Archives for the 'bits and pieces' Category
Get thee to the farmers’ market and a how to for pan sauce
That’s right my fellow Madisonians and Middletonians…today marks the start of the blessed farmeres’ market season. So if you’re reading this on Saturday as you drink a cup of coffee and ponder what to do with your day, get up and go…they’re selling until 1:00 so you’ve got time.
I was at the Westside Community Market this morning, at around 7:00. I forgot my camera but I can tell you what I bought:
- Brats, breakfast sausage, pork chops, and bacon from my good friends at Jordandal Farm
- Salsify, beets, spinach, scallions, and cippolini onions from Primrose Community Farm
- Eggs and goat cheese from Diana at Dreamfarm
- A 6 year aged cheddar and an Avondale Truckle from Brunkow
- Pain au chocolat from Madison Sourdough
- Maple popcorn and little sausages from Geoff King from Sunnyhill Acres
- Cinnamon roll from Stella’s Bakery
- Milk and cream from Blue Marble
- Sourcream and strawberry yogurt from Sugar River
Next week I’ll remember my camera and I’ll have photos to share. In the meantime, I’m still working on pan sauces and to that end I roasted a chicken yesterday and served it alongside some lentils with a pan sauce…it was fabulous.
How to make a pan sauce
- Roast chicken on a bed of onion, carrot, celery, garlic, rosemary, sage, and parsley.
- In a small saucepan simmer the chicken neck, gizzard, wing tip, and heart in water.
- In a sauté pan cook shallots in butter over a low flame for 15 minutes with lid on, 15 minutes with the lid off.
- Soak dry porcinis in a bowl with some of the hot stock you are making with the chicken parts.
- Add some cognac or wine to the shallots.
- Add the drained porcinis to the shallots.
- Remove the chicken from the oven. Place the chicken on a plate. Deglaze the roasting pan with some of the stock.
- Strain the deglazed pan juices into the sauté pan. Stir and adjust heat to reduce.
- Add more stock as needed to the sauté pan. Adjust seasoning.
My favorite snack this week was Madison Sour Dough baquette with excellent butter and sea salt plus radishes with butter and salt….mmmm so good and perfect with a glass of vin rouge.
That cruet and small bottle are full of excellent olive oil and pistachio oil from Vom Fass on University (same strip-mall as Penzeys) but I’ll write more about them next week.
demi-glace debacle…a tale of a broken heart
I got nothing for you…actually nothing but a broken heart and a stock pot of burnt beef demi-glace. Oh yeh, I said burnt, charred beef demi-glace. If you read my post at Accidental Hedonist over the weekend you’ll know that I made an exquisite batch of beef stroganoff from oxtail. After I picked the delectable meat from the bones I dumped them into a pot, covered them with water and let them simmer for about 6 hours. Then I stuck the pot in the garage to cool and chill. Today the stock was no longer liquid, it was gelatinous and jiggly and oh my, I actually became giddy at this point…I had a good pot of beef stock that I could easily transform into beef demi-glace. Demi-glace is just intensely reduce stock and its sole purpose in life is to enrich pan sauces. I have some short-ribs that I’d like to braise and finish off with a rich pan sauce so I thought this was kismet.
I skimmed the fat off the top, reheated the stock, strained it three times, and began to reduce it. At one point it was perfect and then I lost my focus, Alex was running the vacuum in the kitchen and I needed to get out of his way so I ran upstairs to take a shower…15 minutes later I returned to a pan of black, burnt, acrid sludge. How could I be so stupid, so careless? Arrrgh!!! It’s not like it cost me a bunch of money…no, the most expensive part was the glug (actually 3) of brandy that I added near the end. My pain is derived from having something so perfect and rare and then through my own neglect I lost it. Frack!!!
Why the champagne (sparkling wine, of course)? Well, we are in the midst of another friggin blizzard so it’s impossible to acquire any form of alcohol today and cheap sparkling wine was all I had on hand. Obviously sorrows must be drowned. My all-time-favorite sympathetic, broken-heart fix-it food is sparkling wine, potato chips, and caviar with creme fraiche. We have no caviar so I’m making do with sparkling wine, potato chips and Newman-O’s.
What do you eat when you’re heart broken?
Yes we can
What does politics have to do with food? Everything. For instance, our agricultural policy impacts international trade, food and nutrition assistance programs for the poor and elderly, environmental preservation, food safety, and the well-being of rural communities. The Farm Bill includes billions of dollars of subsidies that often go to huge mega-farms, not farmers. Here in Wisconsin we get to vote on Tuesday, if you live elsewhere and haven’t had your primary yet then check out this list to see when it’s your turn.
Vote in your state’s primary election:
- Tuesday, February 19: Hawaii, Wisconsin
- Tuesday, March 4: Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont
- Saturday, March 8: Wyoming
- Tuesday, March 11: Mississippi
- Tuesday, April 22: Pennsylvania
- Saturday, May 3: Guam
- Tuesday, May 6: Indiana, North Carolina
- Tuesday, May 13: West Virginia
- Tuesday, May 20: Kentucky, Oregon
- Tuesday, June 3: Montana, South Dakota
- Saturday, June 7: Puerto Rico
Check out Obama on the issues.
Check out the NY Times Election Guide 2008 for full coverage of the voting and issues.
Check out the Yes We Can video:
Here’s a double chocolate, pecan muffin that screams “yes we can” have chocolate for breakfast. Choose the chocolate for your audience…I made these specifically for Dexter so I used milk chocolate, but semisweet or bittersweet would be even more fabulous. They got rave reviews form everyone and they’re the perfect match for a cup of coffee.
Yes We Can Muffins
printer-friendly recipe
4 ounces milk chocolate
1/2 cup butter
1 egg
1 1/4 cups milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter a 12 cup muffin tin or line it with paper muffin cups.
Melt the butter and the chocolate. Add the milk, egg, sugar, and vanilla. Stir to combine. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Fold the liquid and the dry ingredients together, add the pecans and gently, and minimally stir them in. Fill the muffin tin and bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes and then remove the muffins from the pan.
Recent comments...