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petroniaIn an attempt to be somewhat timely. XD (I put back posting about my cherry trifle until the fruit was completely out of season, and then I lost the photos. Oh well: reason to make it again next year.)
Theoretical Montreal feijoada
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credoimprobus made a feijoada over Christmas, so I wanted to do one. I'm sure we weren't using the same recipe, though (mine was adapted from this). I'd actually had feijoada once in Brazil, and the one I made tasted nothing like what I remembered XD; but it came out beautifully balanced in its own right, so worth noting down.
The major ingredients as I remember them:
300g salt pork (packaged in brine, not dried)
1 large smoked ham hock
4 pork ribs, separated
4 chorizo sausages, sliced (if I were making this again I'd reduce the count by one, but a lot of the flavouring seemed to come from these, so probably worthwhile to get decent ones)
~1kg stewing beef cubes
1 onion, chopped
half a head of garlic, chopped
2 bay leaves
3 cans of black beans (like... Mexican frijoles XD; this meant reserving two cans to be added late in the process so they don't mush up completely)
I didn't add Serrano pepper, as the chorizo made it spicy enough for my taste. But the major divergence was lack of cured/corned beef: I had no idea where to get it. Everything else could be found in the supermarket, or at the various specialty butchers at Jean-Talon Market. Finally the night before I was due to make the thing I sat up in bed and thought, I can used smoked meat. Makes total sense! But of course by that point things were planned out and I forgot to run over to Dunn's for a brined beef brisket. NEXT YEAR (no way am I making more than one of these a year; it was a massive pot and my sister carried away 2/3 of it).
It would have been my second Canadian Brazilian recipe (after the blueberry caipirinha), which, yeah. IDEK.
Cassoulet and high-end cassoulet cookware
Cassoulet, like mead and oatcakes, is one of those recipes I enjoy the idea of more than the reality, because it's so... medieval. Like the parodied stew of fantasy novels. XD; Many of what people think of as signature dishes of a cuisine haven't actually been around that long - anything with tomato or potato or maize or cocoa had to have been invented after those crops were brought over from the New World; the Romans had something they called lasagna but it was nothing like the lasagna of today - but beans, pork, goose/duck and sausage baked in a clay pot, that's bona fide troubadour era. Of course one can only eat minuscule portions, if one doesn't spend one's time hoeing fields by hand or stringing yew bows or hauling tubs of boiling oil up to the parapets. I've gained a worrisome amount of weight over the past few months, what with Christmas and CNY and experimenting on stews.
I bit the bullet and bought a cassoulet pot - a Le Creuset! - because I was tired of the fact that there was not a single pot in the house that could go in the oven. The most freaking bourge purchase I have ever made; don't ask how much it cost. The glaze on the outside shades from fire-engine red to a handsome burgundy wine and matches my Fluevog boots almost exactly, which makes me sound like that girl whose Christmas wish list was posted on Tumblr to great mockery (she wanted a 1000$ Hermes blanket, high-end cookware, Penguin Classics for display not reading, purses, etc. all in approximately the same shade of orange; the boyfriend, poor sod, made copious notes then lost the printout on public transit) but is a coincidence, really truly. It was the most striking pot in the store, though. Targeted use aside an investment piece should be anything but drab. There are mini-Creuset bowls that go with it, I might go back for them after I get my yearly bonus (due on BIRTHDAY). I tweeted that I bought it and got more responses to that than anything.
My "investment pieces" tend to be oddities, and this is no exception - it doesn't have a lid, for one thing, because cassoulet pots don't. It's also sort of conical (and cast iron), so I've been using it as a wok. XD;; As close as you can get on an induction cooking surface, really.
For the cassoulet, I based myself on this recipe (I later saw in the store that she has a cookbook out), but if I were doing it again (and I am, next week) I'd use this one instead. I even bought dried beans to soak, since the canned cannellini didn't hold their shape in the long run. The second recipe also calls for spare ribs (coustelous, which has a Languedoc ring to it - this experiment has taught me a great deal of French porcine terminology), of which I still have some left over in the freezer.
The problem with the first one was too much bacon rind - setting aside the fat, it was really, really salty. Maybe I wasn't supposed to use cured bacon, but I left out the ham and the salted pork, and it was still tough going. I also bought confit sausages that turned out not to be Toulouse sausages, though the package said they were. And there was no space for the duck legs, only the wings made it in XD;; so, yanno, recipe to come after a more successful attempt. My sister ate it fairly happily but she has a higher sodium tolerance than I do.
Classic slow cooker pot roast not in a slow cooker
The one with a can of Campbell's mushroom soup in, Americano style (no onion mix, though; don't have that in the house). Weirdly enough, this made the result taste - coconutty? - to me. As if I'd added coconut milk to a recipe that called for cream.
