Cooking for One

My junior and senior year of college, I was in a cooking rotation with two other people: Benson and his roommate, Abe. I'd sometimes eat with the other girls in my house, but my schedule was such that it was more similar to Benson and Abe's schedules (the other two science majors) then it was to the 4 other people residing in my house. So we'd in general grocery shop together and plan meals together, and every third day or so I'd cook. It cut costs, we almost never had leftovers or eat the same thing twice, we all had different recipe banks to go to so things changed up regularly, and on days you cooked, we had deal that you didn't have to do the dishes (Ah, dishes, my old nemesis - I dream of future days when I will have a dishwasher!). The three of us enjoyed each others cooking and meals, but when it came to basic snacks, we had very different tastes. As I've said in previous posts, I really like salt. I tend to salt my foods a little more than others I cook with might - I don't get complaints, in general, I'm just a little heavy handed. And when I want something to snack on, well, I want it to be salty! Popcorn, crackers, pretzels, or whatever. I attribute this to the fact that my parents had a "cracker jar" rather than a "cookie jar" to raid when I was hungry as a child. Abe, on the other hand, was sweet: he had a constant supply of Skittles, Starbursts, soda, and similar. And finally, there was Benson. As salt is to salty and sugar is to sweet, MSG is to umami (savory). Benson is Chinese-American, grew up in San Francisco, and the snacks of HIS choice were the wasabi-coated peas, the shrimp flavored crackers, and, for lack of better description, the crunchy MSG-coated string beans. We joked that we needed a bitter and a sour person to add to our group - but alas, never managed to complete the set. So in addition to the salt and sugar lying around, we also had a shaker of MSG to add to our soups and stir fries for added taste. I rather grew to appreciate it, and still have a shaker around my kitchen, and I certainly don't have a fear of MSG. Such fears, I think, are overhyped - it's really the rare person who reacts badly to it, and it's NOT that bad for you, any more then a bit of salt or a bit of sugar is. In excess, well, sure, but again, so are salt and sugar.

As I've stated before, now that I'm in grad school I generally just cook for myself when I'm in my apartment. When I have a roommate (and I'm currently in between roommates) I will offer food if they're around, but for the most part, food is made just for me. This tends to cut certain dishes out of my repetoire - one's that are just too massive and that I'd have to eat for a week, or foods that would leave me with a lot of leftover fresh vegetables which would spoil before I could eat it all (I almost never buy lettuce, lest I be forced to have salad EVERY DAY until it's gone). One such dish was a regular in college - Chicken with 30 Cloves of Garlic. I'm a huge fan of garlic in general, and a whole chicken is great for when you have a group of people. Usually some people like white meat, and some like dark, so you can generally get the part of the bird you are most fond of (DARK MEAT!). And when you were through, you'd have a chicken carcass and some bones and scraps, which were easy to toss in a bag in the freezer to save for making stock later. In fact, my bone bag was rather a running joke in my college house; it was clearly labeled "Jen's Bones" and the idea was that not only did I make chicken (and turkey, and duck) soup, but  that I was keeping other sorts of bones as well. Our apartment mate Kaila lived in constant terror that we were all trying to fatten her up for "Kaila Soup" (which as you can see that we've still not made, as evidenced by her recent visit!).

Anyway, I've not made Chicken with 30 Cloves of Garlic in several years at this point. But a few weeks ago, I ran into a sale on cornish game hens at the grocery store. Now, these are small birds, not even 2 lbs, so it occurred to me that it was about the right size for me to make for myself, with a few leftovers. And that a cornish hen could probably be cooked in anyway that a full sized bird could be cooked, just by changing the cooking time a bit. So I bought two. One is currently in my freezer, but for the other I used a recipe I found online which is practically identical to my recipe, but using a game hen instead of a chicken, here.



 Chicken with 30 Cloves of Garlic
1 cornish game hen (or more usually, a whole chicken!)
30+ cloves of garlic (roughly 1.5 heads)
3 tbs olive oil
1/3 cup chicken stock (or 1 cup for a whole chicken)
1/3 cup white wine (1 cup for a whole chicken)
1 lemon, quartered
salt, pepper, rosemary (preferably, but not necessarily, fresh)



The recipe itself is simple. Rub the bird with olive oil, then sprinkle with salt, pepper, and rosemary. You can also mince a clove or two of garlic and rub the bird with that as well. Put a quarter of a lemon and some seasoning into the cavity of the bird (along with the organs, if it came with them... delicious liver, neck, heart, and giblets! I actually quite enjoy these parts, though some people do not.). Then put the bird in a roasting pan, and toss the garlic all around it.

While I peeled the garlic, you don't actually need to - I've made it before without doing so, and if you cut off the bottom before cooking the garlic, you can just squeeze it once it's cooked and it pops out the end. But I actually find it kind of relaxing to peel garlic once in a while, so I went for it anyway - it's easier to eat that way! It doesn't make a huge difference either way. And if I'm being honest, I didn't use 30 cloves of garlic - I only had 27 available, alas! But I think that's close enough, don't you?

Next, baked your game hen at 425F for 25 minutes. Mix the wine and chicken stock, and after those 25 minutes, turn down the heat to 350F, pour the liquid over the bird, and cook for another 35, basting every 10 minutes or so. For a full chicken, well, it depends on the weight, but I'd do a similar temperature changing so you can get the crisp skin. But it will then be much longer baking in the second part, because... size. Once your bird is cooked (judging by a meat thermometer, and when the juices run clear when you cut it), you can remove it from the oven and carve it up to serve. For the game hen, this meant that I cut it in half lengthwise with my kitchen shears and ate half of it, saving the rest for the next days' lunch. Half a game hen was just about the right amount for one, especially with veggies for a side. For a chicken, obviously, carve it like you would any other chicken.

