Have you ever made tamales?  No, not tamale pie.  My mother used to make that and as much as I enjoyed her cooking, tamale pie would not have been one of my favorites.  From what I can remember, it was noticeably sweet, and comprised of hamburger, corn, and canned tomatoes.  I’m not going to blame this on my mother, because I know it was the recipe.  Tamale pie could never compare to homemade tamales.

The only source of comparison I have is that of local women who tempt office workers with their once-a-week offerings, wrapped in foil, and still piping hot.  They’re amazing and so of course it’s a challenge to not eat one before taking them home to share for dinner.  I’d say that’s a fairly good model to work from.

Often, tamales are made with dried corn husks, the masa, or corn meal and filling spread on the inside of a dried corn husk, or fresh banana leaf before steaming.  The filling can be anything imaginable, and often is depending on who traditionally makes the tamales, and what region of Mexico or the Southwest U.S. they’re from.

If you’ve been studying Mexican cooking like I have the past few years, the idea of banana leaves wrapped around a savory filling is quite tempting; it sounds so exotic! A glance out my patio window focuses in on the not so big non-fruit bearing variegated leaf banana plant I’ve been nurturing as a possible source.  No, I’d have to depend on a local market, which shouldn’t be a challenge in San Diego considering the influence of Mexican cooking, but it is.

When I first happened on to the lone 4-lb. package of huge sections of banana tree leaves recently, I grabbed it knowing I’d procrastinated long enough and could now make my own homemade tamales. I knew I didn’t need four pounds of leaves, so attempted quite unsuccessfully to separate them.  Unfortunately, the leaf strips were enormous and all folded together, so my efforts in trying to avoid waste ended up creating something worse.  The leaves began to split, making them useless for the next shopper’s tamales.

Thankfully, my first attempt at tamales was a success thanks to the help of a very good friend.  Between the two of us, influence from a few good recipes, and a make-shift steamer, a few split banana leaves caused very few problems.

Tamales with Pibil-Style Pork and Guajillo Sauce

For the guajillo sauce…

6 cloves garlic, unpeeled
16-20 dried guajillo chilies (1 4-oz. pkg.)
1 tsp. dried Mexican oregano
1/4 tsp. freshly cracked pepper
pinch ground cumin
3-2/3 c. broth
1-1/2 T olive oil
1 tsp. salt
1 T sugar

For the pork…

1 medium onion, quartered through core
4 garlic cloves, peeled
1/3 cup fresh orange juice
1/3 cup fresh lime juice
1/4 cup achiote paste (see notes)
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons coarse kosher salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano (preferably Mexican)
1 4 1/2- to 5-pound bone-in pork shoulder roast (Boston butt)

For the tamales…

1 lb. banana leaves
1 lb. masa fine for tamales or 1-3/4 c. masa harina for tamales + 1 c. hot water (see notes)
1/2 c. (4 oz.) vegetable shortening or lard
2/3 c. cool broth
3/4 tsp. salt

cotton string

Directions

For the pork…

Place the onion and garlic (skins on) in a dry skillet over medium heat.  Cook about 15 minutes or until fragrant and with black spots appearing on the skins.  Allow to cool, then peel and put in a blender or food processor with the citrus juice, achiote paste, vinegar, salt, pepper, cumin, and oregano.  Pulse to puree until smooth.

Dry the pork with paper towels and then coat exterior with citrus puree.  Place in a sealable plastic bag or wrap well with plastic.  Refrigerate for about 4 hours, or, overnight.

Cook pork in an oven or using the indirect heat grilling method at 350 degrees F or until it is extremely tender, about 3 hours.  Allow to cool, then shred, or cut into very small pieces.  Set aside.

For the guajillo sauce…

Cook the garlic as described above.

While the garlic is cooking, cut the stems from the guajillos, cut each once lengthwise to open, and remove them along with the seeds.  When the garlic is done and cooling, lay each chili in the pan.  You’ll have to press on them with a wooden spoon to toast them.  You’ll know they’re ready to be turned when you see a puff of smoke, but not a second longer.  Turn and repeat with each chili.

