The Book: There have been a lot of big-name chef and restaurant cookbooks published this fall. I find that restaurant cookbooks can be hit or miss – not all delicious restaurant food translates well to home kitchens, and sometimes scaling restaurant quantities down results in more recipe errors. However, I took a chance on one of this season’s restaurant books, Le Pigeon, since I couldn’t get over the intriguing table of contents (tongue, fat liver, little birds, pork, horns and antlers, lamb, etc.). I’m glad I did – this book is a winner. While it’s not for vegetarians or timid cooks, adventurous eaters will find dozens of recipes that stretch the way they think about food – this is outside-of-the-box cooking. Every dish is creative and company-worthy, but there’s a broad range of accessibility: a newer cook might try the simple radicchio and pear salad with an addictive-sounding blue cheese dressing or the slow-roasted lamb served over risotto (featured here!). On the other end of the spectrum, even the most ambitious chef will probably be challenged by the 7-component banana cream pie with pineapple and macadamia nuts, or the 5-component calf’s head terrine with gribiche, sweetbreads, and bruleed eggs. Some of the recipes go a little too far for my taste – I get a little squeamish about offal and other infrequently used meats, so recipes like eel dumplings and foie gras served in eel consomme are not something I’m going to cook – but for some people these unique recipes could be the highlight of the book. One note of warning: as you might have gleaned already, some of the ingredients used in this book will be really hard for the average joe to find, especially given seasonality. The book itself is one of the heftier ones on my shelves, with over 340 pages, and plenty of big, full-page photos – of the food, the city, customers, and the chefs just goofing around. I’ve never been to Portland (the Oregon one) or eaten at Le Pigeon, but my gut tells me that this book, full of stories, notes from the chef, and lots of meat and offal, is true to the experience you might have at the restaurant.

The Food: There were only a handful of recipes from Le Pigeon that were approved to be shared for promotional purposes, but they all sounded delicious. We were initially going to make the Maple-Lacquered Squab with Duck Confit Hash, but squab proved very difficult to find (actually, we bought cornish game hens as a potential substitute, but it turns out that they are not game at all, they’re just tiny, expensive chickens). So we pushed this review back a week and took the time to roast the 5-hour lamb for the Lamb with Green Garlic Risotto. The name of this dish does not do it justice – it’s incredible. Although relatively simple to put together, the three components of this dish – a lamb shoulder that’s roasted until falling apart, sliced, then quickly pan-fried before serving; a creamy pecorino and radish risotto; and a mind-blowing curry-pickled fennel and parsley salad – come together in an amazing burst of flavor. The lamb is intensely gamey, the risotto rich and cheesy, and the fennel bright and crunchy and exotic. I couldn’t get enough of the fennel, until I took a few bites without risotto and realized that it was the combination of the two that I was liking so much. Really, a showstopper. If you plan ahead and roast the lamb the night before, this is actually easy enough for a weeknight dinner. It is one of the simpler recipes in the book, so I hope we find the other recipes have the same great time to flavor payoff. Scroll down for the recipe.

Recipe Shortlist: Cedar-Planked Zucchini, Chevre, Almonds; Fig and Fois Gras Terrine with Fermented Black Bean Muffins; Pheasant Gnocchi, Sake Pears; Duck Nuggets; Smoked Rabbit Pie, Cheddar, Mustard Ice Cream; Creamed Rabbit, Polenta, Black Truffles; Potato and Nettle Soup, Crispy Pork; Lamb Shepherd’s Pie, Curry Mash; Honey-Bacon Apricot Cornbread, Maple Ice Cream

Pickles, Pigs, & Whiskey

The Book: Pickles, Pigs & Whiskey is a different sort of cookbook. With the strongly-felt influence of its chef-author, John Currence of City Grocery, it meanders through the foods that have influenced his culinary journey. You will find more than just dinner and dessert here, with whole chapters dedicated to condiments, canning, cocktails, and meat curing. Mostly rooted in Southern cooking (deep Southern and Creole cooking to be more specific), it occasionally veers into the culinary traditions of Latin America, Italy, and France. Between the different cooking techniques and different regional influences, all together this book is a bit of a hodge podge, but in a good way. It has personality. Most of the recipes manage to be both fancy and rustic at the same time – comforting stews and roasts and braises, but always with an elegant spin. Like Le Pigeon, many of these dishes are fairly meat-heavy – again, probably not the best choice for vegetarians or for those trying to eat lightly, but great for creating intense flavors. I’m not the biggest fan of the design of the book – the multiple photo layouts are a little bit too yearbook-like for me – but that’s obviously a matter of personal taste. What I do like is the inclusion of music to listen to while you’re cooking each dish; I think it’s such a fun and original idea to include playlists in a cookbook.

