Daube Provencal Recipe

This is my dad's friend, George's recipe. Though I have not yet made it I thought it looked so wonderful and elaborate that it should be published.

Ingredients:

7 peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1 bottle of Cote du Rhone wine
8 garlic cloves
3 yellow onions, sliced into 1/4inch thick slices
4 pounds of lamb (shouldler or leg), cut into 1.5 to 2 inch pieces
salt and pepper to taste
2 tbs olive oil
12 baby carrots
3 tbs flour
1 can (28oz) diced tomatoes with the juice

Day 1:
Put peppercorns and bay leaves in cheesecloth. In a large bowl,
combine wine, half the garlic, onions, and the peppercorns and bay
leaves. Cover with plastic wrap. Fridge overnight.

Day 2:
Remove lamb from marinade. Discard peppercorns and bay leaves. Reserve
the wine, and strain and reserve the garlic and onions.

Brown lamb in oil for 3-5 minutes per batch, a few pieces to the
batch. Remove the lamb and set aside. Add the reserved onions and
garlic, the other half of the garlic, and the carrots, and cook while
stirring on the cooktop for 10 minutes.

Add the flour, cook for 2 more minutes.

Add the wine, tomatoes and the juices, and bring to a boil. Add the
lamb to the mix.

Cover, cook on "high" in a slow cooker for 6 hours. Skim fat. Transfer
lamb and veggies to a bowl, simmer sauce on the stove top for 30
minutes to reduce, add lamb and veggies back in.

Serve with toasted bread. Serves 8.

Il Ristorante di Giorgio Baldi

Forget that I was seated in a chair already warmed by David Mamet's butt, John Mayer's muscular (and surprisingly expansive) back was 3 feet from my arm's reach and a very pregnant Christina Aguilera's text messaging was almost readable to my 20/20 eyes. These distractions did not work. 

This restaurant is quite good!
 
I thought the ambiance and food would be somewhere along the lines of Dan Tana's meets C&O Trattoria meets Pace but it was much more intimate, with elegant simplicity and a small, entirely Tuscan menu. Yes, it was full and, yes, there was a short wait but it was Saturday night at 8:30pm. When you realize that the wait and the crowd are the result of a quality restaurant and not just a papparazi hang in this town it can be quite the double surprise.
 
Since 1990 owner-chef, Giorgio Baldi, dishes out the dishes and sips his favorite Amarone while surveying the dining room like Yurtle the Turtle from his open kitchen. His daughter, Elena, seats the customers while peppering the already seated with greetings, smiles and suggestions. The waitstaff all appeared to be from the old country and quite possibly have been serving these dishes since the restaurant opened 18 years ago. They were very sweet, knowledgeable and proud of their menu. The space is warm, modest and very nicely lighted.
 
We began our meal with the special beef carpaccio with white truffle cream sauce (white truffles arrive fresh from the Piemonte region every fall) and a proscuitto crostini with fonduta. The carpaccio was so carefully and thinly sliced and so fresh that it just dissolved in my mouth. From the handmade, hand-cut pasta menu I ordered the agnolotti, ravioli with sweet corn and white truffles. The raviolis were about the size of a quarter -- the portion was perfect, not too chaste not too monolithic. They were just wondrous, tender and delicate. I felt a symbiotic relationship with some musty, mountainous woodland, surrounded by large oaks and dappled light. Really just delightful. 

Our wine pairing you ask? We paired the entire meal with two bottles of the very same Amarone that Mr. Baldi was sipping while he worked. This is a powerful wine with some definite oak flavors and fresh red fruit. A perfect match for pastas, veal or even the bistecca fiorentino.
 
Maybe it's silly. Maybe it's so Hollywood. Maybe it's overrated. It is certainly a bit pricey. But for an expensive, silly, Hollywoody, overrated Los Angeles (well, Santa Monica Canyon) haunt the food was damn good and the night was chock full of entertainment and fun times. 

I love this town.

