Month: January 2012

Meal 11: Fried egg w/asparagus, chicken wings w/ mushrooms, sangria w/ fruit

Alyosha
Well, this was as straightforward as it gets, but — again — nothing I’ve ever tried in the same sitting. Each component was dirt-simple, but together, they seemed to tag-team each other for the better.

The first course was supposed to be Asparagus with fried eggs, but the book mentions that you could use peppers or mushrooms instead. Taking that lead, I poached the eggs rather than fry them, and used mushrooms — it worked well.

Second course made itself — just a great combination of ingredients, well done.

Third course was odd in that some of the old recipe errors appeared. But  comparing the larger serving proportions, and having a calculator helped avoid any errors. Just be sure to peel the fruit as instructed. They need that surface area to help the maceration process.

All in all, a great meal.

Cooking Ferran Adriá’s The Family Meal — The Errata

Meal 10: Miso soup w/clams, Mackarel w/vinaigrette, almond cookies

Alyosha
Crazy stuff. No recipe sabotage, and everything was great. Just great.


For the soup, still no dashi powder available, so I went with a “Clear Japanese Stock” packets (with seaweed, mushroom, and fish powder) ground them up in the spice mill, and made up a weakish stock before adding the miso. It literally tasted, after adding the steamer clams and tofu, like cream of mushroom soup. The kids were completely sold, and then some — even after doing search-and-destroy to the clams.


Next, I had procured some whole frozen Mackerel from New Sagaya in Anchorage, and went from there. Pretty straightforward, except instead of frying all the fish, I grilled half of the fillets (at -13 below) and served it up. Again, a great combination of the funky tendencies of the Mackerel against the vinaigrette. It worked — and everyone was nearly full going into dessert.


Dessert has one recipe caveat: “ground Almonds” in this book means “almond flour.” Don’t be confused. I blanched and peeled almonds, then ground them into a roughish meal and folded that into the meringue. It did not look like the recipe pictures, but despite the George Jetson shiny robot pet droppings aesthetic, they tasted great, and didn’t melt into puddles. I had used almond four for the Santiago cake in Meal #1, and I’d imagine the cookies would have been even better.


Pretty good.
















Cooking Ferran Adriá’s The Family Meal