2010: overall

So here we are. The last cooking day of 2010. Tomorrow, New Year's Eve, I'll be taken care of: dinner at The Press Club in Melbourne. A degustation with matching wines. A night at a nice hotel. School's out. For a day, at least.

I knocked over my first Larousse Gastronomique recipes on 9 November. I roasted a chicken and served it with baked potatoes and braised leeks. I used store-bought stock for the leeks. A tetra pack of Campbell's salt-reduced chicken broth.

Now, on 30 December, I have cooked

• 82 recipes
• 10 species of animal
• 2 loaves of bread

I have had new experiences, such as

• Roasting a turkey
• Successfully making my own pasta

I've ruined things, too. The chocolate and Earl Grey chantilly was more like chocolate and Earl Grey soup. I could've poured it into a mug, microwaved it and served it as a late night beverage.

More significantly, to my mind, I've run into trouble with many of Larousse Gastronomique's prescribed cooking times and temperatures for meat. Slowly I'll have to reduce the times, lower the temperatures until I attain the medium-rareness I desire in beef and lamb and the juiciness I desire in pork.

I've had great successes

• I'm happy with how the turkey and duck turned out
• The poule au pot was awesome
• The rib eye, too
• And, tonight, I enjoyed the shit out of the chicken marinade

I've knocked over 82 recipes. Some I'll revisit. A few I won't. I've learned a few things--fresh pasta, a certain degree of subtlety--but I have much, much, much more to learn. I have some crazy recipes to tackle over the next couple of years or however long it takes me to go through Larousse Gastronomique's recipe collection. I have to cook several whole four-legged animals. I have to somehow get my hands on woodcock and grouse and fresh foie gras. These are products not avaliable in Australia. At one point I considered using something else in their stead--pigeon or quail or partridge or pheasant--or just ignoring them. Saying I could've do the 'preparing [of] fresh foie gras' because of, you know, the law and all that. But fuck that. If I'm going to cook my way through the Book, I'm going to do it properly.

Onward.

to sting or to season

81. Pizza dough

I'd argue that perhaps the most significant factor--after quality of ingredients, of course--that sets good examples of pizza apart from the bad is the base. A crappy base--doughy, burnt, whatever--won't save even the finest of toppings. The base is the most difficult part to get right at home. I suspect this is why a lot of people use pita bread or, worse, store-bought pizza cases already smeared with what is supposedly tomato passata.

Larousse Gastronomique's pizza dough is similar to the one--delicious magazine's, if I recall correctly--I've made in the past. 2 teaspoons of dried yeast, sugar and water are combined and let to sit until frothy. The yeast mixture is combined with 350 grams of flour, 300 mL warm water, 4 tablespoons of olive oil and a teaspoon of salt. You knead the dough for ten minutes and then let it rest until doubled in volume. Larousse Gastronomique says this should take 90 minutes.

The recipe makes enough dough for a single 25 centimetre pizza. Note that the base is a very thick one. If you prefer thin, crispy bases you could probably make two pizzas with it. Just remember to cut the cooking time or you'll burn it to a crisp.

82. Neapolitan pizza

Neapolitan pizza follows, at least on paper, one of the rules of good pizza: keep the topping light.

To make Neapolitan pizza, take a pizza base. Spread 6 spoonfuls of tomato passata over it and top with 400 grams worth of sliced Mozzarella cheese. The toppings take the form of 100 grams of black olives and 50 grams of anchovies. The pizza is seasoned with dried oregano, salt and freshly ground black pepper. The pizza is then baked at 240 degrees. Larousse Gastronomique recommends baking it for 30 minutes.

 
The pizza base is nice. Really nice. In fact, it's my new go-to pizza dough recipe. The problem is the topping. Larousse Gastronomique says to season the pizza heartily with salt and pepper. I ignored its demands for more salt, more salt, more salt. Why? Because the topping is naught but fucking anchovies and olives. Even so, the pizza was still too salty for my tastes. In the fierce heat of the oven the anchovies had melted and spread salty anchovy-ness all over the top of the pizza. Still, the saltiness justified the opening of another bottle of James Squire Golden Ale ...

With another topping--say, meat and meat and more meat, a multi-animal pizza, a zoo atop cheese and tomato and olive oil-enriched bread--this pizza would've been awesome.

happiness is a bowl of greasy, salty chicken wings

80. Marinade for small cuts of meat, fish and poultry

A confession: chicken wings are among my favourite things in the world. There are days when I crave no more than a big bowl of grilled (broiled) chicken wings--marinated first, perhaps, in a crude mixture of Tabasco sauce, olive oil, salt, pepper and chilli powder. They're right up there with pork spare ribs, so far as I'm concerned.

The marinade Larousse Gastronomique prescribes for small cuts of poultry is a bit more refined than my usual. Olive oil is the principle ingredient. It is flavoured with bay, carrot, clove, garlic, lemon juice, onion, pepper, salt, shallot and thyme.

 Chicken wings

I first joint the wings. I discard the wing tips, as they are scorch, and separate the wings into 'drumettes' and 'wingettes'. My preferred way of cooking chicken wings is under the grill (broiler). Ten minutes on each side and the meat is juicy and the skin crisp.

The chicken wings were lovely. The marinade enhanced, rather than dominated, the flavour of the chicken. The sweetness of the vegetables was subtle. Much love for this marinade. Much love.

pain, pain ... it hurts like it did the first time

78. Wholemeal bread

Essentially the same preparation as for white bread except using wholemeal flour instead of white flour.

Making bread last time, I discovered that letting bread sit in the loaf tin after it has been removed from the oven is a bad idea. It sweats.

I don't think the wholemeal bread is as nice as the white bread. It had a nice crust due to the fact I tipped it out of the loaf tin as soon as it came out of the oven but the flavour wasn't as good. 

