All posts filed under: French

Trout Amandine

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I had a trip to Yosemite planned when the federal government shutdown cause the park to be closed. So I visited the area close to the park boundaries instead. I mountain biked to a small waterfall and also took a fly fishing lesson. I didn’t catch anything. But since we were practicing catch and release, even if I did I wouldn’t have been able to eat it. After spending four hours knee-deep in river water learning to cast and scrambling along slippery algae-coated rocks, I suddenly had a craving for trout, specifically trout amandine. It is a classic French dish of trout topped with almonds and is often served with green beans or asparagus. Amandine indicates a garnish of almonds; it derived from the French word for almonds (“amandes”), though it is sometimes misspelled as almondine in American restaurants or cookbooks since this is more recognizable as relating to almonds to English speakers (wiki). I choose the recipe for “Truite aux Haricots Verts et Amandes” (Trout with Haricots Verts and Almonds) from “Bouchon” by Thomas …

Chicken Stock

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My mother often made stock at home, so I tried out making stock soon after I started cooking. Michael Ruhlman’s is by far the simplest and easiest stock recipe that I’ve found, and it has given me the best results so far. I used a combination of Michael Ruhlman’s chicken stock recipe on his blog, and the chicken stock recipe in “Ruhlman’s Twenty: 20 Techniques, 100 Recipes, A Cook’s Manifesto” and some other tips from recipes that I’ve read over the years. The difference between the two recipes is that in the book, he suggests chicken has cooked in water for several hours and then adding the vegetables and aromatics and then cooking for 1 hour more. On the blog, he cooks everything together. When you break down a chicken, you can save the spare parts (e.g. backbone), in a bag in the freezer until you have enough to make stock. You can also save the carcass from a roasted chicken to make a dark roast chicken stock, . Cooking the stock in the oven was a revelation …