3 Festive Winter Drinks

Cold? Tired? Had long freakin' day? Step into my kitchen, friend--I have just the drink for you.

Mulled Red Wine

I made Mulled Red Wine when my friend Ben and his boyfriend Steven came over on Rockport's First Night, New Year's Eve. Ben was scheduled to sing downtown at one of the churches (he's got a gorgeous tenor) and is there anything better than a little booze to loosen up those vocal cords? I think not!

I get excited about mulled red wine, because long long ago in a country far far away, I learned how to ski on a terrifying sheet of ice high up in the Alps somewhere. So high the town below was permanently in shadow, no matter how bright and sunny the day. I'm not sure spring skiing on a sheet of ice is the best way to learn how to ski, but a high point for me was stopping halfway down the precipitous slope for lunch, where they also liberally served (even to the high school students) a magical concoction called gluhwein.

This was, essentially, mulled red wine. And let me tell you people, I'm not sure it improved my skiing but it certainly lifted my mood and made me a fan of the stuff for life.

So what's in mulled red wine? Sugar and spice and everything nice, by which I mean a little brandy for kick and some citrus peel to round out the flavor. This recipe says to put the spices in a cheesecloth square and cinch it up but you don't have to--that's just to be neat (probably a German idea, come to think of it). Anyway, good stuff and very festive if you've been outside in the elements, skiing or shoveling or just building snowmen.

Irish Coffee

I couldn't decide whether or not to serve the guys Mulled Red Wine or Irish Coffee, so as is my way, I made both. They were thrilled! And so was I--usually I'm not an evening coffee drinker but New Year's Eve is a special occasion where you WANT to stay up late. Irish Coffee is a sweet sweet way to get a caffeine injection.

This is super-simple--basically a little Irish whiskey + a little sugar in a cup, add fresh brewed coffee and top with lightly sweetened whipped cream. And then you're ready to go dance your socks off.

Kir Royale

Bubbly + creme de cassis--you're thinking New Year's Eve again, I'm sure! No, I'm not THAT schizophrenic a hostess, though this would make an excellent New Year's Eve beverage. I served this drink a few nights ago when our friends Mark and Elizabeth came for dinner--we had a bottle of Moet hanging around our house (probably since last New Year's) and what better thing than friendship to celebrate with champagne?

This is another very easy drink if you don't mind buying a largish bottle of Creme de Cassis that you may never use again--basically you pour a little creme de cassis (that's black currant, btw) into a champagne flute and pour the champagne on top. But if you want to try it, and you're at the liquor store, might as well buy a bottle of white burgundy while you're at it so you can at some future date have Kir (white wine + creme de cassis). That's what I did anyway, so keep your eyes peeled for a post on Kir at some point in the future!

Salut!

Black Bean Soup with Rum

Oh black bean soup! Is there anything like you in the dead of winter? I think not.

I'm going to write all about this soup but first I was just reflecting on how probably a vegetarian would look at this and think--oh! Soup for me! But sadly no, the recipe calls for ham hocks (which is not to say it couldn't be made WITHOUT ham hocks, of course it can. But for the cook-through blogger one must follow the recipe, the first time at least!)

And this reflection had me remembering how in my old job there were three vegetarians I had to sometimes consider in meal planning, and two sort-of-partial vegetarians. I made soup from The Gourmet Cookbook so often (and was so vexed by how a soup that one might THINK would be vegetarian actually wasn't) that I actually went through the soup chapter and put a "V" next to the soups that qualified. As vegetarian.

So here I am, looking at the page that has the Black Bean Soup with Rum recipe, and the other three recipes also involve beans, and NONE of them is vegetarian. Somehow that is weird.

Anyway, vegetarians don't forget that Gourmet Today has an ENTIRE chapter dedicated to vegetarian entrees, plus other vegetarian things scattered throughout the book (with a handy index to find them). You should buy that book if you haven't already.

So, Black Bean Soup with Rum! I did the quick-soak with my dried black beans, then sauteed onions, celery, parsley and thyme sprigs with a bay leaf for a while...then added salt pork (they were out of ham hocks--guess everybody had the same idea I did) and beans and stock and water and cooked the dickens out of it for three hours.

Then I took the salt pork out (also the bay and thyme sprigs), added 1/3 cup dark rum (hello Sailor Jerry's) and some lemon juice and used my nifty immersion blender to blendify it. Then I put it through a fine-mesh sieve to get the non-blendified stuff out. By the way, this is in place of using a food mill, which, as you may have read elsewhere on this blog, I hate and will not use.

