Having a Cheeky Thanksgiving
I pardoned the turkey long ago. I have never found turkey particularly appetizing, even on Thanksgiving. But I did want something special today. Something I have only eaten in restaurants, expensive restaurants. I never prepared this meat but I did very much appreciate it when I had it the few times I was able to find it. The first time I tasted this was at one of Michael White’s restaurants in Manhattan, Ai Fiori. I will not tell you what dinner for four cost that evening. It was one of those multicourse meals where you get various morsels of food given to you over the course of a few hours. One of those morsels was a tiny cube of guancio. It’s really the only thing I remember about that meal. Other than the bill at the end. The guancio was buttery soft and unctuous. Unctuous is really the best word to describe this meat.
Guancio is cheek. Beef cheek. A muscle that is in constant use while the steer is still using it (them). It is a very tough piece of meat. If you cook it like a steak you will need a chainsaw to cut it and forget about chewing it. However, since the meat is riddled with collagen, when it is cooked slowly, for a long time, you get a buttery soft and moist meat that you can cut with a fork and is full of amazing meaty taste. The veins of collagen are creamy smooth and moist. They are not fat and don’t taste like fat. Unctuous is the word.
Guancio used to be a cheap cut because people did not want them. They did not know what to do with them. But now they are being discovered and since there are only two per animal, the prices are rising. It’s still cheaper than a dry aged porterhouse and, done right, better. Cooking them is actually simple if not long. They can be cooked a day or two before you want to eat them. It actually gets better.
The process starts with browning, in an oven safe pot like a dutch oven, two onions, several garlic cloves, one or two carrots, and a celery stalk in olive oil. One cheek will serve two or three people. Add the cheek and brown it on all side. Then add enough red wine ( I used Chianti. What else would I use in Chianti?) cut with beef broth to cover the meat. Add a couple of squares of dark eating chocolate, some green herbs like thyme and place in an oven, covered at 140C or 300F for three of four hours. Don’t forget salt and pepper. Rotate the meat a few times.
When the meat is tender, remove it from the braising liquid and set aside. At this point you can continue the next day or the same day. Using a stick blender, puree the liquid and vegetables until smooth. Add a cup of tomato puree to the braising liquid and simmer for about 20 minutes. Add the meat back and heat through.
For serving, cover the plate with the braising liquid, Add slices of the cheek and some buttered gnocchi (or use your imagination). Add some grated parmigiano and serve with a salad. Have it with a good wine. I served it with a 2014 Brunello from Banfi.
I tell ya, my dog is lazy. He don’t chase cars. He sits on the curb and takes down license plate numbers. (Rodney Dangerfield)
I have grown lazy since coming to Chianti. Specifically I don’t spend much time cooking but yet we are eating pretty good. In France the ingredients were spectacularly good and it inspired preparing meals that compliment those ingredients. It was a challenge to come up with dishes with the food stuffs that were not immediately recognizable but looked or smelled or tasted very promising. I’m sure that after a few years in France, once I got used to these strange products, then boredom would begin to set in. But in the 11 months I was there, that did not happen.
In Tuscany things are different. Having grown up Italian I am familiar with most Italian ingredients and I know how to prepare Italian recipes, existing or improvisational. There ain’t much of a challenge. But.
Italians are the hardest working lazy people on the planet. Maybe not as much as the lazy Mexicans and other hispanics that do all the work in the USA, but a close second. Don’t forget Italians were the “mexicans” of the last century. Why am I drifting into social politics? I’m not really. I’m just trying to make the point that cooking here in Tuscany is so effortless. We are eating fantastically well with almost no effort. Foods that require many hours of effort and years of skill are no sweat. Simple.
In France shopping was focused on the fresh markets. The fresh markets here in Italy, unless you go to the larger cities (Florence for us) kind of suck. They are more flea markets selling cheap clothing and houseware products and very few food stalls. I’ve given up going to those. We do go to the Florence market once a week. What Tuscany has, and other parts of Italy, are artesanal shops. The green grocer with fresh vegetable and fruits who also prepares some of those products so it’s not necessary to sweat all day to make something good. Or the Fresh pasta shop that has an ever changing selection of different fresh pastas that are far better than I could make myself. And not only the Pasta, but they also have the sauces to go with them. Sauces as good as what my mother makes.
Today I put in a bit of extra effort to prepare lunch. I had to start a bed charcoals in the fireplace to grill the Fiorentina steak I bought at the butcher shop. Yes I bought the steak raw. I had to cook it myself. Same with the asparagus. The pasta however is another story. I bought pumpkin tortelloni each about the size of the palm of your hand. I also bought at the same shop freshly made basil pesto that is as good as any I ever made.
Sfursat a little know wine from the Valtellina region of Italy (the top end of Lake Como) that should really be better known. Like Amarone from the Veneto, this wine is made using the best grapes of the harvest that are then allowed to dry for several months on mats before they are pressed and the wine is made. However, unlike the Amarone that is made with the same grapes used for Valpolicella, Sfursat is made with Nebbiolo grapes, the same grapes used for Barolo and Barbaresco. Therefore the flavor profiles are both similar and different. Amarone, a huge wine that has soft tannins and an almost sweet and bitter taste (amaro means bitter) differs from the Sfursat in that the Sfursat is fruitier and a bit more acidic than the Amarone. They are both amazingly complex and delicious.
Try to find it. It’s worth the effort.
The trouble with truffles
I have mixed feelings about truffles. I live in the land of truffles and this is truffle season. They are available almost everywhere. The local butcher has them on his counter, as does the green grocer and the local book store and wine shop. They are not cheap at 2000 euro a kilo but they are not nearly as expensive as you would find outside the truffle zone. The current price for white truffles in the USA runs about $5,900 per kilogram. That is a lot of money. What are you getting for that? When it comes down to it, not much. The primary value of the truffle, especially the white truffle, is that it stinks so nice. It smells of pheromones designed to attract the kind of animals that enjoy eating them. Wild pigs, hedgehogs, rats, squirrels, most forging omnivore seek the truffle. Since they are a subterranean fungus, they need to be dug up to spread their spore. But they need to be ripe and viable to be successful at procreation. So when they are ready they start to give off the scent that attracts their aficionados.
So once you have one of these “tubers” in hand what do you do with it. Well actually there isn’t all that much you can do with it. The truffle is way too expensive to use on everyday foods and it would be a waste regardless of the price simply because the only contribution of the truffle is its smell. They are not sweet or salty or sour or any other tongue based flavor. Adding them to say a tomato sauce would completely obscure the aroma of the truffle. A waste of lots of money. Truffles need to be used on foods that can work with the musty smell and not mask it. One classic use for truffles is to shave them on fried or poached eggs. Most truffles are shaved on a simple plate of fettuccine with butter and parmigiano. Nothing complex or strong or the truffle will be lost.
Consider, for example, the lemon. What if lemons were extremely rare, grew only in very limited areas and required the use of a pigeon to collect. What if lemons cost $200 an ounce. People would wax poetically about the lemon like they do about the truffle. The lemon would be smuggled by organized crime, synthetic lemon oil would be sold in little bottles as the real thing. Lemon is actually a poor example because the lemon is infinitely more useful than is the white truffle. I am not saying that the truffle has no value. A good truffle adds a very complex aroma to food that compliments certain tastes in ways that can not be achieved otherwise. But is it worth $20 for shaved truffle on your plate of risotto? If $20 per person is not a lot of money for you then yes. For most people it is a lot of money. But not too much money for the occasional splurge every so often.
Today is one of those days where I had a truffle and I made a meal around it. We went shopping in San Casciano yesterday for yesterday’s and todays meals. I thought a chicken dish would be good on a rainy Sunday so I had the butcher debone two whole legs. While he was doing that I asked if I could inspect his truffles that were sitting in a glass container on his counter. The last time I checked out his truffles they were close to odorless and I didn’t buy any. This time they smelled good so I picked a small one that came to 18 euro. It was the size of the end of your thumb including the fingernail. OK, so now I had some chicken and a truffle. What next? I didn’t quite know so I thought about it overnight and this morning I decided to make chicken in a cream mushroom sauce with truffle. Since I had no cream nor mushrooms, we went back out today to go shopping at the local supermarket. The little shops are closed on Sundays. I wanted some fresh porcini but that was not to be. I should have bought them on Saturday when they were calling to me but I ignored them. Instead there were enoki mushrooms so I got them. Some carrots were added for color and I found some fresh cream (ultra-pasteurization is not big here).
My thoughts were to cook the chicken in garlic and olive oil until the skin became crispy while I made a sauce separately. The sauce started with smoked pancetta cubes (bacon) browned in a pan. To that I added the two carrots that were also cubed fine and the whole evoke mushrooms. (I drained the excess bacon fat) I added 3/4 cup of chicken broth and a few sprigs of thyme. I let that simmer until the carrots were tender. I added 3/4 of heavy cream and a couple ounces of Vin Santo (the local sweet wine). Sweet sherry would work too. That simmered until it thickened somewhat. I added the cream sauce to the chicken in the fry pan (the excess oil was removed) and it simmered for a few minutes with the addition of chucks of butter for the hell of it. Meanwhile I cooked some fresh egg pasta. I plated the chicken and added the pasta to the sauce which I also plated. Then, using a microplane, I shaved the truffle on both plates.
The chicken and the pasta were delicious. One of those special preparations that you don’t have all that often. With the additional of the truffle it brought the dish over the top. But only because of the added expense. It was hard to tell that there was truffle on the food. I thought by making a cream sauce without strong aromas that the truffle would shine in its element. Not really. I should have put it on eggs.
Fillet Steak with Cipollini and Spinach Gnocchi with Stewed Artichokes
I am not giving you measures. I’ll leave that up to you. It all depends on how many people you are cooking for or how hungry you are or if you prefer more of this than that. I bought the gnocchi at the fresh pasta shop. You can too if you have one nearby. If not, see below.
Mix equal parts of ricotta, cooked spinach {frozen is acceptable, if you must} and flour. Add one or two eggs, depending on how much you’re making, and work into a dough, by hand, until ping pong size balls can be formed. Don’t overwork the dough and don’t forget to season with salt and pepper and a little nutmeg. Dropped them carefully into rapidly boiling water and let them cook for two to three minutes and remove them with a slotted spoon or a Chinese spider. Melt some butter over them and add them to the artichokes (below). You can use parmigiano if desired. Only the real stuff please.
For the steak, 2 to 3 inch thick fillet, coat with good olive oil and coarse salt and let sit for at least an hour. Meanwhile (you’re going to be using all your burners for this meal) set a medium pot of water to boil. When boiling, add the Cipollini {baby onions} and allow them to blanch for several minute, maybe 8 to 10 minutes. You can skip the blanching if you use frozen pearl onions {if you must}. Drain and peel them. Put butter in a frypan and when hot add the cipollini and sauté on medium heat until they start to gain color. Add some honey or sugar {Just a bit. You’re not making onion pie} , raisons, pignoli, a bit of vinegar and pepper. The idea here is sweet and sour. When fully caramelized, no liquid in the pan, it’s done. Set aside.
Peel and trim a few artichokes down to the hearts or if you’re lazy, get frozen ones. Quarter them (the fresh ones) and remove the chokes. crush several garlic cloves and cut several ripe cherry tomatoes in half. Add olive oil to a skillet and the garlic. When the garlic starts to go golden, add the tomatoes and artichokes, a bit of white wine, stir and cover over medium heat. Stir occasionally. Season to taste. Add some herbs like thyme or marjoram but be careful to not add too much. When the hearts are tender and have gained some color, it’s done. Add the cooked gnocchi, mix and serve.
Place the steaks in a dry frying pan and cook to desired doneness. Add the onions to flavor the meat and remove from the heat. Assemble the dishes.
The Science of Egg
This may be the most important article that you are now reading. Everybody knows how to boil eggs! But do they? It isn’t as simple as it seems. Have you ever tried to peel an egg and found that the shell and cuticle stick to the white making the peeling of the egg very difficult? Have you cut a hard boiled egg to find that the yolk has a green halo and is dry and crumbly? There are ways to avoid these problems and to end up with the perfect hardboiled egg. What is the perfect hardboiled egg? For me it is the 6 minute egg. But I would be perfectly happy with the 5 minute or 7 minute egg. The four minute egg is not hardboiled but it is a perfect soft boiled egg.
What do I mean by 4 minute or other minute egg? It is the time of cooking the egg in a very specific way. If you look on the internet or listen to what is said on TV, there are many ways to cook eggs. The most common I have seen is to put the raw eggs in a pot of cold water and to bring the pot to a boil. Then to turn off the heat and count down the number of minutes you want before removing the eggs. Another method is to put the eggs in boiling water and turn off the heat and again count down. That is not my method. I’ve tried those methods many times and I have always had problems.
It all comes down to thermodynamics. Eggs have mass. Water has mass. Water is the medium that transfers the heat from the burner to the inside of the egg. To get a perfect egg, whatever you think that is, it is necessary to cook each part of the egg in the proper way. If you want an easy to peel egg, the albumin needs to be fully cooked so that it is firm and fully separated from the membrane and the shell. If the albumin is under cooked. too low a temperature, the membrane will stick to the albumin and the shell will not come off easily. On the other hand if the egg is overcooked the yolk will be dry and even green if you went too far. This is how most people boil eggs. They put up a pot of water with eggs and then forget about them for 15 or so minutes.
The problem with the “bring to boil method and turn off the heat” is that the temperature of the heating medium {water} is not controlled. Again, thermodynamics. The more water you have the more thermal mass you have and the more calories can be transferred to the yolk. But how much water is the right amount. Do you know? I don’t. Inevitably it comes down to the the size pot you use and the number of eggs you cook. The more eggs the less the water. Too many variables. There is a better way.
What you need to do is control the temperature of the cooking environment. Variables must be eliminated. Start with a pot large enough to hold all the eggs with sufficient water for the eggs to be fully submerged. You notice I’m not giving you quantities. As long as you meet the above criteria, you are set. When the water starts to boil, reaches 100C or 212F, quickly add the eggs without breaking them. Cover the pot and tell Alexa to set the alarm for 6 minutes or whatever you want. Turn down the heat so that the water keeps gently boiling. Understand that water boils at 100C or 212F. You can not make it hotter than that under normal conditions (pressure) and without adding salt. That is how you eliminate variables. As long as the water is boiling you know what the temperature of the water is.
When Alex tells you its time, take the eggs out quickly and place them on a kitchen towel to cool. You will find that the eggs are perfect. The reason is that the controlled maximum temperature has fully cooked the albumin while the timer has allowed just the right amount of heat to penetrate to the yolk. The white is firm and peels easily and the yolk is still moist and creamy. Not dry and crumbly.
Nominations to the Nobel Committee will be appreciated.
6 thoughts on “Food and Wine”
-
Why don’t you season the steak before putting on the grill?
-
I’m just reporting here. Dario Cecchini, a well known tuscan butcher insists that its better to salt after the meat is cooked. It may have something to do with the way it’s cooked. Others, who don’t cook it the same way, do season. Not before but at each turn of the meat. They cook over coals. Salting the meat draws moisture out of the meat which helps develop a crust. But cooking next to a flame also develops a crust. With salt it may be too much. Some people say to salt 40 minutes before cooking. I have to look into that.
-
-
Got it, curious to know which way you prefer!
-
I’ll let you know
-
Just had guancio cooked splendidly in a restaurant in Martina Franca, Puglia. I will be putting your recipe to good use in my own kitchen soon.
-
Let me know if you survive.
-
Leave a Reply
With the meal below we had a Friuli Chardonnay from Vie di Romans. I don’t like white wines that are too acidic and bright. The typical $10 or less bottle. Most Sicilian whites and Tuscan whites. Although both places have some very good whites, they are not common and easy to get. I walked into the wine shop in San Casciano and asked for a barrel aged (oaked) white wine. The owner steered me towards this label. I’m glad he did. The wine was exactly what I was looking for except the price was a bit more than what I wanted at 24 euro for the bottle.
The wine tasted of a combination of a good California Chard, like a Jordon, with its structure and strong fruit and the finesse of a good french Pouilly-Fuissé. A really excellent wine. I wish it was cheaper.
