Cucina Testa Rossa

Let's Get Our Grill On With Bobby Flay!

A HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who clicked, watched, rated, commented - I appreciate it so much but I didn't get selected for the show. I'm pretty bummed but it was really fun to do and I got back in touch with a bunch of friends from college and many people I hadn't talked to in a long time so all good. I think I'm going to be doing a lot more GF grilling so check back for more recipes. Thanks again!!! Bon appetit, Laura

COOKBOOK: The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Cuisine ~The French Culinary Institute

I could have saved $40,000 and 6 months, endless cuts and burns, bad hair days, bruised egos, fashion disasters, gas that could peel the paint off the side of a barn, and having cats follow me home because I smelled like a mackerel!

As y'all know, I attended the full time 6-month culinary program at the FCI a few years ago (and yes I experienced all of the above... in abundance!) so when I saw this book come out, I had to buy it. Like James Peterson's Sauces, this book too could ballast a boat - all 500 pages! - but it is also a veritable treasure chest, a culinary Fort Knox if you will, of all things cooking. If Techniques is the only cookbook you ever purchase, you'd be set.

Techniques is almost verbatim our first quarter (6 week) curriculum. Really! Word for word, gram for gram, ingredient for ingredient. I even pulled out my notebook and compared the Sauces section. Exactly the same. Our first quarter was spent learning these 250 techniques. (Before I went to cooking school I burned water! I still do, just less often...) We then spent the next 3 quarters refining and practicing and expanding on all these techniques. So if you don't want to sacrifice 6 months and $40,000 and the above mentioned humiliations to attend cooking school, then buy this book and cook every recipe over and over and you will become an excellent cook. If you master all the skills and techniques in the book, you can walk into any kitchen (even in France!) and hold your own as this is the foundation of classic cooking and the language of the kitchen.

Hints and tips from the Deans and Chef Instructors pepper the book in every technique with tidbits such as "...cook beans at a constant low temperature and cool them in their cooking liquid. ~ Dean Alain Sailhac" or "Do not cover a chicken after roasting or it will steam and make the meat taste reheated." ~Dean Jacques Pepin". It's like getting a personal cooking lesson from some of the world's the greatest chefs. A few that I'm not sure made it into the book that will I will never for include, "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean ~Chef Henri Viain" and "What you put in the pot, you get out of the pot. ~Chef Pascal Beric" and God love them both for their dedication to their students.

Techniques teaches the 250 classic foundation techniques including stocks, sauces, soups, salads, eggs, potatoes, poultry, beef, veal, lamb, pork, fish, shellfish, marinades, stuffings, organ meats (my least favorite day in cooking school!), pastry dough, creams & custards, crepes, brioche, frozen desserts, meringues, mousses, and soufflés (my favorite day in cooking school! :) As I browsed through the book, 6 months of my life flashed before my eyes, intermittently cringing while remembering slicing off the tip of my thumb on the mandoline or burning my wrist on the convection oven and laughing out loud picturing the over-whipped genoise, splattered pommes anna, and over salted poulet roti grandmere dubbed "inedible" by the chefs.

Many if not all of the recipes in my humble little blog, such as the ones here and here, are based on the foundation I learned in cooking school. Techniques also explains in great detail terms in a kitchen, names of equipment and pots and pans (and the difference between stainless steel and aluminum, cast iron, non-stick and the benefits and pit falls of each), food safety, knifes and knife skills, and professional kitchen management.

If you want to become an great home chef or are considering or about to attend cooking school, I implore you to devour (pun intended) this book. If you learn all the techniques, or at least become familiar with them, then you will be leaps and bounds ahead of the game. Bon courage et bon appetit!

IMBB23 ~ Vive la France! Daube de Bouef Arlesienne

The mere whisper of the word Provence awakens images of flowing lavender fields, charming picture-perfect towns and farmers markets overflowing with heads of lettuce still sparkling with the morning dew and fresh milk and cream ladled from tall metal canisters, all being sold by the quintessential French farmer.

Provence's traditional cuisine, "cuisine du soleil" is built on fresh produce, olive oil, herbs, tomatoes, garlic and of couse, le soleil (the sun).  No surprise as Provence kisses the top west border of Italy so much of the cuisine has these Italian influences, or vice versa as the French would no doubt claim. It's similar to Switzerland looking like France, but I digress....

You will see the similarities in other distinctive Provencal dishes including ratatouille (eggplant) and soup de pistou (with fresh basil and pine nuts) ,daube (stew) and probably the most often associated with the south of France, bouillabaisse (fish soup with garlic, olive oil and saffron).

