The TKO

For any of you who live near a Bouchon Bakery, you are probably familiar with this cookie.  The acronym TKO stands for Thomas Keller Oreo.  Put TK's name on any food item, and it gets glitzy, right?   Use really good ingredients (like Scharffen Berger cocoa and Callebaut chocolate...) and you do get a remarkably tasty cookie.

TKOs
yield: will depend on your cutter size, I usually get 20-24 sandwiches

8 oz white chocolate, chopped fine
1/2 c heavy cream

11/2 c + 3 T all purpose flour
3/4 c sugar
3/4 c + 1 T cocoa
1/2 t baking soda
1 1/2 t salt
15 T butter, at room temperature, cut into 15 pieces

The night before making the cookies, bring the cream to a simmer and pour over the white chocolate.  Let rest for five minutes, then whisk until smooth.  Cover and chill completely.

For the cookie dough, combine and sift all of the dry ingredients.  In a stand mixer on low speed, incorporate the butter pieces one by one, continuing to mix until the butter is evenly distributed.  The dough will be granular and may not come into a ball.  Transfer half of the dough to a clean counter and knead lightly to help the dough come together. 

Roll out to about 1/8" thick and cut with your favorite sized circle cutter.  Arrange the dough on a Silpat or parchment lined sheet, leaving 1/2" in between each cookie.  Bake at 350F for 8-10 minutes.  Repeat with the second half.

Once the cookies are fully cooled, sandwich a bit of the chocolate between two cookies and enjoy!


*note: the thickness of the ganache will vary depending on the brand of white chocolate you use

Shrimp Alhinho

This recipe is an awesome riff on the traditional combination of shrimp and garlic that you find all over the Iberian peninsula.  It's from George Mendes, the chef/owner of Aldea in New York.  The menu there is Portuguese inspired, but definitely not traditional...

If you're pinched for time, the shrimp are awfully good just on their own.

For the sauce base:
2 pounds shrimp heads
canola oil, as needed
½ onion, sliced thinly
5 shallots, sliced thinly
½ bulb fennel, sliced thinly
2 ribs celery, sliced thinly
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbsp. fennel seed
1 pod star anise
1 tbsp. saffron
½ cup brandy
½ cup Pernod
1 tbsp. tomato paste
2 sprigs tarragon, roughly chopped
2 sprigs parsley, roughly chopped
.2% xantham gum (by weight of finished, strained sauce)


For the shrimp:
32 shrimp, cleaned and de-veined
1/4 cup olive oil, divided
6 garlic cloves, minced
½ tbsp. paprika
1 sprig parsley, minced
1 sprig cilantro, minced
1 lemon, juiced
salt and pepper as needed

Make the sauce base:

Toast the shrimp heads in canola oil. Add the onion, shallots, garlic, fennel, celery, saffron, fennel seeds and star anise.  Sweat until the vegetables start to soften.  Add the tomato paste and cook for one minute. Deglaze first with the brandy, then with the Pernod.  Cover with water and simmer 30 minutes. Take off the stove, add the herbs, and infuse 15 minutes.  Strain through a chinois.  Reduce over high heat if the flavor is not concentrated enough.

Add .2% xantham gum by total weight of the sauce and mix with an immersion blender.

Make the shrimp:

Season the shrimp with salt and pepper and sear in 1 tbsp. olive oil for 30 seconds on each side.

Lower the heat and add the remaining olive oil and minced garlic. Cook the garlic slowly until golden. Add the paprika and mix well. Add the chopped parsley, cilantro, and lemon juice.

Heat the shrimp base and divide between eight warm shallow bowls.  Place 4 shrimp in center of each dish. Spoon a small amount the garlic-olive oil mixture over the shrimp and then top with the minced herbs.

Curry Powder & Spice Sourcing

This is for those of you that took my vegetarian class last night!

Jasmine's Curry Powder
yield: 3 cups (that's a lot!)

