I ran across an intriguing recipe for Coq au Vin this morning, calling for white wine instead of red. I'm keen to try it since I had almost given up on the dish; every time I made Coq au Vin I hated it, the red wine completely overpowering all the other flavors.
The explanation for this, according to the white wine recipe extolled in Cusine at Home, is that most of us American cooks are not going to use a tough, old, flavorful rooster for the Coq part of the Coq au Vin. Young birds require a more delicately flavored sauce. This makes perfect sense and there are few things I respect more than the application of good sense to cooking.
I need a repository for recipes I want to try before I forget about them. What's the date today? February 11th? February 11th is going to be my temporary repository until I find someplace else to put them.
Repository for Recipes to be Tried
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Coq au Vin (white wine version)
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Osso Bucco
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Cod Cakes with Ginger and Scallion
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Roast Cod with Tangerine Sauce
This has been, thus far, a slow week for cooking. Last night we simply had to eat leftover grilled salmon, spaghetti with homemade meatballs & bean soup. If I utilized the freezer more, my refrigerator wouldn't become stocked with such odd dinner combinations. Once something becomes consigned to my freezer, however, it loses all appeal. For me freezers are for frozen homemade stock, frozen bannanas, frozen meat, on occasion--in other words things I can utilize in cooking, but not entire meals themselves. Also, I know exactly what Nigella says about becoming bored with what's in her freezer. If I open the freezer five times a day and each time that old package of pork chops is staring me in the face, it doesn't take long before I want to toss it. I'd rather just go to the store on a daily basis; for me that means less waste.
Tonight I won't cook since I'll be working outside the home for the first time in 4 years. My stepmother asked me if I'd like to do some translating tonight at student-teacher conferences at the local elementary school. Recent years have seen a boom in the number of Mexican immigrants settling in Red Wing. I'm sure the Mexicans wonder just what the heck sort of Spanish I'm speaking, influenced as it is by Paraguayan, Colombian, and peninsular Spanish. But they're very polite and they never say anything negative.
11:52:09 AM 
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