79. Fried eggs a la bayonnaise

A fine lunch: fried eggs on toast with fried Bayonne ham and sauteed mushrooms. Now, I've never seen Bayonne ham for sale in Australia. Granted, I haven't looked too closely at what's avaliable at specialist delis like the French shop at Queen Victoria Market. A bit of research tells me that prosciutto is an acceptable substitute so that is what I used.

Americans

75. American salad

A warm night calls for a substantial salad--one of the strongest areas of Larousse Gastronomique's collection of recipes. American salad contains poached chicken breast, boiled eggs, cucumber, pineapple, sweetcorn and tomatoes. It is dressed with a simple vinaigrette flavoured with tomato ketchup.

The salad was unremarkable. Not bad, no. But nothing particularly interesting.

76. Court-bouillon eau de sel

'Eau de sal' translates to 'salt water'. And that's all this variation of court-bouillon is, although you can lightly flavour it with herbs if you like. I added a single bay leaf.

To poach the chicken breasts I placed them in the court-bouillon and bought the liquid up to the boil. I then covered the saucepan and cut the heat. The chicken sat in there for 15 minutes.

77. Potatoes with bacon

I feel like I've made this recipe already. Indeed, I just read over all my archived posts to ensure I hadn't forgotten to include it on 'the story so far' page. I figure that I'm so used of putting together bacon, pearl onions and potatoes from the 'bonne femme' recipes.

This recipe is a variation on sauteed raw potatoes. You saute the chopped potatoes in what is left over after you saute some bacon and pearl onions.

To accompany

James Squire Pilsner. Purchased mostly as I felt like James Squire--the best I can buy without travelling to Dan Murphy's or Swords or Slowbeer--but wanted a changed from the Amber and Golden ales. I suppose I should mention that I'm more of a beer and spirit drinker than I am a wine drinker. I'd be more inclined to throw down a lot of money on a couple of bottles of, say, Westvleteren 12 than an expensive bottle of wine. If restaurants offered matching beers with their degustation menus in addition to the usual matching wines, I'd be a very happy restaurant-goer. Indeed, I'm surprised some restaurants--the lovely La Luna springs to mind--don't offer this already.

of childhood memories, Vegemite and pasta

71. Bolognese sauce

I've cooked many versions of bolognese sauce. I've tried different meats and different combinations of meat. Different vegetable bases. Different ratios of tomatoes to stock to wine. The most significant difference between Larousse Gastronomique's bolognese and the others I've cooked before is the use of fresh tomatoes. I've always used canned tomatoes, tomato passata, tomato paste or combinations thereof. Too, I often use some kind of cured pork product. Bacon or pancetta, usually. Larousse Gastronomique's recipe doesn't call for any such products. Nor does it call for mince. It falls for coarsely chopped chuck steak. I've used this before and found that while it is time consuming to mince your the meat by hand, as you would for steak tartare, it offers a superior flavour and texture to store-bought mince.

I like bolognese. Perhaps it's my favourite dish overall. It takes me back to my childhood. Back to my dad making bolognese--maybe the one thing he could cook successfully--using supermarket mince, tomato paste, Vegemite and curry powder. He'd cook it for however long seemed right, use whatever quantity of mince my mum had left over from making rissoles the night before. We'd eat it with spaghetti and pre-grated tasty cheese and store-bought garlic bread.

The process for making Larousse Gastronomique's bolognese is similar to most other recipes. You brown the meat (500 grams) and then remove it from the pan. You then fry onion (5 large onions; chopped), celery (4 stalks; chopped) and then some garlic (4-5 cloves; minced). 10 tomatoes (peeled; crushed) are added to the pot and stewed for 10 minutes. The meat is then returned to the pan. The liquid component takes the form of 250 mL wine and 350 mL of beef stock. A bouquet garni is fashioned using the regular ingredients and a small sprig each of sage and rosemary. To the herbs I added a length of the tomato vine: in McGee's Food & Cooking it was mentioned that tomato vines add aroma to tomato sauces. The sauce must be cooked for at least two hours.

72. Bechamel sauce

Bechamel sauce is, I understand, one of the mother sauces of classical French cookery. With it you can do many a delicious thing. Say what you will about this sauce, how old school it is--thickened with a roux--but I like it. To me, lasagne made with creme fraiche or ricotta or anything else just isn't the same.

There's little to no variation in bechamel recipes. It's as simple as sauces get. You infuse 500 mL of milk with some mace (substitute nutmeg), onion and bay for half a hour before straining it. You then make a roux using 40 grams each of melted butter and plain flour. Once the roux is smooth you slowly stir in the milk and simmer the sauce, stirring gently, until it thickens. You then season it with salt, pepper and perhaps some grated nutmeg.

  
73. Cooking pasta

This is maybe the first Larousse Gastronomique recipe I came across that wasn't helpful. I know I have to cook pasta in boiling, salted water. I get that. Thing is, I've never cooked fresh pasta before. I understand that cooked fresh pasta has a different texture to cooked dry pasta. I understand it takes much less time to cook. What I don't know is how long it takes to cook. At all. I decided it'd be better to undercook rather than overcook it, given the liquid component of the lasagne--the bolognese and the bechamel--would cook the pasta further in the oven.

74. Lasagne with bolognese sauce

Once you have all you components--the bechamel, the bolognese and the cooked pasta--you layer them in a dish in the following order: bolognese, pasta, bechamel. You finish with bechamel and then top the lasagne with grated Parmesan cheese. The lasagne is baked for half a hour at 200 degrees Celcius.

I was somewhat concerned about how thick I should roll the pasta. My pasta roller has numerous settings (annoyingly, the numbers on the side of the unit don't correspond to any metric measurements I'm aware of). I opted for a thickness of roughly a millimetre as I was concerned the sheets would tear too easily if I rolled them any thinner.

