French-Week 10: Seared duck breasts!

This week was our final French cooking class. According to the recipes in the class notes, we were supposed to make Caneton Roti au Confit d' Airelles Rouge (roasted whole duck). Our chef decided to teach us a bit extra. He roasted one whole duck as the recipe says and for the second duck, he took the breasts and legs off and cooked them separately.  The breasts were pan-seared and served with a cranberry/apple sauce, the legs were made into duck confit. For the duck that I got, I wanted to practice both ways of making the breasts and legs. The seared duck breast was very delicious, however I can't say the same about the duck confit. I accidentally neglected it for too long on the stove, it needs optimization next time. So for now, I will just cover the breast recipe. 

Ingredients

2 duck breasts (marinated overnight with salt/pepper/a splash of Brandy)

For the sauce:

360 g cranberries, chopped

1 cup sugar

2 tsp lemon, rind

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 cup diced apple

1 cup diced celery

Methods

1. take the marinated breasts, dry the surface

2. heat up a pan, add oil, pan-sear the skin side of the duck breasts first

3. turn the breasts and pan-sear the other side of the breasts 

 * the breasts should be 80% cooked from the skin side, and the rest 20% should be completed  from the other side

4. transfer the breasts to the oven, bake at 375F for 10min for Medium 

5. for the sauce, heat up a different pan, add a bit of water, add sugar and cranberries, lemon zest

6. bring the liquid in the sauce to a boil, then simmer for for 1hr to reduce the volume 

7. add in the diced apple right before the sauce is ready

* on the duck, I added a bit of warm fig jam which turned out to be a great addition!

Northern Italian-Week 1: Gnocchi!!!

Ever since my trip to Italy last summer, I have always wanted to relive the incredible gastronomic experience at home. Here I am, taking both the Northern and Southern Italian cooking classes. Each class lasts for 6 weeks, with the first class being demo-only. 

In Week 1-Northern Italian, our chef showed us 4 things, gnocchi di patate, sugo di pomodoro (basic tomato sauce), finissima di branzino marinata (marinated sea bass with Italian salad), and panna cotta (creamy dessert). Gnocchi was definitely my favourite by a large margin! One of the most memorable meals that I had in Italy was a gnocchi dish with smoked salmon in a creamy tomato sauce in Murano, a small island near Venice. To recreate that dish, I tried once, using the gnocchi that you can find in a groceries store and it usually comes in an air-tight bag. It turned out to be a bad, BAD idea. I think because of the packaging, preservatives were added and they make the gnocchi taste "off". You could almost taste the assembly line! I guess gnocchi could look a bit intimidating to make, but really, it's a lot easier than I anticipated. This is my first time to make those lovely potato dumplings, and they are way beyond my expectations! 

Ingredients

1000g baking potatoes

300g all purpose flour

3 eggs

60g Parmesan cheese, grated

salt/pepper/nutmeg to taste

Methods

1. boil a large pot of water

2. put potatoes (with skin on) into the boiling water, cook until done

3. peel the skins off the potatoes, press them through a potato ricer

4. add eggs, flour, cheese and salt/pepper/nutmeg, combine everything to make a dough

5. kneed the dough for 5min or so (when you pinch, the dough should spring back slowly)

6. take a small piece of the dough and throw it into the water as a tester. If the dough holds together for 3-4min, the dough is good. If the piece falls apart, you need more "binding" agents in the dough. Add an egg and try again.)

7. don't rest the dough and work fast with it. Roll it out to small logs and cut it into bite size. Lay them out on a floured tray. (you can freeze them at this point)

8. throw the gnocchi into heavily salted boiling water. They are done as soon as they float to the surface of the water. Then take them out. 

9. heat a pan, add olive oil, saute smoked salmon quickly. Then add tomato sauce, and gnocchi, toss them up until they are coated with the sauce. 

10. grate parmesan cheese on top when you serve it, garnish with parsley

Until next time, my friends, buona sera!

French-Week 9: Seafood pie!

This week we made Fruits de Mer en Croûte Nantua, which is one of my favourite dishes that we have covered in class so far. I have always been a big fan of seafood, and I find that seafood is probably the easiest thing to cook because of its inherently good taste. As long as you remember not to overcook it, you will probably get a nice dish even with little practice. Here's a great recipe for a gourmet dish that can be easily made on a busy weekday night!

