Week 6 (2024) - Normandy

Normandy is a region in Northern France, and while I have a general familiarity with French cuisine, I wasn't sure what dishes in particular came from Normandy. After reading through a bunch of recipes, I found a bunch of ingredient that were repeated over and over - cheese, cider, apples, and alcohol, specifically Calvados, an apple brandy that is only made in Normandy. I had no interest in cooking with alcohol for this challenge, which eliminated a bunch of dishes that seemed like they wouldn't be quite the same if modified, and my lactose intolerance doesn't really love creamy cheeses like Camembert, also from the region. So finding a recipe for this challenge ended up being far more difficult than I thought it would be!

I eventually settled on endives au jambon (endives with ham), a specialty of Northern France and Belgium, based on recipes from Pardon Your French and Complete France. The endives are cooked first until tender, then wrapped in ham, and then covered with a rich Mornay sauce (basically a béchamel plus grated cheese, which was gruyere in this case). The second recipe topped it with some breadcrumbs and cheese, which I also added. The endives are then baked and sometimes broiled, but I skipped the broiler step since we don't have any sort of bowl-like vessel that's broiler-safe. It turned out fine with just baking, but was missing that nice browned layer on the top.

The only real issue that I found when planning out the cooking was that I had three endives that totaled about 230 grams, while the main recipe I was following had four endives that were around 200 grams each. Big difference. That did mean that the endives cooked faster, but it also meant that I was going to have way too much sauce. Rather than cutting down the sauce recipe since my brain was feeling a little tired, I decided to just use the sauce on top of some celery we had in the fridge that needed to be cooked soon. Surprise celery gratin! I searched to find out the origins of celery gratin to see if I could link it back to Normandy in some way, but couldn't find anything that said that.

The endives were really tasty. Very rich and heavy, definitely not something we would eat all the time, but good. (I say that, but I said that the last time I made celery gratin too, and here we are again, a couple months later, with another celery gratin. It's a good way to use up warehouse club-sized packs of celery.) Perhaps in the future, whenever we get to France, I'll find some way to make some other dishes representing Normandy, but for now, satisfied with how this challenge turned out!

Week 13 - Escoffier

I wasn't very excited about the Escoffier challenge and put it off for weeks. A French chef and cookbook writer, he was the one who codified the recipes for the mother sauces. It would be easy enough to do a mother sauce for the challenge, but there was just a challenge for that last year, which probably accounted for some of my lack of inspiration. In the end, since I didn't want to make the same thing, I decided this time to go with béchamel.

At least that was the plan. The primary ingredients in béchamel are white roux and milk, and I was getting ready to put together the ingredients photo when I opened and sniffed the milk. Despite the fact that we hadn't really opened it that long ago, it had already gone bad, so that wasn't going to work. I decided to switch to veloute, so I ended up doing the same sauce as last time, but this time I turned it into a mustard sauce instead, which was what I had planned to do with the béchamel.

I made the sauce the same way as last time - butter and flour, and then chicken stock. Once the sauce was done, I added in some dijon mustard. A helped with it since the flour was so resistant to breaking up and needed constant stirring, and I also had to add a little more flour to thicken it up, but eventually it was done.

We put the mustard veloute sauce on top of some panko chicken tenders and green beans. It was a little salty from the combination of mustard and chicken broth, but tasted fine. Once again, it made too much, even though I had cut down the amounts from last time. I was glad to finally cross off this challenge, even if it ended up being a variation on the same mother sauce as last time. Maybe next time I'll end up doing the béchamel.

Week 43 - French

I wanted to make something healthy for the French challenge, something without cream or tons of butter or cheese, but I didn't want to make ratatouille, because A already makes a great one and I wanted to do something new. I had a lot of trouble finding a recipe that inspired me, and searched for a long time, until I stumbled on a recipe on Marmiton for poulet basquaise, chicken made in French Basque country style.

The recipe was in French, so I first translated it and then adapted it for our ingredients/pantry. The ingredients I used were:

- 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, sliced into smaller pieces ($3)
- 2 tbsp olive oil, divided ($0.40)
- 1 onion, chopped ($0.50)
- 1 large spoonful of minced garlic ($0.10)
- 1 green bell pepper, sliced ($0.89)
- 1 red bell pepper, sliced ($0.99)
- 1 can diced tomatoes ($0.75)
- salt and pepper ($0.05)
- 3/4 cup white wine ($0.50)
- 1 bay leaf ($0.05)
- dried thyme ($0.10)
- dried parsley ($0.05)

The total for the recipe was about $7.38, and we ate it on top of some pearl barley, which probably added another dollar or so to the total. Pretty good for dinner for two.

The steps for making our version of the poulet basquaise were:

- prep: slice peppers, chop onion, slice chicken (although I did that later because we didn't have enough room)
- in a large pot, heat olive oil, add peppers, onion, garlic, and cook until starting to soften
- add tomatoes, salt, and pepper
- cover and cook for 20 minutes (supposed to be over low heat but I forgot and did it over medium, and it seemed fine)
- while vegetables are cooking, heat olive oil in frying pan, add chicken, salt, and pepper
- brown chicken in pan
- add chicken to vegetable mixture along with bay leaf, thyme, parsley, and wine
- cover and cook over low heat for 35 minutes, submerging chicken in the vegetable mixture and wine as much as possible
- serve over pearl barley

We've never had poulet basquaise before, so we have no idea if what we made was close or not. It reminded me a lot of the chicken cacciatore we made in a previous challenge, but without the basil flavor. It wasn't really what people usually think of when they hear French food, but I'm going to believe the French site with recipes when they say it's French and Basque. However authentic our version was in the end, at least it achieved my goals of something French, healthy, and tasty. 