The results were okay, overall. The sauce has a nice texture. As for the pasta, it's much better than the dried, no-cook lasagne sheets I've used before. I'm happy with it given it's the first time I've successfully made fresh pasta.

the only thing to fear

70. Fresh whole egg pasta

Only once before have I attempted to make fresh pasta. I wasn't aiming for anything fancy--just a basic filled pasta. Ravioli with mushrooms or whatever. I didn't get to the filling stage. I had one disaster after another. I tried making it on the bench, as all the old recipes say to do, and I ended up with egg whites running everywhere. The clean-up job was a bitch. I managed to get something resembling a dough, though, and rested it and fed it through my pasta roller ... and watched as it fell apart. Horrible.

I wasn't super excited to have to make fresh pasta again. Perhaps I was even a little scared. I could see egg running everywhere and me having to head down to the supermarket to buy a packet of the dried, 'no-cook' stuff to make tonight's lasagne.

This time I ignored the advice about mixing the eggs into the flour on a bench. I used a large bowl. The plan was to mix the ingredients until I had a workable dough and then to start messing around on the table. I mean, if you can make the dough in a food processor, what's wrong with using a bowl instead of a bench?

The dough is fairly standard. 500 grams of flour (I used '00' flour). 5 eggs (I ended up using 6--after 5 the dough was still really dry, wasn't holding together so well). 2 tablespoons of olive oil. A pinch of salt. I've read somewhere, I'm sure, that you shouldn't put oil in pasta. Maybe heard it, even, on MasterChef or something. Maybe I've also heard something about not putting salt in there. I don't know. As with most recipes that require both flour and eggs, this is one Larousse Gastronomique formula I'll not stray too far from. Worst case: if the pasta is mediocre I can always follow someone else's dough recipe next time given that I've already knocked over Larousse's.

A few minutes of kneading saw the dough come together nicely. I split the dough into four portions and kneaded them into the wee balls you see. I then covered the balls in cling film and threw them in the fridge. There they shall wait until tonight.

amy adams is pretty but meryl streep is more compelling

68. Boeuf Bourguignon

The first use for the quick beef stock is a classic: boeuf bourguignon. There exist many variations of boeuf bourguignon, ranging from simple ones such as Larousse Gastronomique's and elaborate ones such as Thomas Keller's.

Larousse Gastronomique asks you to cut a kilogram of braising steak into cubes and coat them with flour. The cubes of beef, along with 150 grams of 'belly pork', two onions and a shallot are fried in a casserole. Because, at this point, the bottom of the pan will be covered in Awesome, brandy must be used to deglaze. The meat is cooked in 500 mL of red wine and 250 mL stock for at least a couple of hours. Towards the end of the cooking time, a handful of sauteed pearl onions are thrown in and the cooking liquid is thickened with beurre manie.

Now, that belly pork bit. I've always used bacon in boeuf bourguignon. Always. When I saw this part of the recipe in Larousse Gastronomique, I figured that maybe it was talking about salt-cured bacon. But seemingly no. Seemingly--unless I've misunderstood the 'pork' entry--I should be using fresh pork belly. I've got no problem with adding pork belly to anything.

This version of boeuf bourguignon is nice. It's plain, yes, but not in a bad way. There's something so comforting about classic country dishes such as boeuf bourguignon and coq au vin.

69. Potato pancakes

To make potato pancakes you peel and grate potatoes. For every 500 grams of grated potatoes, you mix in 100 mL milk, 20 grams of butter, 2 eggs and a little bit of minced garlic. Take spoonfuls of the mixture and fry them on both sides in butter.

I was looking forward to the pancakes--the smell as they cooked reminded me of walking into Glicks and their blintzes--but I was really let down. Not by the recipe so much but by the fact I had a lot of difficulty forming them. They ended up looking like shit, as you can see. I think next time I should use some egg rings to hold them in shape as they cook.

le petit gateau

67. Marble cake

Marble cake is one of the easiest cakes in Larousse Gastronomique. It's a simple sponge that, as the name of the recipe suggests, is marbled. To achieve this effect you make a batter using 200 grams of caster sugar, 175 grams each of butter and flour, 3 eggs, a teaspoon of baking powder and a pinch of salt. The mixture is divided into two portions. 25 grams of cocoa powder is folded into one of the portions. You them carefully spoon each portion into a cake tin to create the marble effect. The cake is baked at 180 degrees for one to one and a quarter hours.

I haven't had much luck with cake in the past. I always, always, always seem to mess it up. Savoury I can do. Sweet? Not so much. I've found my situation has improved since I started following Larousse Gastronomique's recipes (most of which are very accessible) closely and using a digital scale (not needed for most savoury applications). My pastry chef housemate gives me grief about my reliance upon the Good Book. He looks down on some of Larousse Gastronomique's methods and cites numerous points (such as the fact Robuchon and co. use milk in clafoutis instead of cream) that he disagrees with based on his many years of experience. That's all well and good for him but for me, pastry is a dark forest with many a steep ravine and sheer drop to stumble down and countless rocks and roots to trip over. I have no idea where I'm going or what I'm doing there. I follow the book's guiding light closely because that's all I have. I bought a dedicated pastry book, Advanced Bread and Pastry, but I'm unafraid to admit it's too technical for me. I know enough to realise that it's bloody brilliant but I don't know enough to fully digest its wisdom. I don't have formal training. I don't have know-how gained through decades of trial and error. When it comes to sweet foodstuffs, much moreso than savoury, Larousse Gastronomique is my lifeline.

the source

66. Quick stock

Larousse Gastronomique has several recipes for stock. Some, clearly intended to be used in restaurant settings, are rather elaborate. The quick stocks obviously aren't. I'm making my quick stock using beef bones, onions, carrots and celery. There's a bouquet garni in there too, of course, as well as a couple of cloves, a star anise pod (see: Heston Blumenthal) and a few whole black peppercorns. The recipe for 'quick stock' asks you to simmer the stock for only 20 minutes. Hence the name. I have all day so I'll be giving it six or seven or eight hours. Yeah, I know, my quick stock won't be quick at all, but I may as well make productive use of my time.

