Docsconz- The Blog

Goose Cassoulet - An Idea in Food

Goose was the one constant going in to the weekend. Knowing that Alex and Aki would be visiting and having had the good experiences that I have had with Mary Pratt's Elihu Farm geese, I thought it would be fun to cook one together. I was right.

The defrosted goose was left to dry uncovered overnight in the refrigerator. I then took it apart to Alex's specifications, separating the wings from the shoulder sockets and the hind quarters from the rest of the carcass while leaving sufficient skin behind to keep the breasts fully covered. I then cut out the neck and the rest of the spine and back, leaving the breasts on the sternum. 

While getting ready to cut the spine into smaller pieces for easier cooking to make a stock, I identified the iliopsoas muscles running along the internal spine and dissected them out. Otherwise known as the tenderloins, these lovely strips of muscle were too small to do anything with other than quickly pan sear them and share the bites as cook's treats. Tasty!

In the meantime, Alex and Aki had set smoked bacon bits to cook on the stove, chopped onion and fennel, cooked the wings and hind quarters of the goose and began their initial cooking of the Rancho Gordo cannelini beans in the pressure cooker. Submerged in water they were cooked on low pressure for 5 minutes in the Cuisinart electric pressure cooker with the pressure allowed to dissipate naturally. The water was drained from the beans and the rest of the ingredients including a large can of LaValle San Marzano DOP tomatoes, the onion, fennel, cooked bacon, picked goose meat from the wings and hind quarters and herbs and seasonings were put back in the pressure cooker with the beans. These were cooked at high pressure for 25 minutes and once again the pressure was allowed to drain naturally.

The goose breast was cooked in it's own fat along with some olive oil and seasonings that included fennel fronds and juniper berries. This was cooked in the CVap at 125ºF for about three hours then seared skin side down in a hot cast iron skillet. Alex then deboned the breasts and sliced them adding three or four slices atop each plated bowl of cassoulet. The result was rich, complex and delicious with plump, creamy beans - a perfect finale for a cold winter night's savory dinner.

Braised Bok Choy with Blood Sausage, Horseradish and an Onsen Egg - An Idea in Food

When Alex Talbot saw the blood sausage in the deli case at Oscar's Smoke House in Warrensburg, he couldn't resist it. We had already bought the bok choy and eggs earlier that day at Kilpatrick Family Farm and had previously planned on cooking the goose that my wife and I had purchased from Elihu Farm. The dish came together rather easily and quickly in Alex's ever-whirring mind and became the second course at this dinner.

Alex peeled the sauseage and cut it into small chunks.

Goose bones were browned and made into a quick stock using the pressure cooker.

The bok choy was cooked with the goose jus from the pressure cooker along with horseradish and the blood sausage.

The eggs were cooked in a water bath at 75ºC for 13 minutes and peeled.

Chef Kevin London of Farm House at Top of the World in Lake George, a dinner guest, was enlisted to help plate the dish.

Perhaps my favorite dish of the night, this dish had it all. The bok choy was well braised, but still vibrant with enough horseradish to provide a little zing but not so much as to make it over assertive. It played a great supporting role. The jus was rich and warming and the blood sausage added spice, flavor and texture to the dish, which was unified by the silken coating of the perfectly cooked whites and the oozing European orange yolk of the egg. The dish was greater than the sum of its parts, but the ingredient that set it apart from other similar dishes I have had was the inspired use of the fortuitously found blood sausage. Later in the weekend, per a suggestion from Alex, I cooked some more blood sausage along with fresh eastern L.I.clams, parsley, onions, garlic and white wine served over linguine - another Ideas in Food winner!

