My Paris Kitchen: Fattoush and Chicken Lady Chicken

I feel pretty accomplished. Not only have I managed to keep this alive for a month:

but I also cooked the two recipes from My Paris Kitchen that were on the docket for June.

Up first, albeit, late, was Fattoush, a delightful, crunchy salad that involves lots of herbs (mint and parsley, and I threw in basil, because I had it), radishes, cucumbers, scallions, sumac, and, most importantly, toasted pita bread. I took a cue from some of the French Fridays crew, skipped a step, and just used pita chips. I make no apology for that. I also added chicken. This was very tasty, and I appreciated that I could chop things throughout the day, as my hands were free, and pull it all together at dinnertime. Matt and I both enjoyed this, and it felt clean and virtuous to eat. Unfortunately, we were both starving again two hours later, and each had a hot dog. Woops. So much for nutritional virtue.

I also made Chicken Lady Chicken, which is meant to be a whole chicken, marinated for 1-2 days in an intriguing mixture of garlic, oil, lemon juice, wine, soy sauce, sriracha, mustard, and honey, browned on the stove, and then baked in the oven.

I had the butcher cut my chicken into pieces, because I knew I wasn't going to have time/the will to removing backbones and cracking breasts. I also only marinated the chicken for about five hours. I'm sure it would have been even better with a longer soak, but it was pretty delicious (and smelled amazing), regardless.

As with the fattoush, I appreciated how low maintenance this recipe was. It was pretty easy to complete, even with the bambino around, and the leftovers made a very tasty chicken salad for the next day's lunch.

Now, if only all the recipes in the book were as conducive to cooking with a newborn...

My Paris Kitchen: Belgian Beef Stew with Beer and Spice Bread

On the one hand, I was looking forward to a nice long day of slow cooking. On the other hand, I'm admittedly not a huge fan of stews. Especially stews that require you to make a separate recipe, for pain d'epices, a day or two ahead of time. However, some of Dorie's recipes in Around My French Table have opened me up to enjoying stew--sometimes--and the honey spice bread sounded delicious on its own. The idea of slathering slices of it with mustard and stirring it into the stew? Odd.

I'm not sure that my bread turned out the way it was supposed to. The photo in the book is domed and looks like it has an airy crumb. Mine came out of the oven already sunk in the center, and it was dense and kind of chewy. It tasted good, but I kept re-reading the recipe to see if I had missed a step or an ingredient. Nothing jumped out at me.

I started the stew right after I ate lunch. It smelled amazing while it was cooking. I wish I'd followed my gut and crisped up the bacon a bit before adding the onions. I know perfectly well that any time a recipe tells me to add bacon and onions together, the bacon stays flaccid and fatty. Yuck.

Maybe I didn't cut my chuck roast into small enough pieces. After five hours, it was still not fork-tender.

I cut the difference on adding the spice bread to the stew, and only used two slices. I'm glad I didn't use the full four slices, because I think it would have made the broth too sludgy.

I ate a little. I didn't really love it. If the meat had broken down more, I'd have been happier. The flavor was okay. The meat was way too tough for me. I didn't have more than five hours to let it simmer.

Conclusion: Liked the spice bread, especially slathered with plum jam. Didn't really like the stew.

My Paris Kitchen: Dukkah-Roasted Cauliflower

I'll admit, I wasn't overly enthusiastic about cooking this week's Cook the Book Fridays selection so early in our time with My Paris Kitchen. I've only made a handful of recipes prior to the group starting, and this was one of them. Instead of making my own dukkah, or "Egyptian Spiced Nut Mix," I'd used a jar of Trader Joe's version. It was disgusting. I immediately threw out the jar.

I knew full well that the flaw last time around was with the jar of dukkah I used, not with any of Lebovitz's instructions, but still, my excitement was low. This time, I followed his recipe to make my own. Sort of. I thought I had some of the ingredients--sesame seeds, fennel seeds, cumin seeds--but I must have finished them before we moved from Italy, or they got lost somewhere between Naples and Virginia. I used ground cumin, and omitted the sesame and the fennel, though I can absolutely see this would be even better if I'd had them. I also followed his variation and used toasted almonds instead of hazelnut, because I have a big Costco-sized bag of them in my fridge.

Because I am a lazy mortar and pestler, there were some almost-whole chunks of almond left behind. These were delicious, fished right out of the mortar. I gave one to Charlie, and he said, "Wow, you're right. That IS tasty." This is of particular note, because he doesn't like nuts. I wished I'd been even lazier with my grinding, because I wanted more nut chunks to pick at.

Once the dukkah was made, it was an easy job of roasting the cauliflower and tossing the nut mix on halfway through.

Unfortunately, I over-salted my cauliflower. The pork chops I made were also too salty, so I liked this less, the more I ate. I'm aware this was my problem, and not the recipe's. I've made myself a  note to go easy on the salt next time.

I also sampled the dukkah by dipping some nice seedy bread in beautiful olive oil that I brought home from Puglia, then dipping it in the mix. Honestly, I preferred it straight up like this, rather than on the cauliflower, where the toasty flavors were lost in the salt (again, my fault).

Conclusion: For the Dukkah, liked it. I definitely want to try it again with all of the ingredients. I really think those sesame seeds would have contributed a lot. For the Dukkah-roasted Cauliflower, for now, I'd say Just Okay. Both times I've made this, the problem has been mine. Still, I'm not especially interested in making it again.

My Paris Kitchen: Steak with Mustard Butter and French Fries

I'm a few days late with my post for Cook the Book Fridays, but I needed a day or two after returning from our vacation in San Diego (so lovely!) to get into cooking mode.

On weeknights, Charlie and I eat before Matt gets home from work, so I planned to make Steak with Mustard Butter and French fries for Saturday, because nobody wants cold french fries and reheated beef. I was grateful that this recipe was so easy to scale up at the last minute, because Matt decided to go out and buy a piece of furniture for our basement at around 3, then realized after he got home that I, being six months pregnant, should probably not help him carry it into the house. We lured a friend over with promises of steak frites, ran out to buy a third ribeye, rubbed it down with salt, chili powder, and parsley, let it sit in the fridge for an hour, then proceeded as planned.

My steaks must have been thinner than Lebovitz's. I cooked them according to his timing, and they lost all blush of pink. They were still juicy, but not my ideal cook. He'd specified that he likes his steaks to be thinner so that there's more surface area, but mine must have been too thin. Ah well. Much to my surprise, because I'm not a huge mustard fan, I lo-oved the mustard butter with the steak. I see a lot of mustardy steaks in my future.

No pic of the steak, because I felt dumb photographing it in front of company.

The french fries were good, too. I mean--french fries. Unless they're cold and dry, they're always going to be pretty good. Even if they're oven fries.

That mustard butter stole the show.

Conclusion: Liked it.