September 2011 Home Restaurant

 

Photo Kate Headley

Friday night we had an open Home Restaurant, fabulous group!

This is what we ate and drank–

PASSING Whitmore Bacon and Eggs on Buckwheat Toast Cardoon, Golden Raisin, Young Olive, Fennel and Caper Rabbit and Rhubarb Ketchup with French Breakfast Radish Stuffed Squash Blossoms  Roasted Shishito Peppers Cold Beet Soup with Grain Yogurt Scallop on Cucumber with Sesame and Ginger Basil Lime Vodka Cocktail (Chateau de Roquefort) Cotes de Provence ROSE 'Corail' 2010    SEATED  Black Cod with Butterhead, Okra and Shallot Dressing 48 Hour Bread (Tenuta Roveglia) Lugana Classico 2010      Baby Lima Beans, Green Tomatoes, Eggplant and Spaghetti Squash and Baby Collard Greens Garlic Bread (Villargeau) Coteaux du Giennois Sauvignon Blanc 2010  Lamb Chop, Loin and Sausage with Basil Mashed Potatoes, Cipollini and Chard Spelt Olive Oil Bread (Ch. Pradeaux) Bandol Rouge 2003  Mayor of Nye Beach Cheese and Cracker  Zucchini Cake with Frozen Winter Squash and Candied Walnuts (Tissot) Cremant du Jura "Indigene" NV   Bites: Warm Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies, Celeste Fig Take Home: Sesame Bread, Salty Rosemary Walnut Biscotti, Fresh Bay Leaves

Mash Celery Root

For the last five nights mashed celery root has been part of our dinner. This is not the first time that we have gotten stuck on a particular food and it often happens at the beginning of the season when the food is available for the first time after it has been out of season for awhile...I assume that once we tire of the mash we will move on to roasting, marinating...

Mash Celery Root

Celery Root

Favorite Olive Oil (we used Tuscan Laudemio)

Favorite Salt (we cooked with a fine ground French sea salt and finished with pink Himalayan)

Freshly Ground Black Pepper (we used tellicherry)

Peel the celery root and chop into roughly 1 inch cubes, the pieces need to be more or less uniform so they can cook evenly.  Place in a pot, cover with water, season with salt and bring to a boil.  Cook until celery root is tender when pierced with a fork. Drain the celery root, place in a high speed blender,  add olive oil, salt and pepper to taste and process until very smooth. Serve hot.

Object Oriented Cookery, Collapse Journal

John had his first article published in a philosophical journal, Collapse...exciting!  His piece deals with practices he has been contemplating for years, molecular gastronomy and slow food– and his studies at European Graduate School and  Object Oriented Ontology of Levi Bryants, Larval Subjects.

- In Object Oriented Cookery, Chef John Cochran proposes a culinary practice that opens itself to non-human participants. Chefs, like philosophers, have "ontological commitments" determined by their praxis, and which distort the objects they work with. Cochran critiques the radical claims of contemporary food movements that claim to break out of normative models of cookery - Molecular Gastronomy and Slow Food - and asks what a "flat cookery" could be.

An excerpt from the article–

Therefore, cookery becomes an elegant configuration of entities in a feed-forward-feed-back clumsily-woven web of objects interacting on equal footing. If we do not know what a specific food can do, and this food is interacting with all sorts of other objects at a specific instant, then even in a radically closed environment, cookery becomes a lot like surfing. It consists of a series of tiny adjustments, prompted by anticipations and responses from an openness to utterances from all human and non-human actants entangled. Of course, in order to prevent short circuits, a chef must allow herself to be translated by other objects. In feeling her way through, aesthetics forms a new epistemology where the abundance of local manifestations forms a meal. Keeping in mind that the entanglement that constitutes this meal does not begin or end with this specific event of eating – objects stretch out through other objects. Anticipating objects’ behaviours and responding to both expected and unexpected acts, even the most experienced chef benefits by adopting the disposition of an amateur home cook. A disposition which is simply a commitment to objects being out of phase.

For the rest of the article you can purchase the journal through Urbanomics, or let us know and we will pass it along.

Slovenian Salt

On a recent trip to San Francisco we discovered Piran Salt from Slovenia at one of our favorite spots Boulettes Larder.

A little research uncovered that the salt has been around for a long time and is still harvested using techniques that are more than 700 years old.   The salt is actually scraped by hand from the salt basins in Secovlje Salina Nature Park on the Adriatic coast.

– our new favorite finishing salt...last night we used it to season roasted green tomatoes.

Friday Bridesmaid Lunch and Saturday Wedding Flowers, Late April

Photo Kate Headley I had a great weekend preparing food and flowers for Andrea who got married at the Decatur House yesterday.  I met Andrea quite recently as she was working outside of the country and just returned several weeks in advance of her wedding.

