My Blog

SAT 1 MAR

Lesson 5: Summer Salad, Fish Stew and Sponge Cake By Marcelo Calbucci

    For the first time we did lunch on Sunday instead of dinner on Saturday and I think it work out better, because we don't feel so tired at the end of the meal. On the other hand there is just so much that can be done in the morning, which is critical for foods that must be prepared just hours before serving.

 

    The recipes were:

• Summer Harvest Salad (Salade Messidor)
• Fish and White-Bean Stew (Cassoulet de Poissons)
• Sponge Cake with Crème Anglaise (Biscuit de Savoie, Crème Anglaise)

 

 

The Cooking

 

    This time I had to compromise on three fronts.

 

    The salad was quite simple. It was the first time I cooked artichokes by trimming the leaves first. Usually I cook as a whole and eat the base of the leaves as well. The first compromise of this lesson was the mayonnaise. The recipe called for a home-made mayonnaise with Dijon mustard. There was two pregnant and I couldn't serve that because the base for mayonnaise is raw egg yolks.

 

    The cool part was blanching the tomatoes to remove the skin. I  didn't know it was that easy, but dropping them in boiling water for 10 seconds or so and then quickly moving them into cold water (so they don't cook). It works amazingly well.

 

     The main dish was very promising, with onions, tomatoes, carrots, white beans and fish. The second compromise of the night was that I couldn't find monkfish. I tried 3 different markets, but they were all out. Instead, I used Halibut Cheeks. I left the white beans in the water for about 24 hours, so they were relatively fast to took (less than 1.5 hours). The third compromise of the night was the tomato and onion mixture to go into the stew. Since this is not tomato season, they were pretty tasteless, so I decided to add a can of diced tomatoes.

 

    Finally, there was the dreaded desert, which so far is 0-4 against me. The Sponge Cake was so thick that was near impossible to spread it on the pan. I wonder if anyone at Cordon Bleu ever followed the recipe instructions they wrote. The Crème Anglaise was very easy to make. The hard part was to wait for it to thicken (I think I had the fire too low).

 

The results

 

    Contrary to what I was expecting, the salad was not heavy because of the mayonnaise. The artichoke bottoms were excellent and a bit more firm than you usually find on cans, which I really liked.

 

    The Cassoulet was also very good. According to Jordana it’s the best dish I’ve done to date! The topping of the Cassoulet didn’t look as crispy – with the bread crumbs – as it should have been but it wasn’t a problem. The white-beans with tomato sauce and the fish were all near perfect seasoning (not under-salted like many of my previous dishes). This Cassoulet felt like a perfect dish for a Sunday family lunch.

 

    Finally, the desert had some issues (again!). The Sponge Cake was neither a cake nor a biscuit, it was something in between. However, one of the persons on the table, which lived in France for a year said it was quite common that kind of hard dry cake with Crème Anglaise in France. So, I probably did it right, but the taste was not great.

 

 

Technical Data:

 

• Guests: Alfredo, Audrey, Roger, Dana 
• Total cost: $100 (Artichokes are quite expensive this time of the year)
• Item hard to find: Monk Fish (substituted with Halibut Cheeks). 
• Utensils bought: Gratin dish ($20), Flour Sifter ($7), Small Whisker ($3), Cake Pan ($17).
• Appliances bought: none 
• Best Dish: Fish and White-Bean Stew 
• Worst Dish: Sponge Cake with Crème Anglaise 
• Accompanying wines: Patianna, Sauvignon Blank, Mendocino, 2005 (USA).
   

Score:

 

Recipe	Ingredients	Preparation	Cooking	Taste (1-5)	Do it again?
Summer Harvest Salad	Very Easy	Medium (45min)	Easy (30min)	4	Likely
Fish and White-bean Stew	Medium	Medium (45min)	Medium (3h)	4.5	Very Likely
Sponge Cake w/ Crème Anglaise	Very Easy	Easy (20 min)	Medium (30 min)	3.5	Maybe

Table Legend: Ingredients - How hard to find them; Preparation - Cutting, assembling, washing, etc.;
Cooking - Roasting, frying, searing, etc.; Taste - 1=inedible, 2=edible, 3=good, 4=great, 5=OMG;
Do it again? - How likely would I do it again (based on cost, time and result).