Sunday, January 12, 2003

Well, you win some, you lose some.  Friday, I took the easy way out, I’ll admit it.  The initial plan had been to stick with something simple for the main dish – broiled chicken, to be exact – and do a MtAoFC side dish – Soubise, or Braised Rice and Onions – along with some shredded Brussels sprouts, because I was feeling the need for something green and fresh.  Then I was going to make the next dessert, Mousse a l’Orange, which is pretty much what it sounds like it is, and which Julia suggests serving in scooped out orange halves, which is just the cutest thing, don’t you think?  Well you can guess just how far I got with that.  Sometimes the cooking get to be too much for me – that’s right, ladies and gentlemen, even for me. However, the Soubise was pretty fucking amazingly great.  I guess you can’t go too wrong with two pounds of caramelized onions.  You start by parboiling some rice – not too much, only have a cup – for five minutes, and draining it.  Then you melt four tablespoons of butter in a casserole, and toss two pounds of sliced onions with it before adding the rice and some salt and pepper.  Then you cover and cook it in the oven in a 300° oven for an hour.  Then, right before serving, you stir in ¼ cup cream, ¼ grated Swiss cheese, and two tablespoons butter. Mmhm.  This is some seriously lovely, mushy stuff.  I actually can’t take too much caramelized onions, though, even though I love them – even when they aren’t combined with cheese and cream and tons of butter, they’re decadent and rich.  It was a good thing I’d done Brussels sprouts the light and healthy way – Julia’s Brussels sprouts gratineed with chestnuts might just have had me kicking the bucket.  What I did, instead, was shred the sprouts (with the slicer attachment of the Cuisinart, thank you very much) and sauté them in butter with salt and pepper, and when they had browned a bit, I threw in a tablespoon or so of water and covered it to let the sprouts steam a little.  Then squirted them with lime juice, and that was all.  Good stuff. The chicken was broiled chicken.  Which is always a good thing. Mousse a l’Orange was so not happening. But the next morning, I did make it.  I was feeling pretty confident on this.  On a first reading, the recipe seemed not so different than the technique for the Bavarians previous, which although I had not like them all that much, had turned out pretty successfully, I think.  I zested three big lovely oranges and half a somewhat shriveled lemon.  Do you remember when zesting fruits was a big pain in the ass?  I can barely recall the time, though I know that once it was one of the kitchen tasks I dreaded most.  Thanks the little lord Jesus for my microplane!  I mixed the zest with some Grand Marnier and enough juice from the oranges to make up two cups altogether. Then I beat six egg yolks together with half a cup of sugar until they were “pale yellow and form[ed] the ribbon,” which still sounds scary and inscrutable to me, like an ancient Japanese name for some whacked-out sexual practice.  I beat in some cornstarch and the orange juice mixture, and heated the whole thing, stirring, until it thickened, but did not come near the simmer.  This is a perplexing thing to do.  I stirred and stirred and stirred, and nothing seemed to happen at all.  Then all it once it thickened up, not slowly, but pretty much all at once.  The stuff was supposed to get to 170 degrees, no higher.  Which I guess if I had a candy thermometer, I’d know if it had.  But I broke my candy thermometer while frying chicken about a year ago, spilling mercury into my frying oil, which was a great tragedy we may not yet have seen all the ramifications of to my health, and which is an entirely different story.  So, I guessed, took it off heat, and beat it until it stopped cooking. Then I beat the six egg whites until stiff.  I folded them into the first mixture and put it all into the fridge. So, the main difference between Mousse a l’Orange and the Bavarians is that the Bavarians use gelatin.  This is a major difference, as it turns out.  The difference between a dessert and a cold orange soup. After a couple of hours I folded in whipped cream beaten until stiff.  By that time, though, it was clear that the mousse was a liquidated failure.  There was no way I was scooping this into orange halves and topping it with pretty little mint leaves.  It sits in my fridge still, until I resign myself and throw it away.  Sigh. After brunch the rest of Saturday went by in an insane bout of house cleaning.  The apartment is cleaner than any I have inhabited since beginning the J/J Project.  But by dinner time, I was in no mood at all to cook.  Ah well, sometimes one must soldier on.  The menu was Paupiettes de Boeuf (braised stuffed beef rolls), Carottes Glacees (glazed carrots), and Champignons Grilles (broiled mushroom caps) with Beurre d’Estragon (tarragon butter).  I bought a bunch of beef for bracciole, which was nice and thin already, cut it into squares, and pounded it thinner with a rolling pin before setting it aside.  I sautéed some minced onions in butter, then mixed them with an egg, parsley, garlic, some thyme and allspice, salt and pepper, some ground veal and chopped bacon.  It was meant to be ground veal, ground pork, and fresh pork fat, but our store didn’t have the pork products I required.  So ground veal and bacon.  I rolled a tablespoon or so of this mixture up into each piece of beef and tied each beef roll on either end with kitchen twine.  Which took a hell of a long time.  These rolls I browned in lard, in rotation.  I browned some sliced carrots and onions in the lard next, then stirred in some flour and browned the vegetables for a couple of minutes.  I took the pot off heat and beat in some vermouth and beef stock. I laid into the bottom of the pot some slices of bacon I’d simmered in water.  Again, it was supposed to be salt pork or fresh pork rind, but we use what the Long Island City grocery provides to us.  I lay the beef rolls over them, poured in enough vermouth and stock to barely cover, and brought it to a simmer on the stove before covering it and sticking it in the oven for an hour and a half.  The rest of the meal was a snap, more or less, which is good because I was coming to the end of my rope for the moment.  For the carrots, I just put Eric-cut carrots into a pot with some beef brother, sugar, butter, and salt and pepper, and simmered for half an hour.  For the mushrooms, I just brushed some melted butter over Eric trimmed and cleaned mushroom caps and broiled them, five minutes a side.  Then I beat some softened butter with lemon juice and minced tarragon leaves – leftover from my aspic feast last night, and I’m really surprised they’re still good – and smeared a good teaspoon or so into each mushroom cap before broiling briefly again.  For the rice, I just made rice, like sane people do. When the beef rolls were done I lifted them out of the pot, strained the cooking juices, and mixed them with some mustard and cream.  I put the beef rolls back in and brought the pot back up to a simmer. Eh. The beef rolls were alright.  I little dry, I think.  I attribute it to the lack of pork fat.  The mustard cream sauce was good, and this would be worth trying again with the proper ingredients, if ever I feel like making beef rolls again, which at the moment seems unlikely.  The carrots were good – carrots.  Kinda sweet, of course, which is why I don’t go coocoo for carrots.  Mushrooms were quite good, and as the easiest of the recipes, a definite keeper. Now it’s Sunday, and my god, I’ve got to go to work tomorrow.  Two days of public hearings coming up.  I guess my fascist is showing, but this public input thing is insanity.  Do you see the Bush administration going out and doing an outreach program on the public’s feeling a war on Iraq and his tax cuts?  Hell, no!  You know why, I mean other than that the Bush administration could give a fuck?  Because it’s crazy!  It’s government by a committee of millions.  But that, my friends, is the subject of another blog.  The subject of this blog is food, for instance the lamb and green chile stew my husband is making at this very instant for me to eat tomorrow night at midnight after I’ve done my bit for democracy in Queens.  Or, for instance, the potato gnocchi flavored with chicken livers that’s on for tonight.  So I’d better get to it.   4:59:41 PM    comment []