Salmon Burgers, Apple Pepper Slaw, Out of Focus

this'll be a quicky, just a few shots of some salmon burgers with and apple and red bell pepper slaw made some night last week.

the slaw was made with julienned fuji apples and a red bell pepper. on the good advice of my good friend myra, i picked up a japanese veggie slicer and love it. anything sliced with the apparent precision of a julienne just looks cool to me. (and yes, i realize my next challenge is to julienne by hand! man, if that doesn't sound like a time suck that i'll enjoy greatly.) the dressing: mayo, sugar, mustard and some rice vinegar.

the burgers are salmon, celery, parsely and chives. all in all, simple good stuff. wow, what a boring post.

Risotto, u confound me...

it all seems so simple - melt butter, sautee onions until translucent, add rice for 2-3 mins until faintly toasty, add wine until evaporated, then add heated stock, 1 cup at a time, letting each cup get completely absorbed before adding the next. stir constantly. stop when risotto is creamy but still al dente, or "toothy" in the middle of the grain.

this should leave you with risotto - creamy, saucy rice basically. well, it does, but damn, doing it is waaaaay different than doing it well! i've tried dozens of times and am only now getting close to a good risotto.

first and foremost, use a wide sautee pan - i tried like 10 times with a deep stock pot before finally realizing that was not the way to go. (ok, recipe's often don't specify the cooking vessel, and when they do, i often don't recognize which is which. i had to see someone making it on a cooking show before realizing my mistake. lame. not at all suprising.) second, be patient and keep stirring. trying to speed things along does not a good risotto make.

anyways, these days i'm fairly happy and have become unconfounded. here's the mise en place and the finished product: musroom risotto and orange-rosemary grilled lamb chops.

DAF... Done and done.

like the oh so great chocolate, another DAF has gone by, and the success is bitter sweat. the normal players were present - Aurthur and Elaine, Leslie and Kelvin, Hedda and Leonard - as well as a special canadian guest, alisa's childhood friend Virginia. foxy wife decked the house out in fine style, adorning our table with a beautful setting of mandarin oranges and hand made menus. amidst the sweet smell of blooming birthday roses, my biggest endevor ufolded, itself blooming, and took on a life of it's own. and this night saw and added touch of joy, which, like that perfect pinch of salt, flavored the whole evening - we were celebrating alisa's birthday!

this DAF also featured another unique addition: a blind tasting wine contest. the rule was $25 max bottles. the tasting was fun and i'll write up the details in my next post... stay tuned.

babe's beautiful table setting

amuse bouche ~ lobster pops

first course ~ crab salad and avocado

second course ~ corn chowder

third course ~ scallops and citrus sauce

fourth course ~ sea bass, beniimo salt al cartoccio

fifth course ~ game hen, polenta cakes, carmelized onions

sixth course ~ sierra nevada braised short ribs, fingerling potato coins

about the food
amuse bouche ~ lobster pops
first up were the lobster pops. i had planned on serving a toasted bread box filled with brie and topped with a meyer lemon marmalade, but when i tested the recipe i found out that i am absolutely incapable of making a good marmalade. (that in itself is just a challenge really 'cause considering there's like 4 ingredients, it shouldn't be all that hard). anyways, if no bread box, then what?

well, inspiration strikes where you least expect it: las vegas. foxy wife went to vegas (baby!) for a bachelorette. they ate at Sea Blue and were served lobster corndogs. how deliciously haute country cuisine. i had to bite on that idea, and bite i did. seemed to me that a corndog tastes mostly like the cornmeal based batter and would probably mask the sweetness of the lobster. on went my little little culinary thinking cap - quite obviously the very first sign of trouble - and out popped the above mentioned tempura lobster pops. genius i thought - tempura batter, properly executed, is so light and subtle that it would surely add only a cripy texture to the golfball size chunks of lobster it was to coat.

well properly executed was the first problem ~ i followed what i thought was a fairly standard tempura recipe: corn flour, flour, ice cold water and egg. i even went so far as to chill the flour mixture in the freezer to ensure cold ingredients! regardless, the batter was waaaaayyyyy too heavy resulting in exactly what i was trying to avoid - lobster pieces lost in a mouthful of thick, crunchy fried batter. the second problem was just the rookiest of the rookie manuevers - i forgot to season the lobster. ack. there. i said it.