You can just use the juices as a sauce, at this point, but I wanted something a little thicker and saucier, so I strained out the garlic and other particulates and cooked it down a bit in a sauce pan. I thought it needed a little more flavor, so I added a little bit of salt, msg, lemon juice (a few drops) and apple cider vinegar to brighten it up a bit! I've read numerous places that adding a bit of acidity can really improve a dish, and it turned out very nicely here, especially considering I improvised the additions! So overall, I would call this a very successful adaptation, and I would happily get game hen as a replacement for whole chicken again in the future. Since cooking for one can be a bit aggravating at times, it's always nice to find a good way to moderate my serving sizes and open up my repertoire a bit!

Of Cookies and Cupcakes

On Monday evening I held a board-game night, for people both from college and from my department. It was a great evening, with lots of fun boardgames played (Pandemic! Ticket to Ride! Cards Against Humanity! Taboo! Settlers of Catan! Dominion! Etc!), lots of fun people, and lots of fun food and drinks. My friend Kaila was here for the weekend, (as previously seen in the "Funtimes with Kaila and Benson" post), so she was extremely helpful in aiding my food prep for the evening. She made a delicious spinach dip, for example, as well as helping with numerous other dishes including finding a GREAT recipe for basil pesto bread in my bread machine cookbook. But the most awesome dish that the two of us made was a previously untested (by us) recipe that Kaila found online that looked really cool: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes - the original recipe can be found here.

This is exactly what it sounds like: cupcakes, stuffed with cookie dough. They're pretty straightforward, too - just drop frozen chunks of cookie dough on top of your cupcake batter and bake. But of course, you need to make the dough and the batter! So as a bonus, this post also includes a recipe for delicious Vanilla Pudding Cookies (with chocolate chips!) - a different recipe for chocolate chip cookies that was the standard at our place in college. Unlike my other chocolate chip cookie recipe (see "Christmas Cookie Spectacular" blog post), this recipe is designed to put out large, fluffy, SOFT cookies which stay soft for a long time after you've baked them, as in, probably a week though they've never really lasted that long! And although you only need a half a recipe for the cupcakes, well, we made a full batch so that we could have cookies in addition to cupcakes! So two delicious desserts for one! Apparently you can also just use the standard pre-made cookie dough that comes in tubes to make this recipe even easier, just roll THAT in balls and freeze it instead of making homemade cookie dough. You can also substitute other cookie doughs or other cake mixes to mix and match.

Vanilla Pudding Cookies (makes 4 dozen)

2.5 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 3.4 oz package vanilla pudding mix
1 c. softened butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups chocolate chips
(1 cup walnuts)

Preheat the oven to 350F (assuming you are making cookies). First mix all your dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, the sugars, the pudding mix) in a large bowl, thoroughly. Next, mix in your softened butter. Repeating something I said in my "Christmas Cookie Spectacular" blog post, be sure to actually soften your butter, rather than microwaving it until it's melty. Melted butter and softened butter are very different animals, and the quality of your cookie somewhat depends on your butter consistency! While we did soften our butter as we were supposed to, if you are in a rush, there is an easy trick to make it soft really quickly, without cheating with the microwave - if you have a cheese grater, you can grate your hardened butter through it, which increases the surface area of the butter and lets it soften up right away. Plus, since it's already grated, it mixes easier than straight up hard butter does, even when each individual piece might be harder than truly softened butter. So a handy trick if you are ever in a pinch, like you've suddenly developed a massive cookie craving in the middle of the night and you MUST BAKE NOW. Yes, this has happened to me.

Once you've added and mixed the butter, proceed to add the eggs and vanilla as well, and mix thoroughly. Now, at this stage, your dough may look a little dry and/or flaky. If this is the case, you need to mix it more thoroughly, until it's completely homogenous. The easiest way to do this is just get in there with your hands and mix it thoroughly! So everything should look nice and smooth, as a cookie dough should. Once you've done that, add the chocolate chips as well. And if you like nuts in your cookies, I suppose you can also add those, though I wouldn't recommend them for the cupcakes, and personally I don't like nuts in my chocolate chip cookies! So, if you are making cookies OR cupcakes, you'll want to put the dough into 1 tbs balls and place them on a cookie tin (or, in the case of the cupcakes, into something that will fit into your freezer but keep the balls separated). If making COOKIES: bake for 10-12 minutes in your preheated oven, until they're nice and brown on the bottom.  Remove from the oven, let cool, and consume. These will stay soft for at LEAST a week, probably longer!

