Culinary School Chronicles - Stewing

In today`s class we focused on a few traditional dishes from Eastern Europe and Russia.  It was a pretty quick class with a pretty hearty mid-class snack.  Chef`s demo today consisted of making a truly outstanding Veal Goulash served on a bed of Spätzle.  I have always wanted to try Spätzle but I don`t know anyone who makes it so I was pretty stoked to learn how.

And I just love saying Spätzle... Spätzle, Spätzle, Spätzle, Spätzle, Spätzle!!

Spätzle is somewhere between a boiled dumpling and an egg pasta, and is basically comprised of egg, flour and milk with a grating of nutmeg.  The batter itself is much thicker than pancake batter and I`d say even a bit thick and pliable looking.  The Spätzle is formed either by machine in the commercial application or using a Spätzle cutter creating what is called a Knöpfle Spätzle (homemade or handmade).

Spätzle are formed by placing the batter in the cup of a contraption called a "Spätzlehobel", and then running it back and forth over an extremely coarse grater attachment.  You can also use a coarse grater or potato ricer to make the dumplings.  The Spätzle are then cooked in boiling salted water for 2-3 minutes so they float to the top of the water, then are drained and crisped up in a lot of butter.  Tasty but certainly heavy and fattening.

You can vary your Spätzle by adding cheese or spinach, porcinni mushroom dust, herbs, etc.  Spread out on a cookie sheet to be dried, they can be frozen and cooked a là minute as a sidedish or added to soups or stews.

Then we did our lab today which was a Beef Stroganoff unlike any I`ve ever eat before, mostly because the meat they gave us was tenderloin.  Guess there was an excess somewhere in the College, because I find the cuts of meat we get vary greatly from what we see in our manuals, which is fine with me especially when we get better cuts than the recipe calls for.  It just means adjusting your cooking times really and treating the particular cut with the appropriate manner of love.

Also, today was a small class, so we got an extra half a portion of meat each, which meant my meal for 3 could be stretched to lunch for 6 tomorrow when my parents are here.  Whew!  I hadn`t even started thinking about tomorrow yet.  Whoops.

Beef Stroganoff

1 pound beef tenderloin tips or medallions
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 onion, peeled and thinly sliced
3/4 cup Beef Demi Glace
1 to 1/2 cups Beef or Veal Stock

1 cup mushrooms, thinly sliced

1/2 cup sour cream

1/2 teaspoon dijon mustard

Salt and pepper to taste

3-4 Gherkin pickles, very thinly sliced

Heat oil and butter in a sauté pan over medium high heat.  Add beef medallions and cook for 2 minutes per side or until browned.  Remove from pan and set aside.

Add onions and sauté until golden brown.  Add mushrooms, gherkins and cook for 2-3 minutes longer.  Add demiglace and stock to sauce.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

Right before serving add sour cream and mustard back into the sauce and combine.  Add meat back in to sauce to warm slightly, but do not boil as the sour cream may separate.

Serve on top of a bed of buttered egg noodles, sprinkled with parlsey.

Culinary School Chronicles - Beef

Today we learned about dry heat and moist heat cooking methods.  Dry heat cooking refers to your basic broiling, grilling, baking, roasting and sauteéing.  Moist heat refers to boiling, simmering, poaching, steaming, braising and stewing.  

I am not a serious meat eater - I like it sometimes maybe once or twice a month - but I get confused as to what type of meat cut to use for the different types of cooking applications.  Mostly we eat grilled steak.  For years I thought eye of the round was supposed to be a nice oven roast but apparently not.  It is for stewing, which explains why I never got it quite right.  This Meat Chart gives a great explanation of the various cuts and their applications.  

Chefs demo today was a dish called Vegetable Macédoine.  Not really sure why it was called that but it is just a combination of diced turnip, rutabaga and carrot.  Turned out nice the way he did it, blanching the vegetables one after an other, adding 2 heads of roasted garlic and finishing them in a sauté pan with browned butter.  Quite a yummy snack combined with the beef he had come in early to stew for us.

Most of the focus today was on learning about Sauce Espagnole and making Carbonnade a la Flammande.  Chef said that it was a beef stew in the style of Holland but I am pretty sure he meant Flemish, which equals Belgium.  That added to the fact that the tenderizing liquid in the stew was a Leffe Brun (a Belgian dark beer), I am pretty sure this was the case.

This recipe makes the Espagnole Sauce in the stew pot, but if you would like a view at making it by itself for a gravy, check out my little experiment from back in February where I did veal stock from scratch, then turned it into Espagnole Sauce  and then into Demi Glace.

