Deer, Oh Deer

Wiley continues to be an interspecies love magnet.

While we were were having a lovely walkies through the woods of one of the Gilded Age Hudson Valley estates near where we live this morning, I spied a young deer about a 100 yards off the trail. I mentioned this to Mr. Kittenheads, who was off-leash, pointing in the direction of said deer. Wiley looked thataways but failed to see Bambi.

Bambi shook his head and stomped his feet as if on cue.

And Wiley took off, running full-speed, hurtling his knockwurst-shaped body at the deer.

The deer stood there and wagged its tail.

At the last moment, when Chuckles MacGillicuddy realized the deer had no intention of running away, he put on the brakes and veered, crashing inelegantly into a stand of overgrowth and tall grasses.

When he emerged, the deer lowered its head and began running toward him.

Wiley looked from me to the deer and back again with incredulity. I'm sure that if he could talk, he'd be saying "no no, I'm the predator, you're the prey!"

He started running toward me, taking a wide circle to avoid the deer, which wasn't being aggressive, just playful. This is all happening, by the way, about half a mile from the spot in the same woods where last year at about this time another young deer developed "special feelings" for my furry sidekick. I don't think it was the same deer, however, because this one was clearly still a juvenile.

The deer stopped running at him when he neared me and instead trailed behind us for a bit, while Wiley studiously ignored it. I, meanwhile, was laughing. Hard. Too hard. I should have been paying more attention to where I was walking, because as I climbed up and over a fallen tree, I slipped and fell right on my hip and elbow... in a pile of deer crap.

This only made me laugh harder (sometimes that's all one can do).

I see the whole outing as karmic retribution for W and I really enjoying that venison tenderloin a couple weeks ago...

Silicone: Bad for Boobs, Good for Cakes

On Sunday, in addition to seeing "Pirates of the Caribbean: Sexy Fishmen with Bonus Piratical Chow Yummy-Fat" (what? that’s not what it’s called?) with my culinary friend E., I went to an Actual Social Gathering.

My newish neighbors in the next building had a barbecue and invited everyone. Not a lot of people showed (my apartment complex consists of three buildings with nine units each, spread out across several acres of woodland, and populated, at least it seems, by introverts who all have different schedules), but I was glad I went because it gave me a reason to experiment.

I broke out the three silicone molds that I’d splashed out for at Chef Rubber while I was in Vegas. Chef Rubber serves all the Vegas chefs as well as thousands more through online sales, and I would highly recommend them if you’re a home baker looking to get a bit more fancy-pantsed. They’re a little expensive, but their stuff works, and isn’t it better to buy a $16 mold that works than a $5 one from Bed Bath and Bupkis that turns out lousy product until you finally give up and sell it at a garage sale for 50 cents?

I speak from experience here. When I read about chef after chef raving about silicone (or silicon... whatever... the flexible wiggly stuff that comes in pretty colors), I tried a few different molds from places like Bed Bath and Bupkis. They were horrible. Cakes got burnt on the outside but were still raw in the middle. They were impossible to clean. Everything stuck to them. I decided chefs were getting some kind of kickback by recommending these monstrosities to naive home bakers.

Then, when I got into the bakeshops at school and especially on externship, where my main chef was Fleximold-obsessed, I noticed there was an incredible difference in professional v. home grade silicone. Cakes, financiers, muffins, cheesecakes, mousses, ice creams, panna cotta, cookies... you name it, we fleximolded it, all with stunningly perfect results every time.

That’s actually what inspired my first trip to Chef Rubber. The black fleximold, full sheet tray molds of the highest grade, which we use in the bakeshops, are $70 and up, and, quite frankly, impractical for the home baker, as few have an oven big enough to fit them. But the second grade silicone, which is still leap years better than the Bed Bath and Bupkis variety, is just $16 for 10-18 shapes on a sheet and you can fit two sheets on most home oven-sized trays.

So, that’s my pro-silicone pitch. If you’ve tried the home grade silicone baking stuff and came away angry and frustrated, get thee to Chef Rubber, spend $20 and get happy again.

