A Beautiful Evening and Lovely Meal with a Friend of Twenty-Five Years
Almond flounder meunière is today’s FFWD recipe choice. It couldn’t have been a better one for me. This week my friend Kent Harding, who lives in Toronto, is visiting Las Vegas. Every year he joins his colleagues for a golfing junket here and always spares time to see me. He and his wife Jean, one of North America’s preeminent portrait painters, also own a home in LaCadière, a tiny village located in the far western sliver of the Cote d’Azur. We have known them for the past 25 years, since first meeting on a bicycle tour in Provence. Friends ever since, over the past 8 years I have often enjoyed their extraordinary French hospitality and been welcomed into their expat community of friends there.
What better dish to serve him than the Dorie-version of sole amandine and sole meunière rolled together into Almond Flounder Meunière. If we wanted to wring out a few precious French memories, this would be the perfect meal for it.
Unfortunately, flounder doesn’t come easy, sole is trés chère and I needed to cast a wider net to haul in an acceptable substitute.
Skai Fish Farm, photograph courtesy of koi-bito.com
The good news is, according to experts, skai is a white-fleshy fish with a sweet mild, taste and light flaky texture that can be broiled, grilled, or coated with bread crumbs and fried. The bad news, for me at least, is it is a river-farmed catfish (with a wink, wink, to river-farmed) harvested from the Mekong River in Vietnam. Whoops. The more investigation I did, the more I questioned whether I should take the bait and buy Skai.
There was all kinds of Internet chatter about this fish because it is a cheap alternative to pricier swimmers. I scanned the comments. My thinking was that Skai was kinda French, being from Vietnam which had been a part of the French colonial empire until 1954! Reason enough. However, what locked in my decision to buy Skai was a comment left on a food blog forum. Regarding Skai, the commenter wrote, “I have other things to worry about killing me before the Skai will.”
I took the bait.
I purchased 16 ounces of the Skai which was maybe river-farmed but probably just caught out of the Mekong River which flows through Vietnam which used to be part of the French colonial empire until 1954. Two pieces, available in fillet form, no bones. On sale – $2.99 per pound.
Almond Skai Meunière
It’s a simple process to fry the fish in browned butter. The coating mixture is ground almonds, flour, lemon zest, salt and pepper. The next time I make this I will use almond flour rather than grinding my own almonds. After brushing the fillets with an egg wash, coat one side of each fillet. I fried the skai 4 to 5 minutes on each side since it was a fleshier fish than either sole or flounder would be. Toss some toasted almonds and parsley over the browned fish, squirt a shot of lemon on top and, viola, skai became Almond Flounder Meunière.
What a wonderful combination, Asparagus, Leeks, & Parmigiano Reggiano
To accompany the fish, I made a simple recipe of sautéed asparagus and leeks, both purchased at the Farmer’s Market. The recipe, compliments of Kate who blogs on Savour Fare can be found here.
No one has died from eating my Skai…….yet. The meal was delicious and the fish, tasty. Of course, what about “fried in brown butter” doesn’t spell heavenly. The cautionary note is I will do more research before serving Skai again. And, truthfully, this recipe really belongs to a fish in the sole or flounder family.
To see what other Doristas reeled in this week, go here.
Many of you would not put Easter, Springtime and slowly, braised lamb stew, in the same sentence. This would be a wintertime all-in-one meal at my house. Perhaps, first snowstorm, crockpot and slowly, braised lamb stew fits better.
According to Ms. Greenspan, our leader and author of Around My French Table, this week’s recipe is a classic and a staple of the Easter season in France. The lamb is meant to be paired with freshly dug spring vegetables, tiny onions, carrots, turnips, potatoes and peas. I was able to buy all the vegetables but the peas at our local Farmer’s Market. (I used frozen peas.)
Farmer’s Market Spring Vegetables
I cut a three-pound boneless lamb shoulder into 1 1/2-inch cubes. Be sure to remove the excess fatty pieces. The cooking method is a classic braise, perfect for my 7 1/4 quart Creuset cast-iron dutch oven. Brown the meat. Add broth and other seasonings. Simmer.
Mise En Place – The Fixins’
Next, prepare the veggies and brown in butter for ten minutes. After the meat has simmered for 45 minutes, add the vegetables. A caution, the peas stand alone, unable to play with others until the last moment.
Browning the lamb pieces
Brown the vegetables in butter. No peas, please.
While the stew simmered and still having 1 pound of fresh carrots left, I decided to make Dorie’s café-style grated carrot salad (p. 107). Carottes râpées is also a French classic and served everywhere, from the toniest restaurant to the cheapest student café. Buy it at any take-out place or local grocery store. It’s arguably the favored raw salad of France.
Dorie’s Café-style grated carrot salad
For dessert, I baked Brown Sugar Bundt Cake, a recipe from her Baking: From My Home to Yours. This is a versatile cake, not choosy when it is served, and is perfect for breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner or bedtime snack. The leftover cake made its way through the neighborhood to very good reviews. Find this recipe here and here.
