Johanna: I Love Fried Bread

After last week's fiasco re: duck legs, it was an absolute joy to be able to find everything for this recipe so easily.  Asparagus, check!  Country loaf, check!  Prosciutto, check (I mean, srsly, my local grocery shop is called Romeo & Cesare's)!  And I even got my hands on some of those beautiful blue eggs with the brilliantly yellow yolks that I love so very much.  Everything fell into place so nicely this week.  No more classed-up Sandra Lee from me.

The trick about the asparagus, as Veronica mentioned in her post, really is quite fantastic.  I always just grab my paring knife and chop off what looks like it might be unpalatable.  This bending and snapping thing is a much more reliable (and easy!) method.

The asparagus grilled up nicely (though the lack of hood above our oven always causes the kitchen to get uber-smoky when we break out the grill/griddle) while I looked on in glee as the bread got nice and fried.  (We've made croutons before, but just with olive oil...so this was a little disconcerting / delicious).

My poached eggs were tasty, but ghosty.  I'm really hoping that I'll get better at it.  It's just so gross seeing threads of egg white floating around in a pot of vinegared water.

Final verdict: YUM!  Kamran and I didn't even bother to take our own portions off of the serving dish.  We just dove right in.

Veronica : Adventures in Poaching

Menu: Grilled asparagus with poached eggs, prosciutto, and torn garlic croutons

I thought that the Grilled Asparagus would be an nice weeknight recipe. Convenient, too, as I happened to have a handsome bunch of asparagus in my refrigerator. I tried really hard this time to get my mise-en-place, but I just couldn't. I have only enough counter space in my kitchen to accommodate my smallish cutting board and one, maybe two, receptacles for recently chopped items. I have no place to put tiny bowls, etc. Apologies to the team.

ANYWAY, skinny asparagus is one of my favorite veges and Mr. Keller mentions a helpful kitchen tip that I've lived by for awhile: slowly bend an asparagus stalk and where it snaps is where you should trim. All stalks will be tender and not at all woody that way. Brills! Next I oiled the little stalks and seasoned with coarse black pepper and kosher salt.

I left them to hang out on the parchment for a bit while I saw to the torn croutons. It all started very promising. I had a nice roll that I tore into

bite sized chunks. I slowly sauteed several garlic cloves to impart their tastiness into some oil. But then. Then I tossed the bread in the oil, ADDED BUTTER, and watched the bread soak it up. Every. Single. Drop. As the croutons slowly browned and eventually crisped, my horror morphed into exhilaration. They looked (and smelled) really good.

The last couple of steps in the process were pretty simple. The asparagus just needed to be grilled for a couple of minutes on each side, which was the perfect amount of time for me to also poach the eggs. When I dropped my first egg into the pot, I was immediately reminded of how I hate poaching eggs. I'm not good at it: They always end up so ugly, the whites all shredded up and ghostly.

all together now

your brain in a measuring cup

With all the parts now prepared, I was able to compose my plate. A little prosciutto here. A couple of piles of asparagus there. Strategically-placed eggs. Croutons everywhere! I ground up a little bit of extra black pepper on top because it always looks nice and I love black pepper. I was supposed to drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar on top of everything, but the dish did not need the oil and I don't really love balsamic. Also, I forgot. It did feel pretty fatty overall, so maybe some acid would have helped. If I make it again, I'll try not to forget the vinegar.

zero points for plating

All in all, there were a lot of components, but each of them reasonably simple to put together. Tasty, but very (too?) rich. I expect I'll make it again, but probably in a smaller portion as a starter (at a dinner party) or something. It was a little too decadent to have as an entree.

Unrelated Item:

Stars, they're just like Bearded Ladies

While in line at the deli counter to get prosciutto, I was behind SNL alum Rachel Dratch and her new baby. She ordered pancetta. Italian cured meats for all!

Johanna: Semihomemade Confit

I spent yesterday morning calling every butcher in the area and absolutely no one carried duck legs.  Who knew that they were so hard to find?  I would up at the grocery shop that carries all sorts of fancypants products and they only had duck breast, duck fat, and pre-confited duck legs.  (I mean, really, you carry venison but not duck legs?)  Boohoo.  So I grab a pre-confited leg and decided to at least make the salad.

The salad was pretty tasty!  Crisping the skin to make delicious fatty bits to sprinkle on top was a revelation -- I've never crisped skin myself and always appreciate it at restaurants.  It's so easy!  As for the rest of the recipe, I don't really have that much to report (um, it's a salad), but it came out nicely.  And I opted to top the whole thing with a poached egg (which I overdid a little).

