melting your mouth

Can you believe it? I’m actually on time for a Whisk Wednesday’s event! It’s amazing. (Of course, I’m also late for Daring Bakers, but that’s another story.) This week’s assignment was a Lamb Stew with Spring Vegetables. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find lamb except for chops, which I didn’t want to waste on stew, so I used stew beef instead. I took a fair amount of liberties with this one — I used rosemary instead of thyme, and changed the vegetables around a bit. (I should’ve also included pearl onions and green beans, but I left those out, and added a parsnip.) Also, I was supposed to cook each kind of vegetable (carrots, turnips, onions) in its own pot, but I didn’t have enough saucepans — and wouldn’t have wanted to clean them if I had — so I cooked them all together. I actually think to make it even easier they could’ve been just added to the stew directly, but maybe they would’ve gotten too soft, I don’t know.

I also had trouble reading the recipe, which I seem to be doing a lot of lately. More on that when I get my Daring Bakers post up. Anyway, it said to drain the potatoes before adding them, but I thought it was saying to drain the lamb. I thought it seemed strange to drain the liquid out of a stew, but figured that the folks at LCB probably know better than I, so I dutifully drained it. Then, reading again later, I realized the ambiguity, and decided I should’ve drained the potatoes and not the stew. Luckily, I had saved the broth and added it back in later, but that’s why my pictures seem to have a bit less liquid in them than they should.

Anyway, despite all the changes and screw ups, this turned out delicious. The meat had a great flavor from simmering in the water with tomatoes and especially picked up the taste of the rosemary. Since it actually cooled of this week, this was a great dinner. It also could be simplified quite easily without, I expect, losing much flavor, so that this might actually start making regular appearances at our house!

As always, if you want the recipe, check out the Le Cordon Bleu at Home book, though you can see the basics below, after the jump. And look to see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group did, on the blogroll to the right. (more…)

Well, I’m still waaayyy behind on Whisk Wednesdays, but I’m finally trying to do some catching up and posts some of the ones I’ve cooked but haven’t written up. This soup was supposed to be up a couple weeks ago, when we were still on our soup unit. Le Cordon Bleu tells us that “Madrilene” — which means Madrid-style — can be used for any dish containing tomatoes, but it is particularly appropriate for this consumme in the golden and red colors of the Spanish flag. I really enjoyed this soup since it was pretty hot when we made it, and this cold soup was very refreshing. I was also pleasantly surprised at how flavorful the broth was. I had a fair amount leftover that I froze, planning to use it at some point in place of stock.

The way this was cooked was also very interesting. You add the meat, vegetables, and egg whites to the chicken broth, and after simmering for a while they form a kind of crust on top, which is supposed to help filter out the impurities and make a perfectly clear broth (which is then additionally strained to make it even clearer). If you want some more details about how this was made, you can look a the pictures below, and of course for the recipe, get a copy of Le Cordon Bleu at Home. And as always, don’t forget to check out the results of the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group!

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So I only joined this group three weeks ago, and I’ve already screwed up three times. First I missed an assignment — two weeks ago’s Julienne Darblay, a creamed leek and potato soup. The next week, I actually made the Veloute Agnes Sorel on time, but I obviously didn’t get it posted last Wednesday. And now this week, I’ve missed another assignment, the Bisque de Langoustines. Hopefully I’ll do better from here on out. I think I actually have a reasonable excuse this time — July has been pretty busy anyway, and last Wednesday Matt and I took a redeye to New York for my cousin’s wedding Saturday, then flew from NYC to Raleigh, NC on Sunday for another cousin’s wedding (which I was in) on Sunday night, and then back to California on Monday. So, not a lot of time for cooking this weekend!

Anyway, here’s my Veloute Agnes Sorel, a cream of chicken soup, a week late, as I continue to cook through some version of the Cordon Bleu cooking school curriculum along with the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group. If you want the recipe, I highly recommend buying the book, Le Cordon Bleu at Home. But here’s the gist of it, also in pictures below: I made stock from chicken, carrots, onion, and a bouquet garni, and cooked some mushrooms in butter. I added egg yolks and cream to some of the stock to make it creamy, and then added chicken, mushrooms, and ham to the base. I wasn’t so sure how the ham would be, but it actually gave the soup a really nice, kind of smoky flavor, much more interesting than normal cream of chicken soup. I know this is only my second recipe from this cookbook, but so far I’m pretty impressed with the recipes, though everything sure does seem to require a bunch of dishes!

So in order to balance out my recent attempt at cooking more simply, I decided to join another blogging event! This one is hosted by Shari at Whisk and is called Whisk Wednesdays. I’m joining late, but they have been cooking through the lessons in Le Cordon Bleu at Home, which includes an entire cooking school curriculum. As I said, I’ve come in several lessons into the process, so I may also be playing catch-up while I try to keep up with the recipes everyone else is on as well.

They’ve just started a new chapter on soups, and this week’s “assignment” was Billy Bi, or Mussel Soup. I’m not sharing the recipe here; for that you’ll have to buy the book. (Mine’s still in the mail, by the way, so thanks go to Kayte for typing up the recipe for me while I wait.) The pictures below give you an idea of what the process of making this soup was like. (Unfortunately, my camera battery died as I was downloading the picture of the finished soup, so I’ll fill that in tomorrow)

I will say, the final product was absolutely delicious. The soup was rich, but somehow not overly heavy at the same time. It was creamy, but still pretty thin, so even though it’s summertime, it wasn’t too heavy to eat. The mussels are cooked in the broth, and then some of them are simmered further to flavor the broth (but removed since the meat is overcooked), helping to give the soup it’s rich flavor. I hope we have this much success every week!

Now, go to Shari’s list and check out how everyone else fared!

As Mary pointed out previously, I have had to take off my Sous Chef badge and take the helm for the next couple of weeks. Fortunately for you that means a few articles may yet get written. Unfortunately for you I am not as practiced as Mary in the art of cooking or the art of writing. So bear with me as at least I do in fact know how to cook and I am mostly using her recipes and guidance.

This chili is a wonderful warm and rich comfort food. I am sure we can learn several more recipes from the native Californians here, as I hear it is quite good. This recipe was perfect for me to cook this past week as it is really simple and relatively easy to clean up. Only two items that didn’t go in the dishwasher was the cast iron skillet used for the cornbread and the nonstick pan I used to brown the ground beef in. The reason it was so easy?…it is made the night before and assembled in a crockpot. Yes of you course you are smarter than me!, as I am sure that is not much of a novel idea.

Before we get going a couple of suggestions. First off we typically make this the night before and put in the refrigerator. If you like it spicy feel free to add more chili powder, the original recipe had 3 T. Be creative and find a topping that suits you. Since we weren’t worried about keeping it remotely healthy we added sour cream and cheese. If I weren’t too lazy I may have added some green onions. Walk it off, either after dinner or the next day. Thats about it, here we go.

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