Cooking Adventures: Supper Club #1

On this Cooking Adventure, Official Girlfriend of DCWD Texas and I sought to make a 10-person meal for the first time in our lives, this time from Ferran Adria's new cookbook, The Family Meal.

Amuse bouche (i.e. holy shit, we timed this dinner wrong, we need something to keep guests happy as we cook) - Individual potatoes au gratin

 

First Course - Saffron-mushroom risotto

Top 3 Lessons Learned from risotto:
1) Keep the whole thing submerged under broth as much as possible. The recipe in the cookbook led us to be short on broth; luckily we had an extra box of one on hand, so we avoided the disastrous "dry sticky risotto."
2) This probably would have tasted better with chicken broth over vegetable broth (though we had some vegetarians with us).
3) Saffron is expensive, but surprisingly, more expensive at Giant and Harris Teeter's than at Whole Foods. Same amount cost half as much at the Whole Foods.

Main Course - Catalan-style turkey stew

Texas and I made the mistake of not thinking about thawing when we bought the turkey from the Farmers' Market the morning of the dinner. So we fought against physics and time just to get the damn thing to a workable state. The butterball website was invaluable during this period, letting us know that with 12lb. bird, we'd have to invest at least six hours in a lukewarm water bath to get it thawed.

The recipe actually called for turkey drumsticks, but a) where are you going to find that many turkey drumsticks, and b) everyone loves breast meat better anyway. So we worked to break down a whole turkey into pieces. It being only the second time either of us has ever broken down a bird before, it was... messy. But after 30 minutes, we managed to come up with some good things.

The whole time we'd been soaking prunes and raisins in sherry, which would be added to the stew later on, in addition to tomatoes, onions, and pine nuts. This might've seemed like a very long time (oh, and it was), but it did allow all the fruit to really sop up some sherry flavor; it also softened up the raisins and prunes in a way that made them more stew-friendly.

From here, we seared all the pieces of turkey in a large pan (we used a roasting pan set over two oven burners), getting a crisp on each side (or as best we can anyway). Adding in the mixture of vegetables and broth and sherry, it wa actually a wonderful smell and tasted great. We probably would have been better off getting the turkey earlier and letting the meat defrost naturally, but oh well. 

Dessert - Yogurt foam with strawberries

To buy a foamer or not to buy a foamer? This was the question. I was adamantly against the purchase, since it's a piece of kitchen equipment we'd only use a handful of times. Texas was trying to convince me that it would make it easier. I won.

And then I lost. Because it actually was truly difficult to whip the yogurt-cream mixture fast enough to get it to foam (or even turn into a whipped cream like froth). Lesson learned.