Root Vegetable Soup January 28, 2015 by Jill Foucre Leave a Comment Root Vegetable Soup 2015-01-28 13:12:06 Serves 4 Print Ingredients 5 T. butter 2 yellow onions, chopped 4 shallots, chopped 1 leek, trimmed, washed, sliced thin crosswise 2 garlic cloves, minced 2 parsnips, peeled and cut into 1/2” dice 2 carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2” dice 1 large celeriac (celery root), peeled and cut into 1/2” dice 3 potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2” dice 2 white turnips, peeled and cut into 1/2” dice 6 cups chicken stock (or water or vegetable stock) Salt and pepper Sprigs of fresh parsley, to garnish Instructions In a large saucepan, melt butter and slowly cook the onions, shallots, leek and garlic until tender and soft, about 5 minutes. Do not brown. Add diced root vegetables and stock. Simmer until all vegetables are soft (35 minutes.). Puree in 2-cup batches in food processor or blender until smooth. Return pureed soup to saucepan; heat through and season to taste. Serve hot, garnished with a sprig of fresh parsley By Teri Hiben Marcel's Culinary Experience https://www.marcelsculinaryexperience.com/
Stirring up Memories by Deb Forkins January 26, 2015 by Jill Foucre Leave a Comment I have no memory of my father ever spending time in the kitchen while I was growing up. The kitchen was my mother’s domain where she exercised her creative genius nightly. She had Sunday off and dad would grill steaks or burgers on the Weber, everything always WELL done. Skip ahead 50 years. My mother has been gone for several years, and my father has developed a new penchant for “haute cuisine”….as far as he is concerned…recalling dishes from his childhood in his native Switzerland. Forget the steaks, give him barley soup or schnitzel mit spaetzle. When he visits we often spend time in the kitchen together. He is either baking his family favorite, linzer torte, with me playing sous chef or overseeing my attempts at getting his roesti just right. He is 93 years young, and his memory is not always reliable. However, when we are in the “Swiss” kitchen, associations are stirred along with the ingredients. He begins to recount stories from long ago…things I have never heard before….. The time that he fell from a tree and broke his leg while gathering hazelnuts for his mother’s praline. The pear bread he and his mother would bake and bring to the nearby farmers who supplied his family with cheese and milk. Oh yes, and the time he hung his little sister up on the door jamb so that she would stop following him around. These times together are absolutely priceless. He moves more slowly now, but his mind is clear, his eyes still sparkle, and he can still make a fabulous linzer torte! Linzer Torte 2015-01-26 08:59:42 Print Ingredients 8 oz. ground almonds 1 cup plus 3 ½ T. sugar 1 t. cloves 1 t. cinnamon 1 t. freshly ground nutmeg 2 cups (plus slightly more if needed) flour 1 ½ sticks unsalted butter 2 eggs + 1 egg yolk for brushing the dough. 1 jar of seedless raspberry jam Instructions Mix ground almonds and sugar together and set aside. Over hot water in large bowl, mix butter by hand until melted. Remove from hot water bath and add two eggs to the butter, beating after each egg. Add almond and sugar mixture. Add the cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg. Slowly add 2 cups flour. Add 3 ½ T. more flour on top of dough and let settle for a half hour. Then mix in the added flour with a knife. Butter a spring form nonstick 9 inch pie pan. Sprinkle with bread crumbs* Roll out about 1/3 of the dough to cover the bottom of the pie pan. Pour in ½ of the raspberry jam. Place another 1/3 of dough over jam, and cover with remaining raspberry jam. Roll out remaining dough and cut ½ inch wide lattice strips. Weave lattice pattern on top of jam. Use leftover dough to fill in any gaps between lattice strips. Mix one egg yolk with 1 T. water and brush it over lattice top. Bake at 350 for 45-55 minutes, until the torte is brown and cooked through the center. Remove from oven and release from pan. Once fully cooled, it is best if you let the torte stand covered overnight before serving for best flavor. Will be good for a week….if it lasts that long! Notes *Plain bread crumbs, just enough to coat the pan to make removal easier By Deb Forkins Marcel's Culinary Experience https://www.marcelsculinaryexperience.com/