Pici with Asparagus, Porcini and Porchetta and finished with White Truffle
Keto Friendly
You may have trouble getting some of these ingredients. But there are substitutes that you can get. First pici are a tuscan thick spaghetti. If you can get fresh spaghetti, great. If not just thick spaghetti are fine. If you can’t get asparagus because it’s out of season, use something similar. Green-beans for example. Porcini are not only difficult to get outside of places where it grows but if you can get them they are expensive. So use button mushrooms and add some dried porcini for taste. Look up how to use them. Porchetta is basically roasted pork. White truffle is rare, seasonal and expensive. I couldn’t find any here in Tuscany so good luck with that. What I did find is dried white truffles in a grinder jar. The jar was 15 euro which I think was a waste of money. The aroma is just not there and its all about the aroma. You are better off using truffle oil but be careful. Most truffle oils are synthetic garbage. The best option is to buy truffle cream or paste in high end food shops. Or do without.
To make this pasta set a pot of water to boil. Meanwhile put mushroom pieces and garlic, in a skillet and sauté over medium heat until the mushrooms start to caramelize. Season. Add the asparagus in small pieces, the cooked pork, in small pieces, a tablespoon or two of butter and keep cooking until the asparagus is cooked. I used pencil sized asparagus. Thicker will take longer unless you cut them very fine. Add the pici to the skillet and about 3 ounces of heavy cream and a couple ounces of the caccio cheese. Cook, mixing well until the cream is amalgamated. Plate and add parmigiano and white truffle shavings. Or not. If you have the truffle cream add that with the heavy cream. If you have truffle oil, add that, sparingly, at the end.
The keto part: If you eat everything except the pasta, this is keto friendly.
6 thoughts on “Food and Wine”
-
Why don’t you season the steak before putting on the grill?
-
I’m just reporting here. Dario Cecchini, a well known tuscan butcher insists that its better to salt after the meat is cooked. It may have something to do with the way it’s cooked. Others, who don’t cook it the same way, do season. Not before but at each turn of the meat. They cook over coals. Salting the meat draws moisture out of the meat which helps develop a crust. But cooking next to a flame also develops a crust. With salt it may be too much. Some people say to salt 40 minutes before cooking. I have to look into that.
-
-
Got it, curious to know which way you prefer!
-
I’ll let you know
-
Just had guancio cooked splendidly in a restaurant in Martina Franca, Puglia. I will be putting your recipe to good use in my own kitchen soon.
-
Let me know if you survive.
-
Leave a Reply
Caccio e Pepe with Chickpeas and Kale
When we came home from our visit to Volterra we knew we would be going to a home devoid of the basic ingredients needed to cook dinner. We’ve been here, Tuscany, two weeks and in that time we have been busy with setting up the apartment to our liking. So we have not had time to shop for the basic larder goods everyone needs for home cooking. What we did have is a chunk of caccio cheese and some parmigiano. I also had a package of pre-cooked chickpeas and a bunch of kale I didn’t use the day before. That’s it. Before leaving Volterra I bought some pasta. We did have butter, olive oil and onions and garlic.
The cheese in the fridge, caccio, the kind cured in hay, was the germ of the idea. There is a Roman pasta called Caccio e Pepe. It’s spaghetti with a sauce of butter and caccio cheese. Very simple and quick to make. But we had the chickpeas and kale too. Why not add them too.
The recipe is simple. Cut the kale into small pieces and add them to the cold pasta water and set on the heat. When the water boils add the pasta. Meanwhile, sauté onions and garlic in olive oil and add the chickpeas, with the can liquid. When the pasta is done firm, add it to the chickpeas along with about a 1/2 cup of cooking water. Add about 4 ounces of caccio cheese, in small pieces or grated, and a good sized lump of butter. Over medium heat stir until the water is incorporated and the cheese is melted. Add a generous amount of good black pepper. Not the stuff that has been sitting in a shaker for the past 5 years. Plate and add grated Parmigiano. Don’t over-do the last cooking stage. The pasta water should be reduced to a sauce, not completely adsorbed.
If you can’t get caccio, which should be available in most Italian food stores, mix 3 parts mild cheese like gouda and 1 part pecorino Romano. If you like sharper, add more pecorino. Again spring for the real stuff that is not made in Wisconsin.
6 thoughts on “Food and Wine”
-
Why don’t you season the steak before putting on the grill?
-
I’m just reporting here. Dario Cecchini, a well known tuscan butcher insists that its better to salt after the meat is cooked. It may have something to do with the way it’s cooked. Others, who don’t cook it the same way, do season. Not before but at each turn of the meat. They cook over coals. Salting the meat draws moisture out of the meat which helps develop a crust. But cooking next to a flame also develops a crust. With salt it may be too much. Some people say to salt 40 minutes before cooking. I have to look into that.
-
-
Got it, curious to know which way you prefer!
-
I’ll let you know
-
Just had guancio cooked splendidly in a restaurant in Martina Franca, Puglia. I will be putting your recipe to good use in my own kitchen soon.
-
Let me know if you survive.
-
Leave a Reply
There are too many fish in the sea to know them all. I didn’t know this one. Its an Emery fish, a type of shark that apparently has rough skin. What caught my eye was the name in Italian. My name, sort of.
Sicily, until recently, before the last have of the 20th century, the territory was more or less illiterate. It was a land of small farmers, little industry, wealthy landowners including the church and the mafia. Sicily has come a long way since then but at that time a difficult name like mine was easily misspelled. My current name, Smiriglio, has three (I)s but in the 1940’s and before there were only two. The first one added to make the name more pronounceable, even for Italians.
I think that the first version, without the extra I, was misspelled from a version that has (e) at that location (Smeriglio). That would give the name a significance. It means metal polisher or metal polish made from emery, which is crushed garnet. That name does exist, I’ve met a few. So it makes sense that that version, with the e, is the “official” version and the others are variants based on misspellings. All to say that I actually do share a name with a shark, sort of.
The above is based on extensive research that was done in my head as I was writing the above.
The fish was cooked with Garlic and cherry tomatoes and a bit of balsamic and capers. The chickpeas are precooked and sautéed with shallot and a mild cheese. The asparagus are pan seared with garlic and 5 spice powder.
6 thoughts on “Food and Wine”
-
Why don’t you season the steak before putting on the grill?
-
I’m just reporting here. Dario Cecchini, a well known tuscan butcher insists that its better to salt after the meat is cooked. It may have something to do with the way it’s cooked. Others, who don’t cook it the same way, do season. Not before but at each turn of the meat. They cook over coals. Salting the meat draws moisture out of the meat which helps develop a crust. But cooking next to a flame also develops a crust. With salt it may be too much. Some people say to salt 40 minutes before cooking. I have to look into that.
-
-
Got it, curious to know which way you prefer!
-
I’ll let you know
-
Just had guancio cooked splendidly in a restaurant in Martina Franca, Puglia. I will be putting your recipe to good use in my own kitchen soon.
-
Let me know if you survive.
-
Leave a Reply
How to Make a Fiorentina Steak
First buy a good steak. This one was over a kilo and about 3 inches thick. It needs to be thick because it needs to be able to stand on the flat side of the T-bone. The Porterhouse end of the T-bone is preferred because both the sirloin and the fillet are bigger. Nothing is to be done to the meat. No salt or marinade or nothing.
Along with the steak I bought some Ovuli mushrooms, in english known as Caesar’s Amanita. The vendor told me the best thing to do is to thinly slice the cleaned shroons and dress them with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and parmigiano cheese shavings. I did and I did not like them that way. These are strong tasting mushrooms and raw they taste of fungus. So I took the mushroom salad and tossed it into a frying pan. Cooked them until they were toasted and the cheese formed a crust. Turned out to be a great way to cook mushrooms. The fungus taste was gone and the crunchy cheese crust and the balsamic made for a good preparation. I would only add some garlic.
Back to the steak. It should be cooked over a coal/wood fire but in a specific way. The steak is thick and requires some time to cook through so you start it over the charcoals to warm the meat. After both sides start to color, add some sticks to one side of the coal fire. I gathered olive wood, bay laurel branches and rosemary spikes for this. That stuff grows all around if you are in the right place. If you don’t have that selection, oak and maple or apple are fine. When the wood catches fire, again it’s only on one side of the grill, stand the steak up next to the fire but not in the fire. Turn the steak a few times until its done. Let rest and slice.
6 thoughts on “Food and Wine”
-
Why don’t you season the steak before putting on the grill?
-
I’m just reporting here. Dario Cecchini, a well known tuscan butcher insists that its better to salt after the meat is cooked. It may have something to do with the way it’s cooked. Others, who don’t cook it the same way, do season. Not before but at each turn of the meat. They cook over coals. Salting the meat draws moisture out of the meat which helps develop a crust. But cooking next to a flame also develops a crust. With salt it may be too much. Some people say to salt 40 minutes before cooking. I have to look into that.
-
-
Got it, curious to know which way you prefer!
-
I’ll let you know
-
Just had guancio cooked splendidly in a restaurant in Martina Franca, Puglia. I will be putting your recipe to good use in my own kitchen soon.
-
Let me know if you survive.
-
Leave a Reply
Spaghetti con Tonno
Italian cooking 101. One of the most basic of all Italian dishes is Spaghetti Aglio e Olio. It’s the meal you make when you get home at 10 PM and everyone is hungry. You always have a box of spaghetti and garlic and olive oil or you are not Italian. It is a simple to make meal but there are rules you must follow. Spaghetti Aglio e Olio is also a base recipe for making several other pasta dishes. So once you know how to make this you know how to make Spaghetti con Tonno or Ricci (if you can get them) or even vongole.
We have been setting up the new apartment to better suit us, two trips to Ikea, a few trips to the electronics store, hours of assembly, wiring, wifi troubleshooting, just busy days. So today, instead of grabbing a sandwich at the mall, I picked up a jar of Sicilian tuna with the intention of making a quick spaghetti.
Basic steps: crush a few garlic cloves and put them in a skillet with a generous amount of good olive oil (can’t stress that enough). When the garlic starts to toast, not burn, add the tuna (use good jarred tuna) and crush it with a fork. Add some pre-rinsed capers. Meanwhile cook the spaghetti (I used fresh made) until its still very al dente. Add the spaghetti to the skillet along with a couple of ladles of pasta water. Over medium heat mix everything until the water is adsorbed and forms a thickened sauce. Add parsley and toasted bread crumbs. Also, using a microplane, add some lemon zest. Simple.
Watch the seasoning because of the capers and the tuna. Adjust seasoning at the end. If you like it hot, and some do, you could add chilis to the oil with the garlic or flakes at the end, depending on how intense you desire the heat.
6 thoughts on “Food and Wine”
-
Why don’t you season the steak before putting on the grill?
-
I’m just reporting here. Dario Cecchini, a well known tuscan butcher insists that its better to salt after the meat is cooked. It may have something to do with the way it’s cooked. Others, who don’t cook it the same way, do season. Not before but at each turn of the meat. They cook over coals. Salting the meat draws moisture out of the meat which helps develop a crust. But cooking next to a flame also develops a crust. With salt it may be too much. Some people say to salt 40 minutes before cooking. I have to look into that.
-
-
Got it, curious to know which way you prefer!
-
I’ll let you know
-
Just had guancio cooked splendidly in a restaurant in Martina Franca, Puglia. I will be putting your recipe to good use in my own kitchen soon.
-
Let me know if you survive.
-
Leave a Reply
White Wine Batter Fried Sea Bass on Red Leaf Lettuce with Toasted Sesame Dressing and String Beans and Cherry Tomatoes
Another final, a last, no more. I said goodbye to the Tuesday fish guy. The man that parks his fish truck in the center of town every tuesday. This is our last tuesday in Saint Pierre Quiberon. Next Tuesday we will be on our leisurely drive towards Chianti. The drive is only 18 hours total but we are going to take a week to complete it. We could, if we wanted to, do it in two days but why kill ourselves. This is a good excuse to visit places that we would not normally get to see. Friday afternoon we will say goodbye to Brittany and head for our first night’s stay in Angers. Angers is about a three hour drive away which to me sounds just about perfect. We will stay in a hotel in the center of the Old Town and then the next morning head towards our next stop, Tain L’Hermitage. We will stay there two nights. That will give us some time to explore the Upper Rhone Vineyards. After that I have not decided yet. “Play it by Ear” is the modus operandi for this trip.
Getting back to the fish, I had the fish guy fillet the fish for me. I still had to pull the pin bones with a needlenose, which is something I always do anyway. My wife was raised in the American way, although she is getting better. The batter is a simple egg, flour and white wine batter with a little bit of baking soda to lighten it. The fillets were fried in about a 1/2 inch of coconut oil at 315 degrees F. The crust turned out crunchy and light while the interior was perfectly moist and tender. You can’t beat sea bass for this although many other fish do come close.
The string beans were simply boiled and dressed with salad dressing and finely chopped shallot. The perfect little french cherry tomatoes are simply cut in half. Nothing more.
I don’t know what the fish selection will be like in Tuscany. I’m certain that the fish selection will be fine with more mediterranean fish than Atlantic fish. Oysters will be more expensive and there will be fewer choices as to oyster types. I suspect that only one type at anyone time will be available. The cheese will be different. It will be great but it will be different. Meats, on the other hand, in the Tuscany area, should be fantastic. Especially pork and wild boar. The bread, boy I will miss the bread. Tuscan bread is perfect in every way except that it has no salt. You can’t just enjoy it on its own. It has to be accompanied with food, salty food. That is going to get some getting used to.
6 thoughts on “Food and Wine”
-
Why don’t you season the steak before putting on the grill?
-
I’m just reporting here. Dario Cecchini, a well known tuscan butcher insists that its better to salt after the meat is cooked. It may have something to do with the way it’s cooked. Others, who don’t cook it the same way, do season. Not before but at each turn of the meat. They cook over coals. Salting the meat draws moisture out of the meat which helps develop a crust. But cooking next to a flame also develops a crust. With salt it may be too much. Some people say to salt 40 minutes before cooking. I have to look into that.
-
-
Got it, curious to know which way you prefer!
-
I’ll let you know
-
Just had guancio cooked splendidly in a restaurant in Martina Franca, Puglia. I will be putting your recipe to good use in my own kitchen soon.
-
Let me know if you survive.
-
Leave a Reply
Veal Scallopini with Ham, Walnuts, Sage and Cheese. Accompanied with Couscous with Green Beans and Fenugreek, and Sautéed Chanterelles with Soy and Ginger.
Since we are leaving Brittany this Friday, I am starting to refocus on Italian rather than French foods, but Northern Italian which is less dependant on the ubiquitous tomato and peppers. Not to mention the zucchin0.
French butchers have fantastic veal but they don’t know how to process the meat in the Italian style. If you ask for scallopini you get 3/4 inch thick disks of veal. So I just had the butcher give me the chunk of veal and I prepared it myself. You want 1/4 inch thick slices that have been lightly pounded to tenderise.
The other day at the market I picked up some chanterelle mushrooms and green beans. I don’t know if you noticed but I have not been making many leafy vegetables lately. Almost none. It’s not that I don’t like spinach or char or even kale (i take that back about kale), its that they are not here. That is the problem when you live in a place that has only fresh and local produce. You get what you get. No Chinese or Peruvian produce.
Haricots vert, green beans, seem to be present all the time. Since I like them, I use them. I made them with couscous (Israeli type) butter and fenugreek seasoning. The mushrooms are made with garlic and finished with soy and ginger.
The veal is dredged in flour and lightly browned in butter. I have lots of butter I need to use up before Wednesday when we stop cooking. Once the veal is lightly browned, remove it from the pan and set aside. Add some more butter to the pan and add the walnuts and sage. You can use fresh or rubbed sage. Add salt and pepper and some type of spirit. I used a single malt scotch (Knocando 18 year old) because that’s all I had left. When the walnuts and the butter start to brown, remove them with a slotted spoon and place the veal slices in the pan, cover each with a slice of good boiled ham, and a good amount of grated cheese. I used a mix of Parmigiano Reggiano and a french cheese similar to Cacio. Spoon the walnuts and butter over the top and add some more sage. Cover until the cheese is melted and plate. Drizzle some of the burnt butter over the top and serve.
If you want a specific, detailed recipe or have questions, make a comment below.
6 thoughts on “Food and Wine”
-
Why don’t you season the steak before putting on the grill?
-
I’m just reporting here. Dario Cecchini, a well known tuscan butcher insists that its better to salt after the meat is cooked. It may have something to do with the way it’s cooked. Others, who don’t cook it the same way, do season. Not before but at each turn of the meat. They cook over coals. Salting the meat draws moisture out of the meat which helps develop a crust. But cooking next to a flame also develops a crust. With salt it may be too much. Some people say to salt 40 minutes before cooking. I have to look into that.
-
-
Got it, curious to know which way you prefer!
