French Fridays with Dorie: November Round-Up

Remember French Fridays with Dorie? I'm still cooking from Around My French Table, but I decided that instead of a weekly post it would make more sense for me to do a monthly round-up. The rules of the group are very low-key, and this past month the recipes could be made in any order. I made three of the four selections (and will probably still make the fourth, eventually).

The first recipe of the month, Roast Chicken for Les Paresseux (the lazy folks), was a chicken roasted breast down in a dutch oven, surrounded by root vegetables and garlic. The chicken, which was never turned, rested on a large piece of sourdough, which was meant to absorb all the chicken juices and become crispy and delicious. It was delicious, but because I thoughtlessly put the tough slice crust down, I missed out on the golden bottom, and nearly cracked a tooth trying to chew it all. Still, delicious. Next best was the garlic, and it was all gone pretty quickly.

One of the forum posters mentioned that she had made stock with the chicken carcass right in the roasting pan, a genius idea that yielded a rich, browned stock, which we ate last night with some frozen Udon noodles and pork dumpling filling meatballs.

It seems like we're working our way through the classics first, and nothing is more classic than Pomme Dauphinois. My version used slightly lower-fat dairy products and so was a little juicier than it could have been, more like potatoes floating in the sauce. It was garlicky and good.

The last recipe I made for the month was one of those that looks really good, has great things in it, and never really gets eaten. It just didn't tempt me, somehow, although I was looking forward to it, and I didn't sell it well to the rest of the household.
Maybe another time, Pumpkin Flans with Gorgonzola (it was Chevre) and Walnuts.  Looking forward to next month's recipes, as I continue to dip into the book at my own pleasure.

Everybody in the Pot: FFwD's Vietnamese Blend

 What do you get when you pour almost everything that you like to eat into one pot and slurp? Some would say ramen, and I wouldn't disagree, but almost every cuisine has its version of a hot, restorative, noodle soup, and I happen to think that the Vietnamese do it very well indeed. I've rarely met a pho I couldn't get along with (we won't talk fishballs now), and Dorie Greenspan's pho ga/la sa ga hybrid was no exception. 


Matt doesn't do coconut, so I waited until he was on tour before pouring an entire can of coconut milk into some chicken broth, simmering with aromatics including cilantro, anise, and chiles, and poaching some chicken thighs in the broth. One of the things that can make Southeast Asian cooking difficult is the long ingredient lists--even a 'simple' soup is apt to have ten flavoring elements and fifteen add-ins, but in this case I found that almost all of the flavoring elements have become pantry staples for me, and that the CSA had provided many of the herbs I don't always have on hand, including cilantro and Thai basil. There were glass noodles in the cupboard, and the whole thing just came together remarkably...simply. When it was steaming, I filled a bowl with bean sprouts, chopped basil and cilantro, and sambal oelek, and poured it in.

And continued to do so for lunch and dinner for the next few days. Matt was gone, and Jill, who was staying with me, doesn't eat meat, so I hoarded the whole batch for myself. And slurped and slurped. And will have some more soon. With such a loose and elastic recipe, I found myself unintimidated by the ingredient list, and looking forward to adding, subtracting, trying the variation with curry and lemongrass (which I just found at the farmer's market, hurray!), throwing in some black mushrooms, and making each day's soup a little different.

Happy Pi Day

Mathematicians! Freeze!

Tamales

A great deal of South and Central American food is a variation on a very good theme--corn mush wrapped around fillings of some sort, then baked/fried/steamed, etc... It's only natural, then, that after my co-worker and I discussed arepa flour for a while, I was seized with the overwhelming urge to make some tamales. Tamales are one of those deceptively complicated looking foods. The cute packaging creates the illusion that they must be incredibly difficult to make at home, and even though I know that's not true and have even made them before, once long ago at a neighbor's party, the illusion is persuasive enough that my imagination has shied away from making them at home.

This had to end. Tamales are cheap, easy, delicious, filling, and great to take for lunch. They freeze well, and take to any filling you might have lying around. No more excuses. Still, the process took a few days. First, I roasted this chicken.
As Matt and I heroically denied ourselves more than a few nibbles of skin and one unlucky leg, I mensched up and rendered the fat.Heh. Gribenes.
The next day, after the chicken was all picked, I mixed half of it with some tomatillo salsa that had been lying around and the other half with some Oaxacan mole negro that had been lying around even longer. A lot longer. My father brought the jar home in 2005? 2006? More on this later.
For the dough, I used a recipe from Epicurious.

The proportions are very flexible. If you'd like less fat, use more water. If you want more flavor, add some flavorings. All that matters is that you wind up with a thick paste.

Tamale Dough
adapted from www.epicurious.com

• 1 1/3 cups lard or solid vegetable shortening
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt (omit if masa mixture contains salt)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder (omit if masa mixture contains baking powder)
• 4 cups freshly ground masa dough for tamales (34 to 36 ounces), or make masa dough with 31/2 cups masa harina (corn tortilla mix; about 17 ounces) mixed with 2 1/4 cups warm water
• 2 cups (about) low-salt chicken broth

Mix all the dough ingredients together until you have a thick paste.

