Ladies and Gentlemen, We Have a Winner!

Above you see the Nicoise-Inspired Tuna Salad. It might need a sexier name; it is definitely a sexy salad.

The Details

Dressing:
Make a red wine vinaigrette by mixing dijon mustard and red wine vinegar. Add three times as much oil as vinegar. Add vinaigrette to yogurt. Add more vinegar or oil as needed, chopped dill and garlic cut at a medium chop. Set aside.
Salad:
Roast 2 potatoes, cut into chunks. Pit and roughly chop 5 Kalamata olives, and add to potatoes. Also add 1 can tuna packed in oil, about 2 t. capers, 2 stalks chopped celery, and 1/2 c. crumbled manouri cheese. Toss in dressing.
To Plate:
Mound salad in shallow salad bowl, topping with more manouri and a dill sprig.


The Review:
I really like making what I unattractively call meat salads. As you'll see below they're incredibly adaptable to what's on hand. This particular one generally gets made in some form or the other every couple of months, but thus far this is my favorite rendition. I had most of the ingredients for a nicoise salad on hand, but the olives were Kalamatas, and I had Greek cheese, plus some dill laying around. I could have probably used more of the really flavorful ingredients: the kalamatas, capers, and dill were very tasty, and I limited their use out of economy. The cheese was creamier than I'd expected, so unless I find a big chunk, it's a very minor player. Feta or another sharper cheese could help this out. Tuna and potato do the usual good job of demonstrating why they belong together. Celery was another "I might as well use it" ingredient, but injects a nice "crisp" flavor and texture in an otherwise creamy salad.

What could have been done differently?
First, the aforementioned feta. Chicken could probably have been used, though I like the tuna a lot. Some spicy greens or even a mesclun mix would be very good as well, and red onions would do just fine. A lemon-juice dressing would have been more authentic, and oregano could be added or substituted. You could even add peperoncinis if you felt the need, but I don't have any particular love for them.

About the ingredients:
Oil packed tuna is now available canned from most of the major brands. It's nothing like imported, but it's also about a quarter of the price and still retains its shape. I think the flavor is better too, but my disdain for water-packed tuna stems more from an aversion to eating things that look like cat food. Tuna need not be an expensive ingredient, and it's pretty good for you.
Capers and fresh herbs are expensive however, unless your herb garden in January includes a functional dill plant (doubtful). It drives me nuts the prices charged by major supermarkets for bagged herbs. They're 1/4-1/2 the price at the farmers' market, but that's the farmers' market and that takes effort I'm not willing to expend after a day of class.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi and Pot Roast

Tonight I made the sweet potato gnocchi. What follows is a technical description of the recipe. I'll follow that with evaluation and analysis.
Gnocchi:
Roast and mash sweet potato. Mix with beaten egg and flour, form into a 1" log and cut into 1" sections. Roll off the tines of a fork, and boil for 3-5 minutes. Drain, and allow to dry without rinsing.
Bechamel Sauce:
Make a roux, add hot milk, grate approx. 1/4t. nutmeg into sauce. Add finely chopped pecans, and correct seasoning.
Pot Roast:
Chop carrots, green beans and celery, and add to cold beef stock. Bring beef stock to hot temperature below boil (Ideally, about 140 Fahrenheit; I doubt that I was able to keep it there), and hold at that temperature for at least 30 minutes. Cut chuck roast into cubes and brown. Deglaze pan with beef stock, add vegetables, red wine, and one large sprig rosemary. Bring to boil and move to 350 Fahrenheit oven for one hour. After braising has finished, add demi glace to gravy and reduce to thicken.
To Plate:
Shred beef, and mound vegetables on plate. Top with shredded beef, and spoon over sauce. Scatter Gnocchi on plate, and drizzle bechamel sauce over.

The Review

The gnocchi was not quite as tender or yielding as I would have liked. I believe that this is due to the fact that I roasted the sweet potato whole, and let it sit that way (skin on) after roasting. Sweet potatoes in general are more moist than regular potatoes, which are traditionally used for gnocchi. This meant that I had to use a dispropportionate amount of flour to make the gnocchi dough, which decreased the tenderness of the gnocchi. The flavor of sweet potato was pronounced and recognizable, but not overbearing. The bechamel sauce with nutmeg and pecans was complementary, but a little bland. The pot roast was very basic; I did cut against the grain, and this shortened the strands of muscle fiber; I was not pleased about this, as it didn't shred very well, and took away from the presentation, but it did no detriment to the dish. The flavor of the pot roast was very good, but the sauce was thin; I should have added more demi glace, but when I cracked the bag I smelled freezer burn, and had no interest in adding that particular flavor to the dish. The rosemary flavor was nonexistent; the dish was still very flavorful, but I should have used the rosemary differently to ensure that the flavor was present, and I believe that mincing the rosemary and adding at the end would have corrected this. A sprinkle of rosemary, and possibly a rosemary sprig, would have improved the plating.
What Worked:
The gnocchi had a good sweet potato flavor, and the flavors in the sauce were complementary. Pot roast is easy, and this one went mostly well. The two dishes were complementary, and I used the method outlined in On Food and Cooking for encouraging persistent firmness in vegetables: Start in cold water, bring to about 130-140 Fahrenheit and hold there for 20-30 minutes. The vegetables were still firm, and a little tender upon serving. It should be noted that OFaC recommends this for only some vegetables, namely potatoes, beans, carrots and other.
What could be done better:
The sweet potato should have been cut into chunks and dry-roasted to allow as much evaporation as possible. I need to find a better sauce: the texture, nutmeg and pecans were complementary to the sweet potato flavor, but the combination was bland. The chuck should have been cut along the grain to achieve the desired muscle fiber length. I should have used a thickening agent to make the sauce into a better gravy.
About the pictures:
These aren't great by any stretch, but I need to learn to take pictures of my presentations, so although I was in a hurry, I shot a few and corrected them in Picasa. They're a little grainy, but they get the point across.

