A Beautiful Night!

Tonight was my first Société Mondial du Vin event. Master Sommelier Michael McNeill sat directly across from me during the dinner, which focused on the cuisine of Northern Italy and featured pairings with a dozen wines from the same region. We talked a lot, and I learned quite a bit.

This was my first exposure to others in the Société Mondial du Vin, and they are a great group of very accomplished and pleasant folks. I'm really looking forward to meeting the rest of them as I attend more events.

Michael McNeill is impressive, to say the least. He's approachable and very happy to help you understand more about wine, and he's great reassuring you to just relax, enjoy, and the knowledge will come as you're exposed to more and varied wines.

How true. Each flight of wines enabled me to contrast and compare like I've never been able to before. Comparing a young wine and a more aged wine made from the same grape in approximately the same region enabled me to better identify fruit and tannin development, and it gives me an idea of how to better judge other wines in future.

Stephen Gross, our Bailli, announced some of the new events we should look forward to in the coming year, which promises even more activity than years past. This is really going to be fun. And it's about time; I'm 46, and I've only been on two vacations in my life so far.

But the biggest star of the evening was Michael Tuohy, the chef of Woodfire Grill. You've heard me talk about him before, but tonight was a true privilege.

The meal started with an amuse bouche of cured lardo, sliced so thin you could literally read through it, on a slice of grilled artisan bread slathered with black truffle paste.

This was followed by a first course of artisan cured meats. There was a terrine of cheek and trotter en gelee, cured pork loin, pancetta, and the finest chorizo I have ever tasted. These were accompanied by a truffle sauce and a fig paste that contrasted perfectly.

The second course, a porcini risotto with parmigiano-reggiano, was so perfect that the place went mostly silent with people staring lovingly at their plates while savoring the dish. I have never had a risotto like this. Literally perfect in every way.

The main course was a braised spotted pork shoulder in gremolata on a bed of creamy polenta. I was surprised how Chef Tuohy was able to make such lean pork tender and succulent, and so beautifully fragrant.

The final course was a cheese plate with accompaniments of lavender honey, quince syrup, and pralined pecans.

And everything was paired with many beautiful wines that I won't soon forget.

All I could think the entire time was, What an incredible privilege this is. I am eating and drinking the finest food and drink the world has to offer, and everyone in the room is truly happy. It can't get much better than this.

Michael Tuohy is a national treasure, and if it were up to me, he would be officially recognized as such and given tax-free status for the rest of his life. Whenever I experience something of excellence like this, and I try to imagine the thousands of hours of blood, sweat, and tears he put in at the lower rungs perfecting his craft, the personal and financial risks he has taken to get where he is now, and how hard he works to continue to deliver perfection in food every day.

Compared to that, my sincerest "Thank you" just doesn't suffice.

Bravo, maestro. Bravo.

What a couple of weeks!

Two weeks of heads-down work have left no time to post, but what a couple of weeks it's been.

At work we brought in a new client that we're really looking forward to working with, and are about to start on another project with an existing client, so it's going to be busy. (Note: if any of you know of an absolutely top-notch software developer who is experienced with most of the Microsoft product stack and looking for full-time employment in the Atlanta area then please let me know).

Still losing weight, and feeling better all the time. My stomach continues to shrink inside, making portion control instantly relevant to me when I sit down to a meal. I still need to increase my exercise, though.

Got the FoodSaver. They sent the wrong color, but considering all the strife in the world today, I think I'll be able to deal with it. Maybe.

The sous-vide water bath arrived, but it was covered in a strong-smelling corrosive chemical and the heating element leaked a heavier-than-water clear fluid that pooled in the bottom of the basin during testing. I'm negotiating with the eBay seller on its return. Missed out on three other water baths that were in pristine condition, but I didn't want to spend as much as the other bidders, so no deal. My goal is to be cooking sous-vide before Thanksgiving.

I've joined the Slow Food movement. You should, too (see Relevant Distractions). Julie Schaffer runs the Atlanta convivium (chapter), and she's apparently a big fan of Michael Tuohy's Woodfire Grill, too. I've heared many good things about her and the Atlanta convivium, and I'm looking forward to my first event with them.

And now for the big news... I've been accepted as a member of the Confrérie de la Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, the most prestigious gastronomic society in the world, and also in the inner Societe Mondiale du Vin, it's wine appreciation arm. I've always wanted to be a member of the Chaîne since I heard of them some twenty years ago. I don't know when the next induction ceremony will be (where I receive my ribbon of rank), but our first event is a Mondiale dinner at the Woodfire Grill! Many thanks to David for watching the kids.

