I dove back into Bouchon this weekend while looking for a simple but delicious meal to make with my mom. I'm still fairly restricted in terms of what I'm allowed to lift following surgery, so my mom helped out with all of the heavy lifting while I did the chopping and searing and whatnot...
We actually ended up having three courses from Bouchon last night. First up was a bit of
Onion Soup from the freezer... I used Emmentaler (one of the cheeses Keller recommends) rather than the worlds most awesome Gruyere this time...
It was very good in a different way... More gooey and stringy when it melted, whereas the melted Gruyere dispersed itself through the whole soup, which was pretty awesome... But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I used Brioche for the croutons this time, since I needed it for the next course, too, and I can never make it through a loaf of bread before it gets stale, so buying two different loaves seemed wasteful.
I did a better job this time topping the soup with sliced cheese then grated cheese, like Keller recommends...
... and ended up with browned, bubbly, gooey goodness...
I am in love with this soup. It's amazing how satisfying even a small bowl can be. We took a break after this course just to bask in the happiness that French Onion Soup can bring... So. Effing. Good.
Next up was Frisée Salad with a Julienne of Bacon and Poached Egg. I didn't have slab bacon (this was a spontaneous menu choice), and I made the executive decision that it was better to use amazing bacon from Blood Farm (even though it's too thin) rather than to buy slab bacon that isn't as tasty (but would have the right thickness).
This was an amazing salad, so I'll definitely be making it again and will be sure to have slab bacon on hand (perhaps even homemade from a recipe in Charcuterie) next time... The vinaigrette consists of sherry vinegar, Dijon mustard, and whole grain mustard...
whisked together with a few tablespoons of bacon fat. (If you didn't render enough bacon fat above, you can add duck fat to make up the difference. I love that Thomas Keller lives in a world where you are more likely to have spare duck fat lying around than spare bacon fat...)
Brioche is toasted up and cut into squares, then diagonally into triangles.
Parsley, tarragon, chives, and shallots are tossed with the frisée, then the mix is lightly dressed. That's about 2/3 of a head of frisée in the bowl below, by the way, which was too much for two servings. Thomas Keller tells you that you need 4 heads for 4 servings... but he also tells you to "remove the dark green outer leaves from the heads of frisée and reserve for another use," which I think might mean he wanted me to discard 3/4 of each head (or, rather "reserve for another use"). (I'll come back to this issue, which I
often have with Keller, below...) That strikes me as deeply stupid, so I refrained from doing so. Sorry, Thomas.
I was going to do
Momofuku-style poached eggs in my new sous vide set-up, but there was a temperature calibration issue that we discovered only when we went to plate, so we had to improvise with some last-minute Emily-style poached eggs. I hate poaching eggs. I have neither the patience nor the proper temperament for it. I tried
this method a few months back, though, and it helped me overcome my fears. You basically just oil up some plastic wrap, drop in an egg and a couple grains of sea salt,
and seal into a tight little bundle with your classy IKEA bag clips.
Drop into boiling water for a few minutes, peel away the plastic wrap, and you have a perfectly poached egg with no mess and no traumatic experiences of whites going everywhere...
Disaster averted, we plated up our awesome salad.
This was surprisingly good. I'm always a little nervous about tarragon, but it added a brightness to this salad that was lovely. The dressing was really impressive, too. There was an amazing finish on this, where for a full minute after each bite you sit there thinking "Holy crap. This is a FANTASTIC salad!"
Mmm... Things were going pretty well at this point, and were only going to get better. Our main course was Sautéed Atlantic Salmon with Leeks and Beurre Blanc. This started with the ridiculously delicious Beurre Blanc.
Shallots, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, and peppercorns are placed in a small saucepan.
White wine and champagne vinegar are added (a cup of liquid total),
and the mixture is simmered until this reduces to a tablespoon. A bit of heavy cream is whisked in, then butter. Copious amounts of butter. I went with an impulse buy of some Amish butter at Russo's, and it was totally and completely awesome. I am now a huge fan of Amish butter.