If making CUPCAKES: place the balls (24 of them, one for each muffin, though I added an extra one for luck) into the freezer for at least 2 hours, until they're frozen solid. The reviews of this cupcake recipe are very vehement that the cookie dough MUST be frozen solid for these cookies to turn out right. So freeze them well. Heck, overnight, if you so desire, I guess. When they're frozen, you are ready to make your Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes



Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes
1 box of cake mix
Any additional ingredients required to make said cake mix (this usually consists of some number of eggs, some oil or butter and water)
24 frozen solid 1 tbs balls of chocolate chip cookie dough - REALLY frozen.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix your cake mix according to the instructions on the box. In our case, this involved a red velvet cake mix, 3 eggs, 1 1/4 cup of water, and substituting a half a cup of softened butter for the half a cup of oil (because that way your cupcakes are more buttery! Can't go wrong with that!). Next, either line your cupcake tins with cupcake holders or grease the cupcake pan. We didn't have the paper cupcake things, so we just greased it, but next time I'd definitely use the liners: especially since if these are underdone they're otherwise quite difficult to remove from the pan. Fill your cupcake pan so that each cupcake thing is 2/3 full. I would emphasize that you are adding both cookie AND cupcake batter to your tins, so don't overfill: the cupcakes rise significantly. We overfilled ours, and they overflowed a little. Still tasty, but not as pretty! Next, place a frozen dough ball on top of each of the cupcakes, centered. It will sink as the cupcake bakes, so you don't need to press down or anything.

 In the comments from AllRecipes, it emphasizes to REALLY make sure the dough is frozen and DO NOT over cook the cupcakes, or they'll cook, and you'll have chocolate chip cookie stuffed cupcakes instead of chocolate chip cookie DOUGH cupcakes. Not a tragedy if you overshoot a little, but just be aware. Bake for 16-18 minutes - test the cupcakes by sticking a toothpick into it near the side of the cupcake - since you are testing the doneness of the cupcake part, not the cookie dough part. Once you think its done, remove the cupcakes from the oven, and let cool for 15 minutes (so it settles) before removing from the tins. Then you can pop them out, and they're ready for frosting!

Chocolate [Almond] Frosting
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 1-oz squares of unsweetened chocolate (melted)
1 tsp vanilla
Optional: small splash of almond extract
2.5 cups powered sugar

Bring the butter and the milk to a boil in a small saucepan, then blend in the chocolate, vanilla and, if you so desire, the almond extract. We actually didn't intend to add almond extract, but the bottle of vanilla and the bottle of almond extract look very similar, and some went in before we realized our mistake. But it was a very tasty mistake indeed, so if I made this again, I would replicate it! Next, slowly add your powdered sugar, blending as you go until it's smooth. You should probably taste as you go, and add more or less as you desire your sweetness level. While the original frosting recipe we were following (from my wonderful all chocolate-based recipe cookbook!) called for 2.5 cups of sifted powdered sugar, we cut it down a bit to 1 3/4 - mostly because that was all the powdered sugar we had. However, we found that it was actually just about the right amount of sweetness, so it wasn't a huge problem. The icing WAS a little runny, however, and tended to get a bit melty when in a warm room, so I'd probably go with the full amount of sugar if you have it. Once that's all done, you can frost your cooled cupcakes! And you have a delicious treat for you.

Our final products were very tasty, but NOT the prettiest cupcakes I've ever made. Our first batch turned out slightly overdone - so it was an absolutely scrumptious cupcake with a soft and fluffy chocolate chip cookie baked inside - which was delicious, but wasn't chocolate chip cookie dough we were going for. For our second batch (I only have 12 cupcakes worth of cupcake pans, so we had to do it in 2 batches), we overcompensated and undercooked - so we got the cookie dough part, but the cupcakes were almost falling apart because they weren't quite cooked enough. I'd error on this side, personally, if you have cupcake liners, since the main problem here was difficulty of removal from the pan. Note that the cooking time difference between the two batches was 2 minutes (18 minutes for the first, 16 for the second). So there is a fine, fine line here. And it probably varies based on the exact cookie dough and cake mix you use - so experiment a little! But all in all, very tasty, I would definitely make these again.

Baked cupcakes before the icing stage

Sauces: Pears and Caramel

As I mentioned in my last (long) entry about the lobster, Benson and I additionally made dessert to go along with our meal. It's a dessert that we'd made before, and like quite a lot, as it is both simple and tasty. It also has the added benefit of looking much more impressive than it is. The only downside is that if you get pears which aren't yet ripe, it can take a while to bake. But if you are stuffed with lobster (or some other delicious food), you can just wait around while it sits in the oven long enough for things to get soft. Or get impatient (as I did) and eat the pears a little firmer than one might have ideally, since they will still be tasty. This is from another cookbook that Benson gave me (and another excellent one, I might add), James Pattersons "Sauces." It's actually almost more of a textbook than a cookbook - since for the most part its technique on making sauces and how to modify them and adapt them, rather than straight up recipes. It HAS recipes and instructions for the various sauces, of course, but presumably you want to serve the sauce WITH something, and that, for the most part, is left open. For example, we've also made a delicious chicken dish from this cookbook [name of chicken awesome-sauce here]. More precisely, however, we made a sauce which was supposed to be good with chicken, and just baked some plain chicken thighs and tossed the sauce over it to finish. But that works just fine, as it was an awesome sauce indeed. As for this dish, it's really really tasty, but after we made it the first time, we reduced the amount of sugar significantly as it was also a little too sweet for our taste. If you want to do the full sugared recipe, you just change the amount of sugar in the recipe below to 1/2 cup of sugar.

