Last week I turned the big 2-5. It was not something I was necessarily dreading, but it’s a pretty big birthday. I took some time to figure out exactly how I wanted to celebrate. Because my birthday was mid- week, I was going to wait to celebrate with all my friends at a bar. I decided, on that fateful Thursday night, I wanted to eat a decadent meal. Shocker!
There were a couple of recipes that I had been meaning to try, and frankly needed an excuse to because they were not healthy. It would be 3 courses, including a dessert. How lovely! I invited my buddy Joe over and of course, my roommie (the one who was in town) ate with us as well. And onward to the meal!
Delicious Asparagus Soup
Because I’m always looking to try a new soup recipe, I found a rather excellent sounding version of Asparagus Soup from Emeril. I decided to prepare most of this Wednesday night, and add the last bit of ingredients and heat up the next night. Being a lover of asparagus, I was really excited to give this a whirl.
Stalks for the chucking.
First was to create an asparagus stock! I cut the gorgeous tops off the asparagus, then the unusable stalks. Those stalks were added to a pot of chicken broth and left to simmer for 30 minutes.
Meanwhile, I began the arduous task of chopping all the other vegetables.
After removing the stalks from the stock and chucking them, I blanched the tips. Then I transferred them to an ice water bath to stop them from cooking. I love ice water baths!! I enjoy when recipes add that touch of complexity that makes me feel like I’m a real chef.
Glorious Tips.
All sauteed and thirsty for stock.
The rest is pretty typical soup stuff. I melted the butter, added the chopped vegetables to sautee and then added the stock. I let all of the boil, and then simmer for 20 minutes.
Then came the food processing. As I discussed in my previous post, I was without Immersion Blender, so I sloppily processed my soup in several batches.
This was followed by another ice water bath!!!
Bathing!
I packaged her up and fridged her until the next night.
Mmm!
On Thursday night, I simply added my soup to a pot, added the cream and tips and let her warm up. Each bowlful was topped with freshly grated Parmesan Cheese. I can’t describe how good this soup was. It was so clean and intense. The asparagus really popped, being complemented by all the other ingredients blended together. We all agreed that this was our favorite part of this meal. I highly recommend it, and will absolutely be making it again.
MAIN COURSE
Petto di pollo con Gorgonozola at La Finestra
aka: most unhealthy chicken dish I could find
Dear Lord!
Yes, you guessed it. Another find from the LA times website. I can’t get enough. It brings me great joy when I can recreate (and sometimes improve upon) a dish that a nice restaurant makes. So here we go.
CHEESE SAUCE!
To be honest, this recipe wasn’t that hard. Lucky for me, Joe had showed up way early so I put him on cream duty while I prepared the chicken. I threw 2 cups of heavy cream (holy cow!) in a pot and made him stir that for 20 minutes, at which point he added a ton of Gorgonzola cheese. Then cheese sauce was born!
Pounding that sweet piece of veal... err it was actually chicken.
Meanwhile as I so eloquently said to him after only a half of glass of wine in me, “I’m going to pound this chick.” Woops. That one was too good not to share. Anyways, I cleaned my chicken breasts, put them between two pieces of plastic wrap and beat the crap out of them. The goal was to get to 1/4 inch thick, but I’m pretty sure mine were thicker than that. Oh well.
Dredging.
Frying.
Next they were dredged in salted, peppered, and dredged in flour awaiting their destiny of being fried.
I heated a large pan with oil and browned each one by one.
While this was happening, I was waiting for an enormous pot of water to boil to blanch my spinach. When that finally got rolling, I blanched and then prepared another ice water bath!!!
Upon removing the spinach from the bath, it was a gorgeous deep green color. I won’t even get into the issue of being out of ice. I squeezed all the liquid from the spinach and set aside.
I warmed the pan again, added some garlic and then the spinach. I let that cook for a few minutes the then tossed in that delicious cheese sauce. I let that go for a few minutes to reduce and so the flavors could
marry.
Chickens ready to get saucy.
Next was the assembly. I had put each chicken breast on a tray lined with aluminum foil. I carefully added the spinach cream sauce to each one and put on my broiler. This part actually blew Joe’s mind. At this point, the recipe didn’t seem all that bad for you, but Joe didn’t realize what was about to happen. I took out a bag of shredded Mozzarella cheese and generously heaped a handful onto each breast. Then I reached for a bowl of Parmesan Cheese I asked him to grate. That went on top as well. I’m not exaggerating when I saw that I had to push down on the mound of cheese to get the Parmesan to stay put. Once these delicious death treats were ready to go, I popped them in the oven to melt the cheese. Meanwhile, we ate our soup.
Once the chicken was done, served each on its own plate. In true fine dining fashion, there was no side. I would also like to add how gigantic each portion was. The chicken breasts I had were very large, and after flattening them, they almost took up a large plate on their own. We all laughed at how terrible this dish was for us and how much cheese was involved, but there were no complaints. It was delicious, but I immediately discussed what I would do differently next time. I decided this dish would be much better with butterflied chicken, stuffed with the spinach cream sauce. I would reserve a bit of sauce to put on top for later, making the spinach more of a reduced sauce. I’d button the chicken up with toothpicks and fry lightly on each side. The assembly would be virtually the same, except I’d add fried Prosciutto to the top. There was a salty element missing, and this would be the perfect addition.
Zabaglione!
After finishing the chicken, we were all rubbing our bellies when I announced dessert. Keeping in the spirit of rich food, I had prepared a traditional Italian dessert called Zabaglione, which was comprised of wine. I wanted to stay absolutely tradition for my first try at this, and realized in hindsight I should have thrown caution to the wind. In theory, this dessert can be made with any type of liquor.
I had actually prepared this before I even started on the chicken, so please travel back in time with me for a moment. Now, Zabaglione (I dare you to try and pronounce that correctly) can be served either chilled
or warm. I chose chilled because that just sounded like a nice way to end such a filling meal. To begin, I added half a cup of sugar to 8 egg yolks. Yes, 8 of them. Just the yolks. Like I said, this meal was decadent. I whipped those babies until I got an almost white color out of them. I added 1/4 cup of Marsala wine (traditional) and the grated rind of an orange, and whipped a little more.
I simmered some water, and added my bowl on top of the simmering pot. I continued whipping until the mixture blew up and ribbons formed. I removed from the heat and put it in ANOTHER ICE WATER BATH. I then continued whipping to until it had chilled.
I added blueberries to little glasses and poured my foamy mixture in, plopping more blueberries on top. All the recipes said to use strawberries, but I said “Pshhh.” I dropped these guys in the fridge until we were ready for dessert.
By the time I took them out, they had definitely deflated. I served them and told the guys to mix them up a bit. What we discovered was that the orange flavor was the most pronounced. It was very very sweet, but in a way that I enjoyed. It was so light that I didn’t mind. And it was excellent with the blueberries. I decided for the next run, however, I would be trying the chocolate version with port because that just sounds heavenly. All in all though, how can you say no to a boozy dessert?
Roaring Tiger 