Browse Tag: flavor trips

Flavor Trips: Little birds

I spent this past Monday playing with quail in the kitchen. The experience yielded some interesting things. First of all, they’re so damn tiny and delicate. Your thumb and forefinger move ever so slightly while the bird is in your clutches, and you feel SNAP, CRACKLE, POP while its little bones break and bend. I eat quail often, but had never prepared it myself. I chose a recipe from Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc book; it involved marinating the bird in a pomegranate-juice-based marinade, then cooking it either on the grill or by pan. I chose the pan-roasting cooking method.

The recipe was good, but a tad flawed because it left out some helpful pieces of information. First of all, the recipe didn’t call for a defined amount of salt, nor did it even call for “salt to taste.” It’s bad when recipes fail to mention salt–I ended up seasoning them just before they went into the pan, but a recipe should state when to season because it does matter, and it’s a helpful reminder to home cooks (how many contestants on  Top Chef get reprimanded for under-seasoning? And those are professional chefs with extensive training–I cook at home). Removed from marinade, bits wiped off, briefly dipped in oil, then into a pan warmed to medium they went, breast-side down. But because these birds are so small and have tiny fronts that puff up, they don’t lay down easily on the breast-side; they want to flop over. As I found out after through research, that’s why it’s good to butterfly them for pan cooking–it helps them sit and cook evenly and quickly. The recipe would have been better with that step. So the birds were too-darkly browned on the outside on certain parts, and still slightly raw on the inside as opposed to the medium rare that I wanted. I had to finish them in the oven to fix the raw, and was then satisfied with the taste. Despite the missteps, the birds were good–we loved the flavor that the marinade gave them, which were flavors of pomegranate, serrano pepper, shallot, onion and sage. Next time, I’ll butterfly the birds; that should help a lot.

In the meantime, I continue to hone my risotto skills. Fortunately my bird’s accompaniment–flavored this time with a light saffron broth–went off without a hitch and was quite good, and creamier than the last batch. I find that I thoroughly enjoy making risotto. The transformation of the grains in the pot is mesmerizing…

Risotto: early toasting stage

Early liquid additions

Yellowed with saffron and stock

Final stir!

Weaving its way through the evening–before, during, and after the meal–was a Caymus Special Selection Cabernet. It was with a happy and heavy heart that this cheap date swallowed the last drop of her Nth glass.

The birds, rice and Cab were followed by 10-year-old tawny port, and sweets picked out by my other half from Hollywood’s Chocolada Bakery & Cafe. All in all a fun way to spend the 14th of February.

Sweets
Bottle, cradled and admired the next day. Empty, sadly...

Flavor Trips: Leftover Risotto

I recently posted my first foray into risotto-cooking here on my blog. Encouraged by both my husband and some friends, I’ve decided to post more of my cooking on a regular basis. So without further ado, I give you my leftover lunch: risotto cakes!

In researching different recipes and approaches to making risotto, I came across some delectable ways to use leftover risotto. When the rest of your freshly cooked creamy risotto sits in the fridge for a night or two, it turns into a slightly firmer concoction: still pliable, but harder than a fresh risotto–a perfect consistency for re-shaping with your hands. I shaped the leftovers into two flat round cakes, less than an inch-thick, sprinkling a tiny bit of freshly grated parmesan to the mix to freshen it up. I lightly dredged each side in flour. In a nonstick pan warmed over medium heat, I added a pat of parmigiano reggiano butter and olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan. Fried them up for about 8 minutes on each side, and ended up with crispy browned mushroomy cheesy goodness. Was oh so good. Is oh so highly recommended!

Crispy, cheesy, mushroomy risotto cake

Flavor trips

Several years ago, I went to pick up my dear sister Yamilee at the airport. She got into the car and told me, “You have to try these wafers! They’re not like anything you’ve ever had!” I was intrigued. She explained, “They were at the airport lounge in Paris and I had them there, and then on the flight, the attendant gave me several packs!” She whipped one out: a pack of Gaufrettes au Sel de Guérande by Fauchon, or translated into English on the packaging by a Frenchman who probably didn’t consult an English-speaker, “Salt from Guérande Wafers.” They’re these tiny little waffle cookies. In all honesty, it’s strange that they should be so enjoyable because eating them is a bit like swallowing a mouthful of ocean water–the batter they’re made with is salted heavily with this Guérande sea salt, so they’re salty, salty, salty. But they’re yummy, yummy, yummy, and ridiculously addictive.

Anyhow, after getting home, the family partook in the deliciousness and eventually, the flavor trip came to an end. Resourceful finder of things great/small/random/unobtainable that I am, I told my sister that I’d search for the wafers and buy some for the family. Well, they were nowhere to be found. Google and Yahoo. Yahoo and Google. Just random ramblings from people who’d had them on their own Paris-to-Anywhere flights and thought they were quite good. I looked on Fauchon’s website, but the wafers didn’t exist except as small samples within bigger multi-cookie sampler packages. Eventually I found a sampler that had other cookies and crackers that I liked, but couldn’t purchase it. I emailed Fauchon’s customer service and received a very kind and apologetic reply that their website wasn’t configured for selling to the US, but that if I really wanted something in particular, she could arrange to send it to their boutique in New York, etc. I told myself that it was unreasonable to go to so much trouble for a cookie, but asked the employee to let me know when the company configured a US site.

One day, I bought a jar of Guérande sea salt to cook with. Sometimes, I’d put a few grains on my tongue and remember the flavor of the long-lost gaufrette. In 2007, my husband–fiancé at the time–went to Paris for a work trip. “Fauchon,” I said to him before he left. “Gaufrettes au Sel de Guérande. Please try… And some perfume for my hair.” My poor husband. Anytime he wasn’t holed up at the trade show, he was scouring the shelves of boutiques unsuccessfully for those damn wafers. He did manage to find me the other item on my wish list though– a perfume oil made specially for hair in Lolita Lempicka’s original signature scent. Only the French…

Years later, in May of 2010, that same Fauchon employee emailed me: “As promised I wanted to give you an update concerning our activity in the US…” and she let me know that I could now buy many Fauchon products online in the US as the company had finally created a US online shopping site. I was excited, then soon disappointed because they didn’t have my wafers, whose flavor, by the way, I could now barely remember because it had been so many years since I’d had them. Two weeks ago, I don’t know what came over me–I decided to google the gaufrette and it turned up on this website, The Frenchy Bee, a company that sells French products in the States. A whole box. Of Fauchon Salt of Guérande wafers. For sale in the US. I ordered two boxes and a couple of days later they were sitting on my desk. They taste as I remember them–ultra savory, salty, delicious.

Since Yamilee now lives in Brazil, she couldn’t partake of the flavor trip firsthand, so I sent her a message with the good news. Her response: “That’s newsworthy stuff!” Ahh, folks, if you seek sincerely and if you seek enough, the white whale may just come into view and make your day. And it’s not even Christmas yet. I went back to the site a week later to buy some for my sister for her upcoming birthday. The wafers are now out of stock. Damn it.

The "Salt from Guerande" wafers on my desk