The Ides of March, or The Fall of the Roman Empire

You know, with St. Patrick's Day staring me down, I realized I wasn't feeling it. With it also being the Ides Of March, however, I connected the The Fall of Rome to turning 40 and the realization that it might all be half over. The Ruin... the Sag... the general Gravitas (!!) of it all... this was great inspiration, people! Who cooks an Ides of March meal? Me, that's who!

Here's the invite:

I know the soothsayer warned Caesar about the Ides of March, and then Calpurnia took up the tune and nearly sang the life right out of it, but for some reason I have always thought of it as a rather lucky day. Maybe it was Shakespeare's version of Mark Anthony's opportunist turn...luck.

Something about turning 40 (today!!) makes me think about the fall of Rome. Perhaps because I realize that the sagging could be just around the corner.... the ruin....the glory leading to the complete going to seed.... Let's just think of it as the Fall of the Roman Empire.

In honor of the Ides of March, I thought we might enjoy:
Some Spring lamb shanks, braised with saffron, pomegranate, cumin, and garlic,
Some artichokes... perhaps even fried, alla Giudea,
Some white gigante beans with a salsa verde, Italian style,
Some potatoes roasted with duck fat.
A little pasta course--a cacia a pepe.
Some bitter dandy greens with a light lemon anchovy dressing.
And to finish, an almond cake with dates and candied orange peel.

Short notice, that is true. But delicious, and on a "lucky" day.

Fall of the Roman Empire
Saturday March 15 show up anytime after 6:30pm, dinner at 7.

In love and garlic,
Tamara

Once I settled on Rome, the meal practically planned and cooked itself. Well, not really. Spring Lamb Shanks, (which turned out to be a combination of shanks and shoulder cut into pieces) Braised with Saffron, White Wine, Pomegranate Molasses, Preserved Lemon, Cumin and Garlic, and the luxury of time. If you take away one thing from this blog it should be the AWESOME POWER of cooking at 225 degrees for 7 hours. Seriously. Highly aromatic and delicious.

We started with Fried Artichokes a la Giudea. This is an IDEAL way to use artichokes that are on their way out, as you discard almost all of the tough outer leaves. Cut them into quarters, remove the choke if it is big, and deep fry 'em.


Mmmm. A squeeze of lemon, a big pinch of salt and away you go. Great Scooby Snack.

White Gigante Beans, a mix of both soaked and canned (horrors!) were cooked in chicken stock and then drizzled with Salsa Verde (a combination of all the green herbs you can get your hands on, two big bunches of parsley, some capers, anchovies, garlic and olive oil all food processed and finished with lemon), tossed to combine and lovingly served over some of the baby dandy greens left over from the salad.


Starchy, but also very green, it was the perfect foil for rich lamb.

Christopher, coincidentally, is also the perfect foil for rich lamb...

Baby Dandy Greens always make an appearance here in Astoria, this time of year; They are bitter like their teenage brethren but in a much less astringent way. I heated some olive oil with garlic and anchovies, sauteed, then added a touch of butter, some red wine and sherry vinegars and a bit of lemon and poured the whole business hot over the dandys.

Then I thought-- ooh-- fried eggs! so I fried some eggs in the leftover dressing and placed them on top of the salad. Lazy gal's poached eggs, kids. Take note!

Meanwhile, the potatoes had been chopped and were happily sizzling away in duck fat in the oven. Mmmmm. Salt and pepper finished them beautifully.

The pasta course was first. Very simple Buccatini cooked just past al dente, tossed with loads of Caciocalvallo Cheese and pepper. Salt to taste. Reminded me of Rome in July. An excellent memory indeed-- the first time Zora and I travelled together!!

And Cardoons.... where would Rome be without Cardoons? Peeled, soaked in acidulated water so they keep their color, rough chopped and braised in chicken stock until soft and finished with fresh mint.

I also modified Lydia Bastianich's Scallion and Asparagus Salad, substituting a dijon mustard vinaigrette. I just poached the scallions and the asparagus, cooled 'em, and coated them with the delicious dressing. I love this recipe: It makes the onions taste like fresh spring ramps...

Gorgeous.

Amy, getting her asparagus on...

And last but not least, Kim Sunée's fucking excellent Almond Saffron Cake recipe from The New York Times last month. That woman is a genius.

Oh, man.

