Anyway, I battled through and produced another great meal.
First course was simple; most people have the ingredients in their fridge/pantry right now — but probably not in this combination. Blanched (and shocked) green beans, or wax beans, or “Perona” beans, with potatoes and a “Chantilly foam.” For the foam you need a CO2 whip cream canister thingy — and a mixture of mayonnaise, lemon juice, and heavy cream. The proportion errors are here, and they’re pretty odd this time: between the servings for 2 and 6 the amounts for the lemon juice and whipping cream don’t change, while the callout for the mayo does. Crazy. I went back and scaled the proportions for 75 down to 6, and for the foam it came to 1 cup of mayo, 0.875 cup of cream, and 1/4 cup of lemon juice — it worked. Killer dish.
Ras el hanout
Never heard of this spice combination before yesterday — very cool blend of spices, although, looking at the Wikipedia article, the mixture varies a lot. I took mine from a quick web search and used the recipe with the most ingredients (attributed to Christine Benlafquih):
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 2 teaspoons ground cardamon
- 2 teaspoons ground mace
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1 teaspoon ground coriander seeds
- 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon turmeric
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
- ½ teaspoon ground white pepper
- ½ teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
- ½ teaspoon ground anise seeds
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves
This mix is used in both the quail and the couscous, I measured everything out, using whole spices where I could, and dumped it my coffee grinder (used only for spices.)
For the quail, I used cornish hens, which are a little bigger than the quail shown, so the cooking time was a bit more. I didn’t pay attention to the callouts for oil, mint, or the spice mixture, but just drizzled/sprinkled until things looked right. I cooked them on a sheet tray under a low broiler, flipping them several times until a meat thermometer registered “done.”
For the couscous, which we make a lot here, I went with our usual stock-to-couscous ratio. Also, the recipe for 20 calls for 6 cups of couscous, while the serving for 6 is only 1 cup — not anywhere near the rough 3:1 ratio. Again, scaling things down to 6 from 75 serving helped. The callouts are: 1/2 cup of pine nuts, 1/2 cup of raisins, 1 3/4 cup of couscous, and essentially that much stock, AFAIK, couscous to stock is roughly 1:1. Again this dish KILLED. Just awsome.
For dessert, another good one, just watch the callouts for sugar and butter if you’re using the for 6 serving size: 1/2 cup of sugar, and 1/3 cup of butter is right. The water called for is idiotic — it actually calls for MORE water in the serving for 6 size, than for the serving for 20. I scaled down the water from the serving for 75, and even then I had to remove the pears and reduce the caramel, otherwise the cooking time would have reduced them to mush. I’d start with about 1/2 a cup of water, and go from there. WATCH OUT when adding the water to the caramel, as it’s WAY above the boiling point of water, and creates a lot of steam. After cooking the pears in the caramel, you serve that with a sorbet, and a little mint. Really, really good.
Awesome. Just mind the land mines.