ah well, the idea is still solid ~ the pops themselves were fried nicely, the lobster was tender and moist and delicious. they were served with lemon wedges and fried basil. next time i go "mano y mano" with the lobster pops, ill season the little bastards liberally and follow the french laundry's tempura recipe (which includes baking soda and sparling water), and, dear friends, i'll be victorious. oh, and i hope you are there to try them out...

second course ~ corn chowder
nothing to say here except that corn and crab fritters were intended to join the perfectly-fine-but-not-interesting soup. only the fritters never made it to the party. i was told they forgot their baking soda and didn't have time to go back home and pick it up. subsequently they disintegrated in hot oil, pissed me off, and skipped out on dinner. oh well, onward...

third course ~ scallops and citrus sauce
so for this dish, i guess i need to link back to the originator? i'm not really sure how that works. anyway, babe and i ate at a joint called The House in the city and Chef Tse's dish formed the foundation for this one. Seared scallops, micro-green salad, and some sort of citrus sauce that was smooth, silky and sweet.

I have no idea what was in his version, but my sauce (served from a squeeze bottle in a funky shape - boo ya) was basically a lemon juice vinaigrette of lemon juice, white balsamic, and olive oil, enhanced with this really kick ass pomegranate syrup i found at a little middle eastern market. the syrup is incredible - super concentrated pomegranate flavor that somehow has all the sweetness leeched out so that you can control the sweetness level yourself. then the lemon-pomegranate vinaigrette was mounted with butter (again, you must be shocked) and sweetened with honey to form what i think was a nicely balanced, smooth and tangy sauce that brightened up the tender scallops. one last touch that was small but important to me, was the addition of a pinch of fluer de sel and a thyme sprig tip to each scallop. when consumed together, the salt cut the sweetness slightly and, right at the end, the thyme imparted a floral freshness, thus keeping the whole bite almost refreshing. (holy crap, that little tirade, although absolutely true and my honest thoughts, is worth a post of its own. seriously, who the hell do i think i am, haha...)

plating wise, well, i'm proud gosh darnit! why can't i use a squeeze bottle, a rectangular plate, and the rule of thirds to compose a dish that looks better than it tastes?!?

fourth course ~ sea bass, beniimo salt al cartoccio
check it: baking in paper rocks. baking the tastiest fish in the ocean in paper rocks squared. baking the tastiest fish in the ocean in paper seasoned with beniimo salt that your dear friends brought you all the way from japan rocked the house d-0-w-n. super, super simple. julienned red bell pepper and carrots, a nice hunk of sea bass, thyme (again) and the beniimo salt are assembled in an envelope of parchment paper and baked for 9 mins at 500. bam. done.

so the beniimo salt. comes from beni imo, or Okinawan sweet potatos. the dried, minced sweet potatos are mixed with salt and just float around like little bits of purple haze. when added to the fish, their color bleeds, creating little purple patches on the fish. topped with the thyme, the colors blended beautifully - from bottom to top: red and orange, white, purple and green. it was a straight tie-dye dish... the hippie in me smiled big.

fifth course ~ game hen, polenta cakes, carmelized onions
this dish was covered pretty well in my post about the sauce so i'm not going to get into the food per se. i do, however, want to take a moment to talk about the mad respect i have for the organizational genius it must take to run a real deal restaurant. my dish included a stock based sauce, sauteed game hens, sauteed polenta cakes and carmelized shallots. that's 4 little items.

yea, it took me several hours spread over 2 days of cooking to put this one together.

this innocent looking little dish was, however, my biggest organizational success and a very potent reinforcement of the value and efficiency of good prepping and organization. day 1 consisted of butchering the hens, separating out the legs that were to be used for the dish, and making the sauce with the freshly harvested carcasses. while the carcasses roasted with some carrots, onions, celery and garlic, i made the polenta (which, by the way, got a great flavor spike by adding crushed garlic to the stock that was simmered prior to adding the corn meal ~ thanks again french laundry cookbook!). the polenta finished cooking and went into a sheetpan to cool while the carcasses came out of the oven and went on to the stovetop. the sauce was made on the stovetop and then set aside to cool along with the polenta. finally rounds were cut from the sheet of polenta and everything - the sauce, the hen legs and the polenta rounds - went into the fridge, ready for the next day.