Smoked Trout Brandade - an Idea in Food

Not every idea that comes out of Alex and Aki, the couple behind the blog and book, both called Ideas in Food is cutting edge. They are both as well versed with traditional cooking techniques and dishes as they are with the ultramodern. Their idea for the first course  of our Friday night dinner was just such a tradition based idea - a brandade, but instead of using salt cod, they would use smoked trout. I must admit, this was not an idea that I found initially appealing when Alex first proposed it, but I've learned to trust his judgement and skill. I'm glad I did. As with any dish, the quality of the ingredients is important. Here the key element was the smoked trout itself. Purchased that afternoon at Oscar's Smoke House in Warrensburg, N.Y., it was of pristine quality.

The first step was breaking up the fish. Aki did that, reserving the skin and the head.

The skin and head was used to infuse a quarter pound of melted Cabot 83% butter.

The next step was cooking the potatoes (yellow potatoes bought that day at Kilpatrick Family Farm) along with the peeled garlic cloves. My son, Michael peeled the garlic. The potatoes and garlic were boiled in water in a standard fashion. Once cooked they were riced together in a warm pan and mixed with the trout, the trout=skin infused butter, cream and some minced parsley.

The end result was magic. I may not have found the idea all that appealing, but the actuality was wonderful - silky smooth potatoes, moist, smoky meat and sheer pleasure.

Dinner with Friends - Alex and Aki Come to Visit

TV shows like Iron Chef America, Top Chef and Chopped all riff on a theme of spontaneous cooking to varying degrees. Iron Chef America specifies a specific ingredient that must be showcased, Top Chef offers surprise scenarios that must be adhered to and Chopped supplies baskets of disparate ingredients that must all be utilized in a single dish. All of the shows incorporate time limits in their challenges as well. These elements often lead to some fun television, but what is really compelling is the opportunity to take part when true professionals create a delicious meal spontaneously based on what is available.

 

Alex Talbot and Aki Kamozawa of Ideas in Food have, over the years become very good friends of my wife and I. With a presentation and signing of their new book, Ideas in Food: Great Recipes and Why They Work at Red Fox Books, Alex & Aki along with their daughter and pup paid us an all-too-brief visit, a highlight of which was an informal dinner they cooked for us and a few friends on Friday night.

Ideas in Food Comes North

I am so very looking forward to a visit this coming weekend from my good friends Alex and Aki of Ideas in Food. For anyone in Northeastern New York who may be interested, you can meet them this Thursday evening, February 17th from 7-9PM in Glens Falls, New York at Red Fox Books where they will be signing copies of and discussing their outstanding new book also called Ideas in Food. If you can't make it to Red Fox Books for the signing or to your own local independent bookstore you can order it from Amazon via the link below.

 

Goose Prosciutto

Duck prosciutto is not uncommon, but I'd never seen or tried goose prosciutto before. The reality is that ducks and geese are really very similar birds, so why not goose prosciutto? When I butchered the bird I got from Elihu Farm (that also happens to be where Carlo Mirarchi sources his geese for Roberta's as I discovered this past weekend after dining at Roberta's), I cut out the breasts as well as the thighs and legs. The latter were confited, while one of the breasts was low-temp roasted. For the remaining breast, I decided to try my hand at making it into a prosciutto. Using Michael Ruhlman's approach for duck prosciutto as a guide, I salt-cured the breast, rinsed and dried it, wrapped and tied it in cheese cloth and hung it for 8 days from a pipe in my basement. It was surprisingly easy and the glistening, silky result is pretty tasty. I plan to share it with my family on Christmas Eve.

More noma

Check out this video just put out on Vimeo by my friends at Pocketfork on their very recent dinner at noma. This is about as close as it can get to experiencing a meal at noma without actually eating it. Great job Aaron and Ligeia!

 

noma from pocketfork on Vimeo.

Check out the rest of their blog for some incredible restaurant experiences.