Place the toasted chilis in a bowl and pour enough hot water over them to cover.  Allow them to sit at least 30 minutes.  Expect to save the water for another use, if you prefer.  It can take the place of all or part of the broth in the recipe as long as it is seasoned.

When the 30 minutes has passed, using a blender or food processor, add the peeled garlic, oregano, pepper, cumin, and 2/3 c. of the broth along with the chilis and puree until smooth.  Pour into a fine meshed strainer positioned over a bowl, and using a rubber spatula, rub the puree through the strainer, scraping the bottom to collect the sauce.  Continue until only small piece of the dried guajillo skin are left.  Discard.

In the same dry skillet used to roast the garlic and chilis, pour in the puree all at once.  Stir constantly over medium-high heat about 5-7 minutes until it thickens to a paste, deepens in color, and smells pungent.

Stir in the rest of the broth and simmer, covered partially, until the consistency of cream, about 30 minutes.  If it becomes too thick, then add more broth.

To finish, taste and add to your preference, salt and sugar.

Use as part of the pork filling, and as a sauce to serve over the completed tamales.

To prepare the pork filling…

Place the shredded or cubed pork in a skillet and pour over about 1/2 cup of the guajillo sauce, making sure to coat all.  Allow to simmer on very low heat while preparing the masa and banana leaves.

Make the masa batter…

Beat the shortening or lard until it is light and fluffy, less than a minute.  Add the masa (purchased fresh, or reconstituted) in several additions, beating well between additions.  Add only enough of the cool broth (1/2-2/3 c.) while beating to create a soft batter that is slightly pourable.   To test for readiness, drop a teaspoon full in a cup of cold water.  If it floats, the batter is read to be used.  Season with salt according to your taste.

For the tamales…

Cut about 20 squares of the banana leaves — each about 8×8 inches.  To prepare them for the filling, use tongs to hold them over a gas burner until they soften and become quite shiny.  It helps to have one person doing this, and another on the receiving end, but is not necessary (just more fun).  If you don’t have gas burners, then you can steam them one at a time until they’re pliable.

Spoon about 1/4 of the masa batter onto the banana leaf, positioning it in the center of the square.  With the back of a spoon or offset spatula, spread the mixture to the right, forming a rectangle.  Stop about an inch from the edge of the banana leaf.  Spoon a bit of the chili-pork mixture on the extreme left of the masa rectangle.  Then fold the entire right side of the banana leaf toward the center, which folds the masa over the pork.  Fold in the bottom and top sides to the center, then continue to fold the remainder toward the original direction — left.  Use a piece of cotton string to tie around the package and make a bow.  Set aside and repeat until all the banana leaf squares are filled.  You’ll have left over pork.

To cook the tamales…

I used a large roaster pan with offset baking racks set inside.  I placed the roaster over two burners on my stovetop and once the tamales were placed in a single layer on the baking racks, poured water from the tea kettle into the pan, being careful to not pour it on the tamales.  With the heat on low, I covered the roaster with foil and allowed the tamales to steam about 1 to 1-1/4 hours.  You’ll have to pull back the foil occasionally to make sure there’s water in the bottom of the roaster, so make sure you have a kettle simmering to add hot water when it’s needed.

To serve, unwrap the tamales and pour on some extra sauce.  They’re delicious.  I promise.

Notes:

• I relied heavily on Rick Bayless’ book Mexican Kitchen, his website, Frontera Kitchens, and Epicurious for these tamales.   The guajillo sauce is from Bayless’ book, but is a staple so can be found in a variety of places.  Once you learn that onions and garlic are always roasted in their skins in a dry skillet and the chilis follow, there’s not much to it.  The pork recipe was found at Epicurious, and originally used when it appeared in Bon Appetit a couple of years ago.  The masa mixture and directions came from a few places — courtesy of Bayless and various packages of masa harina and masa fina.
• Pibil pork is simply slow roasted pork.  In this case, it’s made with a citrus-based marinade to which spices and achiote are added.
• I’ve researched achiote before and was surprised to find there’s not much to it.  It’s an ingredient with ancient Mayan roots that seems to be more of a coloring than anything else.  If you’re as curious as I am — inquisitive, not odd –  then you can learn more about it here and make your very own!  I haven’t made my own yet, but I’ll get there.
• For the pork:  I’ve made this on the grill, in the oven, and in a crockpot.  The superior way to cook it is on the grill after it’s marinated overnight.  No contest.  The flavor is very good using the other two methods, but the consistency is perfect coming off a grill.  If you do use the oven like I did this time, you will have a high brown on the exterior.  Just check the interior temp, looking for 170 degrees, and you’ll be fine.  You can make this ahead like I did, and wrap well to store in the fridge overnight.  It’s worth the effort because outside of preparing the marinade, there’s no effort involved.
• I used two large portions of pork shoulder for this recipe.
• Guajillos are a type of chili.  They’re spicy, but not “hot.” I find them bagged in the section of your grocery store that features Mexican spices.   I’d double this recipe because it’s that good, and you can refrigerate or freeze what’s left over for later use.  My friend considers it “gold” for the amount of processing it takes to create.  It’s delicious.
• You can find masa harina in the flour section of your grocery store.  It usually states that it’s for tamales.  Basic directions for how to make tamales will be on the package.  If you’re lucky enough to find prepared, or fresh masa, it usually comes in 2-lb. bags.  The purchased masa is the same as what you’d mix with water from the masa harina.  Create the tamale batter from this point with either to add the fat and salt.
• While we’re on the subject of fat — or in this case, lard — it’s personal preference.  Bayless lays it all out and makes complete sense with respect to lard, and I’ve tried it.  But I’m not used to the flavor and prefer the shortening.  You may be horrified by the addition of fat, but if you look at just how much masa is on the outside of each tamale, then you know that eating one or two is clearly a good thing, and not the 5 or 6 you’d like to if no one is looking.
• You can make the pork and go without adding the guajillo sauce to it, but what the heck?  It’s amazing sauce, so why not?  But I hope you can see that if you can pull this together, then you can put whatever you’d like in a tamale, just like those who have made them traditionally for centuries — in fact thousands of years.

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I love cooking with wine.  Although I do enjoy a dry white splashed into a pan of caramelized shallots for deglazing, or marsala stirred into a mixture of sauteed mushrooms and garlic before a bit of cream is added, I most enjoy meat or poultry braised slowly in red wine over the course of a Sunday afternoon.  Anticipation builds as a heavenly aroma fills the house making us all a bit anxious for dinner time to arrive to see whether the finished product lives up to its promise.

Sometimes, I’m a fairly hard sell.  It isn’t so much that the most recent recipe I’ve experimented with isn’t good;  they very nearly always are.  But think about it.  Once you’ve had an amazing version of something you truly enjoy, it’s challenging for anything else to replicate the wonder of that first bite.

Mention Coq au Vin and someone will ask about what the special occasion might be.  When you consider that any braise is done because the meat used is not an expensive cut, and needs to cook for a long time to make it tender, you know it isn’t necessarily a fancy dish.  In the case of Coq au Vin,  traditionally, the farmer’s old rooster became the dinner.  Bacon, mushrooms, onions, and a liberal quantity of red wine made for quite the send off for that old rooster, and a savory treat for the farmer after a hard day’s work.  All things considered, Coq au Vin is a one pot dish.

I’ve had my eye on a recipe for Coq au Vin I first saw in Saveur. The only reason I haven’t made it before now is that it required marinating the chicken overnight and sometimes my lack of planning gets the best of me.  That oversight hasn’t kept me from making Coq au Vin because I just choose a different version.  Unfortunately, that hasn’t solved the problem.  I’ve wondered about how the marinade might change the complexity of the flavors and whether this particular recipe might be the one to best all of the others.

Evidently, I’m not the only one. It just so happens that it’s the source of the next recipe I’d like to try for Coq au Vin.  Might it be the one?  I’d have to actually find a rooster that doesn’t have his feathers on to get started…and deal with his kidneys.

