#76 - Substitution please!

No pigeons
I forgot pigeons are out of season for another little while.  Luckily there's a rather good butcher (reflected in the prices) just up the street.  They were kind enough to order in some large quail - I figured it would be kind of similar to pigeon in size (although I didn't have to look for birdshot so hopefully that won't affect the timing during the Cuisine final).  The options were to get smaller quails (6 in a packet) or the larger ones (the 4 in the packet below).

So you may ask how it went and the answer is...gloves are the answer.  They keep the blood from sticking to your fingers and any worries about anything yuck being stuck under your nails - it still feels like there's crap under the nails even after scrubbing under them several times with a nail brush.  Ugh.  I'm ashamed to say that there was a little bit of distressed squealing when the tube-y things in the quail wouldn't come out easily and there had to be some yanking and pulling to get it out.



Anyway - there's a bit of an ick factor because you have to get all the spongy bits out of the ribs and things so that they don't cloud the sauce and make it taste yuck.  The wine tonight is from a drier year - about twice the alcohol content of the one from last night, although it's the same grape and the same vineyard.



Ok - enough bitching and moaning. Back to the quails...the lucky (?) guinea pigs are my neighbors downstairs. They both had plans Friday night bu the quails had to be cooked so the plan is to have the plates and dinner the next night...  the good butchers also had some duck fat - very nice, very clean - and expensive, of course.  Luckily you can reuse the fat as long as you clean it so the plan is to filter it through coffee filters (I can't find the muslin cloth), then store it in the refrigerator.  It's a pretty good incentive to make confit anything when you have the right fat.

It was kind of a tight fit to get the 8 legs into the pot but everything eventually settled down and the confit smelled quite nice, especially considering that I don't think quail tastes that nice.


Forgetting almost everything
So I had to check cooking times again because it's been so long since I cooked anything.  The timing is for pigeon, so I have a feeling the legs are a bit over - the meat was kind of falling off the bone, which isn't quite the aim.  Soft, but not falling apart...so will have to rethink the timing again.  On the other hand, the rest of it seems to be on track.  Somehow it's a lot harder to focus at home - so many distractions (laundry, dinner...Harry Potter and a quiddich match, etc. etc.)

Bloodless dinner
Given the blood from the quails (and having to clean out the spongy bits from inside) dinner was perch, hapa rice and broccoli. In case you didn't know, hapa rice is what my sister and I (I think we got it from in-laws) call the white rice/brown rice mix. The white rice is because it tastes better, the brown rice is a nod towards being healthy. I'm not sure how effective it actually is, but it doesn't feel so much like the husks from the brown rice get stuck in your teeth and it cooks faster.

A Saturday Lunch

I promised my friend JB that I would cook for him a while ago.  It's taken us a little while but we finally managed to get ourselves organized.  He tends to eat quite healthy so I had to think a little bit about what to make which would fit in the healthy, not too heavy (it was a hot afternoon) and edible meal.  He said he would be happy with whatever I cooked, but since we both ended up laughing at the possibility of my making him beans on toast, a decision was made to have something that required just a little bit of technique.  We ended up with stuffed mushrooms and garlic shrimp (prawn) starter, sauteed zucchini and pan fried salmon main and a burnt fig and caramel ice cream with mango for dessert.  I didn't make the ice cream but I did play with it a little...

There was a moment of panic when the acetate wouldn't come out of the mould with the ice cream and I could see the ice cream slowly starting to ooze.  Luckily we got it out and took off the acetate (I remembered this time).  Normally I don't like mango, but it went surprisingly well with the ice cream and the mint.

We ate on the balcony, looking down to the water - sorry, somehow I didn't manage to get a photo but a lot of sailboats were out.  The sun has since moved on and the clouds have rolled in.  Perhaps the forecasted rain will still arrive.

Dinner
It seems the reheating can take quite a while - the fondant potatoes were giving me conniptions.  It seemed to take at least another 15 minutes longer than I expected.  The guinea pigs (AC and VB) were good choices - as they are both familiar with French food, I got a nice comment that it tasted like France.  There was a bit of panic over the confit legs because the flesh kept falling apart so that I had difficulty getting a nice piece for presentation.  Baby onions weren't available so I didn't plate them (or the green - parsley? - garnish) and I forgot to buy green olives so it wasn't an olive sauce.  So far it seems like the dish will be ok - except the timing needs a bit of tightening up.  Or a lot of tightening up...

I'm not sure if you've ever smelled duck fat.  If you haven't, let me just say that it's quite a strong smell - so much so that before I was even finished cooking, I didn't feel like eating much.  The result - some vegetables, confit potato (turned for mine) and a quail leg - for a taste.  Actually it tasted quite nice, but I still didn't want anything heavier.  Lucky for me, AC made a delicious salad and I ended up eating most of that instead.  Then grapes for dessert - I think such heavy scents made the salad and fruit seem much more appealing because they are so much lighter.

Verdict - could be better, could be worse.  Timing needs a bit of work and a few details need to be refined.  Hopefully it will be a smooth run for the mock exam.

So until next time - may you be able to enjoy the meals you prepare with your friends and loved ones (instead of just meal times).



#72 - Adventures in cooking

So here are some photos from cooking at last.


Apparently technology and I are still not on great terms because I thought I got the photos earlier but found I hadn't put them on my computer after all. Oh well...so - still work to be done but getting better.  Initial try was a basic roast chicken dinner with some salad, stuffed mushrooms, jus and rice. Rice - because this is Hawaii and my audience prefers rice instead of potatoes. As do I. Looks like the Asian roots of Hawaii are coming out!  I had a little problem with the julienned snow peas, but I now know that it's because I tried to julienne them after I had cooked them (when they were slippery inside) instead of before.  Note to self for the next time...


