What's Cooking (Take Two!)

Matsutake if it's a big and thick (like a porcini), Maitake if it's Hen of the Woods (lots of delicate stems in a sphere, like a Koosh ball).

Add a little truffle salt and I'd just go for roast mushrooms over tajarin with butter.

And a glass of Barbaresco, please!

[Jenise]

Matsutake if it's a big and thick (like a porcini), Maitake if it's Hen of the Woods (lots of delicate stems in a sphere, like a Koosh ball).

Add a little truffle salt and I'd just go for roast mushrooms over tajarin with butter.

And a glass of Barbaresco, please!

Maitake is the one. Love the koosh ball comparison--that's perfect!

Well, the pot pie won the huzz vote so I went that direction, cooking the three mushrooms, tiny potatoes in slices, carrots, rutabaga and celery separately and then combining all in a creamy sauce made with sensible 2% milk, and seasoned with fresh tarragon, chives and Noilly Prat. But I ended up getting busy with the neighbors and having a glass of chardonnay on the patio, where it was an amazing 60 F (sorry, I know you guys are having quite the opposite over there), and watching the sunset, so the crust never got made and we just had it scooped over toasted artisan bread which was really quite good. That followed a salad of shredded escarole and cabbage in a sunflower seed vinaigrette.

Well, all that talk of coulibiac got to me as well, so I made one yesterday. (Sorry - got caught up in finishing and serving, so no photos.) Because of a salmon-phobe in the household, I wanted to use a white fish of some kind and ended up going with mahi. I used the Balthazar recipe, which calls for stacking two filets and with the mahi, this made for a pretty tall final result with the dimensions of a bread loaf. I did use the blini which kept the pastry nice and dry. I thought it came out well but a bit bland in flavor. Jeff's idea of loading up the rice wih spices is a good one and that's one change I'll make when I do this again (someday). Another change would be to plate in the kitchen rather than to bring it out to the table and "carve" it there. It was difficult to keep the slices together while slicing it on a platter; I think it would be easier to do this on a cutting board.

Sunday dinner was tom ka gai (Thai coconut milk, chicken, and galangal soup) and hong shao gai (Shanghai red-cooked chicken).

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Mike, I too love the (idea of the) blini barrier--does anyohne think that would improve a Beef Wellington?

Speaking of beef, tonight we're having steak. Watched an episode of Globe Trekker this morning on PBS in which a lovely rib eye was grilled to perfection in Ireland and suddenly, I must have that.

(Re Globe Trekker, used to watch faithfully, haven't watched in years, but would make a point of watching any episode hosted by the guy we saw this morning, Bobby Chinn, who is a trained chef self-described in this episode as "half Chinese, half Egyptian, grew up in New Zealand, educated in America and lives in Vietnam". He's articulate, funny, amusingly self-deprecating and brings an outstanding foodie POV to his commentary and choice of destinations.)

A wonderful dinner on Saturday night. I hosted a couple from my trail biking group as well as a friend of mine. The couple got us started with generous portions of 2 kinds of salumi, mortadella, crackers, Fontina cheese and some apples.

I offered to make dinner and the first course was a fennel, avocado, grapefruit and arugula salad. The weather was fairly nice so I grilled some wild caught Golden Corvina (excellent fish if you have never tried it) filets and topped those with a simple lemon, butter and caper sauce. My friend said she had never tried it before but after tasting it she would certainly seek it out in the future. To go with the fish, some multi-colored roasted fingerling potatoes with garlic, butter and fresh basil.

My friend though hit the game winning home run and brought homemade cannoli for dessert. A really good cannoli is hard to come by around here so these were quite the treat for all of us.

After that we went to a place close to home that has live jazz and settled in there for some music and a nightcap. All in all, a nice way to spend a winter evening.

Mike, I too love the (idea of the) blini barrier--does anyohne think that would improve a Beef Wellington?

That was one of my first thoughts as well. I really like Beef Wellington but my wife pooh-poohs it because of the soggy pastry problem. I have a ton of leftover blini and another package of puff pastry, so I hope to run some experiments on this.

Dave - Sounds like a great evening! I've never had corvina, but I'll keep an eye out for it.

Are we getting near time for "Take Three?"

[Robin Garr]

Are we getting near time for "Take Three?"

Is it starting to get unpredictable? We started the previous "takes" because the thread got so large that posts sometimes seemed to disappear, etc. This may not be an issue now with the larger, faster server and updated forum software. But if it's either problematic or simply unwieldy, speak up, and we could certainly archive this one and do a reboot.

Anyone?

