Ragu re-runs

A no-frills food post:

Uninspired to be creative this week, I pulled the frozen duck ragu out and stretched it out for 3 nights.

Fist up was duck lasagna. I made some chestnut pasta and alternated layers of duck ragu or béchamel enriched with just a little mascarpone. It was going to be 2 nights' worth, but I'd ridden and not eaten lunch, so screw it-- I made it twice as deep, and we ate the whole thing. I'd kind of hoped I'd get some of Karen's, but when I reached over for a little supplement, she growled and bared her teeth. Don't mess with Funny Girl's dinner!

Next was a more traditional use of ragu, with wide noodles. This time chocolate. I've struggled with getting the right proportion of cocoa in my chocolate pasta, and this one was (a lot) closer: a teaspoon of cocoa per 2 servings (2 eggs' worth of pasta). A little short, maybe, but better than the overkill of previous efforts. I still like the slight sweetness of the chestnut pasta with duck more than the slight bitterness of the cocoa, but Karen liked it.

I only had a little ragu left after splurging on the lasagna, so a stuffed pasta seemed the best way to stretch it. I had planned to go to the Italian coop here in town for some of their amazing ricotta, but after having to wash my bike after a wet ride today, I recalled seeing sweet potatoes at the local produce vendor. So it was a mad dash to get the potato cooked, get it pureed with mascarpone and butter (everything's better with mascarpone and butter) and turned into agnolotti in time for dinner. Served with some orange-peel-and-garlic-scented sauteed spinach, just because we've been a little light on greens this week. Not really Italian, but there're no real Italians here to report us.

OK, so these weren't leftovers. We had a little unexpected celebrating to do tonight, and I recalled we'd bought a dessert red wine at the on-the-boat salon des vins in Nov for our Thanksgiving dinner, specifically for the opera cakes (almond, chocolate, coffee) we'd intended to buy, but couldn't because they'd sold out. So with the one egg I had left, I faked a chocolate cake recipe made with ground roasted hazelnuts instead of flour, espresso instead of vanilla, and a boat-load of butter, cocoa, and good chocolate. I can pretty much put together any pasta at the last minute, but I don't bake nearly enough to have ratios and methods memorized. And so it was no surprise that whereas the 3 individual cakes looked beautiful coming out of the oven in their ramekins, once unmolded, they collapsed in the center. This runs in the family. When we lived in Austria many moons ago, the only cooking I remember of my mom's (aside from bringing home a chicken with the head most definitely attached) was the first chocolate cake she made that came out of the oven with 3 fist-sized indentations in it, the same as mine tonight. Like hers back then, these little cakes were delicious even if saggy, and more importantly, they served as a perfect excuse for a fabulous half-bottle of wine.

And on the theme of good convenience food...

A couple of weeks ago, I made some artichoke agnolotti and put them in the freezer for a time-crunched meal to be named later. That meal turned out to be today's lunch. We got up late and had a leisurely and delicious breakfast of a baguette and pastries from our favorite boulangerie before heading out for a longish ride in the Chevreuse Valley. Since we didn't get home until 3:30, and the last 50 km of le Tour were on TV, the agnolotti seemed the perfect easy and fast meal to tide us over until dinner.

So I made a sauce out of what I had on hand: sauteed some leeks with a little pancetta until they just started to brown, tossed in a big clove of minced garlic and let everything brown lightly before adding a handful of frozen peas. While the agnolotti cooked, added just a little bit of chicken stock (the elixir from the pot au feet the other day) and about a Tbsp of butter. Finally added the agnolotti, plated, and grated a little of the hard goat cheese over the top.

And voilá-- a very tasty light lunch with minimal effort.

HTS: High-Throughput Stuffing

Although I don't generally like stuffed meats, I love stuffed pastas for the sheer variety of flavors and textures they offer. I've made ravioli, tortelloni, and even casconcelli, but my current favorite is agnolotti.

Agnolotti differ from most stuffed pastas in that they're produced by folding a single piece of pasta on itself, rather than joining 2 sheets. Stuffed with chopped up leftover meats or vegetables, this folding isn't such a big time saver, since you still have to fill and fold each one individually. But filled with something smooth, you can use a method Thomas Keller includes in his French Laundry Cookbook, which allows you to bang out a hundred agnolotti in no time. High throughput, the number of data points an assay can generate per unit of time, is highly valued in the pharma industry. No reason it can't be appreciated in the kitchen at home.

