Appetites

Pork Tenderloin

I got home late from work this evening, and all I really had to cook was a pork tenderloin. It was a pretty small tenderloin, which, combined with the time, mean that I wasn't about to do my stuffed tenderloin dish. Instead, I sliced the tenderloin on a bias into 3/4 inch medallions. I pounded the medallions under a sheet of plastic wrap into shapes around the size of your hand (depending on the size of your hand, I guess -- really, the size of my hand), then dredged them in seasoned flour and shallow-fried them in a mixture of olive and peanut oils.

Because I'd pounded them to around 1/4 inch in thickness, they only took around 6 or 7 minutes to cook. Once they were done, I removed them to a rack set over a baking dish, and seasoned them again with some salt and pepper. The pan had a good bit of mahogany colored flour left in it, along with almost all of the oil. I drained off most of the oil, then added a thinly sliced onion to the pan. The onion prevented the flour from browning any further, and after it had softened, I added some chicken stock to the pan, along with some dried thyme. I let that come to a boil, then cook, slowly for 15 minutes or so, seasoning along the way with some sherry vinegar and a few shakes of tabasco; I felt like the sauce needed some acid.

When the sauce was pretty much done, I put the rack with the pork cutlets into the oven to warm up with the potato gratin I was also re-heating. It only took a few minutes, and they were pretty damn good.

This is a technique I've used before with both chicken breast paillards and veal scallopine. With both of those though, it's easy to over-cook them. I suppose you could overcook the pork tenderloin too, but I think it's more forgiving. I was able to brown the cutlets nicely on both sides, then let them sit for a while, and re-heat them, all without losing the crust that had developed on the edges. The sauce was very good as well, and was a good counterpoint to the crispness of the pork.

I had another working lunch today at Cuvee, and it was as good as always. I was served an amuse of a couple of oysters "grilled" in a half shell, with butter, parmesan, and herbs (parsley, chervil and chives, I believe), then topped with a bit of truffle oil. The truffle oil was a very, very subtle background flavor to the rest of the dish, and Chef Iacovone obviously knows how to cook oysters, which is almost not at all. Really nice.

I then had a corn and shellfish veloute, that was colored with peppers, but which had just a bit of the capiscum bite. The first thing I tasted was very, very fresh corn, which was followed by a subtle shellfish flavor. My waiter said "three kinds of shellfish went into the stock!" Which is fine, though I couldn't tell you which shellfish they were, other than the obvious -- there were a half dozen lightly cooked shrimp in the soup. The soup was $6.5.

For an entree I went with a rabbit confit salad ($8.5) with mixed greens and a citrus-mustard vinaigrette. The rabbit was very tender, and while not as juicy as a duck confit, still not as dried out as you might expect with rabbit. (Or am I the only one who tends to overcook rabbit?). The salad was garnished with chopped, roasted peanuts, which seemed pretty common when I saw them on the plate, but which proved an excellent element. I think possibly pistachios might have worked a bit better, but I'm not going to quibble.

It would have been even better, had the documents I was reviewing not turned out to raise some questions about a case I'm working on. But that wasn't enough to ruin a good meal.

Cuvee's manager, Chris came over to chat for a minute as well. He'd also gotten an invitation to the pre-opening tasting lunch/dinners at former Cuvee chef Richard Starr's new restaurant, La Cote Brasserie. I think it says something about the kind of guy Starr is that his former co-worker, with whom he's technically now in competition, was really excited about the opening; as I'm sure chef Iacovone is too. All I can say is that I'm pretty happy that there's going to be another very good restaurant in the vicinity. I wish it was closer to my office -- within walking distance as Cuvee is -- but again, that's not something I'm going to kvetch about.

Cobalt

I had lunch yesterday with a friend at Cobalt. As I've mentioned, my office building is directly across St. Charles Street from Cobalt, so it's very convenient. It's not my favorite restaurant, or even my favorite Susan Spicer restaurant, but it's very good.