Week 19 - Mother Sauces

The theme for Week 19 of the cooking challenge was mother sauces, which are basically the 5 sauces that are the bases for other sauces. I wasn't sure if I had ever actually set out to make one of these before, but it was certainly possible that over the last few years, I'd followed a recipe that went through the steps of making a mother sauce without actually knowing I was making that. In any event, this was an easier challenge to figure out since there were only 5 choices: bechamel, espagnole, hollandaise, tomate, and veloute. I decided to go with veloute since it used chicken stock, and according to Wikipedia, it served as the basis for a sauce called poulette which added mushrooms, parsley, and lemon juice. Sounded good to me.

I decided to make some chicken to go with the sauce, since it was chicken stock-based, and on the side, roast some carrots and onions. I also ended up adding a microwave Seeds of Change packet of brown rice and quinoa to the meal, since as the sauce was cooking, I realized we had nothing to soak up the sauce. The final list of ingredients for dinner was:

- 2 pieces of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sliced ($3)
- 3 tbsp butter, divided (1 for chicken, 2 for veloute) ($0.60)
- 1/3 cup flour ($0.05)
- 4 cups chicken stock ($0.60)
- 8 oz of white mushrooms, finely chopped ($1.39)
- 1 bunch of parsley, finely chopped ($1.20)
- a few spritzes of lemon juice ($0.08)
- 1-1/3 lbs of carrots, chopped ($1.09)
- 1 large onion, chopped ($0.60)
- olive oil to coat the carrots and onions ($0.35)
- salt and pepper ($0.05)

All together, dinner cost approximately $10.38, after adding in the rice packet. I usually try to get it under $10, but that's not too bad for dinner for two.

After peeling and chopping the carrots and onion, coating them with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and putting them in the oven to roast, it was time to cook the chicken. A took care of the chicken while I went to work prepping the mushrooms and parsley. The timing actually worked out fairly well.

For the sauce itself, I followed the steps in this Martha Stewart recipe (mostly because it was the first one I found when I looked), and did the following:

1. Melt 2 tbsp butter over medium heat. (I used the same pan that we cooked the chicken in since I figured we cooked the chicken in butter and the sauce was going to use chicken stock anyway. I doubt this is how you are supposed to make your sauce, but whatever, I wasn't about to wash the pan or waste another.)

2. Add flour and cook for a minute, stirring constantly. (I was confused by the fact that the recipe said the flour should not take on any color. I don't know how that's possible. Maybe it took on even more color because of the chicken residue in the pan, but any time I've ever combined flour with butter, it doesn't stay white. Am I doing something wrong? Or am I misinterpreting the recipe comment?)

3. Pour in stock, stirring constantly, and bring to a boil. (The roux was pretty clumpy, and it took a lot of stirring to get it to break up in the stock, which A worked on while I attended to the parsley.)

4. Reduce to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes to allow sauce to thicken.

At that point, the mother sauce itself was done and the challenge was complete. I tasted it and it had a nice, rich chicken flavor. It made sense that this would be the basis for so many other sauces.

Once the sauce seemed thick enough, I added in the mushrooms and parsley, and let the sauce cook for a few more minutes. At some point, I also remembered there was supposed to be lemon juice, so I added a few spritzes in (basically whatever was left in the squeeze bottle we had). Then I added the chicken back to the pan and let it cook in the sauce for a few minutes before it was time to eat.

I really liked how the sauce turned out. The chicken flavor was really good, and the mushrooms and parsley were a nice addition to round out the sauce. The sauce worked on top of the chicken, the carrots, and also just the rice. I liked eating it with the rice on its own more than I thought I would. We ended up with about half a bowl (maybe a cup) of sauce left over (which I ate with some chicken nuggets for lunch the next day), so perhaps I didn't need all 4 cups of broth, but leftovers aren't a bad thing in our house.

I would definitely make this sauce again, since I thought this turned out well. I guess there's a reason these have been the classic sauces for centuries!

Macaron Day 2016

Today was the first day of spring which meant it was time for another Macaron Day! We were really excited this year because Macaron Day fell on a Sunday which meant we could both go macaron hunting together for the first time. We planned out our schedule, mostly following the same route through Midtown that M took last year. We figured we wouldn't get 11 like M did last year since it was the weekend and it would likely be more crowded, but we aimed to try for as many as we could.

Stop #1: Woops at Port Authority

The crawl started off at the same spot as last year, the Woops kiosk at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. They just handed out macarons without giving you a flavor choice and we ended up with 2 different ones to try. It wasn't the greatest start to Macaron Day as the person behind the counter somewhat patronizingly corrected our pronounciation of macaron, even though it was pretty clear why we were there as they weren't selling anything else that we could see. (As an aside, we weren't wrong (see here) and to us macaroon means something else (like these).)

M's review: I wasn't sure what flavor macaron they had handed me and it was hard for someone of my height to see inside the macaron case after we got them because it had suddenly gotten crowded, so I spent most of the day thinking it was an oddly colored peanut butter macaron. After tasting it, I think it was actually blueberry. It wasn't my favorite one but it fell within the top half of my ranking. The blueberry flavor was nice, not overly sweet, and the cookie held up relatively well.

