Mom's Retirement Celebration: A Very French Dinner

This past Friday was my mom's last day of work, after a long and fruitful career as a preschool teacher.  She is now a grandmother, and with my dad planning to cut back his work load in the immediate future, she decided that the timing was right for her to retire.

Not wanting to let a celebratory occasion go by with out a celebratory meal, I invited my folks over on Saturday for a French dinner.

My original plan was to attempt mom's favorite dish, beef wellington, which she does not get to eat more than once a year.  If you have never experienced this treat, beef wellington consists of a fillet minion, coated in pâté de foie gras encased in puff pastry.  It may be the most delicious way I have encountered to eat beef.  However, when I invited mom, knowing me as she does, she made one request, which was that I not make anything too caloric.  Damn it all.

Now, if I may digress, I shall explain how the meal that followed came to be.  In the summer of 2010, my family went to Europe for the wedding of a young lady who is like my other sister.  Her name is Cindy, and she came from Switzerland to live with my family for a year when I was about ten years old.  We have kept in close contact with her ever since.  Prior to her wedding in Zurich, my parents and I spent a week in the south of France.  This was my first and only trip to the culinary Mecca, but if I can help it, I will see that it is not my last.

The food in France blew my mind.  It was like nothing I had ever experienced.  Walking on the streets, everywhere I looked, every dive restaurant, every corner cafe, every little place - EVERY ONE OF THEM was a fine French bistro.  Every single piece of food that I saw in every shop window and on every passing plate, they all made me salivate.

French cooking uses only the freshest ingredients, and the society is set up in such a way that all food for sale is local.  There appeared to be no corporate food industry, no large grocery stores with food shipped from another part of the world.  Instead, food came from the outdoor markets, and the markets were staffed by farmers and artisans who grew, prepared or cultivated the goods themselves.  No food was processed or commercialized.  There was only produce and handmade foods.  Everything was specialized.  If you wanted bread, you had to go to a bread bakery, and if you wanted pastry then you had to go to a patisserie bakery.  Fruit was from the fruit seller, and fish from the fisherman.  This was such a radical departure from what I grew up knowing in the United States.  So many Americans naively believe that their food originates from the grocery store.  This way of thinking, this disregard for the origin of their food, this is why American society is so far removed from a local-supply food system.  The quality of the food and of Americans' health pays the price for this indignation.

The structure of the food system was the greatest revelation that I took away from France.  But the meals that I ate also left an indelible impression and acutely affected my own cooking style.  The single greatest cooking lesson that I ascertained in France was the potential of salads.  Two salads in particular opened my mind to what could be done to turn a salad into a complete meal.  And yes, I took pictures:

 Minced Veal with Herbs de Provence Stuffed Vegetables with Arugula Salad

 Duck Three Ways Salad

With Duck Breast Slices, Seared Duck Kidneys, and Duck Liver Pâté

The idea of throwing flavorful meats, simply prepared, on top of a pile of greens seems so basic.  But that it was such an obvious thing to do, and that the results were so magnificent was what impressed me.  Forgive me for generalizing, but men in my experience do not customarily order salads for their main course, lunch or dinner, at least not in the United States.  Women, who are on the whole more concerned about calories and their figures, are much more likely to have just a salad for a meal.  The salads that I had in France took the whole notion of "just a salad," and threw it out the window.  It proved to me that there is no reason why a salad cannot be a star at a dinner table.  It can be beautiful, it can be flavorful, and it can be filling.  Here are two other salads that I enjoyed in France:

 Salad with Hard Boiled Egg, Corn, Tomatoes and Mushroom

And Crepes (All Three Plates Were Shared)

 Salad with Pink Pepper Corns and Fresh Cevre on Croutons

When I returned to the States, I tried to implement what I had learned into practice.  Below is a Frenched rack of lamb I prepared with Dijon mustard and herbs, atop an arugula salad with beets in a sesame sauce.

