Food for thought... Coq au Vin

Recently I have been thinking about Coq au Vin and I was trying to think of a way of refining it without disrupting the flavors tremendously. My thoughts were to remove the skin from the whole chicken in one full piece, pounding out the breast meat, making a confit with one leg and deboning and making a forcemeat with the other leg adding the gizzards, and slab bacon. From there my mind told me to combine the confit leg to the forcemeat, folding it in gently, and twisting it in some plastic wrap into a cylinder. Now I plan on laying out the sheet of skin dusting it with some TG, topping it with the pounded breast meat again dusting with TG and placing the forcemeat in the center and rolling it like a burrito. Time to seal it in a bag with the vacuum sealer and cook it in a bath at 68 degrees Celsius for about an hour and a half. Meanwhile peel fresh cipollini onions and sear them hard on top and bottom then add red wine and thyme and reduce au sec then add chicken demi and braise gently. Also this dish required a mushroom component and I'm think ragout but I do want to think a little harder about this part of the dish ( think morels). Next I want a simple celery root puree as a base for the dish. Once the chicken is out of the water bath it is time to sear the skin to caramelize and crispen it. I picture this dish with a swipe of celery root puree, a small mound of mushrooms, three cipollinis and a single round cut from the chicken cylinder placed onto the mushrooms, finally the plate is sauced with the braising liquid from the cipollinis. This seems like and interesting take on Coq au Vin, but for now it is just food for thought...

Pumpkin on my mind...

… so I put some on my cutting board, cut and roasted halves of the pumpkin. I sauteed a little sweet onion and celery, and I wanted to add some apple or pear to it but I couldn’t decide which to use until I noticed something called applepear and the choice was made for me. A little pumpkin pie spice and I was off to the races. Some apple cider couldn’t hurt so I began to pour while adding a bit of brown sugar. Time to simmer… Meanwhile I removed the pumpkin from the oven and scooped out the flesh and passed it through a food mill. The puree was then added to the pot and stirred in with some spiced rum and chicken stock. Again time to simmer…And its time for a snack so I toasted the seeds and tossed them with a little cayenne and salt. Spicy and nutty! Later, as I was snacking I got my hands on some maple extract powder and cassia and blended it with creme fraiche. By this time the soup was ready to blend, so I took a final stove top taste test and it was good, not great, nothing a little maple syrup and heavy cream couldn’t fix. Damn I’m good, that was just what it needed! Super tasty. I proudly put the soup into a blender and began to blend…OUCH!!!…never use a blender with hot soup while your head is full with flavor pride. The molten liquids of the blender made a quick break for the nearest exit and latched onto my coat, hand and neck. So I decided to allow the soup to cool and blend later on. Finally the soup was finished and all it needed now was a little garnish, the spicy pumpkin seeds were begging to be a part of this party and the maple spiced creme fraiche was born for the soup. Together they were delightful, otherwise I wouldn’t write about my mishaps with a blender.

A picture is worth a thousand words!

Ain’t that the truth. which is why I hope to begin to post photos of my food, thoughts, mishaps, and randomness.

It should save anyone from just reading thousands of words.

I’ll do my best to photograph thoughts… It ought to be a breakthrough!

So it begins

This is what I call “Boredom Control.” From here I’ll be keeping track of the food I create and the life I lead. All in the hopes that the food I create merges with the life I lead.

Dedication. Love. Soul. Peace. Consumption.

dink