welcome to Maison Mocque...a 4-star bistro! white tablecloths, fine china, and the finest silver and crystal.
actually, i was wondering if anyone here likes to cook and what their favorite dishes are.
what's your speciality? and if you don't enjoy cooking, what do you enjoy ordering?
tempt us here! what kind of cook are you?
these are my favorites...prime rib, herb-roasted medium rare, with yorkshire pudding or popovers.
leg of lamb, marinated in red wine with lots of garlic inserted into the flesh, and dressed with rosemary from the garden. i do NOT like it pink like some people do.
baked stuffed lobster! my stuffing is a well-kept secret. it's quite savory, and you may have the recipe for wads of cash.
and fettucine alfredo! rich, creamy, fattening as hell. accompanied with chunks of chicken or shrimp. mmmmmmmmmm
In all seriousness, I think people are either blessed with the cooking gene, or not. I've tried to become interested in it but, it's impossible. I've bought popular, bestselling cookbooks, beautiful cookware & gadgets, I've even taken the time to watch cooking shows, nothing intrigues me. I'm just flat out not interested.
I cheat & buy stuff up in Little Italy for many of my entertaining needs.
i don't think i was born with a cooking gene either, but i had an Italian grandmother and learned to love great food from her, as well as my Dad who was world-traveled and appreciative of excellent world-class food. my Mom a southern lady, so i had wonderful southern food growing up. then i started following Julia Child, and that was it, i tried everything she had on her programs! from pastry to breads to banquets. i do believe God took Julia to cook for Him.
or Julia IS God.
then i found Williams-Sonoma and i shop them like other women shop clothes!
Williams-Sonoma ® www.williams-sonoma.com
[/size]Cooking--did someone say cooking??? Hey..I here there is a really great food forum over on another site. Run by the coolest person ever to boil a pot of water!!!
Anyway, I have some neat recipes, and with enough arm twisting I may be talked into sharing.
But first....a lesson on how to dance with a turkey..by LCs favorite chef.
you are familiar with my williams-sonoma obsession/addiction QB...i have to give you a great little tip about knives. i have a fortune in my knives, all high end super expensive. but today i ordered some new little knives made by Kuhn...they are very inexpensive, i mean cheap! and sharp and slick as hell! i ordered several at amazon since W-S has them on back order. these are going to be must-have little boogers!
they come in lots of shapes, sizes and colors. for different purposes.
Cool knives. My husband likes buying knives. Do these have ceramic blades? They kind of look it. Rock got a couple ceramic blade paring knives, and they work really well.
no, not ceramic. but coated to be non-stick. have hubby check them out at amazon, there is a good variety of kuhn. he'd go batshit looking at the cutlery on W-S!
oops, am i spamming?
they are really cheap! especially compared to my German beauties!
Maison Mocque will be recreating this dessert from Serendipity in N.Y.
yes, we know it's obscene.
The Frozen Haute Chocolate is officially recognised by Guinness as the world's most expensive dessert @ £15,730.
and is grand in every way.
'We take a baccarat Harcourt crystal goblet for the Haute Chocolate, but in this case there is a 18 carat gold and white diamond bracelet attached to the neck .
the goblet is laced with 23 carat edible gold.
is there any ice cream in there?
'In addition to that we add 14 of the world rarest and most expensive cocoas that come from Africa and South America.
'We then add milk to the mix, add ice cubes and place the different cocoas in the blender for 30 seconds.
'We then add whipped cream and shavings from the world's most expensive truffle, the La Madeline au Truffle, which costs £1,573 ($2,500) a pound.
'On top of that goes five grams of 24 carat edible gold and the dessert is served with a £8,800 ($14,000) jewel encrusted spoon, that the customer can take home along with their diamond encrusted bracelet.'
Went out to dinner yesterday and had a chocolate martini..it was quite good. Had vanilla vodka and Kahula. Food was OK...but I would definatly go back for the drinks
With flavor so deep it'll drop your voice an octave, this stuff is, well, the bomb
A version of this story appeared, in a different form and in a past life, on gourmet.com
Once, in culinary school, I walked in on a heated argument between two men about ratatouille, the kind of conversation that can only ever happen in cooking school. One of these men, Bill Philbins, was a cook with four-star pretensions, and he went on about how it should be made by cooking all the vegetables separately and combining them the end. And, I'm sure, served on bone china with white gloves to a table with purse stools for the ladies.
I think I made fun of him to his face. Ratatouille is supposed to be a stew, a what-the-hell-are-we-going-to-do-with-all-this-stuff kind of thing. Summer's ending, you're knee-deep in tomatoes and summer squash, and you throw it all in a pot. Bingo.