Thinking about my extern chef’s Fleximold-obsession reminded me also of his fetish for repurposing random things, like turning packaging material into cheesecake molds or pieces of cardboard into stencils to cut supports for chocolate showpieces. It’s something I notice most pastry chefs do, as well as make furtive late-night runs to Home Depot to stock up on exotic hardware and PVC pipes. (Most of our jocund stencils at school are sheets of decorative radiator covers, and der Erlkonig keeps a traffic cone handy for helping students learn to make croque en bouche.)

So, with that in mind, I’d like to urge you to get bronchitis. Or, if you’re not ready to commit to a couple weeks of coughing, go for a milder infection, anything that requires getting a prescription for cough medicine. Then, take your Rx to your nearest Target and they will give you the med in a bottle with a neat little top that fits perfectly with the supercool little plastic syringe they also give you.

How cool is this little fella? It has teaspoons and tablespoons and mLs marked on its side, it’s super easy to clean and it is perfect for, say, squirting just the right amount of booze-laced simple syrup onto a mini-savarin.

I love my little plastic syringe so much that I’m thinking of getting bronchitis again just so I can bring home another one.

Anyway, I whipped up (not literally... mustn’t aerate the egg whites!) the financier recipe I stole from the fancy-pantsiesed of the fancy-pantsed restaurants I rotated through while on externship. It was the one restaurant where the chef made a big deal about not letting me take any photographs or even see any of his recipes (at all the other outlets, the pastry chefs were usually very encouraging, or at least obliging, of me snapping pix and copying recipes). He used to call down from his office every day and ask the sous chef if I had a camera with me. Please. I really wanted him to accuse me directly of stealing his stuff so that I could say "Actually, I don’t want your recipes. I have better ones," but he never confronted me.

As an aside, he was French.

Of course, given his attitude, I had to steal a recipe. I took a couple surreptitious photos, too, including the one I posted of Boy Wonder plating, but I particularly liked the financier recipe because it was easier than the one I learned at school.

When I make it though, I add salt. You have to. Just a pinch, but if you don’t, it tastes like nothing but the albumin of egg whites. The salt brings out the almond and the sugar. The French chef never added salt to any of his stuff, which is why I wasn’t particularly tempted to steal more recipes.

Anyway, after baking off a few dozen each of the three different shapes on Saturday night, on Sunday morning I soaked the mini savarin shapes in straight Frangelico (yum) and the mini-flan shapes in a syrup of equal parts concentrated mulberry juice, vodka and simple syrup. This was my first time using the mini-flan shapes for something other than panna cotta, and I didn’t expect the batter to rise quite so much during baking. I sliced off a couple tops to make a neat shape, then decided I liked the upended, untrimmed shape better.

It’s rustic.

(Another aside, and kind of an in-joke in the kitchens and bakeshops I’ve experienced so far: whenever something doesn’t turn out quite perfect, just call it rustic and suddenly your uneven dice or crooked apple slices are authentic.)

Right before walking over the soiree, I dusted the banquette-shaped chocolate financiers with cocoa powder and the mulberry-vodka soaked doozies with just a little confectioners sugar. I finished the savarin with just a star-shaped dot of freshly whipped cream and a raspberry. Then I took this photo (sorry about the bad lighting):

Nothing fancy and remarkably easy. They won rave reviews. I particularly liked the texture of the Frangelico-raspberry one, as the soft, ripe fruit and whipped cream melted on the tongue and the booze-soaked financier seemed surprisingly light (the mulberry ones felt heavy, maybe because they were so big, and the chocolate ones tasted dry to me, though they were the crowd favorites. What can I say, they were chocolate).

When I was cautioning parents about which ones had alcohol in them so that I wouldn’t be responsible for intoxicating the assorted toddlers and grade schoolers running about, one of my neighbors said "does everything you bake have booze in it or what?"

What part of pastry pirate don’t you understand?

While I’m on the topic of pirates, without revealing anything, I will say I was surprised by the new "Pirates" movie... while I saw several of the plot "twists" a mile off, I was thrown for a loop by a few others, and was particularly surprised by how dark the movie was, especially for something heavily marketed toward kids. I avoided reading any reviews before I went, so maybe everyone knows this, but I thought the ending in particular was pretty ballsy, especially coming from Disney, which after all bills itself as "The Happiest Place on Earth." The extended Depp-in-the-Actor’s-Studio bit in the middle was also, dare I say, shockingly avant-garde for the Mouse Kingdom.