I was contacted a few weeks ago by a family friend of the brides who wanted to plan a "Bridesmaid" (there were no bridesmaids in the wedding) Home Restaurant Lunch.  Late April is full of some of my favorite ingredients, many of which are only available for a moment– helleborus, fava beans, viburnum, fiddlehead ferns, morels...

I will post flower photos when I get them in a few weeks, in the meantime here is the menu from Fridays lunch.  Friday was chilly and damp, lunch was served in front of the fireplace.  For the wedding however on Saturday the sun was out and the temperature was in the 70's...

Passing

Wild Rockfish Cake with Grainy Mustard

Chicken with Tarragon on Sweet Potato

Fennel, Caper, Golden Raisin and Lucques Olives on Endive

Scrambled Egg with Sorrel

Girasol Soup

Roasted Beet, Stem and Green with Pickled Beet

(Moutard) Brut Grand Cuvee NV

Seated

Blond Morels with Fava Beans and Fiddlehead Ferns on Arugula dressed with Chive Banyuls Vinaigrette, Whole Wheat Farm Bread

(Domaine de la Feuillarde) Saint-Veran V.V. 2008

Lamb Shoulder and Lamb Suasage with English Peas, Pea Shoots, Carrots, Leeks, Tiny Potatoes with Herb Leek Broth, Spelt Foccacia

(Domaine des Hauts Chassis) Crozes Hermitage, Les Chassis 2007

Winnimere Cheese on Walnut Cracker

Banana Cake Frozen Coconut Sandwich with Champagne Mango and Candied Macadamia Nuts

(Moutard) Brut Grand Cuvee NV

Chocolate and Vanilla Shortbread

Take Home: Salty Rosemary Walnut Biscotti

Making Energy Bars

What to eat on the run, on a plane– what to send with your child as a school snack or to eat after school before an after school activity that burns lots of calories?

Power bars or energy bars are perfect, not too filling but filled with calories, easy to eat on the run, non perishable...Unfortunately many are filled with sugar and have a really long list of ingredients.  In addition I am not comfortable having a pre packaged food be a part of my daily diet.  As a result I started playing around with a recipe of my own.

Once I came up with a recipe that everyone liked I decided to analyze it nutritionally, it looked good when I compared it to other options you can purchase.  I asked Janis Jibrin the nutritionist that I work closely with on Bob Greene's Best Life Diet to take a look at the ingredients and the analysis.  She enthusiastically approved!

Every Day Energy Bars

Makes 26 bars

5 cup oatmeal

½ cup grapeseed oil

½ cup almond milk

1 cup peanut butter

¼ cup ground flax seeds

¼ cup sesame seeds

¾ cup chopped bittersweet chocolate

¼ cup maple syrup

½ teaspoon salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a stand up mixer add all of the ingredients and mix everything is thoroughly combined, about 2 minutes.

3. Measure out 1/4 cup servings, you could bake them in cupcake molds, I baked them in silicone baking molds that accommodated 1/4 cup servings.

4. Bake for 15 minutes.  After cooling completely I wrap the bars individually in a small piece of parchment paper covered with tin foil.  I store these in the freezer and for me the recipe yields nearly a months supply.

Nutrition Information for One Bar–

calories: 205

protein: 6 g

carbohydrate: 18 g

fiber: 3 g

sugar: 3 g

total fat: 13 g

saturated fat: 2.6 g

monosaturated fat: 3.7 g

polysaturated fat: 5.4 g

cholesterol: 0 mg

calcium: 26 mg

potassium: 182 mg

sodium: 70 mg

Street Food, Paris, Thyms, Bastille Market

I know it is cliche to say, "I love Paris", but I do! Just arrived this morning and immediately after dropping off our bags the first stop was in search of a farmers market sandwich that we had tasted at the Bastille Market 3 years ago!

I remembered that the stand was at the South East corner of the market which is located just north of Bastille. The market is open on Sunday's and Thursday's only. We rushed to make it before the 2:00 closing and were thrilled to find the stand in the same place we had remembered it. I noted today that the stand is called Zaatar Wzeit and the sandwich is called Thyms.

The sandwich is made on a bread that is made by rolling dough on a large pasta like machine. The bread us then spread with a purée of sesame seeds, thyme, oregano and olive oil. It is cooked on a large metal drum an then rolled up and served wrapped in parchment paper. It was just as delicious as we had remembered an we plan to return for one more before our plane departs on Thursday. I am already plotting making my own version once I get back to my kitchen at 1508!

Happy New Year, Vegetable Bao

After having a restaurant for years it always feels like I am cheating when I don't work on New Years eve. Last night we embraced our work-free celebration and made vegetable bao which we ate in pj's to ring in 2011.  The recipe below is loose re filling and sauces, adjust those to your own personal taste.  The recipe calls for lots of time in between the various steps but your patience will be rewarded.