Got a wardrobe refresh, too. A decent tuxedo, a tweed sport jacket, a navy blazer, three nice pairs of trousers, and a few formal and casual shirts. A little tailoring by the very capable hands of Michaela Jordache, and everything fits to a T. Brad Pitt I'm not, but at least I don't look like such a schlub with proper tailoring. (Incidentally, Brad Pitt often exclaims, "Adam Churvis I'm not, but at least I know what software is.")

Made a beautiful batch of glace de viande from about twelve pounds of chicken backs. There's so much fat in backs that you have to transfer to another pan every half hour of roasting and pour the fat into the stock pot for the simmering stage. Then at three hours into the simmering you have do to a complete defatting, then recombine the defatted stock back in with the cooked backs and vegetables, add water back up to the top, and continue simmering for another six hours. Then you're back to defatting all over again, but it's much more manageable the second time around. I always freeze the fat, then scrap the settled gelled stock back into the pot for reduction. Can't waste a drop!

I use a 50-50 combination of beef and chicken glace to simulate a veal glace, and it works very well. I'm using that today for the beef Bourgogne I'll be vacuum packaging for later in the week. Tonight it's Butterflied Cornish Game Hens with an orange sauce made from the jus, chicken glace, Valencia orange juice and zest, and Grand Marnier. I'll be serving with roasted root vegetables (potatoes, turnips, beets, carrots) and green peas braised with Boston lettuce and pearl onions. And the excess will from now on be vacuum packaged for reheating later in the week, so it will taste as fresh as the moment I made it.

Life is good, y'all. KBO!

A Nice, Relaxing Weekend

Lots of good stuff to report:

Progress

I've lost another two pounds. I'm still ahead of the game and gaining ground, not weight. I'll be ramping up my exercise plan a little bit this week.

Chocolate

I've been a chocolate snob for a while, but haven't had any for weeks because of the diet. I tried a tiny piece of bittersweet chocolate while making dessert for Sunday dinner (haven't made dessert in weeks, so treating ourselves), and it was so sweet I didn't even like it! I have no desire for eating solid chocolate anymore!

Of course I'll cook with chocolate, but I'm going to control the amount of sugar in recipes containing it. And substitute cocoa for part of the chocolate. Tonight's dessert had too much sugar in it and was larger than it should have been. I have my bearing on very small dessert portions now, and using less sugar in the recipes. Tonight's was the last dessert of normal size and sweetness that I'll ever create. I'm not a kid anymore.

Gourmet cooking with less fat

Maybe it was my impatience with waiting for the new sous-vide equipment to arrive, but I came up with something a little similar.

Saute de-stemmed cremini and shiitake mushrooms in a little butter and salt, reserving the stems for the sauce. You don't need much butter at all if you cover the pan in the first couple of minutes to generate steam that condenses into water that drips back into the pan and sort of braises the mushrooms. Remove the saute pan from heat.

Mince a single piece of thick bacon and fry to render its fat. Toss in a minced onion, some bay leaf, green peppercorn, reserved mushroom stems, and thyme. Add a bottle of pinot noir and reduce by 3/4, then add a few pieces of glace de viande and a little water or stock. Simmer a bit, strain through a chinois, pressing on the solids. Add a tablespoon of Grand Marnier, two teaspoons of honey, and adjust for seasoning with Kosher salt and white pepper. Instead of mounting with butter, just thicken with a thin slurry of cornstarch. You should end up with a small amount of strongly flavored sauce.

Bring the mushrooms back to high heat and dress with a couple ounces of sauce, then saute until the mushrooms are thickly glazed.

Trim chicken breasts, sprinkle with cognac, season with salt and white pepper, and toss in some fresh herbs. Wrap each separately in a square foot of plastic wrap, then in a square foot of aluminum foil. Steam for ten minutes, turn and steam for another six minutes, then let rest for fifteen minutes before unwrapping and slicing across the grain in 3/8" medallions.

Fan the medallions across the plate and drizzle the sauce sparingly over the center of the fan, and serve with a few mushrooms.

Family dinner

Had The Three Musketeers (David, Matt, and Jimmy) over for Sunday dinner. It was nice to relax for a while and share a decent meal (see above).

KBO!

Sous-Vide, Bitches!

