Sometimes I get to feeling a bit guilty when I don’t post as often as other supa-bloggers. We all get busy and we all make excuses for the things that bring us away from out passions, so mine aren’t necessarily valid, but they’re actual. I’ve been getting all up in the catering world business, and I’m noticing that things I make for other people don’t entirely reflect my personality. I guess I can’t keep not posting, though, so I’m going to share a dose of what I’ve been working on lately, despite the fact that it isn’t what ended up on my dinner plate last night.  Besides, who knew I would have so much fun rolling hundreds of grissini and testing umpteen variations on gelato affogato in limoncello (lemon gelato drowned in limoncello liqueur)? Have fun I did, so I’ll share a few thoughts. When you’re piping ice cream, gelato, sorbet, or what have you into champagne flutes and you want a perfectly piped effect, get your tip down low to the bottom of the glass, pipe fast, and pull up hard. Nothing about that sentence was meant to sound sexy, but it all did somehow, didn’t it? Next up, again on the perfect piping, if you want ideal variance between the liqueur you’re using- in my case limoncello- and the gelato/ice cream, you’ll want to use less liqueur than you might think. I piped a few perfect ones, then I realized those people probably wouldn’t have very much fun, so I stopped worrying about visual glory and started worrying about getting Aunt Mabel drunk enough to give Uncle Peter’s peter a second glance after the rehearsal dinner for which I was doing all this piping.

Next, I moved on to rolling long skinny tubes between my palms in order to make them hard sticks.  Who knew the culinary world could be so dirty? Grissini are marvelous examples of breadsticks, and extremely pleasurable to make after you’ve downed a quarter litre of limoncello, to be sure. You can have great fun with the ingredients, like I did, adding exciting things like sundried tomatoes, truffle salt, and extra pinches of sarcastic wit. Grissini are great space-savers, since you can serve them vertically, bursting forth from your favorite vase as a table centerpiece. The limoncello and the grissini were the highlights of the day and they represent the last time I’ll likely be able to cook for a few days given the fact that I’ll be attending the International Food Blogger’s Conference this weekend. It’s three days of information, food, networking, and likely a time where I’ll need my drinking shoes. Although bloggers have been encouraged to document the event, I’m not sure my usual style of writing up what crazy thing I’ve concocted will make it easy to stray. I’m sure I will learn a great deal and come back to this blog with all sorts of fancy ways to R to the OI and S to the EO. Have an enchanting weekend and put something amazing in your mouth for me.

Pork slow-braised in milk is a mainstay of several cultures, believe it or not. I’m not sure who the first ancient was who decided tossing a big hunka meat in a pot o’ simmering milk was a good idea, but in retrospect, it was genius. It’s a dish I first became aware of in Italy, hence my title, but I’ve heard that Frenchies, Americanos, and even sexy Spaniards have taken successful stabs at it.

As I am wont to do when I get these hare-brained whims, I decided to sort of go global with my version. For example I reduced the goat milk that remained after the braise down into a cajeta-like caramel sauce, giving it a Mexican flair. Since I used Mangalitsa pig, which is an amazing Hungarian swine bred for fatty succulence (and brought to the US by Heath Putnam of Wooly Pigs), I decided to carry a Hungarian theme through the other aspects of the dish. I poached the apricots in sweet Hungarian Tokaji, and I made a spaetzle accompaniment which is dubious in origin itself. It’s technically called “nokedli” in Hungarian, and since Budapest is one of the greatest cities on the planet, in my head I believe it was them who birthed nokedli/spaetzle- one of the greatest pastas on the planet.

Despite all that globe-trotting, the affair remains rooted in locality. The Mangalitsa pork shoulder I used comes from local purveyor to the stars (The French Laundry and Herbfarm to name a few) Heath Putnam, who sells his Mangalitsa products in Seattle at the University District Farmer’s Market as well as via Bill the Butcher. The apricots are sun-ripened from a friend’s tree. The goat milk comes from Grace Harbor Farms in Custer, WA. Even though this meal takes inspiration from the great culinary traditions of the world, it is one that is easy to recreate using local products in an effort to promote sustainability.