The delights don't stop there. The region is home to some world famous wines with ties all the way up to the sky. Opulent red wines include Cotes du Rhone and the noble Chateauneuf-du-Pape (new castle of the pope!). Crisp white and rose wines include Coteaux des Baux-en-Provence and Coteaux d'Aix-en-Provence and don't forget the apres-meal with a Beaumes-de-Venise Muscat, an unctuous amber dessert wine.

I learned this dish in cooking school. In our last quarter, we cooked for the restaurant within the school, aptly named l'Ecole (the school). This is so popular and such a traditional French dish, it is still on the menu!

Daube de Boeuf Arlesienne ~ Beef Stew from Arles

16 tiny Red Potatoes
16 Pearl Onions
16 Baby Carrots
16 Beef 1-1/2" cubes
1  Onion, finely diced
1 cup Dry White Wine (from Provence!)
1-2 tsp Herbes de Provence
20 Hazelnuts, toasted
1-2 slice Dry Bordelais Bread, toasted
3 clove Garlic, chopped to paste
1 cup Parsley Leaves, chopped
2 Tomatoes, peeled & seeded
20 Nicoise Olives
2 tbsp Capers
Thyme & Rosemary sprigs
(serves 4)

Step 1. Prepare your mise en place which means everything in its place (literally 'put in place'). Set out all the equipment you will need (pots and pans, spoons, etc) and all the ingredients. This way, you won't get half way through a recipe and realize you are missing a key ingredient and guaranteed, all the stores will be closed. I always keep a small bowl or plastic bag next to me for garbage such as carrot peelings, vegetable ends, garlic skins, etc.

Step 2. Prepare the vegetables
1. For these tiny red potatoes, the recipe calls for peeling only half way around so you can still see the beautiful red skin contrasted against the white flesh.
2. Trim and peel the baby carrots and pearl onions.
3. Cook the onions and carrots separately in boiling salted water. Shock (drop in ice water when done to stop the cooking), drain and set aside in a bowl. Save the cooking liquid.
4. Cook the potatoes in boiling salted water but do not shock. Set out on a plate on a piece of paper towel. Save the cooking liquid.

5. While the veggies are cooking, peel and cut the large onion into a fine dice.
6. Depending on the size of tomatoes, cut lengthwise into 6 or 8 sections from top to bottom. Cut out seeds and then set the slice of tomato skin side down and cut through as close to the skin as you can. Then cut the slice into triangles, approx 3 per slice, or what ever shape you want.



Step 3: Cook the beef
7. Brown the beef cubes in a pot in a little olive oil. Remove meat, set in a bowl.
8. Saute onions in the same pot. Add a little olive oil if the pan is dry. Move cooked onions to the bowl with the meat.
9. Deglaze the pot with the wine.
10. Add the meat and onions back to the pot. Add the herbs to the pot.
11. Add the cooking liquid from the vegetables to cover the meat. Do not salt.
12. Cover the pot with foil or a lid. Cook for 1 to 1-1/2 hours on the stove so that the liquid is at a low simmer.

Step 4: Arlesienne mixture
13. Toast the hazelnuts and bread (cut into small pieces, any country or hearty bread will do) in 350F oven for 5-10 minutes
14. Chop the garlic to a paste.
15. Chop the parsley. Set aside a few pinches for garnish
16. Put the toasted bread, hazelnuts, garlic and parley in a food processor and pulse until finely chopped.

Step 5. Mangez!
17. Just as the meat is finishing up cooking, add the carrots, pearl onions, potatoes and Arlesienne mixture to the pot. Stir to combine and thoroughly warm the vegetables. The Arlesienne mixture will thicken the broth.
18. At the last minute, add the capers, olives and tomato triangles. Stir to combine and taste for seasoning. Add sea salt and fresh ground pepper to your taste.
19. Plate in a bowl and garnish with chopped rosemary, thyme and rosemary sprigs.

Step 6. Buvez!



Now most Provencal recipes beckon for a light, crisp white or rose but for this dish, and the fact that it is still winter with near arctic temperatures, I'd prefer a stronger wine from the north of Provence, one with papal ties preferably so for this I would serve a Chateauneuf-du-Pape, specifically one from Domaine du Banneret. I had the pleasure of tasting this glorious Rhone with a wine expert (not-so-coincidentally the nephew of the winemaker!) on a recent trip to Provence and what a treat! Cheers!

