Eggs Cole

The other day we visited with our friends Chris and Monica.  They made

• Bloody Marys with fresh tomato and celery with pepper vodka
• Mimosas with fresh squeezed orange juice
• Damned good coffee
• A dish that Monica dubbed "Eggs Cole" after our little guy

and they knocked it out of the park!

Eggs Cole is a mish-mash of different Eggs Benedict versions.  If you had Eggs Florentine but replaced the spinach with arugula and Eggs Blackstone but you replaced the "streaky bacon" with pancetta and 86'd the tomato you would have Eggs Cole.  We used San Luis Obispo sourdough wheat for the English muffins, so the lineage to the Eggs Benedict is pretty tenuous, but they you go.  It's not as far as our invention, Eggs Merci, is from its progenitor.  So, to recap:

Eggs Cole

• San Luis Obispo sourdough wheat
• Pancetta
• Wilted Arugula
• Poached (or over-easy) Eggs
• Hollandaise sauce [we will get Monica's recipe since it is better than ours and seems easier]

More please!

Jim and Peta

PS: We've had to look up the variations so much that we're just going to list them below

• Eggs Blackstone substitutes ham for the bacon and adds a tomato slice.^[5][6][7]

• Eggs Florentine substitutes spinach for the ham.^[8][9][10] Older versions of eggs Florentine add spinach to poached or shirred eggs Mornay – eggs covered in Mornay sauce.^[11]

• Eggs Royal includes chicken livers 
•  
• Eggs Hemingway (also known as Eggs Royale, Eggs Pacifica, Eggs Montreal) substitutes salmon for the ham. This is a common variation found in Australia and New Zealand.

• Eggs Neptune or Crab Benedict or Eggs Chesapeake substitutes crabmeat for the ham.

• Eggs Hussarde substitutes Holland rusks for the English muffin and adds Marchand de Vin sauce.^[13][14][15]

• Eggs Sardou substitutes artichoke bottoms and crossed anchovy fillets for the English muffin and ham, then tops the hollandaise sauce with chopped ham and a truffle slice. The dish was created at Antoine's Restaurant in New Orleans in honor of the French playwright Victorien Sardou.^[16][17][18] A more widespread version of the dish starts with a base of creamed spinach, substitutes artichoke bottoms for the English muffin, and drops the ham.^[13][19][20]

• Artichoke Benedict replaces the English muffin with a hollowed artichoke.^[21][22][23]

• Country Benedict, sometimes known as Eggs Beauregard, replaces the English muffin, ham and hollandaise sauce with a biscuit, sausage patties, and country gravy. The poached eggs are replaced with eggs fried to choice.^[24][25][26]

• Irish Benedict replaces the ham with corned beef hash^[27] or Irish bacon.^[28][29][30]

A Crown Not Fit for a King

This past weekend, we invited a co-worker of Peta's and his wife and young son over for a dinner. We traveled to nearby Arroyo Grande to check out the local butcher shop and to purchase a replacement honing steel. Dangerous dull knives be gone! They didn't have pork shanks, although they thought that they did in the freezer, for a dish that we have made before called Stinchetti di Maiale Arrosto (Roast Pork Shanks) then they didn't have duck legs (for some sort of confit over bitter greens) because they only get Muscovy breasts.

But they did have rib roast, so we decided to do a standing rib roast. Jim used this recipe and sort of blew it in two ways. When we couldn't find the kosher salt and Peta asked, "More salt than that?" and Jim said, "Does the Pope shit in the woods?", it was profane and wrong. Too much salt. Then, because we started early and later than expected, turning the heat down to 300 F for 4 hours rather than 325 for 3 hours was not nearly low enough. The meat was tender, but over-cooked. Not by much, but over-cooked none the less.

The two pluses were that 1) we had wanted to use a coffee rub on meat for a while and the flavor was good and and 2) we eschewed the vanilla in the recipe because there was no way that either of us would add vanilla to a rib roast. No &%*^ way!

As for the accompaniments, there were issues there too. For the first time in a while, we have a TV. We've been watching a bit (too much) and on the food network, it's been "gastrique this" and "gastrique that". We finally looked it up and realized that a gastrique is what we do every time we make BBQ sauce. Who knew? So we found a recipe for Skillet Greens with Crispy Shallots and Cider Gastrique. We used beet greens so that the cooking time would be less than say, collard greens, and so that we'd have the beets themselves to roast with thyme. Unfortunately, it takes a lot more greens that the greens from two bunches of beets to serve four people. Another mis-step.

To accompany the meal, Josh and Katie brought a smooth, aged (2006?) BV cabernet sauvignon. We also cracked a magnum of what was most likely a Louis Martini Monterosso cab that Jim's brother bought (stole for) him a few years back. No label but it was good. We only had a glass each so we just polished it off last night with some friends over beautiful big burgers.

And that's all we've got to say about that.
Jim and Peta

Gerber Shmerber!

A big hello to the gaping maw that is the Internet from Jim and Peta!

We've been very busy with our bambino who is now seven months old. Too busy to make a lot of crazy food, test recipes and be food pedants. However (you knew there'd be a "however"), we have been making baby food. Since at least 1995, we've known that foods ingested by a pregnant mother can affect the odor (and taste?) of amniotic fluid. Then there was an NPR segment on the same issue recently. We figured that because we ate so much weird stuff (our usual fare) during Peta's pregnancy, that CJ would be up for anything. In addition to mashing up things like mango and avocado (not together!), things that Jim didn't eat until later in life, three "weird" things that we've fed him so far have been pear-broccoli-ginger, squash and lemongrass and sweet potato-spinach-cilantro-cumin. He has loved them!

