brunch

sunday afternoon, four old friends from culinary school came over for brunch. in other words, five pastry chefs gathered at my apartment sunday and they all brought food. for my part, despite two late nights in a row - friday night was my going away party at work, and saturday night was a close friend's birthday - i roused myself at a reasonable hour (10 am is reasonable, right?) and started cookin'.













the apple cake i made can be found here; it was great, nice and light, not like a lot of apple cakes which end up really dense (also delicious, but when you're got a zucchini, asparagus & goat cheese strata, 2 kinds of eclairs, chocolates, a spice bundt with caramel icing to get through, you've got to keep it light any way you can.)

my other contribution (aside from some fresh-squeezed juice to house the champagne) was a smoked duck, beet and goat cheese hash, a variation on one of my favorite breakfasts of all time. it takes a bit of time (mostly for the beets to roast) but it so well worth it.


+ + + + + + + + + + + + + +
smoked duck, beet and goat cheese hash

1 smoked duck breast, cubed
2 large beets, roasted until soft when pricked with a fork and cubed
3 medium sized potatoes, peeled, boiled and cubed
1 4 oz goat cheese log
4 thyme sprigs
salt & pepper

start a large saucepan on medium high heat; add duck. sear it on all sides, then add thyme, beets and potatoes; cook until crispy on the sides, remove from heat, and stir in goat cheese. salt and pepper to taste; serve with fried eggs atop if desired.

easy as pie! and so, so savory or delicious. you can really sub in any meat you like, but the duck did work great with the beets and goat cheese.

i started the new job yesterday, and i have to say, it's pretty incredible. now that i've emptied my camera of brunch photos, i'll be sure to document my goings-on in there. and i'm off work around 2 every day, so i should have some daylight time for an outfit post or two. . . as long as i don't fall asleep watching netflix at 3 like i may or may not have done upon arriving home today.

hope all is well, and more from me soon -

xo audrey

anniversary dinner

i had a fantastically busy weekend, spent watching the food network, dismembering crabs, and accidentally sunburning - which is extra embarrassing when i think about the stockpile of hawaiian tropic i have in my apartment. i forgot to bring any and instead rubbed what turned out to be expired burt's bees sunblock all over my body, and i tell you, even sitting here typing this is painful. fortunately i think it's juuuuust mild enough that it won't peel, and maybe i'll even end this summer with a bit of color! maybe.

before it gets any fuzzier in my memory, though, i want to write about the dinner my sisters and i made for my parents for their anniversary. thirty years! they are absolutely my heros and number one role models, in life and in love. so we made them a ten-course, pretty-darn-fancy dinner, in hopes of giving them a celebration worthy of their big day.



the menu for the evening:

sourdough rolls with a trio of butters: truffle, tarragon and honey vanilla bean

west coast oysters served with fresh horseradish and lemon

salmon mustard amuse bouche

my sister emily's roasted carrot and avocado salad (which was DELICIOUS but i didn't get a photo of it - as was, sadly, the case with many of the courses. it was pretty hectic in the kitchen, as we were really trying to push out the courses one right after the other so dinner didn't take four hours. . . we managed it in about an hour and a half, which tells you what hustlers my sisters are, and why i don't have photos of about half the courses. i'm going to try to make this at home, photograph it, and put up the recipe, if emily okays it, because i only had one bite but it was heaven.)

avocado and yellowtail tartar with kumquats

truffle egg custard with sauteed oyster mushrooms and crispy duck skin (very similar to this.)

emily's beet & ginger risotto (again, beautiful and delicious with no photos. fail.)

esther's duck ricotta ravioli (arguably the big hit of the evening - there were a few extra which disappeared in NO time. recipe below, with compliments to the chef!)

steak three ways - one served with a classic bechamel and topped with half a baby heirloom tomato; one "steak frites"; one a deconstructed steak salad, with baby arugula, blue cheese, and a drizzle of good, thick balsamic dressing.

a duo of desserts - esther's champagne raspberry sorbet, served in a hollowed out orange and garnished with a raspberry; and my crepe cake with dark chocolate ganache and a cherry vanilla compote. this was so gorgeous and SO tasty, i really blew it not getting photos. will have to recreate sometime.










and some completed courses. . .