-
I’ll let you know
-
Just had guancio cooked splendidly in a restaurant in Martina Franca, Puglia. I will be putting your recipe to good use in my own kitchen soon.
-
Let me know if you survive.
-
Leave a Reply
Mussels and Cockles and Leeks with a Saffron Cream Sauce
A bittersweet day since we visited our last Brittany market before we leave Brittany. We are leaving next Saturday and this upcoming week will be busy more than enough to keep us from going to the markets during the week. The Monday Auray market, which is normally about a 20 minute drive has turned into a two hour crawl up the Quiberon peninsula because of all the summer people that have crowed onto this small strip of land. Its not worth the aggravation. Similarly with the Vannes Market. There is a market on Thursday right in Saint Pierre but will have a morning appointment in Quiberon to close our bank account and, besides, there will only be one day left before we leave and the refrigerator has to be emptied and cleaned before we go. I think we will be visiting the local eateries for the last couple days of our stay.
But since we are still here today, I made a shellfish variant of the Mussels with cream and Leeks that they serve everywhere on the French coast. I bought 1 1/2 kilo of mussels and a kilo of cockles (vongole) which I cleaned very well. I gave them 3 washes until the bath water was clear. This is important unless you like eating sand. In a large skillet I sautéed 4 cloves of sliced garlic with olive oil and added the mussels and clams and covered, over medium heat.
Meanwhile I cut three small leeks into 3 inch strips and, again, washed these very well under standing water (not running). Put some effort into it to dislodge the caked on mud. I set them aside.
After the clams and mussels are set aside, pour off the remain liquid into a bowl, carefully conserving the last bit that contains the sand and dirt. Get rid of that last amount. Don’t be stingy because you do not need all that clam juice for this recipe. Let the decanted juice sit still in a bowl to allow the sand to settle.
In the same skillet, that has been cleaned, add about 3 ounces of butter and the leaks. Also add some white wine or sherry and two cups of the broth that you decanted (again decant it not using the last bit) at this point. A good amount of saffron should go in at this point along with a bit of fresh thyme. In honor of the president of the United States, I used Iranian saffron.
While the leeks are simmering, remove the meat from most of the clams and mussels that you left to cool. Leave a few to put in the bowls. The leek mix should cook until the leeks are tender. Add four ounces of creme fraiche or heavy cream and stir in. Let it cook over medium heat until the sauce slightly thickens and becomes creamy. Add the shelled mussels and clams and the complete ones as well. When just warmed serve with crusty bread. Breads is better than the frites any day.
6 thoughts on “Food and Wine”
-
Why don’t you season the steak before putting on the grill?
-
I’m just reporting here. Dario Cecchini, a well known tuscan butcher insists that its better to salt after the meat is cooked. It may have something to do with the way it’s cooked. Others, who don’t cook it the same way, do season. Not before but at each turn of the meat. They cook over coals. Salting the meat draws moisture out of the meat which helps develop a crust. But cooking next to a flame also develops a crust. With salt it may be too much. Some people say to salt 40 minutes before cooking. I have to look into that.
-
-
Got it, curious to know which way you prefer!
-
I’ll let you know
-
Just had guancio cooked splendidly in a restaurant in Martina Franca, Puglia. I will be putting your recipe to good use in my own kitchen soon.
-
Let me know if you survive.
-
Leave a Reply
Leftovers, Lamb shoulder on a croissant.
On Sundays, as I have said several times, I buy fire-roasted lamb or chicken from the guy who sets up on the edge of town. We bought a lamb shoulder yesterday and there was quite a bit of meat leftover. I’m not crazy about having leftovers but this one I will make an exception. The leftover is better than the original. I simply sauteed a chopped onion in butter until it starts to color. I then added some freshly shucked peas (frozen are fine too) and let that cook a while to make sure the peas were done. I added the lamb with some additional butter, and let that warm through. At this point I added some mild cheese and let it melt in. When the cheese is melted I drizzled some yakitori sauce, stirred and placed it on an open face croissant. No salt needed because of the yakitori.
This can be done with chicken or veal or even beef but its best with lamb.
6 thoughts on “Food and Wine”
-
Why don’t you season the steak before putting on the grill?
-
I’m just reporting here. Dario Cecchini, a well known tuscan butcher insists that its better to salt after the meat is cooked. It may have something to do with the way it’s cooked. Others, who don’t cook it the same way, do season. Not before but at each turn of the meat. They cook over coals. Salting the meat draws moisture out of the meat which helps develop a crust. But cooking next to a flame also develops a crust. With salt it may be too much. Some people say to salt 40 minutes before cooking. I have to look into that.
-
-
Got it, curious to know which way you prefer!
-
I’ll let you know
-
Just had guancio cooked splendidly in a restaurant in Martina Franca, Puglia. I will be putting your recipe to good use in my own kitchen soon.
-
Let me know if you survive.
-
Leave a Reply
Beef Fillets Seared in Butter and served with a Bordelaise Sauce accompanied with Chanterelle Mushrooms and Leeks in a Cream Sauce.
Looking at the picture you’d think the topic would not be butter. But living in Brittany, butter is pervasive. The Celtic countries, Brittany and Ireland specifically, know how to make and use butter. Everything on the plate shown depends on butter either for cooking or flavor or consistency or all three. Now there are many of you that are about to shut me off because butter is so bad for you that it gives you heart attacks and that it makes you fat. If that is really the case, why are people here in Brittany, on average, so much thinner and healthier than the low fat eating obese American population? Butter and eggs are not the culprits that the misinformed “government health officials” wanted you to believe. Here is a hint; Its sugar that does all those things to you that fat gets the blame for doing. The American diet is full of sugar and the American population is full of heart disease and obesity.
Don’t get me wrong, I love what can be made from sugar and I am way too overweight. But I’m trying. However when some people will see the plate of food I presented here they will revolt because of the butter and fat in the food. “Enjoying full-fat milk, yogurt, cheese and butter is unlikely to send people to an early grave, according to new research by The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth).” And that is just one of the recent studies that have been finding that sugar, carbohydrates and hydrogenated fats are the real killers. These are the items you will find in the center aisles of the supermarket. And at the fast food counters. OK so what is on the plate is not exactly health food but it is healthy compared to a bag of Diorites or a meal at Burger King.
The steaks are actually fillet mignon from Blond D’aquitaine steer. Did you know that if you ask a butcher in France for a fillet mignon you will get pork tenderloin. Fillet mignon in France is known as fillet de boeuf. These particular steaks were pan seared in butter with some fleur de sel (which is a local product also). The sauce that they are sitting in is a Bordelaise, a red wine reduction flavored with herbs and thickened with butter. The original also used bone marrow, which I did not have. The mushrooms are yellow chanterelle prepared with garlic and butter and finished with rustic apple cider vinegar (just a few drops). The best part, in my opinion, is the portion of leeks slowly sweated in butter until tender and then cooked further with some creme fraiche until slightly thickened. Thats all. If you have not had leeks done this way you should consider it. Alice said its like dessert. Although it’s not sweet. Just make certain you clean the leeks well.
The picture of the cheese truck is to show you where I buy the butter, one of the places. This is a farmers truck with their own cheese and cream and butter. I will miss these ladies.
6 thoughts on “Food and Wine”
-
Why don’t you season the steak before putting on the grill?
-
I’m just reporting here. Dario Cecchini, a well known tuscan butcher insists that its better to salt after the meat is cooked. It may have something to do with the way it’s cooked. Others, who don’t cook it the same way, do season. Not before but at each turn of the meat. They cook over coals. Salting the meat draws moisture out of the meat which helps develop a crust. But cooking next to a flame also develops a crust. With salt it may be too much. Some people say to salt 40 minutes before cooking. I have to look into that.
-
-
Got it, curious to know which way you prefer!
-
I’ll let you know
-
Just had guancio cooked splendidly in a restaurant in Martina Franca, Puglia. I will be putting your recipe to good use in my own kitchen soon.
-
Let me know if you survive.
-
Leave a Reply
A Beef Dish with No Name
Two weeks left before we pack-up and leave to go to Italy. So today was “look in the freezer and cupboards and make something with what you find”, day. I found a raw piece of beef that I vacuumed packed but didn’t label so I had no idea what it was but it didn’t look bad. I also had some green beans I didn’t use this week and if I didn’t use them they’d have to go in the trash. I had small quantities of toasted sesame oil and sesame salad dressing and about a cup of Spanish paella rice.
I cut the meat into cubes and marinated them in the sesame oil for about two hours. Then took the meat out of the oil and covered the pieces in cornstarch. I mixed the sesame oil with some olive oil and put the mix in a hot skillet. I fried the meat pieces until browned on all sides and then set aside. In the same pan I add a chopped shallot and a chopped (large) garlic clove. When the shallot softened I added the green beans some leftover apple cider that was hanging out on the counter and covered until the green beans were al-dente. I added to the green beans some soy sauce, the rest of the sesame salad dressing, and the meat. The cornstarch on the meat thickens the sauce.
Meanwhile I made the rice by sautéing a shallot in butter and then added the rice and beef broth and cooked covered until done. I added a bit of butter to the rice and placed it on a plate and added the meat.
Spaghetti with Nero di Sepia and Calamaro
I’m not terribly fond of all things Sicilian when it comes to food. I don’t like Milza, the pancreas that is boiled in its own fat and served on a roll with bland cheese; or anything sardine based. I’m not against sardines but what the Sicilians do with them enhances the oily sardine taste which I am not fond of. And then there is the concoction of mixed mystery meats that is also boiled in fat and served from under a blanket so you can’t see what they are giving you. The Sicilians are proud of these things. They are proud of their street foods and they should be because they represent the Sicilian resolve to overcome the oppression and domination that they have suffered for their entire existence. Sicily has never been for the Sicilians. Right from the beginning they have been dominated by foreigners starting with the Greeks and the Carthaginians and the Romans and the Arabs and the Vandals and the Germans and the Austrians and the Normans and the Arogonese, and the Spanish and the Catholic Church and the English and the Bourbon and finally the Italians under Garibaldi.
Did you know that Naples, the Capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilys, as it was known before the “reunification” under Garibaldi, was the richest kingdom in Europe? When the House of Savoie, the royal house under which Italy was unified, who was represented by Garibaldi, “liberated” the Two Sicilys, the entire wealth of the Bank of Naples was transferred to Torino. The south has never recovered. That is why the south of Italy is the way it is today. That is why Milza plays such an important role in the street foods of Palermo. That is why sardines are so important to the Sicilian diet. Poverty. A poverty that was imposed by the colonial domination that they have had to endure for their entire existence and even under their Italian saviors.
So what does all this have to do with Spaghetti with Nero di Sepia? I don’t know. I just felt like ranting.
The Sicilian dish of Spaghetti with Nero di Sepia is very particular to the Island. There is the use of cuttlefish ink in the Veneto for making Risotto, but I suspect they got their idea from Sicilian migrants. This is a very simple dish to make but it is one of the Sicilian classics. The hardest part is cleaning the cuttlefish and/or calamaro without losing the ink in the process. Italian (Sicilian) fish mongers are pretty good at this and know how to do it. I am in Brittany where they have spectacular sepie and calamari but they don’t know how to clean them. So I have to do it myself. No big deal, just kind of messy. Once they have been cleaned and cut into pieces and the ink is safely protected in its bladder, you chop some garlic, whatever you think is the right amount you should double, and sauté it in olive oil to give it some color (do not burn it or you will start over again). Add the meat and cook until it becomes more opaque (starts to be cooked). Add some cayenne or peperoncino and some tomato puree (use the best Italian or homemade). Simmer until the meat is tender while you are making your Spaghetti. Just before serving add the ink bladder and break it, stirring the ink throughout the sauce. What you will see is the the ink thickens the sauce, gives it more body, and it does flavor the sauce. Its not just color. Add the cooked pasta and mix, adding some pasta water if needed. I use basil in the preparation and as a garnish. Oregano doesn’t work for me in this dish.
I used both calamaro and sepia for this. The sepia ink is intensely black while the calamaro ink is more delicate. You can make this with either or both. You typically only get it as sepia in Sicily. I prefer to mix them because, I just do.
Bluefin Tuna Belly Three Ways
Normally on Tuesday we walk to the village center where the fish truck parks and we buy fish from him. Today we didn’t do that and it’s Ringo’s fault. It was raining and he refuses to go out in the rain. So, instead, we got in the car and drove to Quiberon a few miles away and stopped at the fish market. I’m glad we did because they had fresh Bluefin for sale. In Sicily the Bluefin is available for the month of May. Maybe three or four weeks and then it’s gone. Here in Brittany the Bluefin is available a bit longer. If you are not familiar with Bluefin, that is the fish that sells for hundreds of thousands of dollars in Japan. And the Japanese are the reason why Bluefin has gotten so scarce, especially in the Mediterranean. The Japanese fishing fleets would park by the straights of Gibraltar and intercept the schools of tuna that were headed for their breeding grounds in the Med. A once thriving tuna industry in Sicily was devastated by the Japanese. But not as much in Brittany.
I bought a piece of the belly of the Tuna, which is fattier than the muscle meat that most people are familiar with. The Japanese call it Toro and it is the prized part of the animal. I prepared it three ways; as sashimi, as tartar, and as tuna teriyaki. Also on the plate are real wasabi and seaweed tartar that came out of a jar and should go back in that jar. The wasabi is not the fluorescent green stuff made from horseradish. It is genuine wasabi and it actually taste good.
Paprika Oven Roasted Chicken with Orecchiette with Artichoke Garlic Cream.
The chicken is simply coated with honey, paprika, salt and pepper and oven roasted. Put the chicken pieces in a bowl and add a teaspoon of honey and mix by hand until the chicken is coated with a thin coat of honey. Add a tablespoon of paprika, a 1/2 teaspoon of salt and mix until evenly coated. Roast in the oven, 400 F until the internal temperature is 160 degrees.
I used an artichoke cream, on the pasta, that I bought at the market. Such artichoke creams are available in the USA at stores like Fairway. The difference is that the ones at Fairway are Italian and made with olive oil while the French version is made with cream. They are both good and I wouldn’t exclude one for the other. Try both. They are actually easy to make if you can’t find them. It’s always best to use fresh artichokes but it can be made with frozen hearts. Just keep in mind that if you use the frozen it will have a little of the citric acid taste that the fresh will not.
To make the cream from fresh, cut the artichoke along the equator and dispose the upper half. Cut the lower half into quarters and place in a pot with water. If you are making 4 medium artichokes, cut a medium head of garlic in half, again on the equator, and put both halves with the artichoke pieces. Boil the lot in salted water until the hearts are tender. Drain and place everything in a food processor and process until smooth. Add some olive oil or cream during processing to help. When you have a smooth creamy mix (there will be pieces of leaves and fibers) pass the mix through a food mill or sieve. Salt and pepper to taste.
To make from frozen artichokes, place the artichoke pieces in the boiling water after the garlic has had time to soften, say 10 minutes. Then follow the above.
Add a couple of tablespoons of the artichoke cream to each serving of pasta that has been pre-coated with melted butter. Add parmigiano to taste and serve. The artichoke cream is also good on crackers or toasted bread as in a bruschetta. I’ve also used the cream, mixed with an egg to coat chicken pieces before breading the chicken. Works on pork too.
Sea Bream with Beurre Blanc Citron and Crispy Pilloff of Mixed Cereal Grains with Green Beans and Squash
What else can I say? This was a hit with Alice. She is tough sometimes. Normally we have roasted meats on Sunday because that is when the roasted meats guy is selling his roasted meat. But we have had meat too many times this week so we opted for fish. We drove into Quiberon, about ten minutes away, where we know that two Oyster trucks are parked on Sunday mornings and a fish truck. This morning the selection of fish was a bit sparse with Sea Bream and Sea Bass being the only two fish fish available. Everything else was crustacean or mollusk, and I was not in the mood for those. Fortunately the Bream and Bass both looked really good and fresh but the sea bass was selling at a premium price so I went with the Bream.
To cook the Bream I melted a good sized lump of butter in a very hot pan, you want the butter to start going brown, and added the seasoned fillets skin side down. Then I reduced the heat to moderate. This is important because you want the skin to crisp as it cooks. When the flesh looks like its cooked about halfway through (you can tell by looking at the edges), flip the fillets and cook another minute or so.
The yellow stuff is Beurre Blanc Citron, a butter sauce that takes some effort to make. Normally it requires much whisking over low heat until the texture is smooth and creamy. In my case I needed to carefully snip the corner of the bag containing the Beurre Blanc that is sold pre-made here in France and it is better than most homemade versions I’ve had.
