Dinner – Page 6 – Nicole Peyrafitte

Green Tomatl Salsa

As a seasonal occurrence let’s taste another distinguished native American food: the tomatillo, miltomate or husk-tomato. Pierre had bought the 2 lbs of them I had ordered last week —a good thing that they keep well— and today I finally got to make a salsa verde. This green-husked fruit is a close relative to the tomato. Also member of the Solanacea family, it’s Latin name is Physalis philadelphica. The Latin name for what we know as tomato today is: Solanum lycopersicum. Both fruits’ names (yes! they are fruits) derive from the Nahuatl word: tomatl. Sophie Coe in her book America’s First Cuisine gives an important precision:

“Nahuatl is an agglutinating language, which means that the root of the words were modified by adding prefixes and suffixes. To find out exactly which plump fruit was being eaten one must distinguished between a miltomatl, a xitomatl, a coyotomatl and many other kinds of tomatl. Some Europeans, who did not understand the structure of the language they were dealing with, thought they were simplifying things by shortening the name of the larger fruit which we know as the tomato from xitomatl, meaning plump things with a navel to plain tomato”

I have read that Tomatillo husks are used to help retain the bright green color of the cactus when boiled with the latter. But this is not something I have yet tried; if you have, please share your experience.
The Salsa Verde recipe I made today is very simple and can be used in many ways. The picture shown above is a pan fried fillet of sole with Salsa Verde & brown rice. I made enough salsa to serve tomorrow with chips and cocktails. I also froze a container for later in the season.

Recipe:
2lbs of Tomatillos Salsa Verde
Remove the husk.
Wash thoroughly with hot water to remove the slightly slimy coat.
Meanwhile boil water & blanch the tomatillos for 30 seconds.
While they cool:
chop 1 onion very small.
1 jalapeño pepper
1 bunch of fresh cilantro (fresh coriander)
Salt to taste
Optional: lime juice, olive oil.
Blend your tomatillos in food processor or chop by hand.
Add your chopped veggies.
Keep in the fridge until serving time, or save at room temperature if you are going to serve it with fish or poultry.
How to cook your fillets:
Heat your pan coated with a dollop of butter and a table spoon of olive oil.
Dip your fillet in milk, drain excess and dredge in lightly salted flour, drain excess.
Cook your fillet about 3/4 minutes each side over medium heat.
Remove and serve over a bed of green salsa and steaming brown rice.

Yum! Healthy, fast and tasty!

Look at me Porgy!

Last night we ate porgies. I bought them at the Bay Ridge Greenmarket from the excellent Long Island Sound based American Seafood stand. I prefer whole fish to fillet or steak. One of the reasons is that I like to look the fish in the eye. If the eye is clear, bright with dense black pupil & looking back at me I see/hear “buy me!” If the eye is cloudy, dry and sunken, the message is that this fish has been on display away from the water for too long. Other general indicators of fish freshness are:
The skin must be moist and shiny.
The gills need to be bright red or pinkish red. When pressed with the finger, flesh should bounce back and leave no indentation.
Fresh fish smells like fresh seaweed, any strong odor is suspicious. If the fish smells, even slightly, like ammonia discard it —I once worked with a chef who asked me to “bathe” the fillet we were to serve as “specials” that night in vinegar & water to make the smell disappeared! I refused.

porgy

As you can see my porgies were beautiful and cost me $5. Buying a whole fish is much cheaper by the pound. Yes! it is more work as you will have to debone it yourself. There is also more waste, but what about a fish soup with the bones? I will give you that recipe later. Also, below you will find a quick homemade video on how to serve your fish. I would appreciate if you have a few minutes to give me feedback on the specific questions.
Meanwhile, voilà today’s recipe:

2 Porgies (1 guted & scaled fish per person of 1/2 lb or so)
1 sweet onion peeled and sliced very thin
1 Italian or Jalapeño pepper, inside seeds and rib removed and chopped very small
1 bunch of fresh cilantro
2 ripe tomatoes
1 glass of dry white wine
1 or 2 limes
Salt
½ cup olive oil ¼ cup of butter
Preheat oven to 375º.
Coat the bottom of an ovenproof dish with olive oil. Arrange the onions & hot peppers.

stuffing porgies with cilantro

Add the tomatoes.
Add white wine. Make 2 slits on the fish.
Salt the inside of the fish, squeeze some lime into it & stuff with a few sprigs of fresh (well washed) cilantro.
Insert slices of lime into the slits on the fish.
Pour the juice of ½ a lime over. Scatter tiny pieces of butter on top of the fish.
Put in the oven for 25/30 minutes.
Baste the fish every 10 minutes with the liquid in the pan.