Il Ristorante di Giorgio Baldi
114 W Channel Rd
Santa Monica, CA 90402
(310) 573-1660

Almost No Knead Bread

"All sorrows are less with bread." ~Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

I have been trying to bake recently. I have tried to make the same type of bread three times to no avail. My mom gave me a recipe that seems like it should be pretty basic but apparently not for me. Good, old Dixon, my frequent cooking partner even gave me a baking stone as a gift in a moment of sympathy (I believe he even made some comment about getting a certain amount of pleasure regarding me having such botches in the kitchen). I then went to dinner at a friend's house where one of the guests brought a loaf of bread he had made. It was amazing and perfect - exactly what I had been hoping to achieve. This is the recipe.

Simple Crusty Bread 

Adapted from ''Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day'' by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François (Thomas Dunne Books, 2007)

Time: About 45 minutes plus about 3 hours' resting and rising.
 
Recipe:
1 1/2 tablespoons yeast
1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt
6 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour, more for dusting dough
Cornmeal

1. In a large bowl or plastic container, mix yeast and salt into 3 cups lukewarm water (about 100 degrees). Stir in flour, mixing until there are no dry patches. Dough will be quite loose. Cover, but not with an airtight lid. Let dough rise at room temperature 2 hours (or up to 5 hours).

2. Bake at this point or refrigerate, covered, for as long as two weeks. When ready to bake, sprinkle a little flour on dough and cut off a grapefruit-size piece with serrated knife. Turn dough in hands to lightly stretch surface, creating a rounded top and a lumpy bottom. Put dough on pizza peel sprinkled with cornmeal; let rest 40 minutes. Repeat with remaining dough or refrigerate it.

3. Place broiler pan on bottom of oven. Place baking stone on middle rack and turn oven to 450 degrees; heat stone at that temperature for 20 minutes.

4. Dust dough with flour, slash top with serrated or very sharp knife three times. Slide onto stone. Pour one cup hot water into broiler pan and shut oven quickly to trap steam. Bake until well browned, about 30 minutes. Cool completely.

Yield: 4 loaves.

Variation: If not using stone, stretch rounded dough into oval and place in a greased, nonstick loaf pan. Let rest 40 minutes if fresh, an extra hour if refrigerated. Heat oven to 450 degrees for 5 minutes. Place pan on middle rack.

Tomato Aspic (Yeah, I know... It's gross)

This is a recipe served at my family's Christmas Eve dinner EVERY YEAR since forever. We are very Southern and pretty old school.
 
I have always been disgusted by gelatinous, vibraty foods and never deigned to touch it. One year I tried it. I didn't hate it and we'll leave it at that.
 
When I moved out West and it became more and more difficult to get home for the holidays I started embracing some of the dishes that reminded me of home. I swallowed my pride and called my dad, who snickered and said he had to call Aunt Babe, the matriarch of our family. She shared. The few times I've prepared this dish not a soul will touch it - people don't even want to really think about it's presence on the table. I can't say I blame them, but at least it helps me feel a little closer to the family for the holidays.
 
Here it is... 

Recipe:

Dissolve one small package of lemon jell-o in one cup of hot water.

Add 1 can of tomato soup
1 tablespoon vinegar
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon horseradish
1 pound of baby shrimp, and grated onion to taste

Pour into mold and refrigerate overnight.

Garnish with mayonnaise and parsley.

Note: Using crab meat and adding something hot are options.

Holy Mole, Lamb of God

One Leg of lamb. De-bone, De-fat, De-sinew, cut into rough
chunks of a maximum dimension of one inch or so. Brown on grill or in
fry pan w/ salt&pepper.

Set aside.

1/2 cinnamon stick
1 oz chocolate
1 large can of tomatoes, or crushed tomatoes, the ~25 oz size.
3 or 4 tomatillos.
6oz sundried tomatoes.
1/2 bottle of red wine
3 heads of garlic (yes, heads)
3 cayenne peppers
1 tbl spoon of cumin
2 tbl spoons of dark chili
1 tbl spoon salt
2 tbl of beef stock glaze

Grind the everlovin' bejeezus out of this stuff in a Cuisinart. It
should look like lava afterwards.

Add lamb.

Add two bay leaves.

Add four cloves.

Cook covered in the oven for 2.5 hours at 275, then 15 minutes at 250 to
evaporate it somewhat. Lamb should fall apart.