Today's Bread

James has really taken to this raisin walnut bread I've been baking lately. I'm on my 4th loaf since I tried the recipe in Jim Lahey's indispensable book, My Bread. Today I stretched and added a pan of "stecca." Laheys not quite breadsticks, not quite baguette chewy breads, just right for long, thin sandwiches and antipasto platters.
Looking for new inspiration I was thumbing through some of my cookbooks today and flipped through the pages of Tartine Bread. It's gloriously photographed pages celebrate the genius of baker Chad Robertson and make it seem possible that we mere mortals could create the luscious offerings he turns out in his San Francisco bakery. Until you look just a bit closer. After Lahey's truly revolutionary method could I go back to starters and poolish and multiple rises and kneading? Each recipe in Tartine depends on two or three others (Not unlike my hero superstar chef Thomas Keller's cookbooks).  I was so thrilled when James bought me Robertson's cookbook I couldn't wait to bake like the master. And yet, it sits on the shelf -- beautiful and distant -- while Lahey's recipes trot out every couple days.
Lahey is homemade bread for the real world -- Robertson is still a dream.

One pot dinner?

I love Thomas Keller. He is probably my favorite chef and I aspire to his totally unachievable greatness.

But, one of his greatest talents is his uncanny ability to turn a one pot peasant dish into a kitchen full of dirty pans and trays and seemingly endless hands on work.

Admittedly I was particularly proud of the carrots in our yard and wanted to find a dish to highlight them. Pride, as they say, goes before a fall.

But, the asparagus in the fridge was calling my name. It was just so fresh and springy. This was no time to listen to reason or be seduced by haute French chef Daniel Boulud's one pot soup.

While mindlessly flipping through the Ad Hoc at Home cookbook, looking for what the super chef might do with asparagus, I had already spied a recipe for Spring Vegetable Garbure. The photograph showed spring produce at it's just harvested best, food porn for gardeners. Didn't the carrots, potatoes, fava beans and green beans I had labored over and raised from sprouts deserve this royal treatment? I was hooked.

I didn't know at the time but a Garbure is a thick vegetable stew from Southwest France often flavored with pork, and sausage or duck confit. Keller's recipe starts with cooking down carrots, leeks, and onions (2 cups each) under a cover of pork skin -- yes the skin off a slab of bacon -- for 35 minutes. Once the fat has rendered out and the vegetables are soft he instructs to remove the pork and add in 8 cups of chicken broth and simmer for 20 minutes more. That pot is drained (into a second pot) to leave the flavorful broth that is the soup's base.

Meanwhile a host of other vegetables: fava beans, English peas, green beans, cabbage wedges, and asparagus are individually blanched in boiling water (the fava beans are peeled), shocked in an ice bath and laid on paper towels to drain. Small creamer potatoes (both red and yellow) are peeled and cut into eighths and brought to a boil along with a sachet of bay leaves, thyme, peppercorns, and garlic then cooked until tender. The carrots get a similar treatment with a teaspoon of honey and another sachet. Five pots, two trays, three colanders, a drawer full of utensils and counting.

"This looks healthy," James said as he pulled his spoon through the brightly colored bowl. He nodded as I, his dinner time tour guide, pointed out the ingredients that had come from our yard. "It's good," he said reaching for another slice of the cheese toast I offered on the side. "We can eat healthy," he declared.

Now I just have to worry about the dishes. Sigh.

Ad Hoc Dinner: Tomato Sauce Challenge Part One

Yet another adventure with Thomas Keller.

I know I've mentioned it -- but this year James, although he couldn't wait for Christmas, gave me Thomas Keller's new Ad Hoc cookbook. At Ad Hoc Keller serves offers one appetizer, one entree, a cheese course, and one dessert a night. Chef Keller's version of what we home cooks do every day or would if we could.

When I saw the recipe for oven-roasted tomato sauce I had to give it a try (especially since there is a similar Mark Peel recipe to challenge it), in spite of the more than two hours cooking time. I roasted aromatic vegetables (leeks, onions, fennel and garlic) with salt and canola oil for 45 minutes. Then I stirred in brown sugar and red wine vinegar and allowed the mixture to roast for 20 more minutes. When the vegetables were tender and caramelized I stirred in two large drained cans of San Marzano tomatoes -- 1 can chopped, 1 left whole -- and a sachet of bay leaf, thyme, peppercorns and garlic -- and allowed the mixture to roast at 350º for an hour and a half more stirring every 30 minutes. When I tasted the sauce I thought it was a bit too sweet but chef Keller writes that the sauce goes well with polenta or meatballs. I decided to try them both.

The meatballs -- if you ignore the mix of meats (pork, sirloin, chuck, and veal -- I used turkey) are pretty straight forward. I sautéed onions and garlic until just tender but not browned. Let that cool and add to the meat mixture along with 1 egg, q/4 cup bread crumbs, chopped parsley, and S&P. The twist comes in the cooking. After forming the nearly baseball sized meatballs around a cube of fresh mozzarella I baked them on a rack for 20 minutes until just cooked through. Mini-hamburger maybe but pretty darned good.

The trouble came with the polenta. This wasn't my first polenta by any means, but Keller's method was new to me. His instructions told me to bring chicken broth to a boil and pour the polenta in a fine stream while stirring -- usual so far. But then, Keller says to cook out all the moisture (about 20 minutes) until the polenta is quite dry before adding an absurd, by any one else's standards, amount of butter and cream -- warning that the polenta could be gooey if not fully dry before adding the fat. Well maybe I need pictures, or further instruction. Our polenta was tasty but the texture . . . all wrong.