Yesterday I started with an appetizer of "barbequed" mussels. The mussels were served in a dark broth that was a take on New Orleans' traditional "barbequed" shrimp: garlic, worcestershire, citrus (in this case, orange) and wine; but without the oil/butter that usually characterizes the dish.

The sauce was very tasty, the mussels could have used a couple of minutes more in the pot, because they were not opened widely enough. Ever since my friend Jean showed me how mussels are eaten in Belgium, I've been using the technique (use one mussel shell as a sort of pincer to take the meat from the next, and so on). Using that technique with this dish, however, was difficult because I had to pry each mussel open a bit, and the sauce got everywhere.

I guess what I'm saying is that it was very tasty, but not something I'll order again. And the $8.5 price tag wasn't the reason.

For an entree I had bacon wrapped jumbo shrimp over a green herb rice. The shrimp were grilled, and cooked perfectly, and the smoked bacon just reminded me why the combination is a classic. The rice was pretty good too, though a bit bland to accompany the shrimp. The rice was prepared with a puree of herbs, most of which had lost whatever individual characteristic they once had to provide just an "herbal" note, and a green color to the rice. At $12, it was a bit on the high side for the amount of food.

Cobalt is a very interestingly designed restaurant. The front dining room, done in shades of blue, is a long, narrow space with a long bar to one side, and tables to the other. There are rooms in the back, which are generally not open for lunch, but which are cozier and less noisy in general. We were lucky enough to get one of the banquettes in the back for lunch.

All in all a very good lunch, and pretty quick too. The service was very good and very punctual, even though the place was crowded.

Clancy's

This evening I had dinner with a few colleagues at Clancy's. It used to be a locals-only kind of place, but more and more people seem to know about it.

Clancy's is located Uptown, near the riverbend, in a very out of the way neighborhood. The food is a very sophisticated take on New Orleans cuisine; part creole, part nouvelle, mostly just good. What makes them special, from my perspective, is their smoker. They smoke soft shelled crabs, pork loin, and any number of other things as specials, before finishing the smoked ingredient in another fashion. (Fried soft shelled crabs, roasted pork loin, etc.)

Tonight I had the fried oysters with brie, which pretty much sums up the dish. The fried oysters (in four groupings, one or two oysters per group depending on the size) are served over a dollop of steamed spinach, and then topped with brie and run under the broiler. Pretty simple, and very good.

For an entree I had a veal chop with "specialty" mushrooms. I call this the truth in advertising portion of the menu. Because whenever you see "wild mushrooms" on a menu, you are not actually getting wild mushrooms. At least, not 99% of the time. What you're getting are cultivated mushrooms of less common varieties. The chop was good, as was the reduction sauce that accompanied it. I didn't pay all that much attention to the mushrooms, to be honest. Most entrees at Clancy's also come with a little bit of red cabbage (cooked in the German method - sweet and sour), some piped mashed potatoes, and some seasonal vegetables; usually squash or haricots vert. That may sound bland, but the fact is the sides aren't the focus; they're done well, but the entrees are all flavored pretty boldly, and the portions are pretty substantial; the sides are more or less garnish in the classic sense.

When people ask me to recommend a good restaurant, a good "N'awlins" restaurant, Clancy's is usually at the top or near the top of my list. It's up there with Commander's Palace, Galatoire's, and Brigtsen's in my book. (And I'm leaving out Gabrielle, and Gautreau's, among others because I classify them differently).

Check it out if you're looking for a good meal in New Orleans; particularly if you're Uptown -- they open at 5:30.

Mandoline

One of the kitchen tools I've used most often in the last couple of years is my mandoline. It's perfect for making very thin cuts of uniform thickness, such as for a potato gratin. But with a multi-toothed insert under the cutting blade, it's also great for making long, thin strips of vegetables.

Recently I cooked a pork loin roast, and accompanied it with a saute of a long julienne-cut of daikon radish and leek. It turned out very well, sort of the same texture of spaghetti squash, but a bit more firm.

