Thai Treats

As the temperature here in Connecticut approaches a balmy 9 degrees, what could be more soothing than a steaming bowl of fragrant Thai soup, Tome Yum Goong, and spicy Green Curry to warm you from the inside? With temperatures that low, not even a blisteringly hot fire in the fireplace can keep me warm. At the recommendation of a friend, I took out Real Thai by Nancie McDermott from the FCI library, figuring I would have some time during this long weekend to cook some new food. This spartan cookbook contains no pictures, nothing to distract from the basic intention of the book, which is to introduce Americans to Thai recipes and the regions that the recipes hail from. After spending years in Thailand during a stint working for the Peace Corps, McDermott fell in love with Thai food and wanted to bring Thai recipes to America in an understandable and cohesive fashion.

I've always loved Thai food and dined whenever I could at the multitude of Thai restaurants that appeared on every other street corner in Richmond. Something about the salty, sweet and spicy combinations, the anise-scented Thai basil mixed with the stinging chili in the back of your tongue made me want to try making Thai food on my own. Although some of the ingredients can be hard to find (I had to venture to White Plains, NY to Kam Sen Asian Food market to find the right type of chilis), the recipes are actually quite simple and always render delicious and satisfying results.

Tome Yum Goong

Spicy Shrimp Soup with Lemongrass and Lime

Green Curry with Shrimp, Eggplant and Snap Peas

Recipes (Adapted from Real Thai)

Tome Yum Goong

Ingredients:
4 cups chicken stock (homemade or store bought...homemade is always better, but I understand if you don't have the time)
3 large stalks of lemongrass*
12 fresh wild lime leaves*
6 fresh Thai bird chilis (also called kii noo chilis, usually are very small green chilis)*
Juice of 1 lime
3 slender green onions, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon Asian red chili sauce*
1 1/2 cups of shiitake mushrooms, sliced thinly
1/2 pound of shrimp, peeled and deveined
2 tablespoons of fish sauce
2 tablespoons of whole cilantro leaves

*Can be found at most Asian markets

Procedure:
In large saucepan bring the stock to a boil. Meanwhile, trim lemongrass by slicing off the bulb end and the grassy parts at the opposite end. With the back of a heavy knife or a meat pounder, crush the lemongrass so that it becomes slightly fragrant. Chop into 3 inch pieces. Add the bruised lemongrass and 6 of the lime leaves to the broth and allow to simmer for about 5 minutes until the lemongrass has turned a dull khaki color. Remove the lemongrass and lime leaves from the broth.

Stem the chilis and place them under the flat side of your knife. Crush them until they begin to split. Place in a serving bowl with lime juice, green onions, lime leaves and cilantro leaves.

Increase the soup to high and add the chili paste and mushrooms. When the soup has boiled for one minute or when the mushrooms are tender, add the fish sauce and the shrimp and cook until the shrimp are opaque and firm. Remove it from the heat and pour into serving bowl. Add more fish sauce or chili to taste. Enjoy immediately.

Green Curry Sauce

Ingredients:

Green Curry Paste:
1 tablespoon whole coriander seeds
1 tablespoon whole cumin seeds
5 peppercorns (white or black)
3 stalks lemongrass
1/4 cup cilantro stems
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon finely minced fresh wild or domestic lime peel*
3 tablespoons coarsely chopped garlic
2 tablespoons coarsely chopped shallots
1/2 cup fresh green kii noo chilies, stemmed and coarsely chopped*
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon shrimp paste

Procedure:
Place coriander seeds in a skillet over medium-high heat and toast until fragrant. Place in bowl in allow them to cool. Repeat same steps with cumin seeds. Place seeds, along with peppercorns in a small mortar and pestle or spice grinder and grind until very fine. Set aside.

Slice ends of lemongrass and bruise with back of knife or a meat pounder. Slice into 2 inch lengths and place in food processor. Add cilantro, ginger, and lime peel. Puree until ingredients are broken down. Add the garlic and shallot, process until a moist, fragrant puree forms. Add the chilis, spices, salt, and shrimp paste. Puree until all the ingredients form a paste.

Place in an airtight container and keep chilled. Can stay good for up to a week.


