Spring Cleaning, Cooking & Reading

Like many people do this time of year, I've recently been doing a lot of purging in an attempt to rid my living space of extra clutter. Does anything feel better than that??

One area that required a significant purge was my library. As a voracious reader, my pre-Kindle book collection was large and starting to take over my living space.  I've always felt deeply connected with my books and loved having them around, but it was time to clean house. So what books to keep and which ones to give away?

It's not surprising that most of the books I kept were my cookbooks. As I wrote about in my Kindles and Cookbooks post, there are just some things which cannot be read on an e-reader. (For the record, I also kept my Bill Simmons' autographed copies of Now I Can Die in Peace and The Book of Basketball, my Hunter S. Thompson collection, The Great Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises and a few other books I couldn't part with).

Of the cookbooks that "made the cut" there have been a few recent additions to my collection that I've been referencing time and again ideas, techniques and inspiration.

Ruhlman's twenty essential cooking techniques that all
home chefs should master. 

• Ruhlman's Twenty: 20 Techniques, 100 Recipes, a Cook's Manifesto: I can confidently say this is the only cookbook you will probably ever need. Not only are Michael Ruhlman's recipes easy to follow, you'll walk away have a depth of appreciation and understanding for how everyday ingredients like salt, eggs and water can transform your dishes, and the science behind it.
  
  
• The Family Meal: Home Cooking with Ferran Adria: Before every shift at El Bulli, the servers and chefs would convene for their staff meal. Long considered one of the world's best restaurants until it closed in 2011, you have to wonder, what type of food would be served? The book documents the "family meal" recipes -- an eclectic collection of comforting, simple and satisfying three-course meals.
  
  
• Momofuku: I'm going to be honest here, I haven't actually cooked anything out of this book yet, although the Momofuku ramen is on my list of 2013 cooking resolutions (see some of my past resolutions here). What keeps me coming back to this book is David Chang's stories about his journey as a chef, which are interspersed throughout the cookbook along with insights on what ingredients and places inspire him.
    

If you're looking for a little spring inspiration, I encourage you to check out these books or perhaps take a fresh look at your own collection.  

 

Sonoma County Dispatch

I recently returned from a wine-soaked week in Sonoma with my mom. It was my first visit to wine country, and I'm already starting to plot when I can conceivably get back there again this year. While there was a lot to love about Sonoma, here are a few of my favorite things from my journey through wine country.

1. Everything is local. Unlike other vacations when you return from a week of eating and drinking feeling like you need to detox, I came back from Sonoma feeling, well, pretty great. The access to local produce, meat and dairy products is plentiful and knowing that everything on your dinner plate came from within a 30 mile radius makes every dish cleaner, fresher and healthier.

Picnic lunch overlooking Lake Sonoma
with Longboard Zinfandel 

2. The people. It's clear that most everyone working in wine country is passionate about what they do and deeply committed to their craft. It's evident when you visit a tasting room, chat with a wine maker or talk to local shop owner.

3. The sunshine. One day our forecast was "abundant sunshine." As someone in the depths of a sun-deprived winter in Chicago, this forecast made me tear up a little.

4. Picnics are the preferred lunch option. Why go to a restaurant when you can sit at a lush winery amid rolling hills or on top of a mountain? One of my favorite meals of the trip is pictured at right. As we were in California, it was only necessary that we tasted some Humboldt Fog (one of the Drunken Goat's favorites...)

5. The vacation souvenirs. We naturally ended up buying a lot of wine on our journey. What's fun is that every time you open a bottle once you return, you get to relive a little piece of your vacation with every sip.

Cheers from the Drunken Goat!

Souffle Fears...Conquered?

This past weekend I attempted my first souffle. I definitely had some reservations about taking on this dish; visions of deflated souffles danced in my head.

Savory goodness

I'm happy to report that my first souffle was actually....well pretty damn delicious. While I didn't get as much of the signature souffle lift as I had hoped, the texture and flavor were spot on. Served with a peppery arugula salad, the savory gruyere souffle was the perfect Sunday brunch at home.

