Thursday Kitchen: Test Running

While I'm not reliable when it comes to reading directions, tonight I decided to try a vegetarian test run on my gal pals of the dish I'm making Daddy for Fathers' Day. I don't really make up any recipes to share... or rather, I'm a lot like my grandmother. I "wing it" relatively well, but I don't write anything down. When I'm asked to do so (once in a successful blue moon) I really can't relay the information accurately to render the same results for someone else. Similarly in my grandmother's case, to this day, no one can make my favorite of her dishes quite like she did. It's been written down, but I'm sure she was guessing on the quantities and ingredients. We're getting closer to recreating her stuffing, but we're not there yet.

For Fathers' Day, I want to make classic Beouf Bourguignon from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, so, tonight I made Beans Bourguignon. Aside from the fact that I eat vegetarian food somewhat frequently, my best friend is a vegetarian and she was on my guest list (and beans are less expensive than beef cuts). The variation I have on this very French dish comes out of The Creative Vegetarian Cookbook by Courage Books.
It's not bad, as cookbooks go... there are a handful of mediocre recipes (vegetable soup, vegetable stir fry... you know... YAWN...) but then you have some gems like the Beans Bourguignon. It's obviously different, but the method is similar enough that when I was making it at 10pm last night, even though we'd had a decent meal of ouef en cocotte and beet salad, our mouths were watering at the aroma wafting from the oven. The scent is amazing and even the broth on its own is addictive for sopping with my homemade baguettes.

I prepared it last night because Beouf Bourguignon is decribed as being better the next day after it sits overnight in its juices. I wanted to play with this and figure out the "reheating" technique for serving.

Well, I still have some figuring out to do before Fathers' Day.

It wasn't cold, but it wasn't really acceptably warm either. My friends must have been hungry (or polite) because no one took me up on my offer to nuke their plates. I took advice from someone to put the dishes back in the oven with more liquid at about 250 degrees...

...I've got to stop taking advice and start doing the research.

It does pay, once in a great while, to take the advice of others'... usually when I desperately need it to work. For example, during Passover, about four hours before people were coming to share seder with us, I took my aunt's advice. She suggested that I put the lamb roast wrapped in foil with one cup of liquid into a cold oven, turn the dial to 500 degrees, and turn it off after one half hour. After that, I was warned to under NO circumstances open the oven door for three hours.

Sounds weird, right?

It was perfect.

Alas, that was not the case tonight. Since the mistake, I've read elsewhere that you actually need to heat an oven to 350 degrees... meaning you're actually cooking it again (so the adding more liquid thing was right so as not to dry out the food). This takes between 20 and 30 minutes. Apparently, restaurants use another method sometimes known as "flashing" (isn't that just delicious) where you take your pre-made food, leave it out until it's room temperature, then place it in a very hot oven (425-475 degrees) for only 2-10 minutes. From what I'm reading, the first method is the one I should have used.

Oh well.

The gals really enjoyed the spread I made. That was a smaller quantity though, so, though I made it last night. I put it right back into a pan this evening and turned the dial to just-under-medium heat. Worked like a charm! I borrowed that recipe from Kathleen Flinn's The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry (I'm not finished with it, but I'm enjoying her adventure through Le Cordon Bleu). The delectable temptations to follow included my homemade cream and berries ice cream, Jo's chocolate pudding cake, and cookies with almonds, cranberries, and chocolate pieces... Mmmm...

We eat pretty well when we get together.

I'll fudge it a little for Daddy Sunday night. I like to use the available vegetables from the local Farmers' Market for most of my cooking rather than getting some specific type of onion or mushroom for a recipe. I'm big on supporting local farmers (that's another entry for another day though) and I don't like wasting good vegetables. For example, rather than yellow onions, I used local spring onions (like very large scallions with small red onions at the bulb part). Also, rather than purchasing those precious "button mushrooms" from the grocery as tonight's dish requests, I used these lovely oyster mushrooms I found at the market Saturday. I'm not a mushroom connoisseur, and I'm sure a four/five star twerp would tell me how I'll bastardize Daddy's Beouf Bourguignon if I use these local mushrooms and onions... but, as the French would say, "Tant pis."

This is another reason though that I can't help people out. Even if I photo-copy the recipe I made for you, it won't taste the same when replicated because, chances are, I used the ingredients that were in season and available at the time.

Hope Daddy likes his Beef Stew.