avocado & yellowtail tartar


truffle egg custard with sauteed mushrooms and crispy duck skin


steak three ways


and esther's astonishingly beautiful (and delicious) duck ricotta ravioli. recipe follows.


little sister esther's duck & ricotta ravioli

filling:
2 duck legs
about 3/4 cup of ricotta cheese
1/2 cup of baby arugula, plus more for garnish
about 3 T finely chopped shallot and garlic
salt & pepper to taste

for sauce:
about 1 cup blanched & chopped tomatoes, skins reserved

1/2 batch pasta dough (recipe and directions in the link, though you have to scroll through some awkward to get it.)
1 egg, beaten





start off by putting a good, thick pan on the stove and turn to medium high heat. add the duck with just a smidge of olive oil. salt & pepper it. allow it to get nice and crispy and lots of fat to render out - i placed another pan on top to help it cook through. flip it over; it should be good and crispy on both sides. let it cool.

once cooled enough, you'll want to rip it apart. we reserved the skin so i could use it on the custard, but it would also be good crisped up as a garnish for the ravioli, on a salad, or whathaveyou. rip the meat into smallish strands, and start the garlic & shallots in the pan that you used to cook the duck in - it should still be full of duck fat. once these start to turn transparent, add the duck, sautee for a minute or so, and then remove and put in a bowl to cool. once cooled to touch, add ricotta, then arugula, and stir up.



ready your pasta; make a sheet, brush it with the egg, and put a rounded tablespoon of filling every inch and a half or so, fold the sheet over, and stamp away.



carefully store these on a sheet pan in the freezer until you're ready to cook them.



get a pot of water boiling; use a pasta basket if you have it. throw in the raviolis and cook them for 5-6 minutes, until they have paled in color and float to the top of the water. heat the pan you used for the duck back up to medium high; toss cooked raviolis in there and sautee until they've got a bit of brown on them, then add the chopped tomatoes and toss in the pan for a few seconds before removing from heat. crisp up the tomato skins in the pan, and serve the raviolis on a plate, garnished with some baby arugula and the crispy tomato skins. voila!

thanks, esther, for letting me share your glory! so many more recipes to come - i know this blog has been food, food, food lately (i secretly prefer it that way) but i promise some outfitty stuff soon - i left my tripod attachment in california and i'm waiting for it to make its way back to me.

xo audrey

green & gold

yesterday morning sam and i rode our bikes over the manhattan bridge and down to the southside seaport, where the new amsterdam market is held every sunday. i have kind of a thing for farmer's markets, but somehow i'd never made it down to this one before - i guess i'm kind of lazy and generally just walk to the perfectly good market that's about 6 blocks from my apartment. since getting new bikes a couple weeks ago, though, i'm trying to force myself to make at least one long, tough ride per week, and it's much easier to motivate myself when i know there's a bunch of farm-fresh meat, veggies and cheese at the end of that ride. we packed sam's backpack until it was literally overflowing out the top, rode back home. . . and i basically collapsed in bed for an hour or two and watched back to back episodes of breaking bad. i just started watching it this weekend and it is (appropriately enough, considering the plot,) a terrible addiction that has me deep within its clutches. i snapped out of it sometime in the afternoon and decided to make some pickles.



we'd bought about a pound of misfit cucumbers, along with a couple kinds of onion, rainbow chard, 2 duck confit legs, a pig neck fillet, fennel, corn, and peaches. i grabbed a couple of jars, a handful of spices from the cabinet, and this book, and got to picklin'.

i adapted the recipe a bit - i only had 1/3 of the cucumbers it called for, and i didn't have any dill, so i subbed fennel - but the process and temperatures i used were the same, and i think that's very important if you're trying to make something shelf-stable. be careful and be sure to use a thermometer!

