Late January Dinner

In the past several months, we've pretty much stopped going out to eat at restaurants around Bend. The lousy food we have had in the past couple of years has made us really tired of spending a lot of money with almost no return. For myriad reasons, quality and consistency of restaurant food is lacking and so for our special meals lately, Ann and I have been cooking at home and inviting friends over to dinner.

This past weekend, I really had no overarching theme for the menu; I simply wanted to use (and use up) items that we had on hand already. In addition to a bunch of stuff to use up in the refrigerator, we have a pretty robust pantry that includes a great many items that we can use to cook whatever it is that we want.

Ann was in charge of cocktails and dessert. For cocktails, she made us one of her favorites, dirty martinis with blue cheese-stuffed olives. I am sorry to say that white liquor isn't my jam and although the cocktails were well made, I just couldn't drink mine and opened a bottle of Crémant d'Alsace to go with my appetizer. As much as I would like to be a martini guy, I am resigned to never being one.

Lovely Dirty Martini

Blue-Cheese Stuffed Olives

For appetizers, I had more Scottish cold-smoked salmon and sea trout caviar leftover from our aborted New Year's Eve celebration that I wanted to clear out of the refrigerator. So I envisioned an appetizer of smoked salmon, smoked salmon mouse, and sea trout caviar that is similar in many ways to the smoked salmon smørrebrød that I made a couple of weeks back when we got pounded by snow. Because this appetizer needed to be gluten-free, I cut cucumbers on the bias to mimic crostini. 

Smoked Salmon, Smoked Salmon Mousse, and Sea Trout Caviar

For the main part of our meal, it was pretty much a no-brainer that we were going to have pork tenderloin. A recent foray to Costco saw a package of four tenderloins come home, two of which were salted away in the freezer, leaving two more in the fridge that needed to be cooked. I decide to stuff a tenderloin with goat cheese and spinach and wrap it in prosciutto, a technique that I developed for the restaurant and which is documented in a separate post for anyone curious about how to do it.

The beauty of this dish is three-fold: it looks a lot more complicated to pull off than it is, it looks beautiful, and you can prep it well in advance, leaving only the final roasting to be done and freeing up your time to visit with your guests.

Searing the Prosciutto-Wrapped Stuffed Pork Tender
(cut in half so it would fit into the pan)

Seared Pork Tenderloin Rolls, Prepped in Advance, Ready to Roast

To accompany the pork, I turned to our pantry where I found the tail end of three separate bags of Arborio rice that I wanted to use or consolidate. Moreover, we just ran out of dried porcini and ordered a new bag which is more than will fit into the canister. I wanted to use the overflow that would not fit in the canister and so it seemed pretty natural to make an earthy risotto to go with the pork.

One of the neat things about risotto is that you can par-cook the base about ten minutes and let it cool. This then means that it will only take 8-10 minutes to have the risotto ready. In other words, all I had to do when guests were over was spend ten minutes at the range finishing the risotto while the pork roast cooled and rested. I spent the rest of my time socializing and enjoying the evening.

I get really tired of chefs making out like risotto needs some kind of crazy voodoo to pull off correctly and that it takes far too long to prepare to put it on the menu. In fact, I have good friends who run a restaurant whose menu claims that a simple plate of risotto will take the kitchen 45 minutes to make, and oh by the way, that will be $45 for the plate. Ridiculous. I love you guys, but that's ridiculous.

Spinach and Goat Cheese Stuffed Pork Tenderloin on Porcini Risotto

Ann asked also that I reprise the salad that I made last weekend and I obliged her. She just really loved the combination of ingredients: greens, spiced pecans, pomegranate seeds, and pickled shallots all combined with a pomegranate-pickled shallot vinaigrette. You can find all the salad magic covered in prior posts: spicing pecans, pickling shallots, and making the vinaigrette. 