50 g turmeric
44 g brown mustard seeds 
40 g fenugreek
40 g fennel seeds
40 g coriander seeds
32 g cumin seeds
28 g powdered ginger
24 g black peppercorns
16 g cinnamon
12 g paprika
8 g cardamom 
8 g mace
8 g star anise
8 g crushed red pepper
4 g allspice, whole
4 g cloves, whole
4 g nutmeg
2 g asafoetida
2 g dry bay leaf

To make the curry, toast each whole spice separately in a dry skillet over medium heat until aromatic, then set aside to cool.  Be very careful not to scorch the spices as this will cause a strong bitter flavor to invade your finished product.  After all are toasted and cooled, transfer everything to a spice grinder and grind until very fine.  You can sift the mixture if you like to get a very even texture but it's not absolutely necessary.  At this point you can use the powder or store in an airtight container.   

*This is my adaptation, feel free to adjust to suit your family's palates.  You can increase different ingredients or leave some out depending on your personal taste.  And, if there are one or two small items that you do not have handy, don't worry. 

*If you don't already have a good source for bulk spices, check out Big John's PFI in SODO.  It's the best I've found- good turnover so the spices are usually fresh and a huge selection at very reasonable prices.  Besides, they carry an awesome array of cheeses and imported European stuff.  It's also the best place to buy good quality bulk chocolate.

Good Morning, Sunshine

Spring is officially here, and every once in a while the sun actually comes out!  I don't think today is going to be an epic sunny one, but it was encouraging to see a partly clear sky and few rain drops.  Even though I'm typically a no-breakfast person (cappuccino please!) sometimes I get a hankering for some baked goods, and let's face it, in Gig Harbor, there's not much to choose from that's fresh and good...  This morning I made some low-fat citrus blueberry muffins.  They're one of my favorites, and even though they have nothing to do with springtime, the fresh, bright flavors remind me of this time of year anyway.

Lower-Fat Citrus Blueberry Muffins
yield: 12 regular sized muffins

Whisk together in a medium bowl:
2 c all purpose flour (or a combination with white whole-wheat)
1/2 c sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
a pinch of cinnamon

Combine in another bowl:
1 large egg
3 T canola oil, olive oil, or melted butter
1 c fat free yogurt (thinned with milk if needed)
zest of 1 orange
zest of 1 lemon
1 tsp vanilla extract

Set aside:
1 1/2 c blueberries, frozen or fresh

Preheat the oven to 400F and prepare a 12-cup muffin tin (either grease well or line with papers).  Combine the wet and dry ingredients, then fold in the blueberries.  Portion into the muffin cups, and bake for 15 minutes and check for progress.  If you've used fresh berries, the muffins should be done.  Frozen berries will add at least an extra five minutes, but monitor carefully, you don't want to overbake them.

A Lasting Influence

For dinner tonight, my husband wanted roast chicken.  Even though a whole bird looks grand coming right out of the oven with crackling brown skin and beautiful aromas, I wanted to do something a little different.  Let's face it, chicken is the base line that everyone compares neutral flavors to.  Regardless of what the meat really is, when confronted with a new bland item, the response is often "dunno, tastes like chicken."  Now, this doesn't mean that a perfectly roasted chicken doesn't make for a fantastic meal...

So, in my quest for something new (and more complicated?), I went old-school.  Old school French, and old school CIA.  I mean, really, who makes a chicken galantine on a Sunday afternoon?  And thus the title of this post.  No matter what I do, the CIA Pro-Chef still resides on my bookshelf, and my culinary education, my foundation, will always have an impact on who I am as a cook.

The dish I ended up with is a classic preparation of bird - think the original Turducken.  You take your fowl, and put it breast side down on the cutting board.  You then score down the spine and gently cut and pull the skin away from the entire bird in one piece.  You cut around the ankle and wing to free the skin and voila, you have a chicken wrapper.  Next, carve the breasts off, remove the tenders, and pound the breasts to an even 3/8".  Roughly dice the tenders.  Remove the remaining meat from the legs, back and wings, and dice as well.  Save the carcass for some tasty stock.