I'm sure Joel Robuchon will forgive me.

relief from roasted animals

65. salad Nicoise

I give in. I'm done. I've had enough roasted meat and potatoes to last me for a couple of weeks. I need to retreat into the realm of salads. I shall start with my very favourite salad. A classic. A beautiful salad. Nicoise. 'Nicoise' is the name given to dishes from the region surrounding the city of Nice. The salad combines many things associated with the region: anchovies, olives and tomatoes.

Larousse Gastronomique's version is a lot like the one in The Les Halles Cookbook, which is what I usually make. It contains the afore-mentioned staples plus artichoke hearts, capsicum, celery, eggs, lettuce, red onion and tuna. The dressing is a simple vinaigrette.

I couldn't find artichokes in the supermarket. My suburb just isn't the kind of suburb that has a market for such a vegetable. Taro? Yes. Artichokes? Not so much. I bought a jar of preserved artichokes to see what they were like. They were cheap enough that if they were no good and I had to throw them out, I wouldn't feel bad. Turns out, they were bad. Bloody horrid. Don't buy preserved artichokes, kids.

As for the tuna, the recipe calls for 'shredded tuna'. I associate salade Nicoise with canned tuna. I've stuck with the canned stuff tonight.

a unified theory of roast pork and pork casserole and etc ... or, a meditation on loin

 63. Loin of pork with pineapple

Pork loin bonne femme all over again, only scratch the potatoes and onions. The pineapple (and apple) comes in at the last minute--not actually present during cooking, more a sweet and acidic side than something that co-habitates the cooking vessel, exchanging flavours and aromas.

A problem: the pork was dry again. I never used to buy loin. This is why. It's just too lean. Yeah, I got the butcher to keep a layer of fat on top, but even so: it's not marbled nicely like neck, not a fat-meat-fat-meat sandwich like belly. It's a bastard of a cut. I get why you'd use it. Rolled up with a piece of crackling wrapped around it, it presents well. It's easy to carve. It's not as confrontingly fatty as belly. I get that. I do. And after eating 75% of a duck the day before I was okay with that.

But this has to stop. I used a lower temperature than the recipe said. I shave 30 minutes off the 90 minute cooking time. I ensured the pork was covered well with foil. And it was still dry as all get out. I felt like an arsehole serving this to a guest. I don't like eating shit food and I sure as hell don't feel good about serving it up.

I'm wondering what my options are. I could abandon the cut altogether and use belly or neck in all future roast and casserole recipes--shoulder too, maybe--but that'd be giving up. I want to master pork loin. I'm weighing up a few options at the moment. Larousse Gastronomique describes a few techniques that may be useful. I'm considering larding the meat--using needles to stick lumps of pork back fat all through the meat. I'm also thinking of sitting the meat in a brine for 24 hours or so. Just to see if it makes any difference to the end product. I'll let you know how it goes.

64. Mushroom salad

A very basic salad of sliced mushrooms dressed with a lemon and parsley vinaigrette. Nothing to write home about. Forgive the shitty knife work, please. By the time I got around to making the salad I'd had a couple of beers and didn't trust myself enough to finely slice anything. I find that even the smallest amount of alcohol and a just-sharpened cook's knife are the worst bedfellows in history.

Potato notes: revising my position

I remember, a few weeks ago, first trying Larousse Gastronomique's method for roasting potatoes. You peel them, chop them and roast them. They come out okay. Before that, I'd always, always, always boiled my potatoes to the point of near-falling-apart before putting them in the oven. Last night I reverted to my old method and the results were far superior to the straight roasting method. Oh Mighty Patron Saint of Duck Fat Potatoes, I repent for the last few weeks of silliness. Forgive my sins. I shall not stray from the true path of awesome roast potatoes again.

chocolate and water

62. Chocolate chantilly

Turn to the 'molecular gastronomy' entry in Larousse Gastronomique and you'll find a single recipe: a chocolate mousse made without eggs or gelatine. The preparation is just like the one Heston Blumenthal demonstrated on Kitchen Chemistry a few years ago, when he still had hair. You take 200 mL water (or coffee or tea or orange juice) and combine it with 220 grams of chocolate. You make an emulsion and then you whisk the shit out of it until you end up with something frothy and pale. This you then refrigerate.

In my case, I used Earl Grey tea (black) and Lindt's 50% dark chocolate. Normally with mousse I'd look for something with 70% cocoa solids but you have to remember that this mousse doesn't contain any cream. I'll eat straight 70% but I don't enjoy it anywhere near as much as a strong milk chocolate or a mild dark chocolate (something in the range of 45-60%). Hence the use of 50%. And the Earl Grey? I took that idea from Guillaume Brahimi (and he took it from wherever he took it from, I suspect). At Bistro Guillaume a few months ago I had a chocolate tart that was served with a Earl Grey creme anglaise. The combination worked well.

Now. Problem. The chantilly didn't work well. It partly set but partly didn't. I have an island of okay-mousse sitting atop a sea of Earl Grey-flavoured chocolate. It doesn't look like Heston Blumenthal's at all. My friend told me more chocolate would solve the problem but I didn't have any more on hand. Chalk it up to experience. I'll make it again some time as I've seen chantilly work well as a tart filling.

some biscuits

61. Leckerli

Leckerli are Swiss biscuits flavoured with honey and mixed spice. Even for a pastry retard like me, preparing leckerli is a piece of piss: 500 grams of flour, 350 grams of liquid honey (I only had about 300 grams of honey so I added 50 grams of treacle too), 75 grams of candied peel, 40 grams of slivered almonds, 20 grams of mixed spice (allspice, cinnamon, clove, ginger, nutmeg and star anise) and a teaspoon of baking soda. 180 degrees for 20 minutes. Very rich.

another Christmas roast

59. Roast duck

Slight problem: the recipe calls for a 1.25 kilo duck but I've never seen such a small duck avaliable in Australia. The smallest I can recall seeing avaliable are the 1.6 kilogram Luv-a-Duck 'ducklings' (I'm not sure if Luv-a-Duck's definition of duckling matches with Larousse Gastronomique's). I bought a 1.9 kilogram 'duckling' purely because, two days out from Christmas, it's what was avaliable at Queen Victoria Market--unless I wanted to fork out almost twice as much for a Barossa Valley duck.

