“Taste of Lee” Night on Thursday, February 23

“Moules-Frites & Crêpes Night” at Chez Nous!

Join us on Thursday, February 23 when, in addition to our regular winter menu, we’ll be celebrating Lee’s Cabin Fever Festival with the ultimate French comfort foods:  Moules-Frites and Crêpes!  $25. for your choice of sauce for your steamed P.E.I. Mussels & Home-made Fries, a sweet French Crepe, and either Hot Cider or Hot Mulled Red Wine!

Moules-Frites:  Steamed Mussels with Home-made Fries

& your choice of sauce:

-with Tomato Sauce

-with Garlic Cream Sauce

-with Curry Sauce

Sweet Crepes, your choice:

-with Nutella & Banana

-with Sautéed Apples & Calvados

-with Cherry Preserves & Sweet Ricotta

$25.00 with your choice of Hot Cider or Hot Mulled Red Wine, excluding tax & gratuity

… diligent caretakers of the vine [who] often times represent several familial generations stubbornly clinging to organic, biodynamic and sustainable practices – placing premium value on quality, not quantity – without sacrificing curiosity and respect for contemporary techniques and menus.

We have no doubt that the menu, the wines, and Andrew’s stories and experiences with the growers will combine to make a memorable evening!

Oz Wine Dinner- Chez Nous

Friday, February 24, 2012 6:30

Welcome…

Ceviche of Shrimp & Scallops with Red Onion & Lime

Lapeyere Jurancon Sec 2010

First Course…

Warm Monterey Chevre & Roasted Garlic Ravioli, Beet Coulis
Domaine Menard Cuvee Marine Blanc 2010

After…

Ragout of Wild & Domestic Mushrooms over Toasted Brioche, Pan-Seared Foie Gras with Onion & Prune Marmelade
Domaine Rotier Gaillac Les Graveis Rouge 2008

Followed by…

“Boeuf à la Mode” Braised Boneless Beef Shortribs in Red Wine with Crispy House-Cured Bacon, Confit Turnips in Port & Roasted Root Vegetables
Chateau Armandiere Cahors 2008

And for Dessert…

Kouign Amann & Berry Clafoutis,

Breton Salted Carmel Cake, Mixed Berries baked in Grand Marnier Sabayon
Lapeyere Jurancon Vitatge Vielh 2007

Price per person:  $65. excluding tax and gratuity

** please give advance notice for any necessary subsitions to the menu

So how to make myself more engaged by baking crumble after crumble?  I’ve must have literally made thousands of them.  Dorie Greenspan, one of my strongest muses, provided an excellent option this past fall:  add crushed Speculoos!

What are Speculoos, you ask, and why would I want them in my already-divine crumble? Speculoos are a kind of European ginger snap, my friends, and they are as addictive as any cookie you could want to eat.  Crumbled up, mixed with soft butter, and then mixed into your crumble topping, they take the dessert to a whole new level:  spicy, warm, yummy with winter fruits like apples and cranberries.

Crumbling stuff up into your crumble … why didn’t I think of this before???

Apple-Cranberry-Speculoos Crumble

Apple-Cranberry Speculoos Crumble

8 Granny Smith apples, peeled and chopped into 1/2 inch pieces

1/2 c fresh cranberries

1/2 c sugar

1 T cornstarch

pinch salt

1 t cinnamon

pinch freshly grated nutmeg

1 T lemon juice

-Toss all of the fruit together in a large bowl and set aside for the juices to release while you make the topping.

Topping:

1/2 lb butter, melted and cooled

3 1/2 c all-purpose flour

1 c oats

1 c sugar

1/2 c dark brown sugar

1 t cinnamon

1 t mixed spice for baking

pinch salt

-Toss all ingredients quickly together in a large bowl so that the butter is evenly distributed and mixture looks dry, not in big clumps:

If you don’t want to use the Speculoos, you can stop at this point, put the fruit in the baking dish and top with the crumble.  Bake at 375F until well-browned and bubbling (don’t take it out until you’ve got bubbles coming from the middle of the crumble, not just the edges; underbaked crumbles are one of my nemesis!) This is a delicious crumb topping, and by far the best recipe of all that I have tried over the years.
But, if you’d like to take things up a notch, by all means, let’s get the Speculoos in there!

You can buy Biscoff cookies, or these Trader Joe's look-alikes, or just use a nice gingersnap that you make or buy in the supermarket

For this quantity of crumb topping, use one package of cookies and one stick of soft butter.

Any heavy kitchen tool will crush these up efficiently. I like to keep a few large chunks so no one forgets that this is a Speculoos Crumble!

Use any heavy implement that you have to hand, a rolling pin, a hammer, express yourself… and crush the cookies in a large metal or wooden bowl with authority until they are crumbs with some nice chunks remaining.   Now you have to thoroughly smush the butter into the cookie crumbs, making sure that you evenly distribute the butter. Dorie Greenspan actually just put this topping onto the crumble and baked it. I tried this originally and it is really good and different, a nice change from the crumble doldrums. But it’s a bit sweet (even for me!) with all of those cookies, so I thought it might be nice to mix it into the topping and cut the sweetness a bit. Voila! The Ultimate Crumble… Combine the two toppings and then sprinkle generously on top of the prepared fruit and bake. Any extra crumb topping can be frozen for the next time you are in the mood to bake dessert. They also make a nice topping for pumpkin muffins, if you’d like to try something different, but I guess that’s another story…

