Happy Hallowe'en! - A Medley of Meats: Thyme-Smoked Pork With a Candied Apple Glaze; Bone Marrow; Escargot in Mushroom Caps; Herb Roasted Lamb Ribs

We began with an amuse-bouche of lamb heart tartare served on a sliced baguette with a tomato rose. Pretty standard, really. 

Dolce Senza Sangue

Ostrich Omelette Fritatta and Rocky Mountain Oysters Served With a Garlic Aioli

Here There Be Dragons - Smoked Eel Served With Saffron Rice and Caviar

Elk Shepherd Pie

Cœur farcie aux champignons - Heart Stuffed With Mushrooms and Served With Saffron Rice

 

Waffles Served With Wine-Soaked Pears

Capozzelli di Agnelli - Lamb's Head Served With Saffron Rice, Honeyed Carrots, and Asparagus

Cheese-Stuffed Dates Spread as Butterflies

Ox Tail Soup and Bone Marrow

Creole Turtle Soup

Turtle Soup

                               is a classic in both Asia and the United States, especially so in the Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland environs (which we found odd, given that we're from those states and we had first tried the dish in New Orleans. Naturellement.). Snapping turtle seems to have been (and still are) the choicest kind for the Americans, and the Asian chefs tend to use soft-shell turtles, given that hard-shelled turtles (龜) have ties to Asian myth and lore and so are generally kept alive (this does not exclude them from every dish, however). 

Turtles shells were famously known to have been used for storage and the Greeks used them to make lyres.

Cookbooks of the 19th century advised choosing a turtle of 120 lbs., explaining that a smaller turtle would not be fat enough, and a larger turtle would possess an overpowering flavor. We're unsure of the weight of our guest of honor. The meal is illegal in some places because turtles reproduce so slowly that measures must be put in place to keep their populations healthy. Indeed, it isn't a very common meat to find, so check your local laws and keep an eye on your neighborhood Asian markets. We decided to prepare the dish in the Creole style common in New Orleans, as that was the first time we had a chance to try it (at Muriel's on the corner of Jackson Square). The dish is rich and creamy, like a silky gumbo leaning towards tomato soup. The chopped hardboiled eggs add a thicker texture, the parsley adds the proper je-ne-sais-quoi, and the golden sherry is a must. As for music, something slightly devilish, as this is a rather decadent, sin-inspiring meal. 

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Begin with 1/2 lb to 1 1/2 lb turtle meat. Put in stock pot and cover with water 2 inches above the meat. Bring to a boil, then drop to low simmer while adding 1 tbsp of salt and 4-6 bay leaves. Simmer until the water levels out to the top of the meat. Strain and keep the liquid. Coarse chop the meat into bite-size bits and set aside. Melt 8 tbsp of butter (1 whole stick), and whisk in 3/4 a cup of flour to make a roux. Once the roux is done, slowly add the turtle stock gradually to the roux, whisking until desired thickness is achieved. 
In a saute pan, add 2 chopped sticks of celery, 1 diced green bell pepper, 2 diced shallots (or one whole onion), and 1 diced portabella mushroom. Cook over medium heat for 5(ish) minutes. To same saute pan add 4 minced cloves of garlic. Cook 3(ish) minutes. Add to the roux. Add 18 oz. of crushed tomatoes, turtle meat, 3 tsp. of cayenne pepper, 1 1/2 tsp paprika, a tiny dash of cinnamon (we emphasize tiny!). Drizzle in condensed milk to taste to dilute the spice. Stir and let simmer while hard boiling 1 egg for each serving. Once properly hard boiled, rough dice each egg. After plating each bowl with soup, add rough diced hard boiled egg, lemon juice, and lemon zest to all bowls. Salt and pepper, then sherry to taste; finally, finish off with parsley to taste.

 *Kaiseki (懐石料理) - We hollowed out eggs and left the shells intact, apart from a pinhole on one end. Then we filled the eggs halfway with sherry and placed them in the corner of the soup, oculus up and parslied. When serving, tip the egg over the stew, pouring out the sherry, or (if you are more dexterous) crack the egg - be wary of loose and broken shell.

  ~Ciao & Bon Appétit.