I couldn't find decent chicken stock.  They keep selling chicken broth so I thought I'd try one out.  Ick - the stock wasn't good until I added a ton of wine to the jus, at which point it tasted good enough that eventually people just ate it on the rice.  The list of ingredients on the "broth" had chicken flavoring and some kind of sugar extract and all kinds of other stuff on it.  I just wanted to see chicken, some veggies and water.  Is that so much to ask???  At the moment it looks like I will have to make my own to get what I want, but it just means I have to plan at least a day in advance so that I have enough time to make some stock.  I got a mock-horrified look from the guy at Tamura's (a local wine store who also sells some specialty ingredients and yummy food) when I  mentioned the chicken stock wasn't my onw.

Some other sights...
-just another day at the mall...Ala Moana Centre Stage.  So nice to see hula while waiting for them to finish making my coffee.  This seems to happen most days - I think it's around noon or 1pm or something.  It's nice for the tourists because they get a little show and it's nice for the dancers because they get an appreciative audience.  For me it's just one more thing that makes home, home.

A Saturday afternoon in the winter...our view while we had our lunch by the water just off Diamond Head.  On men's canoe, one women's canoe.  It was kind of nice - we got the vicarious thrill of watching some skilled paddling while eating by the water.  Is it possible to claim someone else did your exercising for you???



Welcome back dinner for the parents:
Prep = 4 hours.  Cooking the amuse bouche - 3 minutes.  Cooking the appetisers - 10 minutes (while we were eating the amuse bouche).  Cooking the main - 8 minutes.


I read Anthony Bourdain's updated edition of Kitchen Confidential and I finally found out that I am not crazy for getting pissed off when people mess with my stuff in the kitchen.  It's called mise en place for a reason and I had to try to keep my cool while fending off my mom's well meaning but incredibly annoying attempts to help.  (Yes Mom - I know I can use that pot.  I chose this one for a reason.  No thank you - I want the shrimp shells, I need them to infuse the oil for the dressing/salsa.  Yes, you may watch and I am happy to explain what I am doing.  No, don't touch that bowl!  No, please don't try to help me plate - they all need to look the same.  Yes please to helping put the plates on the table - careful, they're hot and they need to face the same way.  Thank you!)


Apparently it has something to do actually organizing our minds - in which case mine is still messy.  Organized chaos is not acceptable in the kitchen so I have to think a lot harder because I sometimes forget things are there if I can't see them.  It helped to separate the things into the various courses.  I think I used most of the small pots in the kitchen and we went through a lot of plates.


Preparing amuse bouche

Amuse bouche - pan fried scallop and celeriac puree, Thai-ish style shrimp with celeriac puree (right - for the person allergic to scallops but not shrimp...)  I didn't know one of the guests generally doesn't like scallops so it was a compliment to be told that she liked this one.

Starter - stuffed mushrooms (and bacon bits!) with zucchini spaghetti and tomato concasse.  My plating on the left, my sister's suggestion on the right...

Preparing main - pan fried ginger and green onion Ono steak, lemongrass and keffir lime shrimp, rice and zucchini spaghetti.  Inspired by the lobster open lasagne in Superior...

Plating the main...

Dinner being kid tested...

Verdict:  yummy.

(Q:  Want some more?

A:  Mmm hmmm.)

There was enough food left which we didn't cook that I ended up sending some home with friends and leaving some marinating in the fridge for the next night for my parents.  This is what my girlfriend KK did for dinner the next night, using her own ideas for plating - wish I'd thought of that.  Nice plating, Ms K!  It's nice that she went to the trouble of making her dinner pretty.  We had a rather entertaining text exchange about the cooking of the fish:
Her:  How do I cook the fish?
Me:  Hot pan.  Oil.  Fish in pan.  Cook.
Her:  I can do that.


No photos of dessert - lemon crunch cake (the remaining half from my birthday dinner a couple of nights before)...I hadn't made dessert because I didn't feel like it - between various food restrictions, gluten, eggs and to some extent, lactose were out which makes it a little difficult to make dessert.  Fruit salad had been done rather a lot, but something was missing so out came the leftover birthday cake.  Even the non-dairy/non-gluten/non-egg people had a teeny tiny bite which rounded out dinner nicely.


A gray, rainy, overcast winter day (left) and the same winter day an hour later (right).  Lunch at the Plumeria Beach Cafe (Kahala Hotel).

A no-no of presentation - crap sprinkled on the plate rim.  My sister said maybe it was their way of presenting their plate.  I told her it was wrong...probably it didn't help that I wasn't a huge fan of the food (tasted like leftover steak) - the batter or whatever it was supposed to be suffered from being super soggy.  The roasted salmon belly salad was good although it would have been nicer if they had removed the skin.  I found out why the dish was part of a prix fixe menu for lunch at what looked like a discounted price.  I'm still of the opinion that it's one thing not to waste food or to find another use for it in a dish, but I would have thought you wouldn't want the customers to be able to tell.  I mean really, if you look at the ingredients of each dish and break it down, this option was actually more expensive because you can't really serve the components as anything and they would have gone in the rubbish bin anyway.


Anyway, this trip home has been a great one to study what other people make and serve.  There was so much to learn and appreciate about the local food here (yum - time for dinner now, bye!) and what we like to eat.


So until next time, happy eating.