The Food: Perhaps we were being foolish, but the recipes we chose to test from this book didn’t contain any of the three title ingredients. In fact, they aren’t even that Southern, but Rabbit Cacciatore with Black Pepper Pappardelle was what sounded good to us on a freezing November night, so that’s what we made. I’m a big fan of rabbit, but I thought this recipe didn’t really showcase it – it actually ended up tasting kind of like chicken, where chicken was the protein it was intended to replace. Plus, it was a bit tricky to eat with the rabbit pieces left whole; next time, I would pull the rabbit meat off the bones before serving. The mushroom and tomato sauce was good, a little one dimensional perhaps, but with an unexpected smoky kick to it that I liked, and it had gained complexity by lunchtime the next day. I can’t really fairly review the pappardelle, since I accidentally used bread flour, thought I didn’t have enough, and added some semolina flour to make up for it – but it did end up coming out really well after some thorough kneading, and I loved the black pepper bite to it. All told, this was a solid recipe, but not particularly special, especially given the price of rabbit. I’m certainly not giving up on the book, but next time I think I’ll choose something a bit more Southern. Scroll down for the recipe.

Recipe Shortlist: Bourbon Milk Punch; Gumbo Z’Herbes; Pickled Sweet Potatoes; Top-Shelf Chicken and Dumplings; Chicken-Fried Duck with Caramelized Onion Gravy; Grillade and Grits Casserole; Pecan-Smoked Duck with Molasses Lacquer; Pork Fat Beignets with Bourbon Caramel

Recipes

Lamb, Green Garlic Risotto

Recipe from Le Pigeon. Serves 4.

For the lamb:

• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp ground fennel seeds
• 2 TBS kosher salt
• 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 1 boneless lamb shoulder, about 3 lbs.
• 1 c. dry white wine
• 1 head green garlic, halved (use regular garlic + 2 shallots of green garlic is unavailable)
• neutral oil, for frying

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Stir together the garlic powder, onion powder, fennel seeds, salt, and pepper in a small bowl, then rub the lamb all over with the spice mixture. Place in a roasting pan with the wine and garlic. Cover with aluminum foil and roast for 5 hours. Remove from the oven and let cool. Refrigerate until cold.
2. When ready to serve, remove the lamb from the fridge and cut into 6 equal round slices. Heat 1/4 inch of oil over medium-high heat, and fry the lamb slices in batches until heated through and crispy, about 3 minutes per side. Transfer to a plate line with paper towels. Serve on a bed of risotto with a spoonful of pickled fennel salad on top.

For the risotto:

• 1/4 c. butter, divided
• 1/2 yellow onion, peeled and finely diced
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1 1/2 c. Arborio rice
• kosher salt
• 3/4 c. dry white wine
• 4 c. chicken stock, heated until steaming
• 1/2 c. grated pecorino cheese
• 1/2 c. thinly sliced radish

1. In a heavy pot over medium heat, melt 2 TBS of the butter. Add the onion and the garlic and saute until translucent, about 4 minutes. Add the rice and season with salt. Cook for 3 minutes or until rice is translucent around the edges, stirring the whole time. Add the wine and cook, stirring, until the wine has evaporated, about 4-5 minutes. Ladle the hot stock into the risotto 1 cup at a time, stirring the risotto constantly. Let each cup absorb into the rice fully before adding more stock. Once you have used all the liquid and the rice is al dente, stir in the pecorino, the radish, and the remaining 2 TBS of butter. Season to taste, remove from the heat, and serve immediately.

For the pickled fennel salad:

• 1 c. champagne vinegar
• 1 TBS curry powder
• 1/2 c. water
• 2 TBS sugar
• 2 TBS kosher salt
• 1 TBS ground fennel seeds
• 1 small fennel bulb, cored and thinly sliced
• 1/2 small yellow onion, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1/2 c. fresh flat leaf parsley leaves
• 1 c. halved cherry tomatoes
• 2 TBS good quality olive oil
• a squeeze of fresh lemon juice

1. Heat the champagne vinegar, curry powder, water, sugar, salt, and ground fennel over medium heat in a small saucepan. Bring just to a boil, then remove from the heat and pour it over the sliced fennel and onion in a heatproof bowl. Let cool, cover, and refrigerate until chilled. (Can be made up to 1 week in advance)
2. Toss the pickled fennel with the parsley, tomatoes, olive oil, and lemon juice. Season to taste with salt.