Ingredients

5 oz scallop

5 oz lobster

5 oz salad shrimps (the tiny cooked ones)

1 shallot, chopped

some stems of parsley

2 oz or 60 mL Brandy

4 oz Béchamel (roughly 2 spoons)

1 sheet of Puff pastry

1 egg

salt/pepper, butter, olive oil

Method

1. heat up a pan, melt some butter to sweat the shallot, then put the shallot aside

2. add olive oil in the pan, sear the scallops quickly using high heat

3. if you have an open flame, add a splash of Brandy and flambé it. If not, just add the Brandy and let it reduce a bit

4. separate the cooked scallops and the juice by straining them, set the scallops and juice separately aside

5. repeat Step 2-4 twice for lobster meat and shrimps, separately

6. combine all the seafood, stir in some chopped parsley and Béchamel, toss them around

7. whisk the egg to make an eggwash

8. take a sheet of Puff pastry, cut it into half, place the seafood on one

9. brush the edge of the pastry with eggwash, cover it up with another half of the pastry, brush the pie surface with eggwash

10. bake at 400F until golden brown (takes about 20-25min)  

                               

                                   

*side dish: Ratatouille "Provençale", a French vegetable stew

I had some pastry leftover. So I decided to use it up by turning them into some ham/cheese pastry rolls. Use a strip of Puff pastry, lay a layer of ham, then a layer of Jarlsberg cheese, and roll it up. (Make sure that you use a type of soft cheese so that they will melt when heated) Brush the surface with eggwash, bake at 375F for 20min. 

French-Week 8: Pork Wellington!

When I saw this week's recipe Fielt de Porc Wellington in class, the first thing jumped into my mind was, Oxford! I still remember the first time that I had beef Wellington. It was in the summer of 1999, when I attended a summer school in Oxford, England to study English. School usually finished around 3pm on weekdays, and after that my friends and I would spend the rest of the afternoon wandering around on High Street, shopping, taking pictures, and of course, snacking on local food like Fish and Chips, pastries, and Wellington before heading back to our host families for the real dinner. So as you can imagine, I was pretty excited to recreate the food from my memories this week! If you are like me and wondering why a traditional British dish showing up in a French cooking class, you would find this inconclusive explanation on wiki:

"Some theories suggest beef Wellington is named after Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington; other theories go a step further and suggest this was due to his love of a dish of beef, truffles, mushrooms, Madeira wine, and pâté cooked in pastry, but with a noted lack of evidence to support this. Other accounts simply credit the name to a patriotic chef wanting to give an English name to a variation on the French filet de bœuf en croûte during the Napoleonic War."

British or French, the important thing is, Wellington tastes great!! And it takes a lot less work than I thought it would. Here's how:

Ingredients

1 pork tenderloin

300g Puff pastry

half onion, chopped

3 cloves of garlic, chopped

1.5 lb of mushrooms (about 2 boxes), pureed by food processor

1 egg

butter, salt/pepper

Method

1. remove the silver skin/fat from the tenderloin

2. rub salt and pepper onto the surface of the meat

3. add butter into a pan, brown both sides of meat, and let it sit aside

4. in a second pan, add olive oil, sweat the onions

5. add chopped garlic

6. use a food processor to make a mushroom paste, and transfer the paste to the pan with onion/garlic

7. sweat the mushroom paste, and evaporate off the liquid that comes out of the mushrooms

8. adjust seasoning with salt and pepper

9. let the mixture sit aside and cool down

10. take Puff pastry out of the freezer right before use (it's hard to work with when it gets warm)

11. lay a layer of mushroom stuffing

12. place the browned tenderloin on top of the stuffing

13. roll the pastry and fillings into a log. 

14. brush the pastry on the edges with eggwash so that they will seal up. Cut off extra pastry. 

15. Brush the surface of the log with eggwash. Bake at 375F for 40min. 

* make sure you let the log rest for a few minutes before you cut it up, or the pastry will collapse. 

Pork Wellington

Because I had some leftover mushroom stuffing and extra button mushrooms, I decided to make them into stuffed mushroom caps and served them on the side. 

Stuffed mushroom 

Method

1. add oil in a pan, sweat 1/4 of chopped onion

2. add the mushroom stuff to pan, mix with onion (if you don't have the pureed mushroom from the Wellington, you can chop up the mushroom stems and use them instead)

3. let the mixture cool off for a bit, then add them into 1/2 cup of grated mozzarella cheese, mix well

4. stuff the mushroom caps with the mixture, grate parmesan cheese on top

5. bake at 375F for 20min

6. garnish with curly parsley

                                 

French-Week 7: Crêpes, très Française!

This week in class we practised making crêpes! To me, crêpe is probably one of the most stereotypical French food. When I think about the Eiffel Tower, I also picture the baguette, foie gras, escargot, crème brûlée, and crêpes. We made savoury crêpes that were stuffed with wild mushroom sauce, a.k.a., Crêpes Farci aux Champignons Sauvages. 