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + +

spicy fennel pickles (makes 2 pint jars)

1 lb cucumbers, cut into 3-4" sections and then halved or quartered
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup water
1 T kosher salt
mustard seeds
whole coriander
caraway seeds
black pepper kernels
cumin seeds
dry mustard
cayenne pepper
2 bay leaves
4 garlic cloves
a few sprigs of fennel



boil a pot of water big enough to cover the jars with at least an inch of water and put the lids in a heatproof bowl. while waiting for the pot to boil, place cider vinegar, water, and salt in a saucepan and bring it up to 180 farenheit. (i used the pasteurizing method - bringing the jars up to 180 for a half hour - rather than the regular process, because it results in crisper pickles.) once your water is boiling, carefully use tongs to lift the jars out and pour the boiling water into the lid bowl. place jars on a paper towel and quickly dump in a little of everything - all spices, about 1 t of the dry mustard, 1/4 t of the cayenne, a couple garlic cloves, some fennel, and a bay leaf in each jar. now place the pickles in the jar, fitting them in as tightly as you can without totally squashing them. now, using a funnel, fill the jars with the cider liquid to about 1/2 inch from the top. remove the lids from their hot water, carefully wipe the lips of the jar with a paper towel, and fit each with a lid. now place them back in the water bath and bring the water up to 180, and make sure it stays that hot for a half hour before removing the jars. take them out, let them rest for an hour, and then check the seal on the lids - if they are both well sealed and not popped up, store them until you're ready to open them up, at which point you should refrigerate; if any of them didn't seal and the lid is popped up, refrigerate and eat them within a week or two.




ta-da! i'm going to give them a few days before testing them out - i'll let you know how they taste.

and for dinner i decided to go ahead and spoil us with some duck confit pasta. i think any long noodle will work well for this one - i used bucatini, which i like because it's like spaghetti with a more fun texture. like pasta straws!



+ + + + + + + + + + + + +

fennel & duck confit pasta

1 onion (i used a cippolini that we picked up from the farmers market - still with it's stalk attached, so i used a couple leek-like inches of that, too.)
1 bulb of fennel
1 duck confit leg
1/2 box of noodle pasta
1/4 cup of chicken broth
1/3 cup heavy cream
drizzle of olive oil
handful of parmigiano-reggiano cheese
(optional) thinly sliced tomato

slice the onion and fennel as thin as you can. drizzle some olive oil in a sauce pan and turn it on medium; add the fennel and onion and let them saute for a good long while, until they are soft and beginning to caramelize. this'll take some time, so get a big pot of water boiling with a bit of salt, and get to shredding that duck confit leg. pull it apart as much as you can and just put it aside in a bowl, reserving all the nice fatty parts as they'll melt down and help make your pasta saucy.

your water is boiling? great! put the pasta in and keep an eye on it - let it be a leeeetle on the al dente side. i've been using a pot with a pasta strainer piece inside (this one) and it's kind of magic, since most of the time i make pasta i add the pasta and a bit of the pasta water to the sauce before serving.

add the duck to your onion/fennel mixture, and once it's starting to melt down, add the chicken broth, too. let most evaporate and then add half of the cream and stir until it reduces into a thick mixture. you can season some at this point; i used a smokey salt and freshly ground black pepper. once the pasta is ready, dump it in with a few tablespoons of its water and mix it up well with the duck mixture; add the remaining cream and stir until well coated, will mixed, and nice and thick. add cheese to your hearts desire and serve.

i swear i'm not shilling for crate and barrel (although if they wanted to sponsor me i wouldn't say no!) but the multi-cooker came in incredibly handy here because i was able to steam the 2 ears of corn while cooking the pasta, so everything was ready right on time without a bunch of extra mess. i served the corn simply, with kimchi butter.





voila! i served mine with a few slices of yellow tomato on top, partially because i wanted to use the damn thing before it went bad and partly for a little variation of temperature & texture. i think it worked well, but wasn't really necessary.

that's all from me today! i missed posting on hottest-day-ever friday, because i accidentally left my camera in the office thursday night; i'll do my best to get some good outfit shots up this week.

thanks for all the haircut love by the way! i've been cutting it myself in the mirror like a psycho so it's good to hear that it still looks okay, although i guess the scary part, if there is one, is in the back.

more soon,

xo audrey

trouty mouth

ladies, i highly recommend marrying a fisherman. in my experience, at least, they are handsome, charming, sweet, and funny, and top of all of that they will bring home beautiful fresh fish for you to cook up. and then heap praise on you for doing so. it's a pretty sweet life.

sam and i spent the weekend in connecticut, meeting with our florist and hitting thrift stores to find serving ware for the wedding. i hit the cloche JACKPOT and got like four of them for $12, plus a bunch of old glass jars that will be great for flowers. but while i slept in until 10 am both days, sam got up early and brought home dinner.



