Last night’s dinner was really a mouthful. So many different elements played off eachother to compose each tasty bite it was hard to keep from shoving it all in at warp speed.  First let me talk about the mmmlicious Meyer lemons. The blogosphere is Meyer lemon-mad right now; everyone and their Nana is using them in everything from curds to pannacotta, limoncello to lemonade.  It’s easy to understand why, the little hybrid sweet tart buggers couldn’t be more delicious right now at this moment AKA go out and buy some Meyer lemons if you haven’t already.  I have purchased them to excess, so last night’s dinner was to be about combining elements in which a Meyer lemon cream sauce would work.  Making it was straightforward enough- sautee some shallots, oregano and zest in butter, add and reduce white wine, bring it on home with the addition of heavy cream, and adjust seasonings with lotsa Meyer lemon juice and a little salt and pepper.  Make the sauce last, it only takes ten minutes to come together. 

I set out for the market yesterday morning intending to buy chickens as I’m about outta chicken stock and need to make more.  I came home with game hens, though, because the little buggers looked up at me all cute-like and said “Buy me, Linda, we’ve never been frozen, ran free when we were alive and come from a farm not 20 minutes from here. Let us meet our fate in your tasty kitchen, pretty please?” They had me at hello, plus dinner was only for four, so why not salt-encrust some game hens?  Then I could use their little carcasses to make a rich stock, plus it’s kind of fun to serve guests an individual bird all to themselves. 

I had some salt that needed using too, we made quite a big batch of it last time we went out seawater collecting and we’re planning a new collection mission soon, so I used some homemade sea salt to form the base of the game hen crust.  I like to do salt crusts because I love salt, but also because believe it or not, the salt crust keeps the meat inside so nice and tender it just falls off the carcass like melted butter.  Making a salt crust is easy, I’ll give you the ratio for one game hen, obviously for four, or a chicken, you’ll want to increase accordingly.  Mix four beaten egg whites with one pound of salt and 1.5c flour.  Add water until a medium-tacky dough is formed.  (You can add herbs too- they infuse flavor. I used oregano since it’s taking over my garden right now and is so fresh)

To encrust the bird, first stuff ‘em and truss ‘em.  I stuff’ em with half a lemon, half a shallot and a bunch of oregano.   Truss so that no pointy wings or legs puncture your crust.  Lay a base of crust on a jellyroll pan lined with parchment. Be sure the base is slightly larger than the bird, then set the bird on the crust.  Pack the remaining dough all around the bird, taking care not to leave any holes where moisture can escape.  Immediately put the bird into a 400° oven and cook for 15 minutes for the crust to solidify, then reduce heat to 350° and bake until an internal thermometer probe reads 160°.  Remove the bird from the oven, but do not remove crust- bird will continue to cook for another half hour or so since the crust acts as an oven.  When you are ready to serve, either remove the crust yourself or let the guest do it himself at the table for a more dramatic presentation. 

I knew that my little game hens would do well with a lemon sauce, so I wanted a starch that could handle it as well since encrusting the bird means you get no gravy as the crust soaks up the cooking jus.  My mind often leans toward gnocchi; it’s one of nature’s perfect foods.  Because the Meyer lemons have a touch of sweetness, however, I wanted to soften the starchiness of typical potato gnocchi.  Parsnips proved the perfect addition since they are a touch sweet themselves.  I used a ratio of 1/3 parsnips to 2/3 potato and it was just right. I’m not sure I’ll make plane ol’ potato gnocchi again anytime soon- try it with parsnip and you’ll see why.   I cooked my potatoes and parsnips sous vide before milling them with my potato ricer. Sous vide is perfect for gnocchi as boiling potatoes leaves too much residual water and makes for a gloppy texture, whereas sous vide doesn’t add any water, but nor does it take any away like baking can, often resulting in overly dry gnocchi.  If I didn’t have a Sous Vide Supreme I would cook the potatoes and parsnips by first boiling, then baking them before ricing. 

After the potatoes are milled into even texture, I add a touch of salt, some microplaned Parmigiano Reggiano, and I start adding flour.  The general ratio of flour to potato matter is 1/3-2/3, but I do this by feel.  You know you have enough flour when the dough doesn’t stick to your hands any longer and you can break off clumps and roll it into tubes without it leaving goo all over the counter.  Once you roll the tubes ¾” thick, cut them into ¾” pieces. At this point you can brand them with the tines of a fork if you are using a thin sauce that you want to adhere to the noodle better, but in the case of my cream sauce I wasn’t worried, so I didn’t brand them since I think they look prettier unadorned.  Cook them in gently boiling salted water until they float to the top, then remove them with a slotted spoon and keep them in a pan in a warming oven with a little butter to prevent them from sticking to one another.  You can start the lemon cream sauce when you’re halfway through cooking the gnocchi and your timing should be right.  Serve both the game hens and the gnocchi with the cream sauce drizzled over the top.