Then! Dish it up and garnish with a lemon slice, chopped hard-boiled egg, and minced parsley! Ta-da!

I would like to nominate the lemon slice garnish for this soup as Stupidest Garnish Ever. You can't eat it, and when you fish it out it is pretty much impossible to squeeze for juice (and if you tried you would get soup all over your fingers). Basically it's a visual. If I had a category for Stupid Garnishes I would put this one in it, but I only have one for Stupid Recipes (of which happily there are very few!). And this one is NOT a stupid recipe--it's good! Try it! It will make you warmer!

Migas

Readers, when you're doing a project like this you are keenly attuned to certain ingredients and pieces of cooking equipment that are unusual, that sort of lodge in your brain as something to keep an eye out for. This is why, if you were in Market Basket with me not too long ago, you would have heard me gasp, "Veal Tongue!" Adam and Teena know what I'm talking about.

So I was cleaning out my fridge a few days ago and pitching some stuff when I grabbed a foil-wrapped package of something not well-wrapped at all actually--it was a bunch of corn tortillas from Mexican take-out that were kind of dried out from air exposure. I had one hand on the garbage can when I suddenly gasped "stale corn tortillas!"

I had one of the key componants of Migas right in my very hand.

You won't find migas on the breakfast menu here in New England--in fact I'm betting that most northerners have never heard of it. If you're Jewish and matzo brei is or was part of your life you'll have an inkling of what I'm about to describe--this is basically a homestyle, use-the-leftovers type of a meal that involves bacon, onion/garlic, chilies and tomatoes scrambled up with some eggs, refried tortilla pieces, and shredded cheese.

Sounds good? It is good. Really satisfying. It won't win a beauty contest, but that's not what it's for now, is it?

You start by frying some bacon and setting aside, then frying some ripped corn tortillas and setting those aside too. Then saute onions, garlic and chilies, add crumbled bacon and tomatoes and cumin. Then stir in the fried tortilla pieces and pour on the eggs and sprinkle on cheese--stir til set.

That's it! You might have these ingredients in your fridge. Why not look? Or, maybe it's time for some Mexican take-out?

3 Easy Apps

When I found out that one of my co-workers would be performing during Rockport's First Night, I invited him and his partner to our house beforehand for some roasty-toasty cocktails (mmm, mulled red wine and Irish coffee) and some nibbles before we all set off on an evening of sea chanties, calypso-funk and Beatlemania. Of course I turned to our beloved Gourmet Cookbook for the nibbles (and yes, those cocktails came from Gourmet Today--more on those soon).

I was looking for easy, and I was looking for not going to the store. I won on both counts.

1. Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

I happened to have a few small bags of raw pepitas in the freezer, and this recipe is so simple I'm amazed I haven't tried it yet. You put the pepitas in a dry, medium hot pan, stir them for 5-7 minutes until they're brown and lovely, drizzle a little XVO on them and sprinkle with a little fine sea salt.

That's it! So delicious.

2. Olive and Eggplant Spread and 3. Pita Toasts

We happened to have an eggplant kicking around, and my husband is a fiend for cured olives--so the ingredients for Olive and Eggplant Spread were right at hand. Sort of a cross between baba and tapenade, my friend commented, and yes, he's right!

Also hanging out in the freezer--tiny little whole wheat pitas, which I thought would make dandy pita toasts for the spread. Again, this is so easy--split the pitas, brush with XVO and sprinkle with coarse salt, then cut into wedges and toast. I had them in the oven at the same time the eggplant was roasting.

Then, on to First Night! Here's some of the great music I heard:

Sparkle Motion Swing Trio – 20s, 30s & 40s Music

Coro Stella Maris – Medieval, Renaissance and Early Baroque Choir

Wildest Dreams - Afro Pop - Reggae - Calypso - Funky Soul

Alek Razdan and Willie "Loco" Alexander- Jazz & Punk

BeatleTracks - Beatle Tribute Band

Jah Spirit – Reggae Band

Sweet Loretta's Snake Oil Jug Band – Blues, Country, Ragtime, Folk, Magic & Humor

What a great way to ring in the new year! Thanks, Rockport!