sam had a great trout cookbook he'd picked up at a goodwill along the way, so i adapted this recipe from it and made it for us last night:


trout and fennel cream with pate a choux

for the pate a choux:

1/4 cup of butter
1/2 cup of water
a heaping 1/2 cup of ap flour
about 2 ounces of grated gruyere, plus more for sprinkling
2 eggs, beaten

preheat the oven to 350.

start a large pot with the butter and water on medium heat. once melted, add your flour and stir stir stir, until it's dried a lot and there's a film on the bottom of the pan. let it cool for a couple of minutes and then dump in the cheese and stir, then the eggs little by little until they're totally absorbed. take a 10 inch dinner plate (or other round thing) and trace it on a piece of parchment paper; flip it and use a stick of butter to attach it to a cookie sheet. put the choux in a piping bag and pipe it onto the circle. sprinkle with the rest of the cheese, and put it in the oven to cook for 20-25 minutes (until the underside is well browned.)

trout & fennel cream filling
(the original recipe called for watercress in place of the arugula and fennel, but i didn't have any so i just subbed what i had. [and it was awesome.])

2/3 cup of wine
1/3 cup of water
4 parsley stalks, chopped
2 bay leaves
one trout (ours was about 18 inches and rainbow)

put all ingredients in a saucepan with high walls and poach the fish for a few minutes on each side until it's fully cooked. strain the liquid and save it; put the fish on a cutting board and peel back the skin and use the fork to remove the meat. repeat on the other side. discard bones & skin.

2 T butter
1 small onion, chopped
1/4 cup of flour
reserved liquid from poaching
2/3 cup of milk
1/4 cup of heavy cream
trout meat
2 oz grated gruyere
about 1/3 cup of chopped fennel
about 1/2 cup of raw arugula
salt & pepper to taste

start the butter in a saucepan; add the onion and cook until soft. add the flour and stir to coat it with the stove on medium-low heat. add the poaching liquid and stir; it should start to get creamy. add the trout and stir, then add the milk slowly, stirring all the while, then finally the cream. once it's been reduced and is good and thick and no liquid remains, turn the heat to very low and check on the pate a choux ring (it should be done, or close to it.) take it out and let it cool for a few minutes before slicing it in half and cleaning out the soft dough in the middle. take the trout mixture off the stove and add in the cheese, arugula, and fennel. season to taste and then spoon into the pate a choux and top with the other half. voila! it's tricky to cut but DELICIOUS.




i came straight from connecticut to work this morning, so i'm a bit bleary and wearing some new thrifted duds from this weekend - more from me soon!

xo audrey

sunday supper

hello hello! i hope everyone had a great weekend. friday night i got dressed up and went out, for the first time in ages; an office i worked in for a year when i first moved to the city is closing its doors for good, so all employees, past and present, met up for the first time in ages and knocked back a few. a jolly good time was had by all, and i poured myself into bed at about 2 am and slept until 11. saturday was a much-needed cleaning day: my bedroom has become a dumping grounds for weeks, and it was piled knee-deep with bags of ribbons, vellum, and invitation stuff, as well as about 38 pairs of shoes, clothing in need of mending, and god knows what else. i sorted through it all, hung all my clothes, and now the bar in my closet is bending to the point that i am starting to worry it'll snap.

and i finally COOKED! glory hallelujah! my little sister sent me a crock pot as an early wedding present (she being the on-top-of-it one in the family,) and i have been so itching to use it to make pulled pork sandwiches that sam has actually had to stop me once or twice. (he: "if it takes 12 hours and you start right now, you'll have to wake up at 3 am to turn it off. how about we just do it tomorrow?") i got it started saturday, though, and last night we had a pulled pork family dinner FEAST. it was awesome. (recipes below.)


ashlee: make sure you get my boobs in the picture. me: don't worry. they refuse to be left out.