Surprise Tatin January 21, 2015 by Jill Foucre Leave a Comment Surprise Tatin 2015-01-21 14:30:41 Print Ingredients 1 1/2 cups cherry tomatoes 2 T. olive oil Salt and black pepper 1 lb. new potatoes (skins on) 1 large onion, thinly sliced 3 T. sugar 2 t. butter 3 oregano sprigs 5 oz. aged goat cheese, sliced 1 puff pastry sheet, rolled thin Instructions Preheat the oven to 275 degrees. Halve the tomatoes and place them skin-side down on a baking sheet. Drizzle over some olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place in oven to dry for 45 minutes. Meanwhile, cook potatoes in boiling salted water for 25 minutes. Drain and let cool. Trim off a bit of the top and bottom of each potato, then cut into 1-inch-thick discs. Saute the onion with the oil and some salt for about 10 minutes, or until golden brown. Once you've prepared all the vegetables, brush a tarte tatin pan (or 9-inch cake pan) with oil and line the bottom with a circle of parchment paper. In a small pan cook the sugar and butter over high heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, to get a semi-dark caramel. Pour the caramel carefully into the cake pan and tilt it to spread the caramel evenly over the bottom. Pick the oregano leaves, tear and scatter onto the caramel. Lay the potato slices close together, cut-side down, on the bottom of the pan. Gently press onion and tomatoes into the gaps and sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Spread the slices of goat cheese evenly over the potatoes. Cut a puff pastry disc that is 1-inch larger in diameter than the pan. Lay the pastry lid over the tart filling and gently tuck the edges down around the potatoes inside the pan. (At this stage you can chill the tart for up to 24 hours.) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Bake the tart for 25 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 350 and continue baking for 15 minutes, or until pastry is thoroughly cooked. Remove from oven and let settle for 2 minutes only. Hold an inverted plate firmly on top of the pan and carefully but briskly turn them over together, then lift off the pan. Serve hot or warm. By Yotam Ottolenghi (Plenty Cookbook) Marcel's Culinary Experience https://www.marcelsculinaryexperience.com/
Potstickers January 20, 2015 by Jill Foucre Leave a Comment Chicken or Pork Potstickers 2015-01-20 09:28:53 Print Ingredients ½ lb of chicken breast, cut into chunks (boneless and skinless) ½ lb of chicken thigh, cut into chunks (boneless and skinless) OR 1lb of pork tenderloin, cut into chunks 1 head napa cabbage 3 cloves garlic, minced ½ package chives, chopped 3 T. sesame oil ½ t. salt 2 T. light soy sauce 2 T. mirin* ½ t. pepper 1 package tofu, sliced and squeezed of excess water Won ton skin wrappers Instructions Take the napa cabbage and shred in a food processor with the shredding disc. Remove the cabbage and place in a bowl. Sprinkle salt over the cabbage and mix. Set cabbage aside. Take garlic cloves and mince in the food processor with the blade attachment. Add chicken or pork and process until the meat is fully processed. Place minced meat in large bowl. Take cabbage and squeeze out excess water, using your hands or cheesecloth. Add cabbage & tofu to the meat mixture. Add chopped chives, sesame oil, salt, pepper, mirin, soy sauce, and pepper. Mix thoroughly and set aside. Take wonton wrappers and place in dumpling mold. Add about 1 small spoonful of pot sticker filling to the middle of the mold. Place water around the outer edges of the wonton wrapper and fold mold together. Repeat until all the filling has been used. Fill a nonstick pan with 1 tablespoon of oil and heat on medium high heat. When pan is hot, place pot stickers in pan. When one side of the pot stickers are fully browned, add chicken broth/stock to cover the bottom of the pan and cover. When all the liquid is gone from the pan, the pot stickers are done. Notes *Sweet cooking rice wine By Jenny Chang Marcel's Culinary Experience https://www.marcelsculinaryexperience.com/
