Gilding the Lily since 2006
I always talk about how I am a whore for good-looking produce, and how I am completely powerless against the imp god of Ambitious Cooking (okay, I made him up, but I implore any one of you to tell me you aren’t his bitch, too). …
I have done it. I have created the perfect sandwich. BEHOLD MY CREATION! It is the way, the truth and the light. With an ice-cold Czech pilsner, salt and vinegar potato chips and some quick pickled radishes and Persian cukes, this sandwich is a religious …
In the spirit of gilding the (voodoo)lily, I thought I’d take the classic Salade Lyonnaise and take it in a different direction. Instead of the traditional frisée, I used crysanthemum leaves, which are slightly less bitter and impart a green, herbal note to balance the rich egg and dressing. They’re sold in Asian markets as tong hao.
Yes, Antonia made a similar salad on this week’s Top Chef, but I think mine is better. And you’ll just hafta believe me, I really had been thinking of doing this before I saw the show, since I already had the giant bag of chrysanthemum leaves (see last week’s Fubonn spree, wherein I also picked up those pea shoots).
Besides, it’s not like Antonia invented Salade Lyonnaise. And she sure as hell didn’t serve hers on a shady patio in perfect 80 degree weather. Cue birds chirping and the sounds of children’s laughter.
Chrysanthemum salad with poached egg and warm bacon vinaigrette
Serves 2 for brunch or a light supper. Don’t use an aluminum pan for this or else the vinegar you’ll add will react with the pan and make everything taste tinny and “off”.
~6 cups chrysanthemum leaves (this was a full typical produce-sized bag, after cleaning)
2 eggs
4 slices of bacon, minced
2 tbsp minced shallot
1 tsp lemon zest
1/4 c white wine vinegar
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp Dijon or spicy brown mustard
1/2 tsp minced thyme
S&P
Stem and scrupulously wash the greens, pinch off the large stems and shake the leaves out to dry (since I don’t have a salad spinner, I invented a technique where I soak them in a sink of cold water, shaking them a bit to knock out the dirt, then strain and rinse again, then place a large bowl over the strainer and shake off the water).
Poach the eggs – simmer in hot water with a splash of vinegar until the whites set up. You don’t want the water boiling or you’ll end up with wispy whites like egg drop soup. I crack the eggs into a small bowl and then gently dip the bowl into the water and slide them out. Note that the photos clearly show that I overcooked mine ever-so-slightly. You want runny yolks. Mine were more like custard. Hey, nobody’s perfect.
Render the bacon bits for a minute over medium-low heat, then add the shallot and lemon zest. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the bacon and shallot are browned and crispy. Remove from heat, add the lemon zest and juice, vinegar, mustard and thyme and whisk until emulsified. Salt and pepper (and more lemon or vinegar) to taste. Yes, you have just made salad dressing with bacon fat. You can thin this with a little olive oil if you want to make it healthier, but if you’re eating salad with bacon and eggs on it, I’d say you’ve already given up.
Plate the leaves and top with poached egg, then dribble the bacon vinaigrette over the top. Add a crack of black pepper to finish. Serve with a crusty bread (we had poppyseed bialy) and prosecco (or leftover Domaine Labbé).
Wumpy stared at us and pawed pitifully at the screen door the entire time we ate.
I craved the lusty sunshine aroma of saffron and of smoky pimentón. I had fresh peppers and flatleaf parsley, a nubile pink brandywine tomato and a bag of rice. I didn’t have any bivalves around, and even though it’s practically not a paella without mussels …
Since I used up all the produce that had been festering in my crisper, of course I had to make another run to Fubonn for some Chinese vegetables. This week, I found some beautiful, verdant pea shoots (dou miao) and some other things that will …
Did I mention that I went in with a coworker on a metric tonne of beef? Well, it was really just like half a grass-fed/finished beeve (yes I learned that term from Michael Pollan) from Mt. Vernon, WA. But the point is I have all this meat in my (non-storage-sized, just regular household kitchen-sized) freezer. I’m still working through the lamb from last winter. But I digress…
The good thing about being on the Pill (besides not producing ill-timed, shit-smearing monsters) is that I know exactly when I’m going to start my period. More importantly, I know when I’m going to get all cunty and stabby. Then I can braise some short ribs on the weekend for a quick weeknight reheat, and I can avoid the stabby part. The cunty part, I can’t help. I just gotta be me.