Brown Sugar Bundt Cake
It’s Springtime. The farmer’s fresh vegetables made this all-in-one-meal quite special and tasty. A winter dish? Wasn’t mentioned. I heard no complaints.
Lumière, the character who adds a spark to “Beauty & The Beast”, disney-clipart.com
Preparing a Feast for Belle and the Beast, Lumière and his Cup Chorus, infamouskidd.com
Be our guest! Be our guest! Put our service to the test. Tie your apron ‘round your neck, cherie, and we’ll provide the rest. Don’t believe me? Ask the dishes. They can sing, they can dance. After all, Miss, this is France. Beef ragout, cheese soufflé, pie and pudding “en flambe”. We’ll prepare and serve with flair, a culinary cabaret!” Lumière & Chorus, Beauty & the Beast.
Who doesn’t remember Belle’s first dinner in the Beast’s castle? Lumière’s menu was on target. A soufflé announces itself. Élégance at its most high-brow.
When I think of myself, élégance and high-brow don’t come to mind. I met this week’s recipe choice, however, with a feeling of determination and a “What the hell?” attitude, more my style. With Dorie’s pushing, prodding and reminder, “There’s nothing complicated about the dish, although there are three things you should know,” ringing in my ears, I triumphed.
Dorie’s recipe, to my mind, is a classic, using techniques most of us already have in our culinary skill set. Although mine are a bit rusty, it wasn’t hard to put the soufflé together. Nerve-racking, yes. Difficult, no.
A savory souffle usually begins with a béchamel sauce, enriched with egg yolks. The egg whites are later whipped and folded in, to lighten the mixture. For the cheese, I chose a 8-ounce chunk of well-aged gruyère and grated it, easily and to perfection, in my food processor.
Béchamel Sauce
Béchamel Sauce, enriched with egg yolks and grated cheese
I initially introduced one-third of the whipped whites into the béchamel sauce, and then delicately folded in the rest. That step is difficult for those of us who tend to be heavy-handed. I was careful, also, to delicately turn the batter into a soufflé dish coated with butter and bread crumbs.
Ready to fold the last of the whipped egg whites into the batter.
The soufflé dish, coated in butter and lightly dusted with breadcrumbs
Since a soufflé is baked at high heat and must be “left alone” to rise, I waited 25 minutes before opening the oven, sliding a piece of aluminum foil over the top to prevent further browning. (If you recall, I am currently in a rental home with a temperamental oven.) After a total of 40 minutes, it was well-risen, firm to the touch and jiggly at the center. Although it had browned more than I would have liked, it did not affect the taste. In fact, I loved the crusty topping.
Table-ready. Move quickly and carefully.
Life is Good………….
All we really needed to make this dinner complete was two spoons! Knowing Dorie would probably disapprove, I added roasted asparagus, the first picking purchased at the local farmer’s market, threw a warmed baguette on the table, and poured Harmonie, a Paso Robles white table wine. This is a lovely, light blend of Chardonnary, White Reisling and Muscat Canelli produced by Harmony Cellars, a small winery on California’s central coast. Perfect We even enjoyed it for breakfast the next morning with croissants and raspberry jam. Warmed leftovers, even better!
Once again, Dorie was right in saying, “Really, the soufflé should be ashamed of itself, scaring off cooks for no good reason! There’s nothing complicated about the dish.” To see how other Doristas fared with their own soufflé drama, go to http://www.frenchfridayswithdorie.com/ Oh, about Dorie’s three secrets to souffle perfection? Buy her book: “Around my French Table, more than 300 recipes from my home to yours”. (Page 150.) It costs about the same price as a pound of the cave-aged gruyére I used in this recipe.
The cheese soufflé, safely to the table without deflating
When you think “salmon”, I’m pretty sure “with Lentils” doesn’t come to mind. Despite my rush to judgment, it still doesn’t seem to be an “entre deux” combination. But after my initial, “Saywhat?”, followed by my thinking, “Has Dorie gone off the deep-end?”, I settled in to prepare Roasted Salmon & Lentils, this week’s FFwD recipe choice, for a week-end dinner.
A fresh, fleshy cut of salmon, salt-and-peppered, ready to roast.
I purchased a 1 1/4 pound salmon fillet, thickly cut from the center, from our resident fishmonger. Since the French du Puy lentils, suggested by Dorie, weren’t available to me, I settled for generic green lentils which were delicious. Although lentils, like all dry beans, require a sort, soak and simmer, preparing them is quite simple.
Sea Salt from Slovenia, a flavorful addition to the Salmon.
Dorie’s method for roasting salmon was also neither difficult nor time-consuming. Twelve minutes in the oven, at high heat, produced a perfect pink-in-the-middle result. Here is when I want to give a little credit to sea salt! Ardyth Sohn, a friend who recently spent six months in Latvia as a Fulbright Scholar, gifted me with a canister of Piran Salt from Slovenia. (I love when friends bring me food souvenirs from foreign travels.) The salmon filet pretty much was left on its own. Salt, pepper and a dash of olive oil were the only additives. This salt definitely formed a friendship with the salmon to enhance its flavor during the roast.
