Salmon Rillettes

The Christmas holiday has now passed. I have let it be known around my house that the kitchen this week (and maybe the next week too) is temporarily closed! Fend for yourselves, I'm pooped. That last impromptu dinner for 20 people the day after Christmas just about did me in. (I advise anyone thinking of doing this to please give your spouse -- the one who does all the cooking -- more than 2 days notice! ) The last couple of days I have just been relaxing and perusing the many wonderful cookbooks I was lucky enough to receive as gifts from friends and family. I have also been nursing my intense culinary crush on David Lebovitz. Even though his blog makes all us food bloggers look like hacks, both as chefs and as writers, I read it religiously and often find that I am turning to him more and more for inspiration, not just in the kitchen but in how to observe the life around me. His most recent book, The Perfect Scoop, is what turned me onto the pleasures of home made ice cream this past summer. This Christmas, I was given one of his earlier books, The Sweet Life in Paris which is far more than a cookbook -- it is part journal highlighting his amusing insights into his newly adopted city. I hate him for how well he writes! I then immediately forgive him when he offers up another delightful (and "Frenchified") recipe. Although not from the book, this Salmon Rillettes recipe is his and I serve it often. This season it has found its way into several holiday parties, both mine and others. I'm now rushing this post out as fast as I can so you will still enough have time to try this out for your New Year's evening. I can't think of one thing better to serve with Champagne as you toast in the New Year. (Oh, I love champagne!) If you are going out then consider bringing this for your hostess or having it ready in the morning for your brunch. It is that good.

Rillettes is pronounced “Ree-Yet” by the way. Sort of. You will have to say it with your face all scrunched up doing your best Charles Boyer impression to get the accurate sound on your "R". It will take some practice. Or, you can do what my guests did and call it "Salmon Spread". As in, "where did you get this amazing salmon spread? What is it?" Have some fun correcting them. "Its Salmon Ree Yet." Then watch them stare at you blankly. "Huh?" Rillettes is usually a pork or duck creation where the meat is slowly cooked until tender and then cooled with its own fat in a jar where it is preserved for use later as a spread on bread or toasts. Duck confit is on my target list for 2011 so no doubt the duck version will be on the menu soon but its hard for me to fathom how it can be better than this less traditional salmon version. It is easy to make and doesn't require nearly the same amount of prep as duck or pork rillettes. Typically it is both stored and served in canning jars. This recipe will make exactly two half pint jars of the stuff which will be perfect as you will use one for your party and will grateful to have the other one hidden away for yourself to enjoy to next day.

Salmon Rillettes (adapted from David Lebovitz)

• 8 ounce piece of salmon, preferably wild, bones removed
• salt
• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons chopped chives
• 1 tablespoon finely minced shallot
  
• 4 ounces (125 g) smoked salmon, cut into thin strips, then cut into ½-inch (2 cm) pieces
• ¼ teaspoon chili powder and/or a few turns of freshly-ground white pepper to taste
  

1. Season the salmon on both sides lightly with a bit of salt. Steam in a steamer basket until just cooked, about 8 minutes. If you have a microwave, you can probably cook it in there as well. Once cooked, remove from heat and let cool.

2. In a medium-sized bowl, mash together with a fork the butter and the olive oil until very smooth.This is très important; otherwise there’ll be big chunks of butter in the finished rillettes.

3. Stir in the lemon juice, then the chopped chives and smoked salmon.4. Remove the skin from the salmon and flake the cooked salmon over the mixture, then fold the pieces of salmon into the rillette mixture along with the chili powder. Season with salt, if necessary.

Spoon into canning jars and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. To serve, remove from refrigerator and let come down to just below room temperature. Keeps for 3 days or so. 1 month in the freezer if sealed and wrapped well.

Onion Soup Traditions

Lest anyone think from my earlier post regarding my lack of cookie traditions that we had no culinary Christmas traditions in our family while I was growing up I wish to correct that notion here. We did. Plenty of them. In fact they were the traditions that taught me much about hospitality and great entertaining. Christmas Eve dinner always featured Julia Child’s French Onion Soup. While it was intended to be a casual run up to the main meal the next evening, for me it was my all time favorite meal of the year. Mom was always in the unenviable (yet necessary) position of having to feed the two sides of our family as well as many friends each Christmas and Christmas Eve. Lesson Number One For Entertaining: Choose The Menu Well. French Onion Soup was the perfect choice as much of it could be done in advance and would only require warming, assembly and a quick spot under the broiler before being put on the table.