Reprinted with permission from Le Pigeon by Gabriel Rucker & Meredith Erickson, copyright 2013. Published by Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House, Inc.

Rabbit Cacciatore with Black Pepper Pappardelle

Recipe adapted slightly from Pickles, Pigs & Whiskey. Serves 6-8.

For the rabbit:

• 8 rabbit hindquarters
• 4 tsp + 3/4 tsp salt, divided
• 4 tsp + 3/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper, divided
• garlic-infused olive oil (we used regular olive oil plus two cloves halved garlic)
• 1/4 c. chopped fresh oregano, divided
• 1 c. flour
• 3/4 tsp smoked paprika
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp onion powder
• 1/4 tsp cayenne
• 5 TBS olive oil
• 1 c. diced yellow onions
• 1 green bell pepper, seeded, stemmed, and diced
• 3 TBS thinly sliced garlic
• 4 c. sliced cremini mushrooms
• 2 1/2 c. chopped fresh tomatoes
• 2 TBS fresh thyme leaves
• 1 TBS chopped fresh rosemary leaves
• 3 c. crushed, canned tomatoes
• 1 1/2 c. chicken stock, plus more if needed
• 1/2 c. Marsala
• Parmesan cheese
• fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped, for serving
• fresh pappardelle noodles with 4 tsp of freshly ground black pepper added to the flour before starting, cooked for 3 minutes in boiling water

1. Season the rabbit pieces with 4 tsp of the salt and 4 tsp of the pepper, 3 TBS of the oregano, and some garlic oil. In a small bowl, mix together the flour, smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne, and remaining 3/4 tsp of salt and pepper. Dredge the rabbit pieces in this seasoned flour, shaking off any excess.
2. In a large Dutch oven or pot, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Brown the rabbit pieces in batches, cooking for about 2 minutes per side, then reserve them on a paper towel lined plate. Add the onions, bell peppers, and garlic to the pan and saute until they begin to sweat, about 5 minutes. Add the mushrooms and chopped fresh tomatoes and saute for an additional 5-7 minutes. Stir in the remaining 1 TBS oregano, the thyme, and the rosemary.
3. Return the rabbit legs to the pan, add the crushed tomatoes, stock, and Marsala. Bring to a low simmer, then lower the heat, cover, and simmer for 45 minutes. Check the sauce every 15 minutes or so – if the sauce appears to be drying out, add more stock 1 cup at a time as needed. After 45 minutes, uncover the sauce, season to taste, and simmer for an additional 15 minutes uncovered. Serve over the fresh pappardelle noodles with parmesan and fresh parsley.

Disclaimer: I received a review copy of both these cookbooks from Ten Speed Press and Andrews McMeel free of charge, but was not otherwise compensated for writing this review.

The post Book Club: Le Pigeon + Pickles, Pigs & Whiskey appeared first on Katie at the Kitchen Door.

I’m here to tell you about our garden.

Finally.

I’ve been looking forward to writing this post since the beginning of February, when I planted the first tiny parsley seeds and proceeded to check them hourly for signs of growth.  I’ve taken hundreds of pictures, from those first tiny sprouts to the squash flowers that have just opened up to the fat little pea pods on the vines (peas! actual peas!)  and I’ve been dying to share them.  Well, I’ve shared a couple.  But really, I didn’t want to say too much about the garden in case it was a total failure.  Having written about it prematurely would only have compounded my disappointment.  I love this garden.  Like, I really love it.

From the get-go, I decided that if I ate even one thing from the garden, I would consider it a success.  And now that I’ve harvested not one, but two things from the garden (arugula! peas!), I’m taking a deep breath and declaring success.  And telling you all about it.

Dork alert: I’ve been keeping a garden diary.  Growing things is not something I have that much experience with, and when I’m unsure about something, I write about it until I understand it.  That’s why I have 8 journals full of notes about boys – they’re not as simple as they seem at first, what can I say?  But looking back at the notes I’ve taken in the past 4 months reveals how much uncertainty there is for a first time gardener – there was the week when the trees leafed out and the raised bed stopped getting morning sun, and I wondered if the sun would ever be high enough in the sky to give it afternoon sun (it is).  The days when the lemon tree suddenly dropped all it’s leaves caused a bit of panic too (it’s covered in blossoms now, although still a little low on greenery).  Just the other morning I found that some creature had hopped into the raised bed and eaten an entire kale plant, leaving no signs that the plant had ever existed.  Little heartaches are left and right in this process, but working in the garden with Trevor has become one of my favorite activities, and eating the first fresh peas this week has seemed more like icing on the cake than the natural outcome of all the hard work we’ve put into it.

