Potato Soup

In the past few days the weather has gone from full on summer to something far closer to fall. 

This means that it is time to break out the soup recipes.  In looking over my pantry it occurred to me that I had all the ingredients for potato soup.  You probably have most of these in your kitchen right now... potato, onion, bacon, garlic, cheese, milk and chicken stock.

First things first, the bacon needs to be diced.  I find that if you put the bacon in the freezer for a few minutes cutting it becomes far easier to work with.  Once the bacon is cut, place it in a cold pot over medium/low heat. 

While the bacon cooks there is more than enough time to deal with the onions, garlic and potatoes!  The onions and garlic get a very fine dice so that they will cook quickly.  The potato ends up with a medium dice, this is because I want it to hold together for most of the cooking!

Once the bacon is browned take some out so that you have it to garnish the soup with when you're finished. 

 Then add the onions and garlic to the bacon and the oh so delicious bacon fat!

After adding the onions and garlic let them cook until they are soft and translucent.  This is a moment when you do have to keep an eye on things so that you don't burn the onions or garlic.

After the onions reach the correct color add the potatoes and chicken stock to the pot.  You will want to add enough stock so that the potatoes are totally covered. 

Let this come to a low simmer and cook uncovered for the next half hour or so.  What you are looking for is a potato that is still a square when you pull it out of the pot, but that breaks when you smush it between your fingers. 

Once they get to that magical "smush point" remove the pot from the heat and add the milk.  Once the milk has been added and the soup has cooled down just a touch it is time break out the immersion blender!  

Blend the soup until you get to a texture that you like.  I like my soup to have a silky texture with just a few chunks of potato to remind me that it is potato soup I'm eating.  I will also take this moment to say how much I love my immersion blender... but when you're using it be careful because the soup can splash back and the last thing you want it is a bath of molten hot soup!

Return the pot to the burner, but be sure you have it on a very low heat setting.  At this point all you are really doing is keeping the soup warm while you add the cheese!  Just toss it in by the hand-full and stir well.

Now there is nothing left to do but find a bowl to put the soup in.  I find that topping it with the classic baked potato toppings makes for a great meal!

Enjoy!

Field Trip!

For as long as I can remember I have always loved a good field trip. In grade school those were the days we didn't have to wear our uniform and could pack a lunch. In high school field trips were few and far between but still fun days. In college I managed to sign up for a real estate law class where we took a field trip every single Friday!

When Chef mentioned in our morning meeting that there was an optional "kitchen field trip" to the farm where we get some of our herbs, mushrooms, squash, and (when we use them) micro greens. I think I might have let out a giggle of delight when he mentioned this. The reason we were going was to pay them a friendly visit as well as check out how they grew the shiitake mushrooms that we use in our pasta dish.

I don't have all the technical details down but you start with these logs...


They have holes drilled in them, the holes get mushroom spawn put in them and then the holes and ends are coated in cheese wax. After this process the logs are stacked up for 6-8 months before this starts to happen...


If you look really closely you can see the itty bitty mushroom that is just starting to grow!

At this point the logs get moved from the pile to standing up...


And when the time comes the mushrooms look about like this...

They are harvested! To harvest them you just grab them by the stem and twist.

In addition to the grove of mushrooms in the woods the farm also has beehives, a ton of fresh herbs, beautiful plants and an adorable store.

Balsamic Vinegar

I am exceptionally fond of balsamic vinegar.

I have been using it on everything recently...

Pile of Boston Lettuce (or Butter lettuce depending on where you're from), fresh avocado, little cherry tomatoes, fresh cracked pepper and kosher salt.

Grilled vegetables.

Roasted potatoes.

Grilled chicken.

And my favorite of the moment... Strawberries! I adore strawberries with balsamic, the two flavors work so beautifully together.

These are just a few ways to use it, one can also whip up fantastic dressings and marinades with this magical ingredient.

The Results...

Many moons ago, okay back in January, I took the International Sommelier Guild level 2 exam. This was a 3 part adventure (4 blind wines to taste and identify, 6 essays on a variety of different topics pertaining to things we learned about, and a major multiple choice exam covering everything in a very large book) has kept me on pins and needles waiting for the results. Earlier this week I got an e-mail from a classmate saying that scores were up.

