Housewarming

I had a little get together with friends and family this past weekend... here are the ups, and the downs. 

Up: About 4 dozen great chicken lollipops baked off in the oven like fried chicken. 

Down: Tried to make a balsamic gastrique to drizzle over some roasted figs, but forgot about it and walked back inside my apartment to a lovely plume of black smoke and a crusty All Clad. 

Up: Pickled beets with ginger and cinnamon.

Down: I had to clean up some vomit... I'll spare you all.

Up: Friend's, family, and great company.

Down: Trek was barking at everyone, but finally seemed to simmer down towards the end of the party... he is still a puppy after all, just a very big one. 

Up: House plants as gifts including a brand new money tree.

Up: Finally started watching Breaking Bad... wish me luck.

Up: Learning how to saber a champagne bottle. 

All-in-all, a wonderful party and a great weekend. More to come soon!

- Adam from Tipped Mixology

Chicken Galantine and Ballotine

Chicken Galantine and Ballotine

Classic as classic can get

Chicken Galantine or Ballotine are classic French dishes which I believe are so classic they're almost dead. I graduated with a diploma in classic culinary arts from the French Culinary Institute, and the only two people I ever saw attempt something like this were Master Chefs; I'm talking Jacques Pépin, Alain Sailhac, André Soltner, and the like. These are the heavy hitters, the old and the knowledgeable, the last remaining greats. I held the bathroom door open for Jacques Pépin once during my time at the FCI... that's a cherished memory. These guys paved the way for current star chefs, Michelin star winners, James Beard award winners, and all chefs alike in one way, shape, or form. If quartering a duck in under 15 seconds is something that gives you butterflies, then these are your guys. 

I've always wanted to learn how to properly debone poultry or fowl--it was never taught to me. When I stumbled across an old demo starring a much younger Jacques Pépin, I knew it was time to try my hand at a lost art. Here's the video, and my results.

If you want to do this as badly as I did and need a recipe, here's what I did, and it was amazing!

Start off by sauteing a container of spinach and drain off the excess liquid. Make two servings of mushroom duxelles, as mention in my en papillote review, and combine together. This is the stuffing for the chicken. Once the chicken is deboned and trussed back together, rub it with olive oil or butter, and salt all the way around. Bake on 415 F for around an hour depending on the size of the chicken... you want to pull it once the internal temperature hits 155 F. Grab some really nice vine-ripe or grape tomatoes, drizzle with olive oil and salt, and put them in the oven once the chicken is out. Just turn off the oven, and let the residual heat cook them for 10-15 minutes while the chicken sits. They'll crack slightly, but stay whole leaving the inside full of flavor and juice. 

If you want to make a sauce, make a white roux with 1 tbs of melted butter and flour, and add a splash of red or white wine. Cook until thick and add chicken stock until the right consistency is reached. Add some chopped parsley, salt, and pepper, mount with a pad of cold butter, and there's your sauce!

The hardest part about this recipe is deboning the chicken... I had to disinfect my laptop because I kept hitting the space bar to pause the video so many times. I'll tell you now, it's worth it to learn. If it's something you feel up to, good luck!

- Adam from Tipped Mixology

Restaurant Review: Mesa Coyoacán

Restaurant Review: Mesa Mesa Coyoacán

A new neighborhood gem

New is a subjective term of course, as I did just moved to this awesome little triangle of Williamsburg that I never knew existed until a few months ago. I have to say, other than one run-in with a truly terrible laundromat, this neighborhood is wonderful, quiet, and thriving. It definitely got a transplant of young blood when the rest of Williamsburg did, but it still holds a lot of the charm that I’m sure has been there for many years. This charm is what drew me to Brooklyn in the first place, and what was slowly shriveling away near the Williamsburg waterfront—I’m once again proud to say I live in Brooklyn and not some Soho-wannabee subsection of Williamsburg, now full of pretension and just an overall boushiness that left a major sour taste in my mouth when I moved…no offense to anyone that lives over there.

The French Paradox

Photo Via http://www.Goodtaste.tv

The French Paradox

A happy eater is a healthy eater

To start, I’d like to comment on a previous post: Eat whatever you want. I’m not trying to get on a milk crate and shout my diet opinions across the world, I’m just stating my opinion, which I feel is increasingly becoming a minority. If you want to eat nothing but white rice, white bread, chips, and candy all day, go for it if that makes you happy. The same goes if you want to sprinkle flax seed on your amaranth cereal floating in ice cold almond milk in the morning—this is your choice and I can’t stop you from making it. What I can do is have a commentary on the whole diet subject and throw my two cents in. If through reading these posts your decide to change your diet, that’s great! This, however, was never my goal.

The French paradox in a nutshell was an observation that while the French people as a whole ate an exorbitant amount of saturated fats (ie, butter, milk, cheese, etc) they had very low rates of cardiovascular disease compared to other nationalities. Let’s sum this up by saying that the French ate a lot of fat, drank a lot of wine, and were fit and healthy for doing so. What gives? If I started eating nothing but cheese and drank nothing but red wine all day long, I’d be in an early grave, but this isn’t all that goes into this paradox.

Photo Via http://www.likecool.com