Coq au Vin

3 cups red wine
1 tsp. whole black peppercorns
3 cloves garlic (1 whole, 2 chopped)
2 ribs celery, thinly sliced
1 medium carrot, thinly sliced
1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
1  5–6-lb. chicken, cut into 10 pieces
3 tbsp. olive oil
8 sprigs flat-leaf parsley plus 1 tbsp.
chopped leaves
2 bay leaves
2 sprigs thyme
1/2 lb. slab bacon, cut into 2″-long slivers
3 tbsp. flour
2 cups Chicken Stock
2 shallots, chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 tbsp. butter
18 pearl onions, peeled
1/2 lb. button mushrooms, quartered

The directions can be found here.

Notes:

• I used a whole, pre-cut chicken and included all but the gizzard, liver, and heart in this recipe.  With respect to the bacon, I’ve never taken the time to find out where I can get slab bacon, so just use thick-cut bacon:  about 10 strips because you can never really have too much bacon, can you?
• I chopped all the garlic and added it to the marinade.  I’d like to say I did this purposefully, but that would not be the case.  In any event, it was all going into the pot, so I decided it wasn’t a grievous error.
• I don’t make my own chicken stock.  I consistently use “Better than Bouillon” bases for my cooking.  They cost more, but are worth it when you’re making something nice.
• I used a small package of red pearl onions.  To prepare them, drop them into softly boiling water and allow them to cook for a few minutes before pouring them into a strainer and dousing them with cold water until they’re cool.  A bowl of water filled with ice cubes works just fine.  To peel them,  slice off the root end and the covers slide right off.  This still takes patience, so don’t underestimate the time involved in this step unless you’re an Olympic pearl onion peeler. You might assign it to an unsuspecting person related to you who happens to live in your house.  Train them early is what I always say.
• If I’m going to cook with wine, I don’t use anything I wouldn’t drink.  It’s tempting to go with something less costly, but taste it and then you’ll know.  You might be surprised at how great a $10 bottle of wine is.  The chicken isn’t expensive, so splurge on the wine. I probably committed a faux pas by using a lovely Rioja Tempranillo from Espana.  When you live in California, the French wine selection isn’t always that great (or you’re like me and don’t really understand what is good and what isn’t), and the Spanish selection is constantly improving.  There’s no logic in that explanation beyond the parenthetical insertion, but I’m sticking with it.
• Leave the skin on.  Resist the urge to take it off.  You’ll have other opportunities to avoid it later.  For example, peel it off after you’ve plated your portion.  Or, if you make this ahead, and you can do that, after refrigerated, the excess fat is visible, and you can remove it before reheating it.
• This is a very good recipe.  Very.  If you’ve not made Coq au Vin, it’s a great place to begin.
• The three of us enjoyed this with roasted parsnips and had plenty left over for another meal.
• If you’d like to try Julia’s version, it can be found here.
• Or you can read about which version is better at Chowhound. That would be the throwdown between Julia and Molly.

Ready for the oven.

Ready to serve.

Done.

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I think I’m the last person on the planet who has had the Vietnamese sandwich, banh mi, added to her food radar. The first time I saw anything about them was in one of my food magazines about a year ago. Anything with bright veggies gets my attention — especially if it’s salad. But a salad in a sandwich? This had to be good. Pickled carrots, cucumber with cilantro…and pork? I’d never heard of this particular kind of sandwich before. It was interesting that it was on a French baguette, too. An easy search led me to Battle of the Bahn Mi and then to White on Rice for some amazing renditions of this sandwich.

My first attempt follows.  After much procrastination, I’ve finally joined the ranks of those who love this sandwich.

Now, I need to find a local place that makes them.

I could eat them every day.

Pork Meatball Banh Mi

Recipe source:  Bon Appetit

The recipe can be found here.

Notes:

• We wanted to eat the meatballs before we made the sandwiches.  The aroma was amazing,
• You knew how lean pork was, right?  Here’s the deal:  there are a few more calories compared to ground chicken or turkey, but ultimately the calories from fat are significantly less:  half.  That’s quite the difference.  I used  California natural extra lean ground pork and doubled the quantity (2 lbs.).
• I used quite a bit of basil.  I couldn’t help myself.  I had a package that needed to be used and got carried away, so added about 1/2 cup to the mix.
• If you don’t have Sriracha, you don’t know what you’re missing but you could substitute any hot sauce you like.
• There was no daikon at my market.  Go figure.  I sliced radishes and added them to the carrots to pickle.  They were most likely a tame version of what the daikon would have been.
• I didn’t have jalapenos.  I couldn’t believe it.  I always have jalapenos.  Honestly?  If you used the Sriracha liberally, the extra heat isn’t needed.  The balls and the sauce are spicy enough.
• On the sauce:  I hate to mention this, but have to.  I couldn’t get my husband to consider eating anything with mayonnaise in it, so I made the sauce with ranch dressing.  Don’t get me started.  It was fine.  Don’t tell anyone.
• I used a store-bought baguette and cut it into three pieces to make our banh mi.  For the amount of meatballs I had, I could have fed 6-8 with small portions.  Great party food.

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How sad.

The last seven months of no exercise have taken their toll.  Although I’ve chosen to completely avoid my scale so can’t have the bad news confirmed, and my clothes haven’t quite taken on the appearance of a wet suit, I’ve begun to puff when I walk up stairs again.  My knees hurt, and my feet feel as if they’re carrying around a pack mule’s load.  So with little fanfare, and conscientiously avoiding any talk of a resolution, I’ve promised myself to take better care of my body.  I know how to do this and so I will.  It doesn’t mean giving anything up;  it means paying attention to what I eat, and how much.

It also means I have to get out of bed before the sun at least four mornings a week.  My good friend will join me two of those days, and I’m hoping I can get my husband to at least think about it on the other two. In the meantime, indulge me my veggies.

Have you ever made spring rolls with rice paper?

Not Quite Authentic Spring Rolls

For the spring rolls…

Spring roll wrappers (Bahn Trang)

basil

cilantro

mint

cucumber

carrots

green onions

snap peas

avocado

cooked shrimp *optional*

For the dipping sauce…

6 T soy sauce

6 T rice vinegar

squeeze of fresh lemon

3 T sesame oil

2 tsp. ginger, freshly grated

sriracha

To prepare the spring roll wrappers, layer a few paper towels onto the counter and dampen them.  Pour warm water into a wide-bottomed bowl.  The water should be very warm, but not so much that you can’t dip your hand into it.  Place one of the wrappers into the water to soften completely, about 15 seconds or so.  Remove to the paper toweling.

Layer basil first, then the vegetables, followed by a couple of shrimp, then the mint and cilantro onto the wrapper.  Fold one portion over the filling tightly, fold in the sides, then roll snugly until completely wrapped.

Cut in half, dip, and crunch away.

Notes:

• You can find the spring roll wrappers at your local Asian market, or if you’re lucky, Whole Foods.  They’re made of rice, salt, and water and can be delicate until you get the hang of softening them in the warm water.
• It’s fun to change the fillings to whatever you enjoy.  I like loading them with fresh, raw veggies because they’re so healthy, and quite filling.  Two or three are plenty.
• The dipping sauce is fun to play around with as well.  Mine is an adaptation of a salad dressing I got from the back of a bag of soy bean sprouts.  We’ve tried a peanut dipping sauce which is also good.
• If you’re thinking about calories and counting on this, the wrappers are about 30 calories each.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.

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You’re wondering what peposo is, right?  Or perhaps you know what peposo is and you’ve already wondered how it ended up in a sandwich.  If you’re like me, you may even just want to take a big bite of it right now because it’s dinnertime and it would be much easier to have a savory Italian sandwich magically appear instead of needing to make dinner.  Oh, how I wish that might be so tonight.

This sandwich has quite a long story behind it, so I’ll share it soon — along with the recipe for the peposo, the roasted pepper salad, and the focaccia.  But it’s Wednesday, and I’m supposed to be wordless — or nearly so.

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It’s officially Fall, so pears are plentiful here.  Nuts always make me think of Fall as well, but what kind, and what to fill the pastry with?  Leafing through  The French Laundry Cookbook, I found the perfect recipe and decided that it would be the perfect way to welcome in my favorite season.

The September 2009 Daring Bakers’ Challenge has been chosen by Steph of a whisk and a spoon. Steph chose Vols-au-Vent, which we are pretty sure in French means, “After one bite we could die and go to heaven!”

