues are more proficient in spaetzle-making than I. To see how other Doristas did this week, go here.
What did you find in your stocking Christmas morning? I found celery root.
Odds are that when you planned Christmas dinner, celery root did not come to mind. When you were thinking about pies, I’m betting it was whether to bake pumpkin, pecan or apple. “Pot” probably didn’t enter the picture.
Here’s the problem. During the past six months, my Christmas dinner guests here in Henderson turned sorta-kinda-vegetarian. Sorta-kinda-vegetarian means they will not eat four-legged animals. If it moos, baas, oinks or whinnies, it’s a nonstarter. Furthermore, they won’t eat creatures with wings. Flying is a no, no. Swimmers? Yes, but only those with a shell.
Peel and cut up 2 celery roots and one medium russet potato. Quarter an onion. Add this to a pot of boiling milk, water and salt. To avoid a strong peppermint flavoring, discard the candy canes.
Here’s another problem. The French Friday with Dorie recipe this week is Go-With-Everything Celery Root Purée. To answer your question? Neither had I.
Merry Christmas. Ho! Ho! Ho!
Doesn’t everyone serve Lobster Pot Pie on Christmas Day? (With profound apologies to my Iowa born-and-bred, very traditional Mother.)
Thankfully, this story has a delicious, Christmas-bells-are-ringing ending. My menu may not have been traditional but, with a little help from you foodie friends, I pleased all our palates. Here are the 3 principal players —– We began with Cranberry and Avocado Salad topped by Candied Spiced Almonds and Sweet White Balsamic Vinaigrette as featured by Chris Scherer on The Café Sucré Farine. I added some baby beets, quartered.
The Barefoot Contessa’s Lobster Pot Pie solved my main course dilemma in a very tasty, très élégant manner. A bubble off, perhaps, but, hey, lobsters swim and have shells.
Thank you, Dorie, for this delicious, nutritious, Go-with-Everything Celery Root Purée.
Again, Dorie is correct. Why do I ever doubt that woman? When she calls this recipe, Go-With-Everything Celery Root Purée, she means business. “Because the flavor is subtle, complex, and just a little sweet,”, she writes “the purée is the perfect accompaniment to fish, meat or poultry, whether it’s a main dish that is robust and big flavored or one that is light and mild.”
No one at my table had ever sampled celery root served as a purée. It’s a wonderfully, less caloric, and more nutritious substitute for mashed potatoes. I used my Immersion Blender, instead of fussing with a food processor, to whirrrrr it into a smooth ivory purée. If you want a more silky texture, use the processor. Surprisingly, the lobsters and the celery root did not do battle. This dish totally complimented the pot pie with one guest even using it as a tasty base under the pie.
Seconds, anyone?
The ultimate compliment? No room for dessert.
Dessert, anyone? Last night Michelle and I contributed the sugar for our neighbor’s, Bobby & Adriana Scrima, annual everything-Italian Holiday Open House.
Michelle’s Eggnog Panna Cotta and Dorie’s Top-Secret Chocolate Mousse. When Lilly, a party guest from France, tasted this, her eyes brightened. “Very french,” she remarked. I asked her if she knew the secret? She replied, “Oui,” and preceeded to rattle off the recipe from the back of the Nestlé Dessert Chocolate Bar wrapper that Dorie had discovered and shared with us.
May I wish a Happy New Year 2013 to all you loyal Readers and my fellow Doristas, far and wide. And, to you, Trevor, for loyally cooking with us as our one-and-only FFWD “token” male. May the year ahead be filled with peace & happiness, good health, family & friends and the fellowship of food.