But somewhere along the line, Philbins got to me. And so I stood in my kitchen the other day for something like four hours, sweating tomato juice, and in the end, well, it was the BOMB. It wasn't a stew, but more like roasted vegetables bound by a tomato-onion jam that was so deep it would drop your voice an octave. It was absolutely worth getting into a fight over.
The key isn't really separating the vegetables, it's that tomato base. And the key to the base is time -- a long, long time. I love the freshness of tomatoes more than anyone, but there's some serious magic that happens when you put those things through the wringer and cook the hell out of them, condensing and darkening their sweetness, compacting their rich, meaty umami until it's weapons-grade concentration. Forget tofu, a superb tomato is the great equalizer between meat eaters and vegetarians.
The point of this recipe isn't to follow it slavishly. If you want more of this, got less of that, go for it. Hate shallots? Skip them. The only thing I insist you do is block off some time on your calendar and hang out with your vegetables for an afternoon -- the low, slow cooking is what makes it knock your momma's bonnet off.
Weapons-grade ratatouille
Makes a boatload, nearly half a gallon, of very intensely flavored stuff
Ingredients
1 head garlic, minced
3 shallots, minced
1 large onion (about 12 ounces), minced
½ cup of olive oil (yes, that much. Summertime is living it up time.)
A couple more glugs of olive oil. Hell, just keep the bottle handy.
Salt and pepper
2 large red peppers, puréed in the food processor
4 pounds of very good regular field tomatoes, or fancy heirlooms if you're rich. Just make sure they're the kind you eat a piece of ... and then involuntarily eat another piece of a minute later. Oh, and purée them in the food processor too.
2½ pounds of summer squash and zucchini, ½-inch dice
1½ pounds of eggplant, diced into ½-inch cubes
Thyme and basil to taste
Directions
Start by cooking the garlic, shallot and onion in the ½ cup of olive oil over medium-low to low heat in a heavy pot so that they soften and give up their liquid. Stir and try not to let them brown. (Meanwhile, cut the other vegetables; you'll be waiting a while.) Season lightly with salt and pepper.
Once they became a pale golden sticky mess, add the puréed red pepper and let it get all nice and friendly. Season lightly with salt and pepper. The pepper should have a ton of water, so let it cook down, stirring every few minutes to make sure nothing gets too caramelized and burned, until -- after God knows how long -- you'll have a rich, rusty jam.
To which, of course, you'll add your load of puréed tomatoes. Bring it to a boil, and turn it way down to let that baby snooze off all its liquid. Season lightly with -- guess what? -- salt and pepper. You've probably already been cooking for an hour or more at this point. You're not even close to being there yet. You're concentrating its sugar and tartness, and it's going to be all umami-oooo-Mommy. It's worth it. Around this time, fire up your oven to 450. Stir the tomatoes occasionally, just so they don't burn at the bottom.
Meanwhile, toss the zucchini with salt, pepper and olive oil. Taste a piece. Doesn't it taste good? It's going to be even better after you roast it hard in one layer on a baking tray. After the sizzling starts to slow down in the oven, take a peek. Are you getting some nice browning underneath? Great. Take it out, let it cool a bit before putting it in a big bowl and do it again until you run out of squash. Then do the same with the eggplant, putting it in the same bowl, and let them wait for the minister to their wedding.
When the 6 pounds of stuff you cooked in the tomato pot can be packed into a pint of good-God-DAMN goodness, it will have flavor that doesn't quit -- a finish that lasts forever. You'll know it's ready when it gives the oil back up, it makes squishy noises when you stir it, and when you taste it and suddenly want to punch a hole in the wall.
Now you're ready to finish. Chop up some thyme and basil, as much as you like (I like a lot. Shocker), and stir the herbs into the tomato base. Carefully combine the tomato with the rest of the vegetables so that you don't mash up your zucchini and eggplant. It's victory lap time. Stick a spoon into it and feed it to people you love. Then wrap it up tightly and let it sit in the fridge for a day; it'll be even better tomorrow -- the flavors meld, the herbs work their way through the whole thing. Just let it come back to room temperature when you serve it, to your favorite people and maybe with some cheese and bread, and try not to break too much furniture.
Keeps in the fridge for up to 3-4 days. It does freeze well, though, if you fill up the container so there's not much air in it and wrap it tightly in several layers of plastic wrap. Let it thaw in the fridge, and it'll still be awesome in the dead of winter, when tomatoes taste about as good as tennis balls.
(08-09-2010, 10:26 AM)QueenBee Wrote: Went out to dinner yesterday and had a chocolate martini..it was quite good. Had vanilla vodka and Kahula. Food was OK...but I would definatly go back for the drinks
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