Week 2: Asparagus and Robiola risotto.

For week 2 of my cooking project, I made an asparagus risotto with a dollop of Robiola cheese in the middle. This dish was inspired by a risotto we had at Beretta. It's been on our to-do list for quite a while, waiting until spring when asparagus would come back in season. Since asparagus has started to show up on menus again, I decided it was time to make it.

Robiola is not something I've seen at the corner stores, so I figured I'd have to do a little hunting for it. Fortunately, they had some at our closest cheese shop, the 24th Street Cheese Company. They're a short walk away and have a good selection of cheeses. The Robiola turned out to be a little more expensive than I expected, but once I got it home and sampled it, I decided it was worth the price. Yes, it smells slightly of gym socks, but it's incredibly rich, creamy, and tangy.

Although I improvised the recipe, I did take a look at one in Boulud's book. He took asparagus risotto in a slightly different direction, inflecting it with lemon and lime juice, but I did follow his suggestion on how to cook and introduce the asparagus to the dish – peeled, blanched, and warmed in butter. My educated guess would have been to blanch them and add them to the risotto for the last 2 minutes of cooking, but you can't go wrong with butter. My changes included shortening the blanching time, because I had skinny asparagus, and cutting the stems on the bias rather than into coins to give them a fun shape. And I'm still wondering if I should have caramelized them in a hot skillet instead just reheating them in butter.

For the risotto itself, I used shallots and arborio, deglazed with dry vermouth, and cooked with court bouillon. I finished it with parmesan and a squeeze of lemon juice. At Emily's suggestion, I also mixed in a little of the Robiola. Then I added the reheated asparagus and plated it with a dollop of Robiola in the middle.

We were very happy with the results, but I think I'd add a bit more asparagus next time. We've got more Robiola, despite my snacking, so we'll be making another batch soon.

Week 1: Lamb and Beans

Sometime last week, Emily decided that I should start cooking a new dish every weekend. Since both my to-do list and my cookbook collection have been growing way too fast, I agreed. Last weekend we had our first installment.

After a busy week at work, I didn't really put much effort into research. One morning I flagged a bunch of recipes in Michael Symon's book, and Emily followed up with a bunch in the Café Boulud Cookbook. I flipped through her choices and settled on a "Lamb Haricots" dish from the Café Boulud book. I like lamb and beans, and Emily doesn't usually go for stewed or braised dishes, so I thought I'd give it a try.

I was a little uncomfortable with the recipe after I started putting it together. It seemed to call for way too much liquid: 10 cups of liquid for 1 cup of soaked, dried beans, double-sealed in pot. Yet the instructions mention the possibility of needing more liquid. Also, the vegetables were to be cut in large chunks, but there was no mention of either removing or plating them.

After almost two hours in the oven, I uncovered the dish, hoping to reduce the liquid a little. At about the two hour mark, I ended up pulling the lamb; it was super tender, and I didn't want it to fall apart. The beans weren't done, so I gave them another 30–45 minutes. I still wasn't happy with the beans, but the broth was good. At this point it was getting late, so I reheated the lamb in the broth and plated.

So I fished out some beans, strained on some of the broth, added a few chunks of lamb, and garnished with parsley. I also strained some broth on top of the lamb, but it dried out again by the time this picture was taken.

In the end, the broth was really good, the beans were just short of being done to my taste, and the flavor didn't seem to penetrate the lamb very well. For leftovers I added bacon, broke up the lamb, and cooked it for another 30–45 minutes. The leftovers were decent, but the beans were still not quite right.

In the end, I have much better uses for lamb shoulder, so I doubt I will make this again.

Valentine's Day 2010

For Valentine's Day, in lieu of going out to a crowded restaurant, we like to stay in and have a fancy dinner at home. It's the one time of year when I take the time to do excessively fancy dishes that just aren't practical to do every day at home. Typically, Emily will pick out a fancy dessert that reminds me that I am not a pastry chef, and we come up with a couple of savory courses to go with it. The meal usually includes "Oysters and Pearls" from the French Laundry Cookbook and an entrée.

This year I went a little overboard and spent most of the weekend cooking.

