March 9, 2014 New Recipe: French/Danish Remoulade Sauce
Breakfast - Dungeness Crab
Dinner – Salad, Cioppino and Fallen Italian
Cloud cake
A day of eating and cooking wonderful food, almost.
We had discussed an appetizer for dinner and the only thing
we could come up with was to make some of the five pounds of shelled pecans
Sammie Singh gave me Friday from his 2014 crop.
Sammie Singh Jr. is one of my clients in the Lower Rio Grande Adjudication
who has organized several of the farmers into a Pre-1906 Claimant group to
protect their claims of early water use in the Valley, who is a pecan farmer
and raises wonderful paper shell pecans. So while I watched the news, Suzette found a
sweet and spicy pecan recipe and roasted up a skillet full of
pecans.
Here is the recipe:
After the news and the pecan cooking, at around 10:30 we
decided to eat the Dungeness crab we bought at Costco yesterday. I looked on line for recipes and found that
Mignonette Sauce and Remoulade Sauce were both French recipes and closely
related with a shallot and vinegar base and that remoulade used chopped sweet
pickles (cornichon). The site said that
Danish Remoulade is closely related to French Remoulade, except for the use of
pickled cucumber instead of cornichons.
We had eaten Mignonette Sauce in Brittany a couple of years ago with one
of those three tiered platforms of seafood and hated it because we were unaccustomed
to its vinegary, peppery bitterness. Since
I had a bowl of pickled shallots and cucumbers in the fridge I decided to combine
the recipe for French Remoulade Sauce with the Danish Remoulade recipe to make
a Remoulade without any of the bitter
vinegary, peppery flavor.
Recipe for French/Danish Remoulade Sauce:
I first made a Mignonette base. I soaked one- half diced shallot in about 1
Tbsp. of White Balsamic Vinegar for about fifteen minutes. I then added to that about 1/2 cup of Kraft
mayonnaise. Then I added about 1 tsp. of
Swedish Senap (sweet mustard), a dash of white pepper and salt, about two
Tbsps. of chopped pickled cucumber and 1/2 tsp. of sugar.
Suzette said, “What do you want to drink? I replied, “We usually drink champagne.” She replied, “Well Okay!
So I went to the basement and found a bottle of Gruet
brut. I chose brut and not the Blanc de Noir because I did not want the heaviness and darkness of the Pinot noir grape
juice to interfere with the light, delicate flavor of the crab. If you read my blog you will see that I often
choose less complex and wines with less tannin content for meals. The reason for that is, as a food writer
first, I like to let the flavors of the food reach my lips unaffected by the
wine. Of course the opposite is true
when I am eating a familiar heavy meal such as grilled steak. In those cases I am interested in exploring the
complexities of the wine choice, such as some new Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot
Noir I have found or when eating ham, I want to try a new or especially an old
Rosé from the cellar.
I had let the crab sit in the meat section of the fridge so
it could defrost, so when I took it from the fridge it was completely
defrosted. I cannot tell you how
wonderful this crab was. Its meat was delicate and fresh tasting with that
slight flavor of seawater. We steamed a bunch
of asparagus and toasted slices of the fresh baguette I had bought at the
Bosque Bakery yesterday. We enjoyed
dipping the big claw pieces of crab into the remoulade and made open faced
sandwiches by coating slices of warm baguette with remoulade and crab meat and
washing it down with champagne.
There was method in this madness. We needed the crab shells for our fish stock
for dinner’s cioppino. The recipe
recommended making a soup with crab juice.
Since we did not have any clam juice we decided to make our own clam
juice and decide the best way was to buy a crab and eat it and use its shells
and the bits of meat and tendon as fish stock.
So after breakfast we put the crab shells into a stock pot
with a chopped onion, two stalks of celery, the leftover prawn shells and bacon
from last night’s meal and a bay leaf and began simmering them.
We thawed out some shrimp and shelled them and added their
shells and their red roe to the stock pot later.
In a couple of hours we had a pretty good
tasting stock, although still rather delicate and watery.
Yesterday we shopped for Sunday dinner. We went to Costco at around 3:00 and bought
loaves of French Sourdough bread, a Dungeness crab, lemons, and two bottles of
Dry Creek ($10.99) and two bottles of Joel Gott ($9.69) Sauvignon Blanc.