Roast Pears with a Pear-Butterscotch Sauce
3 pears, peeled and sliced in half
                (preferably, but not necessarily, ripe).
1/3 cup white granulated sugar
2.5 oz of butter (5 tbs, cut in small chunks)
1/2 cup heavy cream          
a quarter of a lemon

Peel your pears, cutting them in half lengthwise and coring them. Rub each one with the lemon (this keeps them from browning). Put the pears in a single layer in a heavy bottomed pan (which you will later be putting on the stove top, so keep that in mind!). Sprinkle the butter over the pears, and the sugar on top of that. Bake the pears at 375F, for, depending on how ripe the pears are, anywhere between 15 minutes (if they're ripe) to an hour (if they're not - mine usually have to cook a bit over an hour since I tend to get the firmer pears).

Once the pears are cooked, you can remove them from the pan, and place the pan on the stove top. At this point, the sugar will have caramelized a bit, and should be a nice brown color.  If you didn't have to cook your pears as long, this might not be the case, so cook the mixture on the top of the stove until everything is nicely browned. Once this is done, mix together the butter and sugar together and add the cream, whisking the mixture while scraping the bottom of the pot. You want to do this at low heat, so that the caramelized sugar dissolves into the sauce smoothly, and everything becomes nice, creamy, thick, and delicious.

Sauces also suggests adding 'Poire William' (a pear liquor) to your sauce at this point to flavor it, but I've never had it on hand, and frankly I don't think it needs it - it's pretty tasty as is! So once you have the sauce and the pears, you can just put them in a bowl and eat them. They're also really good with ice cream, as you can imagine. Every time we make this, we end up with more caramel sauce then you can eat with just the pears, but I'd definitely recommend the sauce for other desserts as well. Either with ice cream, or in a smoothie as a pear flavored sweetener, or simply poured over [insert your favorite fruit here]. Definitely a treat!

The finished dish!

Death of a Lobster

Every time I visit Benson, or he visits me, we usually take one day for a large, ambitious cooking project. On this most recent visit, we discovered that Fresh Direct (a grocery delivery service I occasionally use in NYC) will actually deliver live lobsters to your doorstep, in addition to whatever else you can buy. And they were on sale. And I had a free delivery coupon. With these facts in mind, we decided to embark on our first ever lobster project, and ordered two lobsters, who, sure enough, arrived alive and well on delivery. They didn't arrive in a tank of water or anything - I was actually surprised that they arrived wrapped up in the usual paper and plastic wrappings that things like salmon filets also arrive in. (Their claws WERE rubber-banded, however). But I guess lobsters are pretty sturdy. We proceeded to name them "Butch" and "Sundance," and sentenced them to a terrible and delicious fate.

Butch

Sundance

Since we were actually going to kill the lobsters ourselves, we wanted to make sure they were going to a worthy cause. So once again, we pulled out "The French Laundry Cookbook" for advice and recipes. For this meal, we chose TWO lobster recipes: one for the meat itself (butter poached lobster with leeks, pommes maxime, and beet essence), and another one for the bodies (creamy lobster broth). In addition, we made roast pears with a pear-butterscotch sauce from James Pattersons' wonderful 'Sauces' cookbook, for dessert (note: not seen in this blog post - this is my LOBSTER entry, and it's long enough as it is). This was truly an ALL DAY project, but one well worth it. The first recipe, the one with the lobster meat, was definitely the most complicated, and has several different components. You COULD eliminate some components to simplify, but it's pretty darn delicious all together, so I'd highly recommend trying it all together if you have the time. But read the full recipe first, because you can do a lot of the steps simultaneously, while various components are in the oven, or cooking down, or whatever.

The amazing finished product

Butter Poached Lobster with Leeks, Pommes Maxime, and Beet Essence

2 or 3 lobsters
1 large yukon gold potato
1 lb beets (or 1 cup beet juice)
1 large bunch of leeks (which will turn into 1.5 cups of leek rounds)
2 tbs tomato diamonds
2 tsp chives
1 tbs Brunoise* (*to make, you need leeks, carrots, and a turnip)
3 cups of butter* (*which makes 1/2 cup clarified butter and 2 cups Beurre Monte)
1/2 tsp red wine vinegar
~1/2 cup white vinegar/8 quarts of water
a few drops of lemon juice
kosher salt

Part 1: The Lobster. You can do this part early, and leave the lobster meat in the fridge until you are ready to cook it later (though bring it back to room temperature before you cook it). Unlike the traditional boiled lobster, here you don't fully cook the lobster in the shell - you leave it in the hot water only long enough to kill it and for the meat to pull away from the shell for easy removal. So, you need two large containers: one to initially boil the water and one which will hold the lobster and continue to cook it. Since my large pots are rather limited, I actually boiled the water in two separate smaller pots, than cooked the lobsters one at a time in my large pressure cooker pot (the largest pot I own). Fully cover the lobster with cold water in the pot it will be cooked in. Take that water, and put it in the another pot, and add 1/2 cup of white wine vinegar for every 8 quarts of water you used to cover the lobster. Bring this water to a boil. Pour this boiling water over your lobster. This kills the lobster. Now let it seep for 2 minutes (for a 1 1/4 lb lobster; 3 minutes for a 2 lb lobster). Remove the lobster from the hot water, but DON'T discard the water. Twist the claws off of the body and put them back in the hot water for 5 more minutes. During this time, detach the tail and carefully remove the tail meat by twisting off the tail fan thing and pushing the tail up and out (using kitchen shears helps). Cut the tail lengthwise, removing the sand vein. Once the claws are cooked, you remove those from the water as well, twisting off the knuckles. You can get the knuckle meat out as one big chunk of meat if you snip off the very top joint of each knuckle and cut away the shell. Do this. For the claws, you can rock the pincher back and forth, cracking it loose, then remove it straight off the claw, hopefully leaving the meat inside it still attached the the rest of the claw meat (I managed this on the second lobster, but not the first). You remove the rest of the meat from the shell by cracking the shell near the bottom on both sides, and pulling the shell bit off so the meat can come out the bottom. These steps results in a delicious plate of lobster meat, still for the most part uncooked. As for the body, you can pull off the back and remove the lungs, roe and the sack behind the head, and use the rest of the shells and body for soup, later. These can be frozen, or used promptly. You can use the water you boiled the lobster in for a base for your lobster broth, if you are making that as well. We did!

