Monday, July 14, 2003

Even in New York, getting sweetbreads on short notice on a Saturday can be a bit of a trick.  I called five butchers in my quest.  Ottomanelli’s, my standby, would have them on Monday.  Whole Foods didn’t have any because they “couldn’t get veal right now,” which I guess is what happens when you’re all ethical and shit about your baby cows.  The number for Lobel’s, reputed by Jeffrey Steingarten, who I guess should know, as the best butcher in NYC, just rang and rang.  The woman at Florence Meats just said “No!” and hung up on me.  Finally Pino’s, on Sullivan Street, said they could get them for me if I waited a couple of hours.  That kind of creeped me out – what did they need two hours for, was Daisy still waiting out back for her bolt between the eyes? – but it worked out very conveniently, because Eric could go down there, pick up the sweetbreads, and spend some time mooning over the Powerbooks at the Mac store while he was at it.  Which is what he did.  I meanwhile went shopping for the rest of the ingredients for Ris de Veau a la Marechale (Creamed Sweetbreads) and Charlotte aux Pommes (Apple Charlotte), and then proceeded to waste my day away doing never you mind what. I was determined this time to do right by the sweetbreads, so when Eric brought them home I immediately rinsed them and set them to soak for an hour and a half in cold water, changing the water several times.  I am trying to be open minded about offal, but sweetbreads, I’ve noticed, do have a faint but unmistakeable whiff of a high school biology lab at the end of a long day of frog dissections.  After they’d soaked awhile, I tried peeling away some of the “filament that encloses them.”  I continue having issues with this.  First of all, it looks to me that if I ever succeeded at doing this, my sweetbreads would disintegrate into dozens of tiny little lobes of gland.  Secondly, aren’t filaments like thready things?  This stuff is definitely more like a film.  And it’s more than a little disgusting, more than a lot annoying as hell.  Not at all surprisingly, I leave off before too terribly long, and let the things soak again in more cold water, this time with some vinegar mixed in. While that was doing, I started on preparing the apples for the Charlotte.  I have a couple of problems here.  First of all, because I was a confirmed fruit-phobe when I was a child (and even, I’ll confess, now), I am not much good at recognizing a good apple when I see one.  Or maybe July just isn’t the ideal time for making apple desserts.  But I tried to pick good, crisp, unblemished apples, only to find once I peeled them that they had bruises and soft bits and were just sort of generally mealy.  Not really the thing to change my mind about fruit.  The second problem is that peeling, coring, and quartering 6 pounds of apples takes longer than you’d think.  Then I’d put them in a pot to cook under low heat, and turned on the flame, before I went back to the recipe, and realized that Julia wanted me to cut the quarters into 1/8 inch pieces.  Oy vey.  I got Eric into the kitchen to help, disturbing his Harry reading, and together, we diced six pounds of apples.  Pain in the ass.  These I put back in the pot and let cook, covered, over low heat for half an hour or so, until they were soft.  Then I stirred in half a cup of apricot preserves that I’d run through a sieve, which is a pain in the ass but whatever, a cup of sugar, some vanilla, a fourth cup of rum and three tablespoons of butter.  This I boiled for about ten minutes until it was good and thick and the liquid had pretty much evaporated. Now this apple stuff was supposed to go straight into a charlotte mold that I’d lined with pieces of bread sliced perfectly to fit the mold, and browned lightly in butter.  Needless to say, I hadn’t gotten that done yet, because I was peeling the mother-lovin’ “filament” off the mother-fuckin’ sweetbreads.  So I set the apple stuff aside until the sweetbreads were in the oven.  The braising of the sweetbreads went more or less the same as last time, only since I didn’t have to blanch (read: boil) them because I was cooking them right away, and because I had vermouth, the recipe worked more like it was supposed to.  I sautéed some diced celery and carrots and onions and ham in butter with parsley and thyme and a bay leaf until soft, then added the sweetbreads, basted them in the buttery vegetably stuff, and let them cook on the stove top, covered for ten minutes.  This time they did “render quite a bit of juice,” just as Julia had said they would.  I set the sweetbreads in my braising dish, cooked down the juices with vermouth and poured them over the sweetbreads, along with some beef broth to nearly cover, brought to a simmer and stuck in the stove. I couldn’t bake the charlotte until the sweetbreads came out, because of the temperature difference.  