Martha Stewart has a line of cooking gear for sale at K-Mart, among which is an inexpensive version of the mandoline. If you've never tried one, I highly suggest spending the $10 or so it costs. It's not going to give you the kind of control I get from my Matfer (pictured below) but it's a great way to discover the utility you can get from a fixed-blade slicer.

Buttermilk Pancakes

I don't know why, because I very rarely make breakfast, but this morning I decided to make pancakes. I bought some buttermilk on Thursday, with the expectation of making buttermilk mashed potatoes, but that never happened.

After looking at a few cookbooks for simple recipes, I came on Mark Bittman's version of basic pancakes from How to Cook Everything. I modified the recipe a bit, because I like my pancakes on the thin side. More like crepes than cakes, I guess. Here's the recipe I used:

2 cups of all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 eggs (on the small side)
1 and 3/4 cups buttermilk
2 tablespoons melted butter (cooled a bit)

Mix the dry ingredients. Beat the egg with the buttermilk, then stir the liquid ingredients into the dry. I'd recommend using a rubber spatula to fold the ingredients together.

Heat a griddle or frying pan on medium-low heat, then add some butter, and ladle the batter into the pan. It should take 3 or 4 minutes per side; you can tell it's ready to flip when you start seeing regular bubbles appear throughout the pancake.

The recipe I use makes pretty thick [edit: dense], and relatively thin pancakes, which is what I like. If you like more airy pancakes, cut down on the amount of buttermilk; 1 and 1/2 cups should work fine.

Cooking

I've not been updating this site as regularly as I'd like. Part of it is that I've been working my already mass-deficient ass off, and part of it is that I've just been tired. I have been cooking a lot though, and tonight I managed to finish early enough to write about it.

So apparently I'm the "Tri-tip Guy" at Whole Foods. The first few times I bought a tri-tip roast at Whole Foods, the butchers asked if I came from "the West." No, I said, I just had the great good fortune of having a friend who was familiar with that cut of beef, and who'd brought a spectacular example to a get-together of friends I attended some time ago in Reno, NV. Today we had no baby-sitter for my son, and I got baby-duty. I took him to Whole Foods, and picked up a tri-tip; the butcher said, "You've been buying these regularly, what do you do with them?"

Well, what I've been doing is marinating the triangular shaped roast, then grilling it. It's usually turned out well. The exceptions being when I've been distracted for one reason or another and over-cooked it. (I'm getting paid to use hyphenated-words, by the way).

The butcher noted that another way to cook tri-tip is to treat it like a brisket; a long, slow cooking (presumably a braise) he said, would result in the meat falling apart. Well, tonight I just marinated (peanut oil, red wine vinegar, worcestershire sauce, sugar, dried thyme and oregano, and salt and pepper) and grilled it, and it turned out really well. Almost as well as the first time I tried the cut. But I'm intrigued by the long slow idea. The tri-tip certainly has the marbling to hold up to that method. Assuming I can overcome my general reluctance to cook large cuts of beef for long periods of time, I think I'll try it.

Since I had the grill going, I also threw a few ears of corn on. I'd marinated them in lime juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper. After I grilled them, I sliced the tops of the kernels off with my knife, then scraped the cobs with the back of the knife, and cooked the resulting corn slurry (corn-slurry) with some cream-fraische, heavy cream, and milk. Really good. In fact, it was the first time in a while my wife has actually eaten everything I've cooked. So I have that going for me. Or something.

Last night I did something different. I worked relatively late, and I didn't have much time to cook, so I thought I'd do something with ground beef (pre-ground -- this joke is getting pretty tired, isn't it?). I pulled out a Turkish cookbook, and made a sort of bastard version of a kofta. Today was the first day in weeks that it hasn't rained at least once during the day. So today was the day to pull out the grill for the tri-tip and the corn.