Delicious Lobster Meat

My mandoline

Part 2: Various vegetable preparation.  Beets, potatoes, and leeks all play important parts in this dish, and if you are slicing and dicing one vegetable, you may as well do them all at once. For this, it's extremely useful to have a device called a mandoline (seen right), which can slice vegetables extremely thinly. This not only makes slicing vegetables quicker and easier, but it also results in amazingly thin potato slices, which you really want for this recipe. I've included two pictures below showing HOW THIN we were able to get our potato - laying it out you could literally read through it, and see the inner structures of the potato - it really made me want to break out a microscope! Awesomeness.

So, the next step is to very finely slice your potato, as thin as you can make it. And unless you  either a) have beet juice, or b) have a juicer (we had neither), you also want to slice your 1 lb of beets as finely as you can, and then dice it nice and small, so they're easily blendable. While you are at it, take the leek rounds (the white and pale green part of the leek) and slice those as well, into strips (see picture in the leek section), until you have 1.5 cups of them.  Finally, prepare the vegetables for your brunoise. What is a brunoise, you ask? Good question, I had no idea either. It's a finely diced mixture of various vegetables - in this case, equal parts carrots, leek greens (the dark green part), and turnips - where all of the components are diced to less than 3 mm - a very fine dice indeed (again, see picture in the leek section). You only need 1 tbs total of the brunoise, but since it freezes well, you can make a full turnips worth and save the rest for later. So I diced up the entire turnip, with equal parts by weight of leek greens and carrots (diced by Benson) to match, and just made a LARGE batch of it, rather than a 1 tbs batch. In addition, you want to neatly slice your tomato into at least 2 tbs of diamonds: peel it, quarter it, remove the core until you just have the outside, which you then slice longwise into strips, then diagonally to make diamond shapes, which are rather pretty! So, that's your chopping - but keep all components separate for now!

Part 3: Pommes Maxime. You have your extremely fine slices of potatoes, so you are ready to make your fancy potato chip (which is kind of what this boils down to). Recall this recipe requires 3 cups of unsalted butter: You will now use about 3/4 cup of it to make 1/2 cup of clarified butter. This is pretty easy: just heat up the butter in a saucepan over low heat without stirring. It will separate. Skim off the top foamy layer of milk solids, leaving you with a clear, yellow butter beneath. That bit is the clarified butter, and it's what you use on the potatoes. Clarified butter can be heated up more without smoking since it doesn't have the milk solids in it. So, to make the pommes, take the potato sheets and dip them in butter, layering them on a silicon lined baking sheet either in one large sheet which you will cut up later, or into large round disks of potato. Sprinkle with salt, and bake in a preheated oven at 300F for 45-50 minutes, until they're brown and crisp. Keep an eye on them though, ours turned out a little toastier than we wanted - edible, but toasty. Mmmmm, toasty.

Straining the beet juice

The finished glaze.

Part 4: Beet Essence. If you have a juicer or beet juice, you can skip this first bit. But if you DON'T, take your one lb of nicely sliced and diced beets and toss them into the blender. Add perhaps 3/4 cup of water and BLEND. Add more water if you can't get it to blend - what you are going for is a generous cup of the strongest beet water you can get. It's OK if it ends up a little extra watery - you'll be reducing this down to about 2-3 tbs, you just want all the beet essence you can get. So blend, blend, blend, then press it through a strainer and get all the liquid out you can. Then strain THAT through cheesecloth and a finer strainer (or a chinoise/tamis, neither of which I have. See my note on straining down in the Lobster Broth section.) Take this cup of now particulate-free beet juice, and reduce it slowly over low heat to 2-3 tbs of glaze - this will probably take 30-45 minutes, stirring occasionally, and skimming off any skuzz that may rise to the top. Is this worth it? Yes. Aside from the lobster itself, the beet essence turned into my favorite part of this dish, and if I had a juicer would happily make this beet juice on a regular basis for use in other dishes. Plate-licking good. There is one more step to finish this glaze, but that comes right before serving it.

Blanched leeks

Part 5: Leek mixture. You have all your veggie components sliced and diced at this point, and you are going to blanch each vegetable individually (leeks, carrots, turnip, and leek greens) until each part is soft. To blanch, boil some salted water, and prepare an ice bath (aka ice water). Taking each vegetable in turn (already sliced and/or diced), put the vegetable into the water until it is soft, but not mushy. You want them to be cooked, but still firm and full of color. Then immediately take the vegetable out with a strainer and drop it into the ice water until it is cool - this not only stops the veggie from cooking further, but helps it keep its nice color. I sometimes make string bean salad using this method.