The other problem I have with maiale al latte is that it is typically not the most aesthetically-pleasing of dishes. A giant blob of pork set a simmer in milk for hours on end does not result in a composed plate but rather a gloppy mess. I decided to take it a step further by shredding the resulting softened meat, then compressing it into discs that I ultimately coated in panko and pan-fried. I reduced the remaining pork-infused goat milk along with a little sugar down to a cajeta state that played nicely on the sweet/savory continuum and served as a pretty anchor to the various aspects of the plate. This was my first trial with all-semolina spaetzle; usually I use all-purpose flour instead. Semolina gave it a welcome density and it totally lacked any mushiness that is sometimes a problem with regular spaetzle. It also helps when spaetzle-making to plunge just-done spaetzle into an ice bath to stop cooking, then drain and dry them on towels. The final step with spaetzle is to fry them up for extra crispness, which I did in some of the pork fat I separated off the milk before I reduced it to cajeta.

I should note that I did my “braise” in the sous vide machine- opting for 180° F for 18 hours. Because I don’t have a cryovac, I froze the milk before I put it in the bag with the Mangalitsa shoulder so that I could vacuum seal it without the liquid getting into the sealer element. This is a great way to seal braising liquids, broths, et cetera as it ensures you get an airtight bag. I thought apricots would complement both the cajeta and the pork, so I poached them in Tokaji along with some chamomile from the garden and a vanilla pod. My interpretation of maiale al latte may not be traditional, but it kind of kicked ass. The quality of each individual ingredient added to the greatness of the whole, and despite some technical steps, this really is a showcase of simple combinations working together beautifully to bring out the best in every element.

What the hell is a breast of veal? Breasts come from squab, ducks, chickens, and plastic surgeons, commonly. The average chap doesn’t often think of the breast of a baby cow, but Thomas Keller is no average person, I’m coming to find out. It turns out veal does have a breast, and it’s a pretty hefty thing indeed. I chose to make this recipe for my awesometastic toddler Bentley Danger’s 2^nd birthday, occurring on the intriguingly-auspicious 08.09.10. Why Linda, don’t you think he would have been happy with tater tots and easy cheese? Mayhaps, but I’m doing my best to cultivate a little urban gourmand, so I see no better occasion to make a multi-day feast than on the anniversary of Bentley’s birth. It is also a reminder of how far we’ve come in the last two years. Two years ago I was laid up in a hospital bed after 72 hours of 2-week overdue labor that included a crash cart scare and eventually being completely put to sleep for the birth of Bentley due to unforeseen complications. Everything is dandy now and I chalk it up to the little monster not being quite ready to enter the big, bright world, nevertheless it wasn’t the greatest few days. That is in stark contrast to our life now. Bentley is an aspiring sous chef, assisting me in the kitchen with all the dexterity he can muster. He has a surprising attention to detail (at least when it comes to licking the ice cream-churning beaters).

In lieu of a big party this year, we decided to keep his fete to family, since it was on a Monday. The reveler tally totaled 13 adults and four little ones, so I thumbed through The French Laundry looking for something that would feed a small crowd. It turns out the veal breast was what TK served the original crew of TFL a week before it opened, thus it’s a very meaningful recipe to him. I figured it would be an ideal dish to commemorate a momentous day, and so set out to gather my ingredients. TK suggests asking the butcher for a Bobby veal breast which is smaller than a regular breast, but I was unable to locate one. Just locating a veal breast itself proved challenging. Turns out we are not big veal eaters in this country, and least of all as strange a cut as a breast. No matter though, I planned to double his original recipe anyway since I had a larger crowd, so the butcher and I figured about half a regular-sized veal breast would do the trick. The whole breast weighed in at 20 lbs, of which I took 10.

The breast has ribs running up its length. The butcher compared it to pork spare ribs. I also came to find out it is full of cartilage and fat, which I suppose make it tender and delicious after a low and slow braise, but nothing turns you off of eating more than pulling a 10” long cord of cartilage out of a freshly-cooked piece of meat. The node-like tendrils looked like something out of a sci-fi film: half animate, half spare computer part. I wanted to share a picture but I couldn’t bring myself to ruin the magic of the final dish (it was definitely magical). About the time I was done braising and I was separating the rib rack from the meat, I started to seriously doubt this dish. There was a ton of fat, sinew, bone, cartilage, and all manner of odd thing interspersed between the flesh of the breast. How on earth would it ever taste good, and how could I serve my guests something so strange?