The mixed cereal pillaff is a two step process. First I cut the green beans and squash (round zucchino) into small pieces and sauteed them with a minced shallot until tender. Meanwhile you prepare the cereal grains (for me it’s available in a boil-in bag) until done and add to the vegetables. Mix well, add a bit more of butter and turn up the heat. Stir only occasionally. What you are trying to do is toast the grains to make them crispy. But you don’t want to burn them. I added some Ras El Hanout spice, just a bit, to give it that mysterious taste. Too much and there is no more mystery.
Duck and Pork Buns
There are only three weeks left before we leave France for Italy. So it is time to start using up stuff in the fridge before we have to throw it out. Looking through the fridge and the cupboard I found some Einkorn flour leftover from a previous meal this week, a duck breast that I didn’t cook, a piece of roasted pork shin, and some goat cheese I bought a few days ago. The goat cheese is still fresh but will go funky soon enough. I also had some French bacon but that is vacuum packed and will last a bit longer so I didn’t use it for this.
This list of items is a bit odd and required a bit of thought. But not too long. I was watching a show about Taiwanese street food last night and they made filled buns that looked really good. Why not? So I made filled buns using the ingredients I had. I removed the skin and fat from the duck breast and chopped it as fine as I could with a knife. I didn’t want it chopped super fine as with a food processor, just in 1/8 to 1/4 inch pieces. I put that in a pan with a bit of oil and a finely chopped shallot and quickly cooked it over moderate heat. I added a teaspoon and a half of Sate spice. The pork shin was also cut by hand and added to the duck just before turning off the heat.
Previously I made a dough with the einkorn flour and a bit of wheat flour, salt and yeast and let it rise for a few hours. Divided the dough into eight pieces and rolled 4 of them them out into disks. I dived the meat mix into four and added one portion per each of the four disks that I made. A quarter of the goat cheese was placed on top of the meat and two or three soft dried apricot, cut into small pieces, was placed on top of that. The dough was bunched and sealed at the top, into a bun and allowed to rise for an hour.
Before baking I wet the bun with a brush and sprinkled some fleur de sel on the buns and baked them until lightly golden. The other half of the dough that I didn’t use for the buns I used to make a baguette.
The mix of ingredients worked well together, as odd as that mix sounds. The apricots especially brought sourness and sweetness to the party while the Sate spice brought the strong savory quality that the meat called for. Don’t overcook the buns so they get too hard. Since the interior of the bun is already cooked, you just need to cook the buns until the bottom has gained some color along with the rest of the bun.
Irish Grass Fed Angus Beef Steak
A few months ago I got into an argument about steaks with somebody on Facebook. He contended that the USA had the best steaks because of all the government controls on the quality of beef. You know the Choice and Prime categories. My point was that although Europe does not have the same regulatory structure, that lack of structure gives individual farmers the freedom to produce the best meat they can free of having to meet certain milestones that actually impede the quality of the best meats. He said that if you go to a supermarket in europe and buy meat you can get some very poor quality, tough meat that you would not get in the States. I said that if you go to a butcher and buy quality meat in Europe, although you are going to pay a premium, you will get meat that far exceeds the quality of anything that you can get in the States.
In the US the typical steer is slaughtered between 18 and 24 months after it is born. The main reason for this is that, through the use of growth hormones, the animal is large enough to yield sufficient meat to make a profit, considering the cost to raise the animal. When that Animal is butchered, FDA inspectors determine if the meat should be Prime, Choice or a lesser cut. The lesser cuts usually go to processors for prepared foods rather than sold raw. The two consumer grades of prime (restaurant) and choice (supermarkets) is what the typical consumer is familiar with.
In Europe such distinctions don’t exist. There are strict standards that have to be met in the raising and butchering of animals but the specific categories of choice and prime are not used. Instead producers are free to produce whatever quality level they want and charge appropriately. Cattle, for the higher quality cuts, are typically raised for longer periods so that the animal and its meat can mature and develop flavors that are not found in younger animals. The meat from an 18 month old steer in europe is called veal and not beef. Some boutique producers in Europe raise their steers for upto 13-14 years before slaughter. The meat from those animals is typically sold, long before the animal is killed, for very high costs to specific, rich buyers. Besides the rarity and the quality of the meat, the cost of raising cattle for 13-14 years is prohibitive. That is why cattle rarely make it past 24 months in the States.
The other factor in raising beef is what they eat and what they don’t eat. Notice the color of the fat for this Sirloin (NY Cut) strip. It is known as a faux fillet in France. That yellow color indicates high levels of beta carotene in the fat. This is an Irish Angus steak that has been grass fed its entire life. This is not a steak that has undergone a long dry aging period. Its a normal $15 a pound sirloin steak. But what a steak it is.
I pan seared it in butter with a bit of Thyme and finished it with yakitori and tamari. The side is green beans with shallot, mountain tomme cheese and ginger.
Plum Tart Alla Breton
A few of my misguided friends insist that I write a cookbook. I try to explain that the way I cook is not conducive to the writing of a cookbook because I don’t use recipes. I cook like a painter paints. I start with an idea of what I want to do and start mixing and adding as I go along until I have a final product that bears little resemblance to the idea I started with. I’m lucky that I end up with a cake when I had a cake in mind at the start. Here is an example.
The other day the man at one of the fruit stalls at the Auray market made me taste a little green plum. I had no intention of buying plums. No need to buy plums. But it was so good that Zwetschgenkuchen came to mind. Thats a classic German plum cake. So I bought a kilo. Now I am not supposed to bake anymore because of my attempt to lose weight. But I could justify this because Alice and I were invited for drinks at a neighbor’s house, Natalie, so I have an excuse to bake a cake.
Now I have a kilo of plums but I still need some other ingredients including some cake flour. So we go to the new Bio market to get the rest of the supplies. In the flour aisle I see many bags of flour all with strange names in French. One bag grabs my attention. It was white flour made from little thin skins. At least that is the way my phone translated the name. So being a scientist I surmised that it meant summer soft wheat which is what I need for the cake. I bought it. When we got home and entered the name in the computer’s translator I found out that I had bought Einkorn flour. Fortunately I am familiar with Einkorn. It’s an ancient form of wheat, some of which was found in Otzi’s pocket. Otzi is the 5000 year old IceMan found mummified in the Italian Alps.
At this point I have plums and Einkorn flour. Let’s make a cake. But wait, we are in Brittany. Why should I make a German cake. How about incorporating salted caramel. Yea that’s the ticket. So here goes: First add 4 medium eggs to the mixer. That’s the end of the precision part of this recipe. Next add some cane sugar, maybe 3/4 cup, a little more and about a cup of soft butter and a 1/4 teaspoon of salt, maybe a little more. Go with a little less then taste it later before you stop mixing. Set the mixer on high to whip the mixture until almost smooth. Add some vanilla extract. You know how much. Now add the plain, full fat yogurt. I would say 250 ml,
And then start adding the flour a little at a time while mixing. How much flour? Well I looked at the bag and there is about 300 grams left so it must have been 200 grams that I used. I, just now, got up and actually weighed the remaining flour and it is exactly 300 grams. Including the bag. So maybe 220 grams of flour was used. Add some baking powder. I used a whole envelope so it was exactly 11 grams.
What you want is a light batter that looks and feels like soft ice cream just on the verge of melting to a liquid. How is that for precision.
Cut the plums and don’t forget to remove the pits. Line a 30 cm, 12 inch buttered cake pan bottom with parchment paper and then butter that. Arrange the cut plum halves, cut side down, to cover the entire pan. Drizzle some salted caramel sauce over the plums. Not too much. If you only have plain caramel sauce, sprinkle some salt on the plums. Add the batter and smooth it evenly. Knock the cake pan on the table to get rid of air pockets and bake in a 320 F/ 150 C oven until a toothpick comes out dry. Normally I use a probe thermometer but Alice washed mine and it died. RIP.
Let the cake cool a bit. Cut the side of the cake along the edge of the pan to free it. Place the serving plate over the top of the cake and inverse both together and remove the cake pan. Then remove the parchment paper. While still warm gently brush on the top of the cake warmed jam of your choice (the best is best) and drizzle some more caramel over the top. Serve.
The tart has a soft, moist custard like texture and the plums add a tartness. The caramel adds a slightly bitter sweetness with a touch of salt. I thought it was good. Let me know if you try it. If you can’t find einkorn flour you can use soft (cake) flour. Just pay attention if its self leveling.
I Felt Chinese Today
Chinese “style” food is a pleasant change of pace at times. I say style because this is not from any recipe so I don’t even know what to call it. Yes I’ve had noodle dishes similar to this at chinese restaurants but I never asked for a recipe. It would have been an exercise in frustration anyway. So I wing it. I know the flavors I like and more importantly the textures.
This is chinese noodles (actually Ramen that’s from a different country) with squid and crab meat (the real stuff I took out of the shell) with shredded carrots and zucchini and flat beans. Flavored with ginger, tamari and yakitori. Now that I wrote this maybe I should say I felt Japanese today.
Polpette di Pesce (Fish Balls)
I used to make crab cakes when I was living in the states. There it was easy to buy canned crab meat although it was fairly expensive so I didn’t make them all that often. To stretch the dollar I would sometimes add monkfish and shrimp to the crab, if I had to make lots of crab cakes say for a party. I found that people liked them better than the crab only cakes so that became the norm. Here in France if I want to make crab cakes I have to buy live crabs that are always available and fairly cheap. But the live crabs have shells that have to be removed and I don’t want to do that much work for lunch. So we have not had these polpette very often.
So today I made fish cakes without the crab. I used hake, scallops and shrimp. First I bought a soft french bread (they really have such a thing) and ran it through the food processor until it was 1/4 inch sized crumbs, about a cups worth. Then using the same food processor with the shredder disk I shredded two carrots and a small fennel. Added all of that to a bowl along with a minced garlic clove. I deboned and skinned the piece of hake and coarsely chopped it with the shrimp and scallops. Added that to the bowl. To the bowl I added two eggs, 3 ounces of mayo, 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, a good amount of black pepper, 1 teaspoon of Garam Masala and mixed the lot by hand, gentilly, and then made balls that were rolled in dried bread crumbs.
I deep fried the balls in oil set at 330 degrees F until browned and the internal temperature was about 145 to 150 degrees. I served them with a mayonnaise/mustard mix. Also on the plate are Almond and Sesame broccoli.
Lamb Mushroom Galette Complet
When in Brittany do as……. I brought home 1/2 a leg of lamb that had been cooked on a wood fire by a guy that sets up every Sunday not too far from here. The lamb, along with the chickens he makes, are beautiful. He uses an indirect wood fire to slowly cook the meat which comes out fork tender and juicy with a light smokey flavor. I am going to miss him. The 1/2 leg was more than a 1/4 too big for the two of us so we had leftover meat. Since we are leaving Brittany soon, why not go with a Galette. A Galette is a savory crepe made with buckwheat flour and is the mainstay starch in Brittany. It’s prepared the same way as a normal crepe with the exception of the buckwheat flour which is gluten free.
The filling was sliced mushrooms cooked with an onion in butter and flavored with hoisin sauce. In addition to the mushrooms, the sliced lamb and some Tome de Montaigne cheese (a mild semi soft cheese that is almost too delicious to use for cooking, but I did). The complet in the name refers to the addition of an egg which is just barely cooked so the white is set but the yolk is runny. It is intended to be pierced and allow the yolk to run into the lamb/mushroom/cheese filling. The galette is finished under the broiler and served. Traditionally it is served with a hard Cider, but I prefer a nice Vacqueyras white.
Magret de canard aux oignons caramélisés et au fromage sur une baguette
Or in English Philly Cheese Duck Breast
I’m on a well deserved vacation from keto dinning. Not that I’ve lost lots of weight, I’ve been on a plateaux for the past month, its just that we are leaving France in a few weeks and I will not have the amazing baked goods available to me when we move to Tuscany. And no, there is no comparison between what the French can do with dough and the Italians. Especially in Tuscany where the bread is lacking salt. So, I decided to suspend the keto thing until after we move. I’ll still watch what I eat but then I will definitely eat it.
So to take advantage of my newly found gustatory freedom, I made a sandwich for lunch. Instead of cheap round steak I went with a duck breast and instead of Velveeta I used aged comte cheese and instead of the soft “Italian” loaf I went with the best baguette in Brittany and possibly France. Other than that its a Philly Cheese Steak. You start by slowly caramelizing 3 onions with a little water and olive oil and then add the duck breast that has been sliced very thin, as thin as possible. Cook that over low to medium heat to allow the duck fat to render. When the mix is done, most of the fat has rendered but not all, add the cheese and let melt. Drizzle on some hoisin sauce (I have the liquid type). Place the mix on the bread leaving behind the liquid fat. I made flat green beans with ginger salad dressing for health.
Note the picture of the baguette. See how a piece is missing. There is a natural phenomena in France that when you go buy a baguette it inevitably will be missing an end by the time you get it home. You can see this effect on the street when Frenchmen carrying their multiple loaves, at least one of the loaves, if not more, will be missing an end. A subject worth investigating further.
Orata in Carta
Known as a Dorado Grise in France and an Orata in Italy, I had a difficult time finding the English name for it. The “Internet” insisted calling it Mahi Mahi which it most certainly is not. It’s a Sea Bream. Google needs to get its digital shit together. Regardless of the name I needed to make this in a different way than I have been. I was looking for a lighter presentation so I went with Pesce in Carta al Forno. Fish cooked in parchment. I made a bed of sliced fennel, oranges and lemons. I added some sliced green (ripe) tomatoes. I placed the whole fish on the bed and stuffed and covered it with fresh basil and parsley. Seasoned the lot and closed the parchment and baked until the internal temperature was 170 degrees.
With the fish I made a puree of artichokes and carrots with cheese and garlic. I trimmed the artichokes to the hearts and put them in a pot with the carrots and some garlic cloves and set to boil until the chokes were tender. Drained and placed the mixture in a food processor with a healthy amount of butter and a local farmer cheese that taste like a mix of Parmigiano and mild Romano. I also added some saffron a little heavy cream to help the food processor. Seasoned salt and pepper and pureed the lot. It’s a good Idea to pass the puree through a sieve to get rid of the pieces of artichoke leaves that were not tender.
You can use frozen artichokes for this but know that frozen of canned artichokes are preserved with citric acid, which is not bad for you but imparts a sour citric or vinegar taste to the puree. I prefer the puree without the citric acid. But that’s me.
Fried Chicken (High Tech)
Fried chicken is not easy to get right. First the crust is difficult to get to stick to the chicken and get crispy and, second, it is difficult to get the chicken cooked to the right temperature without overcooking the crust. This method overcomes both those issues.
Before frying I cooked the chicken thighs using the sous vide method. I simply seasoned the raw chicken and placed it in vacuum bags. The vacuum bags then went into 150 F water for two hours. What this did was to raise the internal temperature of the meat to 150 F degrees. Now the normal cooking temperature for chicken is 165 but if you hold the meat at a temperature of 145 or 150 degrees for over 10 minutes, all pathogenic bacteria are killed making the chicken safe to eat at that temperature. But I didn’t stop there. Next I placed the chicken pieces in a yogurt bath (Buttermilk is hard to get) for a few minutes. While the meat was bathing in the yogurt, I prepared the flour mix. I used standard flour with Indian spices. I used enough flour to fully submerge all the chicken pieces at once. When I say fully submerge I mean that when you look at the bowl full of chicken all you see is flour. I was also very liberal with the spices because most of them would not get on the chicken. Taking the yogurt covered chicken I buried the pieces in the flour mix making sure that they were all fully covered. I let that stand for two hours. What that does is cement the flour mix to the chicken. That keeps the crust from falling off during frying and it produces a crispier crust.
But the best part is that all you need do when frying is to cook the crust. The inside chicken is already cooked. The frying process does raise the internal temperature much quicker than frying from raw chicken. Using a probe thermometer check that you are not exceeding 160 degrees. Above that and the meat will start to dry.
Cooking this way produces very crisp crust with super moist meat on the inside. And no bloody bones. You don’t have to have a sous vide pump or water bath to do this. You can use a large pot of water on the stove. It requires a bit of monitoring to prevent temperature swings. Just bring the temperature to the desired point and then set to very low heat. Check after about 10 minutes and adjust the heat appropriately.