Carbonnade a la Flammande

10 oz top sirloin or flank steak, cut into large pieces
1/2 large onion, peeled and diced
1 clove garlic, peeled and chopped
1 tablespoon tomato paste
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 litre beef or veal stock
1/2 bottle Belgian beer, such as Leffe Brun
1 tablespoon parsley, chopped for garnish
Flour for dusting meat
Salt and pepper

Season meat with salt and pepper and dust with flour, shaking off excess.  Heat a large sauté pan with about 1/8 inch of oil in it.  When hot, add meat and brown for about 2 minutes per side.

Remove meat from the pan ans set aside.  Remove any excess oil from the pan, leaving about 1 tablespoon.

Add in onions, carrots and garlic and sautée.  After about 2 minutes, stir in tomato paste and continue to cook.

Add in the beef stock and a bouquet garni.  The bouquet garni is made by tying together a few sprigs of thyme, parsley and oregano.

Place in a preheated 375 degree oven and cook for about 1.5 hours until meat is soft and stock is reduced.

Remove any excess fat on the surface and the bouquet garni.  Serve with garlic mashed potatoes and garnish with chopped parsley.

Cook's Note:   One thing I did to this stew was to thicken it at the end by adding a Beurre Manié like I used to thicken the sauce for the poached fish I did a few weeks ago.  I really like the richness that finishing a sauce with a tablespoon of butter brings and the flour thickens the sauce just enough for my tastes.  I like a fairly loose gravy.....just perfect for pouring over potatoes.   Strain and freeze any left over Espagnole Sauce for a roast or other meat application.

Beurre Manié

1 tablespoon butter, softened
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

Combine both ingredients using a wooden spoon until the butter absorbs the flour, resulting in a toothpaste like consistency.

Roasted Chicken with Lemon Thyme Pan Gravy

Well I screwed up.  I forgot to take my chicken out of the freezer on Sunday to defrost so I could cook it for tonight's dinner.  Not being one to worry about such things, I decided to just adjust my approach to roasting my chicken and my cooking time.  Instead of cooking the chicken in an open roaster for about an hour at 400 degrees, I put it in my dutch oven, lid on, with a little bit of olive oil, some herbs, potatoes, onions and preserved lemons, put it in the oven and hoped for the best.

Well I got the best.  After about an hour of cooking time, my chicken was defrosted and up to 60 degrees and well on its way to becoming dinner.  It just goes to show you that most mistakes can be corrected or at least mitigated.  If you didn't mess up like me, the chicken would normally take about an hour.

Roasted Chicken with Lemon Thyme Pan Gravy

1 large roasting chicken
2 tablespoon olive oil
5-6 sprigs of fresh thyme
1 tablespoon Herbs de Provence
Salt and pepper to taste
1 preserved lemon, cut into eigths (a regular lemon is ok but you will need more salt)
2 bay leaves
2 lbs mini white potatoes, scrubbed with skin on
1/2 cup chicken stock

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Pour 1 tablespoon olive oil into a large Dutch oven.  Add chicken, rub with additional 1 tablespoon olive oil and sprinkle with Herbs de Provence, salt and pepper.  Cover chicken with preserved lemon pieces.

If cooking from frozen, place pot in the oven, cover with a tight fitting lid, and cook for approximately 1 hour.  After the 1 hour cooking time, add the chicken stock, potatoes and onions and return to cook for approximately 1 hour, or until an instant read thermometer reads 180 degrees in the thigh joint.

If your chicken is defrosted, place onions and potatoes around the chicken, and add thyme sprigs, bay leaves and chicken stock to Dutch oven, and cook uncovered in the pre-heated oven for approximately 1 hour, or until an instant read thermometer reads 180 degrees in the thigh joint.

Remove chicken and potatoes from pot and allow to cool slightly.  Cut chicken into 8 pieces for serving.  Use the cooked potatoes as they are or go on to make Super Easy Smashed Potaotes and Roasted Asparagus.

Lemon Thyme Pan Gravy

1 cup pan drippings and stock from Dutch oven

1/2 cup chicken stock

1/3 cup cold water

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

2-3 sprigs thyme

Roasted lemon pieces from Dutch oven

Pour stock that collects in the bottom of your Dutch oven through a fine sieve to remove onion pieces and lemons, then put into and gravy separator to remove fat.  Wash Dutch oven, and return stock to the pot, leaving the fat layer in the separator.  Add in chicken stock and thyme.  I added back in the onion pieces and lemon pieces for extra flavour.  Bring to a rolling boil.  