Taking a deep breath I went to the website clicked the button and voila my scores appeared! Taking a moment to process the numbers I realized that I'd passed all three parts! I'm acutally REALLY happy with my scores!

Cheers!

Valentine's Day

It is a given that there are a few days in the restaurant industry that are going to be "special," for lack of a better term.

One of the key things that the kitchen does is look at the reservations to see how many guests we are expecting. The reservation book is one of the most useful tools that a chef has. It shows us how many people are coming, how many came last year, and when we can expect people.

What the reservation book doesn't show us is how many people have made reservations all over town. We plan for a give or take number, expecting some people not to show up, but when close to one fourth of your reservations don't show up it is down right frustrating.

So, on behalf of restaurants everywhere... if you make a reservation and change your mind, can't make it, don't feel like going out... please call us, go online and tell us, do something so we know. Also, most of the online reservation systems have ways of tracking people who no-show.

Cheers!

French Onion Soup

Since the "chilly" weather has returned I am back to craving soup. Looking around the kitchen I realized that I had everything I needed for French Onion Soup! I adore French Onion soup but haven't ever made it at home before. I made it in culinary school, I've made it at work, I know my mother has made it... but I don't have a "go to" recipe for it. I consulted a few different cookbooks and pulled parts of two different recipes to create my own.

The first thing that you need to go is gather all the ingredients, as you can see this is basically a pile of onions and some beef broth (or chicken broth if you prefer it.)


A quick word about the butter... Normally I would just use "normal" butter, but I was out. Thankfully I had a slab of Plugra in the fridge. I tend to reserve this product for baking, finishing sauces, and buttering croissants... applications where you can really get the benefit of the full flavor and richness that it brings to food.

It has been said many times that French onion soup is all about the onions! This is a rather true statement. I've covered one base by using a variety of different kinds because they all lend different elements to the dish. In this collection we have red, yellow and sweet onions. I also used shallots and a head of garlic (it is hiding behind the cheese.) The other thing that matters with the onions is how you cut them!


All the onions start out in a variety of sized and shapes. For the soup you want them to all go into the pot in about the same size and shape so that they will cook at the same rate. There are a two ways to accomplish this. First, if you have a mandoline this would be a great task to use it for. Second, pull out the trusty chef's knife and get to work. I opted for the knife since I love the one I got for Christmas and am still at the point where I think up random reasons to use it.

Either way you will end up with a pot of onions that looks something like this.


You want your slices to be thin, but not so thin that they will totally break down to nothing in the cooking process. And speaking of the cooking process... once the pot is on the stove over a low/ medium-low heat basically ignore it for the next 30-50 minutes. I checked on the pot a few times to stir things around and see how the color was coming.

You want the onions to go from the above photo to something like this. At this point the onions have spent lots of time in the pot with just a little butter and a splash of olive oil.


Hiding under the mess of onions is a layer of deep brown bits of onion that have secured themselves to the bottom of the pot. These bits are full of flavor and need to be removed from the bottom and worked in before the been broth is added.


The best thing for deglazing a pot is liquid... especially alcohol! In one of the books it mentioned using balsamic vinegar and port. I have the vinegar, but I was missing port. Looking at my alcohol collection I noticed a bottle of Courvoisier, I've never known it to screw up a recipe so I used it.


Once the courvoisier and balsamic have been added, the bottom of the pot has been scraped, and every thing has been mixed together it is time to add all the broth. I like to add warm broth, so way back when I started the onions I also put a large pot on the back burner and filled it with the broth and put it on a very low heat so that it would be ready when I was.

So... add the warm broth to the onions, stir to mix it all together, crank the heat up to a boil and once it boils reduce the head to a simmer and leave it alone for another 30 minutes or so.

When it is all done you will end up with something resembling this pot.


Shortly before the soup is ready you want to slice some bread (mmm baguette) and grate some cheese (gruyere.) I was feeling rather decadent so I took the bread, melted a little more butter, buttered the bread and popped it into the toaster for a few minutes to create giant buttery croutons.

To really have the whole "french onion soup experience" it is necessary to ladle some soup into an oven safe bowl, add the croutons or sliced bread, top with the cheese, and as a last step slide the whole thing under a wicked hot broiler to melt the cheese! You end up with delicious melty cheese & soup soaked croutons covering a delicious rich soup.


Cheers!