Greens with Pickled Shallot and Pomegranate Vinaigrette

In keeping with the theme of using up, I remembered that for the holidays, Ann had prepped a batch of her delicious shortbread made with orange zest, rosemary, olive oil, sea salt, and very little sugar. Unfortunately, she became sick before she could do all the baking that she wanted to do. I suggested that we take the remaining log of dough from the freezer, cut it into discs, bake them, and then dip the shortbread cookies in melted chocolate for an easy finish to dinner. I sliced; Ann baked; I melted the chocolate and dipped the cookies; and Ann applied sea salt to the chocolate. Tag team and done!

Chocolate-Dipped Orange-Rosemary-Olive Oil Shortbreads

As a final thought, I love having leftovers in the refrigerator that can be repurposed into another meal. The following evening, I formed some of the leftover risotto into cakes that I crusted in a pan while gently rewarming the two remaining slices of stuffed pork tenderloin. While I poached four eggs, I whipped up a little of my pimentón sauce with which to finish our dinners of leftovers.

Leftovers: Stuffed Pork Tenderloin and Risotto Cake
Topped with Poached Eggs and Pimentón Sauce 

How To: Prosciutto-Wrapped, Stuffed Pork Tenderloin

For some cooking tasks, pictures are far more instructive than words. In fact, when I was a young pup teaching myself the rudiments of classical cuisine—I never went to culinary school; they did not exist back then—I learned a massive amount from Jacques Pépin to whom I owe a great debt. Chef Pépin published a photographic book of cooking techniques called La Technique that helped me learn so many things that were then new to me, all by way of pictures.

How to stuff a tenderloin and wrap it in prosciutto is such task that would benefit from a pictorial essay. For dinner the other night, I stuffed a pork tenderloin with spinach and goat cheese and then wrapped it in prosciutto, taking a few photos to illustrate the concept.

This stuffed pork tenderloin is a direct outgrowth of the prosciutto-wrapped rabbit loin that I used to make at the restaurant, pictured below with haricots verts, butternut squash cream, and black trumpet mushrooms. The rabbit loin is stuffed with a layer of leafy green (varied from season to season) and then a layer of fresh goat cheese, direct from the farm that supplied us with cheese and goat meat. This particular photo would have been a fall version of the dish as butternut squash and black trumpets are not in season until the fall.

Prosciutto-Wrapped Rabbit Loin

Because rabbits are so small, they have tiny loins. Two loins put together is barely enough to feed an adult, so stuffing a single piece as I did for the pork tenderloin is out of the question. The piece of rabbit would be too tiny to stuff and insufficient to feed an adult.

Loins run along the back of the animal from the shoulder to the tail. In rabbits, the shoulder end is fairly chunky while the tail end tapers to a fine point. When you open the loin up like a book with your knife and then gently pound it to flatten it, you get a very long and narrow triangular piece of meat.

To make a piece of meat that you can stuff and roll, you place the two triangles side by side with the large end of one loin next to the pointed end of the other, as you can see below.

Once you do this, you require a means to hold the two pieces of loin together once rolled. I hit upon the idea of wrapping the whole thing inside prosciutto. When protein cooks, it shrinks and tightens, so when the prosciutto cooks, it snugs the whole roll. It also tastes great and looks beautiful as you can see in the photo of the rabbit loin above.

A quick word about loin versus tenderloin. This post is about a pork tenderloin, but the discussion above is about rabbit loin. The loin runs from shoulder to tail on the outside of the back on top of the ribcage and is sometimes known as backstrap. The tenderloin runs the same way, but under the ribcage inside the body cavity. The tenderloins are much, much smaller than the loins.

By virtue of the large size of a pig, a tenderloin is sufficient to feed four people whereas two loins of rabbit are enough for one person. Regardless, this technique applies equally to loins and tenderloins.

Untrimmed Pork Tenderloin

First, remove the silverskin from the loin with a very sharp knife. I'm assuming that if you're reading this post other than for entertainment, you already own a good knife, have decent knife skills, and can find and remove the silverskin and excess fat from the tenderloin. 

Next, trim the really pointy last inch or so off the tail of the tenderloin and slice along one side of the loin about one centimeter (3/8") from the cutting board. Open up the tenderloin and continue to slice and unroll it until you have a rectangular sheet of meat one centimeter thick, as shown in the photo below.

