I bet you can tell from the title that this post will be about a restaurant’s recipe. What home cook looks at a Cornish game hen and decides to turn it into a salad? If you think that’s recondite, though, wait till I tell you about that “vinaigrette”!
This excursion into culinary cloud cuckoo-land is due to Evan Goldstein’s recent book, Daring Pairings. In it, to quote the subtitle, “a master sommelier matches distinctive wines with recipes from his favorite chefs.” I have to say it’s an intriguing book, with much helpful information about 36 types of wine. My main interest, of course, was the recipe matches. These are the creations of 36 “star chefs,” all from “iconic” restaurants across the U. S. (Does anyone remember the original meaning of icon anymore?)
The thing about star chefs is that they have the time, space, equipment, staff, and budgets to conceive and execute dishes you would never dream of preparing for your own table, even for guests. But it can be fun to give one of these elaborate concoctions a whirl now and then, just to keep yourself on the qui vive. The recipe I chose for this qui vive excursion was one of the simpler ones in the book, attributed to Charlie Trotter, of Chicago fame.
I happened to have a day home alone, so I decided to halve this first-course recipe for four and make it my entire dinner. It really wasn’t too complex: Cornish hens were to be roasted with nothing more than a rub of olive oil, salt, and pepper, then halved and plated with salad greens (organic, naturally) dressed with this so-called “vinaigrette” and a scattering of dried cranberries. The wine to go with it was Gamay, which is to say Beaujolais. Here’s the dish as pictured in the book:
I keep putting that word “vinaigrette” in quotes because the dressing called for no vinegar and hardly any oil. What it wanted was shiitake mushrooms, garlic, shallot, soy sauce, lemon juice, vegetable stock, and a very little bit of olive oil. The more closely I read the recipe, the weirder I found the dressing to be. But those are all good-tasting things, and I’m not too old to learn something new, so I persisted.
Roasting the hen was easy, though mine didn’t get as brown as the book’s picture. I suspect chefs can run their birds under a salamander at the end to get that nice warm color. (Unless the book’s food stylist painted it with iodine.)
For the “vinaigrette” I had to sweat a little minced garlic and shallot in oil, add and soften three ounces of chopped shiitake, add some stock and reduce it, and stir in a whole tablespoon of soy sauce and half a tablespoon of lemon juice. I shuddered to think of that much soy – surely it would overwhelm everything else! But I did it.
Then I had to put it all into a blender and process “until a silky smooth vinaigrette forms, thinning with more stock if necessary.” Well, in restaurant quantities a blender would have made sense, but the small amount that I had would have instantly pasted itself all along the sides of my big blender jar and refused to come down and mix. So I used my mini-food processor, which worked fine – except that what I got was not a pourable dressing but a thick puree. Adding more and more liquid, I finally achieved ploppability, though not pourability, and decided to stop there.
Then I prepared the salad greens. I confess I did not buy organic; just good mesclun. Half the recipe wanted a quarter pound of greens, which I bought, though they seemed like vastly too much. For a start, they had to be – I believe the technical term is – “fatigued” with a bit of the shiitake dressing. Since I was making a double appetizer portion for myself, I divided the salad into two batches. Even so, there was no way one batch was going to fit on half a plate, as the recipe directed. (The book’s photo uses a very modest amount of salad.) So I made a full-plate bed of it, put half the hen on top, spread the dressing around, and strewed the cranberries over all. Here’s the result:
It was fine. The dressing was strongly shiitake; not too heavy on the soy sauce at all, nicely balanced by the lemon juice. It wasn’t what I’d call earthy, as the book had it, but – well – shroomy. Great on the salad greens, though you really have to love salad to enjoy this much greenery, and good on the bird too. The cranberries made nice little bursts of fruit sweetness (though raisins might have done as well, actually).
And it certainly went well with Beaujolais. I poured myself a 2009 Moulin à Vent from a small grower, Jean-Paul Brun. I can’t say this seemed an especially daring pairing. Goldstein in his “pairing pointers” section declares that the Gamay grape goes well with “just about everything,” a fact known to anyone who drinks cru Beaujolais. But I enjoyed it thoroughly.
When I finished that first plateful, I assembled another just like it and ate all of that too. It made a satisfying solo dinner. Half of it would have been a huge portion for an appetizer, though; and it’s not something I’d serve at my own dinner parties. In my unCalifornia-ish notion of a well-composed meal, salad comes after the main course, not before it. But this was a true restaurant dish, much in the current fashion, and an interesting experiment for me.
Hmmm…a “shroomy,” “ploppable” vinaigrette that wasn’t a vinaigrette. And yet, you made it all sound enticing. Just goes to show, a solo dinner for me would be a bowl of cereal, so thanks for the inspiration!
I totally agree with Vickie, especially about the inspiration… reading your blog makes me think: even if i don’t follow the recipe to the letter or if it doesn’t turn out perfectly, it doesn’t mean my cooking is a total disaster!
Thank you, Valeria. I’m glad you’re enjoying my culinary adventures!
Diane