Blog Find - Lisa Abend

Ever wonder what it must be like to work at elBulli as a stagiare (culinary apprentice)? One of the most coveted positions in the entire cooking world has been examined up close by my friend, Lisa Abend. Many of you likely know Lisa as the Spain Correspondent for Time Magazine. A good number of her articles for Time are food related and she has become extremely well known within the Spanish food community. Lisa is about to publish a book (set for release on March 22nd by Simon and Schuster) called The Sorcerer's Apprentices: A Season in the Kitchen at Ferran Adrià's elBulli. During the entire 2009 season, Lisa was at elBulli chronicling the story of that year's stagiares, coming up with literary portraits of each. According to Ms. Abend's website, 

"Taken together, their stories form a portrait of the international team that helps make a meal at elBulli so unforgettable. But they also offer a look at a Ferran Adria few ever see, a Ferran who is not only a genius chef and artist, but also a boss, teacher, taskmaster, businessman, and sometimes flawed human being. And in an age in which food has become the focus of unprecedented attention, ambition, concern, and desire, it explores the strange phenomenon that in less than two decades has turned a once-maligned profession into a source of celebrity. It asks, in other words, a pressing question whose answer Adria himself has been critical in changing: Why cook?"

She has now started a website with a very specialized blog associated with it. In the blog, Ms. Abend shares additional portraits of elBulli stagiares, however, the portraits here are from people who have staged at el Bulli over the course of its existence. The very first portrait/ interview is of Will Goldfarb, the pastry chef extraordinaire currently residing and working in Bali. Goldfarb staged during the 1999 season. Abend promises many more to come. This should be fascinating!

Stella Starr

With my friend Judith Klinger's words that she prefers to go to Pizzeria Stella in Philadelphia for pizza rather than stay in NYC , I had to taste for myself. I since suggested that another good friend try it when he was in Philadelphia and his raves seemed to match Judith's, amplifying my interest even further. To clarify, Judith is someone whose opinions about food, especially Italian food, I take seriously, very seriously. Judith and her husband Jeff live half their year in NYC and half their year in Montone, Italy, where they have successfully opened an Italian restaurant. Judith also keeps a blog, Aroma Cucina, in which she writes a lot and very well about Italian food. I have also dined with Judy and Jeff. They know their Italian food. I also value my other friend's opinion. Individually or together, their opinions spurred me to visit Pizzeria Stella.

On a recent weekend in Philadelphia, a get together with other food obsessed friends was a perfect way to try Pizzeria Stella, Philadelphia über-restaurateur Stephen Starr's foray into the world of Neapolitan style pizza. Stella, of course, means “star” in Italian, which means that Starr effectively named the restaurant after himself. I guess he was serious about making good pizze.

The restaurant, located in a corner building in a lovely part of old Philadelphia, is bright and expansive with plenty of windows opening out onto both streets. A new, adjacent bar makes the restaurant even bigger. The central pizza making station is spacious and centered around a classic domed Neapolitan wood-fired beehive oven with the name Stella tiled in on the oven's transom. The internal fire, off to one side of the oven, was raging when we arrived for an early dinner. A row of bar stools overlooking the workings of the oven and around it stood empty when we arrived.

Our focus was on the pizza, but we decided to warm up our appetites with a couple of orders of arancini, Sicilian fried stuffed rice balls named for their resemblance to “little oranges.” While not quite at the rapturous level of my beloved Ferdinando's Foccaceria or those made by Ana Tasca Lanza at The Regaleali Estate in Sicily, these were still quite good. The size of small meatballs, they were tightly packed with herbs and melted cheese in the center. They were smothered in a good marinara tomato sauce with shaved parmesan (pecorino or especially cacciocavallo would have been more Sicilian) strewn on top. The exteriors of the arancini were perfectly crisp and fried just right. These were compact balls that would not simply fall apart. The rice was al dente, perhaps a touch too much to my taste. The only real flaw of these fine morsels, though, was a relative lack of flavor compared to the virtuous examples cited above. I attribute that to a mildly flavored filling and the failure to use a saffron laced risotto milanese for the rice base. While these were in fact, very good and technically beautiful, I would have preferred a more inherently full-flavored rice ball with less sauce. Nevertheless, they provided a lovely start, as it is hard to find rice balls in this country as good as these outside of a Sicilian-American home kitchen.