The problem is that rather than providing a formula of 'x minutes at x degrees per x grams of meat' formula, Larousse Gastronomique simply tells you how long to cook the one and a quarter kilo bird. The roasting temperature is very high, too. This is okay for small birds but I'm not so keen on cooking a near-2 kilogram beast at that temperature. And so I'm going to step away from Larousse Gastronomique and turn to Google. The results are horrifying. One site--one of the top results on Google--instructs its readers to roast the shit out of duck until 'no fat remains'. I closed the browser window in horror. Luckily, Luv-a-Duck's website has some sensible-sounding advice: 45 minutes per kilogram at 190*C. Given I'm working with a 1.9 kilogram duck, not a 2.0, I'll cook it for about 80 minutes and rest it for 25.

The bird was seasoned liberally, both all over the skin and inside the gut cavity. The gut cavity was stuffed loosely with half a bulb of garlic and a small sprig each of rosemary and sage. The duck was roasted first breast side up and then, after half a hour in the oven, turned upside down. At the one hour mark it was turned so as to face breast up. It rested breast side down.

The duck was juicy and rich and I ate, oh God, I ate too much. Two breasts. A drumstick. A wing. A thigh and a half. So much delicious duck. Goes quite well with Chimay Grand Reserve, too.

60. Ratatouille nicoise

Ratatouille goes well with roasts. It is, for those not in the know, a Provencal vegetable stew that contains (although there are variations) capsicum, eggplant, garlic, onion, tomato and zucchini. You simply chop up all the vegetables and sweat them in a pan for half a hour. Fresh herbs are thrown in for extra flavour and aroma.

pain

58. White bread

There are few things more satisfying than good bread. Sadly, so much bread is mediocre. The good stuff tends to be expensive. I know why someone would charge $5-7 for a single loaf of bread--I understand that they have to pay rent, pay staff and that, too, they're aware they're selling a good prodct--but I always find it hard handing over that much money for bread. Even though I like it. Weird, I know.

Luckily, decent bread isn't hard to make. It's just time-consuming. Larousse Gastronomique offers a few bread recipes and this is the one I've decided to tackle first: the classic white loaf. Not because I'm conservative or anything but because I figure it'll go well with what I plan to do for my 59th Larousse Gastronomique recipe. The dough is made of 675 grams of strong plain flour, 400 mL warm water, two teaspoons of dried yeast, a teaspoon each of salt and sugar and 15 grams of butter. That last ingredient is interesting: the times I've made bread in the past, I've either used no fat or used olive oil. Trust Larousse Gastronomique's team of editors to work dairy fat in there somehow.

I've read or heard or seen somewhere before--multiple somewheres, even--that the amount of flour you need to put into bread dough can vary dramatically depending on climatic conditions and the brand of flour. I experienced this today. Using the flour:water ratio specified in the book I had flour and yeast soup. I had to add a lot of flour before I reached the smooth, elastic dough detailed in the recipe.

I sat the bread in the tin for ten minutes before turning it out onto the wire rack. My housemate, a trained pastry chef, told me this was a mistake. Indeed, the bread had sweated. My housemate said it should dry out okay while the bread sits.

The bread did indeed dry out just fine, although I know for next time to turn the bread out immediatly. It's a nice bread.

peasant food

57. Poule au pot a la bearnaise

Poule au pot--chicken in the pot--is a classic example of poor people food. A perfect meal for a cold summer night. There are many variations of poule au pot. A quick Google will turn up some very elaborate versions. Unsurprisingly, Larousse Gastronomique's version is conservative. You take a chicken and stuff it with a mixture of sausage meat, ham, liver, onion, garlic and herbs. You place the chicken in a pot of water along with some stock vegetables and simmer it for a couple of hours.

I'm lazy. I didn't make my own sausagemeat. Rather, I bought a decent quality pure pork sausage and removed the casing. To this I added some roughly chopped ham, minced garlic, diced onion, sage, parsley and a small handful of breadcrumbs. I was going to buy liver but the only liver I could find locally was of questionable freshness. I considered buying a small amount of liverwurst and mixing that into the sausagemeat but I wasn't sure how it'd stand up to the long cooking time.

I've made pot au feu before and understand poule au pot to be, essentially, a version of pot au feu centred around chicken. Pot au feu is something you set on the stove (or the fire) and forget for a while. But poule au pot? I don't know. The only time I've boiled chickens, I've followed the recipe in Fergus Henderson's Nose to Tail. And Henderson, he aims to get the chicken to the point of just--just--cooked. Was that what Iwas aiming for here? The 'poule au pot' entry didn't say. Neither did the other entry that the recipe directs you to. I turned to Anthony Bourdain. He uses a much larger chicken (I bought a 1.3 kilogram bird as my girlfriend and I don't want to be eating this all week) and gives it two and a half hours in the water. With a much smaller bird, I'll go for one and a half to two hours.

Bourdain explains, better than Larousse Gastronomique does, that the idea of poule au pot is to use up a big old tough bird. The bird I bought wasn't even an organic free ranger--I'm not that flush at the moment and didn't think, at the time, that I could've caught the train to Springvale and bought a rooster instead--and certainly wouldn't have died old. Mass produced chickens, even most of those sold as free range or corn fed or whatever, don't live anywhere near as long as the chickens that are supposed to go into dishes like this. A problem. I wanted the meat and the resulting stock (which I plan to use for something else) to taste nice, to not be insipid, so I took a lead from Heston Blumenthal's book and sexed up the broth with some extra umami: I added a couple of splashes of Worchestershire sauce and speared one of the celery sticks with a star anise pod.

