"I Two"

In addition to being a flower girl, Kaitlyn turned two this past weekend. When we told her it was her birthday, she would say "I eat cake." Having attended two other birthday parties last month, she knew she got to eat cake and boy did she enjoy it!!




Her Pa and G'am got her the Dobash Torte cake. She ate two whole slices during the day - yes, mommy and daddy let her indulge on her birthday.


We had to use two tall matchsticks for candles because mommy forgot to bring them with us. Oops!!


Kaitlyn thinks it's funny to close her eyes and say "CHEESE".



This cake smells good so let's see how it tastes...

Time for presents. Shortly after opening each gift, Kaitlyn quickly identified it as "MINE!"








"I dancing" Kaitlyn told us while riding on daddy's shoulders.


After a full day of cake, presents, playing outside, feeding ducks some bread and just generally goofing off, somebody is a little tired.


Happy Birthday sweet girl!!

Right Together, Left Together... "I Did It"

This past weekend, Kaitlyn's cousin Evie got married. Evie and Matt asked Kaitlyn to be one of the flower girls in the wedding. Lucky Kaitlyn!!

The Happy Couple

Kaitlyn and cousin Evie

As parents, Go Blue Dad and I just wanted her to make it down the isle during the ceremony, which she did. Yahoo!!!

For the most part, Kaitlyn hammed it up for everyone to see. Granted, Go Blue dad said she battled tears and smiles right before walking down the isle, so he gave her a pamphlet with flowers on it to make it through the moment. All in all, the day played out wonderfully and cousin Evie looked beautiful!! We hope she and Matt enjoyed it!!!I just love this photo of Evie and Kaitlyn!!

Go Blue Daddy with Kaitlyn on our way into church

Kaitlyn loved the bell tower at the church. It was "too high" for her to see up close.

Peyton helping Kaitlyn down the isle. She was a great buddy to Kaitlyn!

Getting ready for a group shot...


Cousin Evie and cousin Jeremy before the wedding


Aunt Nan with Kaitlyn (above) & with Grandma (below)


Pa and Kaitlyn (above) and Go Blue dad, Uncle Tim and Kaitlyn (below)


After a wonderful ceremony, we took a quick 'nap' break and then headed to the reception.


Four generations of the family - PaPa (great grandpa), Pa, Dada and Kaitlyn


Matt and Evie are officially hitched!!

The following photos are just fun shots we captured at the reception.


Congratulations Matt and Evie! We wish you all the best in your new life together!!

You Saucey Sauce, You!

So, we devoted a whole month to sauces, which will probably turn into a few blog entries. Talk about information overload!!!

What is a sauce?

• Liquid + thickening agent + seasoning (spices, herbs, etc.)
• A sauce is thicker than a soup, but uses a similar process to soup to create it - prep, saute veggies/herbs, add liquids, add thickening agent, finishing touches and serve.
  

We covered the five mother sauces, plus buerre blanc/rouge, salsas, coulis and compound butters. This blog will discuss the five mother sauces.

Do you know the five mother sauces?

1. Bechamel: Considered a white sauce. Made by adding heavy cream or scalded milk to roux (some sources say white roux, some say blonde roux - we used blonde). The cream or milk is often flavored with onion and clove or onion and bay leaves and strained before adding to roux. A bechamel sauce should be rich, creamy and smooth and is often used in pasta dishes, vegetables dishes and egg dishes. There are several versions of a bechamel - cheese sauce, cream sauce, mornay sauce (guyere and parmesan and cream added to base bechamel - recommended for chicken scallapini), nantua (cream and seafood butter), soubise (extra butter and onions) and many more.

• Our instructor said you can add almost anything to a bechamel to make it into a flavorful sauce.
• Any cream sauce should not be heated past 190 degrees F. The ideal temperature range is 170 degrees F to 190 degrees F. You add roux to the sauce when it is 170 to 180 degrees F.
  

2. Veloute: Considered a clear sauce. A sauce made by thickening a veal, chicken or fish stock with roux. Veloutes are smooth, rich and lump free. You match the stock with the dish (i.e. fish stock for a fish dish). Veloutes should be thick enough to cling to food, but not overpowered by the roux used to thicken it. Examples of veloute sauces include allemande sauce (eggs yolks and lemon juice), supreme sauce (mushrooms), and bercy (shallots and white wine with fish stock), etc.. Like a bechamel sauce, you can make a myriad of veloute sauces with different ingredients.

• Chef does not recommend the allemande sauces b/c they have an eggy taste. So, why not use a hollandaise sauce instead.
  
• Chef most commonly uses a veloute with meats, casseroles, vegetables and seafood (crab and shrimp) dishes. A true veloute sauce always uses a meat stock in the sauce.
  
• Chicken picatta is an example of a veloute sauce dish.
  
• The supreme veloute is a creamy sauce while others are not creamy.
  