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Gluten-Free recipes in this post: Roasted Pumpkin Seeds, Olive and Eggplant Spread

Low-Carb recipes in this post: Roasted Pumpkin Seeds, Olive and Eggplant Spread

Paleolithic recipe in this post: Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

5 1/2 Christmas Confections

Readers, this was an unusual Christmas for me. Why? Because for the first time in over a decade, I wasn't working on Christmas Day! When I had my estate cooking job, that was just part of the gig--Christmas Dinner--and before that, at the Emerson Inn, I offered to cook because our family always celebrated on Christmas Eve.

And all of these years I've also been applying my considerable cooking skill and energy to Christmas cookies, fruitcakes, and confections--all on the job, to be consumed or given as gifts by my employers. Nothing wrong with that--it's what I do!

But this year, I found myself primed at the beginning of December, ready to go--and hey, guess what? This year all of that skill and energy could be channeled to making yummies for my own friends and family. Even more exciting? I had the new Gourmet cookbook in hand, Gourmet Today, to mine for new Christmas confection ideas. Woo hoo! Line up those candy boxes!

My first confection was actually a tried-and-true favorite from the Gourmet Cookbook--one that has proven wildly popular over the past three or four years--Candied Citrus Rind.

When I first made this I quickly realized that the paltry 2 grapefruit they mention (in the book, not the online recipe) would never be enough, and further, that one couldn't stop at just tossing these with sugar--they should properly also be dipped in bittersweet chocolate. So it kind of grew into a candy-making monster. Imagine a soup pot filled to the brim with grapefruit, pomelo, orange, lemon and lime peels (bring to a boil and drain off water FIVE TIMES to draw off bitterness)...make a simple syrup using a whole bag of sugar...what I end up with is many racks of candied peel drying over trays and taking up a lot of room!

This photo is pre-sugar coating/chocolate dip stage, but aren't they beautiful? Oh readers, these are so tasty. It's a very good thing I only make them once a year.

My second confection was the Truffle Fudge from Gourmet Today (the rest are all from that book). Sadly, this is not online, but happily it's so easy I can tell you in two seconds how to make it--melt a bag of bittersweet chocolate chips, 1/2 stick butter, a pinch of salt and a can of sweetened condensed milk together somehow (I used a microwave), pour into an 8" pan lined with parchment paper, and cool in the fridge.

That's it. Super easy!

The third confection was Chocolate Earl Gray Truffles. Here I had a little supermarket quandry, trying to find just the right form of Earl Grey tea. The cook's notes point out that "loose tea leaves have a fresher, more distinctive flavor than the leaves in tea bags", and though I couldn't find loose tea, I did find whole leaf tea in tea bags which seemed like an OK compromise.

If you've ever made a flavored creme brulee this is the same idea--you let the tea leaves steep in hot cream, and then use that cream to go forward and make a ganache. The recipe asks you to roll ganache balls in your hands and then dip those in cocoa powder, but since I have an aversion to goopy hands I used a mini-scoop with a release bar.

The bergamot flavor is very subtle in these truffles and although I liked them (a lot), I couldn't help comparing them with Robert Linxe's truffle recipe in The Gourmet Cookbook, which has you smear a thin layer of melted chocolate on the ganache balls before you toss them in cocoa powder--this fussy little extra step adds a thin snap when you bite into the truffle.

Speaking of Robert Linxe, Don and I visited La Maison du Chocolat while we were in NYC! I got a big box of dark chocolate just for us and I will never tell you how much I paid for it! Here's some history on this fellow for your reading pleasure.

My fourth confection was Toasted-Coconut Marshmallow Squares. My shopping quandry here was finding coconut extract--I could find only artificial extract at Market Basket, but then found real (organic) coconut extract hours later at Common Crow. Of course I went with the latter, only to find out that the 1/2 tsp. didn't add any noticable coconut flavor to the marshmallows--oh well!

I'd never made marshmallows but it's pretty easy if you have a stand mixer--they are essentially meringue + unflavored gelatin. I suppose standard marshmallows are tossed in corn or potato starch so they don't stick--here they are tossed in toasted coconut. Pretty!

