Dinner-Snack at Home. October 2011

At the end of some privileged long days, when I have plenty of time to enjoy looking outside my window and realizing how lucky I am to be comfortable in nice warm home surrounded by a wide variety of books and subjects that interest me, making a simple and Full Flavored Dinner-Snack and diving into one of the several books that are laying around is just about as good as life can get.

Below is a "display" of one of the "many" Dinner-Snacks that are savoured during one of these pleasurable evenings.

The bread is a home-made Olive Oil Focaccia and Herbs topped with fresh sun dried raisins and finally covered with Raw Milk Aged Cheddar Cheese. All slices were then slipped into a high temperature toaster oven for about 10 to 15 minutes until the cheese started to bubble and brown on the sides. 

The bread underneath turned crunchy on the outside and warm and tender on the inside.   

The salted olives contrasted quite well with the sweet juicy raisins and salted cheese.

Hint: When heating normal dried raisins under a layer of cheese, they will become hot and juicy, since as they warm up in the oven, their steam is trapped by the cheese layer making them moist and warm. 

"Imagination can be truly dangerous in the kitchen if the cook has little knowledge of the technique and poor taste buds". (Jacques Pepin)

My chef instructors have been telling me over and over about how important it is to have good knife skills in order to be able to become a good cook. According to them, it's like being alphabetized before expressing your thoughts in writing a book.  

With that in mind, I decided it was time to practice my knife skills and become better at it. On a snowy cold Saturday afternoon I dropped by school with a bag of carrots and a bag of onions and began working. 

My goal was to improve not only my speed in cutting, always in a SAME RHYTHM, but also the precision of each type of cut. That is why I divided each type of cut in different cups.

Above you will see some different types of carrot cuts: Fine Brunoise (top left), Fine Julienne (top right), Batonette (bottom left) and Julienne (bottom right).

Above are the basic tools I used to prep. my vegetables: a Chef's Knife (or French Knife - far right), a Paring Knife (middle) to help remove the top skin of the onion, a carrot Peeler (bottom left) and a Bench Scraper (far left) to pick up the vegetable cut pieces and place them in each cup.

One other vegetable that a cook should master with his knife skills is an onion. According to my chef instructor, in an interview, one of the first things he will ask a candidate to do is cut an onion in front of him. It the person stumbles, discarded at that very moment. According to him, if you don't know how to cut an onion, you will take too long to prepare anything in the kitchen and became an expensive employee for the restaurant. On the other hand, if you have quick and good knife skills, you are useful for many areas.

The only problem about practicing my knife skills on a bag of room temperature onions was that it made me cry so much that by the time I was finished I had no more makeup left on my face. I am glad I was not wearing lenses this day.

Hint: If you chill your onions before chopping them, they will release less acid particles and irritate your eyes less.

Three hours later and seven vegetable cups filled concluded my practice.

Next practice I intend to fill these cups in 2 hours.

Nature is one of my greatest instructors and companions. October 2011

Going for a walk in the mountains is one activity that helps me feel what is around me and as a consequence, feel what is inside me.

I have noticed that when I pay attention to the outdoors, such as the trees, sky, plants, animals and light, I learn a lot about myself and about how my own life works. 

Observing, I see small examples of events that are constantly happening in my life.

Below: Look at the complexity that is happening in part of this tree bark: all sort of colors, shapes, textures, smells, movements and different kinds of little animals and beings, living their own stories.

Every cell has a story to tell and it just as interesting and as important as ours.

This tree was smiling tall and strong. I want to remember its attitude.

Colors, shapes, textures, smells, movements, sounds...infinite variety.

A peek stands on its own, but it needs all else around him to exist as a peek.

Paying attention to the silence outside puts me in touch with the silence inside.

Force Meat served in a Buffet Style. October 2011

As I have mentioned before, Force Meat is not my favorite food.The texture, taste and appearance does not attract me, but we gotta learn how to make everything, since we don't cook only for ourselves.

With this in mind, I made the choice to have fun with what we produced today.

Since an attractive food plate is more fun to eat, we had decided to play around with our plating.

On our first plate, we put together two pieces of Duck Terrine with one Devil's Egg on top of a Chaud-Froid Aspic. 

Obs: the Chauds-Froids are meat of fish Aspics that include cream. We used a Bechamel base in our jelly.

For those of you who are not to familiar with Aspic Jellies, here goes a brief explanation:

They are usually made like a Consomme, from a flavorful meat or fish sauce (sometimes cooked with a veal foot to provide extra gelatin, which in this case comes from the veal's collagen), clarified with egg whites and finally flavored at the end.