Nonetheless, making one souffle does not an expert make. I still have a number of questions, mainly:

1. Is there such a thing as over-whipping egg whites?
2. How long does a souffle really need to bake for? And why does every recipe have a different temperature and time?
3. Why is it so hard to not open the oven door when the souffle is cooking?
4. Why does anything with melted gruyere taste so perfect?
5. When would it be socially acceptable to make and eat another souffle - ideally chocolate?

These are just a few questions I'm looking forward to getting to the bottom of.

In the meantime though, I won't be too quick to dismiss a seemingly challenging recipe from David Tanis, Saveur or the like. If there's anything this venture taught me, it's that - like with most things in life - it's good to go out of your comfort zone every now again. 99 percent of the time you end up surprising yourself and that's always a good thing.

Souffle Fears

Late last year, I outlined my 2012 cooking resolutions. As of today, all but one - the souffle - have been attempted.

Avid readers of this blog know that my last foray into my cooking resolutions (making homemade pasta) was met with a number of...ahem...challenges. See The Time I Made Pasta and it Turned to Mush for more details on that particular cooking debacle.

This weekend, I'll be tackling my final cooking resolution heads on and making a savory souffle with nutty gruyere. Armed with an excellent recipe from Michael Ruhlman's Twenty (a book every cook needs to own - more on that later) and my trusted Kitchenaid mixer, I'm hopeful things will come together...or at least be edible.

I'm not going to lie; I'm pretty intimidated to attempt this notoriously fickle dish. If you have any words of wisdom, tips or ideas, leave a comment and let me know.

In the meantime, I'll be studying this video and working to get perfectly peaked egg whites. This makes it look so easy doesn't it?

Best Dishes of The 2012 Hiatus

Work, travel, dinner, work, deadlines, chores, sleep, life...seasons pass and suddenly it's fall. And so is the highly uninteresting story of the Drunken Goat Hiatus of 2012.

I wish I could say the hiatus was spent in the Basque region of Spain learning new cooking techniques and taking weekend trips to San Sebastian and southern France. Sadly, it was not. It was, however, filled with a lot of delicious meals, many enjoyed with wonderful friends and family. Here are a few of the standout dishes I enjoyed most during the blogging hiatus.

Succulent Sicilian pork shoulder at Next

• Spalla di Maiale Brasato at Next: If you asked anyone who went to Next for the Sicily menu, there was one dish that was unanimously agreed to be the best: the pork shoulder. Sous-vide and braised for six hours, the fork-tender pork melted in your mouth with every bite. I'd like to find a way to recreate this dish one day.  
• Taglionini Nero with Crab and Sea Urchin at Balena: This dish is the dish that made me fall in love with sea urchin. After a not so great sea urchin experience at Nellcote (it was paired with burrata, and the texture didn't work for me), this pasta dish finally made me understand what the sea urchin buzz was all about. 
• Burger at Au Cheval: I don't eat burgers very often, so when I do, my expectations are high. Needless to say, this burger met - and exceeded - my expectations. Top it with a runny egg and Au Cheval's famous thick cut bacon to really put it over the top (but honestly it doesn't need a lot of bells and whistles). 
• Butter Cake at Mastro's: This dessert is so good it has a Facebook page for the people who love it. Served warm with a side of whipped cream, I almost had to pay the waitress to take Mastro's signature dessert away from me. 
• Fried Chicken and Mashed Potatoes at The Lady and Sons. Located in Savannah, Georgia, The Lady and Sons is the cathedral of Paula Deen and all things southern comfort food. So much butter; so much goodness, ya'll. While I had to double up on classes at Flywheel Chicago to work this meal off, it was worth every calorie. 
• Secret Hamachi at Arami: Comprised of yellow tail, mushroom and truffle oil, we had to wait a while for this simple yet incredibly flavorful sashimi dish. It was well worth the wait. Truffle can be overpowering if not weilded correctly, especially with a light and mild fish like yellow tail. The restraint demonstrated in this dish made all the difference. 



Crispy, juicy and positively sinful  

• Tea Smoked Duck Breast at Belly Q: Served with sweet buns and chinese broccoli, this dish was so good my dining companions and I ordered a second helping. 