 Dijon Glazed Rack of Lamb and Arugula Salad with Beats and Sesame

Then, a weekend lunch, my variation of a Nicoise Salad, with hard boiled egg, tuna, tomatoes, cucumbers, red onion, and raisins in an herbed lemon vinaigrette.

  Salad Nicoise

I took what I learned in France, and I did my best to incorporate it into my own cooking.  Now that the warm weather is upon us, and fresh fruits and vegetables are once again locally abundant, I hope to prepare many healthy salad meals for the girls and myself.

Now back to my mom's celebratory dinner. 

I decided that in order to keep things relatively healthy, I would attempt to recreate a salad dinner that I had enjoyed in Cannes, France.  The first salad pictured on this post was the main course: the minced veal with herbs de Provence stuffed vegetables with arugula.  For an appetizer, I had a country style pâté, and for desert, a chocolate layered/mouse/cake thing - pretty wonderful meal. 

For Mom's retirement meal, I bought a pre-made country style pâté.  Sorry to disappoint the readers who expected me to make it myself (I'll try some day soon).  Warm crusty bread, on which to spread the meat, is the most traditional accompaniment for pâté.  It also may be served with mustard (Dijon, grainy or both), and some kind of marmalade or fruit preserve.  Pâté can be categorized as a type of charcuterie, which is the fancy name for meat that has been salted, smoked or otherwise cured.  It is at its essence just a dressed up, spreadable variation of your mom's meatloaf.  Charcuterie is traditionally served with various accoutrements.  Some examples include dried fruit, nuts, cheese, and pickled foods.  For me, the appeal of charcuterie is twofold: 1) the savory accentuated flavor of the meat, enhanced by the curing process, and 2) playing with the accoutrements, combining flavors so that each bite is different.  For my pâté, I went all out with accoutrements.  

 

Country Style Pork Pâté with Accoutrements

Clockwise from top: pâté and microgreens, crusty bread, walnuts, Dijon mustard, 

Manchego cheese, dried currents, corniches, fig jam, edible flower

For the main course, I did my best to recreate the stuffed vegetables.  But for a few reasons, which I will not go into, I decided against baking the meat and vegetables together.  Instead, I cooked the ground veal on the stove top along with the herbs, some diced shallots, and a little brandy.  I then "stuffed" or really topped the  roasted vegetables with the veal.  I roasted yellow zucchini, eggplant, portabello mushrooms, yellow pepper, and (for my mom who can't have peppers) a vidalia onion.  I put four "stuffed" vegetables on each plate with a pile of arugula and micro greens, and topped everything with a simple salad dressing of olive oil and aged balsamic vinegar. 

Minced Veal with Herbs de Provence "Stuffed" Vegetables

With Arugula and Micro Green Salad and Aged Balsamic Vinaigrette

Roasted "Stuffed" Vegetables: 

Eggplant, Vidalia Onion (above), Yellow Pepper (below), Zucchini Squash, Portabello Mushroom

We indulged in a bubbly bottle of Moscato with the meal, and for desert, a chocolate chip, walnut banana bread, baked by my mother.  A good time was had by all.

Apologies to my readers for such a long post today.

And

Congratulations to my mom on entering this new chapter of her life, and for her fruitful and fulfilling career! 

It's Too Darn Hot

This week brought a terrible heat wave across much of the country, and my part of Connecticut was no exception.  Our apartment has no air conditioning, and the air flow from one end of the house to the other is agonizingly stagnant.  Heat causes physical discomfort as well as mental strain, and Vanessa and I found ourselves arguing over nuances of fan positioning and the mechanics of air airflow and temperature change.  So stupid! 

It was really, just too darn hot for June.  On the second day of the heat wave I managed to get away for a hike and swim with my friend Jackie, visiting home from the Peace Corps in Honduras.  We timed the outing perfectly in a respite between a pass-over thunder storm and a huge downpour that engulfed the area for the rest of the evening.  It was so nice to be in water on such a hot day.  We swam in a small natural pool, formed under a tiny waterfall in a local river, a place that I have returned to year after year since I was in high school.

