Cucina Testa Rossa

Thanksgiving ... Covid-style

Last fall, I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for 150 people in a tiny Parisian restaurant with no oven. They have a 10-year-old portable convection oven that was dusted off once a year and I prayed to the French convection oven gods that it still worked. We started with butternut squash soup followed by a spinach-pecan-cranberry salad tossed in a warm mustard vinaigrette. Mashed sweet potatoes and regular butter-laden mashed potatoes were a must for the homesick Americans and green beans with blue cheese crumble and sliced toasted almonds filled out the plate. Dessert was individual pumpkin pies and the star of the dinner – the turkey – was brined the day before then poached to perfection.

But this year will be a much more petite Thanksgiving here in the States where it’s usually all about family, football and food. So how to do that in our new (ab)normal of a Covid world? If it’s only you this year or one or two friends or family, no need to parade out the 25-pound butterball, or fire up 25 sides and 8 different pies. For a smaller feast, a very simple way to get your turkey fix and still have a few leftovers is to poach a few-pound turkey breast. It’s fast, easy and delicious.

First, get festive! Decorate your table gourd-eously with an edible centerpiece of small pumpkins, squash, pomegranates, fall leaves from the garden and candles. Print out individual menus – make them formal or funny. Crank up your favorite festive playlist and celebrate the many things we have to be grateful for this year.

With Zoom being our new portal into our home, an easy way to feel connected is to corral friends and family to agree to a time, Zoom in early or as often as you’d like and spend the day cooking and eating together virtually. You might not be able to toss around the ol’ pigskin but you can make fun bets on the various outcomes of the game du jour.  Share the recipes with everyone, decide on wines or other beverages, designate a time to toast and dine. Set a place for your laptop at the table so you’ll all feel as connected as possible. Just seeing faces and hearing voices is enough to fill our souls and our bellies. Santé!

Brine Recipe

A chef’s best kept secret to juicy poultry is simple - brine! It's very easy, requiring no special equipment other than a large sealable plastic bag or container. Brining is a popular technique that results in the juiciest turkey you’ve ever had!

• 1 cup boiling water
• ½ cup coarse kosher salt
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 gallon cold water
• 1 head garlic, cloves separated and peeled
• 4 sprigs rosemary
• 6 bay leaves
• 1 tablespoon black peppercorns
• 1 container or resealable ziplock bag

1- Bring the water to a boil. Dissolve salt and sugar in the boiling water. Let it come to room temperature.

2- Add it to the cold water and add garlic, rosemary, bay leaves and peppercorns and stir to combine.

3- Chill brine completely in the refrigerator before adding poultry.

4- Place your poultry in the container, cover with the brine – add more water if needed. It’s important that the turkey be completely submerged. Place the container or bag in the refrigerator for 5 to 8 hours. Discard the brine when you’re done.

Poached Turkey Breast Recipe

• 1 3-lb turkey breast, room temperature
• 4 ounces butter, softened
• 1 shallot, finely chopped
• ½ teaspoon garlic powder
• ½ teaspoon onion powder
• ½ teaspoon paprika
• ¼ teaspoon sea salt
• ½ teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 5 thyme sprigs
• ¼ cup dry white wine
• ¼ cup broth
• 1 large sheet parchment paper

1- Turn oven to 350F

2- Combine butter, shallots, spices and slather the chicken breast on both sides

3- Place on one side of the parchment paper and top with thyme sprigs, wrap up into a pouch leaving a small space to pour in the liquid.

4- Add the wine and broth and seal the pouch

5- Place in a roasting pan or sheet pan with sides and place in the oven.

6- Roast for 1 hour and check with an instant-read meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the breast directly through the parchment paper. It should read 165F. Continue to check every 10-15 minutes until it reads 165F. Let the turkey breast rest 15 minutes before slicing and serving.

Heureux Merci Donnant! Happy Thanksgiving! et Bon Appetit! 

A few menu ideas .... this one a little more fun ...

      ~~~~~ or a little more formal~~~~~

Liberté, égalité, fraternité! Joyeux quatorze juillet!

Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé!

Red grape clusters dangling from cafes, wine shops, and awnings across France, a sure sign that it's Beaujolais Nouveau time again. The ubiquitous Georges Deboeuf label and Cafe de la Comedie at the Louvre/Place Colette.

Thursday, November 19, the third Thursday of November, is the official release date of this festive, fruity red wine that celebrates the end of the harvest and gives a preview of this year’s vintage.

According to French law, Beaujolais Nouveau, made from 100 percent Gamay grapes, is released at one minute past midnight on every third Thursday of November. This decades-old tradition is celebrated worldwide with creative “Beaujolais Nouveau Est Arrivé!” events, heralding the wine’s arrival.
 
This year is truly a reason to celebrate. Georges Duboeuf, who single-handedly created this phenomenon, has proclaimed this year’s harvest as “the best of the last 50 years.”

Caveat: This is a re-re-regift from the past few years with the date below updated....

Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé! The New Beaujolais has arrived! In a rare display of marketing acumen, a practice normally scorned and reviled throughout French vineyards, the Beaujolais producers created not only an event but a tradition that has now permeated even the smallest wine shops around the world. What began as a local celebration of the yearly release is now a global phenomenon, with French decree that the release of Beaujolais Nouveau is to be no earlier than midnight on the third Thursday of November.

So tomorrow at 12:01 a.m. November 19, 2009, over a million cases of Beaujolais Nouveau will begin their journey to all corners of the world via Fedex, La Poste, Vespas, wheelbarrows, rickshaws, camels, and any other mode of transportation imaginable. With over 120 million bottles produced, over half will be consumed almost immediately. And with the increasingly elaborate methods of wine production, it’s remarkable that barely a month earlier the wine was still encased in grapes. A quick harvest, swift fermentation and even faster bottling, badda-bing-badda-boom!, it is ready to ship on the third Thursday of every November! The Gamay grapes are pressed within a few days of picking, thus eliminating the astringent tannins normally attributed to red wines, so Beaujolais is much lighter, fruity and tres easy to drink. To me it tastes like Kool-Aid but then again my wine knowledge would fit in a thimble...so enjoy! Cheers!

Thanksgiving Round-up Re-gift

Hey Everyone - My apologies for once again taking the lazy route this year but haven't been able to get my act together. Quelle surprise! So yes, I am committing that heinous act of re-gifting. Now before you judge me and hurl culinary insults my way, my friend's sister gave her used potholders one Christmas, I kid you not!, so re-gifting a few recipes can be all that bad... Here are some Thanksgiving ideas from the past few years. Don't miss the spice bread and foie gras stuffed chapon recipe and please don't torque the turkey like I did 2 years ago... Happy Thanksgiving and Bon Appetit! Laura

[November 2007] Putting together a menu is always the hardest part for me - I struggle, agonize, bemoan my fate - so if you don't want to suffer the same, here are some ideas from the Ghosts of Thanksgiving Past...

How *Not* to Cook a Turkey 12/2/06

Thanksgiving in Paris, Trois Fois (Three Times) 11/27/05

Thanksgiving Recipes v4.0 ~ Stuffed! 11/20/06

Thanksgiving Recipes v3.0 ~ Michael Chiarello 11/19/06

Thanksgiving Recipes v2.0 ~ Deja Vu 11/18/06

Thanksgiving Recipes v1.0 ~ Williams-Sonoma 11/17/06

And this year, I'm in San Francisco cooking with my Paris flatmates. Here's the menu below... Whether it actually ends up being this will be wholely determined by how much champagne we consume while cooking and if certain people went out the night before and decided to clean the oven at 4am...but I digress... We decided on a capon since I torqued the turkey last year. Cross your fingers and toes and wings and thighs for me!
thanksgiving 2008
chez john et pierre
----
rose champagne
smoked salmon on brioche with lemon creme fraiche
toasts with arugula, proscuitto, chevre
----
burgundy pinot noir
chapon stuffed with foie gras, sauteed trumpet mushrooms, cognac
cornbread stuffing with dried cranberries, apricots
roasted asparagus sliced fennel, beets, oranges with a raspberry vinaigrette
----
sauterne (or maybe back to champagne?)
pears poached in red wine on creme anglaise drizzled with chocolate

Bon appetit! L

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!

