Back in Berkeley Feast

It's been a very, very long time, but I have so many delicious things for you ahead that you might actually forgive the hideous post I left you with for the past year. Today we have a feast, made with my lovely cooking buddy Katie - you can see previous feasts we've done here, here, here, and here (these are worth clicking on, I promise). I'm back from a year (plus a few weeks more recently) in Paris, and Katie's back (unfortunately temporarily) from the UK. We put this whole thing together in 2 1/2 hours, which I still can't believe. But each dish is extremely easy - even the homemade gnocchi - and can even be done on a weeknight.

Quick-pickled carrots, radishes, radish sprouts, sunflower seeds, 

baby gem lettuce, oven-dried beet chips, chevre, anchovy

Corn soup, bacon, chives

Braised squid in Piperade

Ricotta gnocchi, lamb meatballs, fresh peas, mint

Katie's Back! Feast

Katie, my partner in complicated cooking crime (see our past feasts: sushi, offal, around-the-world, & summer), is visiting from Scotland, where she's been living for the past year and a half. We designed a meal that highlighted seasonal ingredients, since she's been missing California produce. Unfortunately we were a bit too ambitious; we prepared 8 courses but our guests could only stomach 6. Nixed courses were a salad with arugula, heirloom tomato, avocado, and black radish, and a cheese course pairing Iberico with Bosc & Comice pear and Fuyu persimmon. We did manage to eat the following:

Spanish White Gazpacho with Grapes

Seared Duck Liver with Fig and Rosemary

Bay Scallop Ceviche with Avocado and Smoked Turkish Pepper

[photo missing]

Crispy Calamari, Baby Artichokes, Eggplant

Wild Mushroom & Goat Cheese Puff Pastry

Skirt Steak with Spicy Roasted Pepper Sauce and Savory Chimmichuri

chez johnny jump up

Ridwan made an incredible nine-course meal for John's birthday. I was lucky enough to attend and help out.

Here are some shots of the finished dishes (photos by Mike Seeman):

black truffle souffle

celery remoulade, frisee, crispy duck confit

fried artichoke, capers, lemon-heirloom jam

smoked salmon, baby greens,

matchstick potatoes, creme fraiche

kabocha squash soup, bacon lardon, fried bread

roast beef, yorkshire pudding,

horseradish cream, mustard

whipped delice d'argental, caramelized fig, balsamic syrup

carrot cake

poached pear, candied walnut

Pig Roast

As promised, here are a few shots of the pig roast. I've figured out a way to get the photos off my camera without actually finding the cord, so expect more blog posts soon!

wrapped in tin foil and chicken wire, stuffed with plums

after cooking underground, unearthed

ready to dig in

digging in

Thanksgiving 2008

No pictures in this post; just an update on Thanksgiving, since people have been asking. I'm not doing a real post for two reasons-- one, we basically did the same thing as  last year, since last year's Thanksgiving was so ridiculously good; and two, I didn't have a camera on hand for pictures. Honestly, some of the tastiest things are the least photogenic-- stuffing, for example. So the menu was: (most of the recipes are on last year's post, linked above)

Spicy Sweet Potato Soup

Brined & BBQ'd Organic Turkey

Gravy (made from turkey stock, which we made the day before)

Wild Mushroom Stuffing (recipe below)

Butternut Squash Gratin

Spicy Cranberry Relish

Jelled Cranberry Sauce (yeah, the Ocean Spray kind. I love the stuff.)

Lemony Brussel Sprout Hash

Sour Cream Cheesecake (my dad's delicious contribution)

The wild mushroom stuffing was really amazing, and can easily be a vegetarian main dish or brunch dish any time of the year. We tweaked last year's recipe a bit. Here goes:

Make cornbread and let it sit out overnight so it dries out a bit.

Cut the cornbread into crouton-sized (1/2inch) cubes. Toss cubes and all crumbs into bowl. Add 2T each chopped thyme & sage; add olive oil and toss until well-coated.

Spread seasoned cornbread cubes and crumbs onto a baking sheet. Bake at 400 degrees until golden. Cubes should be crunchy. It's ok if the crumbs get a little dark.

Clean 2lbs mushrooms. We used 2/3lb shittake, 2/3lb oyster, 2/3lb chanterelle. Reserve the shittake stems.

Add shittake stems to 4c chicken (or veggie) broth and bring to a boil. Lower to a strong simmer and cover. Cook about 20 minutes, until reduced by half. Strain. You should have 2c mushroomy broth.

Slice mushrooms.  Slice 5 large shallots. Saute shallots and mushrooms in about 1T butter and 1T olive oil until golden brown, about 20 minutes (they'll release liquid, and then start drying out and browning). Add salt and pepper to taste.

Add the cooked mushrooms to the strained broth.

An hour before serving, beat 1c heavy cream with 3 eggs. Combine with mushroom mix and cornbread cubes only. Pour into gratin dish. Sprinkle cornbread crumbs on top.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes, until set (a thin knife inserted into the gratin will come out clean).