Vanessa coincidentally, was also visiting a best friend of hers that, like me, she had not seen for a year.  Her visit required more of a trip than mine, and her car is insufferable in the heat.  Not only does her air conditioning not work, but the driver's window does not open!  The poor girl came home and collapsed. 

Now eventually this story needs to get to some food, right?  Well, here it comes.  I did not want to cook.  I did not want to turn on the stove for any significant period of time, and I certainly did not want to turn on the oven at all.  So what does one make when one is drained, tired, and wants to avoid the heat?

Pesto.

My herb garden has been more or less coming along these last few weeks; some herbs are healthy but slow to grow, some are deteriorating, and others (my chervil) have flat out died.  Fortunately, the most important herb in the garden, the basil, has taken off.  In the pouring rain that marked the end of the heat wave, I went out in my yellow raincoat, and snipped sprig after sprig of basil.  My basil is doing so well, that I daresay I could make pesto three times this week, and not hinder the plant's growth.

Fettuccine Rigate con Pesto

Dinner was delicious.  It sure as hell felt like summer, so it was refreshing to eat as if it were, nice and light.  The pesto, for those who care, was as basic as pesto gets: basil, toasted pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and grated parmesan cheese.  Very little actual cooking was done, just boiling water for pasta and toasting some nuts - everything else just came together in the food processor.

Thank God the heat is now over!

Indonesian Chicken

Last Wednesday I cooked some skinless chicken breasts in an Indonesian-style coconut curry.  When asked what she wanted done to the meat, Vanessa requested Indian food, so I looked through an Asian cookbook, and figured this was culinarily close enough.  It also happened to sound really delicious. 

I have recommended this cookbook before on this blog, but I really cannot say enough good things about it.  In fact, click here to buy it - you really should.  There are sections in the book on regional foods from China, Indonesia, Singapore/Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Laos/Cambodia, Vietnam, Korea, Japan, India/Pakistan, Burma, and Sri Lanka.  It calls for authentic spices and ingredients, not premade sauces or spice mixes.  Many recipes may be difficult if you do not have an overstocked pantry, but there are so many tantalizing recipes and pictures that it may encourage you to try new things.  I have certainly learned a great deal from this book.

For the dish that I made, which was a slight modification from the book's recipe, I blended onion, garlic, ginger and a little water into a paste in a food processor.  Then I cooked this in a pan with some coconut milk, turmeric, coriander, white pepper, salt, sriracha chili sauce, and ponzu (a Japanese citrus sauce that I used instead of the called for kaffir lime leaves).  I placed the chicken breasts, whole, in this mixture, and cooked them over a low heat for about forty minutes.  Then I removed the chicken, caked with chunks of onion sauce, and seared them on a grill pan to caramelize.  I reduced the sauce and pored it over the meat on the plate.  To go with this, I made some cardamom infused jasmine rice, with green peas and almond slivers.  I also heated up some frozen naan to help soak up the sauce.  Everything was topped with diced scallion and fresh cilantro from my herb garden.

Indonesian-Style Coconut Chicken

Cardamom Infused Jasmine Rice and Naan

Admittedly, this meal was lacking in vegetables.  I always try to cook a protein, starch and vegetable in every meal, and I dropped the ball on this one (the few peas mixed with the rice really should not count).  Everything was tasty though, so no one minded.

Another picture that I wanted to share, entirely unrelated, is of this amazing sandwich that I had last weekend in Florida.  Vanessa and I went to Amelia Island with my family for my cousin's wedding.  We had a great mini-vacation on the beach and at various wedding-related parties.  For lunch one day in the town of Fernandina Beach, we ate at a place called LuLu's.  Below is my fried soft shell crab sandwich, which was AMAZING!!!!