Today I made artichoke agnolotti. Artichokes have been available here since mid-March, and since we eat them nearly every week, I've had plenty of opportunity to run through my own and other people's repertoire of cooking methods by now. About the only thing I haven't done with them is to puree them. Now I have.

High-Throughput Agnolotti

First, you need a filling. For this method, you want something you can pipe using a pastry bag and regular round tip, or just a plastic bag with a corner cut off. Something with the texture roughly of mousse (which is a more appealing comparator than baby food). Lighter than toothpaste, heavier than whipped cream.

Besides artichokes, I've made fillings out of almonds, chestnuts, peas, fava beans, asparagus, beets, squash, sweet potatoes, and regular potatoes. I've not yet made anything with meat, but I've got chicken mousse with wild mushrooms and fish mousse queued up, and I'm trying to figure out how to make a ham mousse-- any ideas, send 'em. If using a vegetable, first cook the vegetable however it's most flavorful (roast sweet potatoes, eg, or blanche asparagus in salted boiling water and then shock in ice water to set the color; braise artichokes), then puree/mash. Resist the temptation to add liquid while blending. If anything, you might need to let the puree sit in a fine strainer for a few hours to let some of the liquid out. Along with your chosen featured food, mixing just a little ricotta (drained first), mascarpone, thick creme fresh (if you're lucky enough to have it), thoroughly cooked arborio rice (blended in a food processor while hot), fine bread crumbs, etc will help stabilize the texture and carry (but not dilute) flavor. I don't use egg or egg white, because I find it makes the stuffing too wet when filling the pasta and too set when they're cooked. Generally, keep the filling in the fridge until your pasta is ready.

You'll need fresh pasta, of course, but for heaven's sake don't let this deter you! It takes maybe 20 min to make a ball of fresh pasta dough, and the rolling takes another 20. You've got lots of options: use Restaurant pasta, made with buckets of egg yolks that give the pasta a silky texture and rich, luxurious taste, or regular old egg pasta (1 extra-large egg for about every 2/3 cup flour), or heck, don't use eggs at all-- use water and a Tbsp of olive oil and/or milk, or even just white wine as your liquid. The texture without eggs will be tougher, country style. Whatever you use for liquid, knead it well and then let it rest an hour or more, and your dough will be a lot more cooperative.

Roll out a useable portion of your pasta of choice to the 2nd-to-last setting on your pasta roller. Don't have a machine? Roll it with a rolling pin, or a wine bottle. You're looking for something you can read headlines through, but not the fine print.

Say "ahhhhhhh....". About a quarter of the pasta dough rolled to the desired thickness.

OK, now comes the fast part. Pipe the filling onto the pasta, leaving about 1/2 inch on the sides and the bottom. You can make these guys fat and plump or lean by adjusting the piping speed and the tip diameter. When using pasta that doesn't take a dozen egg yolks, I always make plenty of pasta. It doesn't take any longer to make a lot than a little, and it's a shame to have to excess filling, since that's what takes the most time.

A caterpillar of artichokey goodness.

Now pick up the lower edge of the pasta and carefully fold it over the filling. Press down on the overlap along the whole length of the pasta sheet. Depending on the type and thickness of your pasta, it may or may not tolerate having a finger dragged along its length. You now have a tube.

The caterpillar in its cocoon...

Roll the covered filling toward the top edge about a quarter turn, so the tube sits on the joined edge you just made...

... and pinch the pasta with your thumb and a finger to make pillows within the roll. This step is why you can't have any solid pieces of substantial size. With little bits of finely diced artichoke (or pancetta, or whatever you might be compelled to leave in for texture), some of those pieces will get caught in the flat sections, and they just need to be small enough that they don't prevent the pasta from sticking together. The pinches have to be secure over a wide enough area so that when you cut them, they stay together.

Oh nooo... smushed caterpillar!

Now using a pizza cutter, or a zig-zag pasta cutter, or even a knife, cut between the pillows, moving the cutter from the side without the flap toward the flat (in the pic above, from left to right). This pushes the pillows down onto the flap and seals it to the sides.