Equipment Malfunction!


I had a plan. I was going to roast a sweet potato on my break today. Sometime this week when not working or in school, I was going to try to make said sweet potato into gnocchi (prohnounced NYOWkee with a long "o" or NYAHkee). I was thinking about a brown butter sauce with rosemary, though I hadn't settled on that particular detail. I don't need a broken stove. But that's what I have, and why is my stove broken? It's electric. Gas stoves work. They may have hot spots. Pilot lights go out, but you don't turn on the stove and find that it doesn't work. This particular range, in addition to not working, has given me a lovely selection of problems. It always smokes when turned on. The largest (and thus best) burner was the site of a recent grease fire (there was no cleanable pan under the burner, and thus grease was allowed to build up mostly unseen), and after about ten minutes of being used, will tilt to the right. A simmer burner (this is only a minor distinction; all the burners are small) is fitted with the wrong knob; thus far I've only found "off" and "high" by trial and error, and this morning, when I went to toast some pecans for my yogurt, I turned the knob, heard a pop, saw a flash at the connection of the wire and the coil, and lost power in that burner. I just discovered that other burners work, but not wanting to be the victim of an elctrical fire, plan to clean my kitchen so I can hit up the leasing office before going back to work.

Welcome to Epicure! This is a food blog that I'm putting together after watching too many friends' eyes glaze over when I excitedly explain how I got that meat to brown perfectly, those biscuits to finally double in size, or that I've learned the differences between mustard-hot and chili-hot. (Curious? Mustards, including wasabi and horseradish as members ofthe mustard family, are made spicy by isothiocyanates, which are released by enzymes in neighboring cells when damaged, and volatile at room temperature, and thus reach the nose before the mouth, causing what is described as "whole-head" heat; Capsacin is the chemical that causes chili-heat, and as it is not volatile at room temperatures, affects only the mouth.) Now if my friends and family get too much ranting from me on food, they have no one to blame but themselves. I'm also trying to get some practice doing food writing, and recipe development. Obviously, feedback is encouraged.

TURKEY
Last night I had some leftover turkey cutlets lying around. I pounded them to about 1/2" thickness, and stuffed them with a mixture of feta, dried rosemary, lemon juice and lemon zest. I sauteed them till brown, and finished them in the oven. I then made a pan sauce of chicken stock, lemon juice, and some of the feta that had leaked out and browned during cooking (I also added a bit more feta before sticking the pan in the oven). It was good.


What could have made it better?
Oregano, more lemon zest (I used to be very good at getting lemon zest with a cheese grater, but apparently no more), fresh rosemary, and calamata olives. I considered pine nuts, which are universally delicious, but that seems like a bit much. I could have used a little less lemon juice (thoroughly juice 1/2 lemon, as opposed to most of 1 lemon). Also, I should have used turkey breasts. Turkey cutlets are not a natural division of any part of the bird, but rather a pre-fab (somewhat) ready to use shortcut for the home cook; I know this because each piece in the package was wildly variant in size and shape, and generally not well suited to wrapping around a stuffing. Why poultry processors think that home cooks want pieces of meat that will take different amounts of time to cook, and not be suited as a group to the purpose at hand is beyond me. Finally, turkey breast cutlets are expensive. This is what I get for going to a bad Kroger.

What could have been done differently?
Most non-melting cheeses (melting cheeses are generally medium-moisture, medium-hard cheeses with a fat-to-protein ratio of or above 1) would work here, but when I think of variations, I go soft, such as goat cheese or possibly ricotta, or blue, because blue cheeses (except gorgonzola) crumble well, melt well, and are really tasty. Herbs like chives would work well with goat cheese, bacon would work well with blue cheeses, and ricotta could be used as a binder for a vegetable stuffing like spinach.

Pizza

I just got home, and a friend has gifted me with a perforated pizza pan. I don't bake much, having for years lacked a kitchen with a stable temperature, but if I recall(and intuit) correctly, this pan will produce high-quality thin crust pizza. There's also a Morrocan stuffed bread recipe that I wouldn't mind trying on it. Check back for updates.