The fifth confection was Pumpkin Seed Brittle. On the surface this looks like a simple recipe, requiring only sugar, water, sea salt and green, raw pepitas. But the technique is so odd I'm going to show you action photos--I was quite sure the whole thing was a wash at least twice but they came out beautifully. You start off with sugar, salt and water and bring it to a boil:

When it reaches 238 you take it off the heat and add the pepitas, stirring until the sugar recrystallizes:

Then you put it back on the heat, stirring until it becomes grainy. This is one of the places where I was sure I'd be pitching it because I stirred for a lifetime without it getting to the next stage, where the sugar "turns a deep caramel color" and at the same time, the seeds get all brown and toasty:

Finally...

Then you pour it onto parchment paper you've got taped down, throw another piece on top and roll it out super thin. I burned my hands here in my enthusiasm to work quickly.

I was in love with this gorgeous candy. Look at it!

Also so good. I think for adventure + flavor this one was my favorite.

And now we come to confection 5 1/2, which was a twice-failed recipe--Fleur de Sel Caramels. On the surface, this seems like another easy one--basically caramelized sugar plus cream. What could go wrong?

A lot, it turns out. The first batch (made by O'Malley, with my supervision) although it cooked to the proper temperature (248) set up far too hard and was essentially a lot like the middle of a Heath bar (not a bad thing, but not caramel!) The second batch, cooked to a temp I found online (236) came out too runny and turned into apple dip.

I'm not sure what exactly went wrong here but I'll try it again next Christmas and see if I can't get it right.

And fyi now-nonexistant Gourmet staffers, where the heck am I supposed to find unsweetened passion fruit puree? I had planned to also make Passion Fruit Gelees but never could find any and since I've never had passion fruit I didn't even know what to sub in. Another confection for next year!

Roasted Spiced Sweet Potatoes

Gourmet Magazine is no longer published, but it is certainly not forgotten. A great example of this is the new blog "Gourmet Unbound", which seeks to keep the spirit of the magazine alive by soliciting monthly posts from cooks around the world who are going through the archives month-by-month.

My friend and fellow Gourmet blogger Adam over at Gourmet, all the way tipped us off on this (Teena and me)--should be easy for those of us blogging through the Gourmet Cookbook, no? And according to the submission guidelines, all you do is an advanced search at Epicurious with your month of choice--a quick browse and I found many recipes I had already done and many more that were in the book waiting for my attention.

A side note! I found two recipes that were apparently published in a January version of the magazine that just astonished me--I would have bet all kinds of money that they would be featured in the dog days of summer. This is why I don't go to Vegas--I suck at betting. The recipes are: Cold Buttermilk and Shrimp Soup (January 1991) and Quince, Apple and Almond Jalousie (January 1998).

It's beyond me why anybody would feature a cold soup in January (unless your readership is primarily in the tropics?) and quince, at least up here, is a seasonal summer fruit. So go figure. And by the way, that soup is awesome. Make it next time it's hot.

On to the featured recipe--Roasted Spiced Sweet Potatoes (January 2002)! I made these to go with the Cider-Braised Pork Shoulder with Caramelized Onions I talked about in my last post. If you've ever oven-roasted potatoes before this will all seem very familiar--what's unusual and most tasty about this side dish is the spice blend: coriander and fennel seeds, dried oregano and red pepper flakes ground in a spice grinder and mixed with salt. It's kind of weird but it's really good. And an excellent complement to the main course! If you've got the mid-winter blahs in the cooking dept oh and maybe you're trying to shed some of those holiday pounds, consider this one--sweet potatoes are one of those vegetables that are supposed to be super good for you.

Happy New Year!

Cider-Braised Pork Shoulder with Caramelized Onions

I'm a sucker for recipes that start with this sentence: "Make this dish and forget about it..." Pre-Christmas, who doesn't want something you can slide into the oven with minimal effort and pull out hours later? Cider-Braised Pork Shoulder with Caramelized Onions, you're the one for me. I made this meal at the same time that I was making about fifty kinds of candy, all of which, dear reader, I will tell you about in due time.

But more about the pork shoulder--this recipe calls for a 3- to 4- pound bone-in fresh pork shoulder half. I could only find a whole, and was too rushed to ask the butcher to cut it for me--so here I am trying to brown the whole picnic shoulder in a pot slightly too small:

After browning the pork you set it aside and add about 5-6 sliced onions to the pot, sauteeing until they're caramelized:

Then stir in 3/4 cup cider, put the pork back in, cover, and slide the whole thing into a low oven for about 3 hours.

Ready for dinner?

We loved it. Our cat did too.

