A wintery lunch that is not dark brown and meaty.

Before I get into my first really big failure cooking a recipe from “The Cookbook”, I’ve got two things I’d like to mention.

(Anything to forestall my public shaming, right?)

Mr. Henderson and his crew recently got to sit down and have dinner at El Bulli.

The meeting of rustic simplicity and cutting edge.  I’d have loved to be a fly on the wall during that service!  If you’d like to follow the meal as they ate, here’s a link to their twitter updates.  Just move forward from there.  Thanks to David Shaw for the heads up.

Secondly, the Queen of Candy (AKA my friend Trish who I’ve mentioned multiple times) sent me these:

Sorry for the terrible picture, I ripped into the Bacon Peanut Brittle and Boccalone Lard Caramels thinking that I had a good shot of the packages.  These awesome porky treats are the offspring of the joining between Humphry Slocombe and Chris Cosentino of Incanto and Boccalone Salumeria.

My favorite of the two were the Lard Caramels.  They were perfectly sweet, but with a meaty undertone.  That probably sounds strange, because it was strange experiencing it.  The flavor was confusing at first, but soon my taste buds had sorted things out.  They’re like little tan chunks of whimsy wrapped in wax paper.  The bacon brittle was tasty too, don’t get me wrong, I’m just in love with those Caramels.

Now, on to my royal screw up.  So let me be right up front about the reason I claim that this recipe was such a mess: I was overconfident.  This recipe seemed so easy that I just didn’t pay the proper amount of attention while I worked.  Had I simply taken my time and used even a smidgen of kitchen knowledge, I’m sure I’d be here fawning all over this recipe.  I can speculate that when I make it right the next time that I’ll really like it, but until then I’ll hold my review.

What I will be doing is explaining exactly where I went wrong at every turn.

I started with a large head of celeriac (or celery root, depending on where you are).  I had picked out the nicest one too, which makes me so sad that it ultimately went to waste.

I carefully peeled and cubed the root, cleaning off any excess dirt.

Mistake #1: The recipe called for “well-salted water” and I went WAY overboard.  I think I dumped roughly a cup of salt in the pot and filled it halfway with water.  The celeriac made up the rest of the volume.  I brought the pot up to a boil and left it bubbling for twenty-five minutes.

Mistake #2: I needed to chop a handful of celery leaves  for the recipe, so I did a few quick hacks with my knife and moved on.  Now, I don’t know if you’ve eaten celery leaves lately, but there are velcro-like little barbs on the underside.  By not cutting the leaves a little finer, I was setting myself up for a three minute session where I had to jam half my hand in my mouth to try and rip one of these little bastards off my left tonsil.

Mistake #3: After boiling the celeraic, I drained off the ultra-salty water and returned the chunks to the pot. Then I began the process of gently mashing the root with two whole sticks of butter.  If I had been paying attention, I would have noticed that Mr. Henderson had specifically mentioned that I didn’t need to add all of that butter at once.  What I should have been doing was adding butter a bit by bit until I felt that enough of it had been absorbed by the mash.  And before you start clamoring that there can never be too much butter in something, I’m cutting you off.  This dish proved that massive amounts of butter can be a bad thing.  I’ll get more into why later on.  Oh, and I added MORE salt since the recipe told me too.  Mistake #4.

The handful of superglue-sticky celery leaves mixed into the mash, I decanted everything into an ovenproof dish.

Six indentations were formed in the celery root mash for the eggs to fit into.  What’s that on top of the eggs?  More salt and pepper?  Sure, why not!  Mistake #5.

The dish was then placed in a hot oven for about five minutes.  When the time had elapsed, the eggs hadn’t firmed up at all like they should have.  Back into the oven the dish went for another five minutes.  Nope, still not set.  Another five.

Crud.

The eggs were supposed to be only cooked enough for the whites to be firm, but the yolks needed to still be runny.  That’s not what I got at all.  What I had were over-cooked whites and almost completely cooked yolks.  Mistake #6.

At this point I hadn’t tasted the final product.  I figured I could just mock up a decent picture of the dish and just talk about how good it tasted.

Wrong on both counts.  That picture is just embarrassing, and I wish I had something better to put in its place.  Mistake #7.

Now, onto the taste.  I’ve been sitting here for the past 15 minutes trying to figure out a good way to describe exactly how salty everything was.  The best I could come up with was, “Animals that enjoy a good salt lick would pass on this.”  And then to make a bad thing worse, the butter was so prevalent, so over the top rich that it became annoying.  I was actually annoyed that I was eating butter!  After the second spoonful I got the celery leaf stuck to the back of my throat, which was all I needed to throw in the towel.

I’m not counting this recipe as completed.  Too many mistakes on my part just isn’t fair to the recipe.  It was a learning lesson, and a warning that I’ve got to pay attention to every detail.  Even the simple recipes deserve that respect, and it’s something I won’t soon forget.

Zero down, sixty three to go.

Let me explain first how to make this and then, once you have an idea of what I am talking about, what you can do with it.  You need a loaf pan or terrine.  The recipe requires a firm waxy potato; it’s the starch that will act as the bonding agent in this dish.

I just found another website that is also working its way through Mr. Henderson’s cookbook.  Being Fergus Henderson is written by Francisco Migoya, a former pastry chef for The French Laundry and various other high end restaurants in New York.  Give it a look!