It was also through this dish that my mother gave me Lesson Number Two: Heaven Is In the Details. If attention is given to ingredients, technique and presentation this simple soup becomes spectacular. Its origin is as a peasant dish served to workers, onions being something that was inexpensive and plentiful. But as is typical of the French, they know how to get the best out of any dish. To achieve its perfection you must follow its traditions. Don't skimp on the precious few ingredients or on the patience this recipe requires. In the days leading up to Christmas eve my mother would make the home made beef stock from the bones she would talk out of the butcher and broil at home. (She would also took this time to review with me how to do a proper brown sauce and glace de viande in the French manner.) Even the characteristic croutons would be made in advance according to the proper oven dry method and using the best bread she could find. The onions must be cooked painfully slow (and for much longer than the recipe indicates) in order to get to the reddish huge that indicates they have caramelized to perfection and released their burnt sugars.

Our family no longer has the same architecture that required her to pull double duty for holiday dining. The French Onion Soup tradition has given way to one that features a formal (and glamorous) Christmas Eve dinner of the type my mother does so well. This year in the run-up to the holiday I found myself unexpectedly with a few quarts of home made beef stock, the result of my own holiday entertaining, so decided to revisit this tradition. I cooked up a batch for my man and started our own Christmas Eve Eve tradition for the quiet dinner we enjoy sharing, just the two of us, before our two day Christmas posada (from family to family) takes a hold of us. You can bet we will be doing this one every year!

French Onion Soup

• 1/2 stick butter
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 8 cups thinly sliced yellow onions (about 2-1/2 pounds)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 8 cups homemade beef stock, or good quality store bought stock
• 1/4 cup Cognac, or other good brandy
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 8 (1/2-inch) thick slices of French bread, toasted
• 3/4 pound coarsely grated Gruyere

Directions

Heat a heavy saucepan over moderate heat with the butter and oil. When the butter has melted, stir in the onions, cover, and cook slowly until tender and translucent, about 10 minutes. Blend in the salt and sugar, increase the heat to medium high, and let the onions brown, stirring frequently until they are a dark walnut color, 25 to 30 minutes.

Sprinkle the flour and cook slowly, stirring, for another 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat, let cool a moment, then whisk in 2 cups of hot stock. When well blended, bring to the simmer, adding the rest of the stock and wine. Cover loosely, and simmer very slowly 1 1/2 hours, adding a little water if the liquid reduces too much. Add cognac. Taste for seasoning.

Divide the soup among 4 ovenproof bowls. Arrange toast on top of soup and sprinkle generously with grated cheese. Place bowls on a lined cookie sheet and place under a preheated broiler until cheese melts and forms a crust over the tops of the bowls. Serve immediately.

Previous related post: French Onion Soup Day

Speculoos (Don’t Forget the Egg!)

For someone who didn’t grow up with any “cookie traditions” I sure seem to baking up quite a few batches this week. I wasn’t in search of new traditions with that post but they do seem to be finding me. This cookie probably won’t become one, however as I just found it to be somewhat of a pain in the ass. Its my fault though. This particular batch had to be whipped up twice. Yup, I forgot the egg on the first batch. I did. Of course, I had some help in that omission. The egg was actually left out of the recipe by the publisher. I wonder if editors get fired for that kind of thing? Do you suppose the editor really loved that cookie and didn’t want the world to have the real recipe she he or she left out an ingredient? (Like my grandmother who never revealed the sugar she put in her spaghetti sauce.) You might be inclined to feel sorry for me here but the truth is that the publisher caught their own mistake and included a leaflet in the book calling attention to the error. My leaflet long ago went missing and even though our FFwD group leaders reminded us of the egg, I dutifully forgot it.