In a separate small bowl, whisk cold water and flour together to make a slurry.  This will thicken your gravy.  Be sure to whisk well to ensure there are not lumps.  Whisk slurry into stock and return to a boil.  It is only once the sauce reaches boiling that the thickening power of the flour will be realized.  Cook for 2-3 minutes on medium heat to remove any trace of flour taste.   Serve over chicken.

Vegetarian Thai Chili with Bulgur

So back in December I made this chili recipe from Clean Eating magazine with ground turkey for my Xmas party and it turned out really well.  It could have used a bump in the spice department for me, but that is easily achieved.  Also I found it a bit odd that there was no use of kafir lime, cilantro or fish sauce in a Thai recipe...huh?  So this time I modified things more to my taste.

This is the first time I am cooking with bulgur.  To be honest, the only reason I didn't make the recipe with bulgur originally back in December was that my local grocery store didn't have it!  Well, since then I have bought some and I thought I'd try this recipe out again.  Nothing better than a belly-warming chili to chase away the -20 temperatures in Toronto (-33 with the windchill....brrrr).  Sadly I have to be careful with the heat if there is any chance that the youngest will eat it.  The Teen is all about the heat, like us, but sometimes I think Justin was switched at birth!  I guess I'll give him a few more years to catch up with us on the Scoville scale.

Vegetarian Thai Chili with Bulgur

4 tsp thai red curry paste (mine seemed very mild heat wise so use your judgement here)
2-3 Thai bird chilis or more (to your desired heat)
2 tsp ground cumin
4 cups vegetable stock
1 cup uncooked bulgar
1 large green or red pepper, chopped
1 can of kidney beans, drained
3 kafir lime leaves (optional)
1 cup light coconut milk
2 cups tomato purée or passata
2 green onions, choppped
1/2 cup cilantro, chopped
salt and pepper to taste
1 tsp fish sauce

In a medium sized pot, add curry paste, cumin and 1/4 cup stock.  Stir mixture until curry paste dissolves slighty. Add remaining broth, bulgur and red pepper.  Bring mixture to a boil over high heat, then cover tightly with a lid, reduce heat to medium and cook for 10 minutes.

Add beans, coconut milk and tomato purée to the pot and cook uncovered for 10-15 minutes or until bulgur is tender and chili has thickened.  Stir in fish sauce right before serving.  Season with salt and pepper and sprinkle with green onions and more cilantro to serve.

Cook's Note:  I made the mistake of using a store bought commercial brand so the curry was very mild.  Store bought is ok but you won't get the heat unless you use a proper brand like Mae Sri.

Why did I not make my own like the one that Don Duong taught me in my Thai cooking classes years ago?!?!  If I remember correctly Don was born in Vietnam but was raised in Thailand and learned to cook Thai by his grandmother, whose recipes he taught my friend Ann and I at George Brown College.  Don is an amazingly accomplished pastry chef who was a pastry chef for the Metro Convention Centre at the time, but now owns his own successful business at Dessert Trends which has a commercial location on Weston Road amazingly around the corner from where I live currently and a new location on Harbord Street.  I still use his family recipes for Thai food and will always know because of him that Pad Thai does not use ketchup!

Justin's Junior Chef Bloggette - Chicken Cacciatore

Hi!  My name is Justin and I am 10.  I like to cook in the kitchen with my mom.  Sometimes we bake, sometimes we make dinner but my specialty is making gravy.  And I have knife skills!  My mom and I have decided that once a week we will make dinner for our family together, and try out a new a easy recipe that is fast and doesn't cost a lot.  I think when I am older I am going to make these kinds of simple meals for my family.

Tonight we made Chicken Cacciatore based on a recipe by Massimo Capra.  He is a chef in Toronto at a restaurant called Mistura and he has a crazy moutstache!  We didn't have all the ingredients for the recipe so we just put in what we had and it was awesome!

My mom has a secret that uses in dishes like this - she keeps the rinds from pieces of parmesan cheese and freezes them, then she adds them into dishes like this for extra flavour.

Here's what you need:

3 chicken quarters, skinned and cut into pieces (or 8 skinless chicken thighs)
1 medium onion, sliced
6 cloves garlic, chopped
1 red bell pepper, sliced
1 yellow bell pepper, sliced
1 box button mushroom, cut in halfs or quarters depending on how big they are
1 can tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp dried oregano
1/4 cup parsley, chopped
2 bay leaves
rinds from 2 pieces of Parmesan cheese (optional)
salt and pepper to taste

In a large non-stick frying pan, add oil and brown chicken on both sides.  Add garlic and onion and continue to sauté.  Add sliced peppers, sliced onions and mushrooms.  Pour can of chopped tomato over and combine.  Add oregano and bay leaves and Parmesan rinds.    Cover and simmer for 30 minutes, making sure the chicken is falling off the bone.  Right before you eat, be sure to take out the bay leaves and Parmesan rinds.

