Chop and Stir

Spicy Cauliflower

I've been seeing some fresh, firm cauliflower at the markets recently, so that inspired me to get my spicy cauliflower dish going again.

I like this dish because the anchovy and breadcrumbs give some "meatiness" to the cauliflower. In a pinch, you can serve this with some pasta, and you've got a meal. 

In the video, I added the breadcrumbs to the cauliflower over heat, before plating. I think it will be better to wait until after you've plated, and add the breadcrumbs over top, so that they don't get soggy, and you preserve that sheen and bit of sauciness from your stock reduction.

And finally, the recipe on Freebase, courtesy of Freebase TopicBlocks:

Spicy Cauliflower with Anchovy

Braised Shortribs

Also known as boeuf bourguignon. But this is not your typical dry beef overcooked in red wine, that shredded beef with soggy carrots and mealy potatoes.

No, no, this is melt-in-your-mouth morsels of beef on a bed of perfectly cooked vegetables, in a sauce of reduced beef stock and red wine with a complexity of flavors. Topped off with some crisped bacon, for even more flavor. Here you go...  Pardon the funky green bowl--we had this for Christmas dinner at our cabin in Tahoe.

 

 I like this recipe because it demonstrates some techniques that one can use for many other dishes. Making your own stock, cooking the meat on a bed of vegetables, and separately cooking the vegetables that ultimately show up in the stew. As you might expect, it's from the Bouchon cookbook.

I must admit that this recipe is a bit of work, but you can do it all days ahead of your dinner function. In fact, you're supposed to. The beef is supposed to rest covered in cold stock for one to three days, for the juices to fully integrate into the meat.

Here's some beautiful shortribs, courtesy of Chop and Stir readers Tom and Kristi Patterson, from the Patterson ranch in Montana. Thanks Tom and Kristi!  I deboned them the night before I made the stew, to use the bones to make a beef stock.

I browned the meat in a touch of canola oil and a large cast iron pan to retain heat.  You only need about 1 tablespoon of oil to start the browning process, because the ribs will throw off plenty of fat for cooking.  Mmmm, look at that color!

 

Here's our meat, all nicely browned, resting on paper towels

 

I make a red wine reduction with a bunch of vegetable, reducing two bottles of red wine down to a glaze. This wine glaze and vegetables will become the bed upon which we will braise the short ribs. You'll end up tossing these vegetables after you'v extracted all the flavor from them anyway, so it's ok that they don't look pretty.

 

Wrap the shortribs in a piece of cheesecloth that is big enough to cover the pot. I like to have the cloth then cover the ribs, so that the stock doesn't envelop the ribs with loose vegetables.

 

The cheese cloth drapes over the shortribs, and there's enough stock to cover all of the meat.

I've created a mise en place of the cooked vegetables, all ready to be incorporated into the stew. The fingerling potatoes and carrots are cooked till just firm in water infused with thyme, bayleaf, and garlic.

The onions have been blanched and peeled, mushrooms are sauteed, and the bacon crisped on a sheet pan in the oven. You cook all of the vegetables individually and just to the right amount of doneness, so that when you add them to the stew, they will still have their flavor intact and won't be overcooked.

 

Here's the recipe on Freebase.

Braised Shortribs

Daily bread

I've been baking bread every day this week. Here's this morning's bake off with our favorite bread delivery man. An olive levain and a polenta bread.

Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Balls

It wouldn't be Christmas at our house without chocolate covered peanut butter balls! Cheryl made a batch on Christmas morning, and here's all of her tempering secrets.

A demo of laryngitis Cheryl rolling the peanut butter mixture into balls:

Here's the trick to tempering chocolate:

And finally, she covers in chocolate and rolls in chopped peanuts:

Here's the recipe and instructions on Freebase:

Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Balls

Combine peanut butter, sifted powdered sugar, and peanut butter in a large mixing bowl. Use a Kitchen-Aid with paddle attachment, if you... more

Author: Cheryl Shwe

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CSI: Mountain Edition

Chop and Stir, Inc? 

