Cullen Skink

We got the recipe at Doune Castle. I made some modifications, and it worked!


Ingredients

• about 8oz mashed potatoes
• 1.5 leeks (you could reasonably use one), chopped
• pint of 2% milk
• about 1lb cod or haddock (we used cod)
• salt
• pepper
• bay leaf
• some olive oil

In a soup pot, heat olive oil. Add the leeks and cook until they're just getting tender - 8 minutes or so. Add the milk, bay leaf, and cod. Heat to boiling, then reduce to a simmer until the fish is cooked through. Using tongs or a slotted spoon, remove the fish, about half the leeks, and the bay leaf. Add the mashed potatoes and blend what remains until smooth. Flake the fish apart and re-add that and the leeks to the pot. Salt and pepper to taste (takes a LOT of salt because of the potato - don't be afraid of seasoning.)

Thoughts: This was pretty great. It's basically vichyssoise, except with cod in it. In the future, I would probably do this SLIGHTLY differently. I might cook most of the stuff in water rather than milk, because the milk tends to separate (though blending with the potato helps this). I would want chunks of potato, too. I'm not sure exactly when I would add this. Otherwise, pretty awesome. Everyone kept saying they liked it and I do not THINK they were lying to me.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Boeuf Bourguignon

SACRÉ BLEU.

Ingredients

• 2lbs. beef shoulder, cut into 1.5" pieces
• 4 onions, thinly sliced into rainbows
• olive oil
• 2tbsp flour
• 1c red Burgundy wine
• 6 carrots, cut into 1" pieces
• 1 clove garlic
• a bouquet garni (a bunch of parsley and thyme tied together)
• .5tsp thyme
• 3 bay leaves
• black pepper
• salt
• chopped parsley

In a large Dutch oven, heat some oil to nearly smoking. Salt and pepper the beef. Working in batches, sear the pieces of beef until you get a nice brown caramelized sear. You want to work in batches, because if you crowd the pan, you won't be able to get the sear you need.

Anyway, remove the beef and add all the onions. Turn heat to medium-high and cook until they're translucent and wilted. Add the flour and cook another couple minutes. Add the wine and deglaze, then add the carrots, garlic, bouquet garni, thyme, and bay leaves. Add water to cover everything by a centimeter or so. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring frequently, then reduce to a low simmer for two hours, checking every 15-20 minutes to scrape up the bottom and make sure nothing is sticking. You may have to add water in the middle if it's cooking down too fast - it's a stew, after all. When it's done, adjust the salt. Serve over crushed boiled potatoes, and top with chopped parsley.

Thoughts: We actually served over some roughly smashed yukon gold potatoes with rosemary and wilted greens. This was pretty fantastic. I don't think I'd do anything differently. Oh yeah - we took the carrots out half-way through when Claire was afraid that they would get too soft. We added them back in at the end.

Claire says now that she thinks she liked the idea, but she also wants to try other recipes. WHATEVER.

Disaster Index: 1/10

Update: Add a bit more thyme. Also, don't need the bouquets garnis. Double the wine, and add some beef stock along with the water. Also, when you add the water, make sure to add the beef back in - somehow we left that out of the recipe.

Port Caviar

It was a test of molecular gastronomy.
Ingredients

• 3/8c Port
• 1/8c Sugar
• 1tsp agar agar and sugar mixture (not sure what % agar agar)
• oil

Pour some oil into a tall glass - you are looking to have about 4" of oil in the glass. Put the glass into the freezer for 30 minutes.

Now, in a saucepan, combine everything else. Bring the port to a boil, then turn off the heat and let it sit for a few minutes. Take the glass out of the freezer, and pour droplets of the port mixture into the glass. They should form little 'caviar' balls and collect at the bottom of the vessel. Pour the oil and port caviar through a little sieve, and wash off the collected caviar in cold water. Serve.

Thoughts: This isn't quite how it worked out for us. It could have to do with the unknown concentration of agar agar, but I was unable to get the port reduction to adhere properly. I dropped it into the oil - fine - and it stayed apart, but it was very messy. I was using an eye-dropper, but I still couldn't get neat spheres because of the weird texture of the sauce. Then when I rinsed off the caviar, they just all melted together into one big sticky mass. I'm not sure I'm going to try this one again.

Disaster Index: 9/10 - it doesn't get 10/10 because I was still able to melt the sauce and use it as a (way too sticky) sauce for blintzes.

Cheese Blintzes

Kind of like crepes, but, you know, Lithuanian.

Ingredients

• Blintz Batter
• 2 eggs
• 1c water
• 1/2tsp salt
• 1/2c flour
• Filling
• 8oz of nonfat, small-curd, unsalted cottage cheese
• 2tbsp sugar (or more)
• 1/2tsp vanilla

This recipe is kind of ridiculous(ly easy). Basically, mix together the batter ingredients. Set aside. Mix together the filling ingredients. Set aside. In a nonstick pan (or on a griddle) on medium heat, pour out some batter. Tilt the pan around to make a blintz, um, wrapper? You probably need about 7" diameter. It DOES NOT MATTER if the edges look crazy or if it's not round. Anyway, when it's done on one side (and not until then), remove from the heat and put on a plate. Put about 2tbsp of filling in the middle of the blintz, then fold it like a burrito (i.e., fold in half toward you, then fold the sides in, then roll it up along the remaining edge). When you're done with all of them, serve (hot or cold) with jam or sour cream... or maple syrup, or whatever.

Thoughts: The filling we made had a very delicate flavor. Next time, I think we'll taste the filling a few times and try to adjust the seasoning - more salt may be indicated, and possibly more sugar. One could also add fruit to the filling - blueberries are obvious.

Disaster Index: 2/10 - the only bad part was that the filling wasn't quite perfect. Otherwise, this is a potential 1/10 recipe.

Sweet Potato Pie

I guess we didn't blog this. I have this habit of keeping recipe tabs open until they get blogged, and lo and behold this has been open for more than a month. We made this to use up our farmers market sweet potatoes before we went out of town. Results were actually pretty awesome, and I don't think this is actually that bad for you?

Ingredients

• 2 medium sweet potatoes
• 1/2 stick butter
• 3/4c sugar
• 3/4c milk
• 3 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2tsp cinnamon
• 1/4tsp nutmeg
• 1/4tsp salt
• 1 tbsp dark rum (maybe more?)
• 1 tbsp flour
• 9" pie shell (we used store-bought pre-made. It was fine.)

Preheat the oven to 350.

Cook the sweet potatoes until tender. We peeled and par-boiled them, but when that failed to get them cooked all the way through, we microwaved them until they were very tender. When they are very tender, mash with the remaining ingredients (maybe want to add the sugar and milk first to cool the potatoes a bit - you don't want the eggs to cook when you add them, so make sure the potatoes are sufficiently cool before you do.)

Raise the oven temp to 400. Fill the pie shell and place on a shallow baking dish. Pop it in the oven for 40 minutes Remove and let cool before serving.

Thoughts: We made two pies, actually, because our potatoes were enormous. One of the pies we baked for 40 minutes and the other was more like 60, I think. Either way, the one we baked longer LOOKED like it was overcooked - it was much darker, and we were afraid we had ruined the texture - but it was actually much better. I guess it's very hard to overcook a sweet potato pie, and cooking the thing longer caused a lot of the sugars to caramelize, which gave it a much better flavor. The texture was better, too. So I would say 60 minutes or more may be more the way to go - just start checking on the pie after 40.

Disaster Index: 1/10 - even when we messed it up, we didn't.