I’ve wanted to use sous-vide cooking ever since I learned about it, but it was always cost prohibitive at two to three grand for everything needed (vacuum sealing unit, poaching bags, circulating water bath, thermostatic immersion heating unit with single degree control). At those prices, it’s strictly restaurant fare.

But leave it to me to come up with a way to do it the right way for under $150.

I found a perfectly good, brand new FoodSaver model reduced from seventy down to forty dollars, complete with all the accoutrements and sealing bags. Total to me about fifty-one bucks.

The tough one was going to be the thermostatically-controlled water bath. I looked on eBay and found a great water bath that usually goes for six hundred used – for only fifty bucks! Another thirty-five for shipping, and I’m good to go.

Total charges, $136.

Why sous-vide? Because it not only turns out the most incredibly textured food imaginable, it enables me to do so with little or no fat!

I make a thin dressing with a tiny dab of tomato paste, garlic-infused olive oil, tarragon-infused apple cider vinegar, and Kosher salt. I coat trimmed chicken breasts with a little of the dressing, season with salt and white pepper, and sprinkle with some minced fresh thyme. Each one goes into its own bag and is vacuumed of all air and sealed tightly by the FoodSaver machine. Then it’s into the fridge to marinate sans oxygen for a couple of days.

On the day of cooking I bring them to near room temperature, and then it’s into the water bath at 144F until everything’s poached through and through. And out comes the most perfectly cooked chicken, with all of its juices used as the poaching liquid, and the herbs’ flavorings cooked right into the meat.

It’s also great for multi-course meals because it can just sit in the water bath until I need it, then a few quick slices and fanning across whatever else is on the plate, and serve.

So once again I am as happy as a little girl! I’ll let you know how it goes.

KBO!

Graveyard Shift

It's 4:00 AM, I'm taking a quick break from writing copy for the fourth iteration of the Productivity Enhancement website, and a new batch of glace de viande is a-cookin' on the stove.

I love making glace. It takes about twenty hours, and the most sleep you can effectively get at any one time is about three hours. But the results are so very much worth it.

Glace. It's poetry.

My first attempts many years ago were a coin toss until I got the techniques down. Now it's like second nature. The final reduction is still a bit nerve wracking because it's only a couple of minutes between beautiful and burned, but I haven't burned a batch in a long time.

Another thing contributing to my consistent successes these days is my wonderful suppliers:

My regular butcher at Publix gets me these utterly fantastic marrow bones, where every single bone has at least an inch diameter piece of marrow in the shank. And I get them for (hold on to your ass) about a buck-forty a pound! I also use a meaty veal shoulder blade left over from boning one out earlier (I freeze them for later use).

Dekalb Farmer's Market is where I usually get canned Rega brand San Marzano tomatoes by the case, but last time I stocked up I also picked up a few cans of Rega brand tomato paste. I grew up brand-married to Contadina tomato paste, and have always been loyal, but I got divorced the moment I tasted the raw Rega product. Oh my God, this is a perfect product. It's bright natural red (Contadina is much muddier), perfect acidity, perfect natural sweetness, perfect salinity, perfect consistency (Contadina is too solid). Next time I go I'm picking up two cases, which should last me about a year.

Twelve pounds of beef and veal bones, three pounds of vegetables, and a sachet of herbs will end up as a half-inch thick, nine-inch diameter disk of dark brown hard rubber. I'll cut it into half-inch cubes and place them in an open bowl in the freezer.

Then, when it's time to turn a sauce into a masterpiece, I'll take a couple cubes and bring them to room temperature using a ramekin, a little liquid, and a few seconds in the microwave, then whisk them into the sauce.

Oh, where shall I use it?

I have sixteen chicken legs cleaved above the knee joint marinating in pinot noir and aromatic vegetables in the refrigerator since last night. Friday morning it will be transformed into a young hen version of coq au vin, and the sauce will be mounted with some of tonight's glace de viande and a bit of pureed chicken liver for depth of flavor. The chicken will be browed in rendered bacon fat and flambeed with cognac before the sauce goes on, then everything goes in the oven for three hours or so.

Here's the trick with reducing the fat: slice the slab a little more than 1/8" thick and then crosswise into 1/8" little lardons, don't blanch the lardons before frying, and fry slowly until the fat is fully rendered so all that is left is crispy meat. The crisp meat will soften again when the dish stews in the oven, but won't add fat.