Yesterday, on the other hand, I was forced to use the broiler. I threw together a mixture of around a pound of ground beef, a little less than 1/4 cup grated onion, 2 minced garlic cloves, an egg, around 1/4 cup of minced pine nuts, a slice of stale bread soaked in water and then drained, a teaspoon of ground cumin, a good handfull of chopped parsley, and salt and pepper in a bowl. After the mixture rested in the refridgerator for around 45 minutes, I formed it into four long cigar-shaped (hypen!) forms, and then broiled them on both sides until they were just done. Really nice. I served it with a yogurt cucumber (hyphen?) sauce with mint, pan-fried pita bread, and some roasted potatoes with garlic.

Anyway, I'll be here all week folks, don't forget to tip your monkey.

Catching Up

On Tuesday, I had both lunch and dinner at Rene Bistrot. I took some work with me around noon, and returned with friends and colleagues for dinner. I had the $15, three course table d'hote for lunch. It started with a mixed greens salad with walnuts, brie, and a vinaigrette; then a very good entree of seared snapper over a wild mushroom risotto, and finished with a chocolate mousse tartlet.

For dinner, I started with warm goat cheese, which comes in a tomato sauce with olive bread on the side. The cheese is softened by the heat, and has a nice balance of richness and tartness. For an entree I chose venison, which came as rectangular slices from a roasted loin, set around a celeriac puree, with a cherry, peppercorn, and red wine sauce. It was outstanding; and although the venison was cooked a bit past the medium rare I ordered, it was very tender. The sauce was excellent too, particularly the periodic burst of peppercorn in the midst of the sweetness of the cherries.

It appears as if I'll get to sample some of Chef Richard Starr's menu at his new restaurant La Cote Brasserie before it opens in August. The restaurant is opening in a new Marriot-owned property in the Warehouse district, and I have a good friend who works in Sales for the Marriot. I hope it works out.

I've also bought a couple of cookbooks lately. Though I haven't really delved into them, both Catalan Cuisine by Coleman Andrews and The Cuisines of Asia by Jennifer Brennan look interesting. I had another book by Brennan, One-dish Meals of Asia that I always enjoyed reading when I was first developing a sense of Asian food, but never cooked from. I have the feeling this book may be more useful.

Catalan Cuisine is a book that gets a recommendation from Mark Bittman in his How to Cook Everything and it discusses a cuisine I'm not as familiar with as I'd like.

I tend to go through phases in which I get almost obsessed with one type of cuisine. I first got interested in food and cooking through Chinese food, I think. It was so completely different from the kind of food we ate at home. Although we lived in New Orleans, my Mother is from around 100 miles to the north, in Amite, Louisiana. And though I can claim to be distantly related to Justin Wilson (of "Cajun" cooking fame), my Mother learned to cook the same kind of food you'd see prepared all over the South, and really, all over the country. The only thing different about the Roast Beef we had for dinner (seasoned with a McCormick's packet) from the Roast Beef someone in Indiana might have is that we ate ours with rice instead of mashed potatoes, or buttered noodles. And we didn't slather mayonaise over it, or whatever other pagan rituals you heathen yankee-types might have.

Anyway, my initial exposure to Chinese food was a small neighborhood restaurant in suburban New Orleans. The food was similar to what you might find at a Chinese restaurant anywhere in the Country where there is not a large Chinese population. But though the food wasn't exactly "authentic," it was so boldly flavored that it caught my imagination.

I began to read more about Chinese food, and began to recognize that what I was eating wasn't truly Chinese, so much as Chinese-American. I suppose it progressed from there. I've gone through phases in which Chinese, Subcontinental Indian, Mexican, French, Italian, and to a lesser extent, some other cuisines have obsessed me for months on end. These days, I just tend to crave something Korean, for example, which prompted me to buy some kim chi and cook the short ribs I discussed last week. This weekend, I bought a lamb shoulder roast. I haven't decided what precisely to do with it yet, but I've got a Madhur Jaffrey cookbook on the bookshelf with a pretty good recipe for Shahi Korma that I haven't done in a while. Or I could just do a provencal-inspired roast... Hm...