Finished Brunoise

The leeks you should boil for a minute or two; for the diced veggies it shouldn't even take this long. Taste test them to be sure! Then once they've been iced, put them out on a paper towel and pat them dry(ish). Keep the leeks separate for now, but once the brunoise veggies are cooked, you can mix them up together into one big veggie mix. You can now mix the leeks with 1 tbs of the brunoise, the tomato diamonds, and 2 tsp of chives in a small saucepan. But before we can finish this part, we need to talk about butter.

BUTTER!!!!

Part 6: Butter. So now everything is almost ready to go: you just need to finish each of the components. To do this, you need BUTTER, or more specifically, Buerre Monte. So, I was amazed at this step, honestly, it was really cool and pretty simple to do. What you are doing is melting your butter in such a way that instead of separating out into the clear parts and the foamy parts, you end up with a thick butter liquid that still looks all creamy and buttery (see below). It's suprisingly easy, you just need a very little bit of water (about 1 tbs) and your butter. You need 2 cups of unsalted butter, cut into tbs chunks. In a medium saucepan, boil your 1 tbs of water, and ready your whisk.

finished buerre Monte

Reduce the heat to low, and start adding the chunks of butter bit by bit, whisking vigorously as you do so, as you emulsify your butter into the water. Once the process has started, you can just keep adding butter until you have the amount you need (in this case, about 2 cups) - you just need that 1 tbs to start. Keep the level of heat gentle and consistant, and keep whisking. You need to do this step right before you need to use the buerre monte, and keep it in a warm place until you do so, so that it doesn't break and keeps emulsified.



Part 7: Finishing Touches. Now that you have your buerre monte, you are ready for the finishing touches. Beet essence: bring the beet glaze to a simmer, then whisk in 3 tbs beurre monte, 1/2 tsp red wine vinegar, and a few drops of lemon juice to taste.  Leeks: heat the leeks, tomatos, chives, and brunoise with 1/4 cup plus 1 tbs of beurre monte until warm, then season with salt and white pepper.  Pomme Maxim: make sure they're in the desired shape, and reheat briefly in the oven until warm, 2-3 minutes at 300F. Lobster: The lobster should be at room temperature - place them in a wide saucepan and pour buerre monte over them to cover (about 1.5 cups, or the rest of the beurre monte). Put the saucepan over low heat and poach the lobster in the butter for 5 to 6 minutes, enough to heat through. The lobster will be cooked at this point, but it's cooked at such a low heat that the meat stays as soft and as tender as if it were raw. And once this is done, the poaching liquid (aka beurre monte) will have a nice sweet lobster flavor, which is completely reusable and amazing on toast, popcorn, and wherever else you might want to use butter. I have been happily using these leftovers!  Presentation:  On a small plate, put a spoonful of beet essence in the center. On this, place a generous tablespoon of the leek mixture. On this, artistically lay half a lobster tail, a claw, and the meat of one knuckle (aka, a quarter of a lobster). On top of THIS, place your pomme maxime chip at a jaunty angle. Enjoy!!!!

Finished dish, sans potato disk.

While our presentation was probably not as nice as it would be at the French Laundry restaurant itself, I thought that on the whole they turned out looking pretty good. But not as good as they tasted. Even if I don't do the whole rigamarole again, I will very happily poach my lobster in butter in the future, as that part was pretty easy (it was the rest of the preparations that took so much time!). The beet essence, again, was another amazing component I would also be happy to make on its own. The chip on top was tasty and crunchy, and pretty straight forward with the mandoline. And now that I have brunoise in the freezer, I'd eat the leeks again, too, but of the various parts, it was probably the least exciting and took the most work (all that dicing... I really need to remember to grab the food processor that is currently sitting in my parents basement for me).

As each lobster made 2 dishes worth, Benson and I were each able to have seconds, so that we had our whole lobster to ourselves. We probably could have eaten thirds if we'd made a third lobster to split! A complex dish, but truly, truly delicious. 

Searing the lobster shells/bodies

The creamy lobster broth, by contrast, was delicious AND simple to make, though we didn't finish it until the day after we had our lobster meal (we worked on the soup, but fridged the broth over night). We already had all the shells, legs, bodies, and whatnot from the lobster ready to go (remembering to remove all lungs, roe, and other stuff inside), leftover from the previous feast. So all we really had to do was roast the shells briefly in a pan (to make sure they were nice and red), then toss them in a pot with water and various extra ingredients and keep reducing the broth. The recipe called for 3 lobster bodies, but we had 2, so we just cut down the liquids by a third and kept the rest basically the same. The results were AMAZINGLY delicious, but also extremely rich. We got two small bowls of broth out of this... and neither Benson nor I could finish our bowls completely. It was simply... too rich, too much flavor, and our tastebuds simply got fatigued eating too much of it at a time. So we saved the second half of it for the next day and enjoyed it all over again. So if you make this, keep it mind it's definitely best in small portions - if I made it for a group I'd probably make about a shot glass per person - that would be enough to leave you wanting more, but not overwhelm you. (Incidentally, that seems to be the philosophy in general of food from the French Laundry - give you lots of small servings of amazing food, and leave you wanting more. In the case of the lobster itself, we were happy to eat more anyway, since we had it. In the case of the broth, a little bit went a LONG way). Anyway, here is the recipe for the broth - a definite must if you ever have lobster bodies and shells lying around - I'll definitely be making it again!