Green Curry

1 pound of shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/2 cup coconut cream
1/4 cup Green Curry Paste
3 cups of coconut milk
1 1/2 cups sliced Japanese eggplant
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
12 fresh wild lime leaves
Garnish: Thai Basil Leaves, Red Chilis or Sweet Red pepper strips

In a medium, heavy bottomed saucepan, warm the coconut cream over medium heat until it boils gently, Allow to boil for 6 to 8 minutes, stirring occasionally, until you see tiny pools of oil glistening on the surface. Add curry paste and stir to dissolve into the coconut cream. Cook for 1 to 2 minutes until the curry is fragrant. Add the coconut milk, eggplant, snap peas, fish sauce, sugar and salt and stir well. Stir in 6 of the lime leaves, adjust the heat to a steady boil and allow to cook for 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add shrimp and allow to cook until opaque and pink. Remove from heat and serve with a mound of jasmine rice.

Enjoy!

Elise

Menu Project

At the beginning of Level 5 (which is already over by the way!), we had to turn in a menu project where we came up with a theme and created a minimum of four recipes to make up a menu. As anyone who has ever shared a kitchen with me knows, I have a slight obsession with all things Eric Ripert, the chef at NYC's Le Bernardin. Most weeknights you can find me curled up on the couch watching my DVR'd episodes of Avec Eric, his show on public television. So when we were asked to pick a theme for our menu projects, I immediately knew mine would be inspired by Eric Ripert and would use only Maine seafood...the lobsters and scallops I grew up eating during my summers in Ogunquit, Maine. Here is the menu:

Five-Spiced Maine Lobster Broth with Carrot Emulsion

Maine Diver Scallop Carpaccio in a Champagne-Coriander Nage with a Petite Herb Salad

Pan-Seared Black Bass with Braised Duck Ravioli and a Pinot Noir Blackberry Sauce


Almond Rose Panna Cotta with a Raspberry Coulis

It turns out that writing your own recipes is hard! And takes several tries to get them right. I had all these great plating ideas for my panna cotta, if it would just unmold from the ramekin, but everytime I tried to unmold one from the ramekin it turned into a blob of white mess. So alas, the panna cotta remained in the ramekin for its photoshoot. Next time...more gelatin in the panna cotta.

If you want any of the recipes, just let me know!

-Elise

Winter Farro Salad with Kale and Raddichio

This past summer I discovered farro, a type of whole grain that is often used in Italian cooking. I fell in love with it's nutty taste and crunchy texture immediately and used it in chilled summer salads with fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, basil and balsamic vinaigrette with some fleur de sel and extra virgin olive oil. So simple and delicious. Farro is also sometimes called spelt and is very similar to wheat berries and sometimes said to be similar to barley, although I would say it has a lot more flavor and holds up much better than barley. It's very hard, so it needs some time to cook before it can be palatable, but will still retain a slight crunch when cooked. This versatile grain holds up well in both summer and winter dishes, and in this dish I decided to pair it with sauteed kale and radicchio with toasted pine nuts, ricotta salata cheese and a garlic balsamic vinaigrette. I served it warm, but it will definitely taste just as good cold for lunch tomorrow.

Here is the recipe:

Winter Farro Salad with Kale and Raddicchio

2 cups of farro (can usually be found in specialty grocery stores, although I found it today in my regular grocery store, in the aisle with rice, couscous, lentils, etc. but could also be in the pasta aisle)
2 cups of chicken stock
2 cups of water
1 bunch kale
1 head radicchio
2 shallots, minced
2 garlic cloves, minced and ground into a paste
Pine nuts, toasted lightly in oven or in a sautee pan
Ricotta Salata Cheese, crumbled
Balsamic Vinaigrette (recipe below)

In a medium sized stockpot, heat 2 cups of chicken stock and 2 cups of water with a few tablespoons of salt. When the chicken stock and water mixture has come to a boil, add the farro and cook for about 25 minutes until it is tender, but still a little crunchy.

While farro is cooking, mince garlic and sprinkle a little kosher salt on top then crush slightly with the back edge of your knife to turn the garlic into a paste.

