Macaroni and Cheese

Somehow, despite being a big fan, I haven't made macaroni and cheese since I was cooking things out of boxes with powders. And there is a special place in my heart for ye olde Kraft macaroni and cheese. But for a couple years, I've been intending to make a more grown-up version of it, with bechamel or some such sauce. The arrival of the Ruhlman cookbook helped spur me on to actually do it.

The sauce is fairly complex. There's some caramelized onions and shallots, five or six different spices, fish sauce, and sherry -- and probably two or three ingredients I'm not remembering. It's pureed, then tossed with the pasta and some cheese, covered in more cheese and butter-soaked panko, then baked. (Yeah, it's not a low-calorie dish). For the cheese, I used a blend of cheddar and parrano.

It ended up less creamy than I was expecting. Not a bad thing, just different. It was definitely cheesy, and removing the covering halfway through baking gave the top a nice crispiness. I was surprised (though I shouldn't have been) by how much it made; more than enough for my wife and I for dinner, with four containers of leftovers for lunches this week. This is going to be a great dish for potlucks.

Tatiana Day

In honor of St. Tatiana, not to mention partner Tatiana Brunetti, Mari Vanna is giving a free flute of champagne and a Birdsmilk dessert (pictured above) to anyone named Tatiana. Who is St. Tatiana? According to Wikipedia:

She was the daughter of a Roman civil servant who was secretly Christian, and raised his daughter in the faith, and she became a deaconess in the church. This was dangerous, and one day the jurist Ulpian captured Tatiana and attempted to force her to make a sacrifice to Apollo. She prayed, and miraculously, an earthquake destroyed the Apollo statue and part of the temple.

Tatiana was then blinded, and beaten for two days, before being brought to a circus and thrown into the pit with a hungry lion. But the lion did not touch her and lay at her feet. This resulted in a death sentence being pronounced, and after being tortured, Tatiana was beheaded with a sword on January 25, around AD 225 or 230.

So if you're a Tatiana, head to Mari Vanna to celebrate your namesake's beheading. It'll be fun!

Rotisserie Chicken and Leek Soup

I don't think I've ever made chicken soup before, but to be fair, I really don't make soup very often. After making this recipe, I'll have to make it more often -- this was great! It starts off with a chicken. The recipe calls for a rotisserie chicken from the supermarket, but Ruhlman recommends just roasting a chicken yourself. I had plenty of spare time, so that's just what I did. My trussing skills leave something to be desired, but I stuffed the cavity with a lemon, sliced in half, some thyme, and a shallot, so it wasn't particularly important. Roasting a chicken is actually really, really easy; after stuffing the cavity, I doused it in salt and tossed it in the oven for an hour.

The leeks were simple to prepare, though a pain to clean. Once the chicken was done, the green part of the leek went in the soup pot with the carcass, a carrot, a parsnip, some tomato paste, garlic, and bay leaves. That simmered for an hour, and in a cast iron pot, I softened the white part of the leeks in some butter. Once the leeks softened, I strained in the stock and added the meat. After simmering for a couple minutes to warm the chicken, it was ready. And boy was it! Just the right amount of saltiness, layers upon layers of flavor, and a silky butteriness to the liquid, I can't wait to have it for lunch again tomorrow.

Sage Garlic Brined Pork Chops

Photo by Julia Frost, on flickr.

 The first recipe I prepared from the Ruhlman cookbook was the Sage Garlic Brined Pork Chops. I've been brining pork for a while now, so the method isn't exactly new to me, but Ruhlman adds a lot more to the brine than I ever have. Ten (10!) cloves of garlic, a tablespoon of sage, lemon, shallot, etc. He also has you boil everything together briefly, which I suspect is important to releasing all the flavors, especially the lemon. Everything in a bag, and then we just had to wait seven hours.

Once the pork chop was done brining, we coated it in flour, breaded it, and pan-fried it, also according to instructions from Ruhlman's book. While frying it, I made a lemon-caper sauce and my wife prepared brussels sprouts and roasted potatoes. While the pork chops were thinner than Ruhlman suggested, they cooked perfectly -- if anything, they were slightly underdone. I've always been impressed by how much brining makes pork much more tender and juicy, and this brine added some really good flavor. It's a really heavy dish, though. The lemon-caper sauce was necessary to cut the heaviness with the acidity of the lemons and the saltiness of the capers. The brussels sprouts were a good side, and complemented the pork chops nicely; I'm glad we didn't roast them, as that may have been too much. Similarly, the potatoes were good, but they may have been a carb too far. I really enjoyed this meal, and look forward to trying it again!

Growlers are back!

Photo by Erwyn van der Meer, on flickr.

 According to Young & Hungry, Mayor Gray signed the omnibus alcohol bill yesterday. The process for Sunday sales might take a few weeks, but hopefully growler sales will start earlier. I'll let you know if I hear anything more.

Kushi-Moto

I had forgotten, sadly, Japanese restaurant Kushi's plans to start a food truck, so I was pleasantly surprised when I saw them pop-up at Farragut Square on Washingtonian's food truck tracker. On such a dreary, nasty day, some miso soup sounded really good. I walked over to the square when lunch time came around, and I think I made the right choice. Every bit of the meal was very good.

I ordered the pork belly rice bowl and the miso soup. I know Kushi's sushi is very good, but I wanted to try something new. They do have several different varieties of sushi, including a California roll with real crab. I might try the spicy tuna next time. The rice bowl was great, with really sticky rice and tender pork belly. The ginger gave it a nice kick. The miso soup was excellent, with a good amount of miso in it and high quality kelp. Definitely worth checking out the next time it's in your neighborhood.

Ruhlman's Twenty

One of my favorite gifts from over the holidays was actually a massive cookbook, Ruhlman's Twenty. As the author puts it:

I continue to pare down and isolate the fundamentals so that we can be more free and efficient in the kitchen (important given the fact that cooking food is fundamental to our humanity). All you really need to know to cook basically everything is twenty fundamentals. This is a book for people who want to understand how cooking works, inside the hood as it were (recipes are the body and trim, techniques are the engine). It’s also a book for those who like or need to cook and want to cook better.

 And that's a very good description. I've made several of the recipes in the book already, ranging from macaroni and cheese to french onion soup and pan-fried pork chops, and they've all been very good. But what they haven't been is for beginners. This book will certainly refine your cooking skills, if you already have some idea what you're doing in the kitchen. And you don't have to be very good -- I'm under no illusions regarding my own skill! But if you're really just learning to cook, there are other cookbooks that are better for you. in any case, I hope you'll enjoy our trip through this book.