I thought the movie was too long (jeez, it took Frodo and Sam less time to find Mordor and throw the damn ring back into the fires of Mount Doom) and, in typical Bruckheimer fashion, way too many things blew up or exploded or went bang. But I was also a bit emotional at certain points (probably not the ones you’d imagine... I was quite fond of that Kraken).

This was also another good Keira Knightley turn. I like that she’s almost always believable, strong and smart in her movies (I never thought I’d say this after the 1995 BBC series, but she’s my favorite onscreen Elizabeth Bennett... rent the "Pride and Prejudice" with her if you haven’t seen it). And yes, she’s beautiful, but in a more natural way than, say, Hannah Montana or the other bleach blond wenches I see on the cover of a lot of preteen mags.

Oh, and regarding the other performances in "Pirates," I just have to say that with or without tentacles, barnacles and unfortunate facial hair, Stellan Skarsgard, Bill Nighy and Chow Yun-Fat can join the crew of my ship any time.

I’ll supply the rum.

Tri Again: Week Three Training Recap

After what I feel were two successful weeks of base skills training, I kicked it up a notch, to use an Emerilism that I deeply despise. My reward for sticking to my training program: getting to listen to my MP3 player again when I ralk. Whoo hoo!

Sunday 27 May: week three got off to an ominous start when I took Cerdic out for a "mental conditioning" ride of 4.5 miles (I decided I’m too anxious (and slow) on the bike to include these rides as part of my physical training). The chain didn’t pop off once (yay!) and I didn’t have to walk up any of the hills, but I did get several bugs in my eyes, which resulted in moments of terrifying blindness. And shrieking. Then, on the way back, just a few hundred feet from my apartment, the daddy goose of the Canadian goose family living in the nearby pond came running toward me, wings flapping, as if he was worried I might run over his brood of four fuzzy ducklings.

Given my lack of control on the bike, his fears were probably well-founded.

I dodged him just in time to notice there was something odd in the road ahead. Something big and black and odd, stretching across the entire single-lane road with barely six inches of pavement free on one side. I thought it was some weird inner tube or something and considered running over it, but at the last minute decided to swerve and aim for the clear area of the road.

Good thing I did, or I would have wounded, or even killed, the biggest snake I have ever seen in person.

It was huge!

When I got back to the apartment, I grabbed the camera and ran back out to photograph it. It had already slithered off the road and was heading for the woods, but I did get this shot, which gives you some idea of its size. It had to be at least eight feet long.



After all the drama of the bike ride, I went to the gym and did 25 minutes on the elliptical at a resistance of 16 (out of 20). I decided right now to use the elliptical on high resistance for the next two weeks to build the muscles I’ll need to take Cerdic on the hills, which should help me both train better and build the confidence needed to tackle Mount Doom on the triathlon. Then I ralked for 25 minutes and lifted weights for 45. Needless to say, I slept well that night.

Monday 28 May: morning Pilates and an evening swim that was relaxingly chef-free. I did the warm-up, distance swim (one kilometer) and cool down in 40 minutes.

Tuesday 29 May: rest day.

Wednesday 30 May: morning Pilates. After class I got on the elliptical for 30 minutes, having an epiphany halfway through when listening to "Crazy Train." I decided that’s going to be my theme song for the triathlon, particularly the Mount Doom downhill, should I survive the uphill ("I’m going off the rails on a crazy train..."). Ralked for 15 minutes and then lifted weights for 45.

Thursday 31 May: I swam after class, shaving almost five minutes off my time just by focusing mentally on going faster. I’m feeling confident about the swimming portion. If the triathlon was tomorrow, I could do that leg in decent time. Of course, when it comes down to it, I’ll probably get a cramp or be swallowed whole by some previously unknown species of freshwater Kraken, but for right now at least, swimming is my twice-weekly "reward" training for the other two landlubber routines I force myself to do.

Friday 01 June: elliptical for 30 minutes, varying between 16 and 18 on the resistance, followed by a 15 minute mile walk to take it easy, as I was feeling a bit overtrained, particularly in my hamstrings.