On Sunday morning, I made macarons as a surprise for Emily. I used the recipe from the Bouchon Cookbook for the cookies and filled them with the chocolate/caramel buttercream from our dessert. The dough spread a little, yielding larger cookies, but I think they turned out well for a first attempt. (The buttercream was a little loose too, making them messy to eat at room temperature.)

As an amuse bouche, I also made a small (1-egg) batch of gougères—cheese puffs made with Comté cheese. I wasn't planning on making them, but they're pretty easy to throw together and have been on my to-do list forever. They turned out fairly well but were a little denser than I'd like. I think the dough needed a little more egg and some tweaks to the cooking time.

For an appetizer, we decided it was about time to try making the Salmon Cornets from the French Laundry Cookbook. They're adorable little savory "ice cream" cones filled with a red onion crème fraîche (French sour cream) and topped with salmon tartare.

It's a great dish, but people on the internet reported having a lot of trouble making it. The tricky part is making the cones themselves. You bake 4" diameter disks of batter in a 400˚ oven until they are just set. Then pull the sheet pan out a little, flip over disks of molten batter, wrap them around conical molds, and finish baking then until they set. To avoid burning myself, I did most of the work with a mini offset spatula. However, I found that I needed to use my fingers to get the disk wrapped around the cone.

The results were worth the effort; it was my favorite dish of the night.

Next, I made our traditional Oysters and Pearls. This year it was good but not as good as previous years. The base was not thick enough, so the oysters sank in, instead of resting on top. (I had extra oysters and managed to get Emily's dish photo-ready by resting a second pair of oysters on top of the first.)

The base is a mixture of pearl tapioca, a savory sabayon (foamy cooked egg yolks), crème fraîche, and whipped cream. On top are two oysters, some caviar, and a foamy beurre blanc containing butter, shallots, chives, vermouth, vinegar, and oyster juice.

Our main course was another dish from the French Laundry Cookbook: a butter-poached lobster with pommes Maxim (crisp sheets of potato), leeks, and beet essence. Keller likes to steep lobster in hot water for a few minutes to remove the meat and then poach it to order in beurre monté. Beurre monté is essentially a bunch of butter that has been slowly whisked into a tiny bit of water. It is slightly tricky to work with, because it will separate if it gets too hot or too cold.

The pommes Maxim are thinly sliced potatoes that have been coated in clarified butter and baked into a thin, crisp sheet. The result is similar to a solid sheet of buttery potato chip, but I didn't quite get it right. The edges were rather dark but crisp, and the middle was a little leathery. It didn't crisp up right. I think I needed to dry the potato slices and back off on the butter. Nonetheless, I made extra and managed to get some decent pieces from the edge.

The beet reduction was tasty: beet juice reduced to a syrup, with some beurre monté and a splash of red wine vinegar whisked in. The vinegar complemented the sweetness of the beets, and the butter added a nice richness. On top of the sauce was a mixture of leeks, tomato diamonds (Keller cuts tomatoes into little diamonds), and "brunoise"—tiny cubes of carrot, parsnip, and leek greens. The brunoise mixture appears in a lot of French Laundry dishes. This was topped with half of a tail, a claw, and a shard of potato.

Emily chose the "Vanilla Fleur de Sel, Caramel and Chocolate Dobos Torte" from Cannelle et Vanille for dessert. It's a thin sponge cake layered with vanilla fleur de sel, chocolate, and caramel buttercream, topped with milk chocolate chantilly and caramel decorations. The torte itself wasn't terribly difficult, although it did take me a few hours on Saturday to put together.

Pastry is a bit outside my comfort zone, and Emily always finds something challenging for Valentine's Day. Two years ago, it was an Elizabeth Falkner recipe with a dozen components that I had to adjust for her allergies. Last year, it was a layered dessert, also from Cannelle et Vanille, with tempered white chocolate wrapped around it.

The real challenge for me this time was trying to form the caramel rings. The ingredient list for that recipe reads, "sugar." The rest is technique, which I don't have. Working with molten sugar makes me nervous, because it's tricky to work with and can cause severe burns. I carefully melted sugar in a pan until it was liquid and caramelized, then shocked the pan in an ice bath to lower the temperature, trying to get the sugar to just the right consistency so I could drizzle a ring of sugar around a greased metal measuring cup. If it's too hot, it pours too quickly and comes off as you get to the bottom side. If it's too cold, it seems to pour too thickly. Finally, I tried to remove the sugar from the form without mangling or breaking it. It took a lot of tries and some reheating and cooling of the pan, but I finally got a few acceptable rings. (I also got a pan with 1/4" of rock-hard caramel in the bottom.)

