November 6, Daniel Boulud

Many of us are insanely busy right now or catching up on our blogposts, they will come though, trust me… We used three different Daniel Boulud cookbooks, Daniel Boulud’s Cafe Boulud, Daniel’s Dish, and Cooking With Daniel Boulud.

We  made:

• Coralie’s Paté Maman (not from Daniel) – Renee
• Cremini and Fontina Tart – Renee
• Soupe au Pistou – Tracey
• Sweetbreads salad with Mache and Chicory – Joanne
• Lamb Chops with Lemon Pignoli Crust – Julie
• Oven Roasted Vegetables – Alayne
• Chamonix with Orange Chocolate Ice Cream – Elizabeth

Delicious

 

November CBC – Daniel Boulud’s Cafe Boulud Cookbook

The book is chosen, prepare yourselves…

Kitchenography is hosting the  November Cookbook Club and she has chosen Daniel Boulud’s Cafe Boulud Cookbook: French-American Recipes for the Home Cook. Courses have been assigned and we are looking forward to it. Stay tuned for November updates.

 

Two books by O’Connell

As Elizabeth and Patrick O’Connell both said, the dinner was elegant and refined. I think it’s important to stress that we used two different books by Patrick O’Connell. Patrick O’Connell’s Refined American Cuisine: The Inn at Little Washington and The Inn at Little Washington. Both books have beautiful photos and while the latter focuses on the region, the restaurant and the food, the former is pure food.

Renee did not come through on the chintz decor that should have been  mandatory for this particular dinner party. Having eaten at The Inn, I must say that I prefer the larger portion sizes that we had at Renee’s to the tiny portions that we had at the Inn. Tasty, but tiny…

Elizabeth’s pasta dish was not tiny. It was big and bold and delicious, the tomato paste and mushrooms combined to make it velvety. I’ve never seen Aveline eat so much.

In the photos below you can see Renee’s baby bok choy. The sauce that Elizabeth was referring to was a caramelized rice vinegar sauce that was absolutely wonderful with the crispy rockfish and bok choy. Julie did a fantastic job on the soufflés and I was surprised at how tasty the corn salsa was with the fish. I love the other picture as Renee’s potholder matches the puffed up grit cakes.

As for the Rutabega-Apple Soup that Alayne made, it was tasty, creamy and smooth with a bit of a tang from the rutabega, sweetness from the maple syrup, sweet potato and butternut squash, and had just the right hint of spiciness with the addition of the cayenne. It was so good I made it for dinner again last night.

I must say I was a bit disappointed with the grapefruit tart (not that I didn’t finish my piece). It was very astringent and acidic, though it looked pretty.  I had thought the sugar and cream would tone it down but I think the grapefruit to orange juice ratio was too high, if I made it again I believe I’d either do 3/4 orange to 1/4 grapefruit juice or maybe just use 1/2 of the rind from the grapefruit, that may have been where the astringent taste came from. Sorry Alayne.

 

October Charm City Cookbooking

Woo hoo no more blogger!!! Thank you ladies for letting me switcheroo! So our crazy cooking night was at Renee’s house and we had a fantastic time. Here is the marinated shiitakes with vermicelli. This was a pretty lengthy appetizer recipe, and it didn’t help that I totally forgot tomatoes and had to run down to the Mexican market at 5:30! So it starts off with a tomato sauce, richened with paste and herbs de provence and sauteed onions. Then you saute the sliced mushrooms and let the whole thing marinade for awhile. The pasta is a sharp flavor contrast, as its sauce is comprised of soy sauce, five spice powder, ginger, sesame oil and scallions. I loved the pairings of these distinct flavors! It was eaten right up and I’m pretty sure Renee’s leftovers in her fridge are nearly gone!

Next was Alayne’s butternut squash soup. The flavors were enhanced with some rutabaga and sweet potato, some spiciness and lots of cream! An enhanced version of classic butternut squash soup for sure.

Here is our exciting array of dishes for the entree! The main was rockfish and bok choy with a insanely delicious caramelized sugar sauce. On the left is Julie’s grits souffles. Slightly fallen in the picture but a perfect eggy and light concoction. On the right is Tracy’s sweet corn relish, which was just so fresh and tasty it reminds me of my confetti salad (although totally different ingredients… but you know what I mean right??) These dishes went so well together and they were all very healthy!

And for our dessert, Joanne created a grapefruit and chocolate pecan crusted tart! The first bite of this instantly transported me back to Paris at the De La Tour restaurant when we had candied orange peels with our espresso. Even though it was a citrus dessert, it was still very rich and I could only eat half! The bright citrus flavor was my favorite part.

Next month is Daniel Boulud’s cookbook at Julie’s house! Can’t wait!

 

October 2009 Patrick O’Connell

Thank you ladies for our new and improved blog site. I have been anticipating this site since the beginning of Cook Book Club over 2 years ago. Now we can all share our pictures and reviews of the books we cook from each month.