So if you are adventurous eaters, don't baby your baby! Food allergies are a concern, of course, so we are introducing things slowly, one-by-one, but we like to mix it up for him. We love to cook (duh), and we don't want to be in a situation where we are making two (or more) different meals just because chicken nuggets and goldfish are the only things our kids will eat.

Pear-Broccoli-Ginger Baby Food

• Peel 6 pears, cut into quarters the long way, core them and place in a covered pot with a small amount of water.



• Peel a 2-inch piece of ginger, grate it and add it to the pears. Bring the water to a boil and turn heat down to low.



• Trim one small head of broccoli and cut into small pieces. Peel the stem and add it or compost it! Steam the broccoli but keep it dark green.



• When the pears can be pierced with a knife, add the broccoli (minus the broccoli water) and puree with an immersion blender.



• Let it cool and feed it to your youngins! Freeze the leftovers in ice cube trays and you'll have a once a day/once every two day meal.

Jim and Peta

An Oscar Fit For An Oscar

At Jim's old restaurant, the Ebb Tide, they used to serve Filet Mignon (and chicken) à la Oscar.
Traditionally the protein was veal and was pounded into a scallopini. But the pocketbook and animal "ethics" say, "Nay!" for "The Tide" and for us as well.

Various sources claim that the "Oscar" was either the King of Oscar II of Sweden who was a fan of the dish or Oscar Tshirky, the maitre d'hotel of Delmonico's Restaurant and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan. The latter also popularized the Waldorf salad, Thousand Islands Dressing and may have had a hand in Eggs Benedict! Anyone who has ever seen this blog will know of our penchant for various on the Eggs Benedict here, here and here.

But lest you think that we are in a Sauce Hollandaise rut, we'll throw the curve. In the recipes for dishes served in the Oscar style that we found, the protein is served with the traditional asparagus, sauce béarnaise and crabmeat (or crayfish). Oooh, so tricky! They replaced lemon with tarragon and vinegar. OK, so Escoffier would put it in the same "mother sauce" classification because the two sauces are pretty similar. We did the Escoffier version with Jim's parents a while back and it was good, but we decided to give Sonja Lee's "Sauce" version a try.

Jim forgot the cayenne, but it was pretty darned tasty, even though we've had mixed success with her recipes. We plated the filet, the asparagus, the crab and topped it all with way too much sauce. And when we say "too much", we mean just enough. The 2003 Clarendon Hill Grenache was a bit hot on the tongue, but the flavors worked pretty well together.

Jim and Peta

Pavlovian Response...

The other day, we went to a BBQ with Peta's "Mommy Group". We had some nice grilled tri-tip, portobello mushrooms, sausages and asparagus along with some tasty summer salads. We brought the cucumber and poppy seed salad that we've adopted from the Ottolenghi cookbook, the virtues of which we have extolled on many of our posts. Peta made her Chocolate and Raspberry Pavlova, a traditional Aussie/Kiwi meringue-based dessert named after the Russian ballet dancer Anna Pavlova. From Wiki: "The dessert is believed to have been created in honour of the dancer either during or after one of her tours to Australia and New Zealand in the 1920s. The nationality of its creator has been a source of argument between the two nations for many years, but formal research indicates New Zealand as the more probable source."

Sorry Peta! Jim thought the name was from his Pavlovian (drool) response whenever Peta mentions it. Wrong again, Jim!

Chocolate and Raspberry Pavlova
6 egg whites
300g caster sugar (you can just buzz plain sugar in a spice mill or Cuisinart)
3 T cocoa powder
1 t balsamic or red wine vinegar
50 g dark chocolate, finely chopped & extra for topping
500 mL double cream topping (whipped cream works fine)

Preheat oven to 180C/356F and line a baking tray with parchment/baking paper. Beat the egg whites until satiny peaks form. Beat in the sugar a spoonful at a time until the meringue is stiff and shiny. Sprinkle over the cocoa, vinegar and chopped chocolate. Gently fold everything until cocoa is thoroughly mixed in. Mound onto the baking tray at ~23cm diameter. Place in the oven then immediately turn the temperature down to 150C/302F and cook for 1 - 1 1/4 hours. The meringue should be crisp around the edges and sides but feel spongy when prodded. Turn the oven off, open the oven door and let it cool. Don't worry about a collapse. It will all be covered over in the next phase!

When cool, top with the cream and fruit and chocolate and serve. Slice, eat and enjoy.

Jim and Peta

Huevos Benedictos

If anyone out there is reading (or knows us at all), you'll know that we enjoy "slutty" sauces like Hollandaise, we like eggs and we like eating and creating variations on Eggs Benedict. After stopping at the Spanish Table, a purveyor of all things Spanish (along with some Moroccan and Tunisian items) for the kitchen, we picked up some aged Manchego cheese and some jamón serrano with which we planned to make bocadillos, quick, uncooked ham and cheese sandwiches that were everywhere in Spain when we went on our separate trips to that beautiful country.

Instead, we used the Hollandaise recipe above along with the cheese, ham, bread and eggs to make another version of Eggs Benedict which we dubbed "Huevos Benedictos". The aged Manchego was a little too strong and Jim hasn't really come anywhere near to perfecting his poached eggs, but the "flavors were there" as Peta says.

Jim & Peta

Chim-chim-ichurri...

This is just a quick post to mark the only Chimichurri sauce that we'll ever need. We forget the website recipe that we used, since we just cut and pasted the recipe into TextEdit. We apologize for not given credit where it's due. This recipe used up nearly the last of our Italian flat-leaved parsley. We haven't bought parsley since last year but we'll have to start a new batch once it cools down. We use this sauce on venison, chicken and vegetables; it's quite versatile.

• 1 cup (packed) fresh Italian parsley
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1/3 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup (packed) fresh cilantro
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled
• 3/4 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Jim & Peta