i’m full

we returned from our lovely paris and london trip very well fed.  while in paris we ate some wonderful croissants (do they even know how to make bad croissants?), and some great meals.  two most notable meals in paris were at les papilles where we picked out our wine from the store shelves and ate a delicious market menu with gazpacho, lamb, blue cheese with prunes, and a strawberry panna cotta, and then the next night at bistrot paul bert, where i had a white asparagus, beef daube, and an amazing cheese plate.  they actually dropped of a giant cutting board full of cheese and i was allowed to leisurely cut off chunks of whatever cheese i wanted.  i can’t imagine a restaurant in the us doing something like that.  in london we had our best meal of the trip at anchor and hope (after staring out at the cloudy, cold, drizzly london skyline on the london eye).  to start a had a salad with snails (eww!) and bacon, and i had a terrine of foie gras, duck and pork.  so yum.  then a had the best entree–potato cake with a poached egg and morels on top.  i had a rabbit with polenta, and while very tasty the rabbit was a bit tough.  to finish we split a pear tart with a crunchy, crumbly crust on the bottom and top that made it very satisfying to eat, and was a nice contrast with the soft pears. 

we flew back on a tuesday night (and had a great flight back with lots of leg room and personal video monitors.  i watched children of men which was good but very very bleak, and catch and release).  we had one day to ourselves before my parents came into town for my  brother’s graduation (i’m now the only one in my family without a doctorate or m.d.–i am officially a slacker) so i cooked at home wednesday night.  neither of us went to work and shopped at union market which is always slightly disappointing.  i get excited at the idea of going there, and everything looks great when i first walk in, but upon examination the produce always looks slightly wilted, and the meat counter guys are sort of rude.  case in point, we decided to get soft shell crab, and when i asked the meat/fish counter guy if they were cleaned he said no in a way that seemed designed to make me feel stupid for even asking the question, and after several beats finally asked if i wanted them cleaned, which of course i did.  for dinner that night we had soft shell crabs crusted with a panko/flour blend, on a fregola salad with ramps, arugula, and pancetta, with lemon drizzled on top.  it wasn’t bad, but a asked if i was ever going to use a recipe again.  not a good sign.  but i think it might have something to do with the fact that he doesn’t like soft shell crab so much, which he readily admits.

this post is running long, so i’ll return tomorrow to report further on why i’m so full, which will have much to do with eating at a variety of nyc restaurants with great food…

braised chicken redux: now with more green!

tonight was leftover night and it was time to give the braised chicken from monday night another try.  that chicken, while tasty, was too beige for a photo.  this time i perked it up with some asparagus (that we had to use tonight because tomorrow we’re going here) and some parsley.  same peas recipe i made the other night but with bigger chunks of pancetta for more chewy bacon-y flavor.  and over grits this time because that’s what we had and i didn’t want to go to the store (did i mention this already? because we’re going here tomorrow).  it was good in the same homey way, and though the grits sort of look weird in the photo i can never get enough grits (i feel the same way about polenta).

when we return i’ll test out some new non-recipe cooking, hopefully inspired by our travels.  even more hopefully i’ll come home bearing these!

beginnings (part deux)

i started this yesterday and then changed names, so technically this is the second beginning.  or not really the beginning at all.  whatever.  here goes:

so, this blog will document my attempt at cooking without recipes.  i’ve been cooking a long time, but i tend to be a rule-follower kind of girl.  recently i’ve started getting interested in figuring out how to cook food without 1) following recipes and 2) with tastier results.  it’s not that i must follow a recipe, but i feel more comfortable with recipes, and let’s be honest–generally recipes (written by people other than myself) generate better tasting food than what i come up with on my own.  when cooking without guidance i’ve found that i tend to get flustered at key moments, throw in too much of certain ingredients, over/under-cook, and neglect the essential ingredients that result in the right balance.  like how a squeeze of lemon juice often brightens dishes.  i get that from recipes, but forget to do that on my own. 

 to get me started i’ve been perusing the scientific cookbooks, namely harold mcgee’s On Food and Cooking and CookWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Cooking.  and it’s starting to pay off.  last night i made pasta with scallops, asparagus and ramps (which i was very excited to find at the grand army plaza greenmarket).  and while it wasn’t great, it was good.  i realized what would have put it over the edge was a splash of white wine after the initial sauteing step.  and the only reason i didn’t was totally lame and embarrassing–I wanted to drink the wine instead!  yep, totally lame.  and embarrassing.  i sacrificed the good of the dish for our drinking pleasure.    

this morning, despite drinking that wine last night, i managed to pull it together and made a successful “no-hands” breakfast: poached eggs on toast, roasted asparagus, and sausage.  i was pleased with my egg poaching abilities, and the roasted asparagus was tasty, but the best part (and my recipe-free triumph) was the sauce.  a hates hollandaise, and i didn’t really want to do that anyway, so i melted some creme fraiche with a little chicken broth, added some grated parmesan, and a splash of truffle oil at the end.  and it totally worked!  it was great on the eggs and the asparagus, and seemed like a well-balanced sauce, or flavoring, or whatever.

my recipe-free cooking streak ended later in they day with some baking (baking will be the ultimate challenge.  baking recipe-free is totally intimidating).  rhubarb was on sale through fresh direct, so with a fresh supply of rhubarb and strawberries i mixed up some rhubarb strawberry pudding cake.   of course, the food made from a recipe is the only dish i have a picture of…

braised chicken

apparently i’m really jumping in to this “no recipe” thing.  tonight we had what i’m choosing to call provencal-style braised chicken with pancetta peas and rice.  except for the peas, everything was very beige-ish, hence the lack of pictures.  but fairly tasty in that homey way.  i browned boneless, skinless chicken thighs in olive oil, removed them and sauteed onions, garlic and a little celery.  deglazed with wine (i was willing to sacrifice tonight for the sake of the dish) and then added chicken stock and splodged in some sundried tomato paste and regular tomato paste.  it was really at this point that i could have added more color to the dish in the form of canned diced tomatoes, but i didn’t have any at home and didn’t stop at the store because i was picking up my laundry and that’s really too much for one woman to carry.  and yes, i don’t do my own laundry.  i never thought i’d let someone else wash my underwear (or at least, since i left my parent’s house for college way too many years ago), but it’s nyc and i say go with the flow.  plus it’s so awesome not to have to match my socks!

anyway, added some chicken stock, plopped the thighs back in the pot, covered and simmered.  in another pan i sauteed some pancetta, then onions, then deglazed with chicken stock and popped in a bag of cascadian farms peas.  this recipe was inspired by a delicious side dish a had at westville and loved.  these weren’t as yummy, probably because i used less pancetta and because they were cooked by me and not the chef at westville. 

in short, i think i had a good balance of flavors, added in the correct acids (wine), and it resulted in a solid, homestyle meal that filled our very hungry bellies.  not really a make again though–not enough wow to the meal.