As I was making the cookie dough I wondered why it was so dry and mealy. Like crust. I thought I was being quite smart and clever to recall that my flour could have been dry and so I added about 1/4 cup cold water to make the dough. That is a bit much for just dry flour and that should have been my tip off but I kept going, rolled it out and had it chilling in the refrigerator when it suddenly dawned on me: The egg!!! Damn. I tossed the rolled out dough and started over. Poor me. Upon reflection I wish I hadn’t done that as I do think this dough, minus the egg, would make a delicious crust of some sort for some sort of custard pie or cheesecake of some sort.

Although delicious, this cookie is not my cup of tea even though it does go lovely with one. I don’t much like rolling out dough and using a cookie cutter is sort of a pain in the ass. Then there is the rerolling the scraps, chilling again, and re-cutting until the dough is used up. It is something of a pain in the ass and quite a bit time consuming. That said, they are incredibly delicious. If this sort of thing is the thing you like then you will like this sort of thing. My husband didn’t so I tried to entice him with Dorie’s idea of augmenting them with dulce la leche but that just made them ‘too sweet’. I thought they were incredible.

The turbinado sugar garnish was Greg’s idea. The dulce le leche was Dorie’s. It makes an already delicious cookie truly decadent.

Grandmother Sis Boom’s “Christmas Cookies”

Some recipes call out to be made even though they are not glamorous or what some would call 'blog worthy'. This is one of them. I make it today out of pure sentimentality and not because it has any technical or visual merit worth sharing. Several readers have recently asked me when I'm going to jump on the holiday baking bandwagon and start sharing some fabulous Christmas cookie recipes. I’m not. Well, not really. I’m still going to post about this one and while I’m flattered that anyone would think I have the skill to pull some amazing cookie creations off, the sad truth is that I really don’t. This is probably due to the fact that I didn’t grow up with any real “cookie traditions” in my family. No annual cookie bakes, no recipes dusted off to exchange or share with co-workers and neighbors. Nada.

Grandmother Sis Boom wasn't really what I would call a baker either (unless you count boxed brownies) and yet she always had home made cookies on hand for our visits. (She had Mint Milanos on hand too which she kept in a cookie tin causing me for years to think she had made these as well.) Her cookies were never anything fancy, certainly not by today's internet chef standards – most of the time they were just your simple, old fashioned butter cookies. To my taste buds, however, they were simply heaven! My disproportionate love for them probably had a lot to do with the Stockholm Syndrome-like affection for the"whole wheat carob chip cookies" my health food, Adele Davis inspired mother pawned off on as as treats while we were young. (You know the saying, “when you haven’t tasted steak, peanut butter is just fine.” ) Grandmother's butter cookies therefore were truly decadent if not also somewhat forbidden delicacies. Each visit I would devour all she had on hand.

To her these were just the cookies that her mother had always made to have with her tea and so it was only natural she would just do the same. I remember thinking how lucky my dad was to grow up without his childhood scarred by carob chips. Instead he came home from school to enjoy a cookie tin always full. What made grandma's cookies unique to her (at least from my point of view) was the way she formed them. Taking her simple butter cookie dough, she would extrude it through the cookie press that was her mother’s fitted with a star attachment. It was the only attachment she had -- all the others long gone from never being needed. This would create a long 'rope' from which she would then cut into 4 inch sections, wrapping them around to make the cookie. After a quick chill they would be baked up, cooled, and then always put into tins lined in waxed paper. That's it. Her recipe never changed even though now I can tell you that this basic dough would take well to an infinite number of additions or tweaks. Orange or lemon zest? Thumbprints? Cocoa? Rolled out and frosted? Nope, not for her. Always the same thank you.

She never made dedicated Christmas cookies the way they are today. Occasionally she would make a persimmon drop cookie recipe that a friend had given her but usually at Christmas my grandmother would make her same cookie recipe only at this time of year she would stick a red or green candied cherry on it and all it a day. That was the extent of her specialized Christmas baking. It wasn't much of an addition but we thought it was quite special. One year her press broke and by that time the old fashioned presses had given way to fancier ones that made wreaths and stars with a single pull of the trigger but no starred ropes. She tried to interest not just us but herself with these new, more "professional" shapes but to no avail. Just not the same. Then last year I found this vintage press on eBay and while even it was more modern than Grandma's, I knew it would do the trick.

Guess who now has a cookie tradition?

Her “Go To Beef Daube”?