Hmm maybe I need some personal instruction -- Chef Keller . . . I'm available.

Week's Work Clams

I started this recipe about a week ago.

Another blind following of the teachings of super chef Thomas Keller and another foray into gift cookbooks. About a week ago, wondering why I don't use my Bouchon cookbook more often (I think that one was last year's Christmas cookbook) I spied a neat little recipe for steamed clams. Manila clams are a household favorite and so I figured what better way to test Thomas.

Though simple at first glance these little clams required 3 sub-recipes (basics I believe Bouchon calls them), soffritto, garlic confit, and black olive tapenade. Somehow while making Christmas dinner I thought -- well I'm n the kitchen anyway, why not give these a try.

The soffritto, a long cooked mixture of onions and grated tomato pulp (no skins no seeds) took about 5 hours simmering (it's supposed to be over a diffuser, I don't have one so I used two burner grates of my gas stove piled up) on the stove. The garlic confit -- after peeling the 45 cloves of garlic, seemed like convenience food at only 45 minutes cooking time (but of course the garlic has to cool in the oil so wait a couple hours to wash that saucepan). The tapenade zipped by at less than 15 minutes (if you don't count pitting the oilves).

To assemble the finished dish I heated a pan on the stove. To the hot pan I added olive oil and to the warm oil I added minced shallots. Next went a healthy dollop of soffritto, minced thyme and 24 of my precious cloves of garlic confit. I stirred those a bit over medium heat, turned the heat up to high and added the clams and 4 TB of butter stirred those around a bit to mix in the flavor of the soffritto, added a cup of white wine covered the pan and steamed for about 2 minutes until the clams were just open and very tender.

Meanwhile I spread my not very pretty tapenade on diagonally long cut toasted slices of baguette, poured the clams and their delicious cooking liquid into bowls and another dinner is served.

This is the kind of recipe a cook thinks can't possibly be worth the time. And yet, James forbid me to throw out the left over cooking liquid ("this would be so good over spaghetti") an didn't look up except to tell me that the clams were better than anything we ate on our central coast New Year's vacation.

I guess I'll stick with Keller.

Bouchon

Okay, so by now it's nothing surprising that an LA area food blogger -- even one as small as me -- has made it to Bouchon. That I idolize Thomas Keller is no secret among my friends and tonight I finally got the chance to see one of his places in action. The room is friendly yet sophisticated, the yellow roses in the ladies room extravagant, the service attentive without being fawning. All of that is nice . . . but the real fact is, the food is just plain good.

These aren't the intricate and playful food as high art dishes Keller is famous for in Yountville and NY, these are straight-forward classics, perhaps not challenging, but cooked to perfection and beautifully served in casual yet lovely tableware (Staub pots and All-Clad copper gratin pans as dishes).

James had the steak frites for which the bistro is rightfully renown. I had the lamb shank special which was good, but came with what are likely the very best mashed potatoes (pomme purée) I've ever tasted. Even the roast chicken at Bouchon doesn't disappoint. But the real spectacular, I can't make that at home, look-at-me dish? Iles Flottante. A delicate disk of poached meringue in a shallow pool of creme Anglais with a delicious caramel, maple, cinnamon, honestly not sure quite what other than delicious thin caramel colored sauce. Why, oh why is there no recipe for Iles Flottante in the Bouchon Cookbook? Please tell me how you made that disc so perfect Mr. Keller (and friends).

Sign me up -- ardent fan, happy eater, returning guest.

Go soon, go often, order dessert.

Roast Chicken with Stewed Winter Vegetables and Balsamic Fig Preserves

I'm a sucker for Thomas Keller. I buy his cookbooks (okay . . . James bought them for me), I dream of eating in his restaurants, I cook his recipes at home.

Yesterday while browsing recipes for dinner I came across the great chef's (and his brother's) recipe for stewed winter vegetables. I just happened to have everything I needed right from the farmer's market.

First I peeled shallots (I did about 4), sprinkled them with S&P and wrapped them in tin foil with 1/2 TB of butter. Those I popped into the oven (350º) for 30 minutes.

Carrots and parsnips are peeled and cut into 2 inch lengths (I made sort of batons about 1/2" x 2"). Leeks are split in half, cleaned and cut into 1" lengths. Turnips, quartered. All of these cut vegetables go into a pot with a sprig of thyme, 2 TB of butter, and 2 1/2 cups chicken stock. I brought the vegetables up to a boil, covered and allowed to simmer for 20 minutes. Meanwhile I boiled some small potatoes until tender, and when the vegetable were just soft added in the drained potatoes and the roasted shallots and seasoned to taste.

On the side -- when a Thomas Keller recipe is on the table everything else is a side-dish -- a quick roast chicken. I simply stuffed the cavity with garlic cloves, lemons and herbs from our garden, trussed, basted with olive oil, sprinkled on S&P and popped it in the oven for an hour and 20 minutes (I basted with more olive oil about 20 minutes into roasting) at 350º -- good company for the roasting shallots.

Thomas Keller was not the only chef on our table last night. Yesterday at work I commented on the delicious balsamic fig preserves served on the grilled chicken breast, and the boys in the truck were kind enough to give me not only the recipe but a little to go container. A little extra autumn flavor complements of our friends at "Off The Shelf."