Up in the hills of Tahoe for two weeks, and we've brought some of the kitchen with us, including the bread making essentials: sourdough starter, flour, lame, and a piece of plywood as our deluxe bread peel.

I've been wondering how the bread baking would be up here. What would happen with the altitude, different water, dry air, different oven? Turns out that its pretty much the same as baking in San Francisco.

Two loaves baked so far, and it's looking really good.

First loaf from Sunday morning (yes, that's snow in the background):

Pretty good, but a little too dense. Things to fix: increase the hydration and increase the second rise by a bit. Yes...that seemed to do the trick.

Here's the bread from the morning's bake:

 

Ahh, that's much better! Much more irregularity in the holes, and more sponginess to the bread. I'm hoping to bake a loaf each day up here, using up all the 12 ounces of extra starter from each daily feed for actual bread.

Mountain Food

We're headed up to the hills for the weekend to do some skiing, so I made a huge pot of tomato sauce for dinner in the Tahoe ski house.

The new twist here is that I let it slowly simmer uncovered overnight, since I wasn't able to start it until about 9 pm last night. By 7 am this morning, ahh.  The whole house is smelling like a wheel of parm and we've got a 4 quarts of beautifully concentrated pasta sauce. The onions and garlic have melted, along with the pieces of the parmigiano rind I threw in.  I used an enormous Le Creuset to disperse the heat and carmelize the sauce, over the lowest burner setting--the sauce was just barely bubbling for about nine hours.

It's a whole different beast from what I put in the pot last night. That's what I love about the slow cooking process: all the emergent textures, aromas, colors, and flavors.

 

See how thick this stuff is? Yum!

I'll put the recipe on Freebase soon, but in the meantime, here's a link to the videos from the last time that I made Spaghetti and Tomato Sauce.

Petit Gougère

I finally had the chance to give the mighty gougere a shot. This was the first time that I've actually used our family food blog to create a dish. I followed Emily's recipe, courtesy of my iphone, and I'm very excited by the results. Just like Emily said-- the perfect food to go with some wine before dinner.

I opted for the individual gougere, here's how they turned out--puffy and golden, like I was hoping for:

One thing to note on the recipe-- make sure you stir in the flour while the pot of milk is still over heat. I reduced the heat to medium while stirring in the flour. The flour should soak up the milk and become a fairly dry mass, just like the picture. I think it also helps to bring your eggs to room temperature, so you're not changing the temperature of the flour mass, and of the eggs to much when you mix the eggs into the flour-milk-butter mixture.

Here's the mixture just before I spooned it onto the silpat:

This mix made 10 healthy-sized gougere thingies. For the first ten lucky guests that arrive... Uh, er, make that the first 9, 8....

Looking for a new appetizer? Impress your friends...gougère!

Here's a guest post from Chop and Stir reader Emily Donahue. Thanks to Emily and son Chris for this recipe. Something fun to try out for one of your holiday parties.

This must be the season for making a gougère. Folks at my office were talking about them today, letting me know that you can make them ahead of time, spoon them onto your sheet pan, and freeze them on the pan ahead of time. Just before your guests arrive, remove the pan from the freezer, bring to room temperature, and then bake.  I'll try that sometime soon and report back.

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When I moved to Paris in 2002, my new kitchen was 4'X6'. It still is.  However, I have enjoyed the challenge of cooking in a small space.  Since many cooks are faced with the same cramped quarters, I thought sharing some of my creations might give confidence to the closet cook!

Gougère- this yummy appetizer can be made as a single ring, or baked as separate smaller mouthfuls. Either way, it is a crunchy change from bread or crackers and cheese, and complements any pre-dinner beverage.


1 cup milk, salt and pepper, 2oz butter in a pan.

Bring to a boil.

