Happy New Year y Feliz Año Nuevo.
To Do: various recent recipes
Made the Carrot Puree again (see below) but with less pepper and I forgot the garlic (!). As usual everyone raved about it - but that means I can't get any constructive criticism. Damn.
Am cooking for some other people this week (family) and went on a little spree - hopefully I actually bought enough of the correct stuff to combine it into decent meals.
Key purchases were the fresh cod (filleted) and the pulpo (octopus); which will become interest things over the next couple of days.
The first step was to make a fish fumet with the remains of the cod filleting (which I let the shop do - they're pretty good at it and I didn't bring my knives on this trip).
This might be called a "pincho" if we were in the Basque country but we're in Galicia so it's just an appetizer.
Slice a baguette into pieces, thinish would be my recommendation.
Hard boiled egg - smash it up with
Anchovies - chopped
mix, and spread on the bread.
I would have liked maybe a little slice of roasted red peppers to top it off. And could have toasted the bread a little.
No foto - still having connectivity problems.
It was late, we'd been out shopping, then went to the Madrid city Christmas concert. So last night we just fried us up some steaks. 400 grams each (about 12 oz?) - and thick..
Got the frying pan out, splashed in a little olive oil (it´s a stainless steel pan - not non-stick). Heat on high until it's close as possible to smoking and the oil's real fluid and coats the pan easily. Toss in the steak -
Of course you all know what a Thermomix is, it's a blender with a built-in heating system. Cooks and stirs / blends at the same time! Quite unique one might say.
Today it was Carrot Puré (or is it puree?) - to use up stuff that I had in the vegetable box before it all went bad.
Ingredients: (all go in at once)
Yesterday I made Fabada - probably the 2nd best known dish of Spain after paella.
Basically it's a really excellent pork and beans.
Serves: 4 (maybe 6)
Ingredients:
So I takes a little loin o' pork and try to figure out what to do with it.
Several seconds of research on chef2chef yield a half a dozen choices and I mix several all together an come up with:
I only found foie mi-cuit and I wanted raw lobes. I want the fun of deveining them and everything. But with mi-cuit running from 60 Euros (canard/duck - Spanish) to € 160 (French - goose) a kilo (divide by 2 for $ per pound [I think]) - - at that price I'm not making a terrine today.
Maybe a nice pork roast will do instead. I'm thinking... a dijonmustard, maple, rosemary crust. I'll have to do some research. chef2chef.net here I come (a favorite research source for recipes).
Here I am, a week and a half later and still no new hard drive. It's on order though and is expected to come in about a week - a week ago. Ah well. (frown) .
Now working from the (new) home machine (ordered the same time as the drive). I have no connectivity between this machine and my camera phone now my PDA camera so no pictures.
No big deal for the moment - although pictures do seem to be important ot food blogs, especially for one who is not a great writer.
Meanwhile, word of the day: sennight = seven-nights; just like fortnight = fourteen-nights
This week I'm going to make a terrine of foie-gras (duck liver or goose liver). We'll see how it goes. Recipe to follow - probably.
It starts with 2 complete foies. That would be about a kilo (2 pounds for the metrically impaired)
ravioli (on flickr)
This is the first thing I've been allowed to actually cook during service.
It's a bacalao (cod) and veggie mixture (a sort of pisto) that's wrapped in long slices of cucumber, dipped in tempura and deep fried. The circle of stuff on the plate is the same stuff that's in the raviolis. There's a streak of a red sauce on the place and a dusting of fresh parsley flakes.
I'm quite happy about being allowed anywhere near the stove during service; it's a step up from salads and deserts. Feels somewhat more chef-like. Next step... something in a frying pan maybe?
Looking at the plating of this dish I'm not all that excited about it. The raviolis are nicely browned, fried but not greasy; crisp. But the ravioli on top of the swirl of sauce doesn't look "right" to me and the sprinkling of parsley isn't visually appealing. It needs some thought.
On Sunday I was experimenting in the restaurant's kitchen by making dehydrated zucchini in the microwave. The idea was to make zucchini dust, zucchini powder, zucchini flakes - - or whatever you want to call them. Real fine, lightly flavored, green, mini flakes of vegetable.
I'll do it again this weekend a make a foto.
The process:
Baguette Attempts
Originally uploaded by willsong.
Back in May/June I did a Boulangerie course at Le Cordon Bleu - Paris.
The chef (JC) was not too happy about this attempt. These 4 baguettes, from 4 different people, are supposed to be rather more smilar than they appear to be in this picture.
Better luck next time - maybe.
Today I made an excursion into Madrid to visit the Prado museum. It's a holiday today; the Feast Day of Nuestra Señora de la Almudena: Madrid's patroness.
In keeping with the food theme I went to find paintings about cooking. There were so few (¿none?) that I modified the investigation to search simply for paintings involving food. In this I did have some success.
The bird picture is by Goya; it's dead pigeons (presumably in a kitchen someplace).
The other one is by Bosch, it was painted about 1500 and is called "De Jardin des Délices" (The Garden of Delights). It's kind of weird freaky 1970's sort of painting - but done 450 years or so before its time. Psychedelic. There's lots of food in it. The theme is debauchery (and, one assumes, the evil thereof). And it doesn't seem fair to me that debauchery is being associated with food.
The exec "bought" all the staff a drink after the service. This is my Cardhu.
My 'stage' continues (unpaid work in an actual restaurant kitchen [training is what you would call it]). I work Thurs-Sun-day in a small, stylish, restaurant as 3rd cook in a two cook kitchen.
Usually the place runs at a nice even pace but this weekend (it's only open Friday to Sunday [Thursday's for prep]) we were very busy for both Saturday's & Sunday's lunches. Not overwhelmed but quite a bit of a peak in the middle part of each service for the main and at the end for the desserts.
The difference now is that during prior "rushes" I was shuffled to one side and my role was to stay out of the way. Now, I'm actually expected to contribute! So instead of being relegated to appetizers, petit-fours and runner I'm now plating certain salads from start to finish and doing parts of some desserts. And, in turn, having the chef yell at me for being too damn slow - which is true. But after making this same salad 8 times I've developed something of a rhythm and am fairly productive. Naturally I'm not allowed to touch any protein yet - that's still the sole purview of the head & the sous.