A's review: I was handed a pistachio macaron which was fine by me. Being my first free macaron ever it held a special place in my heart. Overall, it was just okay. There wasn't a ton of discernible pistachio flavor, and the cookie portion part had a nice crisp exterior but wasn't extremely chewy in the inside. It was okay, but nothing special. The cream had a nice consistency, though.

Stop #2: Francois Payard Bakery

Francois Payard Bakery is basically the home of Macaron Day, so it's a great place to stop by. Last year, they had quite a few flavors of macarons to choose from but this year they had only 2 - black n' white and strawberries and cream. Since we visited another FP location where we both got the strawberries and cream, we'll leave that one for later and just talk about the black n' white here.

A's review: I opted for the black n' white at our first stop in the hopes that we'd get to the second Francois Payard stop in time for me to get one of the strawberries n' cream from there. The black n' white consists of 3 vanilla bean ganache, vanilla macaron cookies, and a dip in 61% dark chocolate. Because of the chocolate dipping, everything else gets a bit lost. The chocolate shell packs a lot of flavor, and it ends up overpowering the vanilla encased underneath. I couldn't even get much of a feel for the cream inside. It wasn't a bad macaron, but it wasn't the best.

Francois Payard Bakery was also the home of a new macaron hybrid that people have been talking about all week - the macaron donut. These were $5, not part of the free macaron giveaway, but today was the first day they were available (and they would only be around for a limited time). Consisting of a strawberry flavored fried dough bottom, a strawberry cream filling, and a macaron top, and about the size of a small cake donut, this was pretty good. It was definitely sweet but it had nice strawberry flavor and the texture of the "donut" held up pretty well.

Stop #3: Bouchon Bakery

Although we had indulged in the macaron donut at Francois Payard, we hadn't eaten any of our other macarons yet, instead saving them for later. The first one we actually ate was the cookies and cream macaron from Bouchon Bakery at the Time Warner Center.

M's review: This was by far my favorite macaron of the day. I had liked the one I got last year at Bouchon, and Bouchon is one of the few places in the city where I've actually bought macarons, so it was no surprise that I thought this one was fantastic. The cookies had the perfect chewiness, and the cookies and cream flavor was exactly what I was looking for. It was like eating an Oreo cookie but with much better texture. After eating it, I was a little concerned that I might have started the day with the best instead of ending it on a high note, but either way, I'm just glad we were able to get one of them. We tried making it to another Bouchon location later in the day but they had just run out minutes earlier.

A's review: Best macaron of the day by a long shot. It all starts with the cookie, and this one was phenomenal. Perfectly crisp exterior that evolved into an amazingly chewy interior. They also had the perfect amount of cream filling which was equal parts smooth and sticky. Eating this was like eating warm cookies and cream ice cream. It had the perfect consistency, and it made me want to go back and actually buy more of their macarons. I wish we could have saved this for last, but the way in which they construct their macarons makes that difficult. The cream fills the entire cookie interior and is a pretty thick layer so it would squish out far too easily.

Stop #4: FP Patisserie at the Plaza Food Hall

The patisserie had the same options as Francois Payard Bakery, but they had already run out of the black n' white, so we both got the strawberries and cream. That macaron was strawberry puree and white chocolate ganache in a strawberry macaron shell.

M's review: I think it's just a coincidence, but all of the macarons in the top half of my ranking were from the first few stops. This strawberry and cream macaron was good, similar in flavor to the macaron donut. It was a little sweeter than I prefer, but it was still good. The texture of the FP macarons are of course always nice too.

A's review: As previously mentioned, I banked on getting to this second FP location to get the strawberries and cream macaron option. I'm glad I did. You could really taste the strawberry in the cream, and the cookie had a really good texture to it. I don't think it was quite as good as Bouchon, but it was still really good. After eating this cookie I kind of wished I had gotten two of these instead of splitting my choices, but how was I supposed to know which one I would like more?

Stop #5: Macaron Cafe

Last year, Macaron Cafe was one of M's favorites, and we were both pretty excited that they hadn't run out of macarons yet when we got there. (This was technically our sixth stop, but we're skipping listing or numbering the ones that had run out already.) They had let customers choose any macaron from their vast selection in the past, but this year had narrowed the eligible ones down to a "seasonal" list (of about 9, so still quite a few choices). (It seemed to be a trend this year to have less options to choose from, for whatever reason.)

M's review: I debated for a bit between the Earl Grey and the jasmine, with a brief temptation by orange blossom, but in the end, ended up getting the jasmine. I anticipated that it would taste like fragrant jasmine tea, one of our favorites. Unfortunately I have no idea what this flavor was. I didn't taste any jasmine whatsoever, just something kind of bitter and not really easy to discern. I made A try a bite (even after I said it was awful), and he tasted banana. I have no idea what was in there, but it was my least favorite macaron. I have no interest in getting that again, and I was so confused because the ones we got from Macaron Cafe last year were so good!

A's review: I opted for the Earl Grey since I really like drinking that tea. I'm not really sure what flavor this was in the end. It had a bit of a citrus flavor which I assume was meant to account for the bergamot, but after that it was all downhill. The cream had the consistency and the flavor of room temperature butter. I was actually looking forward to this one as M liked Macaron Cafe so much last year, but... this was a complete and utter disappointment.

Stop #6: Woops on 2nd Avenue

After attempting a new pop-up spot in Bloomingdale's that had already run out of free macarons, we found ourselves at another Woops, this time near the Queensboro Bridge. This one had a designated person handing out the free ones from a giant cardboard box. Not sure if there were multiple flavors, but we both got cookies and cream.