3. Espagnole Sauce (Brown Sauce): This full bodied rich sauce is the base for almost all brown sauces. You would not serve a dish with a plain brown sauce. Espagnole sauce is brown stock, brown roux, mirepoix, tomato puree and herbs (bay leaf, parsley stems, thyme and black pepper). Here are some common sauces that started off as brown sauces - chasseur (mushrooms, white wine and shallots - delicious!), chateaubriand (white wine and shallots - best served over filet Mignon), chevreuil (bacon, red wine and cayenne pepper), mushroom sauce, poivrade (pepper, vinegar, white wine, mirepoix) and many more!

• If you've heard of a demi glace - it is a thickened brown sauce that was reduced over time. Demi glace is a 1:1 ratio of brown stock and brown sauce.

4. Tomato Sauce: Now who hasn't had tomato sauce! We technically learned to make a marinara sauce because our sauce did not have any animal fat (pork/bacon grease) in it. Traditional tomato sauce apparently has some sort of animal fat in it. If you want to add animal fat for flavor, wait to do it until you determine the type of meat you will serve with the dish. The recipe we used included mirepoix, tomatoes, herbs, white stock, sugar or honey and animal fat. Like the other sauces, there are several variations on tomato sauce - milanaise (mushrooms, butter, ham and tongue (ewe!!!)), spanish (creole sauce with mushrooms and onions), creole (green pepper, hot pepper), etc, etc..

• I've never used fresh tomatoes before to make a tomato sauce, but we did. You bring water to a boil - enough to submerge a tomato. On the non-root end of the tomato, score it with an X about 2" long. Submerge the tomatoes in the boiling water and allow to roll around until you see the tomato skin start to curl in the water. Pull from the water, peel the skin off, remove any seeds and rough dice the tomato. This is called tomato concassee.
• Tomato paste is a sauce with the water removed.
  

5. Hollandaise Sauce: This is an emulsified sauce - meaning a chemical reaction in the ingredients brings the sauce together into the final product. If you mess this sauce up - over or under cook, it won't work and you have to START OVER. Hollandaise is a smooth, buttery, rich sauce that is light yellow colored. It is not as heavy as mayonnaise. Hollandaise has egg yolks, water, vinegar/wine/lemon juice (an acid), butter, lemon juice, salt and pepper. It's optional to add Worcestershire sauce and/or hot sauce. The lecithin in the egg yolks serve as the emulsifier to bring the sauce together.

• For an individual serving - using two egg yolks, whisk 1 T water and 1 T acid (wine or vinegar) with the yolks. Once you place on the heat source - you continuously whisk the egg yolks until they thicken and have a texture like uncooked pudding.
  
• Use the double boiler method for heat source because this sauce is SO temperamental! It's not uncommon to pull the bowl off the heat source to cool and whisk and place back on heat.
  
• Whisking the egg in the beginning is very important. You need to get enough air into it. I'll admit, I didn't whisk enough air into my eggs, so I had to start over.
• Once you reach the pudding consistency, pull from heat and SLOWLY add melted, warm butter to the yolks. Whisk, whisk, whisk the butter in and DON'T cook the eggs. Once butter is added, add lemon juice and any other flavor components.
  
• Do not heat a hollandaise past 150 degrees F because the eggs will cook and make the hollandaise grainy. On the flip side, do not cool past 45 degrees because the butter will solidify.
  
• Do not hold a hollandaise past 1 1/2 hours because it won't survive! Keep it warm, room temperature, not hot temperature.
  

That was a quick and dirty version of a hollandaise sauce. I could type a dozen more bullets, but do not have the time, so I shared the most important lessons from our chef.

That's all for now folks. Stay turned for the next blog on sauces.

Stock Tips - Not the Money Kind (& Soups too!)

I plan to keep my stock tips rather short...

Stocks vs. Broths*
Stocks: uses bones to obtain flavor through the marrow and cartilage and has a gelatin like texture.
Broths: uses meat to flavor the liquid through boiling or poaching the meat.

*Some people have different definitions of the two, so I chose the definitions I've heard most often.



In order to make a stock, you start by roasting the meat or poultry bones in a roasting pan in the oven for two to two and a half hours. Here is the suggested method for creating a stock:

• Prep ingredients - bones, mirepoix (celery, onion, carrots) plus any additional ingredients like garlic and herbs.
  
• Roast bones for 15 to 30 minutes on each side.
• Pull bones and paint tomato paste (adds flavor and color to stock) on every bone with a basting brush and roast for 15 to 30 minutes; flip bones, paint and repeat roasting.
• Pull bones from oven and add mirepoix and continue roasting for another half hour to one hour.
• Pull bones and mirepoix and other ingredients, place in stock pot and add liquid (if using water, always use cold water from the faucet b/c hot water sits in a tank and can obtain a metallic taste).
• Simmer (don't boil - just have some small bubbles around the edges) for a minimum of two hours (recommended to simmer for a longer period of time).
• Viola! You have just made a stock.
  