Trimmed and Unrolled Tenderloin

Pound the tenderloin gently to ensure that it is even thickness and to enlarge it a bit.

Gently Pounded Tenderloin

Next, lay down a layer of film wrap on your cutting board and on top of the film, lay down a layer of overlapping slices of prosciutto as wide as the piece of tenderloin is long and tall enough to be about three inches more than the width of the tenderloin.

Lay Down Film First, Then Prosciutto

Place the tenderloin on top of the prosciutto with the tenderloin about at the edge of the prosciutto closest to you with all the excess prosciutto away from you.

Place Tenderloin on the Prosciutto; Season with Salt and Pepper

Season the tenderloin with salt and pepper, then put a thin layer of stuffing on top of the tenderloin, leaving some room at the edges. When you roll the tenderloin, the stuffing will naturally push out from the center.

In this case, I have used one 8-ounce stick of fresh goat cheese and a pound of baby spinach. I sautéed the spinach in olive oil with garlic, let it cool, squeezed out the excess liquid, and chopped it. Then I creamed together the cheese and spinach and seasoned it. You can use any filling you desire.

Spread on a Layer of Stuffing, Leaving Room at the Edges

Using the film wrap to help you, start to roll the edge of the tenderloin away from you. If you've ever rolled a burrito or maki sushi, you know the drill.

Start Rolling the Tenderloin Away From You

Continue rolling the tenderloin away from you. Use your fingers, protected by the film wrap, to snug the roll in on itself and keep it tight while you are rolling.

Continue Rolling the Tenderloin Evenly and Firmly

When you finish rolling the tenderloin, peel the film back towards you exposing the now prosciutto-covered roll.

Fully Rolled Tenderloin

Next, seal the roll. Use the film away from you to pull the tails of the prosciutto towards you to seal the roll. Alternatively, you can keep rolling the roll away from you to accomplish the same thing.

Seal the Roll

At this point, you are done. If you are using cheese in the stuffing, you might want to put the roll in the refrigerator to firm up again before cooking. Cooking is a two-step process for this pork tenderloin. First, sear the roll all the way around on the stove top and then roast in a moderate oven until done to your liking. If you don't have a pan wide enough to sear the entire roll, cut the roll in half as I did.

I don't bother with a thermometer when roasting a stuffed pork tenderloin because the center stuffing is already cooked and if you take your temperature in the stuffing, the thin layer of pork is likely to be overcooked. Rather, I give the loin a squeeze in the oven and take it out when it has firmed up all over. It should definitely rest for a good ten minutes or more before serving.

Final thought: if you stuff a rabbit loin, it really doesn't need much if any time in the oven after searing on the range top.

Finished Product: Stuffed Pork Tenderloin on Porcini Risotto

Pomegranate and Pickled Shallot Vinaigrette

I've made this pomegranate and pickled shallot vinaigrette a couple times recently and it is worth remembering for winter salads (when pomegranates are in season), hence this post. If I don't record this idea, it will disappear into the ether as my mind continues its unending quest for new foods and flavors.

Pomegranate and Pickled Shallot Vinaigrette

Pomegranate and Pickled Shallot Vinaigrette

This is a simple dressing that I typically make (as you see in the photo above) in a nearly empty mustard container using up the dregs of mustard in that container. I love whole grain mustard a lot and have a constant supply of jars that I have nearly emptied.

FWIW, I use Plochman's Stone Ground mustard; it's reliably stocked here in town and it comes in a reasonable size for someone who goes through a jar every two weeks. At the restaurant we used Maille whole grain mustard, but even though I prefer it, we can't get it here in Central Oregon.

Although you can make this dressing in your blender, I find that making it directly in the mustard container using an immersion blender is most efficient. If you're serious about cooking, investing in a good (say Waring Pro) immersion blender is a worthwhile expenditure (currently less than $150). There are applications such as making salad dressings and smoothing out soup on the stove top for which it is an invaluable tool.

The following recipe yields about a cup of dressing, enough for 2-4 salads. It will scale in pretty much direct proportion. This recipe uses a classic vinaigrette ratio of 1 part vinegar to 2 parts oil. You can certainly adjust that to your taste. I find that the Sherry vinegar and the pomegranates have enough acidity that I want to tame it with a bit of sugar. I use agave nectar because it blends in beautifully. You could use any source of sugar: honey, brown sugar, maple syrup, etc.