M's review: This Woops macaron was okay, but I liked the blueberry better. Texturally it was about the same, but I found the cookies and cream flavor a little too intense (for lack of a better word). Oddly it seemed to have a strong fragrance to it which was a little overwhelming. I definitely preferred the Bouchon cookies and cream.

A's review: They called this cookies and cream, but it didn't taste anything like cookies and cream. In fact, I don't even know what I think this tasted like. It was okay, but it wasn't anything amazing. It had a similar texture to the other Woops macaron I had, but it was nowhere near as good as the Bouchon cookies and cream option.

Stop #7: Eclair Bakery

M remembers Eclair Bakery from last year mostly because it was the place where M realized how many people brought plastic containers to hold their entire macaron haul. This year, they were giving out vanilla macarons.

M's review: This one was okay for me, probably right in the middle of the pack. Texturally I didn't like it as much as Bouchon, but the flavor wasn't bad. The vanilla was a little on the sweet side, but it was fine.

A's review: I didn't like this one very much. Sometimes you can tell when it's artificial vanilla flavoring instead of real vanilla, and that was my thought when eating this one. It just didn't quite taste right, and that was disappointing. The cookie also wasn't nearly as chewy, and since this was the second macaron we ate, following Bouchon, it was a major letdown.

Stop #8: Macaron Cafe

This Macaron Cafe location in the East 40s was M's last stop on her macaron crawl last year, and considering how satisfied we were with Macaron Cafe last year, we were happy to get another one from them here. Once again, we decided to try 2 different ones.

A's review: I got the matcha chestnut macaron because it sounded really interesting. I've had chestnut desserts before, and they had a really nice, subtle sweet and nutty flavor that I thought would pair well with the flavors of the matcha. As you can see, the matcha cream far outweighed the chestnut cream, and that was a huge issue. The matcha was, expectedly, really bitter. Unfortunately there wasn't nearly enough chestnut cream, and this whole cookie was really bitter overall and not very pleasant to eat at all.

M's review: I wasn't sure what cassis was, but the guy working there said it was black currant, so I got that instead of the apricot and chocolate coconut ones I had been considering. This was definitely better than the jasmine one, as it actually had a nice, sweet fruit flavor. That said, it was still very rich, just like the other one, and not as good as I remembered from last year. Pretty disappointing since those were some of my favorites.

Stop #9: La Maison du Chocolat

We had gone to the La Maison du Chocolat location at the Plaza Food Hall earlier in the day, but they were out of macarons and we'd have to wait 30 minutes (which we didn't think was worth doing). Luckily they hadn't run out of all of them yet by the time we got to the Rockefeller Center location, so we still got to try them. They had a bunch left, but all the flavors we initially asked for - raspberry, passion fruit, hazelnut - were gone. Clearly we have similar taste preferences to a lot of other people.

M's review: I ended up getting the Macapuno, which had coconut and lime ganache. I definitely tasted coconut, but no lime. This was probably the sweetest macaron I had all day, too sweet, and even sweeter than the chocolate and praline truffle we got at Godiva immediately after. (It was a very sweet afternoon.) It reminded me a little bit of the macarella cookies we made one year at Thanksgiving (based on this), when we only had sweetened shredded coconut instead of unsweetened, and combined with the additional sugar, it was so ridiculously sweet that only my grandmother was willing to eat them. It was kind of like that, very, very, very sweet. All that said, I still preferred that to the jasmine one from earlier.

A's review: I opted for the Quito when all of our first two or three choices were all gone. It's a chocolate cookie filled with a dark chocolate ganache, and I thought that sounded good. Their website describes the macaron as, "The embodiment of chocolate, as we like it, is expressed in this full-bodied dark chocolate ganache with fresh, fruity and floral notes." I don't know about fresh, fruity and floral notes, but I got one note. SWEET. Yes, there was chocolate mixed in there somewhere, but the overriding flavor profile of this macaron was cloying sweetness. It wasn't horrible, but it definitely wasn't what I was expecting.

Although we still love Macaron Day, and there were some bright spots like Bouchon and Francois Payard, it was a little bit of a disappointing day overall based on how we liked the macarons. If you're looking for the short version, here are each of our rankings in order:

M's rankings:
1. Bouchon Bakery cookies and cream
2. Francois Payard strawberries and cream (x2)
3. Woops blueberry
4. Eclair Bakery vanilla
5. Macaron Cafe cassis
6. Woops cookies and cream
7. La Maison du Chocolat Macapuno
8. Macaron Cafe jasmine

A's rankings:
1. Bouchon Bakery cookies and cream
2. Francois Payard strawberries and cream
3. Francois Payard black n' white
4. Woops pistachio
5. La Maison du Chocolat Quito
6. Woops cookies and cream
7. Eclair Bakery vanilla
8. Macaron Cafe matcha and chestnut
9. Macaron Cafe earl gray

Week 7 - Air

When the Week 7 challenge popped up as air, I was completely confused about what to make. What could I make that would "incorporate air" in the recipe? I didn't want to make a soufflé or whip up a cream or a mousse, and I didn't have any special equipment to "incorporate air." Eventually I started to think about what foods felt "airy" to me and the one that came to mind was gougères, these French cheese puffs that we love. First of all, they're puffs. Second, after reading through recipes for making a soufflé, if those methods were considered as incorporating air, then gougères should qualify too.