We ordered 8 pizze. Unfortunately, I failed to request that they come out in waves. Instead. they arrived essentially simultaneously, one after another arriving at the table in short order. Since we ordered all the pies cut to share, this meant that not all the pies could be sampled fresh and hot by everyone without rushing through each slice.

As much as I would have liked to order every pie on the menu, there were simply too many to choose from, so we had to leave a few to try another time. Of course, we had to order the gold standard of Neapolitan pies, the Pizza Margherita, so-named after the former Queen of Italy. The pie, dressed in the red, green and white colors of the Italian flag, contained San Marzano tomato sauce, basil and fresh mozzarella di bufala blended on a crisply seared crust. The basil was justly applied just before serving preserving its aromatic strength. The buffalo milk mozzarella was soft and creamy and the sauce flavorful without overpowering the pizza. The crust was well charred with an adequate number of bubbles. While the center of the pie was a tad soft, it held up to eating by hand. While I would not say this was the best pizza napolitana I have had in the US (for one, I prefer that of Keste in NYC), it was damn good and would have been worth the visit even if it was the only pie we had.

Thankfully, we had other pies to sample too. Each was expertly prepared with only personal preference separating one from another. From a list of specials we selected a pizza with Squash Blossoms, ricotta, basil, San Marzano tomato sauce, mozzarella and a little chili oil, which gave it a fair kick. As was the case for all the rest of the pizze, the pizza was beautiful with a lot of flavor. Squash blossoms are a great vehicle, but don't generally provide a wallop of flavor, usually relying on an aromatic stuffing within. In the case of this pizza, the flavor came from the other ingredients with the blossoms providing just a subtle component.

The Sausage Pizza also had a kick, this time from the “long hot pesto”, which also added a splash of bright green color to the pie. The kick was balanced by tomato, basil and mozzarella. The Polpette pizza was amongst my favorites. In addition to the sliced meatballs, it contained ricotta, the same tomato sauce, basil and Sicilian oregano. The most aromatic of the pies, no surprise, was the Tartufo, which came with black truffle, fontina, an egg, which was spread out around the pie by the server and parmesan. It was yummy. I expected the Piccante with capicola, aged provolone, crushed red pepper and tomato to be devilishly spicy, but it was no more so than the sausage or squash blossom pizze. Delicious despite being over-charred on one side and the most novel combination, the Pistachio also had red onion (added after the oven), fontina and extra virgin olive oil. Surprisingly, my favorite pie was the Spinach, which came with oven roasted tomato, mozzarella and pine nuts. I shouldn't have been surprised as I generally love that combination and so I did here.

 

While I was not as enamored of Pizzeria Stella as my friend Judith, I did like it a lot. The quality and overall experience is such that it has to be considered one of the better artisanal pizza restaurants in the country, especially of those practicing Neapolitan style pizza. Though I consider it a notch below Keste, correctly timed Grimaldi's (in Brooklyn) and certainly Pepe's in New Haven ( the latter two are not strictly Neapolitan style pizzerias, at least not la vera pizza napolitana), it is most certainly worth a visit for any pizza afficionado when visiting the City of Brotherly Love.

Michael Laiskonis Does Chocolate

Michael Laiskonis, one of the world's great pastry chefs, a very smart man, great writer and super guy recently went to a chocolate plantation in the DR, where he he followed the cycle of cacao from beginning to end and presents it in an incredible way on his blog. This is a must read if you like chocolate.