Cut, ready to transfer.

Separate, and voila-- you've got agnolotti. That flap makes a great little pocket for holding sauce, but depending on your tastes, you can make it extend past the top as much or as little as you want.

Standing up.

Set the separated agnolotti in a single layer on towel-lined baking sheets without touching, and store in the fridge until you cook them. Or, and here's the best part, do what I did today and stick the baking sheets right in the freezer, and once they're hard, dump them in a ziploc bag. It takes little enough more time to make 100 than 50 that it's easy to make a big batch and have something great on hand for when you get home from a training ride or race and need good food fast. Cook them fresh or frozen in salted boiling water until they float (they made need a little TLC early on-- keep them moving in the water so they don't stick to the bottom), and remove them with a slotted spoon, rather than dumping the water through a colander-- they're delicate enough that they'll rip. Some melted butter with garlic or herbs, a couple of chopped canned tomatoes sauteed with some fresh herbs for a minute or two, a little pancetta and shallot and herb, or a little cream sauce... no shortage of serving options.

A week in review

You know things are rolling when there have been a lot of cool things to write about but no time to write. That's especially true when you're temporarily retired and theoretically have copious time to write. So I'll let pictures do most of the talking.

The last couple of weeks have finally been good weeks on the bike. I can't tell you how frustrating a winter it has been, but now that things are looking up, it feels great. To give an idea of the slow going, I averaged less than 6 h/month on the bike in Dec, Jan, and Feb, March saw an average of 3 h/week, and finally in April I got weeks of 3, 6, 9, and 15 h. The build came thanks in part to finally being healthy and working hard on stretching and rebuilding core strength, in part thanks to the visit of a friend (Sean) of a friend (Allen) from Philly, who came here for some business and biking, and in part thanks to randomly meeting a British ex-pat on the way back from the Longchamp Hamster Wheel who invited me to join a Sunday anglophone ride out of the city to the Chevreuse valley. As such, I can now update Karen's comment than one can't ride seriously in the city to say that there are escape and entry routes that allow for good riding from the apartment without having to take the train. Not many, mind you, but any is better than none. Anyway, both the roads and the company on the rides have been great, and I'm ready for a week off to try to recover. Feels fantastic to have to recover from hard riding, rather than being sick or hurt.

The 16e from Champ de Mars train station waiting for a train to the southern riding grounds

Chateau de la Madeleine in the Chevreuse: well worth the climb up

Rapeseed fields and wind farms in the south: just flat climbing here in the wind
Labbeville in the north
Taking blurry pictures in the Chevreuse
The blurry Chevreuse
Pre-ride breakfast
Walled hamlet in the south
Torfou, in the south
Counting stops on the way back from Pontoise, exhausted from all of that videography

In the middle of all of the riding we had dinner at Hidden Kitchen, an "underground restaurant" or supper club where the atmosphere is rather like a dinner party: a small number of people eats together at one dining table in an apartment for a suggested, though not optional, donation that covers the food and drink. There are number of these types of establishments around the US and now a couple in Paris. The night we were there, the 16 guests started the evening at 8:00 with an aperitif and worked our way through the menu below, finishing the petits fours about 5 hours later. The food was teriffic, imaginatively conceived and then executed with fresh ingredients and precise technique. It was decidedly not French food (the "hosts" are Americans from the Seattle area), being brighter with more layers of flavor and more playful, but it complements the French food here in the city very nicely. Definitely a fun evening, and with wine accompanying 7 of the 10 courses, the next day's early morning ride was a bit rough for awhile.

The 2nd course of the dinner really resonated with me, because I'd been waiting for good peas to make pea agnolotti. I'd originally been thinking minted pea filling, but the fava raviolo at Hidden Kitchen used chervil in the pea sauce, which was just an outstanding pairing. Never one to shy away from stealing a good idea, I did a pea-and-chervil filling, instead, evened out with an ad libbed substitute for mascarpone (a mixture of fromage blanc and blended cottage cheese). I sauced them in an intensely saffroned light cream sauce (infused chicken stock with saffron threads, reduced with a little cream and creme fraiche from my local fromagerie) and topped it off with a little sliced prosciutto and some chervil. I wish I'd made 3 times as much and frozen the agnolotti for lunches, because they were heavenly.