I had a lot of fun today writing a particularly snarky French Friday's with Dorie post about the concept of a needing to have a "Go-To Beef Daube" recipe. (I know. Don't act so surprised. Me? Snarky?) Its just that the notion that anyone should be required to have a "Go-To Beef Daube" sounded to me as ridiculous as someone being required to have a "Go-To Reine de Saba Torte" or a "Go-To Amalfi Calamari Pasta". Just how many daube recipes does one run across anyway that we should be required to settle on just one? Well, once I tasted this particular daube the smirk was wiped from my face. Guess what? Amazing. I now have a "Go-To Daube" and it is HER Go-To Daube.

So, what the f*ck is a "daube" you ask? (And when I read the assignment I asked it just like that too.) It turns out that it is just a fancy name for stew. Dorie says that if you braise the meat in wine then that makes it a "daube". Her own friend, however, seems to cast doubt on this definition by suggesting that the moniker "boeuf-carottes" might be more accurate -- but Dor is stickin' to her guns on this. From the looks of it, if you were to add whole onions, mushrooms and a splash of beef stock you would pretty much have what Julia Child calls for in her famous (and definitive) version of Boeuf Bourguingon. I also know that if you braise the stew in beer you would call it a Carbonnade.

This type of dish is so flexible that you can really call it what you want. (Just don't call it late for dinner. Ba dam bump. ) Whatever you call it, please do it with confidence and everyone will just go along with it. Remember when fancy restaurants started drizzling coulis on desserts and various other things? Nobody even blinked or suggested that this was really sauce. Its because they did it with confidence. Sort of like when you know you look good in those yellow socks so everyone else sort of leaves you alone and assumes you know what you are doing.


The point being, its all stew; and its all delicious; and its all easy. And there will be as many different versions of whichever name you prefer as there are cooks that make them. (On a side note, I recently met a chef who works as a writer and segment producer for The Food Network and he tells me that if you change three things in a recipe you don't have to attribute it. Just 3 changes or differences and there is no longer any copyright issues. Did you hear that Cindy McCain?) . I only made one addition to the recipe so I suppose I will still have to credit Dor. Instead of seasoning up the mixture with last and pepper after cooking I instead added a heaping spoonful of some beef demiglass I had on hand. This gave it all the punch I was after and helped balance the wine taste. I suppose this compensated for the lack of a beef stock in the braising liquid, something I was perhaps needlessly concerned with more than likely.

So with so many choices you just need to find a recipe you like so that when you are as lucky as I was and you run across a great sale on chuck at Whole Foods you can nab 3 pounds and make this amazing meal. Yes, you really do need a "Go-To Daube" recipe. If you don't have one yet, consider Dorie's. Its among the finest I've ever had. Of particular note is how the onions don't just get flavored by the sauce but how they actually become the sauce. Wow. Heat this one up in a double boiler the next night and discover what I did. Its even better than it was fresh from the pot.

My Go-To Beef Daube (or whatever.)

I'm not going to break ranks and post the actual recipe but you can find it here. (You should buy the book though. This one is worth it!)

Potato Leek Soup

Well for once I am speechless. I just have nothing much to say. Its not that I don't like Potato Leek soup. I do. What's not to like? Its just that I really don't have much to say about it. If it weren't for the fact that I wanted to try out some fancy, schmantzy html coding on these photos I might have skipped this post altogether and moved onto something else I probably won't have much to say about, glazed carrots. It is so potatoey! It is so leeky! What it is is just a basic soup and I'm not knocking that. Everyone should be able to make a few of these. If you like this sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you would like.

I don't think that anyone would really expect a Potato Leek soup to be a showstopper and I'm sure this particular version would meet all expectations. Miss Dorie's version seen here was put through a food mill using its largest blade. Dorie gives us all sorts of options on this one. Cold, hot. Chunky, smooth. I probably would have left it chunky and stew like had the added milk 'skinned' just a bit during the simmer phase. I haven't read of this happening to anyone else so perhaps my low simmer was a bit hot? Nonetheless, if I make this again, and I won't, I will be sure to do the simmering with the chicken broth only and add the milk after I off the heat. I really should have thought of that, right? How come nobody else has had this issue?

And doesn't the bowl look lovely?