The next step calls for doubling the breast upon itself and weighting it so that it compresses together to form a solid, thin mass. I did this overnight, and the next day when I pulled the breast out to cut it into rounds for serving, the genius of the dish was apparent. The cutter wouldn’t cut through the fat, so it was easy to separate it at that time from the meat, and in the end I would up with perfect circles of meat the texture of tuna in a salad Nicoise with the flavor profile of well-braised veal. Every time I cook a TK recipe I go through a touch-and-go period where I firmly believe the dish won’t come together. Each instance so far, he’s proven me wrong. The steps are actually so clear and concise that any doubt and second-guessing is really a product of my own mind. I feel comfortable enough in the kitchen that I trust myself, but I guess I’m learning that I have to trust someone else too, if I respect them enough to cook from their book.

The grueling detail-focus in this recipe is maddening. For instance, he specifies shapes for the various vegetables that top the meat; the beets must be Parisienne balls, the carrots are 1” turned (whittled into miniature footballs), the celery are 1×1/4 batons, and the turnips are fluted ovals. If there is a soul among you who can scoop Parisienne balls from a raw beet, speak now! I wound up sous viding my beets, then perfectly cubing them- I think they were plenty beautiful. I spent roughly an hour chopping up a few vegetables for the dish. Had it been a creation from my own head, the same vegetables would have taken me 15 minutes and looked good enough to be served at a restaurant. Good enough is not TK’s style. They must be the best. My knife skills improved considerably in that hour.

The waste present in most of TK’s recipes is a little staggering as well. In order to get perfect batons, balls and ovals, roughly 50% of the vegetable in question is peeled or pared away. In a commercial kitchen this would not be a problem, I wager, since stocks and sauces welcome the addition of wanton veggies. In my own kitchen I find myself scrambling to come up with clever ways to serve the unwanted bits, thus I make one recipe from TFL then eat remarkably unphotogenic (though usually delicious) meals for two days afterward. I have witnessed this phenomenon with vegetables, but also bones, duck breast, fish scraps, polenta remnants, et cetera. It’s something to be aware of, and I consider it a good and bad thing. It’s god in that it forces me to think outside the box to come up with alternative uses for the imperfect scraps. It’s bad because I imagine people across the country tackling the daunting recipes in TK’s books yet being busy enough in their lives that they simply boot the waste into the compost bin. I wish he would have addressed this issue by stating what he actually personally does with all the excess instead of the occasional “can be frozen for future use.” Future use in what? Let’s keep the food revolution going with inspired ideas for scrap foods. Maybe I’ll write that book. Hmmm, Goin’ Gourmet with TFL’s Tatters?

Last week I wrote about how TK inspired in me a love for strainers, chinois’, China caps, and the like. This week it’s got to be my round cutters of all sizes. He’s got me thinking I can make anything pretty by simply plopping it into a little round form. It really did the trick for this dish, however. Braised meat dishes tend to be among the most heart-warmingly delectable around, but they also tend toward unsightliness on the plate. A slop of stew, a smattering of spaetzle, and you are left with a full belly in front of a skid-marked plate. By packing the strands of meat into a round, pan-frying them, then serving them on equally circular cakes of polenta, the mess is virtually eliminated. It’s a fine thing indeed when the beauty of the plate matches the beauty in your belly, and this dish achieves that rare balance.

Bentley gave the dish the ultimate seal of approval when he unceremoniously (read: beseechingly, with sticky hands grabbing at the platter) requested a second veal breast round along with more polenta. He ate so much dinner he wasn’t overly obsessed with the chocolate/peanut/cajeta cups I made him for dessert, although they did end up all over his face during the manic unwrapping of gifts portion of the evening.

I have a husband who won’t eat fish. This is especially painful because I am the type of person to desperately covet what I cannot have. If someone tells me something is unattainable I will hit the wall at the end of the internet looking for it. Usually I am victorious. Case in point: my doorbell is actually made from two wine glasses that sound like they are clinking together when a little spring-loaded electromagnet chimes them. I truly found it at the end of the internet and I’m pretty sure it was because someone told me I couldn’t. This long diatribe is all to say that Jonas’ lack of fish fortitude only makes me crave it all the more. Especially in summer. Strangely enough, he has one exception in the seaward realm: tuna. He will order ahi with abandon, despite its sustainability implications. I feel bad buying it given said implications, but when a girl craves fish and there isn’t another option, she’s gotta do what she’s gotta do.

