Category Archives: Edible

Mmm… Doesn’t that look good?

Well if it doesn’t you’ve obviously never experienced the sheer delight that is moules et frites. (Pronounced mool-A-freet)

What is moules et frites? Strait translation- mussels and fries. The  mussels are steamed in aromatic white wine and butter, then served, shell and all, in this as a sauce, with a side of thin, crispy, delicious french fries. Everyone digs the mussles out of their shells with their own little forks (or their fingers, I’m not picky) and it’s an instant party.

It tastes good, it’s all fancy-seaside-french-restaurant feeling, and it’s so easy! (Especially if you have your own deep fryer.)

So the recipes… I made my own version of the moules, based on Julia Child’s method, which I’ve decided is to complicated for modern mussels. If you’re picking them off a pier yourself (which is probably a bad idea with all the pollutants out there these days) you may want to spend the hour of soaking time and get them to “disgorge” their sand, but I don’t think it’s necessary with the mussels you find in the store, in fact, I think it lessens their natural saltiness to much, just a theory.

That brings me to another important fact, the mussels you will be cooking are alive. You want them that way, so they will be fresh and not make you sick… but for me, cooking with something still living for my first time, it was slightly guilt-tripping to hear the soft little noises they made after I cleaned and rinsed them. Maybe it was all in my head, but it sounded like they were making very quite little hissing noises, and it made me a little jumpy. But later I thought how much more humane it is to have quickly steamed them in a delicious smelling broth versus letting them be ripped to pieces in the wild by a hungry seagull, and I felt better.

Moules!

I used about 2 pounds of mussels, which filled my four people up pretty well… but two of them were smaller sized people.

Scrub your mussels in cool running water with a stiff brush and “de-beard” them. To do this, pull off the little tuft on the outer edge of the mussel, if there is one, very few of mine had beards.

Important- throw out any mussels that are open. They are dead and no good.

In a large pot combine around half a stick of butter, two cups of good white wine, one minced shallot, one minced garlic clove, a small handful minced parsley and a tablespoon or so of minced fresh chives. Bring to a boil.

Toss mussels into boiling liquid and steam, shaking once or twice to distribute top to bottom, till they are all open. About 5 minutes.

Discard any mussels that have not opened at this point. They are also not good.

Serve with the broth poured over the mussels and an extra bowl to dump the empties.

Enjoy!

Frites!

The key with good fries is to fry them twice. This way the insides are soft and the outsides are crunchy.

Cut up the amount of russet potatoes you’ll want for eating, I made three potatoes worth. Cut them into 1/4 inch strips.

First frying: Heat a big pot of oil or a deep fryer to 320 degrees and carefully add the potatoes, cook till they are soft when you squeeze one (be careful!) but not browned, around 5 minutes. Remove and drain.

Second frying: Bring the oil up to 360 degrees and then add back the fries and cook till golden, 3 minutes or so. Do this in batches if you need to. Drain on paper towels (or brown paper bags work great).

I serve these with a little fast and easy “aioli”. Just mix up some mayo with a little lemon juice, mashed garlic, and chives to taste. Yummy for dipping and fancy looking to boot!

Did I mention dessert?

Maybe we’ll save that for another day!

I got a little inspired like, a month ago and made a big French dinner for the family out of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” I’ve just now gotten around to blogging it… but since I’m going to put a bomb-diggity recipe at the end of this post I thought I might be forgiven.

Hey! Stop scrolling! I’m not finished yet!

So here’s what I made:

Boiled Baby Artichokes with Lemon Dill Butter

Baked Cucumbers

Purple and Red Potatoes mashed and then baked with cream

Beef Bourguignon

Cheese Course

Fruit Tart with Agave Pastry Creme and Normal Tart Crust Served with Coffee

Reactions:

Baby Artichokes- First time I bought them, usually I use big ones but the baby ones were on sale, and let me tell you, they were SO much better! Great taste, good portion size for an appetizer, and no choke to worry about! Lemon and dill go great with artichokes, just melt some butter and squirt in lemon and sprinkle in dill to taste.

Baked Cucumbers- I had read an article about Julia Child in which Julie Powell raved over the baked cucumbers. So I made the recipe from the book and I liked it… but I had this feeling that it tasted really familiar. Then later, when I tried one cold, I was like, “Pickles! I just made an oven baked, not as crisp, not as sour, version of pickles!” And really, though I love pickles, I think I’ll stick with the real thing from now on.

Purple and Red Potatoes- These were my recipe, not Julia’s, and it showed. They were OK, but I did something horribly wrong when mashing them. (Tried a short-cut with the food processor, DO NOT try this!) They were supposed to be this pretty, fluffy swirl of purple and white with little flecks of red potato skin whirled in. But instead they were sticky, and gooey, and, and… puce. I never in my life thought I would be able to come up with a PUCE food. Not an appetizing color. So I baked them in the oven with the hope of browning the top and disguising the color and since the flavor was sweet and some of the gumminess went away I think they snuck by at the table. But really, I would call them a potato fail.

Beef Bourguignon- Is amazing. I LOVE Julia Child. Forget what I said earlier, scroll down and go make this, it’s more important. You can finish reading while it’s cooking.

Cheese Course- You’re back? OK, the cheese course was great. I also didn’t cook any of it.

Fruit Tart- Was yummy, but the pastry creme didn’t hold up. I don’t know if this was because of the agave or because it didn’t have enough time to set or what, but next time I think I’ll stick with a normal recipe.

It was pretty though.