See the crispy skin bits?

Anyway, this was kind of a bummer.  I don't even LOVE duck, but I'm really into the whole winter pickling, preserving, etc. thing lately and it would have been fun to move on from vegetables to meat.  If I do come across duck legs, I'll buy them and confit and report back here.

Tatiana: lentils > sweet potatoes

Lentil & Sweet Potato Soup

It's a truth universally acknowledged (er, by me and most people who know me) that I love lentils. I eat them all the time, sometimes in strange, weird combinations. I could subsist pretty happily for weeks on lentils and cheerios. And don’t pretend like you cringed at that combo. Delicious!

On the other hand, I’m sort of meh about sweet potatoes, except in fry form. I realize people write odes to them, but I’m just not a big potato person in general. Gorgeous color, antioxidants blah blah blah – sure. I could take them or leave them, and was in fact tempted to leave them off this recipe altogether. But I wanted to make the soup as Keller intended, so in went 1 1/2 lbs of potatoes

This recipe is pretty substantial. As I chopped the vegetables, I wondered whether I would have soup to last me all Fall (signs point to yes - behold my giant stockpot):

I’d been forewarned after other Bearded Ladies had trouble with the sweet potato chop. Raku's analogy

sweet potatoes : chop

as

the savage detectives : enjoy

made me laugh and laugh because seriously, how much did that book suck? Answer: SO MUCH.

Anyway, this is why I was especially psyched to come across these:

Does this count as semi-homemade?

Recipe notes:

• Both sachets and parchment lids are pretty inspired ideas! Thomas Keller really knows his stuff. I’ll definitely use both again. Going into this, I didn’t even know to look for cheesecloth in the baking supplies aisle. Here’s Larry modeling my first (practice) parchment lid:
• 

• Bacon is awesome. I actually substituted non-slab bacon, which as it's less thick needed much less time on the stove (it got crispy way before the allotted time)

• I substituted low sodium chicken broth for the chicken stock. This was mostly because I didn’t feel like making stock and because I came across the broth first at the store. It worked well, but I ended up adding extra salt, ha. I also used about a cup more broth than the recipe called for, because I wanted the soup to be more liquidy than stewy.

• Spanish pardina lentils were harder to find and more expensive than my regular green lentils, but were a nice change of pace. They're tinier, don't get mushy at all, and taste kind of nutty. I loved them.

• Cooking the bacon first (so that you can use the rendered fat for the soup base) is necessary but dangerous – it’s the perfect ready snack while the soup simmers endlessly. Even though I slightly overcrisped it, I had to stop myself midsnack multiple times so that there’d be some left for the soup.

The finished product (I completely forgot to buy cilantro for garnish):

This soup and some fresh crusty bread made really satisfying cold-day meal. I will definitely make it again, though (you guessed it) I'll leave out the potatoes next time.

Johanna: on the joys of bacon

I made this soup for Halloween and, oh my goodness, our apartment smelled like bacon until Tuesday.  How wonderful!  The smell of rendering pork is absolutely magnificent.  LOVE.

mmmm....pork fat

But, I get ahead of myself.  I couldn't find anything other than just regular old green lentils at Bishop's Orchards, the lovely grocery / apple orchard / pumpkin patch not too far from our house (all though we did buy two 24-pound pumpkins at Kamran's insistence), and I'm not sure how much that purchasing the correct lentils would have changed things.  I never knew that lentils could be so fancy!  But I think that everything turned out nicely despite this pedestrian substitution.

I agree with Raku: sweet potatoes are an absolute pain to chop up.  Despite having brand-new fancy knives that I am generally terrified of, I really struggled to handle the potatoes with any level of deftness.  My pieces weren't uniform and all I could think about was that if I was on Top Chef, my lack of skills could definitely land me on the bad side of judge's table.

Even though the potato pieces weren't even, they seemed to cook up nicely and were just the right texture in the soup.  I had to cook the lentils a bit longer than the recipe indicated, so maybe I should have added a bit more broth?  (I did when heating up the last batch of leftovers on Tuesday.) 

This soup is definitely something that I will make again.  We had some guests over for Halloween lunch and it was a big hit!  Even the two-year-old seemed to like it.  I totally forgot the cilantro, though (even though I bought some).  Ah well, next time.

P.S. The parchment lid was fun to make, too.