White Truffle Oil Infused Custards with Black Truffle Ragout

I have admired the picture of the completed custards over and over.  I've contemplated cutting the shells, how pretty the standing chive chip would be, how delicious double-truffle custard would be.

Well, at least I got one of those right.

Let's start with the eggshells.  I bought an egg cutter (against all instinct, because I thought I would be terrible at cutting eggshells).  The stupid, stupid thing did not work (what a waste of $10!)  But, I was right about the eggshells: I AM terrible at cutting them.

(and let us not even mention the number I broke.  Luckily, I needed a lot of eggs for the dinner overall).

I knew the chive chips would be a challenge.  I mean, i'm making chips out of potatoes squished together!

First, I prepped the sheets - two silpats, clarified butter, salt.  Hint: don't put a ton of salt.  The chips may have been pretty, but they were kind of like eating a salt lick.

I peeled the potato, cut it into a band-aid shape, sliced it thin on the mandoline.  I laid a chive between two slices, and baked on low low heat.

The recipe said they were supposed to take 20 minutes.  Um, more like an HOUR before they were golden brown and crisp-like - they never got crisp like a real chip, but at the least they were cooked.  Some of this may have been me, since I did confuse the instructions and think that I needed to sandwich those between two cookie sheets.  They were delicious, once I got past the salt lick thing.

Finally, a couple of hours before people were due, I made the custard.  It was actually simple.  There were only like four things in it - how could it not be??

I warmed the milk and cream to just under a boil, turned the blender on, and poured it in.  Yes, turned the blender on THEN poured it in.  I have to admit, I was scared - visions of scalding milk flying in my direction.  But Thomas Keller said turning it on first would actually STOP splashing, and who am I to argue with TK?  Unsurprisingly, he was right.

So, where was I?  Oh yeah, milk/cream, blending, then I added a couple of eggs, salt, pepper, and (at the very end) white truffle oil.  As i've said so many times, i'm not a huge fan of the smell of white truffle oil, so it didn't smell heavenly.  Pour it into a spouted measuring cup, into the egg shells, which went into a big glass pan that I filled 2/3rds of the way with water.  Baked for about an hour, perfect custards!

Finally, right before serving, I reduced some truffle-infused stock, a dash of vinegar, some truffles, and some brunoise.  Beautiful stuff.

The finished dish:

The chip is standing!  At least it did for a minute - it quickly wilted in the sauce/custard.  Eating it... well, lets just say this is the 'playfulness' in this meal.  I served them in these shotglasses (sake glasses?) I found when unpacking hubby's old high school pottery he made that had been boxed up for at least a decade.  Innocent high school times, i'm sure.  And to go with pottery shotglasses?  Baby spoons.  The only thing I could find that actually fit into the eggshells.  Well, I found one espresso spoon, which husband used, because he said there was 'absolutely no way' he was eating off a baby spoon.  Marked contrast to one male guest who told us about how he used to eat baby bananas and HIDE THE JARS and how eating off a baby spoon brought back memories.  Hilarious things that come out when you have co-workers over for dinner.

I think the fact that I talked about the container and spoon for so long tells how I felt about the custard.  I mean, it wasn't bad.  But it wasn't my favorite.  I was disappointed, after admiring the picture for so long.  With so few disappointments so far, though, it only seems fitting that something wouldn't be the most amazing thing ever.

Dinner 11: New House, New Kitchen, New Outlook

Well, maybe a readoption of an old outlook.  I'm simultaneously gaining and losing steam.  On one hand, I just planned and executed a FIVE course menu from TFLC.  Five courses!  And it wasn't even that hard (well, obviously this was due in part to the menu).  I yearn to spend more time in the kitchen, learning, cooking.  At the same time, i'm becoming less confident in my ability to do this.  By this, I mean make it through The French Laundry.   I've made it just shy of halfway (48% to be exact!), but, well, whole lambs are crazy.  And pigs heads and feet are gross.  Obviously, making it through The French Laundry will be the biggest challenge of the Keller collection (well, not sure how Under Pressure is, but Bouchon and Ad Hoc are both pretty simple after TFLC).  Does this mean that i'm going to spend my next decade cooking Keller for my friends, family, and co-workers?  I'm just not sure.

Musings aside, my five course menu for dinner!