Hence, I give you ahi poached in duck fat prepared l’orange. The whole l’orange thing came about because I was contemplating a way to tie my duck fat in with the dish and I decided adapting a classic duck preparation to fish would make an interesting juxtaposition. I was right. It was one of the most succulent slices of fish I have had in years. I did my poaching in the sous vide bath, thus enabling me to use far less duck fat than I would have needed had I poached stovetop in a pan. Because the poaching is for such a short time relatively speaking, however, you could probably get away with poaching in a food-safe vacuum-sealed bag on the stovetop in temperature-controlled water.

I was a little worried all the elements of the dish might not play nice with one another, but my concern was all for naught. The key players- ahi, duck fat, oranges, figs and translucent potato rounds- all clung together like star-crossed lovers about to be damned. The duck fat brought out a brilliant silken texture in the tuna that made biting through it a dream. The figs, from a neighbor’s tree, bathed luxuriously in the caramelly citrus sauce and lent a sense of cohesion between the potatoes and the rest of the dish. Who knew figs and potatoes paired so perfectly? I’m dreaming up a figgy gratin melange as I type… Pommes Maxim are a wonderful, and relatively simple, take away from The French Laundry. It’s a fun process that involves making 1/4” slices of potato on the mandolin, then using a 2” cutter to stamp them into rounds. They come together as wheels on parchment, then get pan-fried in (you guessed it) duck fat (my addition). It’s all you can do not to devour them straight from the pan when they develop a golden crust and fill the kitchen with their sweet perfume.

Ahi Poached in Duck Fat L’Orange with Caramelized Figs

Serves 4

• 1 lb block of sushi-grade ahi tuna (COLD)
• Kosher salt and pepper
• 4 tbsp duck fat- solid
• Juice of one organic orange
• 1 tsp organic orange zest
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1 tbsp champagne vinegar
• 4 quartered figs
• 4 slices of orange or 8 slices of mandarin
• ¼ c duck stock (can use chicken if duck is not on hand)

1. Bring sous vide bath to 138°. Pat tuna dry, season with salt and pepper, and seal into food safe bag along with duck fat using a vacuum sealer. Poach tuna in water bath for 17 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, in a skillet just large enough to hold the tuna, reduce orange juice, zest, honey, and vinegar to thin syrup consistency. Be careful not to reduce too much or you will not have enough syrup to glaze the tuna.
3. Remove the tuna from the water bath and pour two tablespoons of the duck/tuna fat into the skillet. Heat the skillet to medium high and sear the tuna on all sides in the orange glaze quickly so as not to further cook the inside of the tuna block. Remove the tuna to a cutting board to rest.
4. Add the figs and orange slices to the skillet and coat with the remaining glaze. Add the duck stock, scrape the pan with a wooden spoon to deglaze, and again reduce by half. This should take two minutes. While the stock is reducing to sauce, slice the tuna into quarter inch thick rectangles. Arrange on a plate along with the figs, orange slices and sauce.

I’ve been steeped in French Laundry recipes so much lately I haven’t been doing much personal recipe development. Consequently I decided to devote my attention to one of my favorite things- confit de canard, known in these parts as duck confit. The irony of duck confit is that the cooking process is meant as a way to preserve the duck for later use, however the second I confit (preserve) a Pekin leg I am all over it like a lush on Lillet (that’s me too, this summer anyway).

I have been fascinated with the confit method for some time; a fascination which was exacerbated by my love affair with the Sous Vide Supreme. Since you need a low, ambient temperature to slowly cook the duck in order to render its own fat (I also augment it with a generous slather of already-rendered fat), sous vide is the perfect cooking method. Another benefit of sous vide is that you can use less additional fat (I’ve tried not using any and it works, though the depth of flavor is just not there) in the cooking process and turn out exceptional results.  This is my fifth attempt at defining just the right cure time as well as cook time and temp on duck confit, and I am pleased to confidently publish the results.