I started planning the garden out in January.  I’ll admit, we were a little over-zealous, and the garden quickly spread from being contained in a 16 sq. ft raised bed, to a 16 sq. ft raised bed and about 20 pots and containers along the driveway.  With the exception of 1 eggplant, the thyme, the oregano, and the trees, we started everything from seed.  In February, we started the basil, sage, parsley, oregano, thyme, broccoli, eggplant, and tomatoes.  I invested in a heating mat and found that, even though they seem like a waste of money, the Jiffy pop-up seed pods were much more effective than planting in little pots with seed starter.  The oregano and thyme sprouted but never really grew, so we replaced them with big plants from Pemberton.  That first batch of basil got dried out when I went away for the weekend and had to be restarted.  The parsley was a slow-starter, but is now doing OK in the raised bed.  One of the eggplants really took off, and has it’s first flowers now.  The tomatoes have been the biggest success – San Marzanos and Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes.  The 5 cherry tomatoes are all huge and just getting their first tiny green tomatoes.  In March, the shelling peas and fava beans got planted directly in the bed, the lettuces went into a large stone bird bath, and brussels sprouts and kale got planted inside.  Then in April, the squash, cucumbers, and beets went in.

And now?  In the raised bed are 2 varieties of English shelling peas, fava beans, parsley, broccoli, cucumbers, roma beans, edamame, kale, and brussels sprouts.  On the porch?  A fig tree and a strawberry plant.  In the backyard, a planter that’s overgrown with arugula, parsley, radicchio, and lettuce, and containers with raspberries, more broccoli, mint, and sage.  In pots along the driveway, where it’s the sunniest, are the meyer lemon tree, tomatoes, summer squash, watermelons, basil – both green and purple, and cucumbers.  It’s a giant hodge podge of green, and I have no idea what will work and what won’t, but it’s the best experiment I’ve done in a long time.

To celebrate the arrival of the peas, the success of the garden, and the beginning of summer, I had a little dinner for Trevor and I on Saturday night.  An actual dinner – with a glass of prosecco, a main course, and a dessert, where we sat down at the same time at the table with bowls and forks rather than eating out of tupperware from the fridge.  Mostly I just eat the peas straight while I’m sitting in the garden – they are so incredibly sweet and cool and juicy – but I wanted to use at least a few in a real meal.  So I made a spring risotto, with peas, fava beans, asparagus, mascarpone, and pecorino – all the flavors of spring.  The fava beans and asparagus aren’t from our garden, but they are local and very tender and flavorful, so we’ll take ’em.  It was delicious.  And for dessert, there were parfaits with chocolate shortbread, whipped mascarpone, and lovely red-ripe strawberries from the farmer’s market… but you’ll have to wait for Tuesday for that recipe!

Spring Risotto with Peas, Favas, Asparagus, and Mascarpone

A Katie at the Kitchen Door original.  Serves 4.

• 1 1/2 c. arborio rice
• 4 c. chicken stock
• 1 c. water
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1 TBS olive oil
• 1/2 c. white wine
• 1/2 c. shucked fava beans (about 1 lb. with pods)
• 1/2 bunch asparagus (about 15 thin stalks), trimmed and sliced on a bias into 1 inch pieces
• 1/2 c. fresh or frozen English shelling peas
• 1/3 c. mascarpone cheese
• 1/2 c. grated pecorino romano
• leaves from 10 sprigs fresh thyme
• extra thyme and shards of pecorino romano for garnish

1. Prepare the vegetables.  Heat the chicken stock plus 1 c. water in a large pot over medium heat until it comes to a low boil.  Add the fava beans and asparagus, and boil for 2-3 minutes, until asparagus is bright green.  Remove vegetables with a skimmer and plunge into very cold or ice water to stop the cooking.  When cool, skin the fava beans – the easiest way to do this is to puncture the skin (which should feel a bit loose after cooking) with your thumbnail and then gently pop the bean out of it’s skin.  The bean on the inside should be bright green.  Set aside the vegetables, and lower the heat of the chicken stock to maintain a gentle simmer.
2. In a large frying pan, heat the olive oil over medium-low heat.  Add the onion and saute for 2-3 minutes, until translucent.  Dont’ allow it to brown.  Add the rice to the pan and cook, stirring, for 1 minute, until edges are translucent.  Add the white wine and cook, stirring until fully absorbed.
3. For the remainder of the cooking process, add the hot stock to the rice 1 ladleful (about 1/2 c.) at a time, stirring all the while and cooking until each ladleful is absorbed.  The entire process will take about 20 minutes.  If you find that you are running out of stock, add a bit of water to the simmering stock.  The risotto is done when it is mostly tender but retains a bit of bite – you don’t want it to get mushy.  When it reaches this stage turn off the heat.  Stir in the grated pecorino, the mascarpone, and the thyme leaves until the cheese have melted.  Add the prepared vegetables and the fresh or frozen peas.  If the peas are very young and tender, the heat from the risotto will cook them just enough.  If the peas are tougher and starchier, you may want to prepare them in the same manner as the fava beans and the asparagus.
4. Serve hot, with extra thyme and shards of pecorino romano.