Bon appetite d'Arles et Vive la France!

Tagged with: IMBB23 + French

The Final Exam

Chef Henri, Chef Pascal, Chef Susan, J.D., moi at graduation where we received the tall chefs toques along with our diploma

Wednesday, November 5, 2003. The final exam. Every day for the past six months, I'd been chopping and grilling and braising and flambeing and now I had to pull it all together for our final exam. Let me set the stage. The weather in New York had been miserable the previous week and I was sick as a chien (dog). My comrades-in-knives (Beverly, Michael & Michele) and I spent the entire weekend scripting out our recipes, trying to memorize them, and were up all night the two previous nights studying and wandering the meat-packing district looking for kosher food in driving rain. Don't ask.

After driving my body non-stop for six months with stress, exhaustion, and inordinate amounts of butter, heavy cream, croissants and foie gras, it innately knew the end was near and was beginning its revolt. Had it been any other sort of a test like a physics final or a French mid-term, I would have hunkered down under my comforter and not emerged until I felt semi-human but there was no way I was going to miss this. No way, Jose (who is Jose anyways?). After everything I'd been through, after all the cuts and burns and humiliation and tears, I was going to finish this thing if it was the last thing I did, and it was darn near that.

We arrived early to start exactly at 9am. 24 of us, we each drew a slip of paper with 2 recipes and a number (A1, A2...A8, B1..., C1...) out of a hat, and had approx 4-5 hours to prepare both and send them out to a panel of judges of top chefs from NYC. Not that there wasn't enough pressure or anything..... just throw in a few 4-star chefs to the mix to turn up the heat. Thank you very much and pass the Xanax. The numbers (I was A7) were listed on a whiteboard in the kitchen with the times that your specific dishes had to go out. I was relieved to draw fish and pastry recipes, as opposed to appetizer and meat as that bought me at least an hour. My first dish had to go out at 1:21pm and my second dish about 45 minutes later. I was so sick, with a raging fever, on the verge of coughing up a lung at any given moment, but was determined to get through this gauntlet.


Michele, Beverly, Michael, moi all very proud of our pate a choux swans with creme chantilly

When the clock hit 9:00am EST on Wednesday, November 5, 2003, 24 exhausted, white-coated, knife-wielding, clog-sporting culinary students charged the kitchen and set to work. I ran to my station and filled a big plastic container with ice water. I spent the next 5 minutes drinking and breathing, gathering my thoughts, walking through the recipes in my head, coaching myself to calm down, breathe, it will be fine, you'll get through this, only 5 more hours and it's all over then you can crawl in the gutter and die...and other encouraging mantras.

I gathered all the food for my fish dish, Vivaneau Cuit Poele avec Sauce au Porto (Red Snapper with Wild Mushrooms in Port Wine Reduction), organized my station, then headed into the pastry kitchen to start my pastry and ice cream base for Tarte aux Noix avec Glace a la Creme Fraiche (Walnut Tart with Creme Fraiche Ice Cream). I made the pate sablee first, wrapped it, wrote my initials on it and hid it in one of the low fridges. People have been know to swipe others pastry when theirs hasn't turned out, I kid you not! So much for my naive everyone-is-going-to-love-each-other and we-are-all-going-to-play-nice-and-cook-together assumption. Then I made the creme fraiche ice cream base and hid that as well to chill.

OK, 1 hour down, 4 to go. You can do it. Just keep breathing and drink water. You're going to die anyways, just do it after the final. I began prepping the mushrooms and snow peas, tuiles and port wine reduction. Tuiles are a monstrous pain as you have to slice potatoes very thinly on a mandoline, a torture device that scares the devil out of me having taken a sizable of chunk of my thumb off more than once and shredded another. Sorry for the visual. At least I didn't attach the picture of it, and yes, I do have a picture of it, quite a few actually from every angle.

So you place an herb in between two potato slices, brush over melted butter then place in between silpats (silicon mats) with another steel pan (or very heavy pan on top of another sheet pan) to keep them flat. The issue is you can't check on them, you have to let them cook and hopefully have done it so many times before in class that you should know when it's ready. Right? Wrong! My first batch was 1/2 overcooked, 1/2 undercooked - damn, forgot to rotate the sheet pan. I buried the rogue tuiles far down in the garbage away from the probing hands of the chefs. Round 2. Came out perfectly, the tuile gods decided to smile down upon me. Better late than never.

