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Dining & Celebrating in Paris

July 15, 2012

carved hippo out of chocolate in Paris

This weekend France is celebrating La Fête Nationale, the French National Day. It commemorates the storming of the Bastille, which took place on the same day in 1789 and was considered to be a symbol of the uprising of a modern nation.

Since I just returned from France, I’m celebrating the remarkable food in Paris. Only there will you see such wonders as a hippo carved out of chocolate, laughing at you from behind a shop window.

Quintessential French Dining

Le Procope Restaurant Food since 1686

There are so many wonderful choices of restaurants to choose from. If it is old world charm you want, Le Procope Restaurant in St. Germain des Prés would be the ticket. It is called the oldest restaurant in Paris, dating back to the 1600′s. This gem is steeped in history and it is closely linked to the revolution. Continue Reading →

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methods & madness…
final class – testing, one, two, three!

March 19, 2012

Cheese Soufflé for Two
My ramblings from Pro-Chef French Cooking Class have sadly come to an end after spending the last six months learning techniques, styles, and culinary terms. In the end, there was always a method to the madness.

The first week of testing stressed everyone out – not knowing what recipes would be asked of us, or if we could remember how to make them. Continue Reading →

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methods & madness…
class 16: yeast breads – a fragrant uprising

February 13, 2012

Spaghetti with Bolognese Sauce

Recipes & Ramblings from Chef School

Bread was one of the first things my mother taught me to bake. The fragrance of freshly baked bread was as familiar as a Saturday night bath on a frigid evening in Iowa. I could often be found covered head to toe in flour, my hands gooey with bread dough, and a satisfied grin on my face.

Today, the aroma of baked bread still evokes fond childhood memories, as did this week’s cooking class where we baked five different yeast breads and a pizza.

Basic bread contains very few ingredients – flour, water, yeast, and salt. Other additions can be oil, butter, eggs, sugar, milk, grains, and nuts. Today my goal is to cover the basic ingredients of a good bread. Continue Reading →

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methods & madness… class 15: sausages and such

February 5, 2012

Spaghetti with Bolognese Sauce

Recipes & Ramblings from Chef School

Pork butt… last week we braised it, this week we ground it up. I sure didn’t know how useful pork butt is! This was our first lesson in forcemeat, which is a mixture of ground meat emulsified with fat and various seasonings. The most common forcemeat product is sausage. And that is where our adventure begins.

Savage Sausage

Basic sausage is ground meat (normally pork, veal or beef), fat (up to 30-50%) mixed with salt and spices, then stuffed into casings made from intestines. Casings may also be made from collagen, cellulose, or even plastic.

Sausage and luncheon meats can be sold without casings in tins and jars. Can you say Spam? Yes, that too is made of pork butt or so Hormel says. Maybe you were thinking it’s made of bits even pigs won’t disclose?

Class Assignment

Rona and I were assigned to make Boudin Blanc – a white sausage made of pork without the blood (thank heavens, as neither of us buy into the whole vampire thing). Boudin Noir is made with pig’s blood. Blood when it’s cooked binds ingredients together and turns a hauntingly dark chocolate color. I pass out at the sight of blood, so I was thrilled with the idea of Boudin Blanc.

trimming pork back fat   Sausage mise en place

To start, Rona cut the skin off the pork back fat. I silently cringed as  Rona mumbled something about her Jewish ancestors rolling over in their graves.

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methods & madness… class 14: meat pt. 2
pork butts and pig tales

January 30, 2012

Pork Butt with Port and Prunes

Recipes & Ramblings from Chef School

This week’s class we came straight out of the gate cooking. We were braising a trail with the tougher cuts of beef, pork and veal, and needed plenty of time to get our meat to the “fall off the bone” stage. My job was cooking Pork Butt with Port and Prunes, which gives me plenty to laugh talk about. 

Why put pork on your fork

Pork is naturally low in salt and a rich source of protein. It is also a good source of iron, zinc, B6, B12, vitamin D, and selenium.

Today’s pork has been bred to be 31% leaner than the pork we ate in the 80’s. The pork tenderloin is as lean as a skinless chicken breast with 2.98 grams of fat per 3 oz. serving.

Pig History

The pig is one of the oldest forms of livestock, and was domesticated from the wild boar roughly around 5000 B.C. in the Near East. Today, China is the world’s largest producer of pig meat.

In addition to food, pigs’ hides were used for shields and shoes, their bones for tools and weapons, and their bristles for brushes.

Pigs have a keen sense of smell. Their sensitive noses lead them to truffles, an underground fungus highly valued by my friend Erika, the Trufflepalooza queen, who cooks all sorts of wild dishes with them. Click here for some good truffle recipes.

Hog Wash

The USDA treats pork as a red meat. So why did the U.S. National Pork Board have an advertising slogan of “the other white meat“? Because popular opinion says white meat (chicken and turkey) is healthier than red meat. People still think that pork is a white meat… that is the power of advertising.

To set the record straight, pork is a pale color because pigs aren’t as mobile as cattle, therefore, their muscles don’t use as much oxygen. Less oxygen means less myoglobin, the red-colored molecule, which is where the meat’s color comes from. 

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