Saturday 02 June: I really didn’t feel like working out today, but I told myself if I did, I could take Sunday off and go see "Pirates of the Caribbean: Hot Men In Leather and Barnacles." What? That’s not what it’s called? Hey, just leave me in my happy little reality construct, okay? Morning Pilates, and after spending four hours at the library doing homework (ugh), I ralked 3.1 miles on the track and lifted weights for 35 minutes, streamlining my usual workout by alternating working arms/chest and back/shoulders instead of just resting between sets.

Duck Duck Chicken Pheasant, Take Two

My eggs-periment with different eggs continued Sunday morning with a fry... tomatoes, sausages, bread and the aforementioned eggs. The photo didn’t come out well (I didn’t realize it was blurry till I uploaded it), so I’m not posting it, but my findings:

• pheasant egg still tasteless and had no body. It was like skim milk instead of cream. I also read today that pheasant meat tends to be much leaner than that of other birds. I don’t know if it’s true, but the egg seemed leaner, if an egg could be described that way.
• chicken egg was good, nice size and had decent flavor. I don’t have much more to say about it, though, as it was the control of the group
• duck egg was awesome. A lot of yolk, yes, which Wiley was happy to help with, but it had a richer orange-yellow color and a lot of body. The taste wasn’t that different from the egg, but the body really sealed it for me.

While not part of the formal experiment, I also tried a new (to me, anyway) kind of sausage: since I don’t really like sausages and I was already meeting my weekly recommended amount of fat in just one meal, I opted for Boca breakfast links, a meat-free, soy-based product. Yuck. Tasteless and dry, TVP-like texture. Quorn and Morningstar faux-sausages are both better.

Though I will say the Boca links' taste and texture improved mightily when dipped in duck yolk. Probably not a helpful tip for a vegan, but for the rest of us, hey, it’s an option.

Cakes and Conspiracies

I had my first post-swimming incident run-in with der Brotmeister yesterday. He saw me and made a beeline for me. I thought oh crap, he's going to want to give me swimming pointers or something, but that was apparently the last thing on his mind.

"Haff you heard about zat guy?" he asked me, all excited.

I don't know how I knew exactly who he meant, but I said "Litvinenko?"

Of course that was who he meant. Der Brotmeister shares my love of a good conspiracy theory, though he seems to actually believe them more than I do. My personal favorite of his is how the United States works behind the scenes to keep the world in a constant state of war because it's good for the American economy. Yes, and this from a native German. Nah, the Germans never started any wars. Heck, they are the softest, most loving pacifists around. No martial tradition there whatsoever.

But I digress.

After we discussed the likelihood of Putin being behind Litvinenko's poisoning rather than British security services, der Brotmeister said suddenly, with his typical Teutonic directness:

"I sink you are lookink forward to getting back to ze bakeshops. Zees classes now must be not very interesting for you. I sink zey are beyond you."

Beyond me? Excuse me, Chef?

"No, no, I mean beneat you. Zees classes now must be beneat you. I sink you haff already done all zat."

How true, Chef, how true.

On a related note, at about that moment, my most beloved chef, der Erlkonig (the original pastry pirate and friend of der Brotmeister), walked past, giggled and winked. It's funny how my day immediately improves whenever I see his elfin, slightly maniacal smile.

Instead of proving der Brotmeister right and whining more about my current classes, something I did enough of last week, I want to say how excited I am about my next class, just two weeks away: Special Occasion Cakes. Whoo hoo!

Quite fortuitously, my buddy Laura sent me this link, which is already giving me ideas. One of the assignments in Cakes Class is to create a "personal statement cake" that tells the world who you are. I'm thinking of a dominatrix cake, not because that's who I am, but it's how many people perceive me (I think it's the height, the love of black boots and my inability to suffer fools, though I chalk all that up to my German roots).

Besides, it's always good to keep your chefs both intrigued and unsettled.

More Duck Duck Chicken Pheasant

Blogger wouldn't let me post all my scintillating egg photos in one post, so here's the second half:

Of course, the test of any poached egg is the yolk, so here’s a close-up trio:

The pheasant egg, despite a good size, was the most disappointing in color (boring pale yellow) and taste (absolutely tasteless).

Here’s the chicken egg, which was my favorite overall. Nice orange color (probably from that free-range, grain-fed chicken doing chicken aerobics or something), good body and, well, it tasted like an egg, nothing shocking, but still better than tasting like nothing. Also important: the proportion of yolk to soup, which I thought was just right.

