My way of Sunday

Laura's Risotto del Mare!

We're enjoying a short stay in the beautiful hills of Oakland. The sky is very blue this morning and the feeling is perfect.
What's for lunch today?
A fresh salad, risotto del mare, and a baked custard for dessert.
We're going to have a dry white chardonnay wine from Sonoma.

To make the salad, I bought a mix of organic baby leaves, and added a thinly sliced cucumber, 1/2 orange bell pepper cut in stripes, two sliced branches of celery, a chopped spring onion, and toppled it with some Italian olives and roasted pine nuts.

The seasoning was simple, sea salt, fresh ground pepper, olive oil (3 tsp), wine vinegar (2 tsp) (my favorite).
The different colors worked out very well.

I prepared the risotto with superfino Arborio rice. I bought at an "all organic" supermarket a fillet of wild salmon , two fillets of red snapper (wild catch), and 1 lb of medium shrimps.
Now, I do not buy salmon at all in Paris to preserve wild salmon, and of course I NEVER buy farmed salmon, but I have read in the NYT that it's good to buy wild salmon.

The shrimps I bought were already cooked (I was lazy), but when I tasted them at home, they had NO FLAVOR whatsoever!
To enhance their flavor, I sauteed them with a spring onion, sea salt, pepper, and olive oil before I used them.

I cut the fish in chunks and sauteed it in olive oil with the spring onions, in order to have a homogeneous flavor throughout the whole meal.
The salmon had a beautiful pinkish color - no color added, it's wild!
The red snapper worked perfectly, as it held well when I cooked it.
Now, you need stock to make the risotto (and a dry white wine) and I never use stock cubes or already made similar preparations. So I took the flank off the salmon fillet and boiled them in a "court bouillon", made with water, sea salt, pepper, a spring onion, a carrot, chopped parsley, and a bit of wine. I let it boil for 20 minutes (cover, because i did not want to reduce it) so that the stock had flavor.

See here the full recipe of the risotto del mare .

The baked custard did not look great ... but tasted so good! I made it with two yolks, two whole eggs (all organic) and with whole milk (alos organic). I double boiled it for one hour at low heat.
I sprinkled red sugar to improve its look ... but that was not a good idea.
Bon appetit!

Some time away

It feels uncomfortable for me to write this, since it’s not exactly good news, but here goes: I need to take some time away from this site.As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been struggling a bit here in recent weeks, trying to keep this blog sailing along at her usual clip, and it’s not working very well. Between helping Brandon with Delancey and meeting my own work deadlines, I’ve been stretched

Photo du Jour

Rusting away.

TOMATO SOUP VIDEO RECIPE YouTube VIDEOGULP !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgM8IIglBLwendofvid
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TOMATO SOUP VIDEO RECIPE YouTube VIDEOGULP !

GULP - TOMATO SOUP - VIDEO RECIPE

Selection YouTube video Videogulp !
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Pozole - A Rich Mexican Soup

About 12 years ago, a friend of mine who was born in Mexico and raised in Texas made me lunch. It was a rainy, winter day and she made Pozole, a dish that she grew up on, nothing special, just something to warm us on a cold, blustery day. Well, to me it was very special! Its rich, aromatic flavor left quite an impression. I knew that someday I would encounter this amazing dish once again...

I never did.
So finally, after all these years, I decided to make it myself.

The last time I was in the States I brought back some pozole, which are big, fat kernels of dried hominy that have been soaked in slaked lime to remove their hull and germ. I also picked up a couple of little cans of roasted, diced green chiles since fresh green chiles are often hard to come by here.

The soup called for both of my State-side purchases in addition to some boneless pork, onions, garlic and spices. Pozole was much simpler to make than I thought it would be, and the flavor was just as wonderful as I remembered!



Pozole
serves 6

1 lb pork shoulder, cut into 1 inch cubes
1 large onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
5 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
4 green chiles, roasted, peeled and diced or 1 small can (4 ounces) diced green chiles
1 jalapeno, seeded, and finely diced
2 tablespoons oil or lard
2 cups dried hominy
1 teaspoon salt
1-2 cups chicken stock

Soak dried hominy in lightly salted water overnight.

Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat.
Sauté the onions and garlic for about two minutes then add the meat to the pan and stir it around for another minute.
Add enough water to cover the meat with a least 2 inches and stir in the soaked and drained hominy, the salt, cumin, oregano, cloves, jalapeno and chiles.
Bring to a boil then lower the heat and let simmer for 1 hour.
Remove the meat from the liquid. Remove excess fat and shred the meat into small pieces. Set aside.
Add chicken stock to replace liquid, if necessary. You'll want a brothy consistency.
Simmer for an additional hour.
Add the pork and simmer for an additional 20 minutes or until hominy is thoroughly cooked.
Salt to taste.

Traditionally Pozole is accompanied by slices of radish, lemons or limes, sliced onions and chopped lettuce. I added some sliced carrots and sliced chiles.

Now the question is, can I find more hominy in France? Anyone know?