To serve, I simply portioned up the meat, spooned some hot English mustard into a ramekin and toasted up a small baguette.

Despite the use of an inferior chicken, the results were lovely. Poule au pot is probably my favourite Larousse Gastronomique dish so far.

hot chocolate

56. Mole poblano from the convent of Santa Rosa

I've mentioned once or twice previously that when it comes to non-French dishes, Larousse Gastronomique tends to offer inauthentic versions. The moussaka and lamb tajine are clear examples of someone taking an idea and making it his own. Adapting it to French palates and ingredients.

The recipe for mole poblano seems to be an exception. To the best of my knowledge--and I admit I don't know a hell of a lot about the cuisines of the Americas--it's pretty close to the real deal. It's very specific about the varieties of chilli that need to be used--pasilla and mulato--which is a bit of a problem, as I don't think we have access to those in Australia. This I'll need to work around, as this recipe is the most suited to using up the turkey leftover from yesterday.

Mole sauce is made using onion, garlic, chillies, breadcrumbs, aniseed, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, pumpkin seeds, almonds and turkey stock (made using the bones and various other scraps and off-cuts yesterday, reduced from maybe 3-4 litres down to 1 litre). In the final moments of the cooking process it is jacked with a little bit of chocolate.

I like mole but I didn't enjoy this version much--not through any fault on the Good Book's part but because I added probably a bit too much (a bit? heh) chilli powder. I'm a chilli head and can eat stupidly hot stuff, so I didn't find it horrible, but the hotness trod all over the other flavours in the sauce (although the chocolate, bless it, shone through still). 

something very wrong

I'm told I'm doing something wrong. I'm messing with the natural order of things. Fucking with the program. It feels good, though, so I'm going to keep doing it.

54. Roast turkey

It's a week before Christmas. I bought a three and a bit kilo free range bird from Coles--not one of the expensive Tasmanian ones, just reasonably priced Hunter Valley one (no idea what the difference between the two variants is, aside from hundreds of kilometres). I'm going to roast it for a sort of, kind of Christmas lunch.

Larousse Gastronomique provides, as always, a basic formula for roasting. You season the meat. Add extra fat (a sage and garlic butter, in my case, as in my local area it's hard to find proper streaky bacon). You roast it for 20 minutes per 450 grams at 160 degrees. The turkey weighs 3.274 kilograms. Maths tells me that I therefore have to roast it for 182.5 minutes: three hours, basically. I'm determined to not let the bird dry out so I'm going to cover it in foil for most of the cooking time. The idea is to roast it all low and slow and gentle like. How sensual.

I know it's boring--I know, goose is more exciting, more truly traditional, and pork is pork--but I associate turkey with Christmas day. My mum, she'd always roast one of those turkey breast rolls. She was afraid to touch a whole bird, figured she'd ruin it, but she was determined to have turkey. The couple of times we went out for Christmas lunch instead, she'd have to order turkey as a main, no matter what else was on the menu. For me, Christmastime means eating turkey and ham for two or three days. Cold. With salad, maybe. My mum's mashed potato.

I'll presumably have some turkey left over after today's lunch so I'll be looking through Larousse Gastronomique for ideas on using it up.

55. Mushrooms cooked in butter

Larousse Gastronomique suggests serving turkey with mushrooms. I like mushrooms so I'll listen to the Good Book on this point. The recipe says to slice some farmed mushrooms and saute them in butter. They are then sexed up with some sauteed onion. I'll throw some garlic in too, I guess.

Sides

The other side dishes are old favourites. I'll be throwing some pearl onions in with the turkey when it has about a hour to go--a bit like the 'a la bonne femme' stuff I've been doing recently). I'll be cooking baby carrots in butter as per something Heston Blumenthal said in In Search of Perfection or Kitchen Chemistry or whatever. And of course I couldn't roast meat without roasting potatoes, too. Lots of them. In glorious, wonderful, lovely duck fat.

Happy birthday, dear Jesus. Happy birthday to you.
 

the better wife

53. Casseroled veal chops a la bonne femme

I've had some unpleasant experiences with this 'bonne femme' business. Both the loin of pork and loin of lamb were letdowns. I like the idea of 'a la bonne femme'--the combination of meat, potatoes, onions and cured pig is a winner--but I haven't been pleased with the results so far. The potatoes and onions always end up undercooked.

I've modified the veal a la bonne femme recipe with past failures in mind. I've given the potatoes a good half hour or so to roast in the casserole uncovered. I also deglazed the pan after browning the potatoes, onions and meat and added the reduced liquid to the casserole: ideally it'll improve flavour but, I'm hoping, it'll half steam the potatoes and meat.

The extra effort was worth it.

not yet a man

52. Gingerbread

Saturday will be my last day with my grade five tutoring class. I told them I'd bring them some sort of cake. A few of the girls requested gingerbread and no one objected so I thought, Why not? It's in Larousse Gastronomique. It's a basic recipe. The girls then went on to describe the various things I could fashion out of gingerbread--dwellings, men--but I told them I'd just be making a loaf. I don't have sheet pans and I don't have the sort of artsy-fartsy skill required to engineer cake structures.

I doubled the quantities in the recipe because I have 30 students. So, I ended up having to ...

Combine:

• 200 grams of margarine
• 400 grams of black treacle

I heated this on the stove then mixed in:

• 300 mL milk

The treacle mixture was added to a bowl that already contained:

•  400 grams plain flour
• 100 grams brown sugar
• 4 tsp powdered ginger
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 2 tsp mixed spice (cinnamon, nutmeg and star anise)

I then added:

• 4 whole eggs

I poured the batter into two loaf pans and put them in a 150 degree oven for 90 minutes.

What can be said about the end result? It's gingerbread. It's rich. There's sweetness from the treacle and spiciness from the ginger and cinnamon. It'd go well with vanilla icecream, which I don't happen to have at the moment.

rissoles, darl

50. Beefsteaks a l'andalouse

These are simply patties made from minced beef and diced onion. The contents are bound with an egg. The patties are coated in flour and then fried and are served alongside sauteed tomatoes and pilaf rice. Beefsteaks a l'andalouse remind me of the rissoles my mum made me when I was child.