Wash and remove the tough stem of the kale and slice into 1/2 inch ribbons. Slice the radicchio in half, remove the core and slice into 1/2 inch ribbons as well. Mince the shallots. Heat a few tablespoons of oil in a saucepan and add the minced shallots. Cook until slightly translucent then add the kale and radicchio until kale is wilted and radicchio begins to change color from maroon to slightly brown.

Drain farro when it is finished cooking and immediately add garlic paste and half of the balsamic vinaigrette. Stir well. Add the cooked kale and radicchio and add the remaining balsamic vinaigrette, toasted pine nuts and ricotta salata cheese. Serve at room temperature.

Balsamic Vinaigrette
1 tbsp mustard
1/3 c. balsamic vinegar
1 c. olive oil
salt and pepper
1 garlic clove, crushed and minced

Place mustard and balsamic vinegar in a medium sized mixing bowl, whisk to combine with a pinch of salt and pepper. While whisking, slowly add the olive oil so that the mixture emulsifies and thickens.

Osteria Morini

One of the upsides of going to culinary school is that I'm basically required to eat very good food all the time. And it just happens to be another plus that I go to culinary school in a city full of some of the best restaurants in the world. This week, I ate dinner at a new restaurant called Osteria Morini with two of my friends from culinary school, one of which, Shannon, works at another restaurant, Marea, owned by the same chef, Michael White. Michael White, chef at Marea, the newly opened Ai Fiori and now, Osteria Morini, is one of the most buzzed-about chefs on the New York food scene for his unique take on Italian fare. While Marea is a very upscale and serious take on Italian seafood, Osteria Morini is a place that feels more like your Italian grandmother's kitchen than an actual restaurant. Upon walking in, you're surrounded by the comfort of worn wooden beams in the ceiling and a long bar, stretching half the length of the restaurant with old oak barrels in the walls. The tables, squeezed in as tight as they can, are dark wood as well, paired with mismatched painted chairs and floral china with tinted glasses. Sitting down at the table reminded me immediately of the quaint and charming restaurants that line every street corner in Florence, where real, high quality food is the focus.

Because Shannon works at Marea, the chefs sent out extra courses of food for us to taste, and deconstruct, trying to figure out what ingredients they used and how they made each dish, as we tend to do when tasting something for the first time. (Probably an annoying habit for those who are forced to share a meal with any of us). While we were looking at the menus, the waiter gave us a plate of typical street food from the Emiglia-Romagna region of Italy, where all the restaurant's food draws inspiration from. We started by popping crispy fried polenta topped with meaty and creamy speck that melted in our mouths as the fried polenta crunched. Next was fried mortadella on a skewer with ementhaller cheese, followed by bechamel croquettes...such fried, cheesy goodness.

For our first course we chose Mare, a lemony seafood salad with calamari and shrimp. The shrimp was tender and filled with the lemon flavor of the vinaigrette without being overly acidic. They also brought us a plate of mozzarella with a hint of balsamic and orange segments. The mozzarella was slightly warm and so soft, the perfect start to a meal.

Next we each ordered from the extensive, but rich pasta offerings. I chose the special, spaghetti alla vongole (spaghetti with clams), Shannon chose the tortellini in duck liver cream sauce and Emily chose the Garganelli, quill shaped pasta with truffle butter, prosicutto and cream. They also sent out an extra course, Gramigna, which is a longer version of macaroni with pork sausage and tomato sauce. The homemade pastas were all delicious....my spaghetti was flavored with hot peppers, leeks and lots of butter mixed with the flavorful juices released by the small clams. My one complaint was that the housemade spaghetti was a bit underdone, but I didn't really mind...(I honestly eat the raw pasta dough while I'm making pasta and think it's pretty delicious, so it didn't bother me too much!) Shannon's tortellini with duck liver cream sauce was rich and creamy, but I'm not a huge fan of liver, so I when I say I didn't love it, I'm a little biased. Emily's garganelli was delicious and not as rich as we initially expected it to be, but we were disappointed when we found no hint of the truffle butter promised on the menu. The gramigna was delicious...the pasta was cooked to perfection and the sausage and tomato gave it rich, meaty flavor. The dessert held it's own too...a delightful surprise to the end of such a delicious meal. We ordered two options: a chocolate and peanut butter torte and three types of gelati: chocolate, biscotti and pistachio, all were creamy and flavorful, but the chocolate was my favorite. It oozed with rich chocolate flavor without being too overpowering.