If I were making it again, though, I'd trim off the skin and most of the fat. There's a LOT of fat on pork shoulder, and it all went into those caramelized onions. Notice that didn't stop me from eating it, but I felt appropriately guilty.

Green Chili Cheesecake with Papaya Salsa

When my family started Christmas planning a few weeks back (which really means "deciding about food") my mother suggested "heavy hors d'oeuvres" instead of Christmas dinner. That's the best part anyway, she said--why not just make the whole food event about the best part? Now there's the food philosophy of a true hedonist, and if you've ever wondered where my deep appreciation of both butter and chocolate comes from, look no further than Mom.

Mom is also all about "many hands make light work", and this is why pretty much every family event is potluck. My husband's Long Island family thinks this is a crazy New England tradition (ok--maybe the potluck wedding reception was a little much) but it does spread out both the work and the expense.

So--Heavy Hors D'Oeuvres Potluck! Sign me up!

Don and I picked two--the recently mentioned Clams Perce, and Green Chili Cheesecake with Papaya Salsa. Don was supposed to make the cheesecake, but with his Algebra II final looming, I stepped in and did the deed.

This is a standard cheesecake--just savory. The crust is made of crushed blue corn tortilla chips + a little butter, and the cake part is cream cheese, a bit of sour cream, eggs, and cheddar + monteray jack cheese. Roasted/peeled poblano chilies and minced dill + cilantro are folded in to the dairy base and then it's baked in a medium low oven for an hour, about.

The salsa that goes with is a fruit salsa. It's supposed to be papaya, but my husband came home with persimmons instead. No problem--they're both sweet and sort of spicy. Who can keep these fruits straight when you're wrestling with algebra?

That looks like it takes up a lot of brain space.

How was the cheesecake? "It tastes like Fire and Ice!" my sister exclaimed. Should you be wondering, this is an appetizer we were practically suckled on, down in the Deep South and back in the seventies. And do you think I can find it on the Google? I cannot. Looks like fire and ice can be applied to everything from melon soup to opera cake, but as I recall OUR Fire and Ice involved cream cheese and chilies of some kind. Help me out, Amanda! 2nd-hand algebra is taking up my brain space!

I would say this is a great choice for a party app--it can be made ahead (big bonus points for that) and feeds a lot of people. It's also unusual enough to get you some oohs and ahhs and who doesn't love that?

My one and only complaint about the dish was the crust. After about, oh, two seconds those corn chips, which absorbed moisture, were staler than stale. I'd sub in some crushed ritz crackers or something. Please note that the recipe on Epicurious calls for blue corn flour. Not sure who made the substitution, but maybe that would work better too!

Hey, and the observant amongst you might note I'm posting this the day before Christmas! That's because my mom doesn't really care what day it is--as long as the whole family can be together. Our Christmas was last Saturday. Tomorrow--another Christmas, with my husband's family--a food experience beyond your wildest imaginings. I'm going to try to get a Bearnaise sauce in there--stay tuned for that post. :-) Merry Christmas!

(Don, here's your tree!!!)

Clams Perce

Making any kind of dish with fresh clams or oysters is a mixed blessing. You can't beat the taste, and canned clams just aren't the same, I'm sorry. Even the pre-shucked bivalves you can get at the fish counter usually have preservatives added. Nope, for the best you really need fresh.

BUT. Shucking clams and oysters is more easily said than done, and although I've had practice with both over the years, the idea of it still intimidates me. For one thing, it's incredibly messy, and for another, if you don't have the proper equipment it's dangerous, with a trip to the emergency room looming should your knife slip the wrong way. To make it more confusing, you don't shuck clams and oysters the same way--you pop an oyster at the hinge, and you do the opposite with clams, running your knife between the shells everywhere BUT the hinge, to loosen the muscle.

So it was with great interest and appreciation that I read the instructions for Clams Perce (pronounced "Percy")--you steam those bad boys until they open--no knives involved anywhere. I had even more appreciation for this recipe, the creation of Manhattan bar owner Perce Goodale, once I read it fully--clearly created by and intended for a busy commercial kitchen with no time to waste. So should you have no time to waste yourself this holiday season, but are looking for an app that will wow your guests, try this one on for size.

Once you get your clams out and have rinsed off the shells, lay them on a baking sheet. The recipe asks you to stablize them with kosher salt--I didn't bother with that. Put a clam in each shell, then sprinkle on top: dry stuffing mix, parmasan cheese, a strip of raw bacon, and a drop of Worcesterhire sauce. Broil for 2-3 minutes.