The chefs walked around with clip boards taking points off for messy stations, too many dishes in the sink, they even rifled through our garbage to see if we'd thrown out/wasted things we shouldn't have, exuberantly living up to their "Qualité. Discipline. Realité." motto.  

Once the mushrooms were sauteed and caramelized, the snow peas were blanched, and the port veal sauce was reducing nicely, I traipsed back to the pastry kitchen to finish the tarts and ice cream. I retrieved my pastry and ice cream base from the back of the small fridge and set my ice cream churning. Rolling out the dough and molding the tart rings, chilling them then making the batter, I was quite pleased with myself for holding it together so well and for managing my timing. My timing! Ohmigod! I looked at the clock then at my watch and it said 1:15pm! 6 minutes to get out my fish dish! OHMIGOD! RUN!

I raced back to the main kitchen, threw down the pans, fired up the burners, rubbed Chinese 5-spice on the Snapper fillets, slapped them on the pans and prayed to the fish gods. I plunged the snow peas in boiling water I borrowed from the person next to me whose dish had just gone out, fanned them at the top of 4 plates, gave the mushrooms a quick toss on a searing hot pan, placed a heaping of sauteed wild mushrooms in the center of each of the four plates, crossed 2 fillets of Snapper over the mushrooms, poured port sauce around the bottom of the plates, sprinkled chopped chives, garnished with a potato tuile and sent them out at exactly 1:21pm!

I immediately burst into tears. The tears just poured down my face. They wouldn't stop. I was just so exhausted, so sick, so relieved, so overjoyed, so everything that the emotions just flowed out through tears. Then one of the chefs said, "It's not over yet! Get in there and finish your pastry!" So I raced back to the pastry kitchen, pulled myself together, finished my walnut tart, garnished it with a scoop of creme fraiche ice cream, and a few squiggles of caramel sauce and sent it out. 6 months earlier I was saying, "I can't believe I'm here." Now I was saying, "I can't believe I did it!" The champagne popped and we started toasting.

At 2:45pm we were sent upstairs to change into a clean uniform and instructed to meet back in the kitchen at 3pm sharp. We were herded back into our 3 groups (remember, I'm A7, something I'll never forget.) and sat, as a group (!), in front of our panel of judges as they critiqued our food, yes, in front of the group! I was dreading the public humiliation and had to wait through 6 rave critiques including J.D.'s consomme that was "Michelin star quality" - no surprise that he just received a real Michelen star as head chef at Danube. Side note: I interned there during cooking school under Chef Mario Lohninger.

As the judges worked their way around the semi-circle my anxiety level shot up like a thermometer in a road runner cartoon. "Number 7", I heard. Oh God that's me! I wanted to crawl under my chair. I cringed waiting for the verbal whipping but to my absolute disbelief the chefs, including Andre Soltner and two of his former sous-chefs at 35-years-running 4-star Lutèce, told me my fish dish was perfect, as was my tart! The tears poured down my face again. I really couldn't believe I did it! I didn't give up. I didn't get scared. Well I did get scared, many times, but I didn't let it sabotage me. I didn't run off the stage, as a friend claims I do at the first whisper of success. A very unfamiliar, but very wonderful, feeling. I went to bed that night an didn't get up for 2 weeks.

After the judging I thanked Andre Soltner and he said to me that when he met me a year earlier in San Francisco he never thought I'd be able to cook like that. A back-handed sort of compliment but a compliment nonetheless and I take what I can get these days... Bon appetit!

Note: these recipes are written out as we did to study for our final. It's not the conventional ingredients then steps listing but hopefully it will make sense and give you some ideas as how to arrange those daunting recipes that go on ad nauseum for pages on end. For our purposes, the steps (1., 2., etc...) were written in a column directly to the right of the corresponding ingredients but this format doesn't allow for it so I tried to make it as easily readable as possible. Give a shout if you have any questions.

Vivaneau Cuit Poele, Sauce au Porto ~
Red Snapper with Wild Mushrooms in Port Reduction Sauce

Step 1: Prep

1. Get Pans: bain marie, 3 sautoirs (pot with straight sides), 5 sauteuse (large frying pans with angled sides), bowl w/ ice, hotel pan, rings, foil, mandolin, 2 steel sheet pans, 2 silpats, parchment paper, mip cups (mise en place cups)
2. Get Herbs, Clarified Butter
3. Preheat oven to 300F for maximes.

