Tag: egg

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

53. Old Fashioned Meat Loaf p.448

The recipe

Take cover! NORAD has detected an extraterrestrial turd loaf coming in fast over the arctic. It wants our Humpback whales to save the future.

This was not the most visually appealing dish I’ve ever made, but it did taste good. I think it’s um, distinctive, shape helped with the flavour too. I’ve made meatloaf in a loaf pan before, and while it’s geometry is soothing, there isn’t all that much surface area exposed to direct heat. This loaf developed an excellent crunchy crust which really made the dish. The secret to the crispy crust was a healthy slathering of ketchup before it went into the oven.

I’m quite proud of The Book for using ketchup here. They didn’t seem to feel bad about it, or tell me that I really should be making my own, or ordering heirloom tomato preserves off the internet. They recommended plain-old funding-John-Kerry’s-political-career ketchup. Maybe this was The Book’s attempt to show that they’re in touch with the common man? who knowns? But I appreciate it.

This is a classic meat loaf recipe that doesn’t deviate or experiment too much. There are a couple of nice touches, but generally it’s straight up memories of childhood comfort food. It starts with a sweat of onions, garlic, celery, carrot, and scallions (one of the slight deviations from the textbook). Then ground beef, pork, breadcrumbs, eggs, and parsley are lightly mixed together and shaped into the giant worm of Arrakis. It’s then covered in ketchup, and baked through.

The book recommends having the butcher coarsely grind beef chuck, and pork tenderloins for this recipe, instead of using the finely textured twice-ground meat that’s available pre-packaged. It wasn’t a command from on high, so I just bought the stuff in the display case. I now see that The Book was right and I was wrong. The flavours in the meatloaf were excellent, its main problem was the texture. It was too tightly packed and dense. Using more coarsely ground meat would almost certainly have taken care of the textural issues, and made this an even better loaf.

My dining companion and I occasionally like to have cook-offs. Kind of like Iron Chef in the privacy of our own home. This dish was my entry for battle meatloaf, and I’m happy to say that it swept the judges votes. Her entry won top marks for presentation and style, but it just couldn’t compete on seasoning and depth of flavour. I’ll have to write the Heinz company to thank them.

Categories
Cookies, Bars, and Confections The Book

49. Lemon Bars p.691

No recipe for this one. But they were so good I can’t help but giving you the recipe and them a five mushroom rating.

FOR CRUST
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

FOR FILLING
3 large eggs
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons heavy cream
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon salt

Confectioners’ sugar for sprinkling

MAKE THE CRUST: Put a rack in middle of oven and preheat oven to 350F.
Pulse together four, sugar, and salt in a food processor just until combined. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse meal. Press dough onto bottom of an ungreased 9-inch square baking pan. Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes.

MEANWHILE, MAKE THE FILLING: Whisk together eggs, granulated sugar, flour, heavy cream, zest, juice, and salt in a bowl until combined.

BAKE THE BARS: When crust is baked, rewhisk lemon mixture and pour onto hot crust. Bake until just set, about 16 minutes. Transfer pan to a rack to cool.

Refrigerate bars, covered, until cold, at least 4 hours. Before serving, cut into bars and sprinkle with a thick layer of confectioners’ sugar.

I’m sure we’ve all eaten a million lemon bars, some insipid, some inspired. We all know the bad ones with their mushy oily crusts, and super sweet lemon topping that’s either sloppy pudding, or a Fruit Roll-Up. Worse is the health-food version with a cardboard dry crust that crumbles if you look at it, and artificial sweeteners. My ideal lemon bar is built on really good shortbread, where good quality fresh butter is a must. The topping should be a sweet-tart just set lemon custard that’s thick enough to stay in place but avoid gumminess at all costs.

This bar lived up to that ideal quite nicely. All of the shortbread recipes in The Book seem to come out beautifully, and this one was no exception. The lemon topping balanced the tart acid of the lemons with just enough sugar, and added zip to the smooth egg and cream custard. Add a bit of powdered sugar and it was good to to.

In making this recipe I learned the value of measuring your baking dish. It calls for a 9 inch square, and I grabbed something significantly larger without thinking it though. I spread the shortbread out on one half of the pan and baked it. When it came time to pour the liquid custard on top of it I realized I had a problem. I attempted to rig up a shield wall out of aluminum foil to keep the filling on the shortbread, but my wall breached during baking. I ended up with a deep pool of filling on one side of the sheet pan, and much less filling on the shortbread than I would have liked. It was still totally delicious with half the filling, and I can only imagine that it would have been better had I not messed up.

Lemon bars, you’re the second recipe in a row to earn your five mushroom rating. Kudos.

Categories
Fruit Desserts The Book

11. Cherry Clafouti p. 817

This was a very straightforward dish, an eggy batter poured over cherries and baked until puffed and golden. It was very easy to put together, the whole batter is made in the blender, and the addition of almond and vanilla extracts as well as kirsh gave it some complexity of flavour. I’m always happy to see kirsh turn up on an ingredient list, because other than fondue au fromage, I’m not quite sure what to do with it.

The recipe recommends pitting the cherries, but gives the option to leave them whole. I left them au naturel and warned my guests. We didn’t have any incidents at dinner, however the next day I bit down on a cherry stone and may have loosened a tooth. The final dish was quite sweet, but I believe this was my fault. In rereading the recipe I notice that it called for sour cherries, and I’m fairly sure I used Bings from the grocery store. The sour cherries would have been welcome here, or if using sweet, cut the sugar.

This dish is located in the Fruit Desserts chapter of the book, but I think it would be more at home in with the Breakfast and Brunch section. It was billed as being “halfway between custard and cake”, turns out this is the state known as pancake. I was hoping it would be less sweet and more boozy, but as I mentioned that was probably my fault.

Categories
The Book Vegetables

10. Asparagus With Tarragon Sherry Vinaigrette p.520

the recipe

This turned out quite well. I served it with steak Diane and brown-buttered corn with basil. Here the asparagus is steamed and then shocked in ice water before tossing with the vinaigrette. I usually boil my asparagus, but steaming worked very well. The recipe calls for a hard boiled egg to be passed through a sieve and sprinkled on top. I skipped this step, as my dinner was heavy enough with the steak. If I were serving this with salmon the egg might have worked very well.

The Tarragon was a great addition to this dish. The vinaigrette was simple and added a pleasant tang, while the tarragon has a great affinity for both the asparagus and the mustard in the vinaigrette. I chose to do this recipe early on in the project because I love tarragon, but don’t encounter it all that often. I actually hear about it more as a classic ingredient in French cuisine than I come across it on the plate. I live in Montreal, where every second restaurant is a French bistro, and you might expect it to turn up. That’s not to say that it’s not around, just that it’s under appreciated.