A Shabbat Feast

This feast, generously subsidized by Birthright, was a wonderful opportunity to make something I normally cannot afford: veal shoulder. This beautiful five pound roast is stuffed with herbs and garlic, rolled in porcini dust, and cooked slowly in my homemade chicken stock, red wine, and tomato paste, with some marrow-filled veal bones tossed in to beef up the sauce.

the herb & garlic stuffing

the bones & the roast

adding liquids

After cooking, you refrigerate the roast overnight, scrape off all the fat, carve the meat and reduce the sauce, sneaking a bite of marrow on toast as you remove the bones. I adapted my recipe from Epicurious's, adjusting things like the balsamic and porcini (I added more).

I served this with a barley and roasted vegetable pilaf-- I roasted the butternut squash and parsnips with balsamic vinegar and fresh thyme, separately so each cube would get creamy on the inside and caramelized on the outside...

combined in one pan for easy cooling

...then tossed them with the cooled cooked barley, reheated the pot, and added lemon zest, toasted almonds and mint.

As an appetizer, I made a salad of arugula, julienned apple & celeriac (celery root) soaked in lemon juice & olive oil, smoked trout, warm goat cheese and spicy-sweet walnuts with a dill-pomegranate (thanks Maia!) cream dressing.

J, of the Green Kitchen next door, made dessert: dried cherries soaked in reduced sour cherry juice, served over Haagen Daaz vanilla ice cream with Chessman cookies.

Heritage Potluck

In honor of the 4th of July, I am posting about this very American party. It was a brilliant idea: everyone brought a food from their "heritage." We had: Travis's Southern boiled peanuts, Maria's New Zealand Kiwi Pavlova, Gina's Dalmatian Čevapčići (sausages), Aaron's American Mac N Cheese, Jesse's Cheyenne Fry Bread (with sundried tomatoes and goat cheese!), Trang's Vietnamese Banana Blossom Salad and 5-Spice Pork Belly, and my Turkish Sephardic Spinach Borekas. Everything was delicious.

I'll be gone for a month... more posts in August. Have a great July!

Sushi!

Katie and I made way too much sushi. Stay tuned for some leftovers posts.
Learn from our "mistake": if you want to make sushi,
invite some friends.

pickled mackerel nigiri
with avocado & tobiko
&
hamachi nigiri

closeup of the mackerel-- this was a delicious combo.
the avocado tempered the vinegary fish
and the tobiko added a nice crunch.

salmon nigiri with avocado on shiso leaves

shiso leaves have a strong woodsy citrus flavor
that kind of overwhelmed the delicate salmon

tuna & hamachi sashimi with a dollop of tobiko

salmon, scallop, and octopus sashimi

the octopus was cooked and sliced thin

scallop sashimi is my new favorite!

more pickled mackerel, with avocado,
tobiko, and daikon radish sprouts

tuna with avocado & tobiko,
garnished with daikon radish sprouts

sake, of course

All Offal, All the Time

All Offal, All the Time

February 29, 2008

Our offal dinner-- the somewhat belated Winter Feast of the series Katie & I have been doing-- was held, somewhat appropriately, on Leap Day. I think I can wait til the next Leap Day (or bissextile day) to do this again. It was rather rushed, labor-intensive, and (at least partially) kinda gross (yes, even I can't handle prolonged exposure to gooey, goopy brains as I pull the membrane and veins out...).

I didn't help that our old meat standby, Verbrugge's, completely let us down. We were supposed to pick up the brains and kidneys the morning of the feast (they should be eaten as fresh as possible). Verbrugge's decided to call us that morning to let us know that they couldn't get them. After some very frantic phone calls, I located frozen kidneys at Andronico's (who knew? they also have hearts, tripe, and sweetbreads), and beef brains (we wanted lamb or calf) at Mi Ranchito Bayside Market (Berkeley). But when I went to buy the brains, it turned out that all they had was a frozen 5-lb tub. A little too much for this party. So, a few more calls later, we located pig brains at 99 Ranch (Richmond) and I went off in search (thanks for the company, J). 99 Ranch is a simply fantastic asian market, but they don't really speak English, so trying to get something specific is pretty difficult (I once tried to get seafood stock. Don't even try. They don't have it.). But eventually I found the pig brains, below the tocino and next to the pig uterus and bung (intestines)-- here's a good post on those products, fyi. They were fresh, not frozen, which was a little worrisome, but they were only $2, so we decided to give them a try. We had, after all, promised brains to our delighted guests.

Unfortunately, our recipe depended on lamb or calf brain-- the kind that stays together-- and this poor piggy brain fell apart as soon as it left the container. So, instead of making nice fried slices, we fried the few clumps I'd managed to clean and had them as pre-dinner snack. They were as good as anything deep-fried is, but the brains themselves didn't have much flavor. We'll try again though-- stay posted.

Thanks to Karen for the dessert and photos and to Ridwan for coming early to help (and cleaning too)!

So, the menu:

Chicken Liver Mousse
with pickled red onions


Deviled Kidneys


Braised Tongue with
Caper, Cornichon, and Caperberry Sauce
and
Potato-Chard Gratin


Blood Orange Sorbet
with candied peels
and phyllo crisps

Cooking Pictures (view at your own risk):

The Brains

uncooked, uncleaned

uncooked, cleaned

fried up in tasty clumps

The Tongue

looks like a tongue. feels like a tongue.

bubbling away with aromatics
(notice the brand!)

cooked and sliced, soaking up sauce

The Gratin

This was so pretty uncooked,
topped with chopped chard stems
in red, orange, and yellow

The Dessert

beautiful blood oranges, and a lime

candying the peels