Messy Cuisine is a Richmond, VA based blog about the personal pursuit of fine cuisine in the home, and great places to dine out. Contributions are made by real fans of good food. Posts span back to 2005.
There’s something interesting about this dish I made in a recipe by Mario Batali from his latest cookbook, Spain.
I made a filling with chorizo, peppers and onions. Very simple. But then you make a type of closed pizza pie: two crusts. The flavors were simple, but somehow really came across as Spanish. It was tasty.
I’m guessing you could reproduce this concept of cooking, empenando with just about any type of filling, as long as it wasn’t too saucy. He recommends making steam holes. The top gets coated in EVOO and helped the crust acquire the dark color.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about learning more about French preparations. I’d always heard good things about the cookbook that came out, oh, about 10 years ago, a collaboration between Julia Child and her French friend, chef Jacques Pepin. This cookbook still looks good, and I came to enjoy reading their disagreements on opposite pages (i.e. “I like to cook chicken this way,” and “Unlike Julia, I do it this way…”).
I made Julia’s lemon roast chicken. For the most part it worked, and was tasty.
She said to de-fat the pan drippings, and I tried. But darn it, it’s not fun nor easy to do when you have onions and carrots in the pan. So, I decided to put my knowledge to work: add flour, and it will thicken things up. Her pan sauce combines wine, chicken stock, and the flavorful bits, fat removed. I still had some fat, but the sauce was ultimately too greasy. It also lacked lemon flavor. While sage was the herb used, I think adding more lemon at the very end would have been smart.
As you can see, I also made their potato gratin. I did it in individual servings using ramekins, but felt the vertical shape didn’t adequately hold enough of the flavored milk. I augmented my middle layer of both Yukons and russet rounds (cut very thin) with a little truffle oil. I think real truffle slices would have made this properly deluxe.
For the next night’s dinner, I made their simple (and simply delicious) salad of avocado, red onion, and tomato.
This was absolutely delicious, using good-quality red wine vinegar and really ripe, perfect Haas avocado. I aim to make more from their book. I took a classic and put it to work from the dessert section of the book: Crème Anglaise sauce with fresh berries.