Since receiving this treasure, I’ve become interested, make that, obsessed, with choosing the right salts for cooking purposes. Currently I’m also experimenting with a Smoked Salt from the North coast of Denmark. My wish list includes Maldon, an English sea salt which is arguably considered “the ultimate finishing salt for salads and fresh vegetables”. Penzeys, a Wisconsin-based spice company, sells an interesting Grey Sea Salt from France and a domestically-produced Pacific Sea Salt http://www.penzeys.com/. Culinary specialty stores, like The Meadow in Manhattan and Portland, http://www.atthemeadow.com/shop/ offer many choices.
Smoked Sea Salt from the North coast of Denmark
To serve this dish, per Dorie’s directions and against my better judgment, I put the lentils in a warmed shallow soup plate and plunked a piece of salmon, on top. After a light olive oil drip-and-drizzle, I sprinkled parsley on the salmon. This week’s recipe is a complete meal. And, to my delight, a delicious one.
Saturday night at the dinner table…….
For our First Friday with Dorie Postings, we do not provide the complete recipe because we encourage you to purchase Dorie’s wonderfully-written book,”Around my French Table”. The book, which costs less than the 1 1/4 pounds of the salmon I purchased this week, is loaded with 300 culinary gem-ipes, providing bonus tips, bonnes idées, and variation why-nots (italicized bonus sidebars, scattered up and down each page).You might try http://iarethefoodsnob.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/dorie-greenspan’s-roasted-salmon-and-lentils/ to view this recipe. To see the valuable critiques of other French Friday with Dorie cooks, go to http://www.frenchfridayswithdorie.com/.
Let’s begin at the ending. To best describe this Week’s FFWD is to show off the dinner dregs. If this photo doesn’t illuminate the story for you foodies, nothing can.
Our At-home Bistro, following a Bon Appètit-Bonanza
This week’s recipe is supposed to be Mussels & Chorizo, with or without pasta, (page 316, Around My French Table). Since we are a pseudo-vegetarian household this Winter, I chose to serve Moules Marinière, or fisherman’s mussels, a recipe that should be in every cook’s repertoire of great, traditional dishes (page 312, Around my French Table).
The most difficult part of this simple recipe is buying the fresh mussels at your local fish market. Probably a pound per person. I purchased large, fleshy green-lipped mussels from New Zealand. Scrub them mightily and debeard as necessary. Go to your pantry for olive oil, onion, shallots, lemons and garlic. Pick some thyme and parsley from your herb garden. If you have a bay tree, pick a leaf. And, if you left some white wine in last-night’s bottle (that’s my problem, I never do), use it. The preparation is a snap. http://breadandbutternyc.typepad.com/blog/2011/06/mussels.html )
Lovin’ the fleshy, full-bodied Green-lips from New Zealand
For Moules Marinière, a repas is complete with just pommes frites (french fries), a baguette or two (for “the sop”), and, table wine. For this meal, no silverware is necessary. Use a 1/2 mussel shell as your fork. Paper towels (Bounty heavy-duty), rather than napkins. Break bread, literally.
This photograph does not need a caption!
I urge you to pick up a copy of Dorie Greenspans’ “Around my French Table”, her recipe book extraordinaire. Although she presents more than 300 recipes, her take on fish – cod, flounder, monkfish, skate, swordfish, salmon, tuna and shellfish – is worth the price of admission. If you’re a foodie, budget this book into next month’s purchases……… the cost being the same as two steaks, Porterhouse; OR a leg-of-lamb, bone-in; OR, a pound of halibut.
Dorie calls this dish, “une petite merveille” and, that’s just what this chicken roasted in brandy is, a little marvel.
Just out of the Oven, Roasted Chicken with Potatoes, Carrots, and Onions
“It’s one of those remarkable dishes that is comforting, yet more sophisticated than you’d expect (or really have any right to demand, given the basic ingredients and even more basic cooking method),” she says.
Translated, that means four major ingredients, one whopping big pot (I used my Le Creuset 9 1/2 enameled cast-iron Dutch Oven), 1/2 hour of preparation and one hour in a 450-degree oven. In fact, you can find the recipe at the link below:
Remove the Chicken from the Pot (Cover with a Foil Tent) while thickening the sauce with the vegetables.
Bowl of Potatoes, Carrots and Onions, ready for the table
I made this dinner-for-two on a particularly busy day and was able to leave the house, worry-free, after I stuck it in the oven. Although dinner was delayed, I just shut off the oven, without removing the casserole pot. That kept the chicken warm, moist and tasty.
Enhanced by brandy, and very little else spice-wise, this was one tasty and nutritious dish which we both enjoyed. Although two of us finished this quite handily, served with a salad and crusty bread, this would serve 4 nicely.