A Grain of Salt by Paul Lindemuth January 19, 2015 by Jill Foucre Leave a Comment “With a grain of salt” is an idiom, which means to view something with skepticism or to not take it literally. An interesting history of this phrase reaches as far back as Roman times when General Pompey believed he could make himself immune to poisons by ingesting small doses of poisons with the addition of a few grains of salt to assist in swallowing the poisons. A loose correlation of this philosophy tells us that everything tastes better with a little salt. Fast forward to the current day kitchen and we are in the middle of a salt revival. Salting food is one of the most fundamental and ingrained habits in cooking. But never has there been such an array of salts available. Mark Bitterman, author of “Salted” writes, “salt can be a revelation” and he urges, “no food is more potent, more nutritionally essential, more universal, or more ancient. No other food displays salt’s crystalline beauty, is as varied, or as storied”. That’s quite a tribute to what many consider so mundane and everyday. Once you look past the habit of picking up the salt shaker and start thinking creatively about working with salt, you will be better equipped to understand the differences between salts. In “Salted”, Bitterman includes a 19 page salt reference guide which compares more than 150 different salts and their origins, colors, flavor profiles and applications. Coming right on the heels of my recent class “Prep School-Perfecting Salt”, I want to share the knowledge that you can not only cook WITH salt, but also cook ON it or IN it. My students eagerly waited as the Himalayan salt block reached the proper temperature and then enthusiastically seared thinly sliced flank steak directly on the block. The perfectly cooked steak flavored by the block itself and a little freshly ground black pepper was devoured and disappeared as fast as it could be cooked. Another technique that we explored was roasting a whole fish in a salt crust. 6 cups of kosher salt bound together with water created a rock hard salt “oven” and yielded perfectly cooked, juicy and delicious fish after the crust was cracked and removed. With today’s focus of arming ourselves with the knowledge of where our food comes from, it is just as important to explore the most fundamental element that brings out flavor and makes those other already great ingredients taste even better. I’ve shared a delicious recipe here, using the same technique to prepare a bone-in porterhouse steak in a salt crust. Salt-Roasted Porterhouse 2015-01-19 05:02:46 Serves 4 Print Ingredients 3 bay leaves, crushed 1 T. whole black peppercorns 2 t. whole coriander seeds 2 t. fennel seeds 2 t. dried rosemary ½ t. dried crushed red pepper 1 t. plus 3 cups kosher salt one 30-ounce porterhouse steak, about 2 to 2 ¼ inches thick 1/2 cup water Instructions In a small bowl combine the bay leaves, peppercorns, coriander seeds, fennel seeds, rosemary and crushed red pepper. Transfer the mixture to a spice grinder or coffee grinder and process until finely ground. Measure 2 tablespoons of the ground spice mixture into a small bowl and mix in 1 teaspoon of the kosher salt. Rub the ground spice and salt mixture evenly all over the steak. Wrap the steak in plastic wrap and chill for 3 hours. Reserve the remaining ground spice mixture, separately, covered, at room temperature. Preheat oven to 475 degrees F. Unwrap the steaks and place them in a large, ovenproof skillet. In a medium bowl combine the 3 cups of kosher salt with the reserved ground spice mixture. Add the water and stir to moisten. Pack the salt mixture over the top and sides of the steak. Roast until an instant read thermometer inserted into the steak registers 130 degrees F for medium-rare, about 25 minutes. Remove the steak from the oven and allow to stand at room temperature for 8 minutes. Using a wooden spoon, crack the salt crust. Discard the crust and brush away any remaining salt. Transfer the steak to a cutting board and carve into ½-inch thick slices. By Paul Lindemuth Marcel's Culinary Experience https://www.marcelsculinaryexperience.com/