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Tag: bistro cooking

  • Rolled Turkey Breast à la Hamersley’s

    We've already told you that Compound Butter Is Sous Vide Cooking's Best Friend. One of our favorite compound butter blends is based on the herb mixture that Gordon Hamersley used on his famous roast chicken.

    IMG_7199 copy

    Here we've used it on a boned turkey breast. Using her copy of Bistro Cooking at Home By Gordon Hamersley, Penny made a compound butter with unsalted butter, herbs de Province, parsley, rosemary, and lemon zest.

    She butterflied the turkey breast, slathered the inside with the lovely stuff, rolled it, tied it with butcher string, rolled it in more of the mixture, and popped it into a sous vide bag,

    Since this turkey would be sous vide rather than roasted, she added minced shallots and crushed whole cloves of garlic along with a good glug of olive oil to the bag with the turkey. At 145 degrees, the garlic and shallots will add flavor to the bag juices, but they will not cook and would become a raw note in the herb paste.

     

    Our Joule sous vide was set in a pot of water, heated to 145 degrees, and when ready, the turkey was cooked for two and a half hours. 

    When the Joule announced the turkey was done, Penny took it out, saved the collected juices in the bag, patted the turkey dry (leaving any clinging herbs in place), and seared the outside in more olive oil and a pad of the compound butter.

    IMG_7186

    While the turkey waited on the cutting board, the bag juices were added to the searing pan to deglaze and reduce. One final pat of the compound butter was used to emulsify those juices off-heat for a rich and delicious pan sauce!

    And, if you prefer visual instruction, here is a link to Gordon Hamersley's appearance with Julia Child as a part of her Master Chefs series. You can watch him make this herb mixture and then use his measurements to adapt it for a compound butter. (Penny opted not to add the mustard this time, but might try adding it to either the butter or the bag another time.)

     

     

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    Details:

    Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
    Photography: © 2017 Penny & Ed Cherubino  

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  • Salad Before, After, or With Your Entree?

    DSC_8633 - Version 22012-09-26-green-salad-© 2011 Penny Cherubino

    Do you serve salad before, after, or with your entree? In France and Italy, salads are often served at the end of meals. For many years, American restaurants and especially catered events have placed salads at the start of the menu.

    This was a recent topic of conversation at our house. We were mainly interested in the reasons why salads should be served at the beginning or end of the meal.

    Ed thought it might have to do with the interaction of wine and vinegar. His theory was that you wait until the end of the meal so you can enjoy your wine without the vinegar. 

    Penny has been reading about vinegar as an aid to digestion and use as a sort of antacid and added the possibility of salad with a vinaigrette dressing being used as a digestive aid.

    A tour of the topic around the cyber world found it an often asked question with a wide variety of answers – some that agreed with ours and plenty of additional thought.

    We have three guesses as to why restaurants and caterers opt for salad as a starter, because it:

    • Gets the meal underway fast
    • Turns the tables quicker
    • Gives diners something to eat while waiters circulate with the next course

    Around here, a salad is often the meal. We add this-and-that and turn a plate of greens into lunch or supper. The photo above is from a salad we made to clean out the kitchen before we left Provincetown last September. 

    Food writer Patricia Wells has often inspired salad meals around here. In addition to the offerings in her Bistro Cooking
    and The Provence Cookbook, she also wrote the wonderful, Salad as a Meal. 



      

    What's on your Food Lover's Shopping List? Shop Amazon for all your kitchen & dining needs and support this site!

    Details:

    Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
    Photos: ©2012 Penny Cherubino 

    Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers' comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often, those add great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you. We do reserve the right to edit ads and links out of comments.

    Related articles
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    Enhanced by Zemanta

  • Salad Before, After, or With Your Entree?

    DSC_8633 - Version 22012-09-26-green-salad-© 2011 Penny Cherubino

    Do you serve salad before, after, or with your entree? In France and Italy, salads are often served at the end of meals. For many years, American restaurants and especially catered events have placed salads at the start of the menu.

    This was a recent topic of conversation at our house. We were mainly interested in the reasons why salads should be served at the beginning or end of the meal.

    Ed thought it might have to do with the interaction of wine and vinegar. His theory was that you wait until the end of the meal so you can enjoy your wine without the vinegar. 

    Penny has been reading about vinegar as an aid to digestion and use as a sort of antacid and added the possibility of salad with a vinaigrette dressing being used as a digestive aid.

    A tour of the topic around the cyber world found it an often asked question with a wide variety of answers – some that agreed with ours and plenty of additional thought.