Disclaimer: this post will mention sous vide cooking, I know, I know, again.  It will have value for anyone, though, since good garlic powder is something all of us should have in our kitchen arsenal.

The lovely pulverized goodness that inspired this post came to be as a result of mucking and fuddling about with my newish favorite kitchen gadget- the Sous Vide Supreme.  Now that it’s been out for a few months there are plenty of converts and just as many naysayers on their respective bandwagons. All I can say is that it has revolutionized the way I cook, but no more than, say, my food processor or stand mixer. Funny how you don’t hear a bunch of divisive derision on either of those culinary staples. It’s not like by adding in the sous vide machine someone’s taking away your frying pan, blow torch, or dutch oven, it’s just another notch on the belt, people.  Ok, enough of my rant.  On to the garlic powder.

One thing I’ve learned from sous vide that I am now considering with various other cooking methods as well is that different foods are ideally cooked at different temperatures.  You would certainly cook a steak in the sous vide bath at 134°, though if you throw in some onions or garlic to give it extra flavor they won’t cook properly at such a low temperature.  In order to work around this quandary, you have to come up with a way to get the flavor you want without expecting the sous vide bath to do the cooking.  Same goes for lots of other flavor-enhancing ingredients in the sous vide such as wines, vinegars, ginger, some herbs, et cetera.  Often a chef will pre-cook an ingredient, or merely add it via sauce after the meat is done cooking on its own in the sous vide bath.  I really wanted to experiment with post and pre flavor additions in sous vide, however, to see if the slow and low approach lent any depth or detracted in some way.  This is how I came up with the idea of making garlic powder (aka pre-cooked garlic) to add at will to my sous vide concoctions.  I found a great post on the matter on Pablo Escolar’s blog and I decided to shake things up a bit by adding smoke. 

I was smoking some bacon and artichokes that day anyway, (bacon, always a success, artichokes, not so much) so I figured no harm done by throwing the garlic in the smoker and cooking it that way.  After two hours at 200° in the Weber Smoky Mountain, my garlic had taken on a burnt sienna hue and smelled like savory ambrosia.  I also really liked how I could truthfully state I was smoking cloves, but without the nasty smell and lung-hacking most clove-smoking high-schoolers experience.  Talk about umami- the fifth taste was all up in this piece that day.  That’s when the waiting game started.  Regardless whether you decide to make garlic powder by smoking or roasting the garlic first, unless you own a dehydrator you then need to air dry your garlic to the point that you can successfully pulverize it and it turns to powder, not paste.  I air dried my garlic for three weeks before I ground it in the mortar and pestle followed by the blender for good measure.  I didn’t mind much, though, because whenever I wanted to use some I just spirited away a clove or two from amongst the drying bulbs. 

I’ve been experimenting with the finished product for a week now and I couldn’t be happier with the result. The only thing I wish I had done differently is make more of it.  You might heed that if you try it.  For the trouble you go to, you may as well yield a greater quantity than half a cup, which is what I got from five heads of garlic.  In retrospect I probably would do twenty at a time- that way you would only need to repeat the process maybe twice a year.  It is absolutely perfect sealed into the sous vide bag with a grass-fed filet, a touch of fine salt and nothing more.  I considered pre-mixing some salt with the powder, but I kind of like to individually administer both because different foods require different amounts of both garlic and salt.  The smoke really lends a kick to the flavor, by the way.  Any notions I had of it softening the taste of the garlic are gone.  Instead, it intensifies it, much like smoke intensifies pork belly when making bacon whereas pancetta (which is the same thing sans smoke) has a more subtle flavor.

I was in Cabo San Lucas last week, hence the dearth of posts. I was there for a stiletto ninja training workshop, aka rest, relaxation, food, drinkies and fabulousness.  I committed the cardinal blogger sin, you know what I mean, don’t pretend you don’t. Yes, I forgot my camera. Ok, so I brought along the video camera, which helps, but still! You will sadly miss out on all the enticing foodgasms I experienced in Cabo, but I may just have to feature albondigas in a future post they were so freaky-deaky good.  Meanwhile content yourself with a video short of a few of the foodie fashionista finds I stealthily unearthed while streetwalkin’ in stilettos through the cobbled avenidas of Los Cabos. Loves you til next time, and what a good time it will be, xo, l.