Another celebration

Yesterday, we celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary with some friends. Here you can see how I had dressed my tabe. You'd like to know the "ingredients"?
I wanted a well dressed table so I chose a linen and cotton Jacquard Francais pink tablecloth with its beautiful napkins (a Christmas gift of my good friend Elizabeth). This tablecloth is the perfect match for my art nouveau chinaware.
I deemed my Ercuis stainless steel silverware was not fancy enough, so I took my Aria Christophle silver ware out of the boxes, one by one.
The knives rested on my usual knife stands, that is a chopstick stand. I chose the blue and pink Chinese mini-pillows.
Next came the choice of glasses. I opted for two sizes of my Crystal de Sevres "Primavera" glasses plus small pink mouth blown tumblers specially made for me in Tunisia, for water.
I used additional silver plates to rest the crystal water carrafe and the wine bottles and corks.
The table looked very nice indeed.

And the menu?
Once Elizabeth, Heide, Janqueline, Bernard and Jean had arrived, at 8:30, we served a Red Cremant de Loire from Domaine Sanzay to set the mood. This ruby color sparkling wine from the Loire is made with cabernet franc grapes and I love to serve it in summer.

My appetizer was a home made duck terrine. I made one for my birthday last March, but the guests were not the same and this terrine is a beautiful serving piece! I served it with country bread and two differnet chutneys.

The entree was a large veal roast with a light creamy sauce; with a garnish of red glazed carrots.

I had been to my favortie cheese shop on rue d'Auteuil: La fromagerie d'Auteuil where Mr Fouchereau advised on a special whole cheese made by Cistercien monks in Burgundy, the cheese from Citeaux Abbey . Its a non-pasteurized cow milk cheese, made with the milk of Montebliard cows from the Abbey. It is aged for at least 3 weeks, and it's creamy and mild.

Finally, I served my hazlenut tart for dessert.

Throughout the meal we had Saumur-Champigny wine and Chateau Haut Mongeat Bordeaux wine.

Ah, yes, and coffee after dessert.

Cheese and Cheesemakers of Wisconsin

Wisconsin is not just dairy country, but cheese country. In fact 90% of the milk Wisconsin produces goes into cheese. The state took home more awards than any other at this years American Cheese Society conference. License plates in Wisconsin don't really say "Eat Cheese or Die" but they might as well!

While I was a guest on a recent tour of Wisconsin, I did spend my own cold hard cash to buy cheese from some of my favorite cheesemakers. Here are just a few of those I met, and a rundown of what I bought from them.


I met Tony Hook of Hook's Cheese at the Dane Country Farmer's Market. Tony has a sparkle in his eye and gave me a Cheshire cat grin when I asked too many nosy questions about how he makes his cheese. He makes an amazing number of very fine aged cheddar and blue cheeses. I adore his washed rind Tilston Point Blue, named after Stilton. It's rich and creamy and has a terrific bite. The texture is crumbly but it can be sliced. I also think it is a tremendous value. Of course I paid a pittance at the farmer's market but even in stores it is very reasonably priced.


After meeting Willi Lehner of Bleu Mont Dairy, seeing his beautiful caves and tasting his cheeses, I couldn't wait to bring some of his cheese home to share. Willi, who has dual American and Swiss citizenship, learned to make cheese in Switzerland, where his parents are from. He is creative in his approach, and deeply committed to environmental sustainability, but it is his focus on quality that struck me the most. He is more concerned about making the best possible cheese he can, than about making the most cheese or the most money. He makes his cheese from some of the finest milk available, straight from the cows at Uplands. He makes two similar cheeses, Alpine Renegade and a bandaged cheddar. The cheddar is my favorite because it has such depth, with lots of tang and toasty flavor. It's pricey, but worth every penny.


I am sure Brenda Jensen's sheep adore her. She is so gentle and friendly and yet passionate about making cheese and running Hidden Springs Farm and dairy in a humane and sustainable manner. Her soft sheep's milk cheese, Driftless, tastes a bit like ricotta, only better. Her latest cheese, Meadow Melody is a combination of cow and sheep's milk cheese making it more affordable but just as delicious as her other cheeses. It's semi-firm, grassy and has notes of brown butter.

I also purchased cheese from another award-winning cheesemaker who unfortunately I didn't get a chance to meet this time around. Marieke Penterman of Hollands Family Cheese is a Wisconsin dairy farmer who emigrated here from the Netherlands in 2002. She makes a fantastic gouda, that is aged over 18 months. While I love gouda melted on toast, this cheese is too precious to use for cooking. A thin slice and a piece of apple is heavenly.

You might think I only met "artisanal" cheesemakers but that's not the case. I went to three very modern cheesemaking facilities, including Emmi Roth Kase. At home I buy their buttermilk blue and am now smitten with their smoky Moody Blue. While their Swiss machinery was state of the art, what struck me was how much was still being done by hand.

It's important to note that with cheese you are dealing with a living product and so it is not always the same. There is only so much you can control. A sample of every wheel of cheese is tasted in order to determine which rounds will be suitable for aging and for how long. Yes, there are timers and thermometers, but there are also knowledgeable cheesemakers involved in every step of the process. Even in the most modern "factory" settings cheesemakers are still artisans as far as I'm concerned, doing much by hand and tasting as they go.

My sincere thanks to the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board for inviting me on their wonderful Fall tour!