Cassoulet

Tonight was a classic "duck dinner"--as in, cassoulet. Seven of us got together for a fun dinner and wines. We started with some vintage champagne from 1998 and 2000 vintages. We then shared in this beautiful dish, paired with 1998 and 2004 Rhone wines, and a 2005 Madiran. We followed this with a salad course (very European), paired with a 1999 German Riesling Kabinett. Dessert was a chess pie, paired with an AMAZING 1969 Tokaji Aszu. What a dinner! And great company. I gained a number of fascinating insights tonight from all of this.

First, duck confit, pork belly, and sausage, paired with beans, baked for a couple hours with copious duck fat is downright amazing. And, perhaps, requiring some statins... :-) It pairs extraordinarily with a 2005 Madiran, which is still a baby. The 2004 Ste. Anne CDR-St. Gervais was beautiful, lighter, more acidic, and rather "feminine", if you can really use that to describe a wine. The 1998 Cotes du Rhone shows that a good vintage and a good producer (Grand Prieur) can lead to amazing aging on an inexpensive wine such as this.

Second, this riesling was amazing--it had such a nose of petrol/gasoline (in a very good way), and a crisp, acidic cut, with a long mineral finish. This blew me away.

Third, drinking a 43 year old sweet wine is an experience of unforgettable proportions. This goes down as a 10 most memorable wines of life. This Hungarian wine had incredible acid (STILL), great minerals, a somewhat oxidative note of good dry sherry or Madeira, nutty, sweet, mild fruit, and an ongoing finish.

I am fortunate enough to get to taste and drink a lot of good wine--even quite a bit that borders on great. But I am seldom so surprised by so many bottles in one setting; I seldom learn as much in one setting; and, rare indeed is a bottle that I will be remembering for years to come. To find two of those in an evening--that is extraordinary. Now, most of my favorite wines come from France, as do virtually all of my most memorable wines. So, to have two in a row that were NOT from France--surprising as can be.

Lamb Cheeks

Last night, I managed to cook up a meal that is near the top of all time in my view. Now, my wife was not a fan of this for flavor and texture reasons, so universal praise was not part of the picture here... But here's the scoop:

Sparrow Market, an Ann Arbor classic grocery and meat market, had lamb cheeks on sale. Now, who has ever eaten lamb cheeks? Well, I've had pork and beef cheeks, and I find the texture and strong flavors enticing, so I figured, what the heck, let's try this out. I didn't come home with any particular plan, other than figuring I needed to braise them for a couple hours. A classic sauce with a variety of lamb dishes is a Provencal style sauce--so I built on that theme. After browning the cheeks stove-top, I sweated mirepoix (onion, carrot, celery) plus garlic, added a couple tablespoons of tomato paste, and cooked that for maybe 5 minutes. I deglazed with white wine, added some lamb stock tossed in a bay leaf, a few sprigs of thyme and rosemary, supplemented with a dash of Aleppo Pepper. After bringing to a boil, the cheeks went back in, and the whole cast iron Le Creuset business went into a 325 degree oven for 2 hours.

Meanwhile, I needed a side dish--and risotto seemed the perfect choice. So, out came some chicken stock, some Arborio rice, a bit of butter and shallot and Parmesan cheese. This is such a yummy, but easy, rice dish, I don't know why people are so afraid of it. Yes, you spend 20 minutes stirring a lot. Yes, you add stock gradually, deciding when the rice is at a doneness you like. Is it technically hard? Not at all. No fancy knife skills. No balancing 8 pots cooking at once. Just a bit of patience and attention to what you're doing.

As the risotto finished up, I removed the cheeks from the cast iron, strained the sauce to remove veggies and herbs, and reduced it by about half. I finished it off with a pat of butter, rewarmed the cheeks in the sauce, and sat down to a delicious dinner. I got out a 2006 Tourade Vacqueyras to accompany. It worked pretty well, although I think the wine is in a bit of a closed, awkward phase right now--there's still a lot of structure, fruit buried under it, and I think it'll be a very pretty bottle in a couple years. Right now, it's not bad at all, but not showing gorgeously yet. So, 5 more bottles to watch over 3-8 years.

Halibut cheeks, St. Joseph blanc

Whole Foods has halibut cheeks in stock this weekend. You seldom see these in stores, or even good fish markets. After all, there are only two on every fish, and they are not big. And fishermen and fishmongers tend to like them for themselves. But with the halibut season underway, what a great opportunity! These are much firmer in texture than typical halibut filets, and more flavorful. And, as they were quite fresh, I didn't even have to cover any "fishy-ness"! So, a pan fry in a mix of olive oil and butter for about 2 minutes a side on the cheeks was about right. I did a quick pan sauce with a bit of wine, the juice of a lemon, and some capers. Served with some simple white rice cooked in chicken stock and some sauteed spinach on the side, it was delicious.

But, paired with a Philippe Faury 2004 st. Joseph blanc, it was just magical. The wine is amazing--showing some age with honeyed notes, still showing oak--a surprising amount, actually. And tons of lemon, some stone fruits, some nutmeg, wow!!! it's a great wine. And a nice price. And it just paired beautifully with the fish--nutty/oaky, acid to mesh with the sauce, a bit salty almost, to match with the fish. In all, an amazing meal!

Valentine's Day: Dinner out, or eat at home?