Canape - white truffle oil-infused custards with black truffle ragout
First Course - tasting of potatoes with black truffle
Entree - Venison Chops with pan-roasted butternut squash
Cheese course - Perail de brebis with frisee aux lardons
Dessert - ile flottante

Sally Schmidt's Cranberry Apple Kuchen

We've established that I have gone literally months - *months* - without cooking.  Life is busy, deadlines, work, lawyer, blah, blah.  We all get busy sometimes.  Mine led to no cooking.

By November, I was really starting to have French Laundry withdrawals.  Four months without using my round cutters or chinois!  Four months without making a new flavored oil!  Four months without worrying about accidentally setting my kitchen on fire!  So, I insisted on having people over for Thanksgiving.  It was a long, hard fight; I won.  We had a small crowd (six people), so I stuck to traditions: turkey, mashed potatoes, grilled veggies, stuffing.  I threw in one unusual item: pumpkin-thyme rolls (which were a giant hit).  

And, I managed to seamlessly add a dessert from The French Laundry Cookbook.  Since we didn't have cranberry sauce, since no one coming over really loved pie (except me and angry toddler), I decided apple-cranberry cake would be a perfect way to end the meal.  It was.  And easy to boot.  I actually managed to prep it and cook it during the five hours that it took me to do all of Thanksgiving dinner.

The mis.  Notice something unusual about this picture? 

If you said 'granite counters, so that must be your new kitchen'... dingdingding!  Good observation skills.

Next I peeled, sliced, and cored some apples.

To make the batter, I creamed some butter, sugar, and an egg, then added flour and baking soda.

I spooned that into a cake pan (or in my case, really a cheesecake springform pan, which is nice because it releases easy but can turn out poorly for a bunch of reasons I dont understand.  I used it because it was the only cake pan I had that was anywhere near the right size) and arranged the apples in a pretty ring.

Sprinkling cranberries is fun!

With cranberries arranged around all of the edges and center.

Then I dusted with cinnamon/sugar/possibly nutmeg (I have no recollection of that, but looking back at my mis I see nutmeg and milk, which must have been in the batter)

Forty-odd minutes later, it emerged from the oven all beautiful.  And without any natural light to make a pretty photograph, and with people who had just finished dinner clamoring for a bite.

I whipped up the hot cream sauce - which was basically fat, more fat, and a different form of something that will make you fat (ie, cream, butter, and sugar).

The cake was delicious, although I wished that I had used a slightly smaller cake pan, since the batter part of the cake seemed a little thin.  It was a little tart without the hot cream sauce.  The dessert-hater crowd was happy about that, since (1) they could pretend like it was healthier and (2) it wasn't really sweet.  The hot cream sauce brought the sweetness up a tinge, and soaked through the batter to almost make it like a tres leches cake.

I thought it was delicious both ways.  It definitely reheated better with the cream sauces as breakfast (and maybe lunch... and dinner) the next day.  The combination tart-sweet seems like it would be a good holiday cake or like a nice cake in the summer, when its hot and you don't want to feel weighted down by something super sugary.  It just occurred to me that cranberries are near impossible to find in the summer though - so maybe its more of a September/October in San Diego cake (when its still hot, but we like to pretend its fall.)  Just find a time to make it.  It will take less than an hour, including cooking time, and will get rave reviews.  

Staff Lasagna and Dressing

In addition to the gazpacho, I brought some lasagna along to whatever family gathering where I though lots of people would eat it (i'm thinking Father's Day, but not positive).  Despite being the "staff meal," it still required a lot more work than *I* put into an everyday meal!

 Mis - look at all those ingredients!

Now, part of the extensive work involved had to do with making my own tomato sauce.  To be honest, i'm not sure if I had ever done this before (there isn't much of a point, since marina affects me more than any other tomato product aside from ketchup).

First up, I cut little x's and blanched a trillion tomatoes (notice how I didn't bother taking the stickers off?  It was because I knew I had to peel them, so why bother!)

There are no peeled tomato pictures because my hands were burning.  My sister recently told me she broke out in hives from eating half a slice of tomato.  I know she breaks out in hives from touching ketchup (something hard for her to avoid being a waitress; I've avoided touching ketchup since hearing this).  I'm pretty sure the burning hands were related to the whole allergy thing, which means its getting worse.  Boo!