I made her recipe and then, when the pieces cut twenty ways looked really small, I had a brief moment of brain firing and whipped up some heavy cream I had in the fridge with vanilla, powdered sugar, and Orange Flower Water. Aromatic, only slightly sweet and the perfect way to make the cake "bigger."

All in all... a lovely night that made me REALLY appreciate my husband even more than before (he was working and wasn't there to perform his Herculean effort of backup and prep) and introduced me to some wonderful new people.

Chair - J.Blesso © 2008

The Edge, Confit & The Hour Of Self Loathing...

Banzai!!!

The Edge. I do adore the Edge. My husband knows it, my friends know it. It's no secret that I take pleasure in pushing the envelope and, well, living on The Edge. This time, though, I nearly fell over The Edge and had my ass handed to me. By pastry and poultry, no less.

First, a confession. Often, people attend a Sunday Night Dinner, and they 'ooh' and 'aah' at what we've served, and ask how we pull off dinner for twenty and make it look so easy. I usually smile and mumble something dismissive and self-deprecating and quickly move on to facilitate the rest of dinner, with the secret knowledge that it ultimately really isn’t that hard. It is almost always time consuming to make a huge feast, but not particularly difficult. That is, if everything is done correctly... Which it almost never is. Here's the confession: I often intentionally make the Sunday Night Dinners challenging, because that way there's a possibility of failure, and that chance makes succeeding all the more satisfying.

Is that wrong? My close friends have called me insane. I like to think of it as displaced competitive spirit. My husband, who is supposed to understand me, occasionally agrees with them. Usually while he's doing something menial with a mountain of produce. I prefer to think that they all lack imagination, and something about the seemingly insurmountable challenge of a Sunday Night Dinner menu for twenty is thrilling to overcome. Because it's fun to WIN-- even if I am only conquering pig parts or vegetables.

Whether it's insanity or creativity, The Edge usually manifests itself in the form of a menu that sounds either fun to prepare or intriguing in some other way. Some people want to scale Everest. During the preparation of the fun, intriguing menu, however, I experience what we have come to call “The Hour of Self-Loathing."

Sometimes it only lasts a half hour.

As guests begin to arrive, I'll be sweating over some critical aspect of dinner, with all four burners and the oven going, ingredients piled high in my small kitchen waiting to be added, partial dishes waiting to be finished and deployed, my mind swimming with the reality that I'm nowhere near finished and people are HERE. But in the last 2 years or so, as my confidence has grown, these dinners have become a bit more of a tame lion and The Hour of Self-Loathing has shortened itself to the Half Hour, or else doesn't happen at all. There's still an occasional “Oh Fuck" moment, like recently when I stepped away from the lentils to give directions and they instantly turned to mush. Other than that, things have been going pretty smoothly. That is, until this weekend, when I decided to see how close The Edge really was...

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

This week, out of boredom, and in defiance of convention, I (gasp) made a schedule. A fucking schedule.

The Fucking Schedule

We started Thursday night by curing the salmon (a 10 minute prep, but a critical one) and salting the duck legs for confit, which involves coating the legs in salt, crushed garlic, shallots and thyme, covering them and leaving them to cure for 2 days.

That part all went fine. Friday came, and the schedule said we had to make the Pork and Duck Liver Paté and cook the Duck Confit overnight.

Instead we had dinner with a friend and I got drunk. Which was not anywhere on the schedule.

Saturday morning:

I woke up and began by making pastry cream so it could chill for 4 hours. So far, so good. While I was sleeping, Karl had stayed up late baking Pâte á Choux, so we were almost halfway to croquembouche.)

I brushed off the duck legs, rearranged them in the pans, submerged them in the duck fat and put the whole business in the oven on 225 degrees for the next few hours.

I then ran out to shop for produce and lollygag a bit, exchange New Years’ wishes with the butchers & the produce guys, and take a side trip to the Trade Scare… By the time I actually got home and settled into cooking it had to be 2:30 or 3pm. OK, not optimal, but still doable. Checked the duck legs — fuckity fuck, still not done.

Scary but still fine.

Meanwhile, Karl is working on the fig balsamic reduction for the salad,




I set about chopping fennel to roast as soon as the oven is free, wash the greens for salad, etc.



Done.

Earlier at the green market I saw the Blood Oranges and decided we needed a salad of those and Arugula as well.. cutting the oranges took more time than I thought it would, naturally. SO we shanghaied a kitchen helper...