Aspics should be thick enough to cut through but tender enough to melt in the mouth. If it is made to be used in a Terrine, such as we did below, it should be slightly thicker so that it does not run off the food.

Extra information for curious cooks:

Sources tell us that most of the gelatin we produce in the USA and in Europe comes from pigskins. A second source of gelatin production is cattle skin and bones.

Here goes how we made our Duck Terrine: First we made our Duck Force Meat by marinating our duck legs, wings and liver in red wine and spices. Then we mixed it with some raw, crushed Pistachio nuts and folded half of it inside a ceramic bread pan that was already buttered.

Next we folded in one layer of Caul Fat and placed our (also) marinated Duck breasts (the 2 of them kind of overlapping each other) on the center of the bread pan on top of the Force Meat. Finally we pasted the rest of the Force Meat equally on top of the duck breasts and locked the top of the pan with the remaining Caul Fat that was hanging off the sides.

We were suppose to bake this dish over a hot water bath, but forgot to. I think my partner and I were a bit overtaken after working with the "interesting" Caul Fat.

Not using a Bain Marie to bake off our Terrine caused it to shrink a bit, but according to our chef instructor, it still tasted good, similar to what it's suppose to taste like. 

Who knows!

Below we added a side of grilled and seasoned local vegetables, which were made simple, but with the Maillard Reaction, which is the browning effect from the grill, they ended up being very tasty. 

We finished them with a touch of Garlic and flavored Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Post Scriptum: Science has identified that smoke may contain anti human compounds that are harmful to our health, such as the PAH component. This chemical reactions is formed especially from the smoke that comes from hot burning wood ovens or grills. With this fact in mind, when grilling, try not to keep your food too close to the flames or smoke. This is also one other good reason to score it only to a mahogany color, not a black burnt color.

On the plate below we added cute Cucumber Cup filled with fresh Mint, Cherry Tomatoes (we still are lucky to be harvesting the Cherry Tomatoes that are as sweet as Strawberries), crushed raw Garlic and Extra Virgin Olive Oil. 

On the right again are the mahogany colored strips of our grilled and scored Squash. We tried getting the perfect 10 o'clock, 2 o'clock marks on these ones that were served open.

Our table Buffet: we served most of the food on platters. It looked kind of like a traditional European festive supper.

Above is the Chicken Galantine. 

Here goes a reminder about Force Meat, which is the filling we used for our Chicken Galantine, Duck Terrine, Pate en Croute and Pork Sausages:

It is usually made with the darker pieces and pieces with more connective tissue of animals that are not as tender and aren't used for cooking on a high heat method. Glandular meat, such as liver is also a meat that is usually used in Force Meat.

 These pieces are then ground in the chilled grinding meat machine, seasoned, (always keeping the meat chilled, so that the fat and the protein emulsify), tested for flavor, adjusted and then used for their final purpose. 

Usually the Force Meat will also be mixed with some kind of dairy, such as whipped cream or heavy cream during the process of emulsification. This will give it a richer flavor. 

Our Chicken Galantine Force Meat was finished with heavy cream. Finally we laid it spread on the chicken's breast, wrapped it around the skin, trussed it and roasted it.

Hint: you can test the flavor of a Force Meat by taking a small portion and cooking it on the sautee pan.

For the Pate en Croute, we made the Force Meat, mixed it with some dried cherries and  placed it inside our Flaky Crust (Pate Brisee) that was wrapped it with the steel sieve pinched in the middle. Then we baked it off. Once it was done we poured a flavored Aspic Jelly we had made earlier inside it, and waited a few minutes before slicing it and serving it.

Here goes the Pate Brisee Recipe we used:

Flour, butter, lard, eggs, chilled water and salt. 

Procedure: mix the flour and fats together, until no big lumps of fat remain. Now mix the liquids together and mix this mixture with the flour mixture gently until the dough looks uniform. Gather the dough into a ball, knead it a bit, cover it and chill it until you are ready to use it.

You can play around with your ratios of flour, fats and liquids. You can also use different kinds of flours and fats, such as whole grain flour and different kinds of hardened fats, according to your taste.

 A Vegetable Platter.

Seasonal vegetables served on the side.

Here is the raw Pate En Croute as it was about to go in the hot oven.

Here we are making the Consumme that will be turned into clear Aspic Jelly.

We also had Pork Sausage Patties that were wrapped in Caul Fat before cooking.

After cooking them we left them on a rack for a few moments to drip off the excess fat.

This was my first day cooking, smelling and tasting Caul Fat. It has a very strong fatty glandular smell and taste. 