We ate them with corn on the cob and a beet salad. More details on the video on how to serve it.

How to serve the whole fish family style:

Please take the survey below if you have a minute.
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Is this video helpful to you?
Did you know how to deal with a whole fish before?
If not are you going to try it now?
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If yes, what do you want to see?
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Bonus question:
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M E R C I !

Barked Memories

August 21^st 2009 / Lunch Time
Culinary Institute of America
The American Bounty Room

I am back in the Mid-Hudson Valley to accompany Miles for the last three days of the Muttnik shoot. I cannot resist returning to the C.I.A. This time I’ll have lunch at one of the “big” restaurants, preferably at the “Escoffier” or the “Villa de Medici.” No, I didn’t make a reservation and therefore I will not be “accommodated” in either of these rooms. Now my choices are: the “American Bounty Room” or return to the “Apple Pie Bakery Café.” No hesitation, I am on my way to the “American Bounty room.” I am ushered to a table for two facing the open kitchen. The setting before me is removed; I sit on the banquette across the “Julia Child Rotisserie Kitchen.” Two rows of antique rolling pins frame the sign. Below it, two impeccable pastry students are busy setting up dessert plates. The reverent & courteous student/waiter brings me the menu and offers cocktails. A quick look confirms that I will have the Dr. Frank Rkatsitelli, Vinifera 2006 from the Finger Lakes. I have read the online wine and lunch menu; it is easy for me to scan through and to decide on:

Sautéed Halibut ($16)
Sweet Manila Clams, Soffrito Rice, white Wine Broth
(sorry no pix, remember? not allowed inside the school)

And then starts an annoying conversation with two of my selves (I’m a Gemini):
Moi 1: “I am really overindulging by coming twice for lunch at the CIA in the same week.”
Moi 2: “But, I am here for a reason.”
Moi 1:“Oh! Yeah and what is the reason?”
Moi 2:“ Well, I’m gonna write about it on my blog!”
Moi 1: “Again?”

Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy writing the blog, but sometimes it feels like self-inflicted homework. English is not my first language and I am not a born writer. Why do I do it then? In different ways, whether I draw, sing or write, I find myself doing the same thing: I dwell on a particular situation and seek its “essence.” Using the blog gives a very convenient format, as it allows for all my interest to converge. But today feels like having a “still day.” I put my pen down, close my notebook and sip my wine.

Yum! the wine is crisp, clean & light. It reminds me some of the wines from Luxembourg. Rkatsitelli is an ancient grape from Georgia (Old world not USA!). I had it once before and liked it. Dr. Konstantin Frank wines are always interesting.

What is that human barking coming out of the kitchen? Every time one of the kitchen doors opens — there is one on each side of the kitchen window, one to get in & one to get out — we can hear the “aboyeur” (literal translation: the barker) dispatching orders. In this case an “aboyeuse” as it is a female announcing the orders to the appropriate station of the kitchen. This is a strategic position in a brigade system kitchen. Wow! I am having a flashback, and next thing I know I pick up pen and notebook:

I am a little girl in the corridor of the “office” of the family hotel. The “office” was the upstairs kitchen where some dessert and cold foods were prepared and most of all where the manual dumb waiter delivered the food from the downstairs kitchen. The orders were shouted into a speaker-phone. Then one copy of the order slip was sent down, the first carbon copy pinned on to the board next to “le passe” —that’s how we called the dumb waiter— , the third carbon copy was kept by the waiter to add any supplements and then sent out to the cashier to make the bill.

I was born in this hotel, in my parents’ bedroom just above the action and almost in the midst of it. It was June 18, 1960 at noon; the restaurant was running at full capacity. There was a banquet for a 100 top, the annual banquet luncheon for the Master Accountant Guild of the Southwest France region. The interesting fact is that my maternal grandfather, Maurice Gallot, was the president of the guild! My father didn’t get to see me until after the banquet was under control. My mother and I were in good hands between the midwife and her uncle who was a surgeon. My mother still remembers that my maternal grandfather bought champagne for the entire party! As far as the memory of the birth itself is concerned, she would always say: “C’est le mal joli, quand c’est fini on rit!” “It’s the pretty pain — once it’s over one laughs!.” She is always very positive! In case you are curious to know what was served the day of my birth, here it is taken from my grandfather agenda/menu book. The left side of the page is the regular Menu du Jour and the right side is the menu for the banquet.