Cookbooks

For the longest time my cookbooks lived on the counter, in a basket on the floor, on the dining room table and stacked on a bar stool. They took up valuable counter space in my not too brilliantly designed kitchen, they were in the way on the floor, they got lost in the shuffle on the table and got knocked off the bar stools.

Recently I embarked on a "re-do the livingroom" kick, which still isn't done. To start with I got rid of the tall towers by my tv, one now lives on the other corner of the room but that one doesn't matter. The one that matters is the one that moved to the nook by my kitchen and now holds cookbooks!

I'm just happy to have all the books in one space! Ones I use most often are all lined up on one shelf. They are in no particular order, but the one in the middle (the Les Halles cookbook) is one of my favorites. It isn't written like any other cookbook, but then again it is a Tony Bourdain book! Reading a recipe from that book is like having the man in your kitchen telling you what to do and the pitfalls to watch out for.


I'm also very fond of the Jamie Oliver books, they are seasonal and really focus on the quality of ingredients used. On the far left are a trio of cookbooks that I grew up with. Mom had the Silver Palate books and I had to have them too. The New Basics cookbook has been with me since college and there are chunks of it that are falling out. Martha, in orange, is a requirement for any kitchen. Not that book, but one of her book... The Martin Yan books both came from his visit to Johnson & Wales and one is signed. He was such a fantastic man to watch and listen to.

The shelf below that one holds books that while I don't use as often I find really useful in the moment. The Pioneer Woman cookbook is well worth the money for the food photography alone!

Stacked beneath that are 2 fascinating books by Nigella Lawson and a really fun looking book on baking that I picked up not too long ago. I'd like to round out my baking skills, I make killer cookies and pretty darn good cupcakes but I'd like to get into breads and interesting cakes and things like that.

Stacked on the top of the tower are the big heavy books that are more reference text than anything else. The huge blue one is the text book from culinary school. It isn't all recipes, there is a ton of general information in it too.


The book above it, with the shiny cover that didn't photograph well at all, is the Larousse Gastronomique. It was first published in 1937, since then it has been updated and translated from French to English. It is more of an encyclopedia than a cookbook. The information in it is tried and true. The green book above it takes the place of a large stash of Gourmet Magazines. The James Beard book is another cookbook/encyclopedia selection. It highlights more American leaning food.

The Joy of Cooking is one of those cookbooks that has been around for ages. Every so often it gets updated and a new cover but when you can compare a version from 1943 and 1997 side by side...
The "guts" of the book remains true. The recipes are still set out in a page saving format, the illustrations are simple and the needed information is all there. In the 1943 version there is far more lard used than in the 1997 one. But 1997 has ingredients that weren't in the 1943 version.

In the last two photos there has been a portion of a small grey box. This box is the key to my recipe collection, it is filled with handwritten index cards of recipes that are in cookbooks I'm not allowed to "borrow" from my mother. There are old family recipes, ones from newspapers and magazines, and things I've played around with.

Almost all of the recipes I use in cookbooks have notes in the margin, I have no problem writing in a cookbook. My theory is that anything I think enough to make a note of will only help me the next time I give the recipe a shot.

That final lower portion of the tower has more cookbooks in it too... but not nearly as well organized!

Cheers!

Four Blind Wines...

four blind wines
four blind wines
see how they taste...
(keep humming to the tune of 3 blind mice)

I'm in the last 2 weeks of my level 2 International Sommelier Guild class and tonight we had our blind tasting portion of our final exam. Walking into class tonight we were greeted by 4 glasses and two sheets of paper.

Looking at the glasses I breathed a major sigh of relief. I was pretty darn sure about one of them on sight alone. Tasting it would confirm my initial thought. The rest of the tasting was pretty straight forward... 2 reds and 2 whites. The wines were basically spot on hallmarks of what they should be.

That said, in a move classic for me, I totally over thought the last wine and screwed it up. Hopefully I wrote a decent tasting note for it and can still get most of the points.

The only thing left in class is the exam...

Wine Review

Monday is wine class night, however class was called off due to the snowy/icy weather. Feeling the need for some wine I ventured to my trusty wine rack. In looking at the options I went for a 2006 Ridge Geyserville. This wine is a blend of 70% Zinfandel (just under the 75% minimum to call it that varietal), 18% Carignane, 10% Petit Syrah and 2% Mataro grapes.