Rosemary and Ricotta Tart

This tart was inspired by a dessert we had at Contigo in San Francisco. I based the filling on a ricotta/pine nut tart found in Mario Batali's book, Molto Italiano, and the crust is from Michael Ruhlman's book, Ratio.

If you can't find a meyer lemon, use half of a normal lemon. I used Bellwether Farms sheep's milk ricotta, but a cow-milk ricotta would work too.

This is best made in a 9" tart pan, but a pie tin will do. If you use a pie tin, the filling will come up halfway. After it is done baking, carefully trim the crust to be level with the filling. If you're feeling particularly lazy, you could use a store-bought pie or tart crust.

Crust

9 oz All purpose flour (a scant 2 cups)

6 oz butter (1 1/2 sticks)

2 tbsp sugar

2-3 oz cold water (1/4 cup plus 1-2 tbsp)

pinch of salt

pie weights (1/2 lb dry beans)

Filling

1-2 tsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped

8 oz ricotta cheese

1/4 cup of honey

1 small meyer lemon, or half a lemon

2 eggs

pinch of salt

Make the crust: Mix the flour, sugar, and a pinch of salt. Cut up the cold butter into chunks and work into flour and sugar, until you have pea-sized chunks. Try to use a squeezing rather than a rubbing action, so you don't heat up the butter too much. Add 2-3 oz cold water and mix to combine. I used almost 3 oz, but the dough was a little to sticky.

Form into a flat disk, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 15 minutes.

Roll and blind bake the crust: Flour your counter and rolling pin, and roll out the dough until it's about as thick as pie crust. To get it onto the tart pan, roll it onto your rolling pin and then unroll it over the pan. Trim the dough, leaving a little bit of overlap around the edges to account for shrinkage.

Cover with the dough with tin foil and add the pie weights. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 375°F. Remove the tin foil and weights.

Assemble the tart: Meanwhile, mix all of the filling ingredients together - I used a tsp or two of finely chopped fresh rosemary. Add both the juice and the zest of the lemon. Taste it and adjust with salt, honey, and lemon juice if necessary. There should be a subtle sweetness.

Pour the mix into the tart shell and bake for 30-35 minutes. The crust should be golden brown. Allow to cool on a rack, then trim the crust to be level with the filling. (Emily saved the extra bits of crust for her morning tea the next day.) Cut into slices and serve with a drizzle of honey.

This can be served at any temperature, but I think it'd be best served warm with a quenelle of ice cream or crème fraîche.

Update: This didn't set up the second time I made this, not sure why. I'll update this post if I figure out the issue.

Valentines Day Dinner

We celebrated Valentines day at home this year, and I had a lot of fun putting together a special dinner for it. It helped that the 14th fell on a Saturday, giving me a nice, leisurely day at home to put dinner together.

Oysters and Pearls

Sabayon of Pearl Tapioca with Malpeque Oysters and Osetra Caviar

For a starter, I made Oysters and Pearls again - it's a great dish and the oysters and caviar seemed appropriate for Valentines day. We made this dish last year for Valentines day and once last October. It's a great dish and most of the work can be done ahead. (At serving time, you bake it in the oven briefly and make a beurre blanc.) We also enjoy having the leftover caviar, crème frâiche and chives on crackers as a snack.



Black Sea Bass with Sweet Parsnips, Arrowleaf Spinach, and Saffron-Vanilla Sauce

The main course took us a little longer to narrow down. We wanted something light, since the Oysters and Pearls is rather rich. We eventually settled on this dish from the French Laundry cookbook. It turned out really well, and we'll definitely be making it again. There are a lot of different flavors in this dish that play off each other really well.

The sauce is a saffron/vanilla infused mussel broth, finished with a little cream and butter. On top of that is a parsnip purée. The purée is topped with a ball of spinach, and finally there is a a fillet of black sea bass. There is a more detailed description of the construction of this dish on Carol Blymire's blog.