Ingredients
Crêpes batter:
3 large eggs
120 g of flour
240 ml of homo milk (just a bit less than 1 cup)
a pinch of nutmeg
oil, salt/pepper to taste

Mushroom stuffing:
mixed button, Shiitake and oyster mushrooms, cut
(Shiitake's stems have to be removed because of their high fibre content)
half onion, chopped

a shot of Brandy
30 mL of 35% cream
50 mL of demi glace
oil, salt/pepper to taste

 Method
1. mix everything for the crêpes batter first, and let it sit aside while you are preparing the mushroom stuffing
2. take a pan, add some oil and sweat the onion
3. add Brandy, evaporate off most of its liquid
4. add mushrooms to the pan to sweat
5. add in the cream and demi glace, bring to a simmer
6. adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper

When you make the crêpes, make sure that you are using a seasoned pan. Dip some paper towel in the oil and lightly brush the pan with it. Make sure the pan is not too hot when you put in the batter, otherwise it will burn it quickly. The amount of batter prepared made 8 6-inch crêpes. 

* I served the mushroom-stuffed crêpes as a side to some pan seared salmon coated with Hoisin sauce.

French-Week 3, 4, and 5!

Happy Family Day everyone! I have been procrastinating for a while and fell behind on my French class recipes.  I figured that it would be a good time to catch up with my blogs during the long weekend.  

Week 3. Suprême de Volaille, Rossini (chicken breast stuffed with liver pate)

Ingredients
2 pieces of chicken breasts, supreme
2 shallots, chopped
goose liver pate
1.5 cups of demi glace
1 cup of red wine
salt/pepper, oil


 Method
 1. remove the bones in the chicken chest, prepare 2 chicken breasts, cut a pocket in each breast and stuff it with liver pate
2. add oil in pan, heat it up
3. sear the chicken breasts until light brown with hot oil (when lay chickens down in the pan, skin side down first)
4. transfer the browned chicken into a baking tray, bake at 400F for 25min
5. remove excess oil from the pan, and sweat the shallots 
6. add red wine to deglaze the pan
7. add demi glace, salt/pepper to adjust the seasoning

*the chicken was served with glazed carrots, using ginger ale as the source of sugar. 



Week 4. Paupiettes de Saumon St. James Mousseline (seafood stuffed-salmon rolls)

Ingredients
1 lb of salmon fillet
Mousse (the stuffing):
200 g bay scallops
100 g crab meat
1 shallot, chopped
1 leek stalk, chopped
3 garlic cloves
1/4 cup of 35% cream
2 sheets of nori (the seaweed for sushi), damped with water
salt/pepper, oil

Method
1. cut salmon fillets into strips
2. to prepare the vegetable mixture, add oil in a pan and heat up, sweat the shallots, garlic, and leek
3. in a food processor, add scallops and cream to make it to a smooth paste
(scallops are high in protein, so the paste should be quite thick. In case the paste turns out to be too liquidy, you can always add an egg)
4. squeeze out all the juice in the crab meat and add it into the food processor
5. add the vegetable mixture to the seafood paste, add a pinch of salt/pepper, stir everything together
6. spoon the stuffing onto the salmon strips, and roll it up. To make it Asian-fusion, wrap the salmon rolls with the seaweed nori. Now the rolls look like giant sushi! 
7. bake the rolls at 425F for 30min

Week 5. Coq au Vin (braised chicken)

Ingredients
1 whole chicken, cut into 8 pieces
4 slices of bacon, chopped
1 cup of button onions
2 packages of button mushrooms
4 cloves of garlic
2 cups of red wine, dry
a shot of Brandy
1.5 cups of demi glace
salt/pepper, oil, parley for garnish

Method
1. pre-heat oven to 400F
2. add oil to a pan and heat up, brown the chicken on both sides. Then transfer the chicken to a casserole baking dish
3. remove excess oil from the pan, then add the chopped bacon
4. once the bacon turns crispy, sweat the onions, and add mushrooms
5. add red wine into the pan to deglaze the bottom, add Brandy and demi glace. Bring the liquid to simmering, and adjust the seasoning with salt/pepper
6. pour everything from the pan to the casserole dish that has the chicken, then bake it at 400F for 40min

*it's better to marinate the chicken with red wine the night before, to make the meat more flavourful and tender

French-Week 6: MMM, lamb!