Maigre with Creamy Polenta and Corn with a side of Sauteed Zucchini and Cherry Tomatoes
“Maigre – Meagre, Croaker, Shade Fish, Drum Fish, Salmon Bass. The meagre is a tasty fish with tender and firm flesh, it is a member of the croaker and drum fish families. Some are caught at sea, and they will be on the menu as Maigre de Ligne or Meagre sauvage, wild meagre, but many are raised on fish farms.”
Not this one. The fishmonger went out of his way to point out that this was a line caught fish. Probably to justify the 22 euro price of the fish. I don’t think I’ve had Croaker before, or Shade fish or whatever they call it, but it was good. Similar to sea bass but not as delicate. A bit meatier. I made it with polenta, but being in France real polenta is not available. Only the “five” minute pre-cooked kind that you can get anywhere. I have nothing against the 5 minute type but its not polenta. It does not have the texture of real polenta. It’s more like Cream of Wheat made with corn. In fact I used to make a breakfast polenta cooking the instant stuff with milk and adding some kind of sweetener. But its not polenta. Polenta takes about a half hour to cook and requires a bit of muscle and some scorched skin.
But that is all I had, the 5 minute stuff. So I added a can of sweet corn, half a block of goat cheese and a couple ounces of creme fraiche (sour cream is ok too). The fish was simply sauteed in hot oil on both sides and placed on the polenta. The zucchini, these are the ones that are yellow with green ends, were sliced and sauteed in olive oil with a couple of shallots. When tender I added the cherry tomato halves with some tarragon and thyme, seasoning, and served them. Very simple.
The wine is a Saint Joseph White from the upper Rhone Valley. I very highly recommend wines from the upper Rhone Valley of France. They are not well known in the States and I guess that is a good thing. Otherwise the prices would be like Burgundies, which I don’t like as much.
Beef Strangeough
For those of you who know me, this recipe may sound strange. It is one of those recipes that was developed during my college days living with a group of other degenerates. The criteria for cuisine in those days was: cheap, fast, and filling. This one fit the bill. No, that is not a typo. It is called Beef Strangenough. It is a variant of the actual original Beef Stroganoff, but created with ingredients that could be bought in the typical grocery store of the 1970’s in upstate NY. It is a simple recipe and that is surprisingly good and I’ve kept making it on occasion.
This morning we were walking in the Auray market and I was straining my brain to come up with something to make. Something that I have not made in the past few months. I must be jaded but walking through that market nothing excited me. It was more about my mood than the quality of the food available. And then it struck me. I understood my culinary malaise. Keto! I have gotten into the mindset of cooking keto only meals. They may tell you that keto is not restricting but they also may tell you that the tooth fairy and Santa Claus are real. As soon as I had that insight, Beef Strangenough came right to mind.
The original recipe used frozen shoestring potato fries. I couldn’t find any in the supermarket. They do have frozen french fries but I also saw sliced herbed potatoes made in Brittany. I got those. The other essential ingredient is sour cream. The closest to sour cream is Creme Fraiche which is better than sour cream. Third ingredient is available everywhere. Heinz Organic ketchup. Those plus a few onions and some meat along with a few herbs and spices and you’re all set. The beef needs to be relatively tender because it’s going to be cooked quickly. I used flank steak sliced into thin strips across the grain of the meat.
First slice a few onions and start them cooking in some oil in a large skillet (large enough to hold all the meat in one layer). When the onions are starting to caramelize but not burn, add the meat, over high heat, and spread it out so that it is all exposed to the pan heat. Let sit to allow searing and then turn over to seer the other side. Keep the heat relatively high so that the meat does not give off water and toughen. When well browned, add two or three tablespoons of ketchup and twice as much sour cream. Add a teaspoon of smoked paprika. Stir in, still on high heat. After a few minutes add some fresh or dried thyme or not if you don’t have it. Find something else that would work. Serve those over the crispy hot potatoes.
You can augment this recipe with mushrooms or peppers. I served it with steamed broccoli dressed with Asian ginger salad dressing.
Lapin with Lemon Ginger Honey Sauce
When you’re standing on line in front of the butcher wagon at the market (it’s actually a high-tech butcher-shop on wheels with four people doing the serving) one of the choices is Lapin. Most Americans are not accustomed to buying and cooking Lapin because of the cute factor. It’s hard to eat bunnies. But these are displayed like chicken legs and they actually do look a little like chicken. The meat tastes like chicken. Well, not really its more like veal shaped like chicken. The point is that it’s really good. It is mild and not gamey in the least. Of course getting rabbit in the states, although possible, I’ve seen it, is not easy. So chicken or veal are a good substitute. But not chicken breast. Definitely not chicken breast. Tender beef chunks or pork chunks would work too.
I deboned the rabbit legs and cut the meat into workable chunks, and well seasoned it with salt and pepper. Then add flour to the meat and mixed by hand until each piece is coated in flour. Fry the meat in 360 F oil until golden. There should be enough oil to deep fry the meat. At least halfway up the sides if not all the way. When done set aside on a paper towel or a metal screen.
In a large skillet add a lump of butter (tablespoon or two) and chopped onion and garlic. A good amount of each. Don’t be bashful. When softened and starting to brown add the vegetable, I used green beans, sliced carrots and button mushrooms. To that add a cup of chicken broth. Chicken broth is one of the major problems in France. You can find bullion cubes, bullion powder but no broth in those quart cardboard boxes. It does not exist. Nobody can tell me why but it does not exist. You can, however, buy it online. The Pacific brand organic broth and stock, the kind I used to use, is available from online organic shops. Its 13 euro for a 500 ml container. Thats $15 for half the amount that sells in supermarkets for about 2 bucks! I’ll make my own, thank you.
While the veggies are cooking, mix in a bowl, a tablespoon of grated ginger, the zest and juice of one lemon, a tablespoon of soy and 1 of sesame-oil, and a tablespoon or two of honey. Add a good tablespoon of cornstarch and mix well. Add a dash of white wine or water to help you mix it better. When the veggies are done to your liking, add the ginger mix and stir in and then add the meat. Coat the meat well with the thickened sauce and heat until warmed and serve with a sprinkle of sesame seeds. If your not on the @#$% Keto diet, rice or fried noodles would be a good addition.
Fried Oysters
Not an everyday meal. Not even an every decade meal. But the time for cheap available oysters is coming to an end. We had oysters on the half shell yesterday and I saw the oyster lady this morning selling her wares. I got the idea to make fried oysters. I wrote a backstory about fried oysters that I posted today in Travelswithringo.com.
I did not have a recipe for making fried oysters. I’ve never done it before but I thought that maybe they are made the same way as fried chicken. Its all about the crunch of the breading. How to achieve that. Well, fried chicken is soaked in buttermilk and then buried in a seasoned flour mix for several hours so that the flour cakes around the chicken and becomes part of the chicken. When fried that becomes the delicious crust around the moist chicken. Why not do that with oysters. So I bought two dozen large oysters and started shucking. I had made a mix of flour and spices in a bowl. As I shucked each oyster I immidiatly buried it in the flour mix. When I had all 26 in the flour mix (the lady gave me two extra) I put that in the refrigerator and let it rest a few hours.
When the oil was hot (360 F) I placed a few oysters at a time in the oil and let fry. About two minutes. I also fried two parboiled artichoke hearts as an accompaniment along with seared string-beans. I made a sauce of chopped parsley, garlic, lemon zest, olive oil and mayonnaise to dip the oysters.
Fusion Meatballs
Fusion: the process or result of joining two or more things together to form a single entity.
That definition does sound rather clinical and cold and unappealing. But it is the essence of what I did here. I made meatballs. Good old Italian style meatballs but with some fusion twists. The meatballs are the standard meatballs that every Italian grandmother or grandfather knows how to make. Ground meat, some soaked bread, some grated cheese, eggs. Most people also add onions and garlic with chopped parsley but those additions would have been unwelcome in my version. My intent was to blend the best of what I remember from the meatballs that I grew up with and give them a new life. When I do things like this I don’t always succeeded. Sometimes disastrously so. This time I think I improved on the original. Not to say that this recipe should replace the original. Absolutely not. That is not the point. This recipe should add to the repertoire. That’s the whole point of innovating in the kitchen. You’re not looking to replace but to add.
The other day I saw some meatballs somewhere. It may have been somebody’s recipe on FB. That got me thinking that I wanted meatballs but I did not want tomato sauce. Growing up in an Italian household I’ve had much tomato sauce in my life. An analysis of my blood would probably show a percentage of it being tomato sauce. Basta. Time for a change. Something new based on the old favorite.
At the market today I found some beautiful chanterelles. At the butcher shop I asked the big guy to grind lamb and pork together. I also Brought home some goat yogurt and some wonderful farmer made cheese. I had some sweet onions and fresh garlic. The bakery had some brioche that was calling my name. I was ready.
First, to the lb. of ground meat, add two eggs and about a cup of cut up bread that has been moistened in water or milk. I used the brioche with a little bit of water. I also added 3/4 cup of grated cheese. The cheese I used you can not get outside of Brittany, but you can simulate it by mixing one part mild provolone with 3 parts gruyere. I also added a teaspoon of Raz-el-Hanout. Didn’t expect that, did you? Some of you may be already googling it. It’s a subcontinent asian spice mix. It is a blend of cumin, cinnamon, ginger and turmeric. A very mild mix that both adds color and aroma to the food. Normally it is used in copious amounts as is the method used by Indian chefs. I just wanted a hint of this spice. I did not want it to be obvious and upfront. I just wanted that mysterious essence in the background.
Gently mix the meat and other ingredients by hand and form into balls about an inch and a half and place them on an oiled baking pan. Bake in a hot oven until the internal temp is above 150 F and the outside has developed some color.
Aside, chop 2 cloves of garlic and lightly brown them in some olive oil. Add the cleaned mushrooms, some salt, and cover. When the mushrooms are softened and released their water uncover the pan and let cook to evaporate most of the liquid. Then set aside. Meanwhile place 3 small, or 2 medium or 1 large sweet onion (chopped) and half a stick of butter in a frypan and cook until the onions start to caramelize. You need that much butter for the sauce that you are making. When the onions are caramelized, add a handful of flour (about a quarter of a cup) and mix well. Keep cooking to remove the raw taste from the flour, about 5 minutes and add a cup and a half of goat yogurt (or milk if you live in one of those backward places). Also add 1/2 cup of the same grated cheese you used before. Mix well over moderate heat until it starts to thicken. Add the mushrooms and 1/2 teaspoon of garam masala. If the mix is too thick add more liquid. Then add the meatballs and warm before serving.
As a side I made a tomato salad using little perfectly ripe black tomatoes surrounding a fresh block of fresh goat cheese. All dressed with olive oil, basil, lemon juice and salt and pepper. And for dessert…..
I have particular tastes in wine that may not be like your taste in wine. That may be because you have not had my experiences and I have not had yours. Given that I am writing this and you’re not, it is my experiences that matter here, at least for me. Now if you disagree with me or have something to add to the discussion, I welcome your comments down below, or, if you want, you may contribute to this blog. Just send me your essay and I will publish it so that my entire following of some twenty people could also read it and get a good laugh or cry or scratch their heads or have something to think about.
I have had many favorite wines in my life. Most started out as relatively unknown wines that with time became known and have priced themselves out of my reach. One example is the Quintarelli Amarone that I have discussed before. If I had kept all those bottles that I bought for under $20 and sold them now I would have no financial worries for the rest of my life. But instead I drank them. And I enjoyed them. So did the many people that drank them with me. What is worth more?
In 1983 I was a young hydrogeologist working for a company that was headquartered in a building in Syosset, Long Island, that used to be the building that Grumman built the lunar landers that were used to land the first humans on the moon in 1969. You may have heard about it. That building, my office, was about a twenty minute or two hour drive (Long Island traffic will forever suck) from where I had a home with Alice, in Merrick on the south shore of the island. On the route home there was a relatively small wine shop that was designed to cater to the upper class clientele of the North Shore of Long Island. This was Post Wines and Liquors. I checked and the store still exists but they have moved to a new location.
One day, during a particularly bad traffic day, I decided to stop in for the first time. I had noticed the shop but was always intent on getting home to Alice and Hookah, my Golden Retriever at the time. But traffic was not moving in any direction so I pulled over and parked. I walked into the store with an open mind. This was not Goldstar. The people here did not know me and my wants. This was a store specializing in French wines, wines that I knew almost nothing about. It wasn’t a big store but it did have lots of wines. The wines were stacked from floor to ceiling and most were totally unknown to me. What struck me first was the prices. These wines were expensive. $15, $20, even $50. Who spends that kind of money? Especially for wines nobody [me] has ever heard of. I told myself keep an open mind. There has to be a reason they demand these prices. The shopkeeper was busy with other customers so I was on my own. It was like being in an arabic library. Lots of interesting looking books but I had no idea what I was looking at. So I did what any intelligent, discriminating wine buyer would do. I picked a bottle at random that was in the price range that I was looking for.
I brought home a Côte Rotie. Alice and I called it coteee roteee and got a kick out of it. The wine was barely a year old and when I poured it into a glass, it was purple! In my many months of wine experience I had never seen a wine of that color. And then the taste was a further revelation. The intensity of berry fruits was not like any other wine I had had. Now I had had many young wines but none was like this one. The other wines were, as a whole, tannic or not tannic. Cheap reds were not tanic but they also had no other redeeming qualities other than perhaps that they were easy drinking. (Think Beaujolais). More expensive red wines that were a year or two old were, for the most part undrinkable. Sure they tasted good for a few minutes but once the tannins kicked in and our mouths started to pucker, the enjoyment of the wine ended.
This Côte Rotie was different. From the first glass to the last it was a revelatory experience that I have not forgotten. Even though when I went back they no longer had it. They only had older versions that had developed from purple to maroon and had turned into complex fine wines that I was too inexperienced to appreciate or afford. Through the years I looked for a similar wine but with little success. The closest I came was with a few California Syras that had that fruity quality but not quite as good.
So now I am in France. The wrong part of France albeit, but France nonetheless. It took me a while to find a Cave (wine shop) that had a selection of Northern Rhone wines. This particular Cave is a nice Cave that has provided me with several excellent examples of Rhone wines. The selection is not that big and last Monday I bought the last few bottles that I had not yet tried. One was Les Quartz le Clos du CAillou. I had no Idea what to expect but I knew I would like it given that its from the Rhone.
Turns out that this wine is not from the northern Rhone but from Chateauneuf du Pape, in the southern Rhone Valley. What distinguishes this region from almost all others is the soil. It’s not really soil in the classic sense of the term. It can be better described as rocks or stones. Not even pebbles. These vineyards have upto 30 meters of these quartz stones instead of dirt. The grapevines growing here have to struggle to get water driving their roots the thirty or so meters below the surface. That causes the plant to have massive root systems that can store much water and nutrients and producing unique grapes that produce a unique wine. That, together with the effect of the Mistral winds that both cool and dessicate the vines during the very hot summers of the Rhone, the storage capabilities of the massive root systems of these vines allows them to survive and thrive in the harsh conditions of the region.
This wine very much reminded me of that first Côte Rotie. Although it is not a pure Syrah wine, being made with both syrah and grenache grapes, it has that quality I remember all those years ago. Black cherry, raspberry, Alice says blueberry and the reviewers agree with her, tobacco and, most of all, soft tannins that are enjoyable and not punishing. This by no means is a little wine. It has 15% alcohol content although you would not know it until the bottle is empty and you find yourself writing endlessly about the wine you just finished.
m
Mussels and frites are ubiquitous along the French Atlantic coast. In the 10 months that we have been in Brittany, we have not had the mussels either by buying them to prepare at home or having them at the sidewalk cafes that do a driving business serving them. Having lived in Sicily for over 4 years, the local mussels here are dwarfs. They are tiny and the prospect of having to deal with all those shells was not exiting. In sicily the mussels are at least twice the size, if not bigger, than the thumbnail sized mollusks that are sold here.
Today was different. The mussels were no bigger but I decided to make a mussel soup which evolved into a fish stew. I bought a kilo of mussels, some salmon and a few scallops. I placed three chopped garlic cloves in a skillet with some EV olive oil, added the mussels and covered it on medium heat. Meanwhile I seared scallops in butter and then seared the salmon in the same pan with the same butter. When the mussels were opened, I added some saffron and 4 ounces of heavy cream and a bit of sherry. I took the skillet off the heat and removed the mussels from the shells, leaving about a quarter of them whole. Then distributed the mussel meat, scallops and salmon in the serving bowls and added the liquid (using a spoon so that if there is any sand it stays behind).
