Cooking and stuff

I noticed the comment from Sharon complaining about no information on cooking that we've been doing. So here is a little.

It started with a refresh of the lemon meringue pie cupcakes that we made at D&S's place during the last trip. Remember the picture of Jayna having meringue piped directly into her mouth after we'd made too much for the cupcakes?

Then I tried making the Crockpot Roast Beef from userealbutter.com. It worked really well, although next time I would reduce the amount of soy sauce in the recipe. It was good, but could have been a little less salty.

Next I ordered a copy of Thomas Keller's cookbook from Amazon. The first recipe to be made was Lamb Stew - or as Keller calls it, "Navarin D'agneau aux legumes printainiers". In my case, minus the legumes printainiers. This dish requires that you begin the day before, browning the lamb pieces, then cooking it slowly for about 1.5-2 hours. This then sits in the fridge overnight. The next day I made the Puree de Pommes de Terre (potato puree). For 2 pounds of potatoes, this has 8 ounces of butter and 3/4 cup of cream. To puree the potatoes you have to force them through a tamis along with the butter, then whip them with the cream. All by hand. We ate later that evening.

I've also made agnolotti by hand - 1 3/4 cup of flour, 6 egg yolks, 1 egg, 1 tablespoon of milk, and 1 1/2 teaspoons of olive oil. A lot of hard work later (by hand) you have a lump of pasta dough. Rolling that by hand was only partially successful, and yesterday we purchased a pasta machine. Trying again last night, it was much more successful - the pasta has to be very thin, and trying to get that by hand is difficult. I have a new-found respect for those Italian mamas who did/do this step by hand.

Sonia has decided that Duck Confit is probably the next thing to attempt. Not sure exactly why...

One last detail - we went looking for a gas torch (to brown the cupcake meringues). The only ones in the kitchen shop are just little torch attachments with a disposable gas bottle. The pictures on the bottle show that it can be used in the kitchen, but can also be used for welding. Sure enough, by the time I had browned 6 cupcakes (only a few seconds) the end of the torch was glowing bright red. Not something for children to use, I guess. But at least we can brown meringues and make aburi toro (look it up).