day 2 started with seasoning the legs and carmelizing the shallots, hours before dinner. then, come time for this course, all i had to do was sautee the legs and the polenta rounds, pull them and keep them warm while the sauce was finished in the pan used to sautee the legs. lastly, assembly of all the completed pieces and voila - the course was cooked and served in 15 minutes! this may not sound all that impressive, but considering we were five courses in, i had been cooking for like 9 hours at this point, and i HADN'T GOTTEN DRUNK YET, time was certainly of the essence. all the prep meant that i got to start drinking that much faster once dinner service was complete. need i say more?

sixth course ~ sierra nevads braised short ribs, fingerling potato coins
i, along with thousands, nay, millions, have said it before: slow cooked meat rocks. and, as you know, beer is considered to be the 8th wonder of the world at Chez Berliner's. so the two of them together is just fine by us. this is the third time i've served it and everyone always loves it. but i'm getting tired of it so this is the official swan song of the sierra nevada braised short ribs! adios tasty ribs...

well, there you have it. more than you ever wanted to know about this round of DAF. on the whole i'm really pleased. 6 courses plus an appy pulled off with no stress - well, very little stress - and another great night. best part was that i didn't get wasted until AFTER dinner so hey, success!

Gastrique!

Gatrique's rock. Super potent, very pretty on the plate and super easy to do! This one was sugar, vinegar and apple flavored tea. Mix, reduce and use... The chicken was pan seared and steamed thigh over fingerling potato and parmesan mash. Bit of thyme has been going with everything lately - not sure why, just obsessed with thyme.

Oh, and regarding the pan seared/steamed thing, I found, quite by accident, that covering chicken while sauteeing it, which adds the "steam" part of the equation, really made for tender and juicy chicken. I only figured it out because I was trying to keep the damn oil from popping all over the place. Lucky discovery!

DAF, T-Minus 17 Days!

the prep has begun. once again, poor foxy wife has had to cope with maniacle murmers, inaudible mubles of culinary mayhem in preparation, and of course, me, being really, really annoying. i've got a menu planned, and, thanks to our craptacular economy, a spreadsheet listing each item and it's cost so as not to get out of hand in my desparate attempt to impart all my love of cooking, like an intravenous shot of dopamine, unto my guests in the form of dining pleasure.

this one will prove to be an excersize in organization and preparation. the menu includes an amuse bouche (heh, that will never not make me laugh) and six full, alibiet small, courses. Dinner's at 4pm on saturday and I don't get off work until 5pm friday, which leaves me just under 24 hours to shop, prep, cook, plate and serve. there's a little voice in my head that, along with babe, is telling me that i've bit off too much, that i'm marching up too big a hill, but i say "bah! i can do it..."

best part is, we're hosting a wine tasting competition along with dinner, based loosely on Chateau Montelena's '73 Chardonay's famous victory in 1976 in Paris. i'm guessing i could serve 2 of the 6 courses an no one would even notice!

i'll share more of the planning after dinner so as not to spoil the suprise in the event that one of my guests happens to read this.

Six Courses at Chez Berliner's

the players

picture the scene: two dear friends visiting from canada, Babe, 9 months pregnant with Lucas, a chill to the air outside... what else is there to do but to go big and have an intimate dinner party? first up, the players: me and Babe (and, technically, Lucas), Myra, friend, co-host, chef, Maurice, guest and photographer, and Anita, guest. observe:

the dinner soirée
this is my cooking blog so i'm just going right to the food. and there was lots of it. as usual, babe set the mood with her beautiful decorating ~ sort of an enchanted winter dinner party feel. dinner, 2 days in the making, took 3 hours to consume, which was really rewarding... felt very european as a matter of fact, with a laxidasical pace, endless conversation, free flowing wine and, of course, the food. when the last drop of mango sauce was licked from the beautiful dessert dish, maurice looked at his watch and exclaimed, "holy, it's 11pm!"

come to think of it, "rewarding" isn't strong enough ~ it was downright invigorating! as noted in an earlier post on Why I Love This..., it's in the combination of food and friends, exhibition and glory (or not sometimes!), and, of course, butter, that i find so much pleasure. and this night, this dinner that slipped 3 hours out from under us without shaking a glass, this experience was a savory hallmark in what i hope will be a lifetime of such events...

