New Years Eve 2007

Butter-Poached Maine Lobster with Leeks, Pommes Maxim, and a Red Beet Essence
Originally uploaded by elfed.

Yes, I spent my New Years Eve cooking crap I cannot eat. I just don't like lobster, but the boys do, so this one was for them.

Butter-Poached Maine Lobster with Leeks, Pommes Maxim, and a Red Beet Essence from Thomas Keller's French Laundry cookbook. And a much better blogger than I am has already run down the steps to this one, so go read the French Laundry At Home.

The Tru Dinner

Comments will be added later, but I wanted to at least get these out as it's been months since the dinner actually happened!

We wanted to do a full dinner from Tru using recipes from Rick Tramonto's book, Tru: A Cookbook from the Legendary Chicago Restaurant. The menu for the evening was:

Prosciutto di Parma with Tricolor Melon and Mascarpone

Caramel Taffy Apple Foie Gras with Lavender Salad
and Green Apple Chips

Salad of Baby Vegetables and Greens

Arctic Char Poached in Duck Fat with Spinach Almond Puree

Heirloom Tomato Water

Duet of Venison with Rutabaga Mash

Chocolate Malted Semifreddo with Chocolate-Bergamot Paint

We had my cousin Patrick and his family over and my brother Dan with his family made it for dessert and leftovers. Del had already eaten their foie gras and fish portions by then! The prosciutto dish tasted nice but was messy and hard to eat, everything else was wonderful, especially the fish and the foie. Prep was not too bad, I started a week or so early and had time to throw things together or heat them up in the kitchen between courses. We did wine pairings as suggested in the book. I'll add more comments and sources to specific dishes later, but here are the photos:

The above are prep shots, the one to the right shows the venison bones ready to roast for stock.



the foie!!!!!


Arctic Char poached in duck fat. This was absolutely amazing! We got the fish online from Gortons Seafood, which was really reasonably priced.




The duet of Venison.









The dessert....chocolate malted semi-freddo with chocolate bergamot paint. This recipe made a ton of leftover semi-freddo which was marvelous. It really tasted much better than the photo looks!





more to come..............

Tilapia with curried veg

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Originally uploaded by elfed.

Long beans, eggplant and scallions sauteed with coconut milk and curry paste. Served with pan fried tilapia.

Lamb chops

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Originally uploaded by elfed.

Lamb chops marinated in rosemary and garlic, served with a port wine/fig reduction flavored with chipotle and espresso

Quick & Easy - Gordon Ramsay's Sunday Lunch

Not quite as exciting as the last one, but serviceable. Sunday Lunch is divided into meal sections. Each section has a full meal including dessert. Quick & Easy consists of:

Vine tomato & bread salad
Italian sausage with lentil
Lemon posset

We went to the farmers market for heirloom tomatos which worked out really nicely. The sausages came from Frabonis. The salad was great and we'll definitely do it again - heirloom tomatos, sliced red onions, lime juice, olive oil, parsley and bite size pieces of torn bread. I used a sourdough which I toasted because it was supposed to be stale bread.

There were a LOT of lentils. I cut the recipe in half and we still have enough leftover for four people. They were good, nothing really to rave about, but they did work nicely with the sausage. And Lili liked them - I think that was the only part she ate.

The lemon posset was a little too heavy for summer - or for any time really - a teeny little bite was nice, but overall the cream was way too much. These were just boiled double cream, sugar and lemon juice. I'm not sure how you would thin it down. Bill put it in the iSi whipper which helped a bit - maybe I'll try making ice cream out of it next time.

Tonight is Skate Grenobloise from Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles cookbook, but I probably won't write that one up because I do it all the time.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten

Tonight was just a regular dinner night, but I figured I'd try a couple of easy ones from Jean-Georges - Cooking at home with a four star chef. They really were easy, I got home at 4ish, got the mail done, got Lili settled, etc. , started prep at about 5:15 and we were actually eating at 6:10!! I made Pork in Caramel Sauce, which was a sliced pork tenderloin with a nam pla and caramel sauce - really easy, super fast and just gorgeous. Del ate three pieces (I doubled the recipe). Bill said it needed lemongrass foam - we're growing a lot of lemongrass right now because it keeps mosquitos away. No leftovers on this one and definitely something I'll do again.

I had some cioggia beets and some baby turnips so I also made his Caramelized Beets and Turnips - another super easy great tasting dish - also a keeper.

For dessert I did the Warm, Soft Chocolate Cake. This didn't go quite so well. My oven usually runs hot, so I stuck to the short end of the timing on these and it definitely wasn't quite enough. The kids said they tasted good, but it was really runny. Lili had fun with hers, she's having a bath right now to finish it off. Will have to try them again at a longer cook time.

I guess I really should start taking pictures, the pork was beautiful, and there's nothing left of it now....

Mediterranean flavors - Sunday Lunch by Gordon Ramsay

O.k., Gordon Ramsay rocks my world, and Lili loves him too - she sings along with the F word these and "reads" his cookbooks. This was just a perfect meal. It's from Sunday Lunch, which I don't believe has been released in the US yet, I have the UK version, so you have to convert a little on measurements and degrees. I bought it on ebay, for some asinine reason, you can't get UK cookbooks on Amazon US. So, I have no link, but really, it's a great book, google it!

Sunday Lunch features entire meals - starter, main, veg, starch and dessert. The starter for this one was scallops with a cauliflower puree. We skipped this because, well, we live in SC Wisconsin. Scallops here taste like dust - some restaurants can seem to get good ones, but everything I've ever tried from a local grocery store or even a nice seafood shop is just icky.

The main is an herb crusted rack of lamb. I couldn't get a rack, so I made do with individual chops from Columbus Discovery Farm (unfortunately they don't have a website - I do have an e-mail address and they're at the Sun Prairie Farmers Market on Saturdays). The herb crust is a sort of gremolata, parsley, cilantro, thyme, rosemary, bread crumbs and parmesan - there was about half a batch left over after making the chops, but I'm sure I can find something to use it on, it was wonderful.

The potatos are layered with sauteed onions and garlic and cooked in a seasoned chicken broth. The veg was zucchini and cherry tomatoes (I used baby romas) sauteed with a bit of balsamic and olive oil. Dessert was a bread pudding with raisins and dried cranberries, apricot glaze and Cointreau - really simple and very good. Definitely a keeper.