The zucchini tagliatelle and beet puree are suggested accompaniments that both sprung from my summer garden bounty. The beet puree adds a perfect hint of sweetness to counterbalance the salty duck and the consistency makes it more than addictive. I love that this preparation of zucchini elevates the classic garden staple to a sophisticated component of a decadent dish.

Duck Confit

This makes 2 duck legs and serves 2. Increase as necessary.

note: you will want to start this recipe the night before as the duck requires curing in the salt overnight.

The cure

• 1/3 c Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt
• 3 fresh bay Leaves
• 5- 4” thyme sprigs
• 1.4 c fresh parsley leaves
• ½ tsp SMOKED GARLIC POWDER
• 6 black peppercorns
• Two tablespoons duck fat

Finely grind all cure ingredients (except for duck fat) in a spice grinder. Place two towel-dried duck legs in a food-safe bag and coat with the salt blend. Seal the bag using a vacuum sealer. Place in refrigerator to cure for 12 hours. Set the water temperature of your sous vide to 185°. Cut open the bag and gently rinse the duck legs and inside of bag. Pat dry. Put the duck legs back in the bag along with two tablespoons duck fat and reseal. Immerse in the water bath for seven hours. Remove from bath and let rest 15 minutes. Cut open the bag and gently pour off the duck fat into a container and place the duck legs on a paper towel-lined plate. Heat a film of canola oil in a medium skillet. Cook the duck legs skin-side down for 3-4 minutes, or until they slide freely in the pan and develop a dark-golden crust.

Zucchini Tagliatelle

• 1 large zucchini or 2 small
• Kosher salt
• Pepper
• 1 tbsp  rendered duck fat from the duck confit

Using a mandolin, make long, thin strips of zucchini to resemble pasta ribbons. Spread them evenly on a clean kitchen towel and sprinkle with salt. Allow the salt to draw the moisture from the zucchini for a few minutes, then press the ribbons with another towel to remove the moisture. You can repeat this process several times for a firmer final texture (to resemble al dente pasta). Pepper the ribbons, then sauté in duck fat for a few minutes until just cooked. Do not overcook the zucchini or it will turn mushy. I like to use a round cutter form to plate the zucchini, that way it stays in a nice pile on the plate, but do as you wish. A squeeze of lemon goes nicely with this dish.

Beet Puree

• 2 medium beets (I mixed a red beet and a Chioggia beet to achieve the pink color)
• 1 cup heavy cream
• ¼ c water
• 1 tbsp rendered duck fat or butter

Chop the beets into uniform ½” cubes. Very gently boil them in the cream and water until they are soft- about half an hour. Strain the cream into a bowl and reserve. Pass the beets through a food mill, then a fine mesh strainer (use the back end of a ladle to get them through the strainer). This will give a perfectly smooth, airy texture. Place the beet puree in a small saucepan, and just before service reheat along with a tablespoon of the reserved cream and the duck fat/butter.

I’m probably somehow cheating by systematically selecting the more appealing-sounding recipes to prepare first from The French Laundry. It would be more equivocal if I just started on page one and worked my way through to page 326, but I’m going to allow myself a little flexibility.  It’s not like I’m making the deliberately easy-seeming recipes. It’s just that usually, if given the choice amongst all the fish, fowl, and four-legged beasts, I can’t help but gravitate toward duck. That may be because we had ducks growing up on the little half-ark my father, channeling his inner-god complex, created for us.

I say half-ark because mostly we had one of everything, so we would have been SOL in truly apocalyptic times.  One cow (Slobber, my bff), one horse (Smokey, my nemesis), one stork (a tale for another time), one sheep, and so on, you get the picture. Which is why it was a little odd that we had two ducks. They were the unchallenged rulers of the realm. They had the dogs, cowering in fear every time they so much as wobbled by on their webby, stumpy feet. I was a brazen little girl, insisting on mowing the lawn with my shirt off just because I had seen my dad do it a hundred times. I rode our horse bareback and explored the far-reaches of our acreage on solo missions armed only with a pair of threadbare shorts and an active imagination. This is to say, I didn’t scare easily. But I was amongst the plebian denizens frightened to the core of those scheming ducks. If I would round a corner and happen unawares upon the ducks, they would come at me clucking and pecking at my heels until I left them to their malicious devices.