After meals spent with good company and, let's face it, usually good wine, these were the dishes that had me thinking about them the next morning. 

What meals, dishes and restaurants have caught your attention lately? Leave a comment and let me know. 

The Time I Made Pasta and it Turned to Mush

Before the pasta hit the water.
Things were looking up at this stage. 

The other night, I attempted to make homemade pasta and, a pound of flour later, things didn't turn out as planned.
It was a 2012 cooking resolution failure.

But in every failure, there are some key learnings...right??

I didn't learn much except for the fact that, while I might be skilled at some things (accessorizing, grammar and navigation), making pasta from scratch is not my strong skill. At least not yet, anyway...

I won't call these learnings, but I will call them some initial observations about my first foray into pasta making.

1. Pasta dough is fickle.
2. Making pasta is messy. I'm still finding flour in odd places in my kitchen.
3. Kneading pasta dough is hard work.
4. The act of kneading pasta dough can be quite therapeutic after a long Monday.
5. Pasta dough is very unforgiving.
6. I probably don't know what good pasta dough is supposed to look and feel like.
7. Sometimes you spend a lot of time making pasta and then it turns to mush in the final step.
8. Even though the texture might be off, if you put enough Pecorino on it, the pasta can be salvaged (or at least made edible).
9. I will never look at fresh made pasta the same every again.
10. I will appreciate fresh made pasta much more that I ever did before.

Do you have homemade pasta making tips? If so, leave me a comment and let me know. I need all the help I can get!

Dim Sum at Home

Pork and shrimp & cilantro shumai in a
bamboo steamer. 

A few months ago, I wrote my 2012 cooking resolutions, one being to explore asian flavors and techniques. Today, I made dim sum at home, which included shrimp and pork shumai and pork dumplings.

Though time consuming, the process was easier than I thought and, surprisingly, pretty hard to mess up (always an excellent trait in any recipe).

In French cooking, onion, celery and carrot serve as the foundation to hundreds of different recipes. For asian cooking, I learned that garlic, ginger and green onions serve as a versatile base to many different asian dishes. Sesame oil, hoisin sauce, sriracha and soy sauce round out the other asian pantry essentials. When combined with fish, meat, poultry or vegetables, these ingredients come together to strike a careful balance of sweet, spicy, salty and savory in every bite.

Pork dumplings lightly seared before
steaming 

I used Mark Bittman's shrimp and cilantro shumai recipe as my guide. His recipe includes mixing together soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger and rice wine as the flavor base and dipping sauce. Half of the shrimp, cilantro and green onions are pureed in a food processor along with the sauce, and the other half is chopped coarsely, bringing together two distinct textures.

For the pork dumplings, I used this recipe from Kelsey Nixon, who recommends frying the dumplings in peanut or vegetable oil before steaming them.

The trickiest aspect of making dim sum at home is folding the dumpling wrappers. Some came out looking great, others looked like they had been run over by a car on Lake Shore Drive. Like anything, it apparently gets easier with practice. It also helps to bribe a friend or family member with promises of wine and homemade Chinese food to help with the shumai/dumpling assembly process.

Bittman offers some constructive advice in this video, although it made me feel better to remember that homemade dumplings are just that (and it's ok if they're not perfect).

       
If all else fails with dim sum at home, head south to Chinatown and spend a Saturday or Sunday morning at The Phoenix, which is almost as good as homemade.

Next up on the Drunken Goat's 2012 cooking resolutions? Fresh made pasta.

Ultimate Italian Minimalism: Cacio e Pepe

One of the endlessly fascinating things about Italian cuisine is how a few simple ingredients can come together to make an unbelievably rich, flavorful dish. No where is this more apparent than with Cacio e Pepe, which literally translates to "cheese and pepper" in English.

It has a mere four ingredient (pasta, cracked black pepper, pecorino cheese and butter) and is the pinacle of Italian minimalism. The starchy pasta water brings the butter and cheese together into a velvety sauce, and the fresh-cracked pepper offers a sharp dimension of heat.

Sadly, I don't see Cacio e Pepe on too many Italian menus in Chicago. I'm not sure why this is?