Happy New Year to all!!

Vegetable Bao

1.In a large bowl mix together using a wooden spoon 2 tablespoons of fresh yeast, 2 teaspoons of sugar, 1/3 cup of all purpose unbleached flour and 1/3 cup lukewarm water. Let the mixture stand for 30 minutes.

2.Add 1 1/2 cup all purpose unbleached flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 2 1/2 tablespoons sugar and 1 tablespoon grapeseed oil.  Mix and slowly add enough lukewarm water just to get dough to make a ball, about 1/4 cup.  Knead until the dough is very smooth.  Place dough in a large bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let sit for 3 hours.

3.While dough is rising make filling.  We made ours with finely chopped garlic, ginger, eggplant, mushrooms, onions, carrots, spinach, cilantro, tofu, edamame and rice noodles.  Set aside until dough has risen.  This is also a good time to make dipping sauces.  We made one with hot peppers, honey, salt and sesame oil and another with soy sauce, white vinegar and grated fresh ginger.

4.Once the dough has risen, sprinkle an additional teaspoon of baking powder over the surface of the dough and lightly knead it in. Roll the dough into a log, if the dough is too sticky, add flour on your work surface as needed. Cut the dough log into 12 even pieces.  With your hand roll each piece of dough into a thin disk, place filling in the middle of the disk and fold in the edges to secure the filling inside.  Place each finished bun on a small square piece of patty paper.  Cover the buns with a towel and let them rise an additional 30 minutes.

5.Steam buns in a steamer over medium heat for about 12 minutes or until they look plump and cooked.  Serve with dipping sauces.

Hot Sauce

I wish I canned produce from the garden during the summer, froze containers of home grown tomatoes to enjoy throughout the winter...I don't.  We grow food and buy it from local farmers, we eat it, we serve to to others, we give away excess produce during the growing season.  In the winter we eat more root vegetables, winter greens and the occasional fruit from far away tropical lands.  Some years I do make something that preserves a local fruit of the garden that can be enjoyed during the colder months. Last year was a fantastic fig season and we dried lots of figs and used them throughout the winter. This year, hot sauce.  Last week I bought several pounds of Thai Ascent Peppers from Path Valley Cooperative.  We gave some out as parting gifts at a Home Restaurant, added them to a couple family meals last week and the rest became hot sauce that we will enjoy throughout the cold months.

To make the sauce I lightly coated the peppers in grapeseed oil, roasted them in a 375 degree oven for about 15-20 minutes, combined them in the blender with a salt, raw unfiltered apple cider vinegar and agave nectar to taste.

Non Dairy Milk and Yogurt

We have a few cooking projects that we are working on this summer. We have made non dairy milk before but have never come up with a specific recipe that we could regularly make to have in our pantry in lieu of buying cartons of milk. This milk will now be incorporated into our larder.

Non-Dairy Milk:

2 cups cashews 1 1/2 cup rolled oats 1 1/2 cup pearled barley

1.Place cashews in a large bowl and cover with 6 cups of boiling water. Let sit for 20 minutes to an hour.

2.Place oats and barley in a large pot. Add 9 cups of water, bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and let cook for 3 minutes. Cover mixture and let sit for 10 minutes. Letting this mixture sit longer will result in a thicker milk. Do not worry if the grains do not seem completely cooked they are ideal for extracting milk.

3.Place the grain mixture in a high power blender with 4 additional cups of water, I suggest at Vita Mix. Blend in batches for 30 seconds each. Strain mixture through a very fine strainer, discard the solid and keep the liquid.

4.Wash the blender thoroughly. Blend the cashew mixture until completely smooth and there is no remaining grainy-ness, about 2 minutes.

5.Combine the cashew and the grain mixture, chill your milk. This might be more of a cream like texture. If this mixture is too thick for your taste or desired use it can be thinned slightly with filtered water.

Non dairy yogurt has always been illusive because what is available at the market has lots of sugar. We are thrilled to have this as an option.

Non Dairy Yogurt:

9 cups non dairy milk (see recipe above) 2 cup yogurt starter (for first batch you can purchase any non dairy live yogurt for subsequent batches you can save 2 cups of your own yogurt to use as the starter) at room temperature

1.Heat milk to 110 degrees. Wisk in yogurt starter. Pour yogurt into glass or plastic containers, leaves lids ajar, partially covering the mixture but allowing air into the yogurt as well.

2.Let containers sit in a warm place at room temperature until yogurt reaches desired sourness and thickness. This will take anywhere from 8-20 hours. Cover with lids and refrigerate.

Yields approximately 1 gallon yogurt