The amazing, rich, frothy, finished broth

Creamy Lobster Broth
1/4 cup canola oil
3 lobster bodies  (we used 2)
1.5 cups chopped tomatos
1/2 cup chopped carrots
1 bunch tarragon (1/2 oz)
1 cups heavy cream (we used 2/3 cups)

Making the Soup base

Take your lobster bodies and sear them with the oil over medium to high heat for a couple minutes, until they are well and truly red. Toss them in a pot, add the tomatos, carrots, and tarragon, and cover everything with water (you don't need to add salt). Bring to a boil, then let simmer for an hour - if any skuzz or impurities rise to the top, you can skim those off. This process doesn't require much attention. Once you've done this, strain the stock into another pot, smashing the lobster bodies to make sure all the liquid comes out.

Stock

You want to really strain the soup here and make sure there is no lobster shells, impurities, or little particulates. One of the things that Benson and I have learned from The French Laundry Cookbook is that straining your soups, sauces, and liquids increases the quality of your finished dish a LOT more than you might expect. There is even a page long entry in the cookbook titled "When in Doubt, Strain" - apparently the restaurant routinely puts sauces and stocks through an increasingly fine series of strainers 4 or 5 times before anything hits the table. So we ran the entirety of the broth through a tea strainer and cheese cloth, because we don't have a fine mesh chinois or tamis (a note to any readers looking for present ideas!). We have strainers larger than the tea one, but they're not nearly as fine, so we used those first, then moved on to the tea one. This took a while, but we have learned from past experience that it is worth it, so STRAIN your soup!

Adding cream

Next, take your now-particulate-free liquid and put it in a pot. You will now reduce this liquid (which is probably about a gallon of stock which doesn't taste particularly flavorful) to 2 cups (1.5 for us, since we started with fewer lobster bodies) - this takes a while, but again doesn't require much attention. At that point, the flavor is extremely concentrated, and, after straining it once more, we add one cup (2/3 cups for two lobster) of cream! Are we done? Of course not! Reduce this sucker down until it is once again 2 (1.5) cups of concentrated lobster goodness. This time you DO need to pay attention, because cream and heat can equal burning, so stir.

At this point, you take the broth, strain it one more time, just for fun, and put it in the refrigerator for several hours, to chill (or up to three days, according to the book). You want to do this so the flavor melds nicely - we left it overnight and that worked fine. Once you are ready to eat it, you put the cold broth into a saucepan and heat it on medium, whisking vigorously as you do so. You want it to froth up significantly, it seemed like it practically doubled in volume (though I didn't do a strict measurement of that). So once it's hot and frothy, you can serve it. In small, delicious portions. It is truly a delicious and surprisingly easy soup (and would have been easier if we had a LARGE fine mesh strainer, rather than a tiny tea strainer).

Soooooo goooooooood.

So the lobster resulted in two amazing meals - three, if you count the second lunch we had soup for. And I would definitely order live lobster again - while we did do a more complicated version of lobster, I'd be more than willing to try just doing a straight up boiled lobster, as well, if they were for a reasonable price and I didn't want to go too complicated. But I'd also very happily butter poach it again, since, if you ignore the extra veggies and sauces, that in of itself is amazing (and leaves you with leftover lobster butter - amazing on toast!). And when I do get lobster again, I will never ever throw out the shells. Even if I don't have time, I could just freeze them and make the broth some other time. Totally worth it!

What I did on my Winter Vacation

After New Years, Benson and I went on a 8-night cruise with two friends from undergrad, Abe and Zahava (Benson's college roommate and one of mine, who are now married to each other). They had gone on a cruise for their honeymoon this past fall (they were married last July) and enjoyed it so much they wanted to go on another one, and invited us to join. Since Benson and I are both grad students, we can basically set our own schedules as far as when we take vacations, limited only by our own 'grad student guilt' to draw us back to work, writing papers and doing research. So, we got back this morning from our lovely cruise to Florida and the Bahamas.

Giant Chess!

Benson and I have been on one cruise before, the year between our graduation from undergrad and my first year of graduate school. Note that while Benson went directly from one to the other, I in fact took a 'gap year' in which I did much traveling - though I can talk about THAT in another post. That cruise was on Norwegian Cruise Lines on the Norwegian Pearl, and was the first cruise ever for either one of us, and was lots of fun. So when A&Z invited us for this one, on the Carnival Miracle, we thought it would be a lot of fun. Since this cruise left from New York, it was also a lot easier to deal with (compared to the Norwegian one which left from Fort Lauterdale, Florida). Benson still had to fly in from California, of course, but he would have had to do that anyway to visit. Naturally, the first few sea days were a bit chillier than they would have been leaving from Florida, but there was plenty on board to do on the ship, especially with a pair of friends who enjoy playing board games and card games as much as Benson and I do, if not more. There was mini-golf, pools and water slides, giant chess, various shows, trivia, cheesy dance lessons, and comedy routines; plus between us we brought the game 'Settlers of Catan', poker cards, pinocle cards, 'Magic the Gathering' cards, mahjong cards, and last but not least, '1000 blank white cards.' If you have never heard of this last game, it's OK - you don't buy these. You literally get a blank stack of index cards and make up your own game, draw your own cards, and watch how it develops over time, with the goal to just enjoy yourselves and have the most fun you can (if you actually want instructions, Google it). My closest group of friends in undergrad played this game throughout college, and by the end we had well over 1000 blank white cards (which were no longer blank, of course!). Abe has tried to widdle down the deck a bit to something more portable, since he's in charge of our now enormous deck. Its a good game for a large group of friends with lots of in-jokes and people of various drawing ability.