The garlic bread is a french baguette that has been sliced on the diagonal and toasted under the broiler, both sides. Rub both sides with a garlic clove and then with a ripe tomato. Drizzle with EV olive oil.
She called it Puerto Rican Chicken. 
My mother was fed this by her friend, who lived in Puerto Rico. She was not a Puerto Rican, her friend, but she made this the way she thought it should be made. My mother then brought her recollection of the dish home and made it and fed it to the family. It became somewhat of a staple in the house. That was a very long time ago. I’ve since made it many times. But here’s the rub. I’m not sure if my mother’s friend had the actual recipe or her interpretation of the recipe. I am fairly certain that my mother’s version was an interpretation of the possible interpretation. My version, I am certain, is not anything like the original because it is not anything like my mothers version. But it is based on the same idea. Vague as that may be.
I set out to make rabbit in the Ischia style. We visited the Auray market this morning and one of the vendors, a butcher, always has rabbit. He didn’t. So I needed to punt. But I still had that same mindset. So when we went to the organic cheese lady that sells the cheese that Alice must have, she had some chickens. Now please understand that there are chickens and there are chickens. Supermarket chickens that are raised in cubic foot boxes until they reach their goal weight in a few months and never live the lives of a chicken, american supermarket chickens, are not the same as the birds that from the time they are hatched by their mother hens and are allowed to walk around the barnyard with their family group, eating whatever they want, and being allowed to be chickens and not factory widgets, those chickens taste different. Here in Brittany they have the black chickens that taste like chicken. They have smaller breast, the meat is a tiny bit tougher but they have so much taste as compared to the typical supermarket birds. That’s what I bought this morning. But instead of the Ischia style, I went with a variation of my mothers interpretation of Puerto Rican Chicken.
First take an entire large head of garlic and peel it. There are tricks to doing this quicker that you can look up. I used two large stainless bowls, one smaller than the other, to shake the hell of the cloves. Chop them carsley and place them in a large skillet with a generous amount of olive oil and let lightly brown. Add the salted chicken pieces and brown them on all sides. Add a cup of vinegar, I use a mix of wine and supermarket balsamic, and a handful of basil leaves and several sprigs of thyme. Add three large, ripe tomatoes, chopped. Cover and let simmer for about 10 minutes. Remove the cover and turn the chicken. Let simmer on medium heat, turning the chicken several times. Test the chicken for doneness and if done, remove the chicken from the liquid and set aside. Reduce the liquid in the pan until the vinegary taste (acidic taste) is reduced and the liquid is reduced by at least 3/4. Strain the liquid and return to the pan. Add a couple ounces of butter and return the chicken to the sauce. Simmer until warmed through and serve.
I made an avocado and tomato salad dressed with walnut oil and lemon juice, as a side.
I will make the Ischia rabbit in the near future.
Sunday, more so than other countries I’ve lived in, is important to the French. Stores, except for in tourist hotspots, are closed on Sundays. Most but not all supermarkets have succumbed to pressure and are open on Sunday mornings, only. The equivalent of Home Depot, Leroy Merlin, is closed all day Sunday. Where do French men go on Sundays if not to ogle over the latest cordless devices? So taking a cue from the French, we don’t normally cook on Sunday. We order cooked food and bring it home. But not just any fare. Food worthy of a Sunday meal.
On the road between Saint Pierre and the Town of Quiberon, the larger of the two towns on the peninsula, a married couple set up their chicken and lamb “barbecue” stand every Sunday. They use an indirect cooking method similar to the Argentine grilling style in which the meat is placed on the side of the flame so that just the radiant energy cooks the meat and it is not touched by the flames. But it is exposed to the wood smoke. This slow roasting method cooks the meat without drying it out, producing a succulent lamb that is unlike other cooking methods. If you like lamb, it is addictive.
Nothing goes on the lamb during the cooking process. Just gentil heat and smoke. The same way they cook their blackfooted Bretton chickens that are another story on their own. All the meat is finished with coarse sea salt. Nothing more. It does not need anything else. This Sunday tradition, which has been with my immediate family, Alice, Ringo and me, since way back in December, will soon be coming to an end. We will have to establish new traditions in Tuscany.
To go with the lamb I made a salad of sea asparagus, bean sprouts, belgian endive grown in Brittany, red leaf lettuce and cheese ends dressed with a walnut sesame dressing. The sea asparagus is a seaweed that grows off the Bretton coast. Its crunchy, salty, delicious.
To go with the lamb I opened a Crozes Hermitage red from an organic producer, Cave de Tain. This wine is made from 100% Syrah grapes and is young being bottled in 2016. Normally that is a bad thing. “Red wines need more aging”. But for me this wine is now perfect. The reason being that wines from the upper Rhone, Syrah wines, have soft tannins. Yes they are very tannic but the tannins are not as dominant as they are in Bordeaux wine, for example. The Syrah tannins are actually pleasant and not so astringent. The wine itself is purple, not red. That is the on-oxidized color of the wine and what makes this so special. The fruit, blackberries, black cherries and black pepper, is primary on the palette since it has not had time to be softened by the aging process. These wines, when they age are also good, taking on complexities that are not present in the younger wine, but the younger version is worth drinking too. …and it cost 12 euro a bottle.
Flounder with Lemon Basil Ginger Sauce
The market days in Brittany are coming to an end. No more Saturdays in Quiberon or Mondays in Auray. The Wednesdays in Vannes are already finished. It’s not that the markets are going to be finished it is that we are going to be leaving in four weeks. Yes there are markets in Tuscany and I am sure that they are good too but they are not the same. Fish for one is not going to be the same. The fish selection and quality here in Brittany is like no other place I’ve ever seen. Today, for example, I bought an almost two kilo flounder that could feed four people very well. And it did. 
While at the market I saw some pretty basil which had not been around all that much lately. It seems the basil season is with us so I bought some. The idea of combining the flounder with the basil was a natural progression from the lemon garlic sauce I intended to make with the fish. I had the fish filleted by the munger leaving the skin on. I dredged them in flour and pan fried them in butter with a little salt and pepper. Started skin side down and then flipped. Remove from the pan and set aside.
Meanwhile, put two cloves of garlic in a blender or a container to use a stick blender, along with about an ounce of olive oil, juice of two lemons, a cup of basil leaves, a walnut sized piece of ginger [sliced], and a tablespoon or two of Yakitori sauce. Blend until smooth and pass through a sieve to get rid of the fibers. Put the sauce in the warm skillet used to fry the fish and add about two ounces of butter. Mix until blended and place the fish, skin side up in the pan and warm the fish for serving. Plate the fish and spoon some of the sauce over the top.
Along with the flounder we had carciofi a l’ebreia (jewish style artichokes) and zucchini with shallots and melted cheese. The artichokes are trimmed to their hearts and placed in boiling water until almost tender. Then remove the choke and deep fry the hearts until golden and crispy. Add salt and pepper.
The zucchini are sauteed with a shallot until tender and parts are starting to caramelize. Add about a 1/2 cup of grated soft or medium soft cheese and stir to blend.
The Basil Ginger sauce is useful for other foods as well. Chicken breasts, veal, shrimp, for example.
Below find a video on how to trim artichokes.
Living away from the USA one of the things that one must learn to do without is decent barbecue. There is no shortage of great grilled food in europe but true barbecue is an American thing and it’s hard to find offshore. To make things more difficult, we do not have access to a “yard” with a grill no less a smoker. So what to do? Well, when in France do as the French do. How about short ribs sous vide with fig barbecue sauce? Along with the ribs a “true” caprese salad.
I had a sous vide pump when I was in Sicily but it stopped working and I have not replaced it. It has not needed to be replaced here in France because the apartment we have has an induction stove top and when it is set to 2, it maintains the heat of the pot of water fairly well. Sous vide cooking is cooking in a water bath using a vacuum bag for the food so that it does not come in contact with the water. It is useful for many things including cooking steaks and poaching fish.
I bought a rack of pork short ribs and seasoned it with salt, white pepper and smoked paprika. The smoked paprika was there to mostly impart the smoke taste to the meat. I also placed a few garlic cloves in the bag and a good amount of my favorite herb mix, Herb de Provence. After placing the meat in the vacuum bag, I submerged it into 60 C water ( 140 F) and allowed it to stay in the water, at that temperature, for 18 hours. This process simulates the long, slow smoking that is used for ribs. Although the smoke flavor is not nearly the same, the texture of the meat, tender and juicy, is remarkably similar.
The sauce is made with fresh figs, apple preserves, hoisin sauce, balsamic vinegar, coarse mustard, ketchup, salt and pepper and the juice that the meat released in the bag during cooking. The ingredients are processed with a hand blender and simmered until thickened. Brush heavily on the ribs and place under a broiler until you get caramelization, on all side.
To go with the ribs I served a true Caprese salad. It’s is a salade of dark tomatoes with cubes of goat cheese [formaggio di Capra] dressed with EV olive oil, salt, pepper and fresh basil. The other caprese is named after the island of Capri, which incidentally has that name because it was overrun by goats.
I like my lamb chops rare to medium rare in the middle and caramelized on the outside. The typical way that they are prepared in the USA, typically grilled on a hot fire or sauted in a hot pan with garlic/rosemary butter. So when my friend brought me to an Agriturismo* deep in the hills of Abruzzi back in 2011 and, along with many other amazing dishes, we were served a giant platter of thin, almost burnt lamb chops, I was initially put off. They were one rib thick, about a half inch, and so well done on the outside that there was no way that they could be anything but too cooked on the inside. I reluctantly tried one. Two. Three. I couldn’t stop eating them. They were not “lamb chops”. They were something different. It takes no more than two bites to finish one and as your putting the bone down with your left hand you’re picking up another chop with your right. They’re cooked on a hot fire after marinating in olive oil, garlic and rosemary.
I’ve come to understand that that is how lamb chops for grilling are served in Europe, not just Italy. They are prepared over a hot charcoal fire in large quantities and are eaten like popcorn.
I live in a house that has no outside. Yes it has outside walls but the property line is coincident with the building’s walls. So there is no outside space to set up a grill. We needed dog food today so we went to the Super U to stock up. Ringo is very particular about what he eats. While there I saw that they had lamb chops from Limousine, a part of France famous for its meats, especially lamb, so I bought ten of them. Since I don’t have the capability to charcoal grill these, I had to come up with a different method. I also bought some pork ribs for tomorrow.
Given what I had to work with and the way my dysfunctional mind operates, I decided to make Yakitori lamb chops. In a large skillet I heated some oil to 330 degrees (get an infrared thermometer) and placed the lamb chops in a way that they are all touching the pan, not piled up. They should be cooked that way over medium/high until they are browned on one side before flipping. Don’t forget salt and pepper. Then I cooked the other side until that side was browned. At this point the meat is well done all the way through. Remove the lamb chops one at a time depending on its doneness. When they are all out of the pan, drain the oil and place the pan back on the heat. Add a lump of butter (don’t forget I am in Brittany) and a few tablespoons each of Soy Sauce, Yakitori Sauce and Hoisin Sauce. Return all the chops and move them around so they are covered in the sauce. This done over moderate heat. Add sesame seeds and serve.
The green beans (they grow amazing green beans around here) are simply washed after being trimmed (you just need to remove the stem end of the bean pods. The tail end becomes tender when cooked and do not need to be removed. I just saved you a few minutes of your life) and placed in a pan with a chopped shallot. Add some butter (see above) and cook covered until tender. When done add ground almonds, stir and serve.
Meanwhile I am preparing the pork ribs for tomorrow.
*Agriturismo is a way that farmers in Italy, wine makers, olive oil producers and other agricultural operations can make a supplemental income. They serve food in their own dining rooms that spotlight their own agricultural production as well as that of other local farmers. Some offer rooms similar to a B&B. If you want to experience the real Italy, look to stay at one of these.
Dorado Royale Provencal
I was going to make a Livornese before going to the fish truck. A truck comes to town every tuesday with a selection of fresh fish. Livornese needs a firm flesh fish that can stand up to the “stewing” process that is part of the recipe. The guy did have such fish but I saw a Turbot which caused me to reconsider. However, when I asked him to weight the turbot (I suspected that it was a bit bigger than I need) he said it was almost three kilos! At 25 euro a kilo, ah…no. We are only two people and are not big on leftovers. And Ringo is not that crazy about fish. The fish guy then showed us the Dorado Royale that he had. I knew Dorado Gries but not the Royal. He said that the flesh is similar to Sea Bass.
Dorado Royale, like the Gries, is primarily a mediterranean fish that is becoming difficult to get because of overfishing. Until recently it was not even an option in the USA. But now it is. An Israeli company is farm raising Dorado Royale and importing it into the NYC markets. It is actually cheaper there than what I paid since what I bought was the wild version.
So I brought home the dorado Royale. This too is a delicate flesh fish so I had to come up with a different recipe but I still had the Livornese in mind. The compromise was to simply saute the fish and place them on a bed of vegetables in the Provencal style. A simple stew of onions, garlic, tomatoes, eggplant with black olives and capers.
For the vegetables, slice an onion and crush two cloves of garlic and put them in a pan with a generous amount of olive oil and let soften on low to medium heat. Add a sliced sweet pepper, four medium chopped tomatoes and a medium eggplant that has been peeled and cubed. Add a teaspoon of Herb de Provence, the olives and capers and let stew until the eggplant is done. Off the heat season with salt and pepper and add a handful of chopped fresh basil. Add a small amount of balsamic vinegar to taste.
The fish was filleted and the bones removed with a needle nose pliers. This is a bony fish but the bones are easy to find and remove. Afterwhich the fillets were lightly dredged in flour and sauteed in a mix of olive oil (best you have) and butter (1 to 1). When the fish flesh become opaque on the edges, flip it and cook the other side. After a few minutes squeeze a lemon into the pan and add some more butter. Let the butter melt, flip the fish one more time and then place on the vegetables. Pour the butter lemon mix over the fish.
Along with the fish we had a mixed salad with red leaf lettuce, fennel, orange, cherry tomatoes and shaved zucchini with a simple vinaigrette dressing.
When in Rome…………….
The Gallette is the typical Bretton staple based on buckwheat flour and is similar to a crepe, but don’t confuse the two. Unlike crepes that are reserved for dessert dishes and are made with white flour, Gallettes are a savory “flat bread” used as a base to hold things like ham and eggs, or scallops or a variety of fillings.
Buckwheat was introduced to Brittany in the 15th century by returning crusaders who brought it back from the middle east. Buckwheat was well adapted to the bretton soils and became popular with the poor because it was exempt from the taxation and mill fees that were applied to wheat. 
Till today I have always purchased gallettes from the lady in the truck at the market. They cost 3 euro for four large gallettes. I decided to make my own today because we did not go to the market and we are leaving France in August so I should learn how to make them. Typically they are made on a flat heated disk about 14 inches in diameter. They could also be made in a specialty skillet with very low sides to make it easier to get under the gallette to turn it over. There is one of those skillets, galette pan, in the apartment, but I decided not to use it. I want to be able to make these with what I am expected to have available when I leave France. So I used a frying pan. Since the pan I used is smaller than a galette pan, I made two galettes per person rather than one big one.
The batter is buckwheat flour, eggs and milk, salt and pepper. I didn’t have milk so I used goat yogurt and a little water. Mother of invention and all that. The batter should have the consistency of heavy cream. To the batter I added some baking powder because when I made the first galette it was uniform. The ones made by the people who are in the know are always pockmarked by little holes. By adding the baking powder I achieved the same result. Another thing I discovered is that unlike making crepes, you need to use a good amount of butter in the pan. It gives the galette a crispier texture and releases them from the pan quicker. I made four good galettes (there are only two of us eating) and went to the next phase.
I used fresh peas and zucchini as the vegetable portion. I pre-cooked them with a shallot until done. Then I put two gallets in the buttered pan with the edges overlapping. Normally the galettes are much larger and a single one suffices. Over medium heat I placed a couple of slices of Bretton Jambon Blanc. Thick sliced boiled ham similar to Taylor ham. On top of that I placed the vegetable mix and covered that with slices of a Normandy cheese very similar to camembert. Folded over the galette and kept it on the heat until the cheese was melted. Serve with a salad.
When we went house hunting in Nice and then again in Italy in May and June, we asked our neighbor to take care of Ringo for us while we were away. She took him in at the dismay of her cat and made him welcome. So much so that when we returned he hesitated to come back home. Ringo does this thing that engraciates him to certain people. When he sees them it is as if he has been waiting his entire life to see them. He acts the way he does when we have been away from him for more than ten minutes. When he sees them on the street, from a distance, he runs to them and makes a big fuss over them. Natalie is one of these people (and so is Natalina, my aunt).