This butter is whisked in bit by bit...
Then the sauce is strained, the consistency adjusted with fish fumet (or water), and set aside in a warm place until tarragon and chives are added when it's time to plate.
The second component is the melted leeks. As was the case with the frisée, Keller has an odd sense of quantity here. He suggests "8 large leeks (about 1 1/2 pounds total)," which is sort of ludicrous. We bought the eight smallest leeks we could find, and they weighed about 3 pounds... Maybe he means 8 large baby leeks? I don't know...
Keller started driving me crazy here with his "reserve for another use" talk... Below is a picture of the leeks, light green separated from white and dark green portions.
See that? All of the white and dark green on the left is supposed to be "reserved for another use," while you use only the light green portions on the right. Sigh... But wait! It gets better. The light green parts are sliced into 1/2-inch rings.
These are boiled in salted water for about 5 minutes and then cooled in an ice bath to set aside until they are reheated just before plating. If any centers have fallen out of the leeks? You guessed it: those can be set aside for another use. Seriously. I guess this is why you need so many freaking leeks... You're tossing most of them aside (either raw or after cooking) for some mysterious "other use." Anyway... When serving time comes, these are arranged at the center of each plate (See all those perfect light green rings with no centers missing? The things I do for you, Thomas Keller...) where they will be topped with the third and final component...
The Salmon. I bought skin-on Atlantic salmon because I always use skin-on for the technique that Keller suggests here. When it came time to cook, I realized that he actually wanted me to use skinned salmon here. I was pondering skinning it, but the fillets were so thin and I was so fed up with Keller after the damn leeks that I decided to just do this part Emily-style.
As you can see, I do cut off the belly flap, as Keller suggests (and, of course, reserve it for another use), because I feel that it gives you a more evenly cooked piece of salmon. Plus, all of the salmon that I set aside can be used when I make kick-ass Salmon Rillettes later, whereas I'm scrambling to think of a use for all of those perfectly tasty leek whites he told me to reserve for another use. (I'm apparently not getting over that one any time soon...)
The salmon is cooked in my favorite way to cook salmon, which is to apply high heat to the skin side (or, in Keller's method, the skinned side) and cook only from that side. The bottom becomes fully cooked while the top remains rare. It's awesome. The nice thing about doing this skin-on is that you don't have to worry about losing any flesh to sticking in the pan, and the sheet of skin just slides off, leaving you with a perfectly cooked skinless portion to serve, but without having had to endure any stress while cooking it. Before I show you my plating, I want you to see a picture I found on the interweb, because I am still bitter about the leeks. This is a picture that somebody took when served this dish at Bouchon:
The salmon and sauce look lovely, but check out those freaking leeks. Basically, half of what we see there should have been "reserved for another use" for missing their centers if they were reading this damn recipe. The other half (e.g. the ones on the right)? Those would have been "reserved for another use" because they are clearly the dark green portion of the leek rather than the light green. In summary: Whatever, Thomas Keller... Whatever... So, this is my version:
Perfectly cooked salmon on a bed of perfectly melted (intact rings of light-green only) leeks in the most spectacular sauce I have had in a long, long time...
This was perfection, and was really easy to make, too, aside from a bit of (apparently hypocritical) fussiness with a certain vegetable. This is definitely entering the repertoire as a go-to dish when I want to impress friends with minimal effort and much deliciousness. It's recipes like this that make it easy to put up with Thomas Keller's compulsive need to discard large quantities of ingredients "for another use" and that keep me coming back to his cookbooks again and again. This was towards the bottom of my "Cookbook Adventures" queue, actually. I foolishly thought that the simplicity of the dish meant it wouldn't be that impressive. Clearly, I am an idiot. That simplicity is why I chose it as a recovering-from-surgery Cookbook Adventure, and that allowed me to discover the awesomeness hidden in this simple recipe. Good stuff. Very good stuff, indeed.
We actually ended up having three courses from Bouchon last night. First up was a bit of Onion Soup from the freezer... I used Emmentaler (one of the cheeses Keller recommends) rather than the worlds most awesome Gruyere this time...