Then after dinner at Debbie and Jeff’s we ran
into Sprouts at 9:45 p.m . and power shopped for ten minutes. We bought 1.25 lbs. of fresh halibut ($12.99/lb.)and
1 lb. of fresh corvina (Sea Bass, $7.99/lb.), two bunches of fresh asparagus
($.98/lb.), a tub of medium tofu ($1.19), three large tomatoes ($.88/lb.),
cream of tartar and 6 oz. of fresh blackberries.
We had invited Crystal and Doug Baker and Janis and Tom
LaFountain for dinner at 6:00 so while I rode the Southern Loop (15 miles)
until 4:30, Suzette set the table. When
I arrived in the kitchen after a shower at 5:00 we began cooking in earnest.
I diced six Roma tomatoes and Suzette diced several stalks
of celery and an onion and we put them into a pot with some of the fish
stock. Then we made a salad. Suzette spun a bowlful of fresh organic mixed
spinach and greens (Costco $3.99), while made a Tarragon Dijonaise Dressing.
Tarragon Dijonaise Dressing Recipe: I first squeezed the
juice of a small lemon into a bowl and added 1 tsp. of Italian White wine
vinegar and 1 tsp. of Herbs Provence, three cloves of finely chopped garlic and
1 large tsp. of French Dijon mustard. I
mixed those ingredients and then added about ½ cup of olive oil very slowly
while stirring constantly with a whisk to keep the emulsion blended. I tasted to see if it had a good flavor and
was not too vinegary or too oily and then added some salt and pepper to
taste. I still did not think the
dressing had a good flavor and said to myself, “This could use some tarragon
flavor.” So on a lark, I went to the
garden and found that the tarragon was blooming. I picked three or four stalks that were three
inches high and some garlic greens and brought them into the house and washed
them and chopped them and put them into the dressing. Now the dressing’s flavor was to my liking,
so I set it aside to mellow and went back to my prep of the salad. I was not finished by 6:00 when Janis and Tom
arrived so, while Suzette made gin and tonics with Fever Tree tonic, I sliced
radishes, red onion and tomatoes and dressed the salad with the dressing and then sliced
the PPI asparagus from brunch and tossed them on top of the salad. While I was working on the salad dressing,
Suzette was adding fish chunks and shrimp and scallops to the soup and then
went to the garage to fetch the mussels.
Soon Crystal and Doug arrived and we decided to all drink a
Fever Tree gin and tonic. So Suzette
made them while I was slicing tomato and Janis volunteered to fill and set
water glasses on the table. I went to
the basement with Doug and Tom and we discussed wine selection. Doug wanted to learn a little more about white
wine so we decided to drink three different Sauvignon Blancs and selected a 2012
Eric Montintin French Sancerre (Costco $18.99), a 2010 Merry Edwards’ Russian
River Valley ($35.00 at Costco in October 2012), and Joel Gott (Costco, $9.69).
The back label of the Eric Montintin
Sancerre stated, “Eric Montintin is a grower producer located in
Savigny-en-Sancerre, located just north of Sancerre, with its slope facing the
River Loire. This terroir produces wines
with citrus fruit notes and distinct minerality.” Like all good Sancerres, this one featured
elegant understated citrus flavors and minerality.
We opened the Sancerre and sliced the heated loaf of French
Sourdough bread and served those with the salad. I then returned to the kitchen to add the
mussels to the ciopinno. Many
of the mussels were dead, but while Suzette served the guests salad and I pick
through them and found about three dozen live ones and added them to the Cioppino
and then chopped and added the parsley and we were ready to serve. Suzette
served the soup and we drank he marry Edwards with it and then opened the Joel
Gott and tried it.
Everyone agreed that
the 2010 Merry Edwards Sauvignon Blanc was a very special wine. It was rated 92 points by Wine Spectator.
After dinner we served small wedges of the fallen cloud cake with fresh
black berries and garnished with a drizzle of blackberry coulis. There is something about how we constructed it
that made it fall. We need to work on
this problem. It will be solved. I think we need more flour.
By 9:30 everyone was ready to go home so we said goodnight.
Wine great, food okay.
Maybe next time we will hit greatness with the food also.
 |
| The Cioppino |
Janis and Tom brought a 200 ml. bottle of Tuscan Herb
infused olive oil packaged by the ABQ Olive Oil Company, which is new to me and
Crystal and Doug brought us a bottle of 2010 Le Colombier Domaine Cuvee “G” red wine from the Vacqueyras region
of the Southern Rhone Valley (50% Grenache and 50% Syrah). What
lovely gifts! Good food friends beget
good food gifts.
Bon Appétit
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