My neighbors are leaving for a year in Dubai in September and we are leaving Saint Pierre in August, so we invited them over for lunch. They wanted Italian food. So I made Italian food. In France with French ingredients (except for the spaghetti. No way I’m going to use french pasta). Since yesterday was Wednesday, the day that the Vannes market is open, even though we had decided to stop going to that market for budgetary reasons, they do have the best fish market in the area. So we went. The three of us.
I knew I was going to make fish but did not know exactly what. Walking the fish market I had the idea of Spaghetti with Sepia and its ink. But I did not see any Cuttlefish so that idea evaporated. But I did see some live squid and giant shrimp and some beautiful vongole, so I decided to make a pescatore with those ingredients. I considered adding Homards (local lobster) but my cooking facilities are not good enough to handle that amount of food. We live in a furnished apartment, which I have supplemented with my own knives and pots, but I don’t have pots large enough to handle all this seafood. On a three burner stove with the burners so close together that more than one large pot does not fit. After purchasing what I needed I noticed one of the stalls had good sized live sepia. Oh well.
To make this meal, it’s important to consider the cooking times for the ingredients. The vongole take as long as needed to open the shells from the heat. and more than that and they become little rubber balls. The shrimp need even less time to cook while the calamari have two sweet spots with respect to cooking. They should be just barely warmed or they should be stewed for a while. Anything else produced the dreaded rubber band calamaro. So to start, peel and chop lots of garlic. A full head is about right. Add that to a large skillet with a generous amount of your best olive oil. Let the garlic turn golden but not burnt. If it burns, start over again. It will spoil the whole dish. To that add the washed vongole. By washed I mean soak them in cold water several times, agitating them vigorously to dislodge the sand and silt. Again if this is not done the sand will get into the food and spoil it. Cover the vongole and monitor. When they are mostly open, you may find one or two that are stubborn, remove them from the pan with a screen spoon, like the chinese kind, and put them in a bowl. Set aside to let cool. ((If you want to make just Spaghetti con Vongole, add some sliced tomatoes and undercooked spaghetti and cook until most of the liquid is adsorbed and add back the little clams.)) In the now liquid filled skillet, the liquid is the basis of the sauce, add the cleaned and cut up calamari and the pureed tomato. (please not the cheap stuff). Cover and simmer until the calamari are tender. To that add the cleaned shrimp. During this time you should make the spaghetti so its timed to be ready, al dente, when the shrimp are done. Add the spaghetti to the sauce, with about a cup of the cooking water and stir it in and cooked for a few minutes for the sauce to be absorbed by the spaghetti. Top with parsley chopped fine with a clove of garlic and the zest of a lemon. I removed the meat from the shells of the vongole because our dishes are too small to fit everything. I added the naked vongole back to the sauce.
I also made artichoke hearts and broccoli stewed with tomatoes as a side. I was too busy to take a picture of the vegetables before they were eaten. For this occasion I opened the bottle of red wine that my friend in Palermo gave me. He runs one of the better salumerie in that city. I have been waiting to open this bottle for such an occasion. The wine, one critic wrote, is in the top one percent of all wines. Another critic wrote that a sip of this wine will make you forget all the bad things you think of when you think of Sicilian wines. Another wrote that it is by far the best Nero D’avola, period. The cork came out of the bottle in tiny pieces. The wine had the color of black coffee and smelled like the finest, most delicate wine vinegar. Bummer. I opened a Crozes Hermitage white that was really excellent, instead. 
And now for dessert. Again I forgot to take a picture I was so focused on eating a sweet dessert after months on the Keto diet. At the market there is a guy who sells Kouign Amann, the Bretton pastry. It is basically made the way you make a croissant, folding the dough with Bretton butter so that you get hundreds of layers of both. But unlike a croissant, sugar is added to the butter so when it cooks the sugar and the salted butter form a caramel between the layers of pastry. This particular Kouign Amann was baked with apple slices on top. To the warmed pastry I added a scoop of artisanal salted caramel ice cream. It’s really as good as you can image. With this we served a wine that until the night before I had never heard of. We went to the wine shop a few days earlier and asked for northern Rhone whites and this was one of the ones I was sold. When we opened it the night before we quickly discovered it was a dessert wine and stoppered it. Really what a surprise this wine turned out to be. Not super sweet like sauterne but sweet enough to be considered sweet. It has sufficient acid to balance the sweetness and it is loaded with fruits. I didn’t have the time to fully critique the wine because I had company, but I’m getting another soon. 
It has been said many times that fish from the mediterranean taste better than fish from the ocean. The reason given is that the saltier water causes the production of compounds in the meat similar to msg, umami, which increase the nerve response in the tongue and the perception of taste. This all may be true to some extent but I lived in Sicily for four years and had fish many times, many many times, and now I am in Brittany. I don’t see a radical difference. In fact I see no difference in taste. However I do see another difference. The mediterranean is being overfished and fish are more expensive and, for the most part, smaller than those found in the Atlantic near Brittany. Additionally, the variety of fish found here in Brittany far outshines the selection you get in the Med.
Bar is one of those fish that is found in both markets. Known as sea bass in the states and as bronzino in the Med, Bar is one of the premier fish here in Brittany, caught in the ocean just off of Quiberon, the peninsula where we are currently living. The Bar is generally larger with fish large enough to feed two or three or four people while those in the med tend to be smaller requiring two fish per person. Of course there are larger fish in the med but you are going to pay dearly for them.
On Tuesday there are no significant local markets. Yes some smaller towns have a few vendors but those markets are not worth going to more than once. So on Tuesdays we stay local. Fortunately one of the vendors from the Vannes market (Wednesday) has a truck and comes to Saint Pierre, where we live, and sets up in town. He brings a limited selection of fish but it is impeccably fresh fish. Today I had a bit of difficulty because he had the Bar I eventually chose but he also had Turbot (baby halibut), Dover Sole, Flounder, Monkfish, Cod, Langoustines, Scallops, John Dory, and many more. I remember going to the best fish market in Newburgh, in the Hudson Valley and having a selection of, on a very good day, 4 different fish types and a few different shellfish.
I bought a medium sized whole Bass and brought it home. I normally allow the vendor to fillet the fish for me but they don’t remove the pin bones so I have to work on the fillets anyway. So I decided to fillet it myself. It’s not hard to do and if you are careful you recover much more flesh. When “they” fillet the fish for you the primary concern is speed. That sacrifices some of the fish flesh that will go to waste. A sharp boning knife and with a little care and you will get the full fillet. Then with a needle nose pliers you can remove the little pin bones that wreak havoc with American diners (Alice).
Sea bass is a white flesh fish with a very delicate texture and taste. So whatever you make with it you have to be careful not to overpower the fish. Unlike catfish or tilapia that are also white fish, Bass does not have the muddy taste of those other fish which almost require heavy application of spices and heavy sauces to mask the mud. But some people like that taste.
I am on a Keto diet because I gained a few pounds when I was in Italy and then I came to France where the art of baking is so far above everywhere else’s that I went crazy samping everything that I could. Have you ever had a freshly made Kouign Amann? So being on the dreaded Keto diet, I made breaded Bass fillets with a lemon caper sauce. I know, breaded. I used almond flour for the breading. The sauce is not really a sauce either. It gets soaked up in the breading to flavor it.
To make it, take fish fillets (any delicate white fleshed fish will work. Like flounder or Red Snapper, for example) and dredge it in flour to create a surface that the egg mix will adhere to. Not lots of flour, just a light dusting. For two fillets mix one egg with a tablespoon of mayo. cover the fillet with the egg mix and then dip it into the almond (other nuts are good too) flour.
Fry the fish in hot oil, both sides and then set it aside. Remove the oil from the pan and add a lump of butter, a small handful of rinsed capers and two finely chopped garlic cloves. When the garlic starts to tan, add the juice of two lemons and another lump of butter. Carefully add the fillets and then flip them, again carefully, and then plate them. Pour and remaining sauce over the fillets with the capers. I don’t mention salt and pepper preferring to leave that up to you.
As a side I steamed some flat beans, romagnolo broccoli and zucchino (just one) and dressed them with walnut oil and red wine vinegar and a finely chopped shallot.
It’s Monday and that means it’s the Auray market. The weather is cool, comfortable and pleasant. Not hot like the rest of Europe. A perfect day to walk the market. We even found a good parking space right away. On Wednesdays we used to go the the Vannes market, an even better market, but we have been holding off because it is a 45 minute drive and I am a spending idiot and always buy too much. But this Wednesday we invited our neighbors over for a late lunch so we will be going to Vannes anyway. That means I have to be extra careful not to buy too much at today’s Auray market. Do you have any idea how difficult that is to do? Well I was good. I bought two lamb shanks, some carrots, flat beans, a romanesque broccoli, salad greens, some black cherries and the most spectacular raspberries I’ve ever seen. They’re each over an inch long and perfectly ripe with no mold. I’m looking forward to having those tonight. And some of the black cherries too.
I felt somewhat asian today so I made a somewhat asian meal. I bought two lamb shanks and trimmed them so that I had clean meat without grizzle or bones or tendons. The meat was cut into 1/2 to 3/4 inch by 2 to 3 inch long strips and marinated them in toasted sesame seed oil. I then browned the pieces of meat in coconut oil and set them aside after seasoning them. In the same pan I added two chopped onions with two large chopped garlic cloves. Let them soften and add a handful of flat green beans, carrot pieces, and the broccoli flowerettes, try to keep the sizes all about the same. Add a splash of wine or water and cover to soften. 
When soft, add the meat and a handful of cashew nuts. Also add a tablespoon of soy sauce, 2 tablespoons each of yakitori and hoisin sauce. Stir those in and cover until the meat is warmed through. Mix a tablespoon of starch with about two ounces of water or wine and add to the pan, quickly stirring. As soon as the liquid thickens, plate the food and sprinkle toasted sesame seeds on top. If you are among the lucky members of society that are not on the Keto diet, you can serve white rice with this.
Alice and I, when we were in the states, used to eat dried cherries like most people eat raisins. They have, in my opinion, a better, more interesting taste with less sugar. We would eat them out of hand or use them in recipes but we would never be without them. And they were easy to get. When we moved to Sicily the cherries became harder to find, but we found them so all was right with the world. The ones we were getting in Sicily came from France so when we moved to France we were surprised and disappointed to find out that they were not common. Non-existent is a better term.
So I did what every red blooded American would have done. I ordered them on Amazon. But I got the wrong ones. Don’t forget that my knowledge of French does not go beyond the three years of highschool French that I took a couple of centuries ago. When I received the two kilos from Amazon, they were sour cherries. So sour that they were inedible.
In order to not waste the purchase, I made a Cherry liquor by infusing the cherries in a high proof alcohol for a few months and then adding sugar to make it more palatable. Like making Limoncello, but with sour cherries. It worked, I made cherry liquor but even with the sugar it was too sour for me. So now I had 2 litters of liquor and a one kilo bag of cherries that were just sitting there.
Yesterday at the market, one of the stalls had cepes (porcini) at a good price. The organic cheese lady where we buy most of our cheese had some beautiful organically raised duck breast. I had the taste of large black cherries in my mouth from having just tried a few and I got the idea of using the sour cherries for the duck. So that’s what I did. I also included some zucchini covered with some of the cheese I bought from the same lady.
The Cepes are simply cleaned and trimmed and then cut into quarters. They are added to a pan with two cloves of chopped garlic and a lump of butter or olive oil. Add about an ounce of water and some salt and cover over medium heat. When the shroons have given up their water and have softened, uncover the pan and keep cooking until all the water has evaporated. Continue cooking, turning the shroons, until they are browned, without burning them. Lightly drizzle the best balsamico you have over the mushrooms. I used 12 year old. Almost any mushroom will work with this method. Even the button mushrooms.
The zucchini are cut into slices or wedges or sticks, you preference, and added to a skillet with a finely sliced shallot and some butter and covered until the zucchini are done. At that point add grated cheese that you like. I used a soft farmer cheese that is not available outside of Brittany.
The Duck is first scored on the skin side into 1/2 inch diamonds and then placed in a dry skillet on medium heat. Season the meat with salt and pepper. Keep cooking skin side down until the skin has browned and most of the fat has rendered. Flip the breasts and cook the other sides until the center of the meat reaches about 125/130 degrees. Set aside. Drain most of the duck fat (very useful stuff for other things) and return the pan to the stove. Add a finely chopped shallot and let soften. Add a generous handful of dried cherries and, if you don’t have the cherry liquor, 1 cup of good red wine. Also add a couple of tablespoons of cherry preserves and a tablespoon of good mustered (no yellow stuff please). Simmer until most of the liquid is gone and add a couple of lumps of butter and stir in. Taste the sauce for seasoning. Serve.
The sour cherries were actually a very good compliment with the duck. So I am not going to have to throw this stuff out after all.
Saturday we go to the Quiberon market which is about a ten minute drive from the house. It’s a large market with lots to choose from and, inevitably, I always spend too much money and buy too much food. But it all looks so good. For example I had resolved to stop buying cherries because I can eat all I buy in one sitting and I’m sure they don’t help with my weight loss. But today, instead of just the red and rainier cherries, they had large black cherries for the first time. How do I pass those up? I didn’t. They also, for the first time, had cepes. Cepes are porcini mushrooms. I bought three large ones, more than enough for two people, for 11 Euros. How can I pass that up? Again, I didn’t.
I did buy some Bluefin tuna steaks, four giant shrimp and green beans for today’s meal. The tuna is almond crusted and so are the shrimp. That is accomplished by first dredging the fish in flour, lightly, just to dry them and allow the binder to adhere. Just a light dusting of flour. The binder is French mayonnaise with coarse mustard. I use Maille Gourmande which has the mustard already mixed in. It is, in my mind, far superior to Hellmans. Using a brush, brush the mayo on one side and place the steak onto a dish of almond flour. Brush the other side and flip into the almond flour so both sides are covered. Do the same with the shrimp.
Melt 2 ounces of butter in a skillet on medium heat and place the fish. Cook until a light crust forms and flip. Remove the tuna and shrimp (if you use them) and put onto the serving plates. Meanwhile add the juice of a lemon or two to the pan and mix with the butter and some residual almond and pour that over the fish. The tuna should still be rare. This is important. Cooking the tuna, especially Bluefin, all the way through ashures you a place in one of the rings of Dante’s Inferno.
Simple recipe. Salt, pepper are up to you.
Green beans are simply boiled and dressed with salad dressing.
Another of those accidental gems. I like red wine but most red wine does not like me. I am allergic to tannins, not bad but drinking red wine, more than one glass, will give me a headache. So I try to avoid the reds. That leaves white wine but I don’t like most whites. They tend to be thin and acidic. I like the bigger whites like California Chardonnay or French White Burgundies (not the cheap stuff). My favorites are the wines of the upper Rhone Valley like Hermitage, or Saint Joseph. But they tend to cost enough for them to not be everyday wines. I mean upwards of 25 to 50 Euro a bottle. Special occasion wines.
The supermarkets in this area sell wine but most of it is red. They have whites but most are fish wines, thin and acidic, and not my taste. Most people here drink beer or cider instead of white wine. So to get decent whites one must go to a Cave, wine shop, to get any selection. And even there, there are few to choose from. White French wines are easier to find in the USA than they are in Brittany. This particular Cave is the only one in Quiberon and they know it. They are expensive. So walking in, expecting to have to settle, I asked for a barrel aged Rhone white for about 15 Euro. The guy reached for a wine I had never heard of. A Saint-Peray. What the hell, I’ll give it a try.
Turns out that this is a small wine district that produces predominantly sparkling wine and is unknown, to the general public, for producing good still wines. I’d rank this wine with the better regions including Hermitage or Chateauneuf.
It’s a golden yellow, viscous white wine with honey, mellon and butter cooked banana. One reviewer said:
…full yellow robe. The nose has a rolling, rounded aroma with some typical Saint-Péray salt present, a note of ripeness via its melon and banana flambé air. The palate offers a comfortable, upholstered gras richness with a little clinch of grip on the close. There is an apricot, compote of white fruits flavour backed by a deft note of aniseed. It drinks openly now, ends quietly. 13°5. 15,000 b. €8.35 export. 50% Mars, 50% Rouss. 2020-21 Oct 2016.”