The Rocket Garden at Kennedy Space Center

So yes, there were plenty of things to do. In addition, we had three port days: Fort Canavral (Florida), Nassau (the Bahamas), and Freeport (the Bahamas). We didn't book any of the over-priced official ship excursions. For the first port, we took a shuttle to the Kennedy Space Center and bought our own tickets (which, including the cab, was literally half the price of the excursion which did the same thing, only with a large group). This was a lot of fun. Obviously, I like space things. The various exhibits focused more on the rockets, people, and general history of the shuttle and space program than the science behind it or gleaned from it, but it was really cool seeing everything up close. Alas, since the shuttle program has ended (SEND MORE FUNDING TO NASA), we couldn't watch any shuttle launches or anything, and as it was a foggy day we couldn't get a very clear view of the launch site, but there was a fun motion simulator ride which simulated being on a shuttle launch. Somehow I don't think we actually felt 3g's, however! But it was a really fun day.

The other two days were in the Bahamas, so we pretty much just spent them on the beach, in the ocean, and walking around town a bit. Zahava's a big swimmer (as in, she is on a swim team and does competitions) and lent Benson and I some goggles so we could all look under the lovely, clear Bahamas water at what was underneath. Mostly sand and seaweed, but we did see a few urchins, conch shells, and tiny silver fish! So we swam, lay in the sun, played cards on the beach, and walked around a bit (including having some delicious fish fry and conch salad) for the better part of two days.

Zahava and Abe, swimming in the Bahamas

However, the main thing that you do on a cruise line is eat. So Comedy Brunch with delicious eggs benedict and other goodies, with a different comedian most days, then lunch at an all-you-can-eat buffet (with ice cream machines), then afternoon tea with various desserts and snackables, then a late dinner at 8:15 (we got the late dining option) where you can order as many appetizers, entrees, and desserts as you can desire. The result of this last meal was me eating THREE lobster tails (along with some appetizers and vegetable sides) one night, simply because I could keep ordering them. Benson also ate three, and Abe was the champion eating FOUR. Similarly, one could order more than one steak, more than one shrimp cocktail, etc etc etc. Other dining highlights included frog legs, prime rib, souffle, chateaubriand, various shrimp dishes, beef carpaccio, and french onion soup. So we ate pretty well, too!

Formal Night: Benson and I

I also really enjoyed the formal nights that Carnival has: for longer cruises, on two nights you are supposed to bring 'formal' clothing to dress up really nice. So I brought my two bridesmaid dresses from this past year to wear - it was nice to have an excuse to wear them again, honestly - how often do you dress to that level of formality? Plus it is always nice to see Benson in a suit - honestly, most people look great in formal clothing, in fact, so just looking around the ship at everyone was kind of cool. On the first formal night, since I was feeling fancy, I decided to try out the ships casino, but was quite unhappy to discover that, although they had penny and quarter slots (which are about my price range for gambling), you couldn't actually PHYSICALLY stick coins into them. You had to make an account and stick your little sailing card into the machines, and any winnings or losing were automatically added or deducted to your card. This is NO FUN.

When I gamble, I go into it like I go into an arcade (I actually tend to enjoy myself more in arcades than casinos, honestly - I grew up going to arcades every summer on the Jersey shore in Wildwood!). I expect to lose any money I put forth, with the goal of enjoying myself for a bit of time and getting perhaps a little of the lost money back. But I consider it lost when I stick it in the machine (or whatever), and putting the coin in the slot, or whatever, and hearing the jangling of coins falling down is one of the pleasures of gambling. Seeing a little number balance go up and down on a screen? Not so much fun. The only game on the cruise that you could put coins into was one of those "quarter fall" games, with little pushers which maybe push quarters over the edge. So I played that for a little while until I ran out of quarters. But besides losing perhaps $3 of quarters, I otherwise didn't gamble. And if they'd had had coins operated machines, I would have. Their loss! I gambled far more on the senior trip in college at Foxwoods, when we went to a casino and I could actually put physical money down. THAT trip was great - and I actually won about $30 on poker, which I wasn't expecting. I had gone into it with the goal of losing perhaps no more than $30 anyway. However, the next week was the Belmont stakes, and, when I went with my friend Erica, I blew all $30 on various horses that didn't win (at $5 per horse - isn't my gambling crazy excessive?). So it evens out!  But I had a lot of fun both times, is the point.

Carnival Cruise ship

All in all, it was a very enjoyable cruise. Comparing it to the Norwegian Cruise Line, I tend to think Norwegian had better shows and activities on board, but there was plenty to do on Carnival and I'd be happy to go on that line again. The food on both cruises were pretty good, Norwegian had a different style for dinner, and which is preferable is a matter of choice. On Carnival, there was always all-you-can-eat-buffet open most of the time, with certain sections always open (the pizza, for example), plus a main dining hall you had a standing reservation for, with lots of changing menu options each night. On Norwegian, you also had a similar set-up with the buffet, but instead of a main restaurant, instead you had several different restaurants you could set up reservations for (all included, except a few that had, say, a $10 surcharge). Each restaurant also had changing menus, but the restaurants were themed (Italian, American, Steak, French, etc). So you had more overall variety and choice in what you ate, but couldn't try everything. I think I prefer Norwegian's set up in general, though there were nights you couldn't get reservations at the place you wanted at the time you wanted, so Carnivals standing reservations system did work well. The Comedy Brunches on Carnival were also a win. So, it depends what you want, I think. Overall, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend either cruise line.