May 3, 2018 Lunch – Posole, stewed Chayote and Chard, and chili Relleno Dinner – Old Style Fricassee Chicken with salad and steamed asparagus
I had a challenge today, to cook dinner for five without Suzette’s help plus trying a new recipe.
I had bought 15 chicken thighs at El Super on Wednesday for $.97/lb.
I started working at 5:30 this morning. I took a break at 8:30 and ate a bio dynamic breakfast of granola, yogurt, and tropical fruit salad.
I then chopped an onion, two carrots, two stalks of parsley, a bay leaf, and two stalks of celery and put those ingredients in a pot of water with five of the chicken thighs at a low simmer for several hours to create a broth.
At 1:00 I ate a lunch of PPI duck Posole from last Christmas, some stewed Chayote and Chard with the last ½ of the chili Relleno from my lunch with Mike several days ago at Padilla’s and tzatziki. It was delicious and pretty healthy I think. At least it made me feel good.
I had invited Mike, Willy, Kylene, and Barry for dinner. I lay down at 4:20 for a nap but as soon as I had relaxed my breathing I realized that I had no bread for dinner, so I got up and drove to Bosque Bakery and bought a baguette. When I returned home I started cooking dinner at 5:00. I followed the recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
I will not bore you with all the steps, because there are lots . The two aspects of the recipe that intrigued me were 1) sautéing the white mushrooms in butter, lemon juice, and water to keep them from turning brown and 2) making a progressive sauce with the four T. of butter and 3 T. of flour sprinkled over the chicken and then adding stock to cook the chicken and then removing the chicken and thickening the cooking medium by adding a mixture of egg yolks and heavy cream to thicken the reduced cooking medium into a sauce. I love the logic of this type of French Cooking which adds successive layers of simple ingredients (in this recipe: mirepoix [celery, carrot, and onion], chicken, mushrooms, baby onions, butter, eggs, and cream) and different applications of heat (fricasseeing, stewing, and simmering) to release and combine the ingredients’ natural flavors to create an elegant finished dish. The cost of the ingredients probably did not exceed $.75 per serving. The cost of the two 10 inch diameter enameled casseroles will probably set you back $400 to $500.00, if you need to buy them for this recipe.
Here is the recipe:
minutes.
While the ingredients were simmering I cleaned, quartered, and sautéed the mushrooms and thawed a 1 lb. bag of cleaned baby onions from Trader Joe’s.
I then removed the chicken pieces from the casserole and added the mushroom cooking liquid to the cooking medium and turned up the heat to reduce the liquid to about 3 cups. I then mixed 3 egg yolks with about 2/3 cup of heavy cream in a bowl and Willy then ladled small amounts of the cooking medium into the egg and cream mixture until there was 3 cups of sauce.
The reduced cooking medium
Mike, Willy, Kylene, and Barry
I then put the 10 cooked chicken thighs I had removed into a new casserole and added the cooked mushrooms and pearl onions to the new casserole and ladled the sauce over the ingredients in the new casserole and shimmered the new casserole for about ten minutes to try to cook the pearl onions and
heat the dish.
Julia Child recommended asparagus tips, rice, and a strong White Côtes Du Rhone
I chilled a bottle of 2014 Domaine Guy Mousset Cotes Du Rhone Rose for pre-dinner sipping (Total Wine about $11.00) and a 2016 Famille Perrin Reserve White Cotes Du Rhone (Trader Joe’s $8.99).
When Willy was fricasseeing I snapped about 30 stalks of asparagus and put them in the steamer with water and started 1 ½ cups of basmati rice cooking by bringing 1 cup of water and 2 cups of chicken stock to a boil and adding the rice and covering the pot and reducing the heat to its lowest setting and cooking the rice for 30 minutes.
When I started the final simmer of the new casserole I turned on medium high heat under the asparagus to steam them, so they would be ready when the casserole was ready. I also put the baguette into a 400 degree oven when I started steaming the asparagus around 7:45.
Barry and Kylene arrived at 6:15 and I showed them the raised beds in the back yard filled with lettuce and asked them to pick lettuce and make the salad.
Mike arrived at 7:00 with two bottles of American Pinot Noir that cost about $30.00 each. Mike likes good Pinot Noir and he knows I like good Pinot Noir. One was a 2016 Stoller Family Estates, which I told Mike I had read about recently in Wine Enthusiast (“WE”). Here is the winery info:
Stoller Vineyards Dundee Hills Pinot Noir 2015
Pinot Noir from Dundee Hills, Willamette Valley, Oregon
Ratings
2014
WE91WW91WS90
2013
WS92WW91
Price $26 99
Others. 4.6 from 9 Ratings
Winemaker Notes
The nose opens with notes of preserved dark cherry, smoky flint, sandalwood, ripe red roses and exotic spices followed by more subtle notes of young raspberries and hibiscus. There is a herbal/savory quality that tethers all of the aromatics that is reminiscent of rosemary and lemon verbena. The palate is succulent and long carrying flavors of Bing cherry, rose water, and vanilla with dark chocolate and sea salt finish.
Pair with: cedar plank grilled salmon with tarragon aioli, pulled pork with cherry chutney and pickled onions, creamed morel mushrooms with shallots and hard cheeses, especially Comté.
The other looked equally wonderful, a 2016 Willamette Valley Vineyards Whole Cluster Pinot Noir that I will put down in the cellar.
I got out Franconia wagon wheel dinner and salad plates. Kylene plated the salad on salad plates and placed them on the patio table. Willy set the table. I then let everyone serve themselves rice, chicken fricassee and asparagus on the dinner plates.
Barry, Kylene and I drank the Perrin whit. Willy and Mike drank Stoller Pinot. I usually think of the Perrin white as a heavy bodied wine with its mix of Rousanne and Marsanne grape juices, but with tonight’s meal that harshness disappeared behind the wave of flavor of the heavy rich sauce.
We talked and Mike got to know Berry and Kylene. I learned that Mike had a friend who made large telescope mirrors and Barry did Dr. Andrew Weill’s film work. Pretty cool conversations.
After dinner a fetched the last half of a small wheel of Isney Ste. Marie Brie and the toasted baguette and we drank the last of the Stoller with Brie cheese and baguette. I liked the Stoller. It was exceedingly clean tasting, highly rated and from my second favorite Pinot growing area in the US., the Dundee Hills in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. My favorite Pinot region is Anderson Valley in Northern California.
After we finished the wine I fetched two bottles of grappa made from brunello grapes and a box of dark chocolate truffles from Trader Joe’s. One was the bottle of Reserva Grappa, Mike and Lisa brought us from their trip Italy about ten years ago, so it had great meaning to me and Mike to share this grappa and gave the dinner a special finish.
We tried the two different grappas. The Knight Gabrielle was great (Total Wine $34.99); the Reserva (Altefino) Grappa that Mike and Lisa gave us produced by Nannoni Grappa in Paganico, Italy was the smoothest most floral smelling and tasting grappa I have ever tasted; incomparable.
What a great finish for the pleasant three course dinner, a chocolate and grappa.
After I finished 3 hours of cooking this dish I realized what Julia Child inferred when she said this is a popular Sunday meal for French families. It takes a family effort for several hours to muscle this dish to the finish line. Perfect for a Sunday when a family spends the day together. Willy showing up to help me made a big difference.
Bon Appetit
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