1/3 cup Sherry vinegar
2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon whole grained mustard
1 pickled shallot (see recipe below)
1/4 cup pomegranate seeds
1 teaspoon agave nectar
1 pinch salt

Blend all ingredients well. The mustard will keep the dressing emulsified for a few hours. I find putting the lid on the mustard jar and shaking the dressing well will bring it back together, another reason I like the mustard jar method of making dressings at home. And of course, you can store any leftover dressing in the jar in the refrigerator.

Pickled Shallots

I never use a formal recipe for brines when I am making small batches of pickles. I make a brine that tastes good to me at the time and use that. For me, it's all about balancing acidity, sugar, and salt in a brine that tastes great.

Pickled Shallots

I start by peeling shallots, slicing them into rings, and placing them in heat-proof containers such as the half-pint canning jar that you see in the photo above. Then I make a brine that suits my taste, bring it to a boil, and pour it over the shallots to cover. The shallots can be eaten once they cool, but they do continue to get better as they sit in the brine. I make these pickles in small batches and I do not refrigerate them. I make no attempt to seal the containers either as this pickles are not designed for long storage. The jar that you see above, I made 4-5 weeks ago.

Basic Pickle Brine Ratio

Here is a basic pickle brine that you can use as the basis for your brine. Mix up a batch, taste it, and adjust it to your liking. You can flavor it with herbs and spices as you like. When I make pickles, I put fresh herbs directly in the jars with the ingredients to be pickled. When I use spices and dried herbs, I boil them in the brine for a while to extract their flavors.

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup water

1 tablespoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon granulated sugar

This recipe makes a cup of brine. You can scale it in direct proportion for any amount of brine you desire. At the restaurant, we would make gallons at a time. We had a pickle shelf in our walk-in that was four-feet wide, six-feet tall, two-feet deep, and was loaded from top to bottom with pickles that we used for garnishes and on our charcuterie plates. There was almost nothing we wouldn't pickle in an effort not to waste a single thing that our producers brought to us.

Ersatz New Year's Eve, At Long Last

Ann and I had planned for much of the year with Rob and Dyce to go to their house on New Year's Eve to celebrate the change in years with them. They had stocked up on Champagne and caviar for the evening and we bought caviar to bring as well. And, I had planned quite an elaborate latke board to bring as well, because who doesn't like caviar on their latkes?

Caviar Feast

Rob and Dyce headed off to Italy for the holidays and on return, both were sick. And Ann was sick. And I threw out my back, again. And we kept putting off the caviar in hopes that we could all be well at the same time, at least well enough to enjoy the caviar.

Finally, after four or five delays, we managed to get together. Ann and I had long since consumed all the ingredients for the latke board, but we hung on to the caviar. And so it was that on Sunday night, now in late January, we got together for a very subdued celebration, it having been more than a month since we got together last.

Rob opened some really nice Champagne while we were there. Sadly because of the imminent threat of icy streets, I needed my wits about me and nursed a glass and a half over three hours.

Rob very kindly made some blini to go with the caviar while we brought along a big bag of potato chips and a ramekin each of dill-horseradish sour cream and saffron aїoli. Potato chips and caviar is a well-known pairing with Champagne and a bit of my saffron aїoli makes it just that much better. I made the aїoli knowing that Dyce is a fiend for it.

Rob Made Blini

Caviar Anyone?
(top left, clockwise) American Paddlefish, Sea Trout, White Sturgeon Royal, and White Sturgeon

A word about caviar. The caviar market has led to the terrible exploitation of several species of fish, most notably the assorted sturgeons from Eastern Europe and Russia. In fact, it is mainly illegal to harvest many species in these areas because of this rampant abuse. As a responsible restaurateur, I only sourced farmed caviar from reputable suppliers for the restaurant and I continue post-restaurant to do the same.

