Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Summer Pie








Recipe

Pie crust is here

Mousse
Chocolate
Whipped cream
I packet of gelatin
Melt chocolate let cool a little fold in cream slowly add warmed gelatin
Fruit on top

Indian Night

Spices
People
Basmati rice and Curry
Recipe
This is from Here
Curry base
  • 3 tablespoons vegetable oil or ghee (clarified butter)
  • 1 medium onion - finely chopped
  • 4 cloves garlic - peeled and sliced
  • 1.5 inch piece root ginger - peeled and thinly sliced (it should look about the same volume as the garlic)
  • (optional) 2 mild fleshy green chillies - de-seeded and veined then chopped
  • half teaspoon turmeric powder
  • half teaspoon ground cumin seed
  • half teaspoon ground coriander seed
  • 5 tablespoons plain passata (smooth, thick, sieved tomatoes, US = purée) or 1 tablespoon concentrated tomato purée (US = paste) mixed with 4 tablespoons water
Method
  1. Heat the oil in a heavy pan then add the chopped onion and stir for a few minutes with the heat on high.
  2. Add the ginger, garlic and green chilli (if using). Stir for 30 seconds then put the heat down to very low.
  3. Cook for 15 minutes stirring from time to time making sure nothing browns or burns.
  4. Add the turmeric, cumin and coriander and cook, still very gently, for a further 5 minutes. Don't burn the spices or the sauce will taste horrid - sprinkle on a few drops of water if you're worried.
  5. Take off the heat and cool a little. Put 4 fl oz cold water in a blender, add the contents of the pan and whizz until very smooth. Add the passata and stir.
  6. Put the puréed mixture back into the pan and cook for 20 - 30 minutes (the longer the better) over very low heat stirring occasionally. You can add a little hot water if it starts to catch on the pan but the idea is to gently "fry" the sauce which will darken in colour to an orangy brown. The final texture should be something like good tomato ketchup. Warning - it WILL gloop occasionally and splatter over your cooker, it's the price you have to pay!
Korma Recipe From Here
  • 2 chicken breasts, skinned and cut into approx. 1 inch pieces
  • 1 tablespoon vegetable oil or ghee
  • 1 inch piece cassia bark
  • 2 cardamon pods
  • two thirds of a batch of Basic Curry Sauce
  • quarter teaspoon hot chilli powder
  • half teaspoon concentrated tomato purée
  • salt to taste
  • 4 tablespoons double cream
  • 1 tablespoon finely chopped creamed coconut
Method
  1. Heat a little of the oil in a large heavy frying pan then fry the chicken pieces over moderate heat until they are sealed and have turned white. Remove them from the pan and set aside
  2. Heat the rest of the oil in a heavy pan over a moderate heat then put in the cassia and cardamon and stir for a few minutes
  3. Turn the heat to low then add the Basic Curry Sauce, chilli powder, tomato purée and salt. You can add a little more tomato purée if the colour isn't rich enough but no more than another half teaspoon.
  4. Add the chicken pieces and simmer on a low heat for 20-30 minutes, stirring from time to time. Add hot water if the sauce gets too dry.
  5. Finally, add the cream and creamed coconut and heat through until the creamed coconut has melted. By the end of the cooking the sauce should be silky and not too thick.
RECIPES FROM THE CURRYHOUSE .CO.UK

Wednesday full of meals!!!

Ana from Madrid (Spain) brings four new meals:

- Judias estofadas con verduras (Stew beans with Vegetables)

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- Macarrones con chorizo (Macaroni with Chorizo (highly seasoned pork sausage))

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- Redondo de ternera en salsa con pure de patatas (Roast Beef with sauce and mashed potatoes)

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- Espinacas a la crema (Spinaches with cream)

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Thanks Ana!

pre-Aspen conditioning

June 11

Steven Holt had been after me to stay at the Ritz-Carlton Bachelor Gulch since before it opened.
Bachelor Gulch is part of Beaver Creek, in the greater Vail area, conveniently located midway between Denver and Aspen, so it made sense to stop in on the way to the Food & Wine Classic.
So after a brief stay with family — a highlight was hanging out in a mall (The posh Cherry Creek Shopping Center) with my 12-year-old niece, talking about boys — I picked up my rental car and headed down I-70.
I have known Steven for a long time. New York publicist Shelley Clark instructed him to look after me the first time I went to Aspen for the classic. He was in charge of PR at the Jerome hotel at the time, and he took me to good parties and generally made me feel welcome. Since many of the people in Aspen during Food & Wine weekend are based in New York, they already knew me, and Steven wondered aloud why exactly I needed to be taken under his wing, but it was nice of him anyway.
Here at Bachelor Gulch I’m in a corner suite with one-and-a-half baths, two plasma screen TV's and an automatic fireplace. It’s not a bad place to adjust to the 8,000-foot altitude that Vail and Aspen share.
I was hoping to have a couple of days of relatively clean living in the prelude to Aspen, which is a bacchanalia if ever there was one, but I'm staying on the club floor, which means I can hang out in the lounge that has five food-and-beverage presentations a day (continental breakfast from 7 to 10 a.m., a mid-day snack from noon to 2 p.m., “Aprés Tea” from 3 to 4:30, hors d'oeuvres from 5:30 to 7 and dessert from 8 to 9:30) not to mention wine and cheese that are available starting at 11 a.m.
Oh well, at least I’ll get plenty of sleep.
Steven has left for Aspen now, but last night we had dinner at Spago, prepared by chef Mark Ferguson, who was born and raised in the Denver suburb of Littleton, where he graduated from Littleton High School (although his older brother went to Arapahoe), before becoming a chef. He cut his teeth cooking under Jeremiah Tower at Stars, in San Francisco — which means he’s older than he looks. He’s been working for Wolfgang Puck for more than a decade.
Now, I'm going to tell you what we ate and drank for dinner, but first I'd like to point out that it has been snowing on and off here in Beaver Creek for much of the day. Just a few flakes, but it’s snowing. If you happen to be going to Aspen, don’t let that scare you; 32 degrees in the dry, crisp Colorado mountain air is not like 32 degrees in humid coastal areas or on the plains. It's light-jacket weather. You’ll be fine.

