Tuesday, July 26, 2011

PCW Cooking Tip Week 3 Chicken Liver Mousse

My whole chicken comes with a little bag in it. When you buy whole chickens in the restaurant world you usually buy WOGs, or WithOut Guts, when you buy whole chickens at the regular grocery store most of the time they come with a little papery bag inside that contains the liver, kidney, heart and neck. I’m 100% sure that the pieces in that bag did not come from that same chicken, but you’ve got ‘em so you might as well use them!
Today we are concentrating on the livers. Save them! Put them all into a little baggy and throw them into the freezer until you get enough to make a cup or a pint depending on how many people you are feeding or how much you like Chicken Liver Mousse.
Once you have enough pull them out of the freezer and soak them overnight in milk. That pulls out the impurities. Strain them when you are ready to use.
Sauté up in a pan a little shallots/onions/garlic, add your livers and cook a little so they are brown on all sides. Deglaze the pan with a little white wine/marsala/madiera/sherry/brandy or juice. You can add orange zest if you like. Cook all of the liquid out of the pan.
Put everything in a food processor and puree, as it cools add whole cold butter. Season with salt!
You can eat it warm or you can refrigerate it and serve it later. Because of the butter it is going to get thicker as it cools. If you want it to have a very smooth consistency you can press the mouse through a wire sieve or tamis.
Are you annoyed that there are no amounts? You’ll live I promise. You are not going to screw this up if you put in more or less garlic. It depends on what you like.


Garlic
Shallots
Onions
Livers
Zest
Fortified Wine
Cold Butter
Salt


You’ll have to forgive us, we don’t have any fancy schmancy video equipment or editing program, so the video is too big for Blogger. Check out our Facebook page and we'll post the videos there!

Monday, July 18, 2011

Grating Ginger PCW Tip Week 2

So did you dig last week’s tip? Well consider this part two! But before we get to that a quickie update on what’s new at PCW. Our fundraiser for the Sauvie Island Center went smashingly and we were happy to be helping out such a great cause by teaching people how to make good food. It was a win win for us. Check them out because they have a barn dance happening on the 30th of July complete with BBQ that sounds like the bees’ knees.
Our Teen Camp for next week is sold out! We promise that next year we’ll run it for two weeks and add advanced classes for those participating this year!

Cooking Tip Week 2# Beautiful Ginger Paste no work


We have a video of this too because it’s hard to believe this works as well as it does. Take an ordinary box grater and wrap it in plastic wrap on the small grate. Grate your ginger over the plastic wrap and you’ll get a wonderful paste no fiber and no plastic bits. Don’t ask me why this works, I even took physics in college and I can’t really figure it out but I don’t spend a lot of time trying to either. I do know that all plastic wrap is not created equal and if you have cheap flimsy stuff at home things are not going to go well for you. Don’t avoid your ginger because of the time you normally spend dicing it to bits! Hopefully this little trick will allow you to add more ginger to your food without the hassle.
Just wait until next week when we show you what to do with that little bag you find inside the cavity of the chicken. Don’t make that face! It’s going to be awesome!

Monday, July 11, 2011

PCW Tip Week 1 Peeling Ginger

My in-laws were in town this week. That may not be a surprise to some of you who follow us on Facebook and saw dinner being made for them. One of the many activities we did was head over to the coast and spent a few hours in Cannon Beach. There is a cute little wine bar called Lush on the south side of downtown. We sat on the plant filled patio in the sunshine (yes really there was sun) and drank wine and beer and had snacks.
One of the little appetizers was a balsamic reduction with olive oil and a plate of bread. Now for my husband and I who have been in the culinary industry and in Portland for that matter, balsamic reduction is not new, in fact it’s really old news. For my in laws it was an atomic bomb of awesomeness. And they were more than a little upset that we had never shared this amazing food that is also easy to make, with them.
So my father-in-law suggested (demanded) that I share a culinary trick with him once a week. I thought that would be an excellent idea for the biz and for the blog. So from now on, PCW will be giving you a cooking tip once a week. We hope it’ll be useful and fun for you. Without further ado here it is:


PCW Tip Week 1

Sometime I forget that things that I’ve been doing for years other people have no idea, and one of the things that I find that constantly surprises people is that, you can peel ginger with a spoon.
Just use the edge of the spoon and you’ll be able to scrape the “paper” off the ginger very easily. It gets in the curves easier and you will get a better yield than you’ll even get when you use a peeler or a knife. We’ve even attached a video for you and we hope that you’ll incorporate more ginger into your cooking now that it’s easier to peel. Wait till next week and we’ll show you an easy way to make a ginger paste!