Brave New Kitchen

So after a bit of a whirlwind week of moving to my new apartment and travel to Vegas for business I am finally back in New York! 

Unfortunately I wasn't able to explore Vegas' culinary side due to long tiring days and a cold/sore throat that required nursing and created a limited appetite. I did have a crêpe at Paris Las Vegas-- the "Île Saint-Louis" (of course): ham, mozzarella and basil topped (not sure why..) with béchamel. Tasty, but not the best crêpe ever!

Tonight I enjoyed some simple but real cooking in my new kitchen. I've been hungry for a full-on breakfast and the baguette I bought yesterday was already stale -- voila! French toast! I like to have a little bit of everything especially if I do breakfast at dinnertime, so I also made scrambled eggs with a little colby jack cheese and some fresh red and green grapes on the side. 

My new kitchen presents some challenges and some definite benefits. The space is much smaller than my former kitchen and the my new counter is also the dining table. This will be the most challenging change for me. The oven is full size with a gas powered range, but one of the pilot on the front corner burner is out and is therefore unusable (for now)-- no biggie. My roommates provide great pots & pans at my disposal. Also, my mom got me two great all metal all-clad pans so now I can finally sear my meat and cook it off in the oven in the same pan retaining all those luscious drippings! 

Fortunately with the small kitchen my new roommates do not tend to cook! One of the many ways the three of us are a good fit. I hope they will enjoy my cooking! 

Back to work tomorrow and planning to hit the Union Square market on Saturday to get some good veggies. Any cooking suggestions for the coming week and weekend? 

I'm going to watch the True Blood premiere on Sunday evening and would love to bring something fun and vampire-y to share with my friends. Any ideas good enough to sink our fangs into? 

Also, who is enjoying the new Cooking Channel? I haven't watched it much yet (ridiculously limited channels at the hotel in LV!) but will start DVRing some shows. Open to suggestions! 

Glad to be back!

Conjuring my own memories --- Making Ratatouille

In the movie "Ratatouille" Remy makes the food critic Anton Ego a dish of ratatouille which quickly takes him back via taste memory to when he was a little boy, hurt himself and his mommy made him warm soothing vegetable stew. For me, the first time I had the dish was in Paris while staying at the Foyer la Vigie. The dinners we were served were always a bit questionable and sometimes just inedible, but we had enough to eat and got to see some French cuisine a la cafeteria. The ratatouille was just fine though! Remy's always looks so delicious and chic that I knew I would have to make it myself someday. Tonight I set out with zucchini, eggplant, tomatoes, and red peppers in tow to make my first! There are a couple ways to make ratatouille. Most of them are just stewed stove-top which makes it a very easy dish for anyone to make. I consulted a couple recipes before deciding how to make it. I wanted to make a version that would turn out as decadent looking as Remy's and I found someone who claimed to be giving the "official" movie recipe online but it was far too involved and time consuming so I opted for a rustic stew version from Judith Jones' The Pleasures of Cooking for One. Mirelle Guillano's (the author of French Women Don't Get Fat) was a stove-top version, that used sliced vegetables instead of chunks. Her's said the vegetables had to cook for 2 hours compared to Jones' which took me about 40 minutes to make. The dish is very easy and enjoyable to make with superbly satisfying results!

The stew is very rich and quite delicious on its own. Best served with a chunk of fresh French bread with a bit of butter. I made enough for about three single servings so I froze two servings in sandwich bags. One serving I enjoyed with my friend Jocelin with herbes de provence roasted chicken breast and rice (since split in two would not be enough). The rice is definitely a goo choice to serve the stew over (and how I was served it at La Vigie). The third serving I enjoyed tonight with just a cut-up hot dog-- my way of celebrating the Yankees home opener!!

All in all ratatouille is delicious, easy to make, wonderful to enjoy, and great to share. Definitely going to be one I will make over and over again and perfect to my liking over the years.

What came first: the chicken or the egg?! (the mushrooms!!)

After multiple sources of inspiration about poached eggs, I began to think of them as silky and appealing though I had yet to have them. The March MS Everyday Food "How To" is all about poaching eggs. One evening, watching some late night programming, dissatisfied with whatever I had (or had not) eaten for dinner I decided why not try to poach my first egg!

I did and the result was exactly the silken smooth goodness Julie Powell raved about after enjoying her FIRST egg ever -- prepared by poaching in red wine, a la Julia Child, of course.

The following evening I prepared a batch of duxelles to keep in the freezer, using Judith Jones' good advice, and decided to prepare some chicken legs (in the duxelles pan) and make a pan sauce with chicken stock and some of the mushrooms and serve it over some boston lettuce with a poached egg. Very satisfying!

The more I cook the more I learn. End results for a lot of food preparation seem so impressive that without ever knowing the technique they can be intimidating to even imagine cooking. Again, fearlessness in the kitchen is one of the best tools any chef can have! The worst that can happen usually won't and the worst that is likely to happen is that one prepares something inedible. Trial & error-- without fear!!