I stayed pretty close to the recipe for gougères I found on Bon Appetit, figuring that precise measurements might be needed to make sure they puffed up correctly. The ingredients were:

- 6 tbsp unsalted butter ($1.20)
- a few pinches of kosher salt ($0.05)
- a pinch of nutmeg ($0.05)
- 1 cup water ($0)
- 1.5 cups of flour ($0.16)
- 4 large eggs ($0.68)
- 1.5 cups of grated gruyere-cheddar blend ($2.25)
- a few grinds of black pepper ($0.05)
- 1 egg yolk mixed with 1 tsp water ($0.17)

The total cost of the gougères was approximately $4.61. Combine that with the estimated costs of the other parts of dinner (brussels sprouts, $2.79, mustard sauce for brussels sprouts, $1, salmon, $4.50, marinade and seasonings for salmon, $1), and the total was approximately $14. Since it was ridiculously cold outside (wind chills in the negative single digits) on A's birthday, we made this as a special dinner for his birthday. As a result, cost didn't matter so much, but it was still not too bad for a meal including fish.

We also stuck relatively closely to the steps for making the gougères from the Bon Appetit recipe, and did it together, as in some parts it seemed like it would be helpful to have 4 hands instead of 2. The steps were:

1. Preheat oven to 400. (Easy!)

2. Put butter, salt, nutmeg, and the cup of water in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir until butter is melted and remove from heat. (I kept shifting the pot back and forth from burner to burner to remove from heat. It was helpful that we weren't cooking anything else.)

3. Add the flour and stir to combine. Cook the flour mixture over medium heat and stir "vigorously" until the mixture "pulls away from sides of pan and forms a ball." (The recipe said 2 minutes, but this happened very, very quickly for us. However, it didn't really turn into a single ball at any point like I was envisioning. It did look like dough though!)

4. Continue to cook, "stirring vigorously" until there is a dry film on the pan and the dough isn't sticky. (This was supposed to be another 2 minutes. I did stir it but the more vigorously I stirred it, the more it seemed to break up, so I don't think I stirred it that vigorously.)

5. Remove from heat and let dough cool for about 2 minutes.

6. Add whole eggs one at a time and incorporate fully. (This was where it was helpful to have 2 people, so A broke and added the eggs and I stirred it. It did not mix very well, so by the last egg, I gave up and kneaded it with my hands instead, which worked better but it really stuck to my fingers.)

7. Add cheese and pepper and mix in.

8. Add dough to a piping bag with a 1/2 inch round tip, and pipe rounds about 1 inch in size onto parchment lined baking sheets. (A did this part, because he's more into piping than I am. We ended up doing 2 baking sessions as they were definitely not all going to fit on 2 baking sheets.)

9. Whisk an egg yolk with a tsp of water, and then brush the puffs with egg wash.

10. Bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, and they're done when they look golden and sound hollow when you tap them. (They really did!)

After we pulled the gougères out of the oven, it was time for the moment of truth. Would they be light and airy? Would they be good? Luckily, they were. The texture was pretty much exactly what we remembered from the gougères we've had at restaurants. That made us pretty happy - the experiment was a success! As far as flavor, they were pretty good, but not as much cheese flavor as the restaurant ones. Perhaps I needed to use a stronger cheese than the gruyere-cheddar melange (but that made such good toasties!) or maybe just more of it. They were still good, but they could have been cheesier. They definitely puffed up with big pockets of air inside like gougères should have, so air challenge complete!

Since we were going French for the gougères, I decided to make a French style baked salmon, marinating the fish in some olive oil and herbs de provence, and then baking it at 275 degrees in some more olive oil for 24 minutes (a bit too long). To balance out the meal with some vegetables, I just sauteed some shaved brussels sprouts with a mustard sauce based on the one from the potatoes we made a couple of years back (with whole grain mustard, olive oil, lemon juice, lemon pepper blend, oregano, garlic powder). We also had an unplanned "amuse" of some fried egg whites since we didn't want the egg whites from the egg wash yolk to go to waste.

We ate a lot of gougères as we waited for everything else to cook (it was kind of hard to get everything done at once when we needed to bake at 2 different temperatures and only have 1 oven), and they were pretty filling. They're pretty addictive, light and fluffy and airy. We were pretty happy with the results of this challenge.

Tarte à l'Oignon

We regularly frequent the Trader Joe's blog to see what's new, and at the beginning of the year stumbled upon a new spotlight on the tarte à l'Oignon ($3.99), an Alsatian style onion tart. We've been big fans of Alsatian style tarts ever since having tarte flambée from the restaurant where we got engaged (more on that type of tart here), so we definitely wanted to try this.

According to the packaging, "oodles of onions are caramelized and mixed with a light creamy sauce before being baked in a flaky, buttery crust." The crust itself was a shortcrust dough made with butter and eggs, and on top of the crust, there was a mixture of creme fraiche, caramelized onions, milk, nutmeg, and pepper. Considering the ingredients, it's not a super healthy tart, but we weren't expecting it to be.

Right out of the box, it didn't look anything like the picture, but we hoped it would still taste good. It was pretty easy to make. Just pop it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.

M's review: This tart looked amazing on the box and I love onions, especially caramelized onions, so I was expecting to love this.  Unfortunately it didn't live up to my expectations and didn't really look like what was advertised. Where were all those browned, caramelized onions on top? There was no way it could look like that considering what it looked like coming out of the box. It was definitely creamy and had onion flavor, but it was kind of one-note to me. It was almost like eating a sweet, mild French onion soup in a more solidified form on top of a buttery crust. The crust wasn't that crisp, which could be because I put it on a baking sheet instead of directly on the oven rack, but I was concerned about it bubbling over and making a mess (not sure why really). The texture/crispness really didn't bother me as much as the not very exciting flavor. It wasn't bad. I was just expecting more.
Buy Again? Probably not for me. I'd rather try a different tart or just eat a bowl of caramelized onions.