Michel Richard’s Puff Pastry Dough

From: Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan

Yield: 2-1/2 pounds dough

Ingredients:
2-1/2 cups (12.2 oz/ 354 g) unbleached all-purpose flour
1-1/4 cups (5.0 oz/ 142 g) cake flour
1 tbsp. salt (you can cut this by half for a less salty dough or for sweet preparations)
1-1/4 cups (10 fl oz/ 300 ml) ice water
1 pound (16 oz/ 454 g) very cold unsalted butter
plus extra flour for dusting work surface

Mixing the Dough:
Check the capacity of your food processor before you start. If it cannot hold the full quantity of ingredients, make the dough into two batches and combine them.

Put the all-purpose flour, cake flour, and salt in the work bowl of a food processor fitted with a metal blade and pulse a couple of times just to mix. Add the water all at once, pulsing until the dough forms a ball on the blade. The dough will be very moist and pliable and will hold together when squeezed between your fingers. (Actually, it will feel like Play-Doh.)

Remove the dough from the machine, form it into a ball, with a small sharp knife, slash the top in a tic-tac-toe pattern. Wrap the dough in a damp towel and refrigerate for about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, place the butter between 2 sheets of plastic wrap and beat it with a rolling pin until it flattens into a square that’s about 1″ thick. Take care that the butter remains cool and firm: if it has softened or become oily, chill it before continuing.

Incorporating the Butter:
Unwrap the dough and place it on a work surface dusted with all-purpose flour (A cool piece of marble is the ideal surface for puff pastry) with your rolling pin (preferably a French rolling pin without handles), press on the dough to flatten it and then roll it into a 10″ square. Keep the top and bottom of the dough well floured to prevent sticking and lift the dough and move it around frequently. Starting from the center of the square, roll out over each corner to create a thick center pad with “ears,” or flaps.

Place the cold butter in the middle of the dough and fold the ears over the butter, stretching them as needed so that they overlap slightly and encase the butter completely. (If you have to stretch the dough, stretch it from all over; don’t just pull the ends) you should now have a package that is 8″ square.

To make great puff pastry, it is important to keep the dough cold at all times. There are specified times for chilling the dough, but if your room is warm, or you work slowly, or you find that for no particular reason the butter starts to ooze out of the pastry, cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate it . You can stop at any point in the process and continue at your convenience or when the dough is properly chilled.

Making the Turns:
Gently but firmly press the rolling pin against the top and bottom edges of the square (this will help keep it square). Then, keeping the work surface and the top of the dough well floured to prevent sticking, roll the dough into a rectangle that is three times as long as the square you started with, about 24″ (don’t worry about the width of the rectangle: if you get the 24″, everything else will work itself out.) With this first roll, it is particularly important that the butter be rolled evenly along the length and width of the rectangle; check when you start rolling that the butter is moving along well, and roll a bit harder or more evenly, if necessary, to get a smooth, even dough-butter sandwich (use your arm-strength!).

With a pastry brush, brush off the excess flour from the top of the dough, and fold the rectangle up from the bottom and down from the top in thirds, like a business letter, brushing off the excess flour. You have completed one turn.

Rotate the dough so that the closed fold is to your left, like the spine of a book. Repeat the rolling and folding process, rolling the dough to a length of 24″ and then folding it in thirds. This is the second turn.

Chilling the Dough:
If the dough is still cool and no butter is oozing out, you can give the dough another two turns now. If the condition of the dough is iffy, wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes. Each time you refrigerate the dough, mark the number of turns you’ve completed by indenting the dough with your fingertips. It is best to refrigerate the dough for 30 to 60 minutes between each set of two turns.

The total number of turns needed is six. If you prefer, you can give the dough just four turns now, chill it overnight, and do the last two turns the next day. Puff pastry is extremely flexible in this regard. However, no matter how you arrange your schedule, you should plan to chill the dough for at least an hour before cutting or shaping it.