In absolutely non-technical terms this wine rocks! As in go to your wine shop and buy some, and stick it on the shelf for the next few years. The label tells me that I'm drinking it a bit too early, but it tastes so very good. If it is this good now, I can't wait to see what it will be like in a few years.

Getting to the technical stuff...
On the nose there are great fruit elements (deep red cherries and dark berries) with hints of earthy leathers and vague overtones of baking spices (nutmeg, spice, clove.)

In tasting the wines I found all those elements I smelled showed up and blended into one elegant expression. The tannins balance the alcohol and acidity of the wine, and lend a great structure to the wine. This wine lingers on the palate in a pleasing way enticing you to drink more of it.

All in all... I like Ridge to begin with, and I really liked this wine. I might have to go out and pick up a few more bottles to let them rest for a few years.

Cheers!

Cold Weather = Chili Weather

With rumors of snow tomorrow and a free evening after work I took a quick spin through the grocery store, where I might have been the only person not buying bread and/or milk, for a few things to whip up a batch of chili. Growing up chili always appeared when the weather turned chilly, so the weather today had me craving some!

The ingredients are straightforward and already in most kitchens, all I had to buy tonight was the ground beef and the diced tomatoes.


The first step is to dice the onion and mince the garlic. I usually say that precision in knife cuts matters, heck I even did a whole blog post on it, chili is one of the exceptions to that rule. While you're getting the onions and garlic down to a reasonable size it is a great time to put your pot on the stove and get the butter melting!


Once the butter is melted and sizzling toss the onions into the pot and let them go from this...

To this...

The process of sweating the onions and garlic to get them soft with very little color on them takes about 10 minutes, and requires very little effort. I use the time to measure and blend the spices.


With the spices blended and the onion mix cooked add the ground beef and spices. If you are not a huge fan of ground beef it is possible to whip this recipe up with ground turkey or chicken.


Let the onions, beef and spices cook uncovered for 10 minutes. Then add the tomatoes. I find that the petite diced are the easiest to work with, but you can use chopped, diced, crushed or whole tomatoes. I find that folding the tomatoes in and putting the lid on the pot for a good 30 minutes gets the best results.



I might open the pot once or twice to stir the mix and check that the seasoning tastes right. Once those 30 minutes are up the chili is done and ready to eat... but there is nothing wrong with leaving it on the stove over low heat until you are ready to eat. The longer it cooks the more the flavors develop.


When you are ready to eat it add your favorite toppers (cheese, sour cream and chives), find the right beverage (I opted for beer), and dig in!

New Year... Same Blog

As the new year begins I have decided to come back to the Cocktail Hour Chef Blog! (please cue noise makers, trumpets, and confetti.) For 2011 I hope to have more posts with actual recipes (and hopefully photographs), lots of wine information, segments on my favorite kitchen tools and other surprises along the way.

Kicking this off lets talk about knives...

They are one of the basic tools of the kitchen and there are about as many variations on them as there are people on the face of the earth. When I arrived at culinary school one of the first things I got was a large blue bag and a box of knives. Sitting in a large circle our class identified the knives, talked about what they did and then put them into the blue bags. The knives we got that day were pretty decent German knives. They cut, they chopped, the sliced students who were not paying attention. While I liked these knives I didn't love them. I had a kinda sorta old Henckels knife (I'm pretty sure I bought it at Target after college) that I really think worked better. If nothing else I liked how it felt in my hand more than the school knives did. Still, at school I used the knives the school gave us and kept my old trusty knife at home.

Since graduating I've had time to try out other knives. I've tried a few brands some German, some Japanese, and a single brand from Switzerland. What I found in all of this is that I adore German knives and just not at all fond of the Japanese ones. As for the Swiss knives, they're fun and I like them, but they don't have all the products that I need.

Christmas rolled around and while I'd fallen in lust with one knife I knew that while it was stunningly beautiful and cut like a dream it wasn't sensible to ask for it. A few days after Christmas I once again found my self in Sur La Table playing with knives. This time I looked at a slightly different one and it came home with me.

The knife I ended up getting (Zwilling Henckels Twin Profection) has been up to every task I've put before it in the past few days. A head of cauliflower... nothing to it, carrots... like a sharp knife through hot butter, raw potatoes... easy. This is a knife that wants to cut what ever ends up under the blade.

On that note... I'm off to whip up dinner!
Cheers