That's it! They're great little bites. Yum!

Veal Stew with Lemon and Creme Fraiche

Oh Paris!

My friend Moira and I went to see Paris last weekend at the very worthy-of-your-time Cape Ann Community Cinema.

Oh Juliette Binoche! One of my favorite lines in the movie is when a flirtatious greengrocer asks her if she did her hair with dynamite that morning. That's French seduction for you!

I was in a Paris state of mind for days after, and when browsing through the book for our next dinner, this caught my eye:

Veal Stew with Lemon and Creme Fraiche

The particulars of this recipe came to us from the novelist Diane Johnson, who wrote a piece for the magazine on how Parisian housewives cook.

Say no more! Perhaps my brother

will never perform a choreographed modern dance number at a party in his living room

but at least I could make stew like a Parisienne!

The head notes go on to explain that this is not your ordinary, throw-everything-into-a-pot-and-cook-it type of stew--first you cook the meat and take it out...then you cook the veggies in the meat water and take them out...then you reduce the stock and make an "exquisite sauce". Don't worry!! say the head notes. Not as complicated as it sounds!!

Taking these thing on faith, as I so often do, I trotted off to the market to buy my ingredients. Bone-in veal breast? Check. Boneless veal shoulder? Nuh-uh. I made do with "veal stew", which is stew meat, which for all I know might actually be cut from the shoulder.

Everything else is standard stew-y stuff if you put it in the realm of la France--a bouquet garnis, leeks, carrots, mushrooms--and non standard stew-y stuff, like lemons and creme fraiche. And egg yolks.

First you put the meat, bones, bouquet garnis and onions in the stew pot and let it cook up for a while. I was a little baffled by the veal breast. For one it was really fatty, and for two I mulled over how to cut it off the bone. I finally went for the "mango" approach:

And I cut those cubes off the bone. See what I mean about the fat? All of this went into a pot with onions and a bouquet garnis, which if you don't know are "aromatics" ie herbs, pepper and a bay leaf. Traditionally you bind it up with cheesecloth and string but I couldn't find either of those things in my kitchen so they were footloose and fancy free in my pot. Cover your eyes, Thomas Keller!

Purists will also note that I'm using curly parsley, not flat leaf. Well, curly parsley is growing in my neighbor's pot outside and I'm a cheap bastard (though not a parsley thief--she told me to use what I wanted!)

This all simmers for about an hour and a half, after which the meat comes out and goes in a low-medium oven. I was sort of hoping the fat would magically cook away, but it didn't. I tried one of the veal breast cubes to see if the flavor trumped the fat content, but it didn't. Alas!

So I spent a good 30 minutes picking the meat from the fat while the leeks and carrots simmered in the broth. Here's the pile of fat I had left over:

Blech.

OK, next! The veggies come out and go to a serving dish, which for me meant in the oven with the meat. The broth is then supposed to be reduced to 2 1/2 cups, but mine was already there, so voilà!!

Mushrooms then get sauteed, which made me happy because I love mushrooms in soups and stews, especially if they've been sauteed first, which makes them heartier somehow. Sauteed mushroom in the oven with the leeks, carrots and meat!

To make the sauce, first one makes a roux (flour and butter, sauteed) and then whisks in the reduced stock. In a side bowl, mix 2 egg yolks with creme fraiche:

stir in a little hot broth, then whisk the tempered yolks/creme fraiche back into the big pot with the rest of the thickened stock:

Since I was making this stew at a somewhat more leisurely pace than the recipe suggests, it occurred to me just in the nick of time that the meat and veggies were probably actually COOKING in that 300 oven.

Oops! Hm. Well, the meat was a little crispy around the edges, but nothing inedible. And as with dry Thanksgiving turkey, nothing a little gravy can't cure! I mean, Lemon-Creme Fraiche Sauce.

Doesn't it look delicious? It was. But I can't really say I felt like I was eating stew, even while pretending I was Juliette Binoche, who may or may not cook her own dinners.

Would I make this exact recipe again? Perhaps not, but I certainly am interested in this technique, mostly because it makes great use of the stock to make a very sophisticated dinner out of nothing too fancy. Well, veal is pretty fancy but you could do this easily with any kind of meat or poultry. Give it a try next time you're longing for Paris!