51. Garnished pilaf

Rice cooked in the pilaf fashion--fried with an onion, steamed with fresh herbs--and garnished with whatever takes your fancy. Larousse Gastronomique has a few suggestions. I garnished the pilaf with sauteed mushrooms and the beefsteaks.

steak frites

48. Fried entrecote

That's rib-eye steak to you and I. Larousse Gastronomique presents several recipes for this lovely cut of beef and it makes sense to start with the most basic. You take a steak, season it heartily and fry it in butter until it's cooked to your liking. The fond and meat juices serve as a sauce. That's it. Done. One of life's simple pleasures.

Given the success of my rosemary and sage plants, I stole Neil Perry's idea (see: Good Food--and yeah, I know, he didn't invent the idea) of rubbing some freshly chopped herbs into the surface of the meat before cooking it. He suggests using oregano, too, but I don't have any fresh oregano. In the MoVida book Frank Camorra uses fresh thyme in the same way but my thyme plant is looking rather sad at the moment.

To make the pan sauce, I lifted the fond from the pan with a splash of Armagnac. I added the resting juices from the meat, too. Once the sauce had reduced by half I turned off the heat and stirred in a knob of butter.

The steak is beautiful. I love elaborate dishes as much as the next foodie but there's just something about a piece of good quality beef--a King Island rib eye, in this case--cooked to medium-rare.

49. Pont-neuf potatoes

A couple of years ago, one of my housemates and I spent a lot of time cooking chips. We tried numerous recipes and numerous varieties of potato, trying to perfect them. We made lots of good chips but just stopped after a while, never attaining perfection. Making your own chips is time consuming and, because of the oil, a bit costly for a student.

Larousse Gastronomique presents a couple of recipes for chips. This one is both clear and similar to the recipe I had the most success with--the 'Les Halles' fries in Bourdain's book of the same name. This recipe requests waxy potatoes. It instructs you to cut them into 1 cm * 1 cm * 7 cm chips and to deep fry them twice: first at 170 degrees for 7-8 minutes and then at 180 to reheat them and crisp them up.

The chips are good. Amazing? No. But they'd kick the chippy shit out of anything you get in any takeaway joint or pub.

pancake gone wrong

47. Clafoutis


Clafoutis is the first Larousse Gastronomique dessert I've prepared and a classic. Variations appear in many of the books in my shelves--Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook has a recipe that isn't too different from Larousse Gastronomique's, although it calls for the cherries to be soaked in kirsch. Matt Moran or Neil Perry or maybe both have recipes for clafoutis of pears or figs or quinces or something. I remember seeing a pineapple version at some point--Jacques Reymond's menu, maybe. Larousse Gastronomique acknowledges that clafoutis can involve more than just cheries but makes clear people from the region of Limousin are conservative in their tastes. Apparently they were very upset when some academy of whatever dared define the dessert as 'a sort of fruit flan' as opposed to 'a cake with black cherries.'

Now. Black cherries. It's summer here so of course cherries are in season. Cherries are expensive: today, Coles was selling them for $16 per kilogram and, to be honest, they didn't look spectacular. The recipe specifies black cherries but neither Coles nor the local green grocers specified what variety they were selling. I know very little about cherries--I can't remember ever buying fresh cherries before--so I couldn't tell whether they were black cherries by sight. Luckily, the canned foods section had reasonably priced 425 gram cans of pitted black cherries. I bought a handful of the fresh cherries to bring the weight of cherries up to 500 grams, which is what Larousse Gastronomique's recipe calls for. Traditionally, the cherries used in clafoutis are left unpitted as the pits are supposed to improve the flavour of the cake. In most Australian restaurants and pastry shops, though, I'd imagine they'd pit them for the same reason most places pinbone fish. The canned cherries came pre-pitted and I pitted the fresh ones.

As I said earlier, Bourdain soaks his cherries in kirsch before mixing them into the cake batter. Larousse Gastronomique just lets them sit in 50 grams of caster sugar for half a hour or so. At the end of this point I found that the cherries, which I'd drained before putting them in the bowl, had expelled a lot of syrup. I discarded this as the batter is very moist. The cherries are then moved into a shallow baking dish. You could just as easily pour them into ramekins or little pie tins to make individual portions.

The batter, which is poured on top of the cherries, is made from 125 grams of plain flour, a further 50 grams of caster sugar, 3 whole eggs (beaten), 300 mL milk and a pinch of salt. It's very similar to pancake batter, really, which is probably what led my pastry chef housemate to describe clafoutis as 'something of a pancake gone wrong.' The clafoutis is baked at 180 degres for 35-40 minutes.

It's a lot like a pancake in taste, too. Gone wrong? Well, not really. It's nice. It'd be really nice with icecream. Amazing? Perhaps not, but doubtlessly a crowd-pleaser that's quick and easy to prepare.

a woman's place

46. Loin of lamb a la bonne femme

I cooked loin of pork bonne femme the other day and here I am today cooking a similarly named dish. Just what is this bonne femme business? The little bit of French I've picked up from the Rosetta Stone software tells me the name has something to do with women. The 'bonne femme' entry in Larousse Gastronomique tells me bonne femme dishes are the sort of things a 'good wife' would prepare. They are simple, homely preparations. How quaint. I'm sure, if pushed, I--an old media and communications student--could write a couple of thousand words on cultural notions of gender and food. The man and his barbecue or paella. The woman and her ... meaty loins.

The lamb version of the recipe is a little different from the pork one. The pork was prepared as a straight roast, the lamb is prepared as a pot roast. You brown a loin of lamb and then throw it in a casserole with some browned pearl onions, browned chopped potatoes and crisped-up diced bacon. You spoon a little bit of extra fat in for good measure and then place it in a 180 degree oven for a hour or so.