In a food processor or meat grinder, bring down the meat into a rough paste.  You'll want to add a binder (breadcrumbs, cream, eggs, cooked rice...) and some flavorings.  I used rice, rosemary, and some sauteed mushrooms with Madeira to give flavor and hold everything together.  The filling is much prettier if you use colorful things like pistachios or dried cherries.  Fold in your garnishes and binder, and get ready to roll.  Make sure you're seasoning with salt at each step.

Lay out your skin, insides side up.  The skin should be trimmed of any excess fat or ickyness.  Place the two breasts so they are close to the most raggedy edge of the skin.  Put a log of filling on top of the breasts, then roll snugly until the filling is encased in breast meat, and the meat is encased in skin.  Now, you'll want to do a running truss to hold the shape, and refrigerate until ready to use.  I roasted mine at 375F in a convection oven for about 40 minutes, until the internal temperature was 165F.  I basted with olive oil throughout, then let it rest for a few, and topped it with some beech mushrooms cooked down with shallots and more Madeira.  You could also poach this item and serve cold. 

The Chicken Chronicles I: We're Going to be Farmers!

If you read back in this blog about a year, you'll find a post about my super-enthusiastic husband and his garden.  In short, he covered the entire yard with raised beds and succeeded in growing all of the produce we could eat during the summer and fall last year.  With the weather here in the winter, it's difficult to grow stuff year-round, and spring comes a little late, so we've been purchasing produce for the last five months.  Let me tell you, the difference is astounding and I can't wait for our little seedlings to take off.  We have leeks, arugula, and things of that sort started already on the windowsill.

Having exhausted all the flat, sunny land in our yard, the next logical step is to find something to do with the shady parts.  And what better than to build a chicken coop!  Our supply of fresh eggs recently ran out (due to raccoons...) and we figured it was our turn.  We went down to the feed store just to find out some information about chicks- when they'd be in, what breeds work well up here, etc, and much to our surprise, we were informed the types we wanted would be in the next day...  So, we went to Home Depot and bought a big plastic tub for them to live in while the coop gets started and finished.  We've been hearing all of these horror stories of eagles snatching, raccoons strangling, and some unnamed blood-sucking vampire weasel draining the life out of local chickens.  With Tomek's penchant for over-engineering things, I hope that won't happen to us.

We're starting out with eight chicks- four each of Black Australorp and Ameraucana.  In this photo, the Ameraucana are about a week old and the Black's a bit younger.  Even at this point, they're developing their own little chicken personalities and odd little chicken habits.  Hopefully they'll all survive, and all be girls.  There's a 10% failure rate in sexing the chickens when they hatch, so there's a good chance that we'll have a rooster in the bunch.  I hope it's not the super fluffy one that looks like a chipmunk.  (S)he's the friendliest... 

Roasted Parsnip and Carrot Salad

I don't know about you, but by this time of winter in the North West, I'm ready for some sunshine and summer produce.  However, we have at least two more months of root vegetables and kale to contend with- it's time for new flavors! 

Recently, in an endless quest to find new things to do with parsnips, I came across this recipe.  The dish is originally by Maria Helm Sinskey, a chef and winery owner in the Napa Valley.  I genuinely like her food; she respects seasonality and takes advantage of what every time of year has to offer.  Granted, that's a lot easier in California than many other places in the country!   I love this salad for the inherent sweetness of the vegetables; and the beautiful synergy between the curry, pine nuts and currants.

Here is the recipe, which can also be found on the Food & Wine website:

3 pounds slender carrots, halved lengthwise and cut into 2-inch pieces
2 pounds slender parsnips, halved lengthwise and cut into 2-inch pieces
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup pine nuts
3 tablespoons Banyuls vinegar or red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons Madras curry powder
1/4 cup dried currants
2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

Preheat the oven to 375°. In a large roasting pan, toss the carrots and parsnips with 1/4 cup of the oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast for 45 minutes, stirring a few times, until tender and lightly caramelized in spots.

Remove from the oven. Spread the pine nuts in a pie plate and toast for 5 minutes, or until golden.

In a bowl, whisk the vinegar and curry powder; whisk in the remaining 1/4 cup of oil. Add the roasted vegetables, pine nuts, currants and parsley; season with salt and pepper and toss well. Serve warm.