For 17 euro this is really good. Unfortunately this wine may be a bit tough to find outside of France.
2013 
()
It’s been years since I made polenta, so yesterday, at the market I got the idea to make it again. I am on the Keto diet and really should not be eating carbs, so I made it anyway and would only eat a small amount. Which I did.
Being in Brittany, polenta is not one of the major supermarket items. In fact they only had the 5 minute stuff which does not compare well with the real, slow cooking polenta. Now I could have taken a trip to the big organic market in Auray but it was not worth the hour round trip that that would have required. So I bought the instant shit. The polenta is first made according to the package instructions, boiling water, stir in polenta and stir constantly until cooked. Five minutes as they say. At that point I added about 6 ounces of Roblechion cheese, similar to Italian Robiola (due latte) or taleggio. I also added a large dollop of creme fraiche (about the size of a racket ball) and stirred it in. Salt and white pepper.
The sausage starts out by chopping several medium sized yellow onions and putting them in a skillet with 2 ounces of water and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Add a good 1/2 teaspoon of salt and cook over medium heat until the onions soften. Add to that slice mushrooms, and a handful of cut up prosciutto*. Cover and cook over medium heat, stirring and turning the onions often to prevent burning. Keep cooking until the onions start to color, about 20 to 30 minutes. Add raw sausage slices and stir in. Continue cooking for about another 10 minutes until the sausage is done.
The flat beans are simply washed and placed in a skillet, wet, with a chopped shallot and butter or oil or coconut oil (what I used) and cook covered, stirring occasionally, until done. Some of the beans should have a light sear. Again, salt and pepper.
*The sausage I used is a Bretton sausage that is similar to Italian sausage except it has a slightly smoky quality that adds to the dish. To replicate that, if you don’t have access to Brittany, use smoked bacon instead of prosciutto.
Speaking of prosciutto, I used Jambon de Bayonne which is remarkably similar to Italian prosciutto.
The meal components should be prepared so that they are all ready at the same time. You don’t want cold hard polenta. Any extra polenta should be spread out about a 1/2 inch thick on silicone paper (parchment) to cool. That could be cut into pieces and fried for future meals.
My first food post in a while is a variant of frico. It is quite simple and really does not need a detailed recipe. And it’s keto friendly. You need a couple of shallots, butter, a gruyere like cheese, leftover veggies (I used green beans and pea pods) eggs, ham, and your imagination.
Turbot en Beurre Blanc Citron Accompagné de courgettes avec fromage. Sounds pretty good in French, no? Turbot fillets with a white butter lemon sauce and sauteed zucchini with melted cheese. I think that sounds good too.
Incase you haven’t been paying attention, I love Turbot. It’s baby Halibut. It’s similar to sole and flounder but meatier. Like Sole, it is a flat fish that has evolved for defensive and aggressive reasons to look different on both sides. It’s got a white side and a dark side. The white side is on the bottom, since this fish lays on the sea bottom, so that the dark side blends in with the sediments and makes the fish almost invisible. When the fish is swimming, it swims with the light side at the bottom so that fish looking up lose the turbot in the bright light coming from the surface. Fish looking down see the dark side which blends in with the depths.
The dark side has a thicker skin with tough bumps for protection. The fish has no scales. The light side skin is delicate and thin. When cooked both sides have edible skin but I prefer to remove the dark skin, which comes off very easily, while the light skin is good eat.
I really struggled with making the Beurre Blanc. It is a complicated recipe that involve taking a scissor and snipping off the corner of the plastic pouch that the pre-prepared sauce comes in. The advantages of living in France.
Along with the fish and Zucchini we had a relatively inexpensive white wine. I say relatively because you can buy wine for 3 or 4 euros which, amazingly, tastes like a 3 or 4 euro wine. This bottle is 11 euros, or about 13 dollars. Thats not a lot to pay for a decent wine and this is more than decent. It’s actually very good. It is a wine from the Languedoc region in southwest France. A region that is little known by most none french.
This wine is rich and full similar in style to Meursault from Burgundy, White Châteauneuf du Pape from the Cote du Rhone and even some California Chardonnays. Its the kind of wine I like and for 11 Euros its a bargain. The website describes it:
“Sublime white wine of Roussanne and Grenache caraguilhes castle
Caraguilhes presents this new organic cuvée absolutely stunning by its complexity, its finesse. It is a very beautiful success where one finds the completeness and the freshness of this soil of Boutenac made of pebbles rolled and limestone. To be served on a seafood gratin, a bouillabaisse, a scallop scallop, a unilateral line wolf, a sheep cheese and its fennel salad or, alone, as an aperitif … does that tell you?”
Unfortunately that text was machine translated and it isn’t totally accurate.
If you can find this wine, it’s well worth the effort. Unfortunately, I just did a search and it does not look like you poor, unfortunate people, like I will soon be, are not able to get this in the USA.
June 7, 2019
Cherries
When this seasons cherries first came out about a month ago I was excited. I have a love hate relationship with the berries. I buy them, especially early in the season, out of impulse. I can sit with a bowl of cherries until they are all gone knowing too well that I am going to suffer. And suffer I inevitably do. So you’ll understand my disappointment when I first bought these berries. They were soft, sweet with no sourness. They were like the cherries that you find in supermarkets at the end of july. Overripe and flacid.
However, lately they have been getting pretty good. I suspect the those early cherries were imported from the far off exotic land of Spain. These new ones must be more local. I even found the Rainier cherries, the white ones. They’re good too. Really good. But I can’t eat them the way I want. This fucking Keto diet! They contain too much sugar and I must avoid them. A handful is OK but the bowl-full. No.
Regardless I bought more than I could/should eat so I used them to make a sauce for a roasted pork loin (heritage pork). Along with Rhubarb, red wine, mustard, balsamic and butter. Smart no?
The salad is red leaf lettuce, fennel, avocado, cherry tomatoes, clementines and fresh goat cheese. A walnut, red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar, and apricot jam vinaigrette with a bit of crushed garlic.
About the suffering? If you’ve ever eaten a pound or two of cherries you’ll know what I mean. If not, consider how a ball feels when you over inflate it and you continue until its ready to rupture. It’s a small sacrifice for the seasonal cherry orgy.
Interesting point: I came up with the idea of using cherries and rhubarb as a sauce for pork when I was waiting my turn to buy the cherries. I saw the rhubarb and the lightbulb lit. When I got home I looked up how to prepare rhubarb since I never did anything with rhubarb. While I was at it I looked up cherry/ rhubarb sauce for pork and found Martha Stewart had a recipe for it. But hers is a sweet sauce while my version is a bit more savory. It had to be different than hers.
Recipe in the Recipe Section
June 6, 2019
Lobster, Whelk, Greenbean, Asparagus, Cucumber and Celery Salad.
On that dreaded Keto Diet again. I now go to the Street Market, today the local one here in town, with a bit of dread. There are so many wonderful things I could buy but I can’t eat. My choices become very narrow when I can’t include sugars, starches from any source, not even fruits and certain vegetables. The limited choice makes meal preparations challenging. While walking through the market drooling at the breads, pastries, and incredible fruits, I had to look instead at proteins and non-starchy vegetables.
Passing one of the fish vendors I noticed lobsters at 39 euro per kilo. Passing another the lobster was 38 euro per kilo. I decided that that was too much to pay so I could skip the lobster. The third vendor had them for 28 euro a kilo! So I asked for a single lobster that was large enough for two people. I also bought a kilo of whelks. The total came to a surprising 70 Euro. The lobster was quite large.
At another vendor I bought asparagus and green beans and a cucumber. Why? I had decided to make a lobster, whelk (sea snails) salad dressed with french mayonnaise and beurre blanc. Beurre blanc is a butter sauce that is a bit tricky to make but fortunately the fish vendor was selling packages of it for four euros.
I’m not including a recipe because some of the ingredients may be hard to get. However, substitutions would work. So if you want a recipe, let me know. It’s worth the effort. And it is 100% keto compliant.
Carnivore day, May 30, 2019
Last Monday at the Auray market I saw some “wild” mushrooms for sale and Bretton artichokes. The mushrooms were shitaki and oysters and I bought a kilo to make the next day. I also bought a couple of Bretton artichokes the size of a child’s head. These were going to be made the following day, Tuesday, the day we were invited to eat at a neighbors house. I do that al the time. I buy on impulse and then don’t have the opportunity to make something with whatever it is because we go to markets every other day and I buy stuff on impulse. Yesterday, Wednesday I couldn’t use these items because we drove to the western end of Brittany and had lunch there. Today is the local market. I restrained myself. I bought nothing for lunch other than a dry aged sirloin (New York Strip or Faut Fillet in France) from the local butcher. With that I made the mushrooms and artichoke. See the recipe on the recipe page. The mushrooms are done the way my mother makes mushrooms and the artichoke is done my way. Keto? Very much so.
May 29, 2019
Douarnenez
We ate in Douarnenez, Brittany today. Read why we were there in the blogpost. We picked a bistro at random and sat down. Not wanting to spend much money and not expecting great things, we both picked the days special. It consisted of rillettes of sardine as an entree and a pork plate with pineapple? I’m game. The rillette was exactly what I expected but the pork turned out to be baby back pork ribs in a pineapple barbecue sauce. I like spare ribs. Always have. But this plate was far better than any restaurant spare ribs I have ever eaten. I have to figure out how they made the glaze.
May 28, 2019
Lunch at a Neighbors
We had a very pleasant lunch at our neighbor’s house yesterday. A lunch of cockles (that Natalie captured on the beach) with parsley butter and seared scallops with a cognac flambe. The scallops were also from the nearby waters. A very nice lunch that did not negatively impact my diet until the deserts came out.
The Strawberry tart was from a patisserie. It was very good but the Tart Tatin that Natalie made was irresistible. And as she explained, very easy to make. See recipes.
I think I ate half of it.
Monday, May 27, 2019
Today is Monday. Monday is the Auray market day that we, with much introspection, decided that we will no longer be going to to save money. Don’t misunderstand, we are not hurting but our car is 4 years old and eventually we will need a new one. Since we will not take out a loan we will need the cash in hand to buy it outright. So we are making a concerted effort to reduce spending. We decided that we should reduce the market days from 4 a week to 3 a week.
We went to the Auray market today. I know. We were short on certain items and had to go to the Supermarket in Auray so we stopped in at the Market anyway. You will be happy to know we restricted our spending to under 50 euro. Yea! But on the way home I stopped at the Cave in Auray that I found a few weeks ago. This wine shop has many of the French wines I like. I restrained myself and only spent 172 euro. They had a white Hermitage! My favorite white wine. How could I pass that up. I will review that when I open it. Today I did open the wine in the picture above. When the sales person showed it to me I was sceptical. In France you don’t buy varietal. You buy appellations. Wine producers place their names on the wine that they judge to be their best. The poorer quality wines get the grape variety name on the label. In Burgundy you don’t but a Chardonnay, you buy a Meursault or other appellation. In the Cote du Rhone you don’t buy Viognier, you buy the Appellation. But when she said it’s 18 Euro I was surprised. And I was surprised when I tasted this wine. Viognier grape wines tend to be very floral. Especially the ones from California. Take a sip and you are hit in the face with a bouquet of mixed flowers. But not much more. The wine tends to fade in the mouth very quickly. This wine also is floral, honeysuckle, but unlike the others it also has citrus notes at the front and it ends with a mouth full of honeydew melon that lingers until you take your next sip.
If you could find this, it’s worth the expense.
I just discovered something very important. When you right click over a misspelled word in the blog editor you get a few choices. One of them is delete. The one I chose when I was editing about an hours worth of writing. Poof. The blog editor does have a feature to recover stuff like that. However that stuff must have been saved, which it wasn’t. So I am about to rewrite this page all over again. Joy. Luckily for you it’s going to be a bit shorter.
Alice and I have been discussing spending money. Spending with respect to saving, which we are not doing very well. The biggest problem is our visiting four markets a week. There is the Monday Auray market that is the biggest market and it fills the old part of town amongst the 16th century half timbered buildings. Then there is the Vannes market, which is also large and is also within the old part of town. The Thursday market is in the town where we live. During the winter it was a pretty pathetic market compared to the others but now that it is warmer out, it has grown to a very nice marketplace. And it’s only a 3 minute walk from the house. On Saturday, today, we go to the Quiberon market which is about a 10 minute drive away. This market is located in a dedicated park in the Town center. It does not have the ambiance of the Auray and Vannes market but it does have a nice array of vendors. Especially the artisanal cheese stands.
There are cheese vendors at all of the markets but most are selling other peoples cheeses, the cheeses produced by the larger concerns that sell nationally and internationally. These artesanal vendor, basically the farmer who makes cheese, only sell from their shops and the cheese carts at the market. So you can see that attendance at the Quiberon market is required.
Monday we normally go to Auray. We love the Auray market because of its location. Just walking through like tourists is fun. but unlike tourists we end up buying and spending money. Since we are only two people and a dog, we don’t need all that much food (especially since I am trying to lose weight) but for more or less three decades I cooked to feed four people. Those measures and sizes are ingrained in me. I buy too much and we end up wasting food. Add to that that we are visiting markets with incredibly attractive foods on display, going every couple of days is a recipe for overindulgence.
So we need to reduce our purchases. The best way to do that is to stop one of the markets. Based on the days that we go, it’s the Auray market that is most likely to be cut out. It can’t be the Vannes market because that market has the best selection of organic produce and the it has the Hall of Fish with about forty vendors selling incredible seafood and good prices. See the lobster on the page below. Keep in mind that we also go to supermarkets to buy the stuff that they don’t sell at the markets.
There are no toilet paper stands at any of the markets.
As my friend Richard said, it’s a first world problem.
Friday May 24, 2019
Since there is no market on Fridays I raid the fridge for stuff to cook. On the top shelf there were two duck breasts. But we had no vegetables. There is a small “supermarket” in town but their selection is typically poor. As I expected there were no usable vegetables except for white asparagus that looked like they had just come in. I bought those and made them with a mustard Lemon Hollandaise Sauce. The duck breasts were cooked the standard way and sauced with an apricot balsamic sauce. 
We had an Alsatian Pinot Gris to go with this.
Do I need to provide a recipe?
May 22, 2019
Wednesdays are the day we go to the Vannes market about 45 minutes drive from Saint Pierre Q. Although there are closer markets, I like this one because it has several “Bio” green grocessers and the Halles de Poisons, Fish Market, is huge and well priced. Since we discovered this market [like Columbus discovered America] we [I] have been spending way too much money on stuff that looks amazing, and it is, but we end up wasting it because there is only so much food that two people and a small dog could eat. So I have been holding my wallet closed as much as possible. That does not always work. In fact it works rarely. Ever?
There is one vendor who has the most amazing produce I’ve ever seen. It’s consistently beautiful and tasty. It’s the place that I have been buying the morels for the last few months. Today I specifically was going to limit my purchases. And I did. I bought fewer items, no morels but I did buy three bunches of the wild asparagus that I had last week. They’re only going to be around a short time and we are leaving Brittany this fall, so we may never have the opportunity to have them again. They were six euro a bunch! I still spent 40 euro at that stand. That’s why they love me.
My intent today was to have fish since we have stayed away from seafood for about 2 weeks. So I entered the fish market and immediately was struck by the Homard priced at 22 euro a kilo. Homard is the lobster that is caught off of Bel Isle at the southern end of Quiberon. See the map below. These are the same species as those that crawl around Maine waters but for some reason they are larger. And they almost always are full of eggs. The one I bought was 1.65 kilos (3 pounds 10 ounces) plus a kilo of raw crab claws, the total came to 45 euros. What was that about not spending money?
Last week I made lobster rolls and I didn’t want to do that again. So this week I made lobster and crab Fra Diavolo with linguini, minus the linguini. I’m still on a diet.
6 thoughts on “Food and Wine”
Why don’t you season the steak before putting on the grill?
I’m just reporting here. Dario Cecchini, a well known tuscan butcher insists that its better to salt after the meat is cooked. It may have something to do with the way it’s cooked. Others, who don’t cook it the same way, do season. Not before but at each turn of the meat. They cook over coals. Salting the meat draws moisture out of the meat which helps develop a crust. But cooking next to a flame also develops a crust. With salt it may be too much. Some people say to salt 40 minutes before cooking. I have to look into that.
Got it, curious to know which way you prefer!
I’ll let you know
Just had guancio cooked splendidly in a restaurant in Martina Franca, Puglia. I will be putting your recipe to good use in my own kitchen soon.
Let me know if you survive.