TGRWT#21 Sage and Roasted Peanuts - My Dish

The blog Humbling Attempts at Creativity is hosting the current round of TGRWT, a cooking exercise devised by Martin Lersch through his blog: Khymos, designed to pair possibly disparate-seeming ingredients using a pairing profile that predicts compatibility between ingredients. Greg chose to pair sage and roasted peanuts, not really an intuitive combination - at least to me. Upon further reflection, I thought, why not? What are some things that sage goes with and that roasted peanuts go with also. One protein that popped immediately to mind was "chicken." Guess what? Yes, that's right, I decided to do a dish with sage, roasted peanuts and chicken. Very clever, no?

I skinned a whole chicken, reserving the skin (you didn't think that I would waste something so potentially delicious, did you?) and deboned the breasts and removed the femurs from the thighs, leaving the leg bones. Pounding the breasts to flatten them, I then applied salt, pepper, sage leaves and ground peanuts before rolling up the breasts and wrapping the,m in plastic wrap. For the thighs, I stuffed them with the same ingredients before rolling them in plastic wrap as well. The chicken was then cooked in my CVap for three hours at 150ºF and browned in ghee on my cooktop.

I served it with asparagus, celeriac puree, baked (325ºF convection for 45 minutes) chicken skin seasoned with peanut oil, soy sauce, powdered sage, salt and pepper and a satay like sauce that I concocted using chicken stock, smooth peanut butter, sesame oil, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and sage. Chopped peanuts were scattered on top of the chicken and asparagus. The plate was garnished with fresh pea shoots.

Overall the dish was pretty tasty and the ingredients did work well together. Both of my sons who had it enjoyed it. The sauce went very well with the asparagus as well. As might be expected, the thigh/leg preparation was moister and more satisfying than the rolled breasts, which though moist and adequately cooked out of the CVap,  had dried out in the browning process. The most satisfying element of the dish was the crisp chicken skin. All the ingredients came together amongst a very pleasurable crisp bite. It was amazing to see how much the skin had shrunk in the oven (sorry, no photo!). If I were to do this again (I might), I would think about not cooking the breasts further or  not using the CVap for them.

Blog Find: Matthew Kayahara: Canadian Food Done Differently

I have known Matt Kayahara virtually for some time now originally via eGullet. I just discovered his superb blog, which is now covering a trip to Japan. Despite the title of his blog, his interests are not limited to Canadian food (though there is plenty there) as interesting a subject as that is. Check it out!

TGRWT#20 Sage and Roasted Peanuts

TGRWT #21 is up over at the blog Humbling Attempts at Creativity. The intriguing combo is sage and roasted peanuts. Click the link for more details and put your culinary thinking caps on!

Mugaritz Fire - Stagières' Knives Appeal

Early on Monday February 15th, fire severely damaged the kitchens at Mugaritz, the world-famous restaurant in Spain's Basque Country. Luckily, no-one was hurt. For the management and staff of Mugaritz, the destruction of their workplace was a tragedy. But for three other young people, this was also a calamity. Stagières are unpaid apprentices, usually young, without whom no top restaurant can function. Driven by a common passion to learn from the world's best chefs, they travel from all corners of the globe to train at world-class restaurants. When the dust settled on Mugaritz after last Monday's inflagration, Mattias from Sweden, Diego from Guatemala and Greg from the US found themselves without their most valued possessions. Their precious knife sets, not covered by the restaurant's insurance, had been incinerated. Read Greg's story here.

Fellow food blogger Aidan Brooks of Aidan Brooks: Trainee Chef, his father Mike Green and I are setting up a special transatlantic fund to help them recover from their combined $2,500 losses and re-equip themselves for work. As Aidan says, "This is something I understand well - two and a half years ago I set off for Spain as a novice stagière myself. It's taken me years to put together my knife set, so I know exactly how devastated these lads must feel." Can you please help with a personal pledge? Donations will be so welcome, no matter how large or small. Email me at docsconz[at]gmail.com at  with your pledge and we'll get back to you with details of exactly how you can contribute to the fund. Would food bloggers please copy part or all of this post and publish similar appeals. Together we can make so much difference to a group of people who really deserve our support. Update: Please see here for details on how you can donate through firstgiving or Paypal.