Page left:
Lunch:
Hors d’Oeuvres (I have a post on this here) & Cantaloup
Trout Meunière
Entrecôte & Pommes Frites
(always served with Beurre Maître d’Hôtel)
Wild Stawberries & Fresh Cream

Dinner:
Soup du Jour
Braised duck with Garniture Printanière (diced spring veggies)
Asparagus (most likely served with hollandaise sauce)
Peaches

Page right:
The Banquet Menu
Consommé en tasse — cold consommé served in porcelain cup.
Langouste à la Parisienne — rock lobster in a sort of aspic glazed or a.k.a chaudfroid
Grilled chicken à l’Américaine — chicken crapaudine that is first grilled, then covered in a mustard sauce, then breaded and finished in the oven.
Salade Rachel — according the Escoffier cookbook: Equal parts of truffle shavings, rooster kidneys, celery ribs cut into thick julienne, asparagus tips. Light liaison with a thin mayonnaise.
Coupe Poste & Golf — It could be anything my grandfather felt like making! probably some sort of home made ice cream with liquor a fruits topped Chantilly and served with a cookie)

Café/Armagnac/ Liquors
Vin Nature de Champagne Abelé Sourire de Reims

I would like to make that menu for one of my birthdays! maybe for the big 50!
By the way I thank you very much for your comments about the blog on Facebook, but I would really appreciate if you would comment directly on the blog. Merci!

Wild Wild Roast

“No, I’m not coming to eat endangered animal meat,” says Miles. He is talking about the leg of izard, a.k.a: Rupicapra pyrenaica or Pyrenean chamois I cooked on a string before an open fire a few days before our departure from Bourg d’Oueil.
Too bad & more for us! It is a very special occasion as Pierre, my husband, waited patiently for close to twenty years to taste this exquisite & very hard to hunt Pyrenean wild goat. And no, it is not an endangered animal (Miles overstated his case), though it is indeed a protected species.

My close friend Joseph Garcès had heard from my dad that Pierre never tasted izard, so he brought us a leg that was hunted as ethically as possible by his nephew Jean-Claude. In the Pyrenees getting izard meat as a present is a significant gauge of friendship and esteem, all the more so if you are offered the gigot (the leg), as it is the best cut. It is short notice, but I am inviting Joseph and his partner Paulette to eat with us.
The leg is frozen as it was killed during the short and very regulated Izard hunting season last year. Once a year a team of garde chasse —government paid national hunting wardens— goes out to count the animals and apportion how many it will be safe to kill in a particular district. If the lot of apportioned animals is killed before the end of the hunting season, then the hunt is shut down for that year.

isards

Izard hunting is not just a walk in the woods. It takes serious hiking and the chase can last a few days. The beautiful, elegant and fast wild goats rarely hang out below 6000 feet, except in the winter when there is snow and they come under the tree line to find food in the forest. Their weight averages about 60 lbs for a height of about 3 feet. They love to be on steep rock debris covered slopes, and often “perch” on top of a dramatic mountain peak. It is impressive to see them climb straight up these abrupt terrains with a fast and sure hoof. The izard is the totem animal of the Pyrenees.

There are good reasons why izards are protected. The more disconcerting problem is the outbreak of the strange “Border Disease Virus” (BDV), a worldwide virus usually affecting only domesticated animals, that was detected around 2001 in the izard population. The pestivirus Border disease virus, is closely related to Bovine virus diarrhea and Classical swine fever virus, not to be mistaken with the swine flu. At this point it is difficult to get accurate public information, but the general sense is that after the epidemic peaked around 2005, the situation has improved. It is still unknown why some areas of the Pyrenees are more affected than others. My area is one of the less affected ones. There is always a few braconnier –poachers—, who hunt off-season, preferably in the winter when the animals are more vulnerable and easier to track. They use forbidden sniper rifles with silencers. If they get caught they can serve jail time & pay high fines. Another problem talked about is that the deer, introduced into the Pyrenees only in the 1970’s, deplete the resources the izards survive on, especially in winter. I will refrain from discussing the polemic subject of animal introduction or reintroduction in that region; this is a very heated topic especially when it comes to the bear issue.