Fast-forward nearly thirty years- maybe I subconsciously like to eat duck because I feel like I’m somehow getting back at those two saboteurs of my happy-go-lucky childhood. I certainly don’t hate ducks in their live state; I think they’re striking and on the smarter side as far as fowl goes.  I do, however, prefer them on the plate if they’re going to be within five feet of me.  Which is why I jumped at the chance to make Keller’s duck roulade. It’s basically flattened duck breasts wrapped in blanched chard leaves cooked at 190° in a water bath for 8 minutes.  Sounds simple enough, no? So I thought I would measure the total time spent making the dish. It starts with a “quick sauce” of duck bones and anyone who has made one of the quick sauces from The French Laundry knows that they are anything but quick.  I figured since I needed to make the sauce from duck bones it would be more economical to buy a whole duck for the affair. I’d use the breasts for the roulade, the carcass for the sauce, and reserve the legs for a confit preparation along with the fat I could render from the bird.  It turned out to be a wise choice, however I felt a little like Daniel Day Lewis in Gangs of New York going all meat-cleaver on my duck carcass.  There was duck blood sputtering all over the kitchen and I was really happy Bentley Danger was tucked safely in his crib for a nap, because who wants their two-year-old to liken them to Bill the Butcher?

I’ve broken down plenty of fowl carcasses in my life, but never quite so meticulously as with this duck. It was imperative that my breasts remain as large and intact as possible in order to maximize them for the roulade, so I took great care extracting them from the frame (upon rereading the previous sentence, I suppose one might read it with dirtier thoughts than I intended. Oops!). Keller wants the remaining bones 2” long in order to extract as much possible flavor for the quick stock, so I had to somehow cleave very carefully. I don’t know about you, but it is all but impossible for me to bring a cleaver down on anything and not close my eyes as its making contact. Not sure if it’s some cobweb in my mind from a horror flick gone awry, or just a natural instinct, but I’d be curious if it’s the same for you. I wonder if it’s the same thing as trying to sneeze with your eyes open, perhaps.

About the time I was carefully extracting my luscious breasts, I started fantasizing about who I would have to dinner along with Thomas Keller. It’s a far-flung goal of mine to cook for him, but who best to fill the remaining seats? I decided to go ahead and put together a dream-team of my all-time-favorite living idols, cooking and otherwise. So that’s Thomas Keller, Jeffrey Steingarten (there would have to be an amuse bouche of grubs or beetles or something to satisfy him), Christopher Walken, and David Lebovitz.  I could waltz with Walken, test my latest gelato on Lebovitz, quake in my boots for what Steingarten would say of the meal, and bask in the sheer genius of Keller all night long.  I actually think it would be a well-blended set, and I don’t think they’ve all been in the same room at once before, so I would give them something to bond over. I would LOVE to hear your ultimate dinner party if you’d care to share in the comments. Make sure they’re living folks- that way there’s a remote chance it will actually happen!

After the starting the sauce, I got down to trimming up the duck breasts so they’d fit symmetrically within the chard leaves. It was a sad sight trimming off all the perfectly good meat, but I’ve reserved it for another use, so all is well with the world. Rolling the breasts in the leaves was trickier than it sounded, but in the end I got perfect little roll-ups that rested in the refrigerator while the sous vide machine heated up to temperature. Keller actually calls for immersing the roulades wrapped in plastic into a pot of water kept at 190°, but I have a sous vide machine, so why not use it?

Meanwhile I got a chance to play with the chemical properties of corn by extracting corn water from the cob, then heating it and watching it quickly thicken from the natural cornstarch present. The creamy corn that is a part of this recipe is a relatively simple vegetable dish that I will repeat often since it was beyond pleasurable.  The morel topper made with what eventually became duck sauce, however, is what pushed me over the edge to try this dish. Morels are nearing the end of their season here in Washington, and they are my favorite mushroom by far. This is perhaps the best showcase of their meaty, woodsy qualities I’ve prepared this season. From top to bottom, this dish is a MUST-TRY if you are even remotely a Keller-phile such as myself. Nothing is overly-daunting, and the ratio of accomplishment to time spent is quite high for a recipe from The French Laundry.