Since we served the today food in a Buffet Style, I will briefly talk about a Buffet Set Up for a Double Sided Buffet:

1) Always double your food, one in each side. One side should look like a mirror reflection of the other.

2) Put your food in an appropriate order and place the most expensive food at the end of the buffet, this way people will fill up their plates with the cheaper food first.

3) Put your condiments at the end of the buffet so that people can dress their food appropriately.

4) Make your buffet look pretty, such as placing ice sculptures in the middle or small flour arrangements. If it's a holiday, decorate it accordingly.

5) Don't give away all your food at once. Serve little at a time, this way when people ask for more of something you will have it.

6) Use good quality, stainless steel pans for holding your food and flame devices. This will save you money. Also, make sure your staff takes good care of this equipment.

7) Make sure you learn who to manage and maintain each food that your are serving in your buffet. For example, if you are serving an Egg Frittata dish or even scrambled eggs, your egg batter should be made with a bit of acid, such as lemon juice so that your eggs would produce sulfur as they keep hot for to long. Follow your directions for how much acid you should use in your quantity of egg batter.

8) You should always have more food in a buffet than the number of people and always keep it looking full. That way when someone such as the bride's mother is finished talking to all the gets and is finally going to help herself to some nice food she will find a nice full and fresh buffet table waiting for her.

Protein:

9) Suggestion for amount that should be produced:

8 oz of protein per person if there is a single option of protein.

6 oz of protein per person if there is a double option of protein.

4 oz of protein per person if there is a triple option of protein.

Starches and Vegetables:

5 oz per person if there is a single option.

4 oz per person if there is a double option.

3 oz per person if there is a triple option.

Here is a further suggestion of how to place your food in a buffet:

Start by placing your plates, then your breads, your salads, vegetables, starches and finally proteins.

The Fall is finally showing its face. October 2011

This this post is especially dedicated to my father, who does not live here with me, but who enjoys the American Fall  Season so much. I remember when I was little and we had a touch of fall season down in Brazil, he would notice it right away and as we walked around the neighborhood, he would show me how beautiful it was to watch the color of the leaves changing. 

One specific tree he always loved and even planted two of them in our home garden was the Maple Tree. Of course, down in Brazil the are hard to find and they did not change colors like the American ones, but I still had a taste of what the magic of fall could be like. Today, finally living in this beautiful town on the Coast, surrounded by Maple trees and Fall Breezes, I am able to see, smell, feel and get enthusiastic while I see the magic of the Fall Season expressing itself. 

The magical colors of nature. I will interpret this moment as pure divinity.

Colors are a representation of life. Life expressing itself.

Even as they fall in the ground they lay in harmony, happily.

One single leaf has many different stories to tell.

A Cured Meat and Salad day. October 2011

Today we had our meal at the end of our day instead of in the middle of the day, since this was the same day we took our egg practical and when meal time came along our meats were still not at the stage to be finished off cooking after the brine period. 

I have already shared this bit of information with you before: since I was so hungry at meal time I ended up eating all of my five eggs used and graded for my egg practical and with a loaded liver, really could not enjoy any of the tonight's menu that was so colorful and appetizing. At any rate I still got to taste all of it and remember what I will repeat in an empty stomach with more pleasure.

Here goes our today's 6 o'clock menu:

"vegan" Quinoa Salad

"refreshing" Cabbage Slaw with Vinaigrette dressing 

"plain" Green Salad

"interesting" Corned Beef with Cooked Cabbage

Duck Pastrami

"always welcome" Herb Infused Extra Virging Olive Oil

"eehh..." Pain De Campagne

"unbeatable" Miche

As usual, Boris (our starter) did not fail to provide us with some very "oven burnt" tasty (even done in a conventional oven) and crunchy crusted bread.

The Pain De Campagne, in my opinion was a bit plain and flavorless.

Post Scriptum: The "oven burnt" taste comes from the fact that we steam our breads with a very hot sheet tray that is in the bottom of the very hot oven (550 degrees) with 1 cup of water as we throw the bread in it. This gives it the extra crunch in the crust and the caramel dark color and taste.

Maillard Reaction: Carbohidrates in contact with water in very hot heat.

Mixed Greens with a simple vinaigrette. Not much to say about this salad. Nothing to special.

Corned Beef with cooked Cabbage (left) and Duck Pastrami (right). Both these Brine Meats were delicious. I was able to enjoy a piece of the corned beef on a later date, chilled, right out of the cooler, when I was in a hurry and had no time to warm it up. 