Coconut, Meyer Lemon, and White Chocolate

For dessert, Emily suggested a dish that she found on Cannelle et Vanille, a food blog. It consists of alternating layers of a coconut cake and meyer lemon custard, surrounded with white chocolate and topped with some fruit. I was a little hesitant about the dessert at first because it called for tempering white chocolate and wrapping it around the dessert, and pastry work is a little outside my comfort zone. The chocolate ended up nice and crisp, so I think I pulled off the tempering correctly.

Venison Loin with Potato and Celery Root Gratin

So, there is this venison dish that I'd been meaning to make ever since we saw the "Furred Game" episode of "Jamie at Home," but I never got around to it.

This Saturday we went to Ferry Building to see if we could find some venison loin (aka backstrap). Golden Gate Meats did have it, but it was not cheap (very not cheap). We bought it anyway. While we were there, we also picked up some Rancho Gordo beans and some Boccalone guanciale and prosciutto cotto.

I ended buying 1.5lb of venison loin. I cut it in half and saved one piece for another meal. I oiled the remaining piece and crusted it with a mixture of rosemary (obtained from a nearby bush), juniper berries (from the store), salt, and pepper. Then I seared it and roasted it for about 10 minutes, turning once. For the sauce, I deglazed with a little red wine, reduced it, and mounted with butter.

The side was a gratin of potatoes and celery root, cut into thick disks, par-boiled, and baked with sage, cream, and parmesan. I then topped it with more parmesan and browned the top.

The dish turned out really well, it was worth the expense. The meat was perfectly done all the way through, and the flavor of the crust nicely complimented the flavor of the meat. I thought the sauce had some bitter notes (I got some singed garlic in there), but Emily said it was fine.

The gratin was also tasty, but I think the sauce could be refined a little - it tasted too much like cream for my tastes. At the very least it could use a little nutmeg, possibly a second cheese, and maybe a dash of wasabi or curry powder. (Compare Keller's cauliflower gratin.)

We frequently make venison burgers, but this was the first time I've eaten a venison steak since I was very young. It was also the first time I've worked with juniper berries - they have an interesting flavor that seems to go well with the rosemary. I look forward to using them in the future.

Our Wedding

So much has happened since my last post that I don't really know where to start. Generally I'm inspired by Emily's photographs, but in the last couple of weeks she's taken about five thousand of them - this is going to take a couple of blog entries.

First things first - we're now married. We had a lovely wedding, which went perfectly. I was expecting something to go wrong - they say it always does - but it was great. People had fun, the setting was beautiful, and our dance worked out well.

Emily will go into better detail on her blog, but here is my summary:

We had an intimate wedding at the Acqua Hotel in Mill Valley, about 40 people were able to attend. The wedding was outdoors, on a lovely little lake with the mountains in the background.

The rehearsal dinner was down the street at Buckeye Roadhouse - a place that we happened across a few years ago after hiking in the Marin Headlands, which turned out to be in the list of top 100 bay area restaurants. They did an excellent job, details to follow.

It was a little cool out, but the guys didn't notice in their tuxes. After the ceremony, there was a cocktail hour, which started a little earlier than planned. During that time, Emily and I had photographs taken. After the cocktail hour, we had a sit-down dinner catered by Piazza D'Angelo in Mill Valley.



After a bit of mingling, we had our first dance, a foxtrot choreographed by Alyson - the part of the wedding I was most nervous about. It went really well, despite a couple of missteps on my part and Emily having the extra difficulty of dancing in a wedding dress. Learning the dance was a lot of fun. Alyson did a really good job teaching us the dance and designing a beautiful and cute dance that matched our skill level. (I got the easy part.)

The cake was beautiful. Emily had gotten a spiced "Carrot Cake" from the Shannie Cakes. She did the cake tasting with Alyson, so I hadn't tasted it before the wedding. When we did the cake cutting, I decided that the cake was really good and we should do a second take. I'm sure the photographers appreciated it.

There were a lot of people who were unable to make it - travel has gotten expensive and budgets have gotten tight - but the size was really nice. We were able to spend a lot of time with each guest, eat our entire meal, and have a fun, relaxing time. We hope to have a reception in Michigan around the holidays to catch up with some of the people who couldn't make it.

After the wedding we spent the night at the Acqua Hotel, got up the next morning and got ready for our honeymoon on the big island of Hawaii.

to be continued...