So on Sunday, I gave these bad boys a nice long braise. I had to trim them pretty good first, to get rid of some of the shitton of tallow these had coating them. Salt, pepper and dried thyme. That was really it. Sear for some maillard, brown the mirepoix in the rendered beef fat (and what the hell, a little bacon fat for extra hugs), deglaze with a splash of red wine and cover in beef stock. Oven for two hours. Tonight all I had to do was boil some potatoes. A spoonful of creme fraiche on top makes the drippings into a creamy sauce.
Note the lack of greenery, save a sprig of parsley. This makes six days in a row that we have had red meat for dinner, and I think I’m growing a goiter. Lighter suppers the rest of the week! I’m serious, too – we’re expecting a heat wave this Friday. Straight from 60 degrees to 90 FUCKING DEGREES. We got screwed out of a springtime just like we got screwed out of autumn. Fuck you, climate change!
But onto nicer things, like people who like me (who really, really like me)! I got a couple of awards from my co-bloggers. Awards I absolutely do not deserve. The first one was the You Make My Day award, gifted to me by Judy of No Fear Entertaining. I can’t imagine really making her day, since she has it all (plus 2 wunderkind daughters and a greenhouse!). Thank you, Judy.
The other award came from Amy at We Are Never Full (I assume her hubz Jonny concurs? God I hope so). If my purpose is to be a source of cursing and half-assed food photography, then I guess I deliver. I kid. I’m going to be sincere for a moment, here. I really wish I could do nothing else but think of recipes, cook and shoot them in daylight, and write about it. The catch? I like my salary and bennies. A lot. Maybe if I ever I have a (non ill-timed, non shit-smearing) kid I can do this for real. Until then, I’ll do my best to keep blogging purposefully.
This sounds trite, I know, but I’m just going to give these awards back to all of my readers (and the people on my blogroll in particular). None of you do this without giving a shit (even just a little). You are all committed, and give as much time and attention as you can afford. Thank you for being a part of my community! Do you want to gouge your eyes out with a grapefruit spoon yet? No? Good. Watch this video.
My dad’s birthday was Friday, so he brought over some venison for me to cook (the thought of him eating all his game in the form of well-done steaks drowned in A-1 makes me cringe). Since he brought it the day before, I gave it …
Spring cleaning time. I get on these kicks where “I’m totally gonna eat healthy this week and this vedge looks so amazing and I can totally cook it all within the week and none of it will go to waste!” Well, now it’s the end …
Okay, for all intents and purposes, this is jambalaya. For those of you that are unfamiliar with southern American cuisine in general (and Creole cuisine in particular), jambalaya is a rice dish traditionally prepared with sausage (such as andouille), chicken and seafood. Cajun jambalaya usually doesn’t include tomatoes, and tends to rely more on game proteins. Sticklers will tell you that andouille is really Cajun and not used in Creole cuisine, which tends to use less offal (of which andouille is usually made). Mine usually leans toward the Creole side, but this time I bent the rules a bit. Also, I didn’t have any shrimp or shrimp stock at hand.
Fussier than a traditional jambalaya, this time I used arborio rice instead of a plain long-grain rice, and rabbit instead of my usual simple chicken and shrimp. Sure, the andouille smiles through in ubiquity, but takes a back seat to a lagomorph. I really wasn’t trying to be fancy or anything, it’s actually just what I had in my coffers.
Derail: Mother’s Day is right around the corner. Fun fact: my mom has been dead for three years. She died tragically at the age of 49, only 11 days after being diagnosed with colon cancer. Okay, that’s a heavy bomb to drop, and really seems waaaay outta left field, but I suppose it bears mention. I’m not upset or anything, so relax. Besides, I feel like sharing.
Another fun fact: my mom was kind of a shitty cook. This is primarily because she didn’t really like cooking (she was a line cook at a dingy jazz club-cum-sports bar for some years), but also because my family was always really poor. She did make a dish when I was a kid that she called “Shrimp Creole”, which featured bay shrimp (she must’ve made this on the day we got food stamps). She probably learned it in Home Ec and just kept it in her little tin box of recipes. It tasted like the sort of thing American girls in the late 60s were taught to cook in public schools, so that they might one day impress a man and land a husband.