Burning hands aside, I cut them into chunks.

Next, I sweat some onions down with some tomato paste.  It smelled heavenly.

Then, I tossed all of the peeled, seeded, chopped tomatoes into the mix, and cooked those down until it was sauce.  It took a long time to get something that smelled right - like 1 1/2 hours.  This may have been faster if I could have tasted it, though, since its a lot easier to adjust seasoning with tastebuds than, say, your nose.

While the sauce was cooking, I stirred some eggs and ricotta together.  I've made a lot of lasagna (mostly with white sauce instead of marinara), but i've never added eggs before.  I think that i'm going to use this in future lasagnas, since it made the ricotta a lot easier to spread evenly (plus, i'm pretty sure it held better once it was cooked).

Finally, lasagna!  Noodles, sauce, ricotta mix, and oodles of mozzerella - the way lasagna should be.

Because the sauce took so much longer than I guestimated, I was really in a rush and forgot to take a picture of it done.  Even worse (or better, says my body), we had two sets of plans, so we ran out before people had started eating -- so neither me or the hubby got to try it!  I heard it was delicious.  

Oh, yeah, what else... I made salad dressing and brought salad.

Here are the ingredients...

But nothing beyond that, whoops.  It was standard salad dressing - blend everything, add oil very slowly to emulsify.  I'm pretty sure the vitamix made fast dressing out of it.  It was good, but nothing to write home about.

Gazpacho

The disaster that was the verjus sorbet was also the last of many dinners that I would have at my old house.  I knew this because... well, because the dinner was at the end of June, we were supposed to close on our new house in early July, and packing becomes ever more complicated as one builds a massive kitchen arsenal.  I decided that I couldn't leave my French Laundry dinner party project on such a well, utter failure, note, so I decided to squeeze a couple of recipes in (with the intention of bringing them over to big family gatherings).  The easy ones... like gazpacho!

Seriously, if you are looking for the easiest recipe to start The French Laundry Cookbook with, this is it.  There isn't even any cooking involved.  Well, unless you count the balsamic glaze, but I had some in my fridge, so no cooking!

The mis:

Basically, you cut everything up, put some tomato juice and vinegar in, and let it stew overnight.

The next day, I tossed the mix (minus the thyme) into my trusty vitamix....

And blended!

Now, wasn't that easy!  (pictured without balsamic glaze - I was waiting for it to warm up still)

Now, those of you that have paid attention might question how I ate this, since i'm allergic to tomatoes.  In truth, I only had a tiny sip.  I would have liked to drink/eat the entire serving.... but my body wouldn't have appreciated it, so I abstained.  The tiny sip was enough to realize the complexity of flavors, and that this would be a fantastically refreshing soup on a warm day.  So, to recap: hot day, feeling lazy, make gazpacho! 

Verjus... uh, soup.. with Poached Peaches

There wasn't a lot to this dessert.  In fact, I was so intimidated by the idea of cooking lamb AND foie that I intentionally chose an "easy" dessert.

So, of course, I screwed it up.

The peaches went fine - I made pretty slices...

Then I poached them in liquid with a pretty parchment lid, peeled them, and put them in their poaching liquid.

For the sorbet, literally all I had to do was combine verjus and some simple syrup, and put it in the ice cream maker.  I didn't even take any pictures because it was so boring.

And I totally, completely, blew it.  Backing up... I couldn't find any verjus.  Anywhere.  I gave up and got some honey mead that was supposedly supposed to taste similar to verjus (and had a super low alcohol content).  Unsuprisingly to most, i'm sure.... the mead wouldn't freeze.  WTF?  I asked myself.  Then: 'DOH! Alcohol!'  So I boiled the crap out of it to get rid of the alcohol.  But the bowl had thawed a bit, enough to make only a slightly slushy, vaguely alcoholic mix.  (Slush that melted before I even made it to the table).

I present my poached peaches in "wine-sauce." 

The peaches were fine.  Most of us felt a bit more drunk after eating this, even though I contended (over and over) that there COULDN'T be any alcohol in it.  I was validated in that it did finally freeze, after 12 hours in the freezer.  I am currently 0 for 2 on sorbets, which are seemingly the easiest thing to make.  Pox on your house, sorbet... I *will* conquer you!