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Hey, two months in a row!  Look at me, fulfilling promises and everything.  This month’s cookbook is David Leite’s “The New Portuguese Table,” a fairly recent compendium of traditional Portuguese recipes with a modern twist.  I’ve been really looking forward to cooking from this book, as it won a James Beard award in 2010 and has a solid 5 star review on Amazon, with only one negative review in the bunch.  I made three recipes from this book in the past few weeks – cilantro bread soup with poached eggs, white beans and sausage, and black olive risotto – and I hate to say it but I’m not as enthused about the recipes in this book as everyone else seems to be.  The white beans and sausage were good, but not that original – I thought it tasted like regular old chili.  (Full disclosure, I used kidney beans instead of cannellini beans, because I just couldn’t find dried cannellini beans.  I went to four stores looking for them.  So the bean substitution probably added to the chili effect.  However, kidney beans and cannellini beans are actually pretty close in flavor, and genetically related, so the major differences caused by the substitution were probably texture and appearance, and not so much flavor.  Also, did you know that kidney beans and cannellini beans are poisonous?  Thanks, wikipedia.  You are so full of knowledge.)  The cilantro soup I did not like at all – its only redeeming factor was the croutons made from Trevor’s delicious homemade bread – and I ended up dumping most of the recipe out, as well as not finishing the bowl I brought to lunch the next day.  And it takes a lot for me to throw out food that I really wanted to like.  Maybe I was expecting too much from such a simple recipe, but it was definitely a disappointment.  On the other hand, this black olive risotto – super awesome.  Like decadent grown-up mac’n’cheese with a twist.  I made it twice in one week, and taking the time to make two risottos in one week is big for me.

Let me elaborate: this recipe takes your standard risotto ingredients – arborio rice, chicken stock, onion, white wine, and parmesan – adds two special ingredients – black olives and mascarpone – and becomes something super comforting, super creamy, and super delicious.  Trevor’s one semi-negative comment on it was that it lacked depth of flavor, which I do sort of agree with – it hits you with creamy, cheesy, and olive-y pretty hard.  But I’m OK with that.  That’s kind of what I’m looking for in a comfort food.  And this is definitely comfort food.  So the risotto recipe is a keeper.  But the other recipes I tried?  I probably won’t go to the trouble of making them again.  That doesn’t mean I’ve completely given up on this cookbook – I still have a few recipes I’d like to try, like the green olive dip and the rosemary custard – but I will approach future recipes with a more critical eye.  The cookbook itself is very attractive and well laid out, and most of the recipes included sound interesting – many of them are totally new to me, which is always something I look for in an ethnic cookbook.  Overall, I’d give this book 3 and 1/2 stars, with room for improvement if the two not-so-good recipes I tried were just flukes.

Black Olive Risotto

Serves 3.  Adapted from David Leite’s “The New Portuguese Table”

• 1 1/2 c. arborio rice
• 1 TBS olive oil
• 1 small yellow onion, diced
• 5 c. chicken stock
• 1/2 c. dry white wine
• 2/3 c. freshly grated parmesan cheese
• 1/3 c. mascarpone cheese
• 1/2 c. pitted kalamata olives, sliced
• 3 TBS minced fresh parsley

1. In a large, wide saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat.  Add the onion and cook until translucent and beginning to brown.  In the meantime, heat stock over medium heat.  Add dry rice to pan with onions and cook for 1-2 minutes, until edges of rice are translucent.  Then add white wine all at once and cook, stirring constantly, until it is absorbed.
2. Add  ladleful of hot stock to the rice and stir constantly until it has been completely absorbed, about 2 minutes.  Continue adding stock one ladleful at a time and stirring until completely absorbed until the rice is just tender – you should use most of the stock.  If you run out of stock before the rice is cooked, use hot water.  When rice is tender.  Add parmesan cheese, mascarpone cheese, and sliced olives, and stir until cheeses are melted and risotto is creamy.  Remove from heat and serve hot with fresh parsley sprinkled on top.

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