Eesie (Shelese's pet name) and I fell in love with Fabio's (Top Chef contestant two seasons ago) butternut squash ravioli and vowed to reverse engineer them. Filling - sweet and savory, check; creamy sage sauce, half check (we prefer a simple brown butter sage sauce); noodle - great supple texture and perfect tooth, uncheck. We tried to make a rich egg yolk, light and delicate noodle. The flavor ended up great but the noodle was a little bit tough and it wasn't because it was undercooked. I have some ideas so I'll fire up the test kitchen and let you know when I have a winning recipe.
The filling was a winner! We used sweet potato instead of butternut squash. Sauteed some shallots in olive oil, threw in some garlic and deglazed the carmalized aromatics with Amaretto. Amaretto is an Italian almond-based liquor and rounded out the sweetness of the yams; a little S & P and processing with the yams and the filling was perfect.
Avante garde ravioli crafting. Did what we could to get them close enough to each other in size and shape. None of them bursted while cooking so that's all I care about. Topped with a little stinky parm and the brown butter sauce and enjoyed thouroughly.
The next project was to figure out how to use the turnips that came in our Abundant Harvest box. With a puree in mind, everthing else just kind of fell in place and it was convenient that we got some beautiful spinach in the box too. Boiled the turnips in milk until soft, sauteed some chopped shallots and garlic, and blended with butter, olive oil, and S & P. It had a subtle radish like spiciness and made for a cozy bed for the spinach. The spinach was topped with sea salt, pepper, and a very old Modena Balsamic Vinegar. After the grilled and sliced skirt steak was placed on the spinach the firm leaves submitted to the heat and dutifully wilted after about a minute. I salted the skirt steak for about an hour before grilling but neglected to dry of the water that accumulated on the surface; this prevented the formation of the char I crave so but the meat was nice quality so it still shined.
The last project to update here is the roasted chicken and heaven sauce. The chicken was roasted in accordance with the Zuni Cafe Cookbook, minus the 2-3 day salting. This cookbook is great, you want it, get it if you don't have it. The recipe calls for an extended salting, initial stovetop browning, and high heat roasting; very simple and surefire!
... and the best part is that you cook it in a skillet. Consequently, you end up with an golden fond that really needs to be turned into a deep, unctuous, umami-loaded, silky, vibrant sauce. In fact, it is near criminal to not use that fond. After pouring off most of the chicken grease I added the mirepoix aromatics, garlic, thyme, and deglazed with dry white vermouth; added some chicken broth and butter and called it a day. The sauce went into some quinoa after it was cooked and made for a great side.
While the chicken ends up super moist and is perfect for almond chicken salad (which is what I did), it's almost worth it to make it just to get to make this sauce. Okay, thanks for reading. I'm going to fight off my fatigue for another hour in and attempt to adjust to this crappy daylight savings nonsense.
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