Mike, I decided against the Balthazar recipe just because I couldn't see where the flavor was. Perhaps if the spinach were cooked with onions garlic and butter might have some flavor but texture would not be appealing.One method we employed was a "one pot" technique. The fish was poached on top of the seasoned mushrooms and the rice was cooked in the mushroom/fish poaching liquid. We added lots of fresh dill to the rice after cooking and before layering. Nonetheless I thought it should have had even more flavor.My co-chef did not like the color of the resulting rice, brownish from the baby portobellos.
Next go around in addition to whole poached fillets rather than flaked will use a variety of mushrooms fresh and dried and perhaps poach in stock and wine not water and wine. Also thinking about using up some of my jars of frozen ramp pesto between the layers for flavor. I was surprised that the flavor was better the next day and the puff pastry was not soggy.

Jenise, don't know why the blini wrap for beef Wellington would not work. We shingled 3 blini on the bottom layer and another 3 on the top but Julia Child pictures a single large blini wrapping her fish fillet and fish mousse. The single giant blini trimmed to fit would certainly streamline the assembly.

Christina -

As I put the dish together, I thought it would have more flavor than it did. The mushrooms were very tasty and the dill in the rice/chard mix came through nicely when I tasted it by itself. Everything seemed to get lost in the final production, though. I sauteed the fish as per the recipe and was browned nicely but that was not enough to give it any significant flavor. Salmon would have been a bit of an improvement over the mahi, but not much. I like the pesto idea. Getting a layer of something pretty strong like that is really what's needed. There would be some risk of obliterating the flavor of the fish, but there really wasn't much of that anyway, in the one I made.

Mike: Good on ya for our third Coulibiac! Sorry to hear about your flavor woes, though.

Christina, I think the ramp pesto is a great idea. I'd use it as a separate layer, as far away from the dill as you can manage, just to give people a variety of flavors.

Yesterday's cooking was cassoulet. I found some imported Toulouse sausage so it was game on. I also used ham hocks this time, simmering them in the ragout and then removing all that bone, skin, fat, gristle, etc. I think it improved the texture of the final result.

Speaking of which:

2015-01-25 17.51.21 cassoulet sm.jpg

Looks excellent, Jeff, and that is a great meal especially this time of year. I also like the retro timer and have one that is very similar that has been with me since I moved into my first place during college. Definitely a relic.

[Jenise]

Awesome looking cassoulet, Jeff--I can see the crust from here!

Dinner tonight not yet planned.

Have been working down the over-stuffed refrigerator from last week (houseguests and distance from a decent market always necessitate stocking lots of options) and, in fact, the leftover spaghetti Bolognese from last week probably should be dinner while I still have the fresh basil on hand to garnish it with.

Looks excellent, Jeff, and that is a great meal especially this time of year. I also like the retro timer and have one that is very similar that has been with me since I moved into my first place during college. Definitely a relic.

Thanks.

Gotta love the rocket-ship motif of those mid-20th-century timers! I've also had that thing about as long as I can remember.

And, every now and then, when the timer on the stove and the timer on the microwave are busy, I have a third timer to use.

[Jenise]

Bill's lasagna thread had me asking myself yesterday, "What's the name of when you roll lasagna noodles up one at a time and bake them that way?" I googled, the answer was 'rotolo', and up came this picture:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://recipetineats.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Rotolo-1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.recipetineats.com/baked-spinach-ricotta-rotolo/&h=941&w=680&tbnid=a1SXVXSPlW4c4M:&zoom=1&docid=siyZuW6mm7jfiM&ei=NXHJVPDOHsf3oATNk4H

And suddenly that's what we had to have for dinner. I used her recipe for the filling and overall instructions, made my own marinara sauce for a more complex and developed flavor than hers would have been, and made my own pasta sheets. Unfortunately, we didn't love the result. Taste was fine, but my pasta ended up in this weird place between not raw and not cooked--not toothsome or al dente but more gummy-soft than cooked-soft. As such it was quite a disappointment.

[Robin Garr]

Roasted and delicious: cauliflower, green peppers, onion and garlic, olive oil and high heat.

[Robin Garr]

Okra from our summer garden tastes best, but in January when you’re craving, Honduran okra will do. I feel bad about the carbon miles, but gumbo.

[Robin Garr]

Mushroom risotto made with fresh criminis and dried porcini and tons of yummy umami.

I saw something about pappardelle with roasted mushrooms and cream in a restaurant review today and that struck a chord. For supper, I roasted a bunch of sliced crimini mushrooms and put them into vermouth-cream-shallot sauce that went over pappardelle. It was a pretty easy thing to put together between Super Bowl commercials and it was delicious.

Dinner last night was chicken and tasso jambalaya.

-Paul W.

[Jenise]

Dinner last night was chicken and tasso jambalaya.

-Paul W.

Sounds great. Do you really get real tasso up in NH or do you use another ham as substitute?

Our dinner was a long progression of TV-suitable snacks (just the two of us), starting with a raw plate of sliced kohlrabi, pickled green tomatoes and baby peppers, followed eventually by chicken wings, close to three dozen that we didn't think we could finish but the longer we sat there, and the longer they sat there, we eventually polished off. Used berbere in the bread crumbs I rolled them in--yum!

[Robin Garr]

Mmm, black bean chili and cornbread. We ate it too fast to take its picture.