Mollusc Aqua-terrestrial -- Escargot-Stuffed Mushrooms and Conch Fritters

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• 1 cup conch meat, chopped, preferably pre-cleaned
• 1 can escargot, 12 large. *If you keep your own cochlear garden, you win
• 2 shallots
• 12 whole mushrooms large enough to hold escargot
• Cooking oil, enough to fill a deep frying pan
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• 1/2 orange bell pepper, diced
• 1 lemon
• 1 lime
• 4 celery stalks
• 5 cloves garlic
• 4 tsp ketchup
• 2 tsp mayonnaise
• 2 tbsp mango hotsauce
• Fresh parsley to taste
• Fresh thyme to taste
• Salt to taste
• Pepper to taste

Escargot (es-kahr-go. Fre: snail) have been prepared as food since time immemorial. Evidence of heliciculture (snail farming) date back to our earliest meals, for archeological sites from the ancient world are littered with empty snail shells and are full of references to a culinary application towards these molluscs. Though eaten as delicacies during Roman times (much to the approbation of Lucullus, I'm sure), the snail as food is popularly attached to the French, to whose famous preparation we thank for the meal's nomenclature: when prepared, the snail is purged, removed from the shell and cooked with garlic, butter, and a pleasant white wine. After cooking, the snails are placed back in their shells along with the butter sauce. Parsley and thyme are usually sprinkled on top when served.In addition to the snails, we also had on hand some conch meat, so we decided to kill two gastropod molluscs with one stone and make a night of it: escargot sitting in a butter-garlic-thyme sauce in a large mushroom, and then conch fritters (Bahaman-style) served with an aioli variant. 
Tonight was the mid-course (read "season") finale of "Hannibal", which ended the "Hannibal Murder Vacation in Italy" arc in a most satisfying way.
As such, here is something veering towards the melancholic - one can discern happiness, lightness and softness in the tempo and arrangement, affording it a kind of excited and uplifting quality; but there are times often the tempo is dimmed and halting, like it's resisting itself or protesting.


~Ciao & Bon Appétit.

Alligator Étoufée

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Serves 4

• 1 lb. alligator meat 
• 1 can crushed tomato 
• 4 tomato on vine, quartered 
• Green onion one bunch, diced 
• 5 cloves garlic, diced 
• 1 Portobello mushroom, diced 
• Flour 
• Salt 
• Black pepper 
• Cayenne 
• 2 sticks butter (duck fat preferable) 
• 1 cup Jasmine rice 

Start by making a roux in one large saucepan. -stir together 2 tbsp. butter (or duck fat for the win) with 2 tbsp flour added gradually (ratio should be 1:1) over medium heat until a wet paste is formed. Continue to stir and turn down heat when paste darkens to a peanut butter color. You now have a roux. Into the same pan add the can of crushed tomatoes. Add 3 tsp salt, 2 tsp black pepper, 2 tsp cayenne pepper. Mix over low heat. *If you have any ox-tail beef stock on hand, now would be an excellent time to add that. We did. In a separate saucepan on medium heat, melt 6-8 tbsp of butter (duck fat). Dump in the diced garlic, green onions, mushrooms, and three of the tomatoes on vine (they should be quartered, so you'll have twelve slices) and sautée until garlic is barely browned.

Dump in the roux-tomato mixture. Add glass of the best red wine you're currently not crushing - Bordeaux if your cellar has some. Mix well and let simmer on low heat. Cut alligator into clam-strip sized strips. Dump into roux/stew. Cover and let sit on low heat for 1 hour. Jasmine rice can take awhile, so plan ahead by giving yourself about .5 hour. Check the bag/box for instructions on cooking times for 1 dry cup. When rice is done, create an island of rice in each serving bowl. Ladle the roux/stew either on top of the island to drown it (étouffer - to smother), or around it (for purposes of kaiseki).


Étouffée (eh-too-fay) is a Cajun or Creole dish made of a seasoned brown roux simmered with some kind of shellfish (most typically crayfish/crawfish) and then served over a small mound of rice so that the mound is drowned by the stew (Fre: étouffer - to suffocate, smother).
We have always enjoyed ordering étouffée when we visit New Orleans and pair it with other famous dishes such as gumbo and turtle soup - indeed, these are the very meals which define the city and its people, and as such they are like memories we are able to conjure up when we feel a longing for them. Biting into a spoonful of étouffée is enough to summon up a memory of oneself sitting in the low lamplight glow of a French Quarter restaurant, the dish's spices making one's eyes water just enough to blur the shapes and shadows which are casting themselves on wall, street, and broken beads. First, your mouth tingles from the flavor and then you hear the low drum of the music in your ears before it flows into your feet, and then you are humming along to it, for it is its own strong magic. As for the meat, we've always had it with shellfish, but never alligator. Since we had some of the evil reptile on hand, we thought "Why not?" The decision certainly added an edge to this already delicious meal.
Our friends Jay and Seamus joined us for this meal, and hopefully the dish did its job and it conjured up a little bit of New Orleans in our kitchen.
As for music, may we recommend Tom Waits?


*Kaiseki (懐石料理) - we inserted the leftover tomato slices into the rice mound and then sprinkled diced fresh parsley on top of that, which creates a nice presentation.


~Ciao & Bon Appétit.