1kg or 2-3lbs pot roast (it was actually 600g flank roast, 400g stewing beef cubes - the cubes turned out fine but the flank roast was better)
2 medium white onions
5 large carrots, wedged (I used multicoloured heirloom carrots)
2 parsnips, chopped (parsnips tenderize more slowly than carrots, so need to be chopped more finely for the same cooking time)
4 medium red potatos, wedged
pint of white mushrooms
4 garlic cloves, halved
vegetable oil
can of Campbell's mushroom soup
beef broth
white wine
salt and pepper to taste (I used pink peppercorns)
Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees.
Rub the bottom of the pot with vegetable oil, then add the garlic, then one of the onions cut in eighths. Sear the meat on all sides and layer on top of the onions. (Over the years I've found that the oil really has to be sizzling hot, sparkling everywhere and making a mess, or else the meat doesn't sear - it cooks, particularly beef cubes, and the juice comes out, making it drier rather than moister. Also, I claim "vegetable oil" but that's not what I used - the stuff in the pot was the fat surrounding the confit sausages that went into the cassoulet, and the stuff I used to sear the meat was a combination of butter and goose fat left over from the day before when I, uh, made pan-seared foie gras with caramelized apples and onions. Yeah, I do what I want.) Mix the chopped vegetables and layer them on top of the meat, except the mushrooms. Since I had beef cubes as well as the roast I made another layer of meat and then another of vegetables, but one big roast will just sit at the bottom of the pot.
Pour the Campbell's mushroom soup over the top, followed by a scant can's worth of beef broth, breaking it up a little (is there a foodstuff that looks grosser than Campbell's mushroom straight out of the can? Americans who eat it - and I love it, personally - have no right to complain about the appearance of anyone else's food). Cover and place in oven. Remove after two hours, add mushrooms, a can's worth of white wine - these are 10oz cans by the way, I seem to remember them being bigger in the past so be advised if your Campbell's doesn't come in this size - salt and pepper liberally, mix well, cover again and stick back in the oven. The gravy really seemed to come together at hour three, although I have to admit I started eating the thing at 2.5 hours. XD;
Of course, all vegetables are essentially to taste - root veggies go in at the beginning, fresh veggies with an hour to go, adjust liquid quantities accordingly.
Theoretical Montreal feijoada
credoimprobus made a feijoada over Christmas, so I wanted to do one. I'm sure we weren't using the same recipe, though (mine was adapted from this). I'd actually had feijoada once in Brazil, and the one I made tasted nothing like what I remembered XD; but it came out beautifully balanced in its own right, so worth noting down. The major ingredients as I remember them:
300g salt pork (packaged in brine, not dried)
1 large smoked ham hock
4 pork ribs, separated
4 chorizo sausages, sliced (if I were making this again I'd reduce the count by one, but a lot of the flavouring seemed to come from these, so probably worthwhile to get decent ones)
~1kg stewing beef cubes
1 onion, chopped
half a head of garlic, chopped
2 bay leaves
3 cans of black beans (like... Mexican frijoles XD; this meant reserving two cans to be added late in the process so they don't mush up completely)
I didn't add Serrano pepper, as the chorizo made it spicy enough for my taste. But the major divergence was lack of cured/corned beef: I had no idea where to get it. Everything else could be found in the supermarket, or at the various specialty butchers at Jean-Talon Market. Finally the night before I was due to make the thing I sat up in bed and thought, I can used smoked meat. Makes total sense! But of course by that point things were planned out and I forgot to run over to Dunn's for a brined beef brisket. NEXT YEAR (no way am I making more than one of these a year; it was a massive pot and my sister carried away 2/3 of it).
It would have been my second Canadian Brazilian recipe (after the blueberry caipirinha), which, yeah. IDEK.
Cassoulet and high-end cassoulet cookware
Cassoulet, like mead and oatcakes, is one of those recipes I enjoy the idea of more than the reality, because it's so... medieval. Like the parodied stew of fantasy novels. XD; Many of what people think of as signature dishes of a cuisine haven't actually been around that long - anything with tomato or potato or maize or cocoa had to have been invented after those crops were brought over from the New World; the Romans had something they called lasagna but it was nothing like the lasagna of today - but beans, pork, goose/duck and sausage baked in a clay pot, that's bona fide troubadour era. Of course one can only eat minuscule portions, if one doesn't spend one's time hoeing fields by hand or stringing yew bows or hauling tubs of boiling oil up to the parapets. I've gained a worrisome amount of weight over the past few months, what with Christmas and CNY and experimenting on stews.