Rob is quite the caviar connoisseur and splurged for a couple of different tins of farm-raised White Sturgeon caviar from Sterling in California, our West Coast supplier of choice. Ann and I have had this caviar before for our own celebrations and it is a wonderful product. White Sturgeon, the primary sturgeon species in the US West, is not quite as good as either Beluga or Ossetra, but it tastes quite good, comes sustainably from fish also used for meat production, and is priced more affordably.

Knowing Rob was going to get sturgeon roe, I wanted to bring something different and so I turned to the Portland Maine-based supplier to my restaurant, Browne Trading Company. I got a tin each of American Paddlefish and Sea Trout caviar, both of which we used at the restaurant in addition to sturgeon.

Native to the Mississippi River basin, American Paddlefish is a threatened species that is now farmed, like White Sturgeon, for caviar. The Sea Trout caviar comes from Rainbow Trout farmed in the ocean off Denmark. The appeal of the Sea Trout caviar, besides its delightful salmon color, is its unique texture. Each egg pops when you eat it to release a delightful, but decidedly non-fishy, flavor. If you have ever balked at salmon caviar because of its fishiness, trout caviar will be a revelation.

In addition to our not having seen Rob and Dyce in more than a month, we have also missed seeing their kids Reilly and Lola, who wasted no time in greeting us at the door and keeping us company throughout the evening.

Princess Reilly

Lola Wants Snacks

I'm glad we finally got together to eat this caviar before it went bad. We're already talking about next New Year's Eve.

Pork and Potatoes

So Ann has this habit of picking up people wherever we happen to be, and if she likes them well enough, inviting them to dinner. Such was the case recently when we met Evan and Justin around the fire pit at our local pub while we were getting a couple beers after a movie two Fridays ago. Ann decided that they were coming to dinner along with Justin's fiancée and soon-to-be wife Maria, who was not in attendance around the fire.

Ann also decided that I was making pulled pork. To be fair, she did ask me to make pulled pork, but she knows that I will never refuse her requests if I can fulfill them. Besides, I am too happy to cook for anyone who is a good human and a good eater. I'm no longer in the restaurant business, so my tolerance for picky and high-maintenance eaters is nil, having had to cater to such people all my life. But for good people, I will gladly cook any time and any place.

Ann, Maria, Justin, and Evan
We Had a Great Night with Great People, Food, and Wine

I still approach dinners at home the way that I would at the restaurant. Even though we changed the menu every day at the restaurant, we would start the week off by sketching out where we wanted the menu to be by the weekend, and trying to pull as much of that prep forward into the earlier part of the week when we were not as insanely busy as on the weekend.

Ditto for dinner at home. On the day of the dinner, I don't want to have spent the entire day prepping such that I am too tired to spend quality time with my guests. So when I sketch out a menu for a dinner, I try to spread the work out over multiple days. In this case, the menu was not very complicated so for the Saturday night dinner, I started with some small tasks on Friday.

The menu was straightforward:

Whipped Goat Cheese with Puttanesca Topping

Slow-Roasted Pork Shoulder

Scalloped Potatoes with 'Nduja

Green Salad with Pickled Shallots, Spiced Pecans, Pomegranate Seeds, and Pomegranate Vinaigrette

Pulled Pork, 'Nduja Scalloped Potatoes, Green Salad

The tasks that I could do ahead on Friday I did on Friday: making the dry rub for the pork, spicing the pecans, and making the puttanesca topping for the whipped goat cheese. I've covered my spice rub for pork ("Butt Rub") in detail before and you can find a recipe here. I pretty much followed the recipe except for when I tasted this batch of rub, I wanted both a bit more sugar and salt which I added.

"Butt Rub" for the Pork Shoulders

Spicing pecans is a useful technique and we used to make many pounds at a time at the restaurant as they were a key component in certain dishes, such as our Fall Salad, a mix of cubed roasted winter squash, cubed Asian pear, and Cajun-spiced pecans, all dressed in a vinaigrette made from local apple cider reduced 8-fold, and served molded in a ring mold with a flourish of just-cut micro-arugula on top. [I sure miss the days when our growers would deliver living flats of microgreens to the restaurant, micros that we would clip seconds before they hit the plate.]