Next, you take the paste and spread it onto some corn husks. These can be purchased from the bodega or grocery store, and were absurdly expensive ($3.49 for a bag), so dry your own when you eat corn. I will be trying to. As you can see in the badly lit photo below, you want your paste to cover a rectangular area on the top left or right hand corner of the husk. You don't want it to go all the way across or all the way down.Scoop some filling into the middle of your paste area, roll over and fold the bottom up, and tie off, leaving the top open. I pinched the tops together. Then all you have to do is put the tamales over some boiling water in a big steamer pot (mine wasn't quite big enough), cover, and steam for about 40 minutes. Take the cover off, let stand a bit, and then do what you will with them.
They were delicious, and I've eaten them for lunch every day this week but one. With a splash of water, they microwave very well.
As for the mole, it was delicious, but after we'd both had a bit, I got really anxious about how old it was and panicked about botulism for a few days. As neither of us is dead yet, I may decide to feel less anxious soon and eat the chicken (which I froze pending death verdict). In the meantime, I have a new school lunch and a new party trick. Not bad.

Zuni Chicken, Take Two

I swear that I have some restraint. Between this and the drumstick picture, it might seem like I have an animal response to a roast chicken, and can't resist tearing into it with my teeth. This chicken, which I salted 24 hours in advance and rubbed with cumin, was delicious, but the wolfish tears across the breast skin is more a result of sticking to the pan than any fierce appetites on my parts.

Judy Rogers recommends heating the cast iron pan on the stovetop before putting the chicken in, and says that that and a dry chicken skin will keep it from sticking. Maybe next time.

18-Alarm Roast Chicken

I used to say that I was a baker first. Although I knew how to cook some things, my expertise was generally in areas where butter and sugar get creamed. Over the last few years, though, I've become a more interested, and thus a more confident cook. These days, I still make mistakes, and it's not as intuitive for me as baking, but I'm pretty good at cooking things I like to eat.

Part of this growth has been a piecemeal mastery of basic techniques--stockmaking, bean soaking, braising, and roasting chickens. For a long time, I avoided cooking meat because of the vegetarian roommates. Even when I did cook it it, I opted for pre-cut chicken pieces, usually boneless, for quick cooking. Thinking back, most of my specialties from a few years ago involve stirfrying chicken breast. These days, one of my favorite things to do to build technique is roast a chicken.

I like local, organic chickens, so I can't afford them often, but I get so much fun out of each one. I buy it, I think about it, I smell it cooking, I pick it dry, I make stock...the entertainment rewards equal the eating, which makes the occasional splurge very worth it.

Another recent splurge, the Zuni Cafe Cookbook, just paid off big time as chef-author Judy Rogers doubled my entertainment dividends and helped me to cook the hands-down best roast chicken of my life.

Rogers' mantra is "pre-salt." Everything from fish to vegetables gets a little time to absorb salt and flavor, and to firm up. She goes deep into the science of it, but suffice it to say, I'm hooked. I salted the little chicken 24 hours ahead, and got home at 9:30 Tuesday night looking forward to cooking it. First, though, I had to leave it out for an hour to achieve room temperature. Then I plunked it in a preheated cast-iron pan and stuck in in a 475 degree oven.

It roasted beautifully, crisping up, turning warm caramel brown, shedding clear sweet fat. The method was perfect. So perfect. There was just one problem. All that high heat and spattering fat set off my smoke alarm over and over and over again. By the end of the process, every window in the house was open, a fan had been dug out of the closet, and Matt was positioned under the damn beeper with a broom handle, justifiably worried that the neighbors would hate us forever. (It was 11:30 at that time, and our upstairs neighbor is a classroom teacher.)

But it was all worth it. It was the best chicken I have ever roasted. I'm going to do it again soon.
The only thing I forgot to do was to get a good picture. As you can see from Matt's shots above, photo-taking took second place to tearing off drumsticks like starving wolves and stuffing my face. I even pan-roasted some oyster mushrooms with the drippings. Salty, but so good.
Speaking of simple techniques, the Zuni cookbook also yielded perfect mashed potatoes for a dinner the previous Sunday. Apparently the trick to mashed potatoes is to add fat (like melted butter) in first so that it coats the potatoes and then they don't just absorb all the milk. Also, any additions should be as hot as possible. Judy Rogers says that her mashed potatoes (with buttermilk) are one of the few kinds of potato dish that survive well as leftovers. I tried this out two days later with some chicken breast and the potatoes in the microwave. They were lighter and fluffier than on the first day. Judy Rogers is seriously impressive. And I can't wait to roast another 18-alarm chicken, though I am seriously considering cleaning out the oven first. Or maybe just inviting the neighbors for dinner.