I recently had dinner at Davanti Enoteca on Taylor Street and was pleasantly surprised to see this dish on the menu. Between myself and my two dining companions (my Dad and brother), we ordered a second order of Cacio e Pepe before the first one was even finished. It was that good.

A few years ago, Anthony Bourdain dedicated an entire episode of No Reservation to the Roman way of life. The first stop on his Frederico Fellini/La Dolce Vita-inspired visit to Rome? A local neighborhood place specializing in Cacio e Pepe (begins at around the 2:30 mark).

When I finally conquer one of my cooking resolutions of 2012 - making fresh pasta - Cacio e Pepe will be the first pasta dish I plan to tackle.

What other dishes do you think best embody ultimate Italian minimalism? Leave me a comment and let me know.

Ciao e buon appetito da il Drunken Goat!

Cheese Dispatch: Humboldt Fog

For avid readers of the Drunken Goat and for those that know me well, there's no question that cheese is one of my favorite things to eat. (Look no further than past blog posts such as Delice de Bourgogne Seduction and Why the Drunken Goat? for a brief taste of my cheese obsession.)

When asked what my last meal on earth would be, my answer is almost immediately a sprawling cheese plate with assorted cow, sheep, goat and buffalo milk cheeses and a crusty, chewy loaf of freshly-baked bread. And considering that it is my last meal on earth, there will most certainly be wine present, as well.

A mature piece of Humboldt Fog well into the aging process. Gorgeous
image from Tastings Gourmet Market.

One cheese that would undoubtedly make "the last meal on earth" cheese plate would be Humboldt Fog. Humboldt Fog is a mold-ripened goat cheese from Cypress Grove Chevre, a creamery located in Humboldt County, California.

It is a tangy and creamy chevre with a signature ash vine in the middle. The cheese's ashen features are known to mirror the fogginess of the northern California terrain of Humboldt County.

Depending on where the cheese is in the aging process (young, ripe or mature), Humboldt Fog takes on a unique flavor profile with increasing levels of complexity as the cheese ages. It pairs well with earthy flavors such as mushrooms, as well as sweeter accompaniments such as honey, pears and apples. It is a versatile cheese that can be served as an appetizer or as a decadent dessert course. As for wine and beer pairings, I like a bright Sancerre or an IPA.

One of the other things I love about Humboldt Fog is that Cypress Grove Chevre is a wonderful entrepreneurial story that took shape long before artisanal goat cheese became mainstream. The video offers an interesting and beautiful look at the creamery's early beginnings:

The Drunken Goat will feature this blogger's favorite cheeses as part of a recurring Cheese Dispatch series.  Have any cheeses or pairings you'd like to see featured on the Drunken Goat? Leave me a comment and let me know.

My Childhood Menu

Earlier this month I had the unique opportunity to eat at Next for its childhood menu (more on that in my Magic of Childhood post). Ever since, I've been thinking about the favorite meals and treats of my own childhood. If I were shaping the Childhood menu, what would be on it?

Fish and Chips at Next Childhood. Far more
glamorous than the fish sticks of my childhood,
but both equally delicious.

While some of these dishes, like the macaroni and cheese, were captured beautifully at Next, everyone has their own meals that defined their childhood.

In retrospect, my childhood menu would look a little something like this:

• Macaroni and cheese out of the blue box (also known as Kraft Dinner). To this day, this is still a staple in my pantry.
• Grilled cheese and Campbell's tomato soup. Especially great with generously buttered bread and extra cheese.
• Lipton's Noodle Soup and Ritz crackers, each with a smear of cream cheese. My mom would make this for me when I was sick, and I still keep a box of noodle soup around for when I'm feeling under the weather.  
• Fish sticks with ketchup and mayonnaise dipping sauce. Loved it as a kid, but probably wouldn't be caught dead eating it today. 
• Yodels (frosted, cream-filled cakes). Ditto.  
• Swedish fish. Still one of my preferred movie theater treats.
• Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls. Haven't had these in years, but I have no doubt they'd still be great on a Sunday morning. 

If you were writing the childhood menu, what would be on it?