And the duck egg... I liked the color, which seemed to deepen during poaching, and the shape, but damn, it was just too much yolk. It seemed like half a cup of just yolk. The taste was very rich, though I can’t say whether it was because of the yolk’s qualities or its sheer volume.

The winner, then, would be the chicken egg, which incidentally cost half as much as the pheasant and a third of the duck.

Though perhaps the real winner was Wiley. I ate the soup from all three bowls (hey, it’s damn good, and the way I make it, good for you) and the chicken egg, but after tasting the other eggs, I decided to let my furry sous chef in on the tasting. He gobbled them down indiscriminately and then cried until I let him lick the soup pot (don’t worry... I don’t do that in the real kitchen. But hey, I’ve got hell-hot water and anti-bacterial soap. And trust me, the plates you’ve eaten off of in restaurants have probably had worse things than a dog’s tongue run across them).

This weekend, I continue the experiment with that classic indicator of an egg’s quality: a good fry.

And yes, despite eating raw or undercooked parts from five different animals in a 36 hour period, Wiley and I were both just fine.

Duck Duck Goose! (or Pheasant... or Chicken)

I’ve been itching to post about this since the weekend, but alas this was an extra busy week at Cookin’ School with projects to be done, midterms to be taken and a large number of cranky old people to be herded about on tours.

On Sunday I went to the local farmers’ market and splashed out on a small package (two pieces) of venison tenderloin from a local deer farm. It was $15 well spent ($7.50 well spent, actually, since the second piece is in the freezer). I used the same Gordon Ramsay recipe that I used a couple weeks ago on the rib-eye and the results were equally delicious, served with barely-blanched broccoli and a pilaf of teff, mushrooms and onion.

I will post more about my love of teff one of these days, but if you don’t know it, go get yourself some and play around with it. I think it may be my favorite grain, though quinoa is certainly up there, partly because it’s so much fun to say aloud.

KEEN-WAH!

The only problem with the venison was that I was so worried about overcooking it that I seriously undercooked it. The center was raw and still a little cold. Still delicious, though.

Wiley agrees.

I also got another quarter-pound of scallops - the guys at the supermarket with the best fish around here just love me, because I’m picky and demand to know where the fish came from and smell everything before I buy and then, in the end, I usually get a quarter-pound of one thing and that’s it.

This time I dusted the scallops in a blend of 1 part kosher salt to two parts Chinese five spice powder and served them on a bed of stir-fried baby bok choy and mushrooms. I think the flavor of the scallops this time round was even better than last week’s pimenton scallop experiment, but I undercooked them – a developing theme for the weekend.

Still delicious, though, and Wiley agrees.

The venison smelled so good that I ate it before I remembered to take a picture (oh well) but I’ll be repeating the recipe soon. Very soon.

The most exciting part of the weekend, however, is what the subject line refers to. The farmers’ market also had duck and pheasant eggs for sale, though they were pretty pricey. I was excited because I’ve read in my British food mags how chefs prize duck eggs and pheasant eggs because of the more colorful yolk and richer taste.

Let us begin the experiment...

Here is a shot with the duck egg at 12 o’clock, the pheasant egg at 4 o’clock and a plain ol’ chicken egg at 8 o’clock. Actually, it’s an organic local egg from a free-range chicken, which I think may have skewed the results.

Crack! Left to right, it’s pheasant, chicken and duck. That’s a lotta duck yolk right there. I’m also disturbed by how yellow and cloudy the white of my chicken egg is, but as neither Wiley (who gets an egg now and then as a breakfast treat) nor I have signs of food poisoning, it can’t be that bad.

For this first experiment, I decided to rip off, who else, Gordon Ramsay. He did a starter with watercress soup and a poached egg in the center. I made a super easy (and super delicious) spring pea soup with bergamot and thyme from my garden, then set about poaching the eggs. Here is the result, before trimming, again left to right, pheasant, chicken and duck.

Obviously the duck egg held its shape the best, though that could have been my fault as the water was boiling a little too aggressively for the teeny pheasant egg.

Here are the three finished plates for comparison:

Again, it’s pheasant, chicken and duck, left to right. I think the duck egg shape was nicest, but the pheasant size was best proportionately, since one doesn’t really want a big honkin’ egg taking up the whole bowl of one’s soup.