I used to toss the pecans in melted butter and then add some spice rub and mix them well to coat them with the spices. And that was good, but I noticed that when one of my line cooks prepped the pecans, they always tasted way better than mine. I watched her when she made the next batch and saw that she heated the pecans and butter together in a pan until the pecans were well-roasted before coating them in the spice mix and a generous pinch of additional salt. Even an old chef can learn new tricks.

While at the restaurant we used our Cajun spice mix (aka "Magic Dust") to spice pecans, I wanted for this dinner to echo the same flavors in the pork, so I used the pork rub to spice the pecans. I have found that menus hang together better if you can echo some flavors throughout, but not so much as to be tiresome.

Spicing Pecans: Cook Until the Pecans are Roasted

Spicing Pecans: Tossing with Spice Mix and Salt

The next Friday task was to start in on the goat cheese that we would have for our pre-dinner appetizer course with sparkling wine. The idea for this appetizer was to whip some fresh goat cheese to a light, airy, and spreadable consistency and then to top it with a highly-flavored olive oil.

But what to top the goat cheese mousse with? I wanted to be a bit creative. When I start thinking about creating dishes, I am often influenced by ingredients on hand, dishes that have appealed to me recently, or some other external input. In the restaurant, I would often, when in need of inspiration, walk into our well-stocked pantry (We stocked 15 different types of rice, for goodness sake!) where I would surf the shelves, seeking ideas.

In the case of this appetizer, I have been thinking a lot recently about making a chili-garlic crunch as that has been all the rage in the last year or two, and for good reason. Moreover, I have been thinking about spaghetti alla puttanesca as those bold flavors really appeal to me.

And there you have it, this topping is the answer to the question everyone has been asking: What if chili-garlic crunch and pasta puttanesca had a baby?

Chili-Garlic Crunch
Boiling Olive Oil Poured over Chile Flakes and Fresh Garlic

I started by making a simple chile-garlic crunch. While heating a cup of olive oil on the stove, I put 7-8 cloves of minced garlic, a couple tablespoons of chile flakes, and a tablespoon of dried basil in a heat-proof bowl. When the oil got very hot, I poured it over the mixture, instantly frying it, and let it cool on the stovetop.

Whipped Goat Cheese with Puttanesca Topping

Once the oil cooled, in went the remaining ingredients: minced anchovy fillets, brined capers, oil-cured sun-dried tomatoes, and chopped green olives. Then Ann and I tasted the mix and adjusted it. The oil seemed too prominent, so I added some acidity in the form of first a touch of balsamic vinegar for sweetness and acidity, then a touch of red wine vinegar for straight-up acidity. A bit of salt helped round out the flavors (surprising to me that it needed salt because of the anchovies, capers, and olives).

I left the mix on the counter overnight to macerate and for all the flavors to come together: it takes time for flavors to infuse into oil. The flavors were definitely better on Saturday morning than Friday afternoon. We left the whipping of the goat cheese to minutes before our guests arrived and one the mousse was spread on a plate and topped with the oil, I scattered on a large handful of chiffonaded fresh basil to lighten and freshen the appetizer.

Slow-roasting 15 pounds of pork shoulder is an all-day affair. A prior post outlines my method in which I bring the roasts up to 165F, wrap them, and return them to a very slow oven to bring them up to a final temperature of 195-200F. Despite it being an all-day affair, I couldn't bring myself to get in the kitchen until after my morning coffee, so I did not get the two shoulders into the oven until just after 9am. Accordingly, they were not ready until roughly 7:00pm.

Spice-Rubbed Pork Shoulders Ready for Oven (or Smoker)

Pork Shoulders at 165F, Ready to be Wrapped and Put Back in Oven

Fall-Apart Tender Pork Pulled Using Tongs

To go with the pulled pork, I had the idea to do scalloped potatoes with thyme and 'nduja, the Calabrese spreadable salame. I was hoping that the 'nduja would melt into the cream and I was not at all disappointed. I built the casserole by putting a layer of sliced raw yellow potatoes in an oiled gratin, then topping the layer with a sprinkle of salt, fresh thyme, little dots of 'nduja, and a drizzle of heavy cream, continuing in this fashion until the gratin was full. It baked for an hour, covered, in a moderate oven, and then uncovered for another half an hour or so until it browned on top.