I bit the bullet and bought a cassoulet pot - a Le Creuset! - because I was tired of the fact that there was not a single pot in the house that could go in the oven. The most freaking bourge purchase I have ever made; don't ask how much it cost. The glaze on the outside shades from fire-engine red to a handsome burgundy wine and matches my Fluevog boots almost exactly, which makes me sound like that girl whose Christmas wish list was posted on Tumblr to great mockery (she wanted a 1000$ Hermes blanket, high-end cookware, Penguin Classics for display not reading, purses, etc. all in approximately the same shade of orange; the boyfriend, poor sod, made copious notes then lost the printout on public transit) but is a coincidence, really truly. It was the most striking pot in the store, though. Targeted use aside an investment piece should be anything but drab. There are mini-Creuset bowls that go with it, I might go back for them after I get my yearly bonus (due on BIRTHDAY). I tweeted that I bought it and got more responses to that than anything.
My "investment pieces" tend to be oddities, and this is no exception - it doesn't have a lid, for one thing, because cassoulet pots don't. It's also sort of conical (and cast iron), so I've been using it as a wok. XD;; As close as you can get on an induction cooking surface, really.
For the cassoulet, I based myself on this recipe (I later saw in the store that she has a cookbook out), but if I were doing it again (and I am, next week) I'd use this one instead. I even bought dried beans to soak, since the canned cannellini didn't hold their shape in the long run. The second recipe also calls for spare ribs (coustelous, which has a Languedoc ring to it - this experiment has taught me a great deal of French porcine terminology), of which I still have some left over in the freezer.
The problem with the first one was too much bacon rind - setting aside the fat, it was really, really salty. Maybe I wasn't supposed to use cured bacon, but I left out the ham and the salted pork, and it was still tough going. I also bought confit sausages that turned out not to be Toulouse sausages, though the package said they were. And there was no space for the duck legs, only the wings made it in XD;; so, yanno, recipe to come after a more successful attempt. My sister ate it fairly happily but she has a higher sodium tolerance than I do.
Classic slow cooker pot roast not in a slow cooker
The one with a can of Campbell's mushroom soup in, Americano style (no onion mix, though; don't have that in the house). Weirdly enough, this made the result taste - coconutty? - to me. As if I'd added coconut milk to a recipe that called for cream.
1kg or 2-3lbs pot roast (it was actually 600g flank roast, 400g stewing beef cubes - the cubes turned out fine but the flank roast was better)
2 medium white onions
5 large carrots, wedged (I used multicoloured heirloom carrots)
2 parsnips, chopped (parsnips tenderize more slowly than carrots, so need to be chopped more finely for the same cooking time)
4 medium red potatos, wedged
pint of white mushrooms
4 garlic cloves, halved
vegetable oil
can of Campbell's mushroom soup
beef broth
white wine
salt and pepper to taste (I used pink peppercorns)
Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees.
Rub the bottom of the pot with vegetable oil, then add the garlic, then one of the onions cut in eighths. Sear the meat on all sides and layer on top of the onions. (Over the years I've found that the oil really has to be sizzling hot, sparkling everywhere and making a mess, or else the meat doesn't sear - it cooks, particularly beef cubes, and the juice comes out, making it drier rather than moister. Also, I claim "vegetable oil" but that's not what I used - the stuff in the pot was the fat surrounding the confit sausages that went into the cassoulet, and the stuff I used to sear the meat was a combination of butter and goose fat left over from the day before when I, uh, made pan-seared foie gras with caramelized apples and onions. Yeah, I do what I want.) Mix the chopped vegetables and layer them on top of the meat, except the mushrooms. Since I had beef cubes as well as the roast I made another layer of meat and then another of vegetables, but one big roast will just sit at the bottom of the pot.
Pour the Campbell's mushroom soup over the top, followed by a scant can's worth of beef broth, breaking it up a little (is there a foodstuff that looks grosser than Campbell's mushroom straight out of the can? Americans who eat it - and I love it, personally - have no right to complain about the appearance of anyone else's food). Cover and place in oven. Remove after two hours, add mushrooms, a can's worth of white wine - these are 10oz cans by the way, I seem to remember them being bigger in the past so be advised if your Campbell's doesn't come in this size - salt and pepper liberally, mix well, cover again and stick back in the oven. The gravy really seemed to come together at hour three, although I have to admit I started eating the thing at 2.5 hours. XD;
Of course, all vegetables are essentially to taste - root veggies go in at the beginning, fresh veggies with an hour to go, adjust liquid quantities accordingly.
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no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 10:37 am (UTC)(It is seriously not a 1-person household dish, no. XD; Which was actually half of my motivation for doing one for christmas -- so I'd have some more help finishing it off than I usually do. *snerk*)
Augh, now I want to make a stew. UNF TENDER SLOW-COOKED BEEF. *crave*
no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 07:55 pm (UTC)Basically I needed a pair of ankle boots that could be worn under a suit and could handle plane trip/slushy sidewalk/boardroom without ruin or discomfort.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 07:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-02-14 08:21 pm (UTC)