Ice Cream Truffles

Don't laugh. I know this isn't really a recipe but but I gotta tell you this experiment in blogging is taking its toll on my stress levels around here. What with the demands of 'the season' and the end-of-the-year work stress in high gear and all that. (What kind of masochist willingly adds to this mix with a weekly blog assignment?) So please excuse this lightweight 'recipe' which I know isn't really a recipe at all but more of an 'update' on my quest to re-purpose a full bowl full of unused Halloween candy. (You will recall a few weeks ago that the two dozen or so mini-bags of Whoppers ended up in some pretty fantastic and sweet cookies.) These Pay Day Bars didn't get such a creative treatment but at least they didn't make it into the trash.

Lest you look too far down your nose at these low brow creations I actually first saw something quite similar to them at a very fancy restaurant several years back. They served a simple chocolate ice cream rolled in salted, crushed pistachio nuts and there was a vanilla one which was rolled in something that I could have sworn was nothing more than a crushed Butterfinger bar. The restaurant understood that sometimes you don't want a whole dessert but would rather just have a little something sweet. They also knew that if you break something down into 'minis', you will invariably end up eating more than you would have otherwise. Who hasn't been to an appetizer party and ended up eating more than if you had just sat down to a proper dinner?

And while were on the topic, have you ever noticed that sometimes what passes for fancy is just regular stuff repackaged smaller? I know a lot of the Doristas have picked up on this and I have even exploited the concept here with those suspect Semolina Cakes. So, I guess if you are making Macaroni and Cheese for dinner tonight you should consider putting it into ramekins? What panache! Be careful of these. One is never enough.

Ice Cream Truffles

• Ice Cream
• Stuff

Scoop out the ice cream into golf ball sized scoops and put on a tray lined with parchment. Return to the freezer for at least 20 minutes to harden. Quickly roll each ball in crushed topping and return to tray to harden. Toppings can come from just about anything you have left over. I had one quarter cup of sliced almonds lying around but small amounts of baking chocolate, broken cookies from the bottom of the jar and just about any type of nut will make a great truffle topping. Truffles will stay several weeks in an airtight storage container. Put parchment between each layer. Great drizzled with home made hot fudge. (Don't hesitate to make a batch with my recipe located here. Its VERY good.)

We still have Kit Kat bars and Milky Ways to deal with. Stay tuned!

Winter Mojito

I need a drink. Yes, it has been awhile since I've featured a cocktail in this bloggie thingamabob and you must know it isn't because I've stopped drinking! Oh no. Our summer cocktail season was a real bust around here wasn't it?In fact, it barely got off the ground after we kicked it off with our Mojito feature. The main reason for this was that it rarely ever got warm enough around here to crave a refreshing libation. A true shame given I had several such treats lined up for you, But, alas, our weather would just not cooperate.

But now the holiday season is in high gear (I spent all day at the mall today and plan to head back in just a few minutes) and we just got off a short round of record cold spells. So if cold weather doesn't inspire an appropriate drinkiepoo then surely our increased holiday related anxiety does? I just noticed that its been pretty much French Dorie this and French Dorie that around here. (Cocktail nuts doesn't really feel much like French food does it? Whats up with that?) It only seems proper and polite of me to offer you a thematic winter cocktail while we ponder such things. And as far as looks go, they don't come any more Christmas-y than this one! There is no better antidote to francophilia than a cocktail because it is one of the few things the French just don't do all that well. (Ever order a martini in Paris? Blech.)

Even given its near cocktail perfection in its pure form, the mojito is still fertile ground for adapting and tinkering. I covered this classic back in June and have been mad for them ever since. The herb guy at the farmer's market here is always quite generous with mint as are the Persian markets that I find myself in frequently and I hate to let it go to waste. So, doing all I can to avoid waste (and thereby contribute to a greener planet) I turned to mojitos . The things I sacrifice for the sake ecology! One night, saddened by the discovery of an empty rum bottle and yet still desiring to do my part for a green earth, the Watermelon Mojarita was born and we moved the party to Tequila Mexico.

Around the 'net I've seen several attempts at winterizing this drink but the best by far goes to Danny Meyer's version served every season at his Gramercy Tavern in NYC. You can expect any cocktail you get at any one of his restaurants to be near perfection and this one truly is as well. Before Thanksgiving I picked up an extra bag of fresh cranberries just so I could make his "druken cranberries" garnish for this winter treat. The cranberries will stay kept in a Ball jar in the fridge for a couple weeks and even though they are rum based you can pop them into just about any festive holiday cocktail garnish during the season.