    We have three guesses as to why restaurants and caterers opt for salad as a starter, because it:

    • Gets the meal underway fast
    • Turns the tables quicker
    • Gives diners something to eat while waiters circulate with the next course

    Around here, a salad is often the meal. We add this-and-that and turn a plate of greens into lunch or supper. The photo above is from a salad we made to clean out the kitchen before we left Provincetown last September. 

    Food writer Patricia Wells has often inspired salad meals around here. In addition to the offerings in her Bistro Cooking
    and The Provence Cookbook, she also wrote the wonderful, Salad as a Meal. 



      

    What's on your Food Lover's Shopping List? Shop Amazon for all your kitchen & dining needs and support this site!

    Details:

    Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
    Photos: ©2012 Penny Cherubino 

    Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers' comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often, those add great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you. We do reserve the right to edit ads and links out of comments.

    Related articles
    How to eat more salad
    Yes, Salads Really Do Help With Weight Loss
    10 Tips for Shepherd's Pie
    Are You Drinking Wine Too Cold and Coffee Too Hot?
    10 Decluttering Tips from "The Clutter Queen," Rhea Becker
    Enhanced by Zemanta

  • Salad Before, After, or With Your Entree?

    DSC_8633 - Version 22012-09-26-green-salad-© 2011 Penny Cherubino

    Do you serve salad before, after, or with your entree? In France and Italy, salads are often served at the end of meals. For many years, American restaurants and especially catered events have placed salads at the start of the menu.

    This was a recent topic of conversation at our house. We were mainly interested in the reasons why salads should be served at the beginning or end of the meal.

    Ed thought it might have to do with the interaction of wine and vinegar. His theory was that you wait until the end of the meal so you can enjoy your wine without the vinegar. 

    Penny has been reading about vinegar as an aid to digestion and use as a sort of antacid and added the possibility of salad with a vinaigrette dressing being used as a digestive aid.

    A tour of the topic around the cyber world found it an often asked question with a wide variety of answers – some that agreed with ours and plenty of additional thought.

    We have three guesses as to why restaurants and caterers opt for salad as a starter, because it:

    • Gets the meal underway fast
    • Turns the tables quicker
    • Gives diners something to eat while waiters circulate with the next course

    Around here, a salad is often the meal. We add this-and-that and turn a plate of greens into lunch or supper. The photo above is from a salad we made to clean out the kitchen before we left Provincetown last September. 

    Food writer Patricia Wells has often inspired salad meals around here. In addition to the offerings in her Bistro Cooking
    and The Provence Cookbook, she also wrote the wonderful, Salad as a Meal. 



      

    What's on your Food Lover's Shopping List? Shop Amazon for all your kitchen & dining needs and support this site!

    Details:

    Words: Penny & Ed Cherubino
    Photos: ©2012 Penny Cherubino 

    Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers' comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often, those add great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you. We do reserve the right to edit ads and links out of comments.

    Related articles
    How to eat more salad
    Yes, Salads Really Do Help With Weight Loss
    10 Tips for Shepherd's Pie
    Are You Drinking Wine Too Cold and Coffee Too Hot?
    10 Decluttering Tips from "The Clutter Queen," Rhea Becker
    Enhanced by Zemanta

  • Hearty, Herby Split Pea Soup

    IMG_4424 - Version 22011-12-30-patricia-wells-split-pea-soup-herbs-ham-© 2011 Penny Cherubino

    My favorite split pea soup recipe started out as the one in Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells. She takes a simple pea soup with ham recipe and adds lots of garlic herbs and spices– thyme, marjoram, parsley, and cloves. I took her recipe and added big pieces of carrot and a dose of cumin seed toasted and then ground. 

    I love Patrica Wells' cookbooks because the recipes always seem to work, and she has a very relaxed style that invites you, as a cook, to make changes and finish the dish in differnet ways. With this I took her up on not puréeing the soup but serving it in a rustic, chunky style.

    Bisto cover.jpg

    If you would like to learn from a real pro and love little tips tucked into the pages of a cookbook, I highly recommend this one, Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells. I've learned a lot from this outstanding food writer.

    Details:
    Words: Penny Cherubino
    Photos: © 2012 Penny Cherubino

    Note on Comments: We monitor comments constantly and anything that is pure spam, inappropriate, or nasty is swept away. In addition to readers' comments, we welcome hearing from the people, places, and services we cover. Often those comments add great insights for our readers. As long as it doesn’t become a pure ad, we’d love to hear from you.