Skate with capers, cornichons, and brown butter sauce with Go-with-everything celery root puree

Dorie Greenspan: Around My French Table Recipes 2 & 3

This is a good recipe, and also a quick and easy one.  The Skate cooks quickly, as it is a thin wing, and the sauce comes together quickly and easily as well.  I couldn’t find a skate wing anywhere near the 6 ounces that Dorie calls for and so compensated by getting the correct number of ounces, amounting to 4 skate wings.  The recipe is tasty for two reasons.  One, skate just has good flavor naturally, and two, the sauce was good.  The sauce consisted of all the things in the title- cornichons, brown butter, capers, and also sherry and grainy French mustard.  I’d certainly make this recipe again, but not anytime soon.  Currently, fishing for skate is not ecologically sound, but luckily, as far as I am concerned, the sauce can probably be paired with another white fish, and so this recipe, and wild skate, can live on.  Dorie suggested putting the finished skate on a bed of Go-with-everything celery root puree, so that is what I did. 

I liked using celery root- it was novel and I was glad to be able to get a new vegetable into my diet. Also, it tasted good.  This recipe involved boiling in a mixture of milk and water celery root, one russet potato, and one onion.  When tender, liquid is drained and vegetables are pureed in a food processor with salt, pepper, and butter.  That’s it.  While we did think this tasted good, neither of us thought it was special enough to make another time.  I bet this is even better if you are a farmer and do not have to buy celery root- more of a reason to make it again.  But if you are like me and have to go out of the way to get celery root, you may agree that is not special enough to warrant many remakes.   

Chicken in a Pot: The Garlic & Lemon Version

There was a lot of anticipation for this meal.  We talked about making chicken in a pot long before we finally decided we were going to do it.  Having a photo of it on the cover of Dorie's book was a good reminder to make it happen.  It wasn't difficult, nor very time consuming.  The chicken, from the farmers market, was very good in itself, however, Dorie didn't call for much to be done with it, and it ultimately lacked flavor- no rubs, marinades, or seasoning other than salt and pepper.  The carrots and potatoes (yukon gold) were very tasty, the broth was good, but this seemed merely a first step- the chicken in a pot needed a boost, more time cooking, more flavor, more drippings, more something.  There was not much garlic or onion flavor despite having 4 heads and 16 bulbs respectively.  The dough around the rim of the pot was not worthy of eating and was merely a seal.  The results were not bad overall, but also not impressive.  Chicken and company only spent 55 minutes in the oven.  Would the original Richard Olney version have been better?  

Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table

1) Our meals had again become routine, 2) It is the new year, and 3) We are going to France; these are the reasons to begin the recipe book project again, hopefully with better luck, and again we have attempted to immerse ourselves in French cuisine. Greenspan's book was chosen because all the dishes seemed to have the right ingredients and immediately looked like the very thing you want to be eating. The caveat was that we had already tried one entrée, the one on the cover, actually, Chicken in a Pot: The Garlic and Lemon Version; and it didn't go well at all. But we own the book and need to give it a more representative chance. Besides, how would the chicken in a pot taste if we tried it again? Even if we have our doubts much of the time retesting  may be necessary in order to draw a valid conclusion. An aim will be to get to know French cooking before we arrive so that we can compare notes. How does our food approach theirs? What are we doing wrong or, maybe, more preferably? When we are at a café, bistro, or restaurant, what will we order? Hopefully we'll have a better place to draw answers from with the six months homework we expect to undertake.

Whole Grain Waffles

Alice Waters: The Art of Simple Food; Recipe 20

We have been collecting maple syrup.  Problem is, we don’t eat enough foods that call for maple syrup.  Not the biggest fans of pancakes (they are heavy after all), we thought we might prefer waffles.  But it’s been years since we have had waffles.  Do we even like them enough?  Not to mention we don’t have a waffle iron. In order to find out more about us and waffles, we borrowed an electric appliance and turned to Alice Waters for guidance.  Though pancakes sit heavy with us, there was no denying the success of Alice’s whole grain pancakes we made a few months ago.  Figuring she’d come through on the waffle front as well.  And she did.  The batter consisted of whole wheat pastry flour, all-purpose flour (note: recipe calls for no all-purpose flour- I ran short on the pastry flour.  Using all-purpose will make the waffles more dense, but we did just fine adding some in), cornmeal, and rye flour, whole milk (should have been buttermilk), baking powder, eggs, and a whole stick of butter(!).  Luckily we pulled my father into this meal, so we didn’t consume that whole stick by ourselves.   So these were just as heavy as pancakes, but we liked them better.  The recipe was tasty and the waffles were both crisp and fluffy which was preferable.  Used Burton’s Maple Syrup from Indiana and saw a lot of possibilities for gourmet-ifying waffles with add-on ingredients.  Alice Waters came through again with a simple flavorful batter and I would certainly make waffles again with this recipe.  Please excuse the photo, which I forgot to take until I was more than halfway done eating my waffles. 

Linzer Hearts

Sarabeth's Bakery: Recipe 4

Made October 14th.  Making these linzer hearts was not difficult, but it did take time.  Sarabeth warns you of this.  First you have to toast and de-skin the hazelnuts, then turn them into flour, mixing with all the other dry ingredients. Then you make the dough and refrigerate for 1-2 hours.  Next, you roll out the dough and stamp it with the cookie cutter, which of course, does not have to be a heart, but I had a heart shaped cutter and used it.   Once you have your baking sheets full of hearts, they need to go in the refrigerator again for another half hour.  Bake, cool completely, and make into sandwiches with jam in the middle.  Then, the real shocker, is that Sarabeth says to let the cookies stand for 8 hours, or overnight, before eating so that the jam can set.  Well, I didn’t want to wait that long and lo and behold, the jam ran out the sides of the cookie upon first bite.  So I thought she was right, you should wait.  But then when I had a cookie the next day the jam also got smooshed out of the cookie, albeit of a thicker consistency.  On day three, the jam escaping the cookie was less of an issue, though it still happened.   The cookies were a bit on the thick side, but that is only because my rolling pin skills are not that advanced yet.   These cookies are good, there is no question.  But are they good enough to warrant all that time?  Am I going to want to make these cookies again?  No, probably not.  I am more likely to try another recipe that might produce more impressive results.  These are easily the best Sarabeth cookies I have made so far, so I don’t want to knock them too much, but I would have liked dough that had a bit more zip to it brought about by spices I presume. As for the jam, I made a good choice with the relatively thick Mediterranean Organic Raspberry jam.  

Sage and Butternut Squash Risotto

Alice Waters: Chez Panisse Vegetables

Made this on October 7th and am running with my earlier Alice Waters theme, even though this is not from The Art of Simple Food.  This might have been more accurately named Butternut Squash Risotto with sage, but no matter, because it’s a winner.  It’s creamy, flavorful, and hits the spot.  I made it twice within 10 days.  It’s very simple to make as well and requires few ingredients- squash, sage, butter, broth, parmesan cheese, white wine, risotto rice.  This will become a regular autumn staple, I can see it now.  Thanks, Alice.

Update 2/15/13:  I make this about once every ten days now.  It is so easy that when I out of food and dinner ideas this is almost always something I can and do easily whip up (that's a one-hour whip-up, which is about how long I usually spend making dinner).  I almost never have sage in the house but I somehow always manage to have thyme and the thyme has been my go-to herb for this recipe.  I have no crispy fried thyme to replace the crispy fried sage that sits atop the risotto (see photo), but no matter, it's tasty anyway.  Just put in the amount of thyme that seems right to you.  I put in about a tablespoon or so during different stages of the cooking process.