Blog Find: Braised and Confused

Greg Kuzia-Carmel, who recently did a guest post on this blog has his own blog, Braised and Confused, which he is using to chronicle his full experience in Europe. He is currently traveling, while on break from his staige at Mugaritz. Check it out!

Native Foods

I follow a number of outstanding blogs, but none are better than playing with fire and water. If you haven't already, check out Linda's latest series of posts on working with native American ingredients. In addition to her usual outstanding creativity and beautiful photography, she has provided a treatise on native ingredients - simply stunning!

TGRWT#20 Pumpkin & Cooked Chicken Round-Up

“Pues me dio calabazas” is an idiomatic expression that I learned in high school Spanish. It literally translates into “she gave me pumpkins,” which really means that she blew me off. Despite that rather negative association, I have always been fond of pumpkins either as ornaments or as food. Since I was very young, pumpkin pie has always been a favorite. It has only been relatively recently, however, that my interest in and experience with pumpkin as a savory component has blossomed. It is because of that interest and the association of pumpkin with autumn and holidays such as Halloween and Thanksgiving, that I thought it would make an interesting essential ingredient for TGRWT#20, the latest cooking challenge in the series originated and administered by Martin Lersch of blog.Khymos. I added cooked chicken as it's partner to push the use of pumpkin in savory ways or to make particularly interesting pumpkin and chicken desserts.

Perhaps it is the business of the season or perhaps the ingredients were not inspirational enough, but the submissions were fewer than for some other couplings. I have, however, always been one to take quality over quantity. I appreciate the quality of the submissions that came in.

TGRWT#20 Last Day For Submissions

This Long Island Cheese Pumpkin photo serves as a reminder that today is the deadline for submissions for TGRWT#20 - Pumpkin and Cooked Chicken. The chart separates "cooked" chicken" from "roasted" chicken. While I specified "cooked" chicken for the pairing, all manner of cooked chicken including "roasted" will be accepted since both are on the compatibility chart with pumpkin. We have a number of good submissions so far, but I'm still expecting a few more.

Blog Find: DICED: The Official Blog of ICE

Filled with posts about happenings at The Institute for Culinary Education in NYC as well as videos on culinary techniques, the DICED blog is an interesting compendium of culinaria. I particularly enjoyed Rick Smilow's recent posts on his road trip to the Southern Foodways Alliance conference in Oxford, Mississippi, an event I have wanted to attend for the past few years, but have been unable to make happen. Smilow's posts made me want to be there all the more.

On the Farm: Consider Bardwell

Consider Bardwell Farm located in West Pawlet, Vermont just over the border from Washington County, N.Y. has generated a reputation for making world class cheeses from both goat and cow milks. I recently had the chance to visit the farm and at the same time observe both the making of cheese and the making of a quality video as Michael Crupain of The Dairy Show was there to film the process.

The picturesque and bucolic farm is owned by Angela Miller, Russell Glover and Chris Gray. The engaging Peter Dixon, formerly cheese maker at The Vermont Butter and Cheese Company is the head cheese maker at Consider Bardwell.

The cheese are made from milk the farm's own Oberhasli goats and from the nearby Jersey Girls Farm. Dixon makes a a number of different cheeses, but his favorites are the firmer, aged cheeses, like the cow's milk Rupert he was making in the photos above. To make these harder cheeses, it is important to cut the curds into extremely small pieces to get out as much liquid whey as possible. Softer cheeses are made from larger curds. Dixon is fastidious in his cheese making, making sure that all the little details are right and that his cheeses are consistent from batch to batch, or at least as consistent as an essentially natural product can be. His attention to details like the pH of the whey/curd combination shows through in the fine quality of the finished product as does the quality of the base milks.

Stay tuned to The Dairy Show for more on the process and the farm including what is sure to be another outstanding video.