~

the enchanted table

a la foxy wife

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amuse bouche

gruyeré cheese gougers

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first course

butter nut squash soup

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second course

dungeness crab salad, mixed greens, pomegranate dressing

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third course

sweet potatoe agnolotti, curry emulsion sauce

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fourth course

seared halibut, broccoli rabe, citrus vanilla buerre blanc

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fifth course

sierra nevada pale ale braised short ribs, fingerling potato coins

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sixth course

vanilla bean panecotta, mango compote, homemade pistachio biscotti

so there you have it, six courses at chez berliner's courtesy of todd and myra. you can find the complete album of Maurice's Fabulous Photos on, again you guessed it, facebook. in case you're not cool enough (i kid) to see his photos, here's the gist of the food shots. oh, and hey, don't feel bad, i had to make a six course meal to get access to these photos (again, i kid)!

The Sauce...

last night, and of course i truly wish i would have photographed more, I experimented with a really big sauce. I tried, with varying degrees of success, to butcher 2 cornish game hens (more on that below) and to make a sauce from the carcases.

so let's get to the good stuff already, eh? the sauce. oh the triple distilled sauce. i can't even wait, i have to show you what i'm talking about with another classically crappy food shot by yours truly:

there's some mash and, if i do say so myself, a wonderfully crispy skinned cornish game hen leg, and the sauce! now, i know i need to get help on presentation - i just can't figure out any interesting ideas or new ways to plate potatoes, meat and sauce. i guess in teh end stacking is probably the most interesting but oh well, in person even the plate above looked much nicer. ah, i digress...

making the Sauce...

so the sauce was made by putting the remains of my game hen butchery ~ 2 wings and 2 carcasses cut into chuncks with a cleaver (that was actually 7x as fun as it sounds and i'mpretty sure i'm going to have to figure out a way to cleave things more often. i think i may have actually yelled a chinese word when i did it. awesome), a sliced carrot, a sliced onion and 2 smashed cloves of garlic into a small roasting pan. all that love went into a hot oven for about 45 minutes. i added water periodically to prevent the juices from buring on the bottom of the pan.

when the carcasses and veg were browned and the drippings smelled great, the pan came out of the oven and onto the stove top. a cup of stock was added and then the liquid was reduced 'till it caramelized on the bottom of the pan. another cup of stock, another reduction (this is where all the big bold flavor comes from) and it was ready for the 3rd and final reduction. for this last one, thyme sprigs and a bay leaf were added along with the stock. this reduction was only about 1/2 the volume and then the whole affair was strained into a saucepan. (then strained back and forth 3 or 4 times for good meausre!)

this left us with a rich and fairly thick jus. after sauteeing the game hen legs in another pan, the fat was poured out and the jus was used to deglaze the pan. swirl in butter (lots, duh!) and season and viola! this was the best, most rich and complex sauce i've ever made. dig!

butchering the game hens

I suspect that most people who cook a lot, including my mom, are well familiar with buying a whole chicken and taking it apart. It is probably taken for granted, an unavoidable lesson learned by anyone with the slightest bit of sense and the desire to cook at home.

well, despite my strong desire to cook at home, my lack of "the slightest bit of sense" meant that i had face down these two game hens ~ and learn the hard way. the major "duh" moment was discovering that poping out the joints by hand, such as the thighbone from the back bone, and THEN cutting away the surrounding skin and flesh was far easier, and far neater, than trying to just cut through the joints.

oh yea, go ahead and laugh, you should, but i'm not even gonna get into the other idiodicies of my adventure - in stead i'll tell you that in the end, i was successful and those 2 game hens ended up as 2 very neat carcasses and a plate of 4 beautiful breast fillets and 4 lovely, semi-bonless legs. (ok, that was one of the greatest things i learned - take out the thigh bone but leave the drumstick bone! makes for a very nice presentation AND you get to eat the succulent thigh meat without having to negotiate around a bone - very nice.

anyways, random post, sorry bout that. gonna try to focus a bit more in the future - this was supposed to be about the sauce, not my rambling. always learning lessons.