Building the Potato Layers

The Finished Potato-'Nduja Gratin

To act as a foil for the rich pork and potatoes, I wanted a green salad with a relatively acidic dressing. I decided to put spiced pecans, pomegranate seeds, and pickled shallots in the salad and because the pomegranate was really ripe, I got a good bit of juice in the process of knocking the seeds out. That pomegranate juice would form the basis of the dressing when combined with whole-grain mustard, Sherry vinegar, agave nectar, and extra virgin olive oil, all buzzed together with the immersion blender.

Greens with Spiced Pecans, Pomegranate Seeds, Pickled Shallots,
and Pomegranate Vinaigrette

Pickled Shallots Put up in December

By the time the potatoes and pork came out of the oven, we had been talking and drinking wine for a good hour and perhaps 90 minutes. Everyone was ready to eat and it all turned out wonderfully. We continued the merriment well into the evening when someone, Ann I think, suggested opening a bottle of Port.

1992 Quinta do Bomfin Port

By the time the Port was opened and decanted, a lot of wine had been consumed and we had all got a hankering for something a little sweet to go with the Port, despite having gorged ourselves on pork and potatoes. I stood at the counter and assembled crackers topped with Cambazola cheese and fig compote, the remainder of the compote that we made at Christmas to give to our friends.

This 375ml 1992 Quinta do Bomfim is fully ready to drink; the tannins have mellowed and the fruit on the wine is no longer improving. This is unlike the 750s of 1977 Warre's whose tannins are still rough and youthful. I can hardly believe the $16.95 price sticker on the bottle!

It was a great night chez nous and I thank our lovely dinner guests for sharing in the merriment with us!

Lamb Stew

There's nothing really novel about lamb stew. At heart, it's quite a humble dish of lamb, vegetables, and gravy. But there is a vast difference between how professionals and home cooks approach this dish. And a vast difference in the finished dish as a result.

Carefully Constructed Lamb Stew

At home, one often cooks all the stew ingredients together, meat and vegetables until done and then thickens (or highly reduces) the cooking liquid. The vegetables will likely go all at once into the pot once the meat is cooked to avoid overcooking them.

On the other hand, at a high-end restaurant, each ingredient will be pre-cooked just to the point of doneness, combined with a meticulously-made gravy when the dish is ordered, and reheated before service. In this way, each of the constituent ingredients is cooked perfectly with nothing overcooked.

Here's a sketch of how I made this batch of lamb stew which is pretty much identical to how we would have made it at the restaurant, if we could have sold something as pedestrian as stew. Fine dining customers, especially those for whom such a meal is an unusual splurge, usually want to order something "luxurious" that they can brag about to their friends: steak, lobster, foie gras, etc.

This tendency makes it really hard to sell something such as a stew, which you must do if you are running a nose-to-tail restaurant like ours that was based on whole animal butchery. Selling the non-glamorous parts of the animal at such a restaurant involves a precise combination of wording on the menu and pricing ("menu engineering"), but that is a topic that would require an entire chapter in a foodservice textbook. It is a topic in which I am highly versed but which is way beyond the scope of this, or any, blogpost. If you're a chef reading this and need help, I do consult.

Step 1: Make a Great Stock

To make the stock, I had been saving scraps of meat and bones over the last few days. This stock was made from lamb trimmings, steak trimmings, the backbones from spatchcocking game hens, the bones leftover from the roast game hens, and a few chunks of pork neckbones.

To start, toss the bones and some aromatic vegetables (carrots, celery, onions in chunks) with oil and roast in a hot oven (400-450), turning as necessary, until the bones and vegetables are really well browned. 

Stock Bones Before Roasting

Well-Caramelized Bones After Roasting

Once the bones were roasted (about 45 minutes with four turns at about 400F), I removed them to the stock pot, covered them with water, and then poured very hot water onto the sheet tray and scraped up all the brown bits (what we call in chef-ese the fond or "bottom" in French). I then poured the water and brown bits into the stock pot so as not to lose any flavor.

