Sunday, November 29, 2009

New cookbook but...

This is the time of year when I love to cook. Stews, soups, and hearty meals and now a great new cookbook - Micheal Symon's Live to Cook.

We made his Blue cheese tomato soup which was very good, spicy and complex flavor, but a snap to make. But so many of the recipes call for things that are hard to get... beef cheeks, chicken feet, pig head, sheep milk ricotta, a quart of duck fat... Really?

How often do you see a cookbook with an entire section on pork belly? Even less often would I think "Wow, I have to get some pork belly!" (I especially love the part where he started calling it Fresh bacon, at which point he was able to sell the pork belly dishes that did not before.)

Today I made a test run of ravioli, using Alice Walter's recipe from the Art of Simple Food to practice the technique in advance of hunting down the milk sheep ricotta the recipe calls for. And as long as I am going to that trouble, I will want to use a high quality butter to. I am glad I did not use Symon's recipe because my dough was tough (overworked?) and the raviolis not well filled (my machine.) Looks like more ravioli is in my future!

What new recipes are you playing with, this year?

2 comments:

Dave said...

I also picked up a copy of Symon's new book thanks to Cleveland Foodie. The book has inspired me to create my own blog and cook my way through the book much like Carol Blymire from the blogs French Laundry at Home and Alinea at Home. I am working on my first post but it should be up some time soon.

As for some of those hard to find ingredients. I think you'll be suprised how easy they actually will be to find. Head to the Westside Market or develop a relationship with many of the great farmers in the area. For example, beef cheeks and chicken feet are easy to find at the Westside Market and I just got a pig's head from Bluebird Meadows in Sullivan. If you are interested in a head, I might even be able to help you out. Let me know....

CSA Farmer Girl said...

I don't often make it up to the Westside market anymore, but could do that. I have called my butcher and ordered Beef Cheeks. I thought I had an order in for duck fat and quarters to, but they never called me like they said they would...

Good luck with your project, I will wait on my own Pigs head until I see how yours comes out! :)