This being said, it’s been more than 10 years that I ate a leg of izard. My brother Pierre, a barbeque expert, had roasted it inside his fireplace hanging on a string, and that’s the way I’m going to do it too:

Two days ahead I take the leg out of the freezer. The night before dinner I immerse it in a marinade of red wine, onions, garlic, herbs, pepper and a touch of honey —the one Joseph collects from his bees. I also install the nail inside the top frame of the hearth of the fireplace. I wanted to have about 3 hours before Joseph and Paulette were to arrive, but I got delayed visiting my dad and doing errands in town. I have only a couple of hours. The priority is to start a roaring fire and get the leg going, I have no idea how long it will take. Remember, I have never done this on my own, though I draw heavily on my vivid recollections of that day I sat with my brother and watched the leg roast while we sipped wine by the fire and gave the leg a little push once a while. I must admit that I am a bit nervous although I am trying to underplay Pierre’s anxiety. Yes! I started a little late, but I will play with the adjustable length of the string and will prop the leg as needed to make the cooking as efficient as possible. I know how to do that! I make the spaetzle with fatback and dried cèpes —I had hoped for fresh ones but none were found while we were there, the terrain was too dry. The guests arrive. Pierre says “it’s gonna take for ever!” I ignore the comment and rush them into having apéritifs. Everybody is more relaxed after the first whisky! I sensed that Paulette was also a little suspicious of my undertaking. The leg is definitely roasting well and there is plenty of food to nibble on while we wait. We serve some sardine tartines and the delicious pâté de chevreuil —venison pâté—Paulette made, followed by fresh goat cheese & tomato toasts.
It is intense: one side of my brain is totally engaged in the conversation that reveals some aspects of my family history Joseph & Paulette know a lot about, and the other side is directly connected to the leg in the fire! I occasionally sit down for a sip of wine and a bite of pâté, but I am mostly standing next to the fire moving the leg around, brushing it with olive oil & garlic until it finally looks done. At which point we all gather around the fire, I poke the leg with a long knife and the verdict is unanimous, there is no blood running when I pull the knife out, which means the meat is cooked! Joseph masterfully carves the burgundy colored red meat, showing off his 20 years of Maître d’H experience —14 of which were spent working at my family hotel. We all eat a lot of meat. It is tender, moist, it melts in the mouth and it is not as gamy as I remember it.
I love the rare slices close to the bone. The red burgundy wine Joseph brought complements it beautifully (sorry I forgot to write down the info).

We are sated but …what about a little slice of Poubeau cheese? O yeah! Just a tiny piece to finish the wine! And we can’t possibly ignore Paulette’s scrumptious and light fondant au chocolat. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, now let’s wash it all down with a 25 year old Armagnac to make sure we digest well!
Merci Joseph, Paulette et Jean-Claude!

The party is over!

The party is over in the Pyrenees, we will return home tomorrow. I will post a few more things about my trip, but with much regrets it will be from New York State. Miles and I have to return early as Miles is being called to finish Muttnik.
Today we had our last concert in Peyragudes and I will post a few pix and videos later. We had a blast and after the concert as we had a drink at our favorite watering hole, “le Faisant Doré,” one of my brother’s friend paid me the funniest comment ever: “How come you speak English wich such a perfect accent and French with such a thick one!”. Yeah! go figure!

Anyhow, 2 days ago Pierre decided to go back to Bourg d’Oueil early after a day in Luchon to be able to stop for dinner at the Sapin Fleuri. We had a marvelous meal full of remiscences for me. This is what we had:

Potage de Légumes (both of us)
vegetable soup

Truite Meunière (Pierre)
Pan fried trout
Ramequin (Nicole)

Faux Filet (Pierre)
Truite Meunière (Nicole)

Tarte aux Fruits
Fruit Tart

Our wine was a simple clean & chilled Saumur Champigny (Cabernet Franc). This was a lovely way to say good by to Bourg d’Oueil. The Ramequin where definitely a wink to my grandfather’s version called “Le Ramequin Poste et Golf” ( a light a divine crust less quiche, remind me to give you the recipe. It will make a great low-cal brunch item). My father always said : Jeannot Toucouère (father and co-owner of the Sapin Fleuri) was one of the best cook they had at my family restaurant. The hotel-restaurant is now run by Jeannot (father) Olivier (son) & Sylvie (Olivier’s wife) and I even saw Adrien (their 3 year old son) helping out super efficiently in the kitchen! They are all very dear to me and eating there is always an emotional moment. I will have a last glass of wine and then close down the suitcase for tomorow early call. Can’ wait to be back!

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Category: Dinner