If I were making a super-fancy stock, I would pour lamb stock over the bones instead of water, which would be called a double-stock. I often make chicken soup by cooking raw chicken in chicken stock, yielding a double stock just to get a more intense chicken flavor, our poultry in the US largely being bland.

Once the bones and liquid are in the stock pot, I added other flavorings such as leek leaves, onion peels, parsley stems, a sprig of rosemary, and a couple sprigs of thyme. These items add depth of flavor; the onion peels also add brown color and they were used as a dye in olden days. I often collect these bits in a bag in the freezer to add to my stocks.

Step 2: Prepare Each Ingredient Separately

Once the stock had cooked slowly for about 4-5 hours, I removed it from the heat, strained out the solids, and returned the stock to the stockpot. While the stock was coming back to a light boil, I cut into bite-sized cubes the remainder of a lamb shoulder that I had roasted to medium rare.

I then cut a couple yellow potatoes and a couple large carrots into the same size pieces as the lamb and poached first the potatoes and then the carrots in the stock until they were done. Then I put a bag of frozen pearl onions into the stock to cook. I am not ashamed to admit that I use frozen pearl onions; the labor and cost savings in using them is immense.

At the restaurant, we would have focused on using baby vegetables rather than cut ones, just to up the wow factor of the dish. I would have asked my growers to harvest tiny carrots and new potatoes and my crew and I would have probably stood around and peeled small shallots in place of the pearl onions.

It's likely we might have used baby hakurei turnips and tiny chanterelle mushrooms as well, in the appropriate seasons. All these ingredients and all this work would yield what we call in chef-ese a very soigné ("carefully prepared" in French) dish, but man, that's too much expense and labor for home cooking!

Mid-Stream in Cooking Each Ingredient Separately

Step 3: Finish the Gravy and Reheat the Stew

Once all the vegetables were cooked in the stock (and thereby lent their flavors to the stock), I then continued to reduce the original gallon and a half (six quarts, roughly 5.5 liters) down to the final volume of gravy that I wanted, concentrating the flavors. I then seasoned the stock with salt and white pepper to taste. You really don't want to season a stock before it is reduced because you'll end up concentrating the seasoning and will end up with an oversalted stock.

A professional hint that I have passed on to many, many young cooks: if your highly reduced stock tastes flat, add a drop or two of vinegar (I like sherry vinegar for this) and see how that helps. Highly reduced stocks are likely to be flat and bland because of the highly concentrated amount of gelatin that they contain. Acid will bring new life to such a stock.

Once I seasoned my stock to my taste, I made a batch of beurre manié, roughly equal parts flour and room temperature butter kneaded into a paste. Kneading the flour and the butter creates a great sauce thickener that you can whisk into a stock, eliminating any worry of lumps in your sauce.

I added small lumps of beurre manié to my simmering sauce, whisking it in, until the gravy was as thick as I wanted. A decent rule of thumb is that one tablespoon of flour and one tablespoon of butter will thicken one cup of liquid to a heavy cream consistency.

A lot of chefs will skip the beurre manié altogether, opting to sauce their meat and vegetables with a glace or demi-glace, both highly concentrated and very thick stocks. I find these sauces to be too thick and too sticky for my liking, but that's just me. YMMV: your mileage may vary.

All that is left is to combine the stew ingredients with the gravy and reheat. You can do this in any fashion; this time, I put everything into a casserole and reheated it in the oven. At the restaurant, we would have assembled an individual portion up on the range top and then put the hot stew in an oven-proof serving dish into a very hot oven for five minutes or so before calling for a runner to take it to the dining room. [More than likely, we would have covered it with a sheet of puff pastry and baked it until the pastry was golden and risen.]

Lamb Stew, Ready to Serve

These are a few hints on how a professional chef might approach a humble stew with an eye to elevating it slightly. There's nothing difficult about this method, but it does involve a significant amount of time to do. If you have time to do this, it will elevate your stew game. If not, at least you may better appreciate all the pains to which chefs go to assemble even the most humble of dishes for you.