It was a meal that reminded me of why I love the simplicity and rusticity of Italian cooking. Paired with just a few other ingredients, the two components of a pasta dough: eggs and flour, can make such a complex and flavorful dish.

-Elise

Level 5

I know it's been so long since I updated on what I've been up to at school, but believe it or not I only have about 6 more weeks of the program! I'll be done on February 16th and the time just keeps flying by. After a grueling 4 weeks of Level 4, where we did family meal, production and buffet and I developed what appears to be a slight case of carpal tunnel from the heavy lifting and repeated knife work from cooking family meal (lunch for the 400 or so people who eat everyday at FCI), I'm now onto Level 5, where I cook in the FCI's restaurant, L'Ecole. In the last two levels of the program, we rotate through the different stations in the restaurant kitchen, cooking two to three designated dishes, depending on the station. We go through garde manger (cold and hot appetizers), entremetier (usually the vegetable dishes and specials), poissonier (fish station), saucier (meat) and pastry (pretty self explanatory). At the beginning of level 5, our class was split into five different groups and unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the fourth member of our group decided to drop out of the program before we moved onto Level 5. He had been in my group throughout Level 4 and drove us all absolutely insane...I'm pretty sure he was high the ENTIRE time, or recovering from being high and would take hours to do the most mundane tasks. Which is why I say, it's probably more fortunate that he decided to drop out of the program, leaving our group with just three people, Ivan, Nancy and myself.

We started out on garde manger, prepping and serving four dishes: escargot, boudin blanc with lentils, a seasonal salad and a chicken salad. There was a lot of prep work involved for the three of us to manage, but we were able to get it done in time for service everyday. We only have four days at each station, so by the time you're able to get used to the recipes and the routine of prep for the day, it's time to move on to the next station! And our next station was poissonier, which compared to garde manger had relatively little prep work and we were usually ready to go for service by 10:45/11, leaving us with an hour and a half until any customers would come into the restaurant. At this station, we cooked scallops with butternut squash puree, brussel sprouts and pomegranate seeds and pomegranate vinaigrette as garnish, and a pan-roasted branzino with white beans and braised radicchio and endive. Even though we didn't have as much prep work here, we certainly made up for it during service, since scallops is one of the most popular dish on the menu. At first it was hard to adjust to the organized chaos of service, the expeditor yelling out "ORDER TWO SCALLOPS," and you having to respond "TWO SCALLOPS", then you pull everything out to get it ready and wait until you hear the expeditor yell "FIRE TWO SCALLOPS" where upon you yell in return, "FIRE TWO SCALLOPS" and you fire (cook) those damn scallops. When you want to know how many total scallop orders you have, you yell "How many scallops all day?" instead of going through the process of asking, "Now, how many scallops do I have in total?" I never thought cooking on the line would have so much of its own little lingo.

Next up was saucier...by far the most challenging. Here our two dishes were rabbit terrine and rabbit loin with a potato fennel pancake and grilled scallions and a hanger steak with peppercorn sauce, cauliflower and bone marrow puree and a pommes darphin. Not only was there a ton of prep for this station, but we were also crazy busy during service and had to somehow figure out how to test a steak for doneness just by poking it a little with your finger. When someone orders a steak medium rare, it has to come out of the kitchen medium rare, but did I know what that felt like before rotating through the saucier station? No! The first day we were at the station, Nancy and I let Ivan take control of the beef situation, but the next day we decided to tag team it and try to figure out the beef together. Hanger steak is particularly tough because when it's portioned it is in all different sizes and varies a lot in thickness, so you have to pay attention to every single portion while you're cooking it to make sure that its going to end up being the doneness that you're looking for when you slice it to put it on the plate. Occasionally we would slice into a steak that was supposed to be medium well and find it still dripping with blood so it would have to go under the salamander (basically a broiler) to cook a little more. Typically we would sear off about five steaks before service and take them to the rare stage then once we got an order and knew how the customer wanted it done, we'd cook it a little more, pop it in the oven with the rest of the order and plate it once we heard the command to fire. It was not easy, but by the end of the rotation I was feeling a lot more comfortable with beef.