Winter Mojito

• 1 teaspoons drunken cranberries
• 2 lime wedges
• 8 sprigs mint
• 2.5 oz dark rum
• Soda

Fill rocks glass. Muddle 1 teaspoon cranberries, 2 teaspoons liquid, lime wedges and mint in cocktail shaker. Add rum and crushed ice. Shake, strain into glass. Garnish with 1 teasp cranberries and mint.


Drunken Cranberries:

• Simple Syrup (1 cup sugar/1 cup water)
• 1.5 cups 2 cinnamon sticks
• zest from one orange
• 2 cups cranberries
• 1 1/2 cups rum, pref white

In saucepan simmer syrup, cinnamon and orange zest. Add cranberries and cook 1 minute until skins split. Off heat, cool. Strain liquid into jar. Add cranberries, removing cinnamon and orange. Add rum. Make sure covered. Chill for up to 3 weeks

Signature Nuts?

I really like the idea that certain types of things can come to be thought of as someone's "signature". Scents, dishes, articles of clothing, even cocktails can become automatically associated in your mind with one person or one place. Coco Channel had her white pearls. Bing Crosby had that damn hat. The Brown Derby of course had the Cobb Salad. Anna Wintour has her haircut. My early business and graduate education was in brand development and marketing so this notion of an automatic association with something unique has always been somewhat fascinating to me. It is certainly not easy to attain in either the personal or the professional realm. Even a million dollars can't create it if it is not meant to be and yet when it does happen, it is golden...and worth much more.

Speaking personally, I would very much like a "signature" of some sort. Once upon a time I had a rather well-known signature but lets just say that certain advances in the scientific engineering in the commercial hair straightening industry has pretty much wiped that one away. (Just in case you are trying to think of a new one for me, white pearls are taken.) Back when I was quite the cologne aficionado (a hobby not too far related to cooking if you really think about it) I would to wear my favorite scent repeatedly and declare it "my signature" and yet truly, it never was. How come? The answer is that people tend to confuse their commitment to wearing only one sent, repeatedly serving the same dish, or drinking only one cocktail with it being a 'signature'. Not so. A real signature is not something you give yourself, it is given by others. Signatures aren't yours because you say so -- they become yours because others insist they are yours.

So why this talk? It occurred to me while preparing for this week's French Fridays with Dorie entry that Sweet and Spicy Cocktail Nuts would be just such a dish ( if I could get it just right) that I could put forth to the world as an eventual 'signature'. I hadn't even tried them or read about them when I thought of this possibility idea struck me as ripe with possibility. Just read the title. Given the ease with which dish can be personalized and given the frequency with which one is given the opportunity to serve nuts certainly I could get people to declare them "my signature"? Well, Dorie as per usual already thought of this possibility and wrote about how this dish can easily become a spécialité de la maison. (Those French have words for everything!)


I didn't achieve anything close to what I would want to call Signature Nuts this time around but I am intrigued with the process. Given its ease and inexpensive ingredients I know I will keep tinkering. Not being much of a fan of chili powder unless its used in actual chili and realizing that doing this recipe exactly as written (in one of the most popular cookbooks of 2010 no less) isn't going to be quite personalized -- I opted toward the Bonne Idée this time around and used cardamom. This somewhat lemony toned spice is something I had not really encountered until Persians became a fixture in my life. I would have not normally considered it for a cocktail nut spice since most of my associations with it are with baked goods yet I was quite heavy handed with it here. Adding a very heavy hand of cayenne gave it some necessary heat for balance (and provided a fun trigger for excessive drinking.) Delicious perhaps but not 'signature' just quite yet. Future tinkerings will no doubt have me raiding the saffron from my mother in law's kitchen. (All relatives visiting from Iran are duty bound to bring her.) Perhaps a splash of lime juice with the cardamom and saffron? The Garam Masala I just bought from the new gourmet spice shop in town will take these a new direction as well. So much endless possibility. Will I get that signature appetizer?

That will be up to you. Do you have a true 'signature'?