CDG to SFO in 37 Hours....

Champs Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe ~ Paris, December 2007

Copied from an email I sent my flatmates in Paris a few days after arriving back in San Francisco....

"...I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever fly through Washington DC/Dulles again. Ever, ever, ever! Did I say ever? NEVER!

To start, we were late leaving CDG because of a SUSPICIOUS BLUE BAG left in the terminal. Good thing I got there early because it took me almost and hour and a half to get to the gate. The airport was mobbed with people of all shapes and sizes and colors in various forms of ornate ethnic clothes, some bright, some subdued, all in need of washing. The line to check in at the gate was about 5 people deep and a veritable mosh pit. Why is it that the check in desk at Lufthansa is always calm, serene, and orderly while chaos reigns at United? Anyways, after answering various and inane questions about the whereabouts of my luggage and the content within, I made it to the check-in counter and was helped by an absolutely delightful, kind woman. WHEW! I had upgraded the night before, as you know, to Washington but was wait listed from Washington to SFO however she said, "It looked very good".

Giddily anticipating my complimentary business class cocktail, I then proceeded to the longest passport control line I'd ever seen. It snaked along the wall nearly the entire circumference of the airport. While waiting in line for nearly an HOUR, we kept hearing announcements asking the owner of a SUSPICIOUS BLUE BAG left in the terminal to come get it. I kept hearing it as I marched through passport control and as I was headed to the gate I heard a BOOM! They BLEW UP THE BAG! They didn't remove it, inspect it, x-ray it nor seal it. No. They BLEW IT UP! In the terminal! I ran for the Red Carpet Club, slammed back a glass of champagne and headed for the gate...

Click below to continue reading this explosive travel tale -->

City of Lights

Hotel Plaza Athenee ~ Paris, December 2007

National Indie Excellence 2007 Book Awards Finalist!!!

I was stunned to see an email in my inbox that read: "You are an Indie Excellence Book Award Finalist!" Spam most likely was my first thought. Then....yikes! Moi? My humble little livre (book), My Keyboard for a Cutting Board ~ Adventures in a French Kitchen v1.0, made it to the finals! Oooh la la! Never mind I lost out to the Junior Leaguers.... "I'm just happy to be nominated", to quote Susan Lucci. Click here to see the press release and listing of finalists and winners.

And for more information on my book, click here.

Spring in Paris!

Hi Everyone! Thank you all for being so patient with me the past few months. I had emergency surgery so have been out of touch for a while but am recovering well, in spite of a setback here and there, but I promise I will get y'all up to speed on the past few months.

It is absolutely GLORIOUS here in Paris. I don't remember a spring this spectacular in the past 3 years. Today it was 80F degrees and each day has been more beautiful than the last. The entire city is a-bloom, an exploding rainbow of petals and leaves and everyone is outside soaking up, embracing, clutching the sunshine. This picture of Notre Dame I took on Easter Sunday walking home along the Seine after Easter mass at the American Cathedral. It was one of those days that makes you glad to be alive.

Happy Spring! :)

Dorie Greenspan ~ Live and Online in Paris

Some of my most treasured memories in Paris are of time spent over a chocolate chaud or a vin chaud or an impromptu walk around the 6th with Dorie Greenspan. She knows everyone. Really. Everyone. It's amazing. And very fun. I try to stay in her wake, hoping some of her magical fairy dust will float back onto me. She tells me stories after stories after stories of the richest, most delightful experiences, experiences with some of the industry luminaries. Over a delicious lunch at Le Comptoir this week, Dorie shared more of her fascinating life with me. I can't begin to convey them with the humor and joy that she did but I hope they at least bring a smile to your face and a warmth to your heart as they did to mine. Click here to read the whole story...