Soup Tips
We made six soups in class: Manhattan Clam Chowder, New England Clam Chowder, Split Pea Soup, Shrimp Bisque, French Onion Soup and a Corn and Chicken Chowder. Outside of the French Onion soup, most soups have a similar process in creating the dish. My favorites were the French onion or the corn and chicken chowder. My least favorite was the shrimp bisque - I prefer crab or lobster bisque.

French Onion Soup before toppings

The key tip to take away from making soups is that almost every soup has a similar process from start to finish. An exception is French onion. Here is the process most commonly used for making soups:

• Mise en place (layman's terms: organize and prep ingredients).
• Saute/Sweat vegetables (typically your mirepoix) in clarified butter and poach meat if needed; our chef recommends always sweating vegetables before adding to a soup and adding dried herbs to rehydrate them and release the flavor.
  
• Add stock, broth and/or liquid to stock pot - never bring a soup with milk to a boil because the milk might curdle - ewwww! Heavy whipping cream won't break initially if it boils, but in general it's recommended not to boil cream soups.
  
• Add roux to thicken soup - many recipes recommended adding roux early in the process, but Chef recommends adding it towards the end.
  
• Bring soup to 170 to 180 degrees F and serve. Yum!!!

Crostini for French onion soup

The photos shown here are of French onion soup that Go Blue dad and I made at home. If you have not tried French onion soup, it has carmelized onions in a beef based broth topped with a crostini and melted guyere cheese.

Crostini in soup before adding cheese

We read a great tip for carmelizing onions at home... put four or five pounds of sliced onions into a dutch oven and roast in the oven for about three hours on 350 degrees. You'll be amazed at how much the the onions reduce. After the three hours, the onions reduce to about a third of the size and you can easily carmelize them on the stove top. I mention this trick b/c most people don't have a four foot wide griddle surface to carmelize onions at home (this is what we used in class).

Go Blue dad adding Guyere cheese

Another idea for French onion soup is to add some demi glace into the broth for an intensely rich, meaty flavor that compliments the carmelized onion flavor and adds great color. We didn't have beef stock in our class, so the chef pulled out the demi glace and the French onion soup tasted delicious!!

Finished French onion soup
Bon Apetite!

Clarified Butter & Roux

As we started the soup section of our cooking class, our chef instructor explained and demonstrated two basic concepts - clarified butter and roux. Many home cooks have made a roux for a recipe before and may not have realized it.

Clarified butter results when you separate the milk fats from the butter. In a home kitchen, you can do this by place butter in a double boiler and allowing it to separate. As with chocolate, do not boil it. This will ruin the separation process and you will not receive the desired outcome.

As the butter separates, the milk fats float to the top and you skim them off. Then you strain the remaining butter to ensure all milk fat particles are removed and VIOLA you have clarified butter! Idea for amounts... if you want 5 lbs of clarified butter - start with 6 lbs. regular unsalted butter. Clarified butter is often used to make roux, soups and sauces. It can be stored at room temperature for 30 days or in the refrigerator indefinitely.

Roux is a mixture of flour and clarified butter* (or oil or other fats) used to thicken soups, stews and sauces. The make up of roux is typically a 1:1 ratio. For a roux to reach it's full flavor and aroma, you need to simmer it for 10 - 20 minutes to a temperature around 160 degrees F (170 degrees F) at the highest. You heat the butter/oil first. Add just a small amount of flour to see if it generates some bubbles in the butter/oil and if it does, whisk in the rest of the flour. It is okay to simmer, but do not boil as noted below.

Clarified butter is preferred over regular butter because it doesn't burn. However, if you do not have the time to make clarified butter, I've found that you can still use regular butter for roux at home. Granted, you must keep a close eye on it to make sure you don't burn it.


White Roux: roux that just cooks the flour (~5 minutes) - stays relatively white and does not taste or smell 'nutty' like the blonde and brown roux. It also can have a gritty texture to it. It can be used in a milk based sauce, like a bechamel sauce, or a clam chowder. Our instructor says he almost always uses blonde roux, even in bechamel, because he doesn't like the texture, smell and taste of white roux.

Blonde Roux: roux that is cooked for ~ 20 minutes until it achieves a golden color and a 'nutty' aroma.

Brown Roux: roux that is cooked for ~ 35 minutes until it achieves a light brown color. It has a stronger aroma than a blonde roux, but does not thicken as well because the extended cooking time weakens the flour. Dark brown roux is cooked for ~45 minutes and is used more for flavor than thickening. Brown roux's are common in gumbo.

In general, the darker the roux, the stronger the flavor and the weaker the thickening power.

This is an example of a blonde roux, which we later used in a sauce.
This is an example of a roux that I accidentally let boil and as you can see the butter and flour separated. So sad!!

I showed the two photos because our chef indicated that you can 'break' a roux if you heat it over 180 degrees F.

More to come on roux's, soups, and sauces...