Most of my culinary identity is founded on taking the dishes of my childhood and kicking them up the proverbial notch. So I make jambalaya and cornbread – just not with Minute Rice or Jiffy mix.
Roasted tomato risotto with rabbit and andouille
This really is just jambalaya if you add shrimp, use chicken instead of rabbit, and use long grain rice instead of arborio rice. This recipe probably serves 8, but it’s great leftover. The leftovers would also probably make really excellent arancini, if you were so inclined.
1 lb. small tomatoes (like those hothouse toms), quartered
2 tbsp. minced shallot
pinch salt
1 tbsp olive oil
Arrange tomatoes in a baking dish and sprinkle with shallot, salt and oil. Roast at 400 for 30 minutes or until browned and squidgy.
Half rabbit fryer (half saddle, 1 front and 1 hindquarter – should include the liver, heart and a kidney)
2 strips thick-cut bacon, diced
1/2 smallish onion, diced
2 ribs celery, diced
1/2 each green and red bell pepper, diced
~1/2 lb. andouille sausage (~8-10″ long), sliced into 1/4″-thick slices
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups (or so) arborio rice
1 cup budget white wine
6 cups chicken stock, simmering
a handful of parsley, chopped
salt to taste
Seasoning (feel free to shoot from the hip a little, people – it’s how you learn):
fat tsp or two smoked paprika
tsp chili powder (I make my own by grinding dried mulato and ancho chiles)
several cracks black pepper
two or three fat pinches chili flake
fat pinch of fried thyme, crushed
few dashes Worcestershire sauce
few dashes bitters
few dashes hot sauce
coupla drops liquid smoke
While the tomatoes are roasting, pan-roast the rabbit (not including the organs) for a few minutes on each side so you can get the meat off the bones. If you’re very clever, you’re using this time to have a glass of wine and get your prep done. Really, you should be multitasking here. If you were, by now you’d be saying to yourself, “Oh, look, the rabbit is ready”.
Pull the meat from the bones and dice the loin and leg meat, liver, kidney and heart. Since the tomatoes are still roasting (because you’re so fast at your prep, look at you go!), go ahead and throw those bunny bones in the pot of chicken stock that I just know is simmering on the stove (you are making stock from scratch, right? I mean, that chicken carcass in your freezer isn’t going to simmer itself!).
Render the bacon until browned, and add the veg. Saute for a minute or two over med/med-high until glossy. Add (and brown) the andouille. Add the arborio rice and dry seasonings (listed below). Stir the rice a bit and cook for a minute, then add the bunny organs, wet seasonings, wine and tomatoes. From now on cook the rice as though you were making regular risotto (we’ve been through this already). Five minutes from the end, add the rabbit meat to warm and cook through. Add the parsley and salt at the end. If you’re feeling sassy, add a knob of butter at the end to soften things up a bit.
Serve with hot sauce and cornbread (recipe follows)
Yankee Cornbread
This is my bastardization of Joy of Cooking’s northern cornbread recipe, cooked southern style in a cast-iron skillet with bacon fat. I know it’s not traditional southern cornbread, but at least it’s not a box of Jiffy mix.
1 tbsp bacon fat (please tell me you keep a tub in the fridge like me)
1-1/4 c cornmeal (I used blue and yellow)
3/4 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar (optional, but I like it)
2 large eggs
2/3 c buttermilk
2/3 c milk
3 tbsp melted butter
1/2 c frozen corn (I also like to add minced jalapeños, but didn’t this time)
Stick a 10″ cast-iron skillet with the bacon fat in the oven that’s preheating to 425. Mix dry ingredients. Mix wet ingredients (eggs and milks). Add wet to dry, mix, and stir in the melted butter and corn. Pour batter into now-hot skillet and bake for 20-25 minutes, until browned on top and toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the middle.
Toasted leftover cornbread makes a great open-faced sammich with thick bacon, melted sharp cheddar and roasted peppers.
Shout out to my girl Yen: thanks for your mom’s recipe. I think your email is bouncing me, because I’ve sent you a couple. That, or you’re ignoring me.
Hey, time-strapped and uninspired: how ’bout we find another way to tell Rachael Ray to go fuck herself? Fry some chopped pancetta with garlic and shallot until crispy, add chopped broccoli rabe (and what the hell – some swiss chard from the garden) and a …