It was very good in a different way... More gooey and stringy when it melted, whereas the melted Gruyere dispersed itself through the whole soup, which was pretty awesome... But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I used Brioche for the croutons this time, since I needed it for the next course, too, and I can never make it through a loaf of bread before it gets stale, so buying two different loaves seemed wasteful.
I did a better job this time topping the soup with sliced cheese then grated cheese, like Keller recommends...
... and ended up with browned, bubbly, gooey goodness...
I am in love with this soup. It's amazing how satisfying even a small bowl can be. We took a break after this course just to bask in the happiness that French Onion Soup can bring... So. Effing. Good.
Next up was Frisée Salad with a Julienne of Bacon and Poached Egg. I didn't have slab bacon (this was a spontaneous menu choice), and I made the executive decision that it was better to use amazing bacon from Blood Farm (even though it's too thin) rather than to buy slab bacon that isn't as tasty (but would have the right thickness).
This was an amazing salad, so I'll definitely be making it again and will be sure to have slab bacon on hand (perhaps even homemade from a recipe in Charcuterie) next time... The vinaigrette consists of sherry vinegar, Dijon mustard, and whole grain mustard...
whisked together with a few tablespoons of bacon fat. (If you didn't render enough bacon fat above, you can add duck fat to make up the difference. I love that Thomas Keller lives in a world where you are more likely to have spare duck fat lying around than spare bacon fat...)
Brioche is toasted up and cut into squares, then diagonally into triangles.
Parsley, tarragon, chives, and shallots are tossed with the frisée, then the mix is lightly dressed. That's about 2/3 of a head of frisée in the bowl below, by the way, which was too much for two servings. Thomas Keller tells you that you need 4 heads for 4 servings... but he also tells you to "remove the dark green outer leaves from the heads of frisée and reserve for another use," which I think might mean he wanted me to discard 3/4 of each head (or, rather "reserve for another use"). (I'll come back to this issue, which I often have with Keller, below...) That strikes me as deeply stupid, so I refrained from doing so. Sorry, Thomas.
I was going to do Momofuku-style poached eggs in my new sous vide set-up, but there was a temperature calibration issue that we discovered only when we went to plate, so we had to improvise with some last-minute Emily-style poached eggs. I hate poaching eggs. I have neither the patience nor the proper temperament for it. I tried this method a few months back, though, and it helped me overcome my fears. You basically just oil up some plastic wrap, drop in an egg and a couple grains of sea salt, 
and seal into a tight little bundle with your classy IKEA bag clips.
Drop into boiling water for a few minutes, peel away the plastic wrap, and you have a perfectly poached egg with no mess and no traumatic experiences of whites going everywhere...
Disaster averted, we plated up our awesome salad.
This was surprisingly good. I'm always a little nervous about tarragon, but it added a brightness to this salad that was lovely. The dressing was really impressive, too. There was an amazing finish on this, where for a full minute after each bite you sit there thinking "Holy crap. This is a FANTASTIC salad!"
Mmm... Things were going pretty well at this point, and were only going to get better. Our main course was Sautéed Atlantic Salmon with Leeks and Beurre Blanc. This started with the ridiculously delicious Beurre Blanc.
Shallots, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, and peppercorns are placed in a small saucepan.
White wine and champagne vinegar are added (a cup of liquid total),
and the mixture is simmered until this reduces to a tablespoon. A bit of heavy cream is whisked in, then butter. Copious amounts of butter. I went with an impulse buy of some Amish butter at Russo's, and it was totally and completely awesome. I am now a huge fan of Amish butter.
This butter is whisked in bit by bit...
Then the sauce is strained, the consistency adjusted with fish fumet (or water), and set aside in a warm place until tarragon and chives are added when it's time to plate.
The second component is the melted leeks. As was the case with the frisée, Keller has an odd sense of quantity here. He suggests "8 large leeks (about 1 1/2 pounds total)," which is sort of ludicrous. We bought the eight smallest leeks we could find, and they weighed about 3 pounds... Maybe he means 8 large baby leeks? I don't know...