First of all, Happy Valentine's Day to you all! It's not that I have anything against Valentine's day, I like things that are pink, red, cute, adorable and heart-shaped. But honestly, I am just too practical to find getting an overpriced dinner in a overly crowded restaurant on February 14th every year "romantic". Why designate only one day a year to celebrate the love of your life? With the right person, every day is Valentine's day! 
So if you are like me, who chose to cook at home today, here's a yummy lamb rack recipe for you! 

Cari d'Agneau Florentine
- roasted lamb rack with spinach stuffing. (Anything with Florentine in its name involves spinach)

I guess lamb is not as common as beef or pork or chicken in our daily diet. I have never been a lamb person in my entire life because of the lamb-y smell, which is too distinct and strong for me to tolerate. (By the way, what's the proper English word to describe the lamby smell?) When my mom used to make her lamb stew/soup, our entire place would be filled with the smell and I had to lock myself in my room for hours. So I was pretty reluctant to try the roasted lamb rack made by Chef Klaus during class. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the absence of the smell in the meat! For once, I could finally focus on how tender the meat was, instead of being distracted by the smell! My guess is,  the smell would be less dominant if you prepare the meat by dry heat (i.e. roasting). If you never tried lamb or didn't like it before, give this easy, tasty recipe a try! 

Ingredients
2 lamb racks
half package of spinach
half onion
4 cloves of garlic
white wine
olive oil




Method
1. Clean the lamb.  To make it presentable, you need to French it. 
2. Add olive oil in pan, sweat onion, garlic and spinach, let it cool down
3. make a pocket in the meat, stuff it with sweated spinach/onion
4. season the lamb with salt and pepper
5. add olive oil in pan, sear the racks until the meat turns light brown
6. roast the racks at 425F for 20min for medium rare, or 30min for medium 

*Let the meat sit for a bit before you cut it, to prevent losing the juice in the meat

*You can use some red wine to deglaze the pan that you used to sear the meat, thicken it and make it into a wine sauce. Or make a vinegar/mint sauce, or Worcestershire sauce. I got lazy, so I just drizzled some aged, 6-year old balsamic on top, which turned out to be great! 


The lamb was served on a bed of Port-Braised Du Puy Lentils, here's the recipe for the side dish:
Ingredients
8 oz Du Puy lentils (black)
3 cloves of garlic
1 shallots
1 piece of double-smoked bacon (about 3 oz)
Fresh thyme, parsley, 2 dried bay leaves
olive oil
Port
balsamic 

Method
1. sweat the bacon, shallots, garlic in the pan
2. put in dry lentils
3. add cold water that covers the lentils
4. add thyme, bay leaves, a splash of balsamic, Port, salt/pepper to taste. Cover the pan with a lid, and let the liquid simmer for 20min with the lid on. 
5. when the lentils are about 80% cooked, continue cooking with the lid off to evaporate off the remaining liquid. 

*The other side dish in the picture, Duchesse Potato, will be covered in another blog post. 

Andddddd, of course, no Valentine's day would be complete without chocolate and strawberries! Amaretto sour goes down really well with the chocolate fondue! Who would have known?! 

Boost the taste of your dishes by Maillard Reaction!

     As I mentioned in my last post, the French stew was cooked by the same technique that I learned in 2 other stews from my classes. Basically, you brown the meat first, then you continue baking the meat in the oven in some kind of sauce/stock. Prior to my cooking classes, I have only watched my mom making beef stews and never really made one myself.  The Chinese way of making stews is quite different: you first blanch the meat in boiling water, after you skim out the floating impurities, you add soy sauce, cooking alcohol and other spices and slowly finish cooking the meat on the stove (an easier alternative is to use a pressure cooker). "Browning the meat" was a foreign concept to me. So I did some reading, and found out that this "browning reaction" actually has a name. It's called the Maillard reaction. 

bis(2-methyl-3-furyl) disulfide

     The Maillard reaction was discovered by Louis-Camille Maillard in the early 20th century, when he was trying to heat up amino acids and sugars and the mixture turned brown.The molecules produced by amino acids and the reducing sugars absorb light and create a nice brown pigment in cooked meat. However, the colouring of the food is not the only outcome from the reaction. What is more important is that the reaction enhances the flavours and aromas. Like in roast beef, cysteine, an amino acid in protein, reacts with ribose, a sugar in the meat. Together, they produce a sulfurous molecule, bis(2-methyl-3-furyl) disulfide, which is responsible for the distinct smell of beef! Other amino acids and sugars are involved in similar Maillard reactions in baked goods.
     As for many chemical processes, temperature needs to be carefully monitored. The Maillard reaction proceeds at a fairly high temperature of 130 ºC/265 ºF. If the meat surface is covered in water, the temperature will stop climbing when it reaches 100 ºC, at which temperature water evaporates and you can't really go any higher than that. This is why when you brown the meat, the surface needs to stay dry so that the heat will exceed 100 ºC. However, if you over heat the meat, at 180 ºC or higher, pyrolysis (a.k.a., burning) kicks in and it will burn the meat instead. I guess the Maillard reaction is one of those high-maintenance reactions that require your undivided attention. Luckily for people like me, who have short attention spans, browning happens fast and it usually takes 2-4min per side of the meat. 
     Happy browning, my carnivorous friends!