It was still delicious even cold, when flavors are usually masked and become to quiet.

Quinoa Salad with onions, cucumber, tomatoes, yellow, green and red bell peppers. Chilled quinoa salads are not as tasty as warm ones with warm vegetables. 

It tasted healthy, to healthy, as if I had bought it from a cooler in a "green vegan" store, with green meditating outlined yogis drawn on the glass window. Over what I can enjoy.

Red Cabbage Slaw seasoned with vinaigrette. I must say that this was my favorite dish of the night: A nice crunchy, tasty salad with a very light and citric dressing. I much preferred this dressing over a mayo based one.

S.O.C. 2 Day. October 2011

This was our second S.O.C. (System of Creation Day). The theme was Canapes and Ours D'Euvres, (one or two bite size products that can be eaten without silverware).

Here goes the list of ingredients we received or were allowed to make this time:

Bases that we could make: Breads (baguettes, brioches, Pullman bread, Phyllo dough).

Proteins: eggs, anchovies, prosciutto, Point Reyes Cheese, Cotija Cheese.

Products: Green apples, arugula, cucumber, egg plant, lemon, lime, onions (red, white), peppers (Bell green, yellow, red) potato, fresh tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes, zucchini, squash.

Herbs/Preserves: Chives, mustard, capers, olives, cayenne.

Some of our Always available products: milk, cream, butter, oils, herbs, spices, eggs.

Since I had never worked with Phyllo dough I decided to give that a try. Together with my partner, we created three different kinds of fillings:

1) Sun Dried tomatoes, fresh Oregano (since there was no Basil available), Radish and Ricotta.

2) Sauteed onions, Cotija Cheese and Honey.

3)Fresh Arugula, Gruyere Cheese, Dried Figs and Sauteed Red onions.

Once we Mise En Placed our ingredients for each filling we rolled out the dough and brushed melted butter in each layer, keeping it covered for it not to dry out and topping it with a next layer. In the envelope method we filled about 3 to 5 rolls with the dough and baked it off. 

The fillings turned out quite good, but on the Phyllo dough I ended up using way more butter than I cold have used. The pastries were so greasy oil was practically dripping out as we bit into them. Next time I mess with Phyllo Dough I shall use at least half the amount of butter.

Since we did not have Cottage cheese in school my chef instructor thought me how to make my own.

Cottage Cheese Recipe:

1 qt Buttermilk

1 Gal Water

1/2 Oz Lemon Juice (if needed to enforce the curd formation).

Procedure: Heat up the milk until scalding point (when bubble starts to form on the edges). Add the buttermilk and bring to a simmer. The curd should separate from the whey. Turn the heat off and let it sit for 15 minutes. Add the lemon juice to help the curd separation. Pour this separated milk through 3 layers of cheese cloth in a Chinoise strainer. Let curd drain overnight through cheese cloth or at least 30    minutes. 

The left over solids are is the cottage cheese that can be seasoned according to taste.

Here are some other Ours D'Euvres that were made:

Bottom right is a little Phyllo Cup filled with raw chopped vegetables. I felt like something else was missing to complete it. It felt almost like a base for something else.

On the bottom left are Samosas (an Indian type of fried whole wheat pastry filled with a meat and potato stuffing). It was served with a cucumber sauce and a mint sauce. Both these sauces we delicious, even to be eaten with other products, such as vegetables alone, salads or even meats. Very interesting. The Samosas were a bit flavorless again, maybe the recipe used needed more salt and spices.

This was a very simple and nice canape: Tomato, Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Herb Bruscheta.

Simple, light and good compared to the other ones that were served.

Since I made more filling than the amount of Phyllo dough I had, I ended up using it to make some Pizza Like Bite Sizes on Brioche dough that had been made my one of m class mates. 

Unfortunately I baked it for a bit to long and they became dry.

Another group also made some Fried Onions with a sweet and sour sauce. I personally do not prefer fried food. If I choose to eat something fried, it really has to be beet my prejudism against them. 

This was not the case, a bit flavorless. 

Again, here are my "oily" Phyllo Pastries.

Bellow is a Prosciutto Bruscheta made on a Baguette that we baked in class with Boris (our starter). In my opinion the combination do salty Prosciutto with capers and black olives became way to salty.

I would have had only one of those salty ingredients, such as the Prosciutto with tomatoes, a mild cheese  some interesting herb.

Our set table, family style. 

Precious! October 2011.

Sometimes I have to be reminded to focus my attention on feeling nature around me. It is something that makes me happy. I saw this video in another blog that I really enjoy and just had to add it here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xHkq1edcbk4

Friday - Egg Practical. October 2011.