A's review: I looked at the picture on the box a few times to make sure what I was about to eat was actually what we were advertised to have bought. Obviously some camera trickery and special food preparation/photography was involved, but I ended up trying to keep an open mind. After my first bite, my mind closed off a bit. The crust was a little buttery, but it wasn't that flaky. The onions were rather bland as well, and it was mostly just a melted looking and textured blob of "onions".
Buy Again? I wouldn't. Would I eat it again if we bought it? Sure, it was edible and the crust was nice, but it just wasn't good enough overall to warrant me wanting to get it again.

Quick Chicago Weekend

Back in August 2013, we flew out to Chicago for a quick weekend trip to celebrate our nephew's first birthday. For most trips, we recap each food stop on our journey, trying to commit our memories to words before they completely fade (and we're not always successful in that, sadly), but this time, we're going to wrap up the whole thing in this one post. Why? Primarily because most of the memories of this trip have completely faded despite having pretty good photographic documentation. Sad but true. We probably have enough memories left to fill up the content of one post, but not 5.

We left on a Friday morning from LaGuardia (and not the comfy Marine Air Terminal) headed for O'Hare. We had packed a couple of sandwiches from Trader Joe's to eat at the airport and on the plane, but those no longer need a post because we already talked about them from a later trip to Vegas. After we landed, we made our way over to A's brother's place, and then went out to grab a quick lunch. We found ourselves at the local Mariano's, a grocery chain in Chicago we became completely enamored with the year before when they first opened in the West Loop.

Mariano's reminds me a little bit of Wegmans when it comes to their premade selections in that they are extensive. We decided to split one of the $6 meals (main and 2 sides), getting the hand-rolled Sicilian meatballs (2 giant meatballs) with sides of potato salad and mojito Cuban quinoa salad. The meatballs were delicious. We really don't remember anything about the potato salad over 2 years later. The quinoa salad had quinoa, black beans, green peppers, olive oil, lime juice, coconut, red peppers, green onion, jalapeño, cilantro, garlic, mint, salt, pepper, and oregano. I only know this because we had kept the ingredient label after the trip, and it was one of the only food notes I had from the entire weekend. That also tells me that we must have liked it if we wanted to try to figure out how to make something similar at home.

Besides lunch, we also picked up some pluots to eat later since they had so many varieties of pluots that we had never seen before, and they looked so juicy since it was late summer. (They were really, really good.)

Many of the meals we ate that weekend were homecooked by A's mom (very tasty, as always), but we did go out for one nice meal to celebrate our nephew's birthday and just generally to have one really nice dinner as a family for A's family (similar reasoning as our Japonais dinner from last summer). Dinner was at the bustling Paris Club in the River North area of Chicago, and we got a bunch of appetizers to split as well as individual entrees. If you had asked us to name from memory what we got at this meal, without looking at any of the photos, I think the only part we might remember is the charcuterie board. I don't think that's a reflection on the food at Paris Club, because I think we concluded that the quality was pretty good after we ate there, but more a confirmation of how much memories can fade in just over 2 years (same reason I recently went on a draft-deleting spree). 

Anyway, from what we can tell/remember after looking at the pictures, we (or someone at the table) got:

- charcuterie board (homemade pates, terrines, and saucissons)

- shrimp cocktail

- baked brie with mushrooms and walnuts
- butter lettuce salad with dijon vinaigrette and shaved radishes

- side of roasted mushrooms

- side of braised lentils

- skate wing with lemon, capers, and brioche croutons (A is guessing this was his, but not really sure)

- duck confit with braised lentils and mustard greens
- wild Alaskan halibut with creamed corn and chorizo (I think this was mine)

We didn't get any desserts because there was still a massive amount of birthday cake left to eat back at the house.

After the very short weekend, we left O'Hare for Newark on Sunday afternoon. Before leaving we stopped by our favorite place to eat at O'Hare, Tortas Frontera, Rick Bayless's fast casual spot. Since we've gone there on so many trips, you would think we would have written about it before, but it's usually the last stop on a Chicago trip so we've never gotten up to it.

Unfortunately we didn't really have any recollection of which torta we got this time (seriously, why is this trip so faded in our memories?), so any post about Tortas Frontera based on this visit would not do it justice. We'll save that for another trip. My photo album captions tell me that we got the roasted garlic mushrooms torta, but considering we didn't know that just by looking at the photo, we clearly don't remember what it tasted like enough to describe it. We do remember that we got a raspberry prickly pear agua fresca which was refreshing.

Before leaving for the airport, we had picked up a couple of sandwiches from Mariano's to eat on the plane. Since we got the torta at the airport, we were only really hungry enough to split one of them on the plane - a turkey and swiss sandwich on pretzel bread. We ate the other one (warmed up) after we got home, an Italian meat sandwich on focaccia. We remember that we liked both sandwiches, but the specifics are just too faded.

Anyway, there's a quick recap of the weekend we spent in Chicago back in 2013. We did eat a lot of tasty food, even if for some reason we can barely remember some of it. At least we've managed to get this much down in a post before the rest of our memories of this trip completely fade!

An Abundance of Dill

Sometimes trying to use up leftover ingredients in the fridge can yield the most tasty results. This time, I had about 1/4 lb of ground turkey, 1/2 lb of chicken breakfast sausage, most of a bottle of white wine, a very large bunch of dill, a few carrots, a third of a head of garlic, and half a container of mushrooms to use up (mostly left over from the wedding soup). I started thinking about the white wine and dill tofu recipe that I had done for a challenge back in 2014 and wondered if I could use a similar profile with the ground poultry since I had so much dill. It was worth a shot.

I heated up some olive oil and then added the ground turkey and chicken sausage (without casings) to the pan. Luckily I had A's help so I could do additional prep work while everything was cooking, so he worked on breaking up the meat while it was cooking. Once the meat was pretty much done, I added some chopped onions, mushrooms, and carrots to the pan and we just let everything saute for a while.

For the sauce, I mixed together all of the chopped dill (and there was a lot of it), chopped garlic (about 4 cloves), a few tbsp of white wine, a few tbsp of white wine vinegar, a few tbsp of olive oil, 2 spoonfuls of whole grain mustard, a little bit of honey, and a little bit of salt. (If it's not obvious, I didn't measure anything.) The sauce didn't taste quite right, so A suggested more sweetness. At that point, I added a few tsp of agave, and that made all the difference.

After the vegetables had released a lot of their water, I added the sauce to the meat and vegetables, and let it simmer for a bit while I prepped stuff for the cookie challenge. It turned out better than I could have ever expected. I thought all of those ingredients might go together, but wasn't sure if the sauce would be enough flavoring for the dish. I was pretty happy with dinner, and would make this again for sure, even as a planned dish.

Macaron Day

While doing some cleaning the other day, I found a flyer for one of the macaron shops I visited on Macaron Day earlier this year. I wrote pretty much all of this post way back in March, but for some unknown reason, never finished or posted it. Just *slightly* overdue, but here's a recap of my first real Macaron Day experience.

The first day of spring was Macaron Day, which meant that participating vendors were giving out free macarons to anyone who showed up for the holiday. (It was also to raise awareness and money for City Harvest as a portion of the proceeds from macarons sold that day went to them.) Despite Macaron Day running in the city for 5 previous years, I still had not gotten 1 free macaron. Some years I was too busy at work and/or the lines were too long. The last time I tried, I got out too late (2:30 or so) and the first 3 places I stopped at had no macarons left so I gave up. I commented at the time that they should just call it "Macaron 1/2 Day" since there was no way the free macarons were going to last until 5 pm. This time, I vowed to do things differently, to start earlier, and to see how many places I would be able to hit.

Stop #1: Woops at Port Authority. I set off around 11 this year (much better than last time) and decided that Woops, which had a location in Port Authority Bus Terminal, would be a good place to start the macaron crawl. Although I passed through Port Authority fairly regularly, I hadn't even known there was a macaron stand there. I figured that it was early so I had a good chance of getting a macaron, and even if this was the only one I got all day, it was still more than what I got last time.

They had a couple different flavors at Woops and I went for the Nutella. They were the only place that had their free macarons in sealed packages, which was nice, so I just tossed it in my bag for later. This actually ended up being the last macaron we ate (I saved whichever ones I could so that A and I could eat them together and share in Macaron Day even though he had to work). It was okay, but not our favorite. The Nutella on the inside was a little bit more liquidy than I had expected it would be, which made eating this macaron a little bit messy, and the cookie crumbled a little more than it should have.

Stop #2: Bouchon Bakery at the Time Warner Center. I've bought macarons from Bouchon before and knew they were good, but with how crowded the mall up there is, I wasn't sure they would have any left. Luckily they did!

Bouchon's offering was chocolate salted caramel. This was one of the best macarons all day and it's why people are always going to Bouchon for macarons. Cookie texture was perfect and the flavor was spot on. I always worry with salted caramel that the caramel flavor is going to be too intense but this was great, perfectly balanced. Although I had packed a ziploc bag to wrap up some macarons to share with A for later, this one I ate there because I didn't want the filling (which went to the end of the macaron) to smear all over the paper wrapping. Poor A didn't get to try this one. We'll just have to go back to Bouchon another time to get some. It's not like it's far. 

Stop #3: Epicerie Boulud by Lincoln Center. On my previous failed macaron crawl, I think this was the first place I stopped and they were completely out. This time, I fared better.

I went with the pistachio macaron since that one looked more popular than the vanilla that was also on offer, and because we had really liked the pistachio macaron from the TJ's box set. This was good, but it didn't hold up as well as some of the others. The cookie was a little drier and more crumbly than some of the others, but the taste was good. It was the only pistachio I got all day so I can't really compare to anyone else's pistachio macarons.

Stop #4: Francois Payard Bakery near Columbus Circle. This finished off the 3 Macaron Day spots in the Columbus Circle-Lincoln Center area (and also completed re-visiting all the ones where I had failed last time). City Harvest was at FPB for the event and they still had macarons! This day was going much better than last time. I thought they might run out at the stops I was going to make after FPB, but I figured at least I was going to have some macarons to show for my effort.

FPB was offering a special mint macaron for the event, one that they don't usually have available for sale. Although I was tempted by other flavors, I had to get that one because if not now, then when? Biting into this one, it was green on the inside, which was supposed to be similar to City Harvest's colors. This was another one that we really liked. The mint flavor was great and the cookies were also quite good.

Stop #5: FP Patisserie in the Plaza Food Hall. By the time I got over to Plaza Food Hall, places were getting busier, it was lunch hour for a lot of people, and I started to think they were going to start running out of macarons. I was still going to try, but if I didn't get any, I was pretty satisfied already with what I had been able to pick up since it was so much better than last time. Luckily, FP Patisserie still had plenty and the crawl would continue on for a while longer.

I was trying to decide between the raspberry champagne and the passion fruit, and asked for a recommendation. The guy there suggested the passion fruit since they mix in a bit of chocolate, which makes it a little different. Great recommendation. We loved this one. There was that hint of chocolate that you could definitely taste, but it matched up really well with the passion fruit flavor. And since this is another Francois Payard place, you can be sure the quality/texture of the macaron was just right.

Stop #6: Epicerie Boulud at the Plaza Food Hall. Yes, I already went to the other Epicerie Boulud, but the poster did say to eat macarons around the city at all participating locations. It was at this point that I started to recognize fellow Macaron Day crawlers that I would see at multiple other stops.

This time, I picked up a raspberry macaron. I was starting to get a little peckish, so I ate half of it and put the rest away for A to eat later when we met up for lunch. The cookie was the same as the pistachio one, a little bit drier, but overall, it was good. I didn't think the flavor of the raspberry jam was as rich and pronounced as the other raspberry macaron I got later, but A thinks he might have gotten more jam in this one and thought this one had better filling.

Stop #7: Sugar and Plumm at FAO Schwartz. Located in the sweets shop at the (now closed) toy store, they had a bunch of different flavors but only a few for the special event. A didn't get to try this one, because they only gave a small square of paper (better for the environment?) to hold the macaron and I couldn't wrap it up for later. 

I picked the passion fruit macaron. This might win for the prettiest macaron as I loved the red and orange coloration and how it seemed to glitter under the toy store's bright lights. Taste and texture, it was very different from any macaron I had before. The filling was thick and creamy and very rich. You could really taste the cream, like you can in ice cream. It also was kind of a "sticky" macaron and the filling was chewy. That doesn't mean it was bad, just different from what I was used to with macarons. Very sweet and very rich, but also very pretty.

Stop #8: Macaron Cafe just down the street from FAO. I liked this section of the crawl because there were a whole bunch of Macaron Day participants in a straight line. This was the first place where I encountered a line outside, and it reminded me of a previous Macaron Day where I tried to go to the Macaron Cafe in the 30s and the line was just way too long. I hoped it would be worth the wait!

Once inside, I figured out why the line was so long. They let you choose from the entire selection of macarons and that included some of their more unique flavors that no one had. I decided on the rose lychee, but it was a tough choice since so many sounded good. This was another one of our favorites. We love any rose flavored dessert and this was no exception. It was a little heavy on the filling, and since we ate it later on, the filling had started to melt a little bit, but it was more solid when I got it so that was on us. But the flavors of the rose and lychee were so good. 

Stop #9: Mad Mac Macaron at the Bernardaud store. This looked like a pop-up that was at the store just for this event. Pretty much everyone "shopping" at the time was on line for a macaron.

I picked up a raspberry macaron here. It was on the smaller side for size, but it was quite good. I liked the raspberry filling better in this one than the Epicerie Boulud one, but A liked the other one a little more. The cookie was better on this one though; we both agree on that.

Stop #10: Eclair Bakery in Midtown East. This was the spot where I started to feel like I hadn't "prepared" enough for Macaron Day. I thought I was smart, bringing a zipper-closed bag since it was snowing, and packing away inside that an empty ziploc bag (sandwich bag size) to collect macarons so I could share them with A later. But it was at Eclair that I realized that multiple people had brought plastic tubs for their macarons. Tupperware! It didn't even occur to me to do that, but I watched several people (who were not traveling together) rearranging their packed macarons in their boxes. I was running out of space in my ziploc bag, but it had served me well for the most part. Is bringing Tupperware really a thing? Clearly I was a Macaron Day newbie.

Eclair was offering salted caramel macarons. This was pretty good, but I liked the Bouchon one a little more (and it's easier to get to).

Stop #11: Macaron Cafe in the East 40s. This would end up being my final macaron stop of the crawl. (Although I did check out the other Macaron Cafe in the 30s later in the afternoon, they were out of free macarons by that time.) I was pretty excited and was hoping to get one of the other flavors I had been eyeing at my first Macaron Cafe stop.

Success! I got the honey lavender. It didn't fit in my ziploc bag which was bulging at the seams, since the Macaron Cafe macarons are on the larger size, but that didn't matter since I was heading to lunch with A and was planning to share this with him while we waited for our special Shake Shack burgers. Just like the other one from Macaron Cafe, this macaron was fantastic. The honey and lavender flavors went together so well. We would definitely go back for another one of those.

All in all, it was a pretty successful Macaron Day and I'm so glad that I went. Not only did I get some much needed exercise (over 18,000 steps for the crawl!), but it was really fun. It reminded me a little bit of the Easter Egg scavenger hunt from the year before, going around the city looking for all the hidden eggs. I really get a psychological boost from doing things like that, running around the city finding or picking up stuff. This really fulfilled a need that I hadn't even realized I was missing. It was a lot of fun and the awesome macarons were a great bonus.

I don't know if we could pick a single favorite macaron, but the 2 Macaron Cafe ones are up there along with the 2 Francois Payard ones and the one from Bouchon. 11 macarons for the 2 of us definitely made up for all the years we walked away with none. Long live Macaron Day!