pulled pork

prep time - 12-18 hours

3 lbs pork tenderloin (i've read that shoulder works just as well at 1/3 of the cost; this is just what they had at our market.)
1 large yellow onion
your favorite barbecue sauce (i wanted to make my own, but sam swears by kc masterpiece)
your favorite spices: i used fennel, paprika, smoked salt, turmeric, sage
a couple cups of apple juice

do a rough chop of the yellow onion and put it in the crock pot. rub the tenderloin with the spices, or just a rub you like if you have one; put it in the crockpot and add more spices, if you like (i don't measure these, just do 'em to your fancy.) pour about a half bottle of barbecue sauce on the pork, and then enough apple juice to almost cover it. cover the pot, put on low, and let it go for 8-12 hours. (it'll start to blacken; it's ready to pull when it falls apart easily when forked or picked up.) pick out the big piece of meat and put it in a bowl; strain out the juices, save the onions, and dump them in the bowl with the meat. now start pulling. you just want to shred the meat as much as possible. it's a pretty visceral activity, really. once you've got it really well shredded, dump it back in the crock pot and add the remainder of the barbecue sauce. turn it back on low and let it go until you're ready to serve.

pickled onions

prep time - 10 minutes
(best if you let them sit for an hour or so before using.)

2 large red onions
about 1/2 cup white wine vinegar
1 t mustard seeds
4-5 allspice berries
4-5 coriander seeds
some ground fennel (okay, yes, i just put this in everything.)
a few pinches of sea salt
plenty of fresh ground pepper
pink peppercorns (if you've got 'em)

thinly slice the red onions and put them in a bowl. add everything else and mix well. let it sit. ta-da! the longer you wait, the better they'll get; these'll keep for a couple of weeks if well sealed.




i gorged myself on momofuku last thursday, and one of the best things i had was a brussels sprouts dish with thick cut bacon and carmelized apple. i took a stab at it last night and it was sooo delicious; i subbed duck prosciutto for the bacon, since i had some that i needed to use (because i'm a weirdo) and the one thing i'd change was the way i cooked the brussels sprouts - steam them, don't boil them like silly me - they get too wet that way.

brussels sprouts with duck prosciutto and apple

about 3 cups of brussels sprouts, cut into quarters (or half if they are really small)
3/4 cup or so of thick cut bacon, duck prosciutto, or whathaveyou cut into lardons (thick dice)
one apple, peeled and cut into dice

steam the brussels sprouts for about 4 minutes, until they are starting to get tender. at this point i would try to get them as dry as you can - maybe squeeze them in a towel to release any residual liquid. set aside.

get a good, steel-bottomed pan going on medium high heat. once it's good and hot, add the bacon and cook it until it's good and crispy. add the brussels sprouts and toss them around for awhile to get them nice and bacon-y. add the apples, toss around, and then take off heat and serve with salt and pepper.



and lastly, for dessert, i made little almond lemon-curd and blackberry tartlets. super easy (so long as you have lemon curd in your fridge begging to be used, as i do,) and SO tasty.



almond tart dough (from here)

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
1/2 large egg, beaten
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon almond flour

beat butter and sugar together in mixer until combined. add the egg and mix it just until combined; you may need to help it a long with a spatula. add the flours all at once and mix just until it comes together.

lemon curd: when i made mine, i used this recipe (to use up egg yolks) - it worked perfectly.

so - roll out the almond dough. i used powdered sugar instead of flour for my bench. use a cutter (i think mine was about 3 inches) and a mini cupcake tin to get the mini tart shells; put them in the freezer until they're firm, then bake at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes, until browned.

in the meantime, clean your blackberries, add a bit of vanilla and some sugar to them and stir until coated.

pipe in the lemon curd and top with a single blackberry. crank the oven to 400 and bake them for about ten minutes, until the curd has set. let them cool for a few minutes. they are great on their own, or you can top them with some ice cream or whipped cream; ashlee whipped up some cream with a bit of powdered sugar, then i poured the juice from the blackberries into it to give it a little flavor.





and today, back to the grind. the highlight of saturday was probably the uconn game; sam and i had intended on going out to watch it and NOT be total hermits, but instead i put on pajama pants and we drank coors light and watched it on his macbook pro. ah, domestic bliss. so today i'm wearing uconn blue and we've promised ourselves to leave our apartment and watch the game in the presence of actual living human beings. it should be a good time.







dress: madewell
brooch: snagged off a necklace, courtesy of accessorize
belt: snagged of a top from the (now defunct?) church & state
socks: american apparel

shoes: madewell

that's all from me for now. thanks for reading, happy monday!

xo audrey