A word on the cut: if you're in Australia and go to a butcher or supermarket and look for loin, you'll probably see chops. Individual chops. What I'm working with is a single piece of loin. It wasn't on display but the butcher had a few such pieces out the back, each weighing somewhere between 700 grams and a kilogram. A lot of the loin roasts that you'll turn up via Google image search have been rolled and tied attractively. Mine didn't come like that.

I scored the fat as one might with a piece of pork belly and then placed some roughly chopped fresh rosemary and bay (I would've included parsley and thyme, too, but those two plants are looking a bit sad and the last thing I think I should be doing is picking their leaves) inside and then rolled it and tied it.

Incidentally, if you do a Google image search for 'loin', the very first image that appears is of a well-built man wearing naught but a few strategically-placed lengths of chain.

rib-sticking goodness

43. Spare ribs

Waking up this morning I decided to continue my journey through the 'encyclopaedic animal' that is the pig. It's hot today. I was thinking of doing something with loin, but no, I've had enough roasts over the past week. Time for something different. Time for sweet, sticky, salty pork ribs. Luckily, Larousse Gastronomique has a recipe.

The marinade, which must be applied to the ribs at least 30 minutes before cooking them (I'm giving them a good 7-8 hours), is made up of powdered ginger, salt, pepper, sugar, garlic and equal quantities of soy sauce and tomato sauce (60 mL to be precise--which makes the perfect amount of marinade for the half-dozen ribs I bought). For reference, spare ribs are different to the 'American-style' ribs some butchers sell. The 'spare ribs' entry explains that spare ribs come from 'the upper part of the pork belly' and are 'cut into long, narrow strips'. The 'best spare ribs are the fleshiest and the leanest.' Good thing, too, given that the ribs I bought are both fleshy and lean. I'm looking forward to this one.

Larousse Gastronomique mentions a number of ways of cooking spare ribs but provides no specific times or temperatures. A bit of research on Google told me that 50 minutes in a 200 degree oven is about right. Spare ribs require basting numerous times during cooking.

I like the ribs. I really do. In fact, they're easily one of my favourite Larousse conquests.

44. Avocado salad with cucumber

A fitting salad for a hot night. The recipe calls for equal quantities of cucumber and avocado to be dressed with a strong mustard-flavoured vinaigrette and chopped herbs. I've prepared two of Larousse Gastronomique's vinaigrette bases before. The second one I prepared, which suggested a fat to acid ratio of 3:1, was far superior to the one that called for a 1:1 ratio of fat to acid. I'll be flavouring the vinaigrette with hot English mustard, purely because that's what I have on hand.

Protip: if you're the sort of person who normally only buys avocados for tacos and sandwiches and, as such, always looks for ripe, soft avocados, understand that maybe they shouldn't be so ripe and soft if you're supposed to dice them. Just saying.

45. Boiled rice with butter

I'm getting a bit tired of having dairy fat with every meal so this will probably be my last recipe that needs butter for a while. I have a little bit of a block to use up, still. Boiled rice with butter is self-explanatory: you steam some rice and then stir a little bit of butter in.

opening the encyclopaedia

41. Loin of pork bonne femme

'It was [...] a meat of the common people. Grimod de La Reyniere saw the pig as an 'enclopaedc animal, a meal on legs' that did not provide roasts for aristocratic tables.'

- Larousse Gastronomique

Larousse Gastronomique is full of such quaint tidbits. I wonder if, to some extent, that attitude explains why pork isn't as common on restaurant menus (at least here) as chicken and beef. Why high end western restaurants seem to favour veal and lamb over the mighty pig.

Anyway, pork loin. I don't buy pork loin, normally. When I want roast pork, I buy belly or shoulder. Maybe neck. Australian supermarkets tend to stock leg and shoulder. Sometimes boned out 'scotch fillet'. Larousse Gastronomique's roast pork recipes all call for loin, a far leaner cut than what I am familiar with.

The formula for roasting a loin of pork is simple. You season and sear the pork and then roast it for 50 minutes per kilo at 200 degrees. My piece of pork is just shy of 900 grams in weight, so I'll be taking it out of the oven somewhere around the 45 minute mark. About 25 minutes, you add some pearl onions (first browned in butter) and potatoes to the roasting pan.

Sitting here a few hours before I roast the loin, I just realised I may have a bit of a problem. The piece of meat I bought, it's boneless. Every time I've seen pork loin in an Australian butcher, so far as I recall, it's been boneless. Sometimes it's rolled up and tied and encased in a layer of pork skin. Sometimes it's just a slab of meat with a thin layer of fat. Reading the recipe closely, though, I see that I have to 'separate the loin chops' once I have removed the loin from the oven. Chops? What chops? 

Some quick research told me that pork loin is indeed sold in two forms. Further research told me that the cooking time for the boneless version is surprisingly pretty much the same as what Larousse Gastronomique specifies in the recipe.

Eating dinner now, I'd question the wisdom the people who said boneless roast takes roughly the same amount of time to cook: it doesn't. I like pork cooked to medium-well. This is easily sitting on well. A lean cut like loin doesn't respond well to that. It's nice, yeah. But next time I'll shave ten minutes or so from the cooking time. I put the potatoes in earlier than the recipe said and even so, they're still not as soft as I'd like.

42. Sage and onion sauce

Billed as a fine accompaniment to roast pork and goose, sage and onion sauce is as basic as it gets. It is made by combining boiled onions, fresh sage, breadcrumbs, butter and the pan juices from the roast. It's very satisfying being able to make something, no matter how simple, with herbs you've just picked from your garden.

This recipe challenged my understanding of sauce. I thought of sauce as something very wet--a liquid that may be quite viscous or downright watery--but this the complete opposite, even after I added more pan juices than the recipe specified. Those breadcrumbs just suck up all the moisture. It tastes okay but I probably wouldn't make again. If I did make it again, I'd halve--at least--the amount of bread crumbs.