Valentine's Day is a bit of a special occassion here. Julie and I started dating on Valentine's Day a number of years back, as well as it being a classic Hallmark holiday. In short, it's really not simply a day of 'hate and rage' for us. :-) So, that means a nice dinner. Some years, we've gone out for dinner. The experience of dinner out on the holiday has been decidedly mixed, however. In Georgia, we did have a wonderful 5 course dinner at Five and Ten one year--well worth it, in spite of a rather exorbitant price tag. More commonly, dinner out on the holiday has been more hit or miss. One year, we went to a nice place (by reputation); during dinner, we managed to have a glass of wine spilled on us by our server, our wine selection rather poorly judged by the server because it was a screw cap (it was an Oregon Pinot that sold for around $55/bottle--not a crappy wine by any means, aside from the inappropriateness of the comment.), and we ate rubbery over-cooked, fishy smelling scallops and a rather forgetable rabbit ragout. While that might have been the worst, most dinners out on Valentine's Day (and other major holidays) are just rather disappointing. Restaurants are inevitably slammed, so they're stressed out. They don't take the time on either the service or cooking side to make sure everything is perfect--simply do NOT have the time. The menus, when "special" prix fixe, are often unimaginative and usually simple to prepare.

As a result of all of this, we decided this year to spend less, eat better, and do so at a more leisurely rate, while cooking at home. Now, for a lot of folks, this might be stressful. But I love cooking, so I didn't mind at all. And, I must say, in spite of a few missteps along the way (spilled water, spilled egg whites, slightly over-blanched pearl onions) , it came out quite well. I decided on a 4 course dinner--simply skipping the sorbet/granita course. We did wine pairings with starter, salad, and main, as well, though since there were just 2 of us, kept with the same wine for starter and salad (two people, three bottles.... not so smart).

So, what did we do?
1. Seared Foie gras with cherry-marsala reduction and baguette.
2. Asparagus-haricots verts salad with blood orange and lemon-olive oil vinaigrette.
3. Blanquette de veau.
4. Chocolate creme brulee.

Wines:
L. Mawby Blanc de blancs sparkling Michigan wine (with 1 and 2)
Domaine Romanin 2007 Pouilly-Fuisse "Terroir de Fuisse" (with 3)

So, how was it cooking these things? Pretty straight-forward, not too bad.

1. Foie Gras: Simply took a handful of dried cherries, soaked em in marsala for a couple hours. Took foie gras, sliced it, and seared it in a jet-hot cast iron pan for about 30 seconds. Plated it, deglazed with the cherries and marsala. The wine cooked down very quick making a thick sauce, which poured over the foie with the cherries. Sliced the baguette thin, used bread to soak up the sauce and to hold the foie. Very yummy, rather fatty, a bit sweet. Wine was very acidic, lemony, so it cut through the fat and sweet cherries very well. Wow!

2. Asparagus/Haricots Verts salad: A cinch to make. Steamed the veggies for a few minutes, just to al dente, and shocked in cold water. Plated with wedges out of a blood orange. Dressed with a home-made dressing of lemon juice and olive oil, with a bit of salt and white pepper. Simple, tasty, refreshing after fatty foie. Was too acidic, vegetal, to work well with the wine. Would use a sancerre, maybe, instead, or a rose.

3. Blanquette de veau: (aka, veal stew with mushrooms and pearl onions in cream-lemon sauce). This is a complicated, sort of futzy thing to cook, but it's not hard at all. Start with veal stew meat, or breast or shoulder meat, cut into large cubes. Add to pan with stock or water or mix of the two, an onion studded with a few cloves, a carrot or two, and a stalk of celery, as well as some herbs (thyme, parsley, bay leaves). Cook this for about 2 hours. Meanwhile, in two other pans cook pearl onions and quartered mushrooms in stock or water with butter, and salt. Cook until stock almost evaporates, making almost a glaze on the veggies. After the 2 hours is up, pull the veal pieces out of the cooking liquid. Strain the liquid out into another pan, tossing the "stock" veggies, but keeping the liquid. In yet another pan, make a light roux with flour and butter. Gradually work cooking liquid into the roux. Add cream. Add lemon juice. Add an egg or two, tempering it in. Season with salt and more white pepper as needed. Meanwhile, cook up some plain white rice to serve this over. Put veal and veggies back in sauce. Serve stew, meat, veggies, and sauce over white rice.

The dish is admittedly heavy, rather complex to make, but oh so tasty. This classic French stew was beautiful with the just slightly oaky, very acidic, lemony Pouilly-Fuisse. Yum.

4. Finally, creme brulee: Again, a classic, albeit heavy dessert, made of eggs, cream, sugar, turned into a custard, cooked in a bain marie in the oven. Cocoa powder and vanilla extract, with a pinch of salt rounded this out. Finished by sprinkling sugar on top of the finished custard, and torched with a propane torch. The hard, caramelized top contrasts beautifully with the creamy custard below. Nothing says indulgence like that first spoon whack cracking the sugar layer on the creme brulee.

So, was it better than dinner out? The food was every bit as good. We ate it all over a period of about 3 hours--longer than we'd have been able to command a table at a restaurant. If we'd have eaten out, the meal would have easily cost in excess of $250 or $300. We paid a fraction of that, I got to improve and use my culinary skills, and in all, a fun time was had... so, restaurant reservations next year? I doubt it. We managed to eat two rather controversial foods, a remarkably high fat, high calorie meal. Clearly, this would not be an every-day meal--weight annd arteries would not stand it. But as an indulgent, wonderful holiday meal, oh yeah.