Living in London and studying pastry at Le Cordon Bleu in the mid 90′s, I somehow got mixed up with a band of Korean boarders living with a Korean family… long story…but what an amazing discovery for me: Korean food!  I happily devoured fabulous meals at their communal table, coming early and staying late to cook, cook, cook with the lady of the house.  Her English was sparse, but we smiled at each other, cooked, and smiled some more.  I took copious notes and ended up thanking them when it was time to go with a lasagna dinner (their requested dish:  never saw a group of people get so excited about lasagna and garlic bread…I was surprised until I realized that it was probably the amount of GARLIC in everything that they were loving!  garlic being an integral ingredient in Korean food).  We made breakfast, lunch and dinner together and I have to say, I never felt so healthy and energetic as during this time when I ate mostly Korean food!  Very light, savory, full of garlic, ginger, chilies and fermented pickles, this cuisine is definitely among our favorites.  It’s a huge cuisine with a vast history, and so different from other Asian cuisines.  We’re looking forward to showing what we know about Korean food to our guests this Thursday night!

If you haven’t tried one yet, or if you are among our many lovely MBED friends, we hope that you’ll be able to come to the restaurant  for an evening of wine tasting, cooking demos, recipes and just relaxing foodie fun.  ”Manger! Boire! Eat! Drink!” has a different theme every week, sometimes a cooking technique, sometimes a regional cuisine or style, or whatever people are in the mood for.    Get ready for some new recipes you’ll want to make again and again, $30. excluding tax & gratuity.

Watch this space or “like” us on facebook to hear the theme for our weekly MBED nights! We will start again on Thursday, April 12.

1 lb beets, roasted or boiled until cooked through, then cooled and grated or shredded

2 shallots, chopped

½ c chopped parsley

2 T Dijon mustard

½ clove minced garlic

1 T chopped capers

Dash Tabasco

Dash Worcestershire

-Mix all together and taste for seasoning.  Use mayonnaise to taste, if desired, to bring together and give a little creaminess.  Let rest at least 1 hr before serving.

Lemon-Lavender Posset

It has become a summer tradition here to serve this simple and refreshing dessert. I have so many requests for the recipe, I’ve decided to post it so that you can astonish your guests this summer with something that is so easy and delicious! It’s an old-fashioned, creamy English dessert made without any eggs or gelatin, which can be infused with any herb or citrus. Try using fresh thyme or rosemary instead of lavender and let me know how it comes out.

Lemon Lavender Posset
makes about 6, depending on your ramekins

2 1/4 c Heavy Cream
3/4 c sugar
1 T Lavender Flowers
-Bring to boil and let simmer for 2-3 minutes to slightly thicken the cream

1/2 c Lemon Juice
1 T lemon Zest
1/2 t vanilla extract
pinch salt
-Add the rest of the ingredients off of the heat, stir well, strain and pour into jars/ramekins. Let set in fridge at least 4 hours or overnight.

We’ve carried this fish occasionally, and eaten it ourselves here and as “White Tuna” at other restaurants, and it’s so delicious and popular, you’d never imagine that it could make you sick, but it can.  Not lethally, and not everybody, but you can be uncomfortable for a period of time for sure.

It’s getting harder and harder to find fish that you can feel good about serving.  We stopped carrying shrimp a long time ago; now we get it only when it’s from a sustainable, good practice, American farm.  That’s it.  No Thai shrimp, no trawled shrimp, no way.  Mercury is a big issue, overfishing is a big issue, unhealthy fish farming practices is a big issue.  Oil spills?  other environmental degradation?  You really have to think before you buy.  We are able to get sustainably farmed salmon, but even that is shifting now and we’ve had to change companies because we lost trust in our former “Organic and Sustainable” fish company.  Line-caught Massachusetts Cod has been very good and reliable, as has Mediterranean Bronzini.

High-end restaurants like our favorite, Le Bernardin, charge a tremendous amount of money and serve fantastic fish, but that’s what you have to do these days more and more.  With all of the problems out there in the sea, it’s not obvious for people who can’t afford to spend that kind of money every time that they want to eat fish.  And it’s a shame when a fish that is so consistently fresh and delicious as escolar turns out to be, quite apart from all of these external factors, not, in fact, a good eating fish after all.  We really wanted everyone to know about the situation.

We once were hosting a party at the restaurant, serving two white wines. One was our house Chardonnay, which is an extremely pleasant Burgundy from a small producer, and the other was one of my favorite whites, an excellent deal called  ”Evolution,” from Sokol-Blosser in Oregon.  It’s a blend of nine white grapes which literally dances on the tongue:  it’s delicious, pure and balanced, and happens to be made by a woman who is, along with being a very high-end Oregon Pinot Noir producer,  a passionate advocate of organic and sustainable viticulture.  At this party, one gentleman approached the bar for a glass of white wine for his wife.  After I told him the two choices (” French Chardonnay or an Organic blend from Oregon?”) he replied, “the chardonnay; my wife won’t drink organic wine, it’s bad.”  What could I say?  First lesson in sales, the customer is always right, and it’s not my place to contradict.  But I was so sad.  The other wine is not bad, but the Evolution is really something special.  How to help people understand organic, biodynamic and sustainable wines better??

Now, I write “organic” because it’s so hard to categorize wine production by one label, and many organic wines aren’t even labeled as such (see above if you’re surprised, even the Evolution isn’t labeled organic though she drives her tractors on biodiesel!!).  But