The meal for Brent and Harmony continues with this recipe for pressed potatoes.  I served it with the anchovy dressing I posted about last week.  Mr. Henderson claims that it’s  a perfect pairing for salty, oily things–like the dressing.

I started off peeling these Yukon Gold potatoes, which are a fantastic marriage between dry, fluffy russet potatoes and other moist, waxy varieties.

Once peeled, the potatoes were boiled in salted water until they were properly soft, but not so much that they were about to fall apart. After the spuds had cooled down enough they were sliced lengthwise and set aside.

Finally, time for the assembly!  At the bottom of my loaf pan I laid down a layer of the potato slices.  On top of each slice I sprinkled copious amounts of salt and pepper, and a scant amount of capers.  Then another layer of potatoes were placed on top of the last, and more seasoning and capers followed.  I continued the process until the entire pan was filled, as you can see above.

A bit of saran wrap went over the loaf pan, along with a piece of cardboard and a box of kosher salt to equally distribute the pressure of the weights.  The whole thing went into the fridge overnight.

The next day I removed the weights and cut off a thin slice of the potato terrine.  While it’s not terribly much to look at, it was tasty.  The capers added a nice touch of briny flavor to the otherwise uniform character of boiled potatoes. When I manage to find some eels for the Eel, Bacon, and Prune Stew dish Mr. Henderson recommends using this recipe as the base, so expect to see it again!

One down, seventy two to go.

The fresh, peppery radishes make a perfect foil for the rich birds.

I know, I know.  Radishes are the best in the spring.  I just wanted to have duck, and it had been so long since I had radishes that I decided to just buy the radishes that were available at my local Megamart.  Cut me a little slack, please?

To make the radishes I needed some duck fat, so I scored the skin on these duck legs–poorly, might I add–and browned them all over before sticking them in a hot oven to finish them and to crisp the skin.

In the mean time, I separated the radishes from the leaves, carefully washing both.  Once the duck had finished cooking, I set the legs aside in a warm place and popped the little red bulbs into the oh-so wonderful rendered duck fat.  I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I believe that duck fat to be the most delicious thing on the planet.  For five minutes, I moved the radishes around, watching them change slowly from red to pink.

After the five minutes had elapsed, I added the leaves to the pan and a bit of salt and pepper.  The leaves wilted from the carry over heat just as they were plated.  I added some extra fat on the plate for bread sopping.  I really do love duck fat.

The radishes were wonderfully crunchy, peppery, and great with the duck legs.  I do believe that I’ve gained a new appreciation for the little fellows.

One down, ninety four to go.

What is vital here is the pumpkin.  It must be an organic blue pumpkin (Hubbard) or Jarrahdale–a pale blue-skinned, very hard-fleshed, delicious pumpkin, which can be obtained at heath-food shops.  Once you have tried one, the large, orange, woolly variety will become a thing of the past in your life.

shame
Pronunciation: ˈshām
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English scamu; akin to Old High German scama shame

A crottin, which means horse dung or sheep’s dropping in French, is a small, button like goat cheese from France; some are for eating and others specifically for cooking with. For a while now a few American goat cheese makers have been producing them. St. John uses crottins from a goat herder in Barnet, surprisingly, so look out, there could be a crottin producer near you! The best known of these is probably Laura Chenel in California.

This recipe is located in the Vegetables section of the cookbook, but I can see this working much better as a starter or in place of a salad.

My old roast pan finally gave up the ghost last weekend, so I decided that it was time to upgrade to an All-Clad pan. What a huge difference having a quality roasting pan makes!

18 vine ripened tomatoes went into the pan with a head and a half of peeled garlic, sea salt, some pepper and copious amounts of extra virgin olive oil. I placed the whole thing in a very hot oven for about 28 minutes or so.

After the allotted time, the tomato flesh was starting to soften and the garlic had cooked fully through which meant …

… it was time for the crottins. My wife bought me six cute little buttons of cheese made in Loire, France. Crottin De Champcol is a cheaper, yet still delicious imitation of Crottin de Chavignol, the most famous goat cheese of the many varieties produced in the Loire Valley. These were young crottins, so their rinds were still white and the interiors were rich and creamy. I nestled all six crottins on top of the tomatoes and placed the pan back in the oven.

While the tomatoes and crottins roasted, I picked the leaves off a bunch of mint which I then mixed with the juice of a lemon, some salt and pepper, and a squirt of extra virgin olive oil. After a quick tossing, I had a very nice mint salad to sprinkle over the tomatoes and crottins.

At this point the crottins were soft and melty. The tomatoes had become even softer and the garlic had gotten to that lovely beige color that means they were now sweet little nuggets of joy. I pulled the roasting pan out of the oven and replaced it with a half-sheet pan with slices of sourdough bread sprinkled with olive oil for toasting.

Mr. Henderson instructs the reader to “Squish the tomato, garlic, crottin, and mint onto the toast, scoop up some of the garlicky, tomatoey oil, and eat.” With gusto, we complied. This dish is obviously reminiscent of bruschetta, but with the substitution of mint for basil, and the use of the lovely crottins, I’d really like to think that this is a superior cousin.

One down, one hundred and eleven to go.