melting your mouth

For this week’s Whisk Wednesdays post, it’s the last in our series on frying and sauteing, and it forced me to finally conquer my fear of deep frying. I almost backed out on this one. I’ve never tried deep frying, as I don’t have a fryer or a splatter screen or anything, and I’ve been sure I would splash hot oil all over myself and get a terrible burn. So I’m pretty proud of myself for trying this one — and pretty pleased with how it turned out. These were really delicious, and definitely worth making again!

We made these on a weeknight, so I wasn’t able to take my usual mise-en-place pictures. But here’s a summary of what we did. The shrimp were first marinated in olive oil, lemon juice, parsley, and salt and pepper. This definitely gave them more flavor than they would’ve if they were directly battered and fried. While the shrimp marinated, I made the batter. It included equal parts all purpose and potato flour (1 1/4 c each) and 1 T baking powder, combined with 3 T olive oil, salt, and 1 c cold water. These were combined, drizzled with oil to keep a crust from forming, and let rest for a while as the shrimp continued to marinate.

Right before getting ready to fry, I folded 3 beaten egg whites into the batter (which was more like dough until adding the egg whites). I think these helped to really lighten up the coating on the shrimp. The shrimp were then dipped in the batter and deep fried in 350 F oil.

I don’t know if it was the lightened batter, or the marinade, or what, but these came out deliciously crispy but not too greasy, despite all that oil. It reminded me a little bit of a tempura batter, especially since it seemed to kind of puff up as the shrimp cooked. In fact, since we had a bunch of extra batter, I ended up frying everything I could think of — some potato slices left over from the delicious potato pizza we had made again, and some mushrooms. The vegetables were almost as good as the shrimp. Overall, I’m really glad I decided to tackle deep frying — this cookbook curriculum is really teaching me new and useful skills, and getting me outside my comfort zone, in a good way!

Be sure to check out how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared — on the blogroll on the right. (Note: I’m a couple weeks behind, so if you check them out, they’re probably making something other than these shrimp.)

Can you believe it? I’m actually on time for a Whisk Wednesdays post! We’ve now moved on to a section on frying/sautéing. I think last week was the first time I intentionally decided to skip a recipe — we were supposed to make deep fried whiting, and I’m just terrified of deep frying. I don’t have a deep fryer or a scatterscreen, and I just know I will end up with hot oil all over myself and my kitchen. (I meant to post one of my backlog of cooked-but-not-up-on-the-blog-assignments, but as seems to be happening a lot lately, things got away from me.) Anyway, I’m glad to be back this week for Sole Belle Meunière.

According to Le Cordon Bleu at Home, this translates literally to “sole cooked the way the beautiful miller’s wife cooks it,” which basically means floured and fried. It’s served with sautéed mushrooms, and a nut-brown butter sauce, with a bit of lemon juice added to the sauce to perk it up.

I think this was by far the fastest LCB recipe I’ve made yet, and I think I only slightly cheated by using one pan! (Of course, it was shortened also by the fact that I bought sole fillets instead of buying whole sole — which I don’t think I could’ve found anyway — and filleting it myself.) The fish was pretty simple, but it got a nice crispy crust from the flour, and of course, all the butter and the light lemony-ness added to it. The brown butter sauce and sautéed mushrooms made this feel fancy, but it was actually a pretty quick meal — a great way to have a nice meal during the week and still sit down to the table before 9. (Ok, I admit we barely made that cutoff tonight but still — you get the idea.)

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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!