December 22, 2012 Lunch - French Onion Soup and Dinner – Roast Duck with Orange Sauce and Braised Cabbage and Blanched Carrots and Corton Grand Cru

December 22, 2012  Lunch -  French Onion Soup  and Dinner – Roast Duck with Orange Sauce and Braised Cabbage and Blanched Carrots  and Corton Grand Cru

At around 9:00 a.m. I started making my favorite chocolate dessert for the Christmas Eve Open House.

It is a chocolate baked pudding:

10 egg whites

˚4 egg yolks

1 Tbsp. flour

1/2 cup of sugar

½ lb. butter

1 tsp. Grand Marnier

½ cup of chocolate chips

2 oz. cocoa 

You melt the butter and chocolate.  Then you add the ½ cup sugar to the melted chocolate and butter mixture.  Then in a separate bowl you place the 10 egg whites and 4 yolks and 1 Tbsp. of flour and mix well (I used the Kitchenaid).

Then you fold the chocolate mixture into the egg and flour mixture and pour it into a buttered 2 quart bowl and place that in a heated baine marie and cook in a 350˚ oven for 50 to 60 minutes.

Crème Anglaise - Then I took the 6 egg yolks I had separated to an enameled sauce pan and whisked them with 1/3 cup of sugar while I scalded 1 cup of cream and 1 ½ cup of milk in an enameled sauce pan with ¼ cup of roasted coffee beans and ½ vanilla bean cut in half lengthwise.  The coffee beans and vanilla bean released their flavor into the milk as it heated  to just the point of boiling, at which point I stopped the process and et the scalded milk cool and then poured it as I stirred it slowly into the egg and sugar mixture while I stirred it with a whisk.

Then I put the milk and egg mixture on a low heat and stirred it for about an hour until the liquid coated the spoon a bit rather than running back into the sauce.  I could have turned up the heat and the process would have gone faster, but there is a greater danger of the custard clotting at a higher temp.

The original recipe calls for 5 eggs and 8 oz. of chocolate, so is much easier.  When I am really inspired and separate the egg whites and whip them until stiff which give a more soufflé like feel to the dessert.

Shortly after I started Suzette came into the kitchen and started making her squash casserole, by chopping and blanching the celeriac (celery root and roasting the squashes in the oven after I had cooked my chocolate dessert, but by 10:30 a.m. we has both finished and we decided to try to finish off the PPI French Onion Soup from Thursday (Julia Child’s recipe) I made with the PPI  standing rib roast bones and meat plus two onions and Suzette got out the family’s old brown glazed French soup crocks and we heated the soup and then filled the crocks and laid slices of country style French bread on top and then laid slices of Swiss Gruyere on top of the bread and broiled it in a 500˚ oven until the cheese melted.  We drank ginger tea with the soup, since Suzette has a cold.

After lunch we drove to Los Lunas for the opening of the Camino Real Winery on Tome Hill Rd.  They bottle ten different wines made from about five different grapes (Chambourcin, Vidal Blanc, Riesling, Muscat, and Leon Merlot) raised on 2 ½ acres of land in Tome and Barbera grapes purchased from growers in Corrales.  The Chavez family that owns the vineyard has planted another 2 or 3 acres next to their existing property with the same grape types, so soon they will be making more wine.

After tasting all the 10 wines, we bought three bottles of wine and went home by way of the La Montanita Coop to buy Israeli couscous and another celeriac for Christmas Eve and a red cabbage for dinner.

Shortly after we arrived home, Billy and Elaine and Rebecca arrived. For dinner we had thawed out four duck halves.  We chopped cabbage and then six carrots and started braising the cabbage Hungarian style in olive oil and cumin when Suzette put the duck halves into a 400˚ oven for 10 minutes and then reduced the temp to 350˚ for 20 minutes more.  When the cabbage had softened Suzette added apple cider vinegar and sugar so it would be sweet and sour. 

I suggested a bottle of French Riesling , but Billy wanted red wine so we went to the basement and he selected a bottle of 1996 Corton Premier Cru from Burgundy that was produced by the Doufoulet family with whom we stayed in Nuit St. Georges when we visited France with Mother in 2000.   It was sedimented but incredibly smooth with no rough edges whatsoever, a truly beautiful bottle of wine.

 Bon Appetit