Christopher preparing the bloody goodness...

Meanwhile, duck legs are finally done — 5 hours later. Excellent. Out of the duck fat and into the oven to crisp up and on to the paté...

The paté went off without a hitch; the pork shoulder had been ground by the butcher,

I pureed the livers, shallots, spices and a little duck fat, for good measure,



mixed it all together with my hands, put it into the bread pans with bay leaves and thyme sprigs.

Made a water bath with boiling water, put the little parchment covered paté loaves in, and into the oven it all went at 375 degrees for about 2 hours...

Now onto the Croquembouche:

Karl had filled all of the little Pate Á Choux and all we needed was hot caramel (melt sugar with a little water and watch the magic.)

I began to assemble the Croquembouche, by dipping each little creampuff into the caramel and then sticking it to the others in a tower formation.

Cold water was kept on hand in the event of burns (I only ended up with 2). This is the point where I mention that hot caramel is NAPALM. Like truly fucking hot-- and it keeps burning. Dangereux, as the French say. Unfortunately, I had to make 2 more batches of caramel which took more of what I didn’t have — time. But, making a croquembouche is a little like skiing downhill; once you start it is almost impossible to stop.

The next thing I knew, guests began arriving, and I hadn’t yet even touched either the pheasants or the bulgar and lentils. And here is where it started to unravel: All these lovely, kind, excited people arriving at my home with happy and anticipatory little faces and filled with New Year’s cheer, and there I was, silently seething, freaking out, the Hour Of Self-Loathing in full swing now, half-smile frozen on my face like a pre-fireaxe Jack Nicholson in The Shining, the voices in my head shrieking, and demanding to know what sort of shitty ass cook was I that I hadn’t even STARTED THE PHEASANTS?”

I made Karl toss everybody out of the kitchen, watching their happy little faces crumble a little... The good thing is, Fear usually follows Loathing and it soon took over my adrenal gland and booted me back to focused action.

While the ever-burgeoning crowd was being distracted by our delicious paté, (which we put out with homemade pickled onions, cornichons and Dijon mustard...)

...and the Home-Cured Gravlax, with capers and a cream sauce, I got back down to it.

I'm just saying.

...the nice mixture of sour cream and strained yogurt.

With the kitchen empty, and Karl handling the front of house duties, I was free to finish the poultry.

I stuffed the breasts with fatback,

made up a quick sauce with cognac, orange juice, white wine, lime juice and a dash of Worchestershire sauce, and poured it into a pan.

Rubbed the pheasants down with duck fat, salt and pepper, and roasted them for 45 minutes. At the 25 minute mark, I added dates and dried apricots to the pan, and turned the birds breast side up to finish.

Lentils were cooked with allspice, nutmeg, bay leaves and bulghur. A little bland, initially, but rocked once they sopped up the date-apricot poultry sauce.

After the birds rested for 15 minutes or so Karl cut it all up with kitchen shears and served it on a large platter with the reduced apricot date sauce and some shredded duck legs confit on the side...


Holy Jeebus.

Heavenly.

We put the birds out with:

The Blood Orange Arugula Salad,

Try to imagine these on a nice bed of arugula... On account Karl dint get the picture...

Grilled Fennel With Black Olives,

bitter dandy greens with red wine vinaigrette,

Chicory Lettuce With Reduced Port & Fig Balsamic Dressing,

Roasted Fennel and Bulghur With Lentils,

And nice carrots in maple syrup...

Oh, and the croquembouche? A huge hit. So glad we made it. So fun to watch people break off the creampuffs and then lose their shit when they bit down... Completely worth it.

Fucking Delicious.


After a night of marathon cooking, drinking myself silly, meeting new friends, seeing old friends, and putting the kitchen beating behind me, I went to bed.

Then on Sunday, we got up, watched The McLaughlin Group, and DID THE WHOLE THING ALL OVER AGAIN including ANOTHER croquembouche.

As I said... The Edge, my friends… The Edge.

4 pounds of salmon, 6 pheasants, 30 duck legs, 10 pounds of duck fat, a 1.6 pound pig liver, 1.5 pounds of duck liver, 5 lb of ground pork shoulder...

...And a total of One Hundred And Ten cream-filled pastry puffs.

Poor Karl. Did anyone tell him before he married me?