Keller started driving me crazy here with his "reserve for another use" talk... Below is a picture of the leeks, light green separated from white and dark green portions.
See that? All of the white and dark green on the left is supposed to be "reserved for another use," while you use only the light green portions on the right. Sigh... But wait! It gets better. The light green parts are sliced into 1/2-inch rings.
These are boiled in salted water for about 5 minutes and then cooled in an ice bath to set aside until they are reheated just before plating. If any centers have fallen out of the leeks? You guessed it: those can be set aside for another use. Seriously. I guess this is why you need so many freaking leeks... You're tossing most of them aside (either raw or after cooking) for some mysterious "other use." Anyway... When serving time comes, these are arranged at the center of each plate (See all those perfect light green rings with no centers missing? The things I do for you, Thomas Keller...) where they will be topped with the third and final component...
The Salmon. I bought skin-on Atlantic salmon because I always use skin-on for the technique that Keller suggests here. When it came time to cook, I realized that he actually wanted me to use skinned salmon here. I was pondering skinning it, but the fillets were so thin and I was so fed up with Keller after the damn leeks that I decided to just do this part Emily-style.
As you can see, I do cut off the belly flap, as Keller suggests (and, of course, reserve it for another use), because I feel that it gives you a more evenly cooked piece of salmon. Plus, all of the salmon that I set aside can be used when I make kick-ass Salmon Rillettes later, whereas I'm scrambling to think of a use for all of those perfectly tasty leek whites he told me to reserve for another use. (I'm apparently not getting over that one any time soon...)
The salmon is cooked in my favorite way to cook salmon, which is to apply high heat to the skin side (or, in Keller's method, the skinned side) and cook only from that side. The bottom becomes fully cooked while the top remains rare. It's awesome. The nice thing about doing this skin-on is that you don't have to worry about losing any flesh to sticking in the pan, and the sheet of skin just slides off, leaving you with a perfectly cooked skinless portion to serve, but without having had to endure any stress while cooking it. Before I show you my plating, I want you to see a picture I found on the interweb, because I am still bitter about the leeks. This is a picture that somebody took when served this dish at Bouchon:
The salmon and sauce look lovely, but check out those freaking leeks. Basically, half of what we see there should have been "reserved for another use" for missing their centers if they were reading this damn recipe. The other half (e.g. the ones on the right)? Those would have been "reserved for another use" because they are clearly the dark green portion of the leek rather than the light green. In summary: Whatever, Thomas Keller... Whatever... So, this is my version:
Perfectly cooked salmon on a bed of perfectly melted (intact rings of light-green only) leeks in the most spectacular sauce I have had in a long, long time...
This was perfection, and was really easy to make, too, aside from a bit of (apparently hypocritical) fussiness with a certain vegetable. This is definitely entering the repertoire as a go-to dish when I want to impress friends with minimal effort and much deliciousness. It's recipes like this that make it easy to put up with Thomas Keller's compulsive need to discard large quantities of ingredients "for another use" and that keep me coming back to his cookbooks again and again. This was towards the bottom of my "Cookbook Adventures" queue, actually. I foolishly thought that the simplicity of the dish meant it wouldn't be that impressive. Clearly, I am an idiot. That simplicity is why I chose it as a recovering-from-surgery Cookbook Adventure, and that allowed me to discover the awesomeness hidden in this simple recipe. Good stuff. Very good stuff, indeed.
This is an interesting recipe because it is both easy and ridiculously time-consuming. After 8 hours making beef stock last weekend, I spent 8 more hours caramelizing onions yesterday, then two more hours finishing the soup today... Luckily, 95% of that time can be spent largely ignoring the cooking that's going on. This is also an interesting recipe because it is so very simple in terms of the ingredient list, which makes the quality of ingredients and the care you take with them that much more important... and which is why I would never dream of making this with anything but homemade beef stock. So, here we go with Phase 2 of the soup-making: Caramelized Onions. It turns out Thomas Keller uses a technique very similar to my standard technique only with a LOT more butter. Heh. For some reason, he has me start off with 8 pounds of onions...