Fillings

Spiced Poached Pears

2 red pears

1/2 lemon

1 vanilla bean

1-1/4 c. turbinado

2-1/4 c. water

3 T butter

1/2 tsp. ground cardamom

1/8 tsp. freshly ground nutmeg

1/8 tsp. finely ground fresh pepper

Slice pears in half reserving the stem for decoration.  Decide whether to leave the peelings on or shave them off.  Core the pears to remove seeds then rub with lemon to prevent them from turning brown.  In a wide shallow sauce pan, add the sugar and water, stirring over medium heat to dissolve sugar.  When the liquid begins to boil, add the pear halves.   Poach for about 10 minutes or until just beginning to soften occasionally turning and/or spooning poaching liquid over.  Remove pears from poaching liquid and set aside.

Butter Spice Syrup

Heat the remaining liquid in the pan over low heat until syrupy, about 30 minutes.  Pour all but 1 T into a jar, and discard vanilla bean.  Set pan aside until the time to plate arrives.  At that time, over medium heat, add 2 T butter, stirring to mix in the syrup remaining in the pan.  Sprinkle in the spices and mix well.  To “fan” the pears,  slice nearly all the way through each half to the stem to create as many fan pieces as you’d like.  Using a spatula, carefully move the pears to the pan and spoon the sauce over while cooking, about 3-5 minutes.  Remove pears to a platter and turn off heat.  Pour remaining sauce through a fine-meshed sieve and reserve.

Mascarpone Cream

1/2 c. heavy cream

1 T mascarpone

1 tsp. sugar

In a medium bowl, whisk heavy cream until soft peaks form.  Add the mascarpone and sugar and beat until well blended.  Add to a piping bag if desired and place in the fridge until time to use.

Almost French Laundry’s Hazelnut Sabayon

1 c. heavy cream

2 lg. egg yolks

3 T sugar

1-1/2 tsp. hazelnut oil

Whip the cream to medium peaks in a medium bowl and set aside.  In the bowl of a standing mixer, add the egg yolks and sugar.  Heat about 2″ water in a sauce pan over medium heat and when hot, place the mixer bowl over.  Whip the egg and sugar until a ribbon effect is achieved, about 2-3 minutes.  Attach the bowl to the mixer and beat on high until the mixture cools completely, about 5 minutes.  Feel the bottom of the bowl occasionally to test temperature.  When the mixture is completely cool, add the hazelnut oil, drizzling it in.  Remove the bowl from the mixer and add about 1/4 of the whipped cream to lighten it, then add the rest of the whipped cream, carefully folding it in.  Place in the fridge if not quite ready to plate but plan to do so as soon as possible.

Plating

1 spoon pear vanilla poaching syrup

1 spoon butter spice syrup

1 puff pastry shell

hazelnut sabayon

mascarpone cream

hazelnuts opt.

Decoratively score the plate with the two syrups.  Place one puff pastry shell on the plate.  Fill with sabayon carefully.  Arrange the fanned pear on the dessert.  Pipe the mascarpone cream over and shave a bit of fresh nutmet.  Add a couple of hazelnuts to the plate if you wish.

Notes:

• Now this is more like it.  I can actually see layers, but honestly, I used cheap butter.  I had it, so I used it and know the water content was pretty high.  Next time, I’m going to experiment with something else, but I’m not complaining.
• After 6 turns, I refrigerated the dough over night, well wrapped in plastic.
• The best sequence to make this dessert is poach pears, bake & cool pastry, saute poached pears, whip mascarpone cream, make sabayon, then plate dessert.
• The hazelnut sabayon is “almost” French Laundry because I added more cream.  The recipe calls for a fairly small quantity, and I’m thinking my cream wasn’t whipped enough and deflated a bit so I added more whipped cream to stabilize it.
• I have about a cup of the poaching syrup left and can’t wait to do something with it.  Yummy!
• The sabayon is probably going into and ice cream and how delicious will that be?
• I have quite a bit of puff pastry left:  1/3 of the original that I’d like to try something like croissants with and even more of the layered scraps.
• I’m getting ready to fill my remaining vol-au-vents with a shrimp white wine cream sauce, but I’m not quite there yet.  I’ll get around to adding that later.  Maybe.

As always, don’t forget to take a peek at the rest of the Daring Bakers’ marvelous creations.  There are probably a million of us now, so you should be able to knock on your neighbor’s door and ask for a Vol-au-vent sample tonight.  Go for it!

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