French - Week 2: beef stew!

Week 2. 
During this week's class, Chef Klaus demonstrated 3 dishes: crêpe suzette, estouffade de boeuf (beef stew), and batonnets de carottes et navets (glazed carrots and turnips). We made our own beef stew,  as well as the glazed vegetable side dish. The glazed vegetables were fairly easy to make. You start by caramelizing sugar in the pan (dry heat, no water). Then you add the blanched vegetables to the pan, coat them with the caramelized sugar and 1 tbs of melted butter. 

For the  beef stew, our recipe calls for 1 kg of meat. But due to the small class size, we all got a bit of extra of ingredients. I got a HUMONGOUS piece of meat, which probably weighed 2 kg just by eye-balling it! The techniques used to make the stew are pretty standard for beef stews. Basically, you brown the tough meat in the pan first and then finish cooking it in the stock in  the oven. I like this recipe because the nice touch added by the olives, which made the entire dish very French. 

Ingredients
2 kg of beef shoulder meat, cubed
4 slices of bacon, chopped
1 big onion (the meat to onion ratio should be around 1:1)
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 package of mushrooms, sliced
1/4 can of black olives
1tbs olive oil
1.5 cups of red wine
2.5 cups of demi-glace (demi-glace is made of half beef stock and half Espagnole sauce)
some flour for dusting the meat
salt/pepper

Methods
1. Preheat oven to 375 ºF
2. Cut the beef into cubes, dust them with flour. Make sure you remove all the chewy silver skins in the meat. 
3. Heat the olive oil in pan. Add beef cubes for browning. 
4. Set the meat aside in a casserole and drain off the excess fat. 
5. Fry up bacon in the pan until crispy. 
6. Sweat onion, garlic, mushroom and olives.
7. Add red wine and demi-glace. Remember to deglaze the bottom of the pan, so that you will keep all the flavour from the fond. 
8. Adjust seasoning with salt/pepper.
9. Pour everything into the casserole, continue cooking in the oven (covered) for another 2.5 hrs. 


 The final product was served with the glazed root vegetables made in class, stir-fried rice, and the leafy Chinese vegetable, Jie Lan. (I think its English name is Chinese Kale? Correct me if I am wrong.) 

Happy Sunday! 

French - Week 1: steamed mussels!

After taking Culinary Art I last semester, I signed up for 2 more classes this term, French Bistro Cooking and Italian cooking. The French class is a 10-week long course. Our teacher, Chef Klaus Mueller, is surprising not French, but German-born. He is a well travelled chef who has worked in many many countries. Unlike Culinary Art I, this course seems a lot more intimidating to me. Most students taking this class are either pursing a culinary degree or a career in the field. And then there is me, whose original intention of taking this class was that I will be guaranteed to have food to pack for lunch the next day.

Week 1.
The first class was demonstration-only. Five dishes were made by Chef Klaus: chilled Vichyssoise (cold potato/leek creamy soup), Salad Niçoise (a traditional French salad with red wine/mustard dressing), Soufflé Au Fromage, Bouillabaise avec Rouille (fish/shellfish stew), and Moulles Marinière (steamed mussels in white wine sauce). A few key points shared by the chef: salad Niçoise should be served at room temperature which makes it tastes better; soufflé needs to be served as soon as it's prepared, or the soufflé surface will collapse; don't use salmon for fish stock/stew, it's too fatty. 

My favourite dish of the night was the steamed mussels. Since I didn't get a chance to make it during class, I tried it at home the following day. Here's the recipe.

Ingredients:
1 tbs butter
1 package (usually 2 lb) PEI mussels
half onion
3 cloves of garlic
2 springs of parsley
1.5 cups of dry white wine

Methods
1. De-beard, wash and drain the mussels. Don't soak the mussels in water.
2. In a pot, melt the butter
3. Sweat the onion, add garlic, parsley, salt/pepper to taste
4. Add white wine, simmer, reduce the volume to 2/3
5. Add mussels to the pot, and cover it up to steam. The mussels are ready as soon as their shells start to open up. It takes roughly 5-8min, depending on the heat.

It was served with sour dough bread and balsamic vinegar/olive oil.