What we ate and drank:
Spicy tuna tartare cones
Henriot Champagne

Mini crab cake
Rudi Weist Riesling (a crisp little guy from Austria)

Spring Asparagus soup with Maine lobster, ramps and Provençal olive oil
Hand-made pea agnolotti with seven-year “Boni” Parmigiano-Reggiano
Boxler Pinot Blanc (also Austrian, which a rich lusciousness that reminded me of Martinborough Pinot Noirs

Pan-roasted Alaskan halibut “aqua pazza” with garlic potato purée, ramps, crab, sweet shrimp and lobster
Château de Puligny-Montrachet

“Chinois [presumably on Main] Style” Colorado lamb chops with Hunan eggplant, snow peas and cilantro-mint vinaigrette
Syrah Copain “L’hiver” from Mendocino County, California

Kaiserschmarren
Kracker Beerenauslese Cuvée

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Breakfast. Swedish style.

I have a theory. Like the best theories, it is simple and concise and able to spark much debate as to its veracity and plausibility. Perhaps it is little more than the ramblings of a self-confessed gastronome attempting to add a modicum of legitimacy to a burgeoning obsession but I shall, nevertheless, share it with you now as a stimulus to further discussion.

I am willing to hear counter arguments and even consider the possibility that it might be nothing more than utter bunkum, but I have a feeling that a great many of you will agree.

It runs thus: the very best way to begin the process of understanding a new country or culture is not through examining their social structure, rituals, rites of passage or sexual practices. It is by looking at the food that they eat.

I firmly believe that by consuming three meals you can gain a more immediate and precise understanding of wherever you are than by reading any number of guidebooks. Only by sampling the local foods and flavours can you start to scratch the cultural surface and begin to delve deeper into the social miasma that a mere few mouthfuls ago felt so alien.

As a result whenever I find myself somewhere new, it is not the art galleries, museums, guided tours or buildings I am interested in – it is the local food. In the spirit of adventure I try not to be constrained by pre-conceptions or my own short-sighted cultural relativity. Granted there are some things that I would only eat if faced with the possibility of a long, slow and painful death from starvation, but they are few and far between (and for an entirely different post altogether). Now is the time to discover the food of my ancestral land – and what better place to begin than at breakfast.

Breakfast is the cornerstone of cuisine. It sets the day in motion and creates a springboard for whatever follows (usually lunch). It is usually a hurried affair, a far cry from the glory days of breakfast when an aristocratic diner could idle over tea and toast and eggs and bacon all served by the staff from silver platters. A freshly ironed copy of The London Times provided an excuse to avoid conversation aside from a muted commentary on the affairs of the day.

Sadly, I don’t live in an episode of Jeeves and Wooster so have to make do with toast and a large espresso with a glass of juice as a concession to health. But on holiday it is possible to linger over the first meal of the day a little longer, as if you are living in a world of perpetual Sundays (how I wish that were the case).

For some reason that remains elusive to me at this moment, I’d become convinced that the Swedes enjoyed a breakfast consisting mainly of coffee and pastries and so on our first morning – which also happened to be my girlfriends birthday – I confidently marched into a café ready to show off my knowledge of Swedish breakfast practices.

My request for two coffees was met with an approving nod from the chap behind the counter. So far so Scandinavian. My supplementary request for three pastries of his choice was met with a look of mild confusion and a glance at his watch before he shrugged his shoulders and removed a selection of tasty but totally unbreakfast-like items from the huge display. We were presented with a slab of chocolate cake, a glazed raspberry tart and a warm cinnamon roll. The first two were unexpected and came with a frightening amount of whipped cream. The third was more what I had in mind but I was willing to be proved wrong and we merrily tucked into this selection of Swedish breakfast treats.


The cinnamon roll was perfect with strong black coffee (the Swedes are the second biggest coffee consumers in the world, only the Finns neck more of the stuff), warming and steadying . I thought it would be an ideal hangover breakfast, like an edible hug. The others, although tasty, were just wrong at half nine in the morning and left me feeling a little sluggish while my poor digestive system struggled to deal with the cream.

I analysed this breakfast in conjunction with my theory. What did this tell me about the country I was in? Swedes are greedy, have a sweet tooth, aren’t particularly health conscious and most probably skirting a fine line between obesity and morbid obesity. Something was clearly amiss because not one of these conclusions appeared to be true.

I relayed this story to my Swedish mother. ‘Why on earth did you have cake for breakfast?’ she said.
‘Because that’s what they do over there. Isn’t it?’ I replied meekly
‘No, what gave you that idea? If people have cake at all, they wait until about three o’clock. Maybe late morning on a Sunday. And even then it is usually retired women who only do it as an excuse to gossip. Breakfast is usually yoghurt with cereal and fruit.’

This explained a lot. My disappointment at being wrong was offset by my delight that my theory still held water. And that we’d got to eat cake for breakfast, something I recommend everyone try at least once.

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