Step 2: Sauce

1 L Brown Stock
1 L Port
1 L Sherry Vinegar

4. Reduce stock by 3/4.
5. Reduce port by 1/2 - 3/4.
6. Add to reduced port and reduce again by 3/4.
7. Add port/vinegar reduction to the reduced stock. Put in bain marie. Season.

Step 3: Fish

4 pc Snapper
8. Portion fish into 150 g pieces. Slice in ½ on bias. Score skin. Wrap. Chill.

Step 4: Mushrooms

60 g Creminis
60 g Shiitake
60 g Oyster
60 g Portobello

9. Saute each type mushroom in oil separately in hot pan. Caramelize

1 ea Shallot, fine ciseler (tiny dice)
4 sprigs Thyme
4 cloves Garlic, smash, no germ

10. Add to mushrooms, finish cooking. Remove thyme, garlic. Hold in hotel pan.

Step 5: Garnish ~ Snow Peas, Potato Maxime, Chives, Salt

24 ea Snow Peas, a l'anglais (cooked in boiling, salted water)

11. Cook. Shock (drop in ice water to stop cooking). Cut top on angle, seeds on left.

2 ea Idaho Potatoes, peeled
8 sprig Chervil

- Clarified Butter

12. Peel. Put in water. Slice paper thin on mandoline. Lay slices on silpat.
13. Put Chervil sprig on potato slice. Top with potato slice.
14. Brush with clarified butter. Cover w/ silpat/parchment. Cover w/ steel pan.
15. Bake in oven at 300F, 20 minutes. Set aside on parchment.

- Chives, chopped

16. Chop. Plate on top of sauce at service

1 mip Fleur de Sel (mise en place cup)

17. Plate on top of fish at service

Step 6: Fish

8 pc Fish

17. Rub skin of fish with back of knife to remove moisture.

- Salt, Pepper

18. Salt, pepper flesh. Pepper skin.

1 mip Wondra Flour
1 mip Chinese 5-Spice Powder

19. Sprinkle Wondra, 5-Spice on skin

Step 7: Service

20. Warm 4 plates, 12" plates.
21. Add oil to sauteuse, heat to smoking. Lay fish skin side down. Press down on fish when first in pan. Cook 90%. Flip to finish.
22. Flash snow peas in boiling water.
23. Heat mushrooms in sauteuse.
24. Put port sauce in sauteuse. Monter au beurre (whisk in cold chunks of butter to velvety consistency and shine).
25. Plate snow peas, fanned, seeds on left.
26. Plate mushrooms in center in ring.
27. Plate fish in "X" on mushrooms.
28. Plate sauce from "9 to 3".
29. Sprinkle chives on sauce.
30. Potato maxime in slit on fish.
31. Sprinkle fleur de sel on fish.




Tarte aux Noix, Glace a la Creme Fraiche ~ Walnut Tart with Creme Fraiche Ice Cream

Step 1: Prep

1. Pans: bowl on ice, chinois, sautoir, 4 tart molds, parchment paper, blind bake beans, wooden spoon, rubber spatula, paddle, skewer
2. Heat convection oven to 350F

Step 2: Creme Fraiche Ice Cream

1 L Milk
500 ml Heavy Cream
455 g Granulated Sugar
16 ea Egg Yolks

3. Make creme anglaise.

- blanchir (whisk til lightened in color) 1/2 sugar, egg yolks
- heat cream, milk, 1/2 sugar.
- temper, return to pot, cook to nappant with wooden spoon
- strain through chinois (strainer) into bowl on ice bath, vanner (stir to cool).

500 g Creme Fraiche

4. Stir in creme fraiche w/ rubber spatula.

Step 3: Pate Sablee

250 g Flour
90 g Confectioners Sugar (10x)
pinch Salt

5. In kitchenaid w paddle, combine flour sugar salt.

150 g Butter, cold, cubed
2 ea Egg Yolks
1 T Vanilla Extract
1-2 T Ice Water, if needed

6. Add in butter, mix to sandy texture.

7. Add yolks, vanilla extract. Mix til solid. Flatten, wrap, rest, chill.

Step 4: Dough

8. Roll out dough to 1/4" thickness. Cut with ring mold.
9. Mold dough into tart pans. Freeze for 5 mins.

Note: If ice cream is ready, now scoop onto plate and cover.

Step 5: Walnut Filling and Tarts

200 g Chopped Walnuts

10. Lightly toast in oven. Chop.
11. Blind bake tart crusts w/ parchment, beans at 375F, 7-10 mins

2 ea WHOLE EGGS (I capitalized this because when I made this during class I wasn't paying attention and only used egg yolks and my tarts were a disaster!)
70 g Granulated Sugar
100 g Creme Fraiche

12. In kitchenaid, combine eggs, sugar, creme fraiche. Don't overmix.

60 ml Grand Marnier
45 g Butter, melted
75 g Brown Sugar

13. Add. Mix well.
14. Put 1 layer of nuts in tart pans.
15. Pour in filling 3/4 up sides.
16. Bake 375F, 15 - 20 mins.

Step 6: Service

Get 4 - 10" plates.

- Apricot Glaze

17. Brush with Apricot Glaze (In cup, add glaze, water. Microwave. Strain.)

- Caramel Sauce

18. Place drops on center of plate to anchor tart. Plate tart.

- Chocolate Sauce

19. Alternate chocolate, caramel sauce dots around tart.

20. Run skewer (paring knife) through dots.

4 scoops Ice Cream

21. Scoop ice cream on center of tart.

And after that, a big whopping Bon Appetit!

Also posted here: KQED Bay Area Bites

IMBB23 ~ Vive la France!

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a huge thanks to Tana for this banner!

Is my blog burning? Well as a matter of fact it was...during New Year's Eve dinner but that’s another story.... To the mission at hand...

Bonjour mes amis! Bonjour de Paris. Gros merci to Alberto for creating this fun forum. I really struggled with a topic for this IMBB for months.  Over a humm-dinger lunch with the fabulous Sam, I agonized: “WHAT am I going to do for this? I thought about choosing a French theme but that just seems so obvious and the other ideas I had are already taken.” The fabulous Sam replied, “Uh, you live in France right?” Yep. “Well then it only makes sens that you pick a French theme!”

So voila! For this IMBB23 ~ Vive la France!

Or more specifically...Vive la France Régionale avec un Verre du Vin! A fancy way of saying a regional French dish with a glass of wine. Take a traditional French recipe and do a little sleuthing (aka “google it”) to discover a bit more about it, what region it came from and why it was important to that region.


salad niçoise

For example, take Salad Niçoise. It’s from Nice, hence Niçoise, the Provençal region, but what is it about this salad that earns the Niçoise moniker or what about it is Provençal? Who invented it and why and why is it considered a traditional dish?  There's Beouf Bourguignon or Coq au Vin or Poulet Saute Chasseur or Tarte aux Poires à la Frangipane or Gratinee a l'Oignon or Croque Monsieur et Madame, etc.... Chacun à son goût, as they say here. To each his own taste.

Then....since we are in France, you can’t have a meal without a glass of wine, oh mon dieu non!, so pair a wine with your dish. If you’re near San Francisco or on the Peninsula, drop by K&L Wines, the most knowledgeable, friendly wine experts around and if you are in France, well just pop into your nearest Nicolas where they are always delighted to help you select the perfect wine for the meal at hand. If you have any questions about this, give a shout. Please post by Sunday, February 26th and drop me a note when you do.

I hope you have some fun at this as the aspect I find most interesting about cooking, especially here in France, is the regionality (is that a word?) of food. Learning where foods and recipes originate and why adds so much more excitement to a meal, like you are consuming a little piece of history along with it... If you are coming up with cookers block, I'm sure you could pick up an idea or two from la reine de la cuisine française herself, Julia Child.

I think I’m headed to the south of France for my sleuthing.... If nothing else it's warmer down there!  Bon appetite et à fin du mois, j’espère! ~ Happy eating and see you at the end of the month, I hope! Laura

PS: Here’s the technorati tag (thanks Sam!):

Tagged with: <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/IMBB23" rel="tag">IMBB23</a> + <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/French" rel="tag">French</a>

PPS: In case you are struggling with this, here are a few traditional regional French dishes that we learned in cooking school including the one above. The pics are less that stellar since I used disposable cameras that kept falling out of my pocket into the frying pan every time I leaned over.  And to be honest, the food we made the first few months was pretty scary....


navarin printanier

goujonettes de sol au sauce tartare


blanquette de veau a l'ancienne


filet de sole bonne femme

Tagged with: IMBB23 + French

Merci Chef Auguste!

Brown veal stock is the foundation of this port sauce

Last week I prattled on about consomme and how to make consomme from stock to finish but a few people wrote me asking just how to get from start to stock. Stock (les fonds), also known as boullion or broth, my friends, are nothing less than the foundation of French cooking.

"Les fonds sont pour la cuisine, ce que les foundations sont pout la maison." Stocks are to cooking what a foundation is to a house. -Auguste Escoffier

So there you have it. Straight from the horse, er, father of French cuisine himself. It is so important that.... Click here to read more about this horse, er, key creation of French cuisine....

Consommé Celestina al Tartufo ~ Consommé Celestine et Truffes

What does an award-winning Italian chef make for his Christmas dinner at home? Why French consomme, of course! When I left for cooking school almost 3 years ago, I sold most everything - car, furniture, etc. - and gave up/away what was left including my apartment so whenever I come back to visit, I stay with my good friends M & B. I used to work with M at a Huge Software Company down on the Peninsula and B is the award-winning chef/owner Bruno Quercini of Pane e Vino Trattoria on Union & Gough. Needless to say I eat very well when I come home. Click here to read more about the extraordinary cuisine of one of San Francisco's finest...

Manger! Boire! Vivre! ~ Eat! Drink! Live!

Wise words to live by indeed, as well as the theme for this year’s 19th Annual James Beard Foundation Holiday Auction & Dinner. French chefs from around the world were on hand for this “Celebration de la Cuisine Française” at The Essex House in New York City. Click here to feast your eyes....

The most expensive tomatoes in the world!

These lovely little red ruby cherry tomatoes (tomate cerise) from my Place Monge market cost 9 EUROS!!!!! That's about $12 give or take a dollar....basically an arm and a leg and another arm thrown in for good measure.  Approximately 42 tomates cerises, not counting the few that I ate from the market back to my apartment, comes to about 29 cents a tomato!  Is it worth it, of course!  Once in a while anyways....when you pop one of these little jewels into your mouth and bite down, the taste explodes.  It actually tastes like...oh, I don't know...a tomato! A glorious little tomato they way God intended it, not the genetically-engineered chemically-altered mutant waxed dull lifeless tomatoes with absolutely no flavor sold in the big markets. Now what to make with them?  Tomatoes this spectacular call for a special recipe....

Maybe Marcella Hazan's Acqua Pazzo ? Hmmmm......where is that recipe? Twice a year Marcella and her husband Victor teach a 1-week class at the French Culinary Institute and I assisted them in their class about a year and a half ago.


Chef Susan Lifriere, FCI & Marcella in the                       ...and Marcella, Victor & moi at the end
FCI's Culinary Ampitheatre                                                   of a very long week and still smiling!

That's another story in itself but one of the items we made was Pesce all'Acqua Pazzo or Fish in Crazy Water, cooking sea bass in cherry tomatoes and white wine.  Chef Bruno Quercini at Pane e Vino in San Francisco makes Acqua Pazzo in his Modena-built wood burning brick oven that could move a man to tears, it is so heavenly.  It's still too early to call San Francisco so I will have to defer to the grande dame of cucina italiana. 

Ah, here we go.  I brought 4 cookbooks with me to France and hers is one of them. From Marcella Cucina, her recipe calls for snapper but I prefer a thick piece of sea bass. Also, I opt out of serving it on bread, I use about half water and half white wine and when using cherry tomatoes I don't peel them!  Finally an Italian recipe :-) This should make my grandmother happy.... Mangia bene!

Pesce all'Acqua Pazzo ~ Fish Cooked in Crazy Water

1-1/2 pounds fresh, ripe tomatoes
4 cups of water (or 1/2 water 1/2 white wine)
3 large garlic cloves, peeled, sliced very thin
2 tbsp very finely chopped parsley
1/8 tsp (or to taste) chopped red chili pepper (or dried chili pepper flakes)
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2- to 2-pound red snapper, filleted with its skin left on
Salt & pepper
Optional: 4 slices of day-old or grilled sourdough bread

1. Peel the tomatoes raw and chop them roughly with all their juice and seeds. The yield should be about 2 cups.

2. Choose a saute pan in which the fish fillets can be subsequently fit flat without overlapping. Put in the water, garlic, chopped tomatoes, parsley, chili pepper, olive oil, and salt. Cover the pan, turn the heat to medium, for 45 minutes.

3. Uncover the pan, turn up the heat, and boil the liquid until it has been reduced to half its original volume.

4. Add the fish, skin facing up. Cook for 2 minutes, then gently turn it over, using two spatulas. Add a little more salt and cook for another 12 minutes or so.

5. Serve promptly over the optional bread slice.

*Recipe from MARCELLA CUCINA by Marcella Hazan (HarperCollinsPublishers; October '97)

blog-appetit ~ poireaux et st jacques

bienvenue à blog-appétit ~ ma recette avec poireaux et st jacques

Un énorme merci à Chef Patrick Chazallet et son blog-appétit, www.blog-appetit.com, de me laisser participer quand mon français soit une horreur énorme!

C'est une recette que j'ai apprise en l'école de cuisine à l'institut culinaire français mais  je l'ai changée un peu et j’ai incorporé des poireaux. Mon livre des recettes est dans une boîte à San Francisco et puisque je suis à Paris, j'ai essayé de le recréer de la mémoire quand je l’ai fait cet weekend ainsi je suis tres désolé pour les mesures moins que spécifiques.

C'est les coquilles st jacques sautées sur un lit de courgette, épinards et les poireaux avec la sauce à mangue et l’huile de cresson et les brunoises des pouvrons rouges et oranges. Il regarde beaucoup plus difficile de faire cuire que c'est lui est juste beaucoup de différents éléments qui, une fois combinés, sont tres jolie.  J’espère que vous aimez et j’espère que vous pouvez lire mon français!!! Si non, m'envoyez un email et j'ecrit en anglais :-) Pour servi 4 personnes :

-16 coquille st jacques (3½ - 4 par personne), coupe dedans à moitié en travers
-1 poivron rouge, brunoise
-1 poivron orange, brunoise
-1 poignée (cup) de feuilles de cresson
-l'huile végétale
-4 mangues
-4 cuilleres grandes de crème entière
-1 poireaux, emincée
-2 courgettes, petit julienne
-4 poignées d'épinards (épinards normaux d'utilisation, pas les feuilles de bébé ni les grandes feuilles bouclées)
-un anneau de pâtisserie de 3-4"environ x 1" ou enlèvent simplement le dessus et le bas d’un bidon de thon *bon nettoyé*

Coquilles St Jacques:
1. coupé dedans à moitié en travers, ensemble d'un plat, couverture avec le film et mis dans le réfrigérateur jusqu'à ce que prêt à faire cuire.

Les Legumes:
1. emincée la partie blanche et vert clair des poireaux. sauté jusqu'à ce que translucide mais ne le laissiez pas brun mis de côté.
2. coupez les courgettes en petites allumettes, enlevant autant du centre blanc comme possible excepté environ 1/8 inch. sauté jusqu'à ce que cuit mais ne le laissiez pas brun. mis de côté.
3. enlevez les tiges et le sauté jusqu'à ce que fané enlèvent et mettent de côté.

La Sauce Mangue:
1. Épluchez la mangue et coupez la chair de mangue du puits. coupe de mine en cubes et la chaleur très basse d'excédent de cuisinier dans une casserole de sauté ne la laissent pas brunir ou elle décolorera la sauce. Quand elle est douce et cuite, mettez les mangues dans un processeur, mélangeur, ou utilisez un mélangeur d'immersion pour mettre en purée. La contrainte par une chinoise fine-le devrait être complètement lisse sans des fibres. Ajoutez la crème entiere lentement jusqu'à ce que l'uniformité désirée soit atteinte

L’huile de Cresson:
1. Mettez 1 tasse (cup) d'huile végétale (ou d'huile d'olive très légère) dans une sauteuse. ajoutent une demi-tasse (½ cup) des feuilles de cresson. Bruiller pour un moment et immediament mettre le feu très bas pendant 15-20 minutes. Mélange et contrainte. Mettez de côté et laissez froid

Garniture des Poivrons:
1. Coupez un poivre rouge et orange en brunoises. Sauté sur la basse chaleur en huile végétale jusqu'à ce que juste cuit mais ne laissiez pas le brun de poivres. mettre de côté sur la serviette de papier pour absorber l'huile.

Pour Servir:
1. Les poireaux, la courgette, et les épinards cuits ensemble dans une casserole de sauté et réchauffent complètement.
2. Placez l'anneau au centre du plat et mettrez de légumes. emballez-le dedans de sorte qu'il garde la forme quand l'anneau est enlevé.
3. Sauté les coquilles st jacques et la mettrez dans une spirale sur les légumes.
4. Tandis que les coquilles st jacques font cuire, mettrez la sauce à mangue autour des légumes
5. Mettrez soigneusement l'huile de cresson autour de l'extérieur du dessus de la cuvette
6. Mettrez une cuillère grosse des poivrons brunoises sure les coquilles et en arrosent autour de la sauce.

Bon appétit!  Click below for the English version....