But I could at least line the mold.  So.  Obviously, I wasn’t going to clarify any frickin’ butter, especially since Julia has since the printing of this book come out against the practice.  So I just browned the pieces of bread I cut to fit the mold in regular old melted butter, and stuck them in.  They fit quite nicely, if I do say so myself – a square in the middle of the round bottom, surrounded by four moon shapes, and then overlapping strips along the side.  Right around here I freak out because I’ve forgotten the spinach.  Eric, who is disturbed that I freak out so freakin’ much these days, volunteers his services.  I put some water on to boil for the spinach.  The kitchen’s getting a little hot. Sweetbreads out.  Take the glands out, put them aside.  Boil down the cooking juices.  In a separate pan make a roux of flour and butter, then blend in the cooking stock.  It’ll get thick.  Beat in half a cup a cream, and then more cream until it’s the consistency you like for cream sauce for sweetbreads.  Add a little lemon juice to lighten it up, and some salt and pepper.  Put the sweetbreads back in the braising, dish, cover with the sauce, and bring almost to the simmer before serving. But before you do that you have to blanch the spinach and rinse it in cold water – which, because the kitchen cold water tap doesn’t work, has to be done in the bathtub – then squeeze out the water, heat it in the pot until the remaining water evaporates, and cook slowly with a hell of a lot of butter.  And make some rice.  And turn up the oven to 425, and scoop the apple stuff into the charlotte mold, lay some more buttered-bread strips on top, and bake it for half an hour or so while you’re eating, until the bread is browned and the charlotte is set enough to stand up on its own.  That’s the theory anyway. By the time we sat down to dinner, I never wanted to cook again.  I don’t know why I get so exhausted so easily these days.  But the sweetbreads were quite good.  I think so, anyway.  Eric didn’t like his – he says he can’t get around the offal thing.  I don’t get it.  To me they tasted like a very mild liver, mild enough to serve in a cream sauce.  I was a little offended to tell you the truth.  Besides, his spinach was gritty, so there. The charlotte came out nice and golden and brown, but I fucked it up unmolding it, so it collapsed a little.  Oh well.  I boiled down some apricot preserves (fuck pushing it through the sieve) with rum and sugar to pour over the charlotte.  And it was good, apple-y and buttery from the bread.  Quite rich.  I couldn’t eat much.  And then we threw the rest of it away, which of course is a sin and I’m going to hell, but I’ve got an avalanche of apple desserts coming up, and I quailed before them. Sunday was easier.  For one thing, Eric made dinner – a big honkin’ pork shoulder cooked with New Mexico red chile sauce for four and a half hours, and then shredded up for tacos.  Alongside, red rice made with tomatoes and don’t forget the lard.  Pork taco with red chiles sauce and red rice with lard can certainly hold their own with all of Julia’s butter and cream.  Or maybe I just stuffed myself picking off the roast before dinner.  And I just made the Pommes Normande en Belle Vue.  Belle Vue – that sounds nice.  As my mother pointed out, I think I need a nice long stay at a sanatorium, why don’t people have sanatoriums anymore?… Sorry, tangent.  Anyway, all this is is apples, again cored and peeled and quartered, and sliced into 1/8 inch pieces.  Not diced – sliced.  Don’t tell my husband I made him dice six pounds of apples for no reason, ‘kay?  Anyway, those slices cooked for half an hour or so over low heat, then boiled with cinnamon and lemon zest and sugar until the liquid nearly evaporates – which takes much longer than the five minutes Julia suggests – then blended with a fourth cup of rum, four tablespoons of butter, four eggs and an extra egg white.  Which is all turned into my trusty charlotte mold, which I’ve lined most inexpertly with caramel – making the caramel in the charlotte mold this time, I’d have thought the direct heat would warp the mold, but no, it works fine – and baked, in a pan of hot water, for an hour or so, and served with whipped cream, which I should have flavored with sugar and rum, but didn’t.  It’s pretty amazing – there was a time not that long ago when I wouldn’t even touch a dessert with an apple in it, now I’ve eaten two in one twenty-four hour period.  The second of them was the better, I think – lighter, and yet more solid, almost cake-like.  I’ll take it to work instead of tossing it to make room for the apple aspic.  Just when I thought it was safe to put the Knox away….  8:21:05 AM    comment []