Right now, I'm in pastry where everyday we make a pumpkin souffle with egg nog cream sauce and a Calvados Baba (it's like a little muffin-type thing soaked in calvados liquor) served with a chestnut ice cream. I've been enjoying pastry a lot the past few days because it's a lot calmer and more relaxed than being on the line, and it's also fun to do something different. And now I know the secrets to making souffles and getting the timing right for serving them in a restaurant. It's all about the timing with the souffles....Everyday we make the souffle base, which is basically just flour, butter, pumpkin puree and egg yolks. Then we carefully portion out four recipes worth of egg whites and sugar and we portion the souffle base into four portions as well. We keep all of these on hand and starting at 1:15, we whip up the egg whites and mix the souffle, pipe it into ramekins and keep them on hand until we get an order. After the souffles have been mixed and piped into the ramekins, we have 35 minutes before the souffles die aka lose their ability to magnificently and magically rise. Once one batch it about to die, we throw it into the oven if no one has ordered it and give them out to whoever wants one (it's not hard to find people who are in the mood for a souffle). It's also tricky because as soon as you take a souffle out of the oven, it starts to deflate, so you have to get it to the table as quick as you possibly can. So we have to time exactly when we put the souffles in the oven and get everything else that's going out with that same order ready before the souffle even comes out of the oven. As soon as it comes out of the oven, we run it up to the front of the kitchen for the waiters to pick it up and take it to customers. We also get the chance to do dessert specials in pastry, and today I did a carrot cake with cream cheese ice cream and a pineapple compote. We also molded little marzipan carrots to put on top. I'll post a picture of it soon.

On the next post...my menu project.

Elise

Christmas Cookbook Additions

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! Hope you all had a restful break from real life for a week or two! I know by now it's a week or two past Christmas, but I wanted to share some of my favorite Christmas gifts with you, since of course they involve cooking! Much to my mother's chagrin, I continue to collect cookbooks...they never seem to get old to me, and there's always a new cookbook coming out from new chefs and on new topics (Mark Bittman's book, Salt on yes, you guess it, SALT!...I think I need that, after all, it was the title of my college essay). This year, I got a few classic cookbooks that will definitely get some use in my kitchen:


The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg is more than just a cookbook...it lists every kind of ingredient you could possibly imagine and what flavors pair well with that ingredients. For cooks like me who hate following recipes to a tee and are always looking for a new kick to that classic recipe, this cookbook is definitely a must. It was a huge help when I was trying to put together my menu project for school where we had to create our own themed menus and recipes (it will be the topic of my next post, don't worry!)


The French Laundry by Thomas Keller...need I say more? The chef of famed restaurants, Per Se, Bouchon, Bouchon Baker, ad hoc and of course, The French Laundry brings his intricate recipes to life in this gorgeous cookbook filled with behind-the-scenes stories of the farmers and purveyors who make his restaurant what it is. Although it's definitely not a new cookbook (it was first published in 1999), it's as close to dining at The French Laundry as I can get (hint hint, someone take me to San Francisco please?).


And probably the best cookbook of them all, my great-great grandma's Fannie Farmer cookbook published in 1917, given to me by my Nani. While it's probably not something I'll cook from, it's so interesting to see how much cookbooks have changed since then and the types of things that were popular (lots kidneys and cream!). All the cookbooks in the world couldn't have meant more to me than getting this cookbook, it's something I'll cherish and save for the rest of my life.

I'll leave you with the epigraph from the beginning of the Fannie Farmer cookbook:

"Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe and of Helen and of the Queen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs and fruits and balms and spices, and all that is healing and sweet in the fields and groves and savory in meats. It means carefulness and inventiveness and willingness and readiness of appliances. It means the economy of your grandmothers and the science of the modern chemist; it means much testing and no wasting; it means English thoroughness and French art and Arabian hospitality; and in fine, it means that you are to be perfectly and always ladies--loaf givers."
-Ruskin