My mom ate hers with sautéed rapinni (blech) but we had ours with pasta.  Yummy.

Crawfish Etouffée and The Trinity

In an effort to reduce the meat in our diet a bit, we picked up a package of frozen crawfish from the St. Lawrence Market last week.   I long to go to New Orleans to eat fresh crawfish by the bucketful but haven't been so lucky in life yet.  One day....

While I am not a great afficiando of Cajun or Creole food, I really was first introduced to this type of food by none other than Emeril Lagasse over 10 years ago when the Food Network first came to Canada.  While back then I found his stilted food presentation skills underwhelming on Essence of Emeril, the food he turned out was extremely interesting and flavourful, so I bought Louisiana Real and Rustic and have made many things from it over the years, including variations on Gumbos and his Ham Hock and Sweet Potato Soup (both to die for).  As time went by, however, with every "BAM!" he made, we became less and less enchanted with the show as it seemed to become so much more about the celebrity chef than the food itself, which is what brought him into our homes to begin with.  I never lost interest in the food of course.

So what is an etoufée anyway, right....  According to Emeril, the word étouffée means "smothered," and in Cajun and Creole cooking generally refers to anything cooked in its own juices, sometimes with a bit of water or stock.  Crawfish are freshwater crustaceans which look like tiny lobsters and which have extremely sweet and tender tail meat.  So I guess Crawfish Etoufée is basically smothered crawfish.

As is the case in every Creole recipe I have ever made, this recipe calls for the holy trinity. Generally, a "trinity" refers to the three cornerstone ingredients of a particular cuisine, a trio of specific ingredients that are combined together and sautéed to become the flavour base of many dishes. These 3 ingredient combinations appear as the basis for many cuisines, such as mirepoix - the basis of French cooking, which is a combination of onion, celery and carrot.  In other countries that border the Mediterranean Sea, the trinity is comprised of garlic, onion and tomato and are called by different names such as refogado in Portuguese, soffritto in Italian, and sofrito in Spanish.  In Phillipean cooking, the same basic combination is called ginisá.  

In Chinese cooking, the trinity is scallion, ginger and garlic, similar to Indian cooking which favours onion, ginger and garlic.  Greek food favours olive oil, lemon juice and oregano, and galangal (thai ginger), kaffir lime leaves and lemon grass are the basis for much Thai cooking.  Obviously, I could go on and on and on.....but in Creole cooking the trinity is comprised of onion, bell pepper and celery.

This is our "lightened" version of Crawfish Etoufée with far less butter than some recipes I have seen.

2 tbsp buttter

2 cups chopped onion

1 cup chopped celery

1/2 cup chopped bell pepper

1 pound crawfish tails (we can only get frozen in Toronto)

2 bay leaves (we were lucky enough to get fresh this week)
1 cup water + 1 tbsp flour for a slurry
1/4- 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tbsp chopped parlsley
3 tbsp chopped green onion

Salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter in a large skillet or non-stick pan. Add onion, celery and bell pepper and cook until softened, approx. 10-12 minutes. Add crawfish and bayleaves, and reduce heat to medium. Cook an additional 10 minutes or so, until crawfish release their liquid.  Season with salt and pepper.

Dissolve flour an cayenne in water to make a slurry, an add to crawfish trinity mixture.  Season with salt and pepper if needed.  Stir until the mixture boils slightly and starts to thicken, about 3-4 minutes.  Sprinkle with parsley and green onion.  Don't forget to remove the bay leaves before serving!

Serve over white rice.

Monday Dinner - Rustic Chicken Mushroom Stew

Just went in the oven...

http://www.compliments.ca/en/Recipes/Recipe.aspx?ID=11810

Well the results are mediocre.  I guess that's what I get from picking a recipe from the Sobey's flyer but it looked good.

I ended up dumping in a glass of wine last night after I tried the cooked dish.  Really needed some help because "as is" it was bland.  I don't think I'll bother with this one again.



Used up:
1 frozen package chicken drumsticks
1 frozen package chicken thighs
misc. vegetables from the crisper
half used bag of farfalle pasta
misc. single and mismatched buns from the freezer