This month was at my house and we used two books both by Patrick O’Connell. We used Refined American Cuisine and The Inn at Little Washington Cookbook.I enjoyed all the food but was a little disappointed in the books themselves. we found at least two major errors in the books, I would not have expected this from a guy who is supposed to be very good at attention to detail.

I did not take many pictures of the food so hopefully everyone else can add those as well as the complete menu of what we cooked. What I would like to add is the new picture of us all. I am really luck to have suck great friends and to know such great cooks! I look forward to all the books and evening we will share.

 

September Charm City Cookbooking

So mind the formatting for this post… I have no idea how to use this considering I am so used to wordpress!!!

Here is Renee’s mayonnaise that she paired with the head on shrimp. She did a fantastic job at making this and it went soo well with the shrimpies.

Here is an upclose shot of the arrangement of freshly cooked shrimps and the mayo! This was the perfect pairing!

Here is my zucchini stuffed with mussels. The smell of the tarragon and white wine cooking with the mussels was heavenly. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed this, except that the mussels still had beards… next time I will make sure to remove those! There is something about squishy food that I just can’t swallow these things!

Renee baked some breaded sardines. It was nice being able to bake whole fish like that! This was another thing I wasn’t too keen on eating… and watch out this might become a pattern in this post. If it annoys you just don’t read my writing!

Next was my fried cheese with bacon! Oh these were delectable little nuggets of delicious fat! I used gruyere cheese and wild boar bacon! Very nice ingredients to make a very nice and delicious flavor combination.

This was a salt cod and potato fried concoction! The fish flavor was pretty delicate and the whole fried nature of the dish was fantastic!

This next dish was the most crazy and interesting to make! So the recipe called for small sausages, but all I could find was vienna sausages… And then you were supposed to hole out the potato and stuff the sausage inside and then bake the whole thing, basting the potato-sausages with the oil on the bottom of the pan. Well we could not find a kitchen tool perfect enough for this task, so Finn got out his drill and we drilled a perfect hole in the potato!!!!! The removed pieces of potato, were so curly and cute so we fried them and they turned out to be a nice tasty treat. The actual dish was very good considering I used vienna sausages and drilled potatoes. The basting of oil helped to give the whole dish really good flavor!

This is a shot of the salt encrusted lamb dish that Joanne made! Too bad the stove caused her beautiful dish from France to break…

Here are some pieces of the succulent lamb. The salt really helped to keep the lamb moist and it was perfectly cooked!

Another crazy dish was chicken livers baked with an egg! I think this was Ned’s favorite. Laurita and I desperately tried to stomach it, but it just wasn’t happening…

This is our tasty dessert of the evening made graciously by Renee! A date mousse with some chocolate mint. Very nice texture and great flavor from a fruit I hardly eat!

And here are the cooking beauties! Though this month had only three of us, next month will have 7!!! yay for 7!!

 

October CBC Book – The Inn at Little Washington Cookbook

Renee has picked Patrick O’Connell’s books for this autumn foray. There will be seven members of Cookbook Club in October and each is assigned a course. Hopefully Renee’s kitchen will accomodate us all. Someone should be in charge of the chintz and someone else in charge of the gilt in order to have the appropriate atmosphere for eating this rich beautiful food.

Renee has stated that we can take our recipes from “The Inn at Little Washington Cookbook” or “Patrick O’Connell’s Refined American Cuisine: The Inn at Little Washington”. I’m in charge of dessert, looking forward to October….

 

1080 Recipes on Labor Day

Cookbook Club was held on Labor Day chez Keswickian. We decided to invite the guys and had quite a bit of fun cooking for and with them. We were also joined by Strawberrie’s sister Laurita who contributed the wonderful bread that, paired with the local butter WBC had brought, went down very well.

The cookbook 1080 Recipes is a Spanish cookbook that was written by Simone Ortega in Spanish over 30 years ago and recently translated into English by Phaiden Press.

I was a little bit nervous about this book as CBC had previously done the Silver Spoon Cookbook which was published by the same outfit and had many errors. We were pleasantly surprised.

We decided to go the tapas route (Spain after all) and cook and eat as things became available. The guys were charged with pairing drinks to our meals. I think this was pretty impossible as we didn’t know what we were making until Saturday. There was plenty of sangria, sherry and some kind of brazilian tequila like liqueur going around. The impressive list of tapas follows:

• Steamed Shrimp with Homemade Mayonnaise
• Zucchini Stuffed with Mussels and Tarragon Cream Sauce
• Baked Whole Fresh Sardines
• Gruyere Wrapped in Bacon and Fried
• Fried Codfish Cakes
• Potatoes Stuffed with Sausages (Strawberries has a story to tell!!!)
• Lamb Tenderloin in a Rosemary Salt Crust
• Shirred Eggs with Chicken Livers and Sherry

For dessert we had a date mousse that was delicious and even better cold the next day. I’ll leave the deets and the rest of the photos up to the other two. Suffice it to say it was a wonderful evening.

 

September CBC coming up

The featured cookbook will be 1080 Recipes by Simone Ortega. A Phaidon Press book, CBC is hoping it will work out better than the Silver Spoon which seemed to have problems with it’s recipes. Wish us luck…