This practical ended up taking longer that we expected, so by the time it was over we were all starving. Since I do not function very well when I am hungry, I ended up eating all five of the eggs I had prepared, all at once. 

Of course, once dinner was served a couple hours later I could not stand a bite of salad or anything else. On top of that, I had to deal with these five eggs conversing with me the whole weekend long...long, very long conversations.

Even though I really enjoy eggs, I shall not have another one, nor a conversation with one for a while. 

The "French Omelet" is by far the hardest egg type to make from the ones I have shown so far. 

Here goes the procedure: Heat a greased Teflon pan to medium high heat and as with the American Omelet, whisk well two or three eggs until uniformly blended and colored. 

Hint: If you whisk your eggs with a fork in several different directions (horizontally, diagonally and vertically) you will get a better blended mix. The better blended your mix, the easier it will be to make your omelet.

 Now pour this mix in the high heat pan and with  a fork in one hand and the handle of the pan in the other hand keep whisking fast and constantly with the fork and moving the pan quickly in a perpendicular direction until it starts gently cooking on the sides and under. The middle should remain raw and creamy. 

Obs: this process will happen quite fast. Now lean the eggs toward the inclined part of your pan and make both sides fold like an envelope. Again, the middle should still be runny and as you fold the sides. 

Throughout this process you should acquire no color or uneven texture on the outside of the omelet. It should still be smooth and pale yellow.

It took me a few practice times to get that one down.

Observation: Even thought Egg Cookery is one of the only times you may choose to use a Teflon pan, if you cook omelets in a daily basis you can use a stainless steel pan and not have it stick. It works like a Crepe Pan, the more you use it, the better it cooks your eggs and the less it sticks. Once you are done using it, just wipe off the excess grease and food particles. 

On the long run you will produce an better and healthier product with a steel pan than with any kind of Teflon.

Hint: If you choose to make your French Omelet with vegetables or anything else, you can chop these ingredients and mix them with your raw eggs, while you are beating them and making them into a uniform paste.

The bottom one is a perfect example of a French Omelet.

The bottom is another example of a French Omelet.

Below is an example of Scrambled Eggs. When making them, you want to keep your pan in medium heat and try to get them as uniform as possible and with the smallest curd. 

Again, if you whisk and blend your raw egg mixture well before hand, it is a lot easier to get them to look as you please. 

Another rules is mix them well in the beginning, while they are still cooking and then stop and remove them from the heat while they are still relatively raw and pasty. Serve the and let them "Carry Over" to the ideal cooking point on the plate.

In the "Over Easy Egg" we also break the whole egg in a medium low heat greased Teflon Pan and this time as you are approaching your cooking time you incline the egg on the furthest edge of your sloped Teflon pan and flip it around without using any other utensil. After a few seconds, remove it from the pan and serve immediately.

This type of egg should also acquire no color other than it's natural white and yellow coloring.

This is an example of a Basted Egg: Originally a Basted Egg was made by women who cooked their eggs in a frying pan with bacon and then basted them with the bacon's fat while they were cooking.

 Now days, since we don't always feel like cooking them with bacon, much less with the bacon's fat, we can simply cook them in a medium low heat lightly greased Teflon Pan, add a few drops of water on the sides of the eggs and cover it for a while. 

This way the steam of the water will help cook the egg and create this thin while coagulated layer on its top. The basted egg should not acquire any color or browning on it's white. 

Here is another example of a Fresh Grade AA egg: Big tall yolk, small thich white, a thing smaller white around it and the Chalazae (which is this white part that connects the yolk to the white) on the bottom part.

An "egg practical day" is a day where we are suppose to produce some common kinds of eggs eaten in our American Culture.

 Below is a Sunny Side Up Egg: In medium low heat you lightly grease a Teflon pan with clarified butter, crack the egg in a separate bowl and without letting the yolk break you break it in your hot pan. Let it sit there until the white is cooked but has no color and the yolk is still runny but hot. 

Serve immediately.

As I have mentioned above, cooking eggs is one of the only times when Teflon pans are recommended since eggs are so delicate and stick so easily to any pan and we don't necessarily cook them everyday in order to keep our Steel Pans in shape.

 Cooking in medium low heat, for a short period of time, will probably not overheat the pan and allow chemical hazardous particles to be released from the Teflon. 

Note that I also used clarified butters, since it has a higher smoke point (the point where an oil starts burning and releasing undesirable, hazardous particles).

This type of egg cookery should not acquire any color on it's sides.