I was planning to slice them on a mandolin against the grain as I usually do, but Keller recommends cutting with the grain, which is easier to do by hand. I think this actually really enhanced the final texture.
Into the pot they go with an entire stick of melted unsalted butter and some salt.
That salt is a key part of the brilliance of this method. The salt draws out the liquid from the onions in the beginning, so it can be cooked off and caramelization can proceed more evenly. (If you don't use salt at this step, the liquid continues to leech out and get in your way throughout the cooking process.) I can't remember where I first learned to do this, but I've been doing it for a few years and it revolutionized my onion-caramelizing... Here are the onions after 30 minutes:
After 3 hours:
After 4 hours:
After 5 hours:
After 7 hours:
And after 8 hours:
Mmmm... Caramelized... So, obviously the volume reduces considerably between the raw and caramelized stages... but I have no idea why Thomas Keller asked me to use 8 pounds of onions here when the recipe only makes use of a cup and a half of caramelized onions. Here's the yield from my 8 pounds:
This is something about Thomas Keller that always makes me chuckle. He likes to tell you to "reserve any extra for another use." In this case, it takes the same amount of work to make 4 cups of caramelized onions as it does to make a cup and a half, and they freeze well so I'm happy to have them... but he does this all the time. With the salmon recipe I made last year from the French Laundry Cookbook he wanted me to buy a whole side of salmon, mutilate it to get 4 perfect serving pieces cut, and then reserve the rest for another use... With the beef stock, he wanted me to slice a head of garlic in half crosswise, use one half in the stock, and reserve the rest for another use... And, yeah... this week I'm supposed to reserve "any extra" (which is two and a half cups of caramelized onions) for another use. Oh, Thomas... Anyway... Back to the soup. The onions are combined with a little flour and cooked for a few minutes.
Then a sachet containing a couple bay leaves, black peppercorns, and thyme sprigs is added, along with the beef stock.
And that's pretty much it until the plating... Just simmer for an hour or so, add a couple drops of nice sherry vinegar to taste, and call it "soup."
I used a "rustic loaf" from Russo's for the croutons, which are toasted up under the broiler just before service,
then placed atop the onion soup ready to be topped with cheese:
(Apologies for not having proper onion soup crocks... It was my first time...) I used a beautiful Gruyere from Russo's to top the croutons that topped my soup. When I told the cheese lady that I was making French Onion Soup she got a big smile on her face and exclaimed, "Oh! Wonderful! Fantastic!" and went straight for a chunk of this Gruyere to cut me a sample. So. Freaking. Good. I love the Russo's cheese lady.
After a round in the broiler, we were good to go.
This soup was really fantastic. The stock was well worth the time it took to make, the onions were awesome, and the cheese was perfect. I think Thomas Keller may have wanted me to use even more cheese, but I'm not sure I would change a single thing (other than buying the proper serving dishes) next time I make this... and there will definitely be a next time. I also had these gorgeous hanger steaks from Blood Farm:
which I turned into Steak Frites for me and my friends. There were a couple hiccups with this course, relating to a malfunctioning meat thermometer and lack of familiarity with this cut, which is one that Keller recommended. (I actually think this would be the perfect cut to sous vide and then sear. The rib-eyes lost too much texture, but these have a lot of toughness that could stand up to the technique, and marbling that would melt beautifully during sous vide cooking.) Things still turned out lovely and delicious, but a couple of the steaks weren't cooked as well as I would have liked. That's what I get for experimenting on my friends, I guess... Trying not to dwell on that, and instead focus on the yummy, yummy soup... Plus, pretty:
Despite a couple technical difficulties with the main course, it was fun to share this meal with friends. Even though there was almost 18 hours of prep involved in the stock and the onions, this is still a nice meal for entertaining since all of the work can be done in advance and is very low-maintenance, leaving only about 15 minutes of work when your guests arrive. Good stuff...