OK so for all of you who scrolled down, you have to do me a favor and go back up after reading this OK?

Boeuf Bourguignon (Slightly adapted from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Child, Bertholle and Beck)

Ingredients:

6 ounces Thick Cut Bacon, sliced into 1/4 inch sections and simmered for ten minutes, then drained and dried.

3 pounds Stew Beef, cut into 2-inch chunks and patted dry.

1 Sliced Carrot

1 Sliced Onion

1 tsp Salt

1/4 tsp Pepper

2 Tb Flour

3 cups Red Wine, Chianti is suggested (I used a Zin, I think.)

2 to 3 cups Beef Stock (I doubled the recipe and could only fit in 1 or so, just season accordingly later.)

1 Tb Tomato Paste

2 Cloves Garlic

1/2 tsp thyme and one crumbled bay leaf (OR I tied together a bunch of fresh thyme and a bay leaf or two for a bouquet garni, and that worked great.)

18 to 24 Small Onions, Brown Braised, (Do this by browning the outsides in 1 Tb oil and 1 Tb butter, then baking, with a bouquet as described above, at 350 for 4 to 50 minutes, turning once or twice, till soft and golden.)

1 pound fresh Mushrooms sauteed in butter (You’ve seen the movie right? “Don’t crowd the mushrooms!” Fave line.)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

In a Oven-Proof Casserole (or a cast iron dutch oven, which I used) lightly brown the bacon and set aside on paper towels to drain. In the remaining fat, saute the beef a little at a time, till browned on all sides, then set aside with the bacon.

Add the onion and carrot to the same fat and saute, then pour out remaining fat. (I did not pour out the fat, it did not hurt anything.)

Return beef and Bacon to casserole and toss with salt and pepper. Then toss with flour. Put in middle of oven and cook uncovered for 4 minutes. Remove, toss, and cook 4 minutes more. (This is supposed to get crusty bits on the meat, did not do it for me, but my pot was crowded.)

Remove casserole, lower oven to 325 degrees.

Stir in wine and enough stock so beef is barley covered, add tomato paste, garlic and herbs. Bring to simmer and then cover and put in lower third of oven. Cook 2 1/2 to 3 hours, till the meat is easily pierced with a fork.

Prepare little onions and mushrooms while beef is cooking and have them ready.

When ready, pour beef and everything else into a sieve set over a sauce pan. clean out the casserole and add contents of sieve back in. Put the little onions and mushrooms over the meat.

Skim fat off sauce, then simmer and continue skimming till reduced to a thickness that coats a spoon lightly. If it’s really thin, you can boil it down rapidly, if to thick, you can add a little beef stock tablespoons at a time. Taste and season well. Pour over meat.

At this point you can either simmer it for a few minutes, basting the meat with the sauce, and then serve it, or you can hold it in the fridge (after letting it cool of course) till you’re ready to serve, and bring it up to temp by bringing it to a simmer and then simmering it for 10 minutes, basting occasionally.

Bon Appetit!

Yes I know it’s SO been done by everyone, but I have been wanting to make this bread for so long. Now, thanks to my beautiful new Christmas present (thank you Mom and Dad) I can!

The video is just a little inspiration to get me started. Hopefully the real thing will be up soon.

When I was a kid, the classic icebreaker question in Sunday school was, “If you were going to be trapped on a desert island what (object, book, food, etc.) would you bring with you? It was supposed to help you get to know each other, but everyone would come up with the same answers. Object? A speedboat of course. Who wants to be stuck on an island? Book? The Bible, this was Sunday school after all. Food? Pizza. Why? Because it has everything: Meat, Dairy, Veggie, Grains, Fruit (if you’re a pineapple pizza person)… the whole pyramid.

Or at least that was our excuse for the grown-ups. The real reason is that pizza tastes really good, and it’s really fun to eat. It’s linked in our minds with birthday parties, sleepovers, and not having to wash dishes. It is ingrained in our sense of fun.

So to satisfy my inner kid, and my gourmet, homemade-food-obsessed, outer adult, I’m making my own pizza. Even if it does mean I’ll have to wash some dishes.

Adapted from the William’s Sonoma Bride and Groom Cookbook

Dough:

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups warm water

5 tsp active dry yeast

2 tsp red wine vinegar

3 Tbsp olive oil, plus oil for greasing

4 cups flour, plus extra for dusting

2 tsp sugar

1 Tbsp kosher salt

Method

Combine water, yeast, vinegar, and 3 Tbsp olive oil in a bowl and mix. Add 1 cup flour and mix well. Stir remaining flour, sugar, and salt together in another bowl. Add flour mixture to wet mixture and stir to combine. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead till smooth.

Put dough into a well-oiled bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest 30 minutes.

Divide into 6 equal pieces (or less if you want bigger pizzas, 6 for personal size), roll each into a smooth ball. Cover with damp kitchen towel and let rest 10 minutes. Use now, or refrigerate for up to 4 hours.

Preheat oven to 500°

If chilled, let dough come to room temperature for 30 minutes. Roll and stretch each ball into an 8 inch round.

Toppings

This is where you go crazy. Or not. The picture above is made using canned tomatoes for the sauce – with a little salt, pepper, and fennel sprinkled in. Put some grated mozzarella cheese on top of that, and finish it off with some sauteed bell peppers and red onions, and some pepperoni.

But really you should be creative here. Put what you like best on this puppy, be it anchovies or zuchinni, and then sling it in the hot oven for 10 minutes or so, till the cheese is bubbly and the crust is golden.

Let the party begin!