After removing the fried bacon from the pan, leave *all* the bacon fat in the pan and fry the chicken legs about four at a time on all sides over medium rather than high heat, which gives the chicken skin a chance to render some of its own fat. The extra fat in the pan enables the chicken to fry deeper and render fat better. It's true: there are some ways to use more fat during cooking so that you eat less fat than you would with typical cooking techniques that use less fat.

Drain the chicken on a rack rather than on paper towels. When all the chicken has been fried you'll end up with a good bit of fat in the pan that you can just pour out. Deglaze the fond that remains using the strained reserved pinot noir marinade before adding the chicken and fried bacon and stewing in the oven at 325F.

After everything cools for a few hours any remaining excess fat (including what rendered from the chicken during stewing) will float on top where it can be skimmed.

So the final relatively lowfat reduction sauce is mounted using fatless glace and a little chicken liver.

I'll let you know how it turns out.

An Amazing Thing Has Happened...

I no longer crave fatty or high carbohydrate foods. In fact, my body is rejecting them. It used to be that when I got really hungry I grabbed sandwich makings, and would produce a whole wheat sandwich with mayo and about a quarter-inch of lunch meat. I would add some Claussen pickles and a few Triscuits, and chow down.

Not any more. I don't want sandwiches; I want vegetables or tuna, and a reasonable portion at that. Lunch is more likely to be a can of well-drained tuna, Claussen pickles, a few crackers, and some cottage cheese. I'm not looking to fill up to be full; I'm looking to eat a small portion of dense protein (thanks, tuna!) and lots of vegetables. I get my quick fix with Glory brand mixed greens nuked in the microwave, with a splash of hot s-s-s-sauce, y'all.

I love a cold relish plate of cut celery and Claussen pickles. I'm going to start experimenting with make-ahead cold antipasti that are low in olive oil or that don't use any fat at all. It's amazing what some quality balsamic vinegar, a little sea salt, and a touch of fresh herbs will do to vegetables in the fridge overnight. I'm thinking par-steamed cauliflower dressed like that. And fire-roasted red bell peppers sprinkled with a little citric acid and salt. And salt-cured anchovies fileted by hand and soaked in vermouth, then mixed with the red bell peppers. And cipollini agridolce. There's a lot I can do with little or no fat and very little sugar.

I also no longer have cravings for snacks like the Satan-inspired Doritos or the equally evil English flavored potato chips. I would still want them if they were right in front of me, but I don't seek them out any more. I have no desire to pick them up when shopping at the grocery store, I don't think about them (it's not like I obsessed before), and when they're not in the house (they're not allowed any more) I don't miss them at all.

Tonight I had to catch a quick dinner between getting fitted for a tuxedo and going grocery shopping, so I stopped by a great Vietnamese restaurant for their pho. Lean beef shaved thin, a defatted broth, fresh vegetables and herbs, and fresh rice noodles. Normally I would down the whole bowl with an order of fried spring rolls, but tonight I didn't even feel like spring rolls (and they're delicious), and I couldn't finish the whole bowl of soup. My stomach is shrinking! I don't feel like packing food into me any more!

I don't know why I had become such a glutton starting in my mid-twenties, but whatever it was I'm conquering it now, and it feels damned good. I have twenty-plus years of gluttony to reverse, and every day I feel like I'm not only closer to my goal, but I'm stronger in the journey.

I've never told them this, but my in-laws have been a source of inspiration for me over the years, albeit from a distance. One of my sisters-in-law would always be munching on celery when she got hungry, and I never thought I would have the willpower to do it myself (Doritos I could do), but damned if every single time I munch celery these days I don't think of her and how hard it must have been for her, too.

My mother-in-law and father-in-law are aliens from outer space -- somewhere near the planet Zilox 7, I believe, where all humanoid creatures possess massive strength and vitality due to the planet's unique atmosphere and the diet of mostly radioactive compounds.

In their seventies, they are in better shape than most twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings I know. I'm not exaggerating, folks. They're both really active. And I don't mean senior-citizen-protein-drink-commercial active, I mean Marine-Reconnaissance-Underwater-Demolition-Team active. It's sick: they climb up and down Stone Mountain. Stone Freaking Mountain! There should be a law against embarrassing younger people like that. Punishment would be they have to sit around watching CBS and drink some of those protein drinks.

Seriously, they do inspire me to keep working the plan. This time next year I should be strong enough to join The Lovely And Talented Lisa on her march up and down Stone Mountain. Gotta make sure my ticker won't tock first.

KBO!