4 oz flour all at once into the boiling mix

Stirring with a wooden spoon till you have a mass

Off the heat, add egg #1

Fold in egg # 2

Add egg #3 - the dough is getting shiny, which is key

3 oz of cheese- I used fontina - should be small pieces

Mix until cheese is pretty well incorporated

tablespoons plopped in a circle - use two spoons

second row of plops on top of the first row

smoothed a bit with a knife - brushed with milk

cooked at 375 without peeking until firm in middle - about 45 minutes

The done test is always tricky.  Keep peeking through the window until you see that the gougère is nicely puffed and browned,then quickly check with a toothpick to see that there is not a lot of uncooked dough--the toothpick should come out clean.  There is a chance that it can fall, but taking it out too soon ensures that it will deflate! 

As insurance against undercooking, the oven can be then turned off for another five minutes with the gougère still inside.  

Cut with a serrated knife to help keep it from falling. Enjoy!

Quacks Like a Duck

From our house to your house, we wish you a Happy Thanksgiving!

Lots of activity in the Shwe house this morning. Birthday boy Alex jumping around like a new nine year old. Turkeys pulled from their brine. Bread about to go in the oven. Smoker is, well, smoking.

These are some funny looking turkeys though. Poor things don't have any legs. There are many roads to the dream turkey, and I've just taken one that I had not yet traveled: turkey legs confit. Purely speaking, to confit means to cook meat in its own fat. I've slow cooked the four legs from the two turkeys in duck fat. Ohhhhh, these are to die for.

 

Turkey legs, ready for their 10 hour bath in duck fat

No matter how moist and flavorful the white meat, the drumsticks from the turkeys of years past have been dry and tough. Might as well compost them.  No more of that. I followed the Bouchon recipe (what else?) for duck legs confit, and these are falling off the bone, most, dense, and salty--just like the dream. More on the duck leg confit process later.

All I need to do at serving time is warm them in and rescue them from the duck fat bath that they are now resting in, and toss them under the broiler to crisp up the skin.

Falling off the bone tender, after 10 hours in 190 degree duck fat

We hope your turkey and your time with family and friends is a memorable one.

Turkey Thoughts

I'm still in search of the perfect turkey. I dream of super-moist and dense meat, with a crisp, nicely browned skin. With some steamy, herbaceous stuffing falling out of the bird. Our friends at the USDA advise us not to cook the stuffing in a turkey, "for optimum safety", because of salmonella issues. I stuff the turkey anyway, because it makes the stuffing taste so good. Just don't let any warm stuffing sit around in an uncooked bird for very long.

Last year, I tried injecting and then deep frying one, and smoking the other one in a Weber with hickory. Neither was very good. This year, the strategy is to go back to brining and high-heat roasting for the main bird, which I've had great results with in the past. For my experimental bird, I'll do a slow smoke over apple wood chips.

For both birds, I'm using the Diestel free-rangers again. The heritage birds from Bill Niman in Bolinas sounded very appealing, but the $6.99/pound was stifling.

I'll use the brine from the Bouchon cookbook for both birds, which I've been using for roast chickens. I think I'll add some allspice and juniper berries to give some of that Thanksgiving earthiness and spice. 

For my stuffing, I'll cut up some of the big Pain au Levain loaves from Trader Joes into small cubes, combining in a large cast iron pan with melted butter, adding a sauteed mixture of carrots, celery, and onions, with a touch of minced garlic. Some thyme, parsley, and sage for aroma and flavor. Then, I like to take all the giblets (kidney, heart, stomach, and especially the liver) and puree them in a cuisinart. It makes for a scary looking addition to your stuffing, but it makes the stuffing so good. I much prefer the natural flavors of the turkey giblets in the stuffing to adding sausage, which tends to overwhelm the turkey flavors. Gotta keep that stuffing moist, so I'll add lots of chicken stock to it, along with some white wine to give it some good acidity and bite. I'll cook half of the stuffing in the roasting bird, and half in a covered casserole dish.

Let us know your bird plans and secrets, and how things turn out for you. Happy Thanksgiving to all of our Chop and Stir readers!

Brine

Zest the lemons with a vegetable peeler, and then juice them. Combine zest and juice with all other ingredients in a large pot and bring...

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Author: Thomas Keller

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