Tuesday, April 15, 2003

You know, I keep forgetting to mention this, but I did finish the Crabe en Chaud-Froid, or Crab in Chaud-Froid (read: “aspic with cream in it”), that I was talking about working on a week and a half ago.  If you don’t believe me, come and look in the bottom shelf of my fridge.  Actually, it would be great if you would do that, because I don’t dare.  Just bring some elbow-length rubber gloves and industrial strength disinfectant.  Seriously, I did manage to taste some of the stuff, almost a week ago that was now.  And it really.  Really.  Wasn’t good.  And I don’t even think it was because it had gone bad, though there may have been a bit of that to it.  No, I think that I can safely say that Chaud-Froid is simply a hangover from a time when presentation meant more than it does now, and we were willing to put up with stuff that tasted like ass if it looked pretty.  And mine isn’t pretty, so there really is no point.  Chaud-Froid, rest in peace. Which is not to say there aren’t more aspics.  Aspics we’ve got.  Only just a few though.  We’ll make it. Last night we made something that sounds almost as bad as aspic – boiled lamb, or Gigot a l’Anglaise, as Julia calls it.  Poor English.  The French have food, sex and philosophy, and what to the English have?  Tony “Bush-Poodle” Blair and a centuries-old reputation for not being able to cook. I say that despite the fact that Gigot a l’Anglaise winds up actually being not half bad.  And though there is time involved, it doesn’t be much simpler.  Just get a leg of lamb and your largest pot.  Get some salted water up to boiling, and stick the lamb in, with a meat thermometer rammed into it.  Let it barely simmer for about 12 minutes per pound, or until the thermometer reads 147°.  When it’s about an hour away from done, throw in some carrots and turnips and potatoes and onions, if you want.  Once it’s done, let it rest for a bit in the water, then take it out and baste it with some butter.  The hardest thing about this, actually, was the Coulis de Tomate I made as a sauce.  And it wasn’t exactly hard, it just took longer than I was thinking.  Mostly because I had to peel tomatoes, which jesus sometimes you’re just not in the mood to peel tomatoes.  The tomatoes plus thinking for a minute that we owed $1,200 in taxes was enough to make me pretty irritable.  But once the tomatoes are peeled and juiced and chopped and once you’ve minced some onions, sautéed them in olive oil, cooked that with some flour, then it’s pretty much child’s play.  Dump in the tomatoes, along with a bit of sugar, some garlic, parsley, bay and thyme, fennel, basil, a pinch of saffron, pinch of coriander, some dried orange peel and some salt.  Cook it slowly, covered, for ten minutes, then uncover it and cook it for half an hour.  Add some water if it’s scorching.  Stir in some tomato paste at the end if you have crappy tomatoes.  The lamb is not at all pretty, and the vegetables look, well, boiled.  But the meat is moist and not overdone – which has to do not only with carefully watching the meat thermometer, but also with keeping the water it cooked in at a bare simmer – and the vegetables have been boiling with a fatty leg of lamb, so they aren’t that bad.  Plus the sauce really brightens everything right up.  It’s actually quite good.  I also could have served it with Sauce aux Capres, a “mock hollandaise” with capers, which I’ve made before and which I think would be excellent with this, as well as taking much less time.  But it would rather out-English the English, I fear.  So I stuck with tomatoes.   So, much discussion in the comments about what blog I should do once this one is done.  To which I say, first of all, don’t get too excited here – we’ve got some Julie/Julia Project left here, and I may very well win the lottery and never do anything again besides lie on a beach in Tahiti for the rest of my natural life.  I did think of something, though – what about a seething indictment of the New York City subway system?  That would be fascinating, wouldn’t it?  I could research, for instance, the strange civic conspiracy or rip in time’s fabric that prevents me from getting to lower Manhattan early under any circumstances.  For instance, yesterday I left home half an hour early so I might get done an important errand.  Well, I waited on the subway platform for twenty minutes, wound up taking a different train and making two transfers, including one at 51st and Lex, aka “The Station that God Forgot.”  I wound up crying like a baby in public.  If ever you should hear that I have died, you may be reasonably certain that I immolated myself on the tracks in protest, or threw myself in front of a speeding train just so I’d never have to get on another one of the fuckers. Seriously. 7:37:40 AM    comment []