recipes rather than just one. You'll understand why in a few moments...
Here's what was on the menu:
Salad: Frisee Salad with Bacon Lardons
Entrée: Mussels with Leeks and Red Ver Jus
Dessert: Chocolate Bouchon
And if you're thinking, wow! You are right! Wow! It was deeelicious!
Beau first had this frisee salad at Thomas Keller's restaurant,
Bouchon, on his bachelor party in Vegas a few years back, probably
almost three years ago to the month. I first had it on our honeymoon
in Paris at a little bistro one afternoon. The same restaurant we saw
Kate Moss enter that restaurant.
Anyway, it's a heavenly salad. The bitterness of the frisee and the
sherry vinegar mixed with the saltiness of the bacon lardons and the
creaminess of the runny yolk from the egg is just divine. THIS...this
time...was my first attempt at poaching an egg. I've been terrified to
try it. With the exception of one broken yolk, I successfully poached
three eggs on the first try. And the salad was everything we
remembered it to be.
Moving onto the mussels. I love mussels. To me, I feel like it's
something light to eat but something exquisite at the same time. I
made a big pot of them and just gave everyone some bread and we shared
the giant dish. The mussels were steamed in a mixture of butter, white
ver jus (couldn't find red), parsley, shallots, leeks and garlic
confit.
As you can see from the three dishes, there were in fact just three
that we ate. But at the beginning, I stated that I tried four recipes.
The fourth was this above-mentioned garlic confit. I had to make that
in order to make the mussels dish. It first involved me peeling 24
cloves of garlic while keeping them intact. Which, in case you didn't
know is hard. Peeling garlic the easy way normally involves smashing
the cloves with the flat side of the blade of a knife, causing the
skin to loosen. This was not the case. This was quite labor-intensive.
After peeling them, I covered them in over an inch of canola oil and
very slowly cooked them on top of the stove until they were tender. I
used half of them for the mussels. Thankfully I have the rest in my
fridge ready for the next recipe.
The last dish were the Chocolate Bouchons and by bouchons (which
actually means "cork") I mean decadent brownies. I have always held
tightly to the statement that boxed brownies are better than homemade
ones...at least until now. These homemade brownies were far better than
any brownie I've put in my mouth to date. They were crispy on the
edges and soft and dense and chewy in the middle. I baked them in
popover pans so they would be tall and kind of "stately" like I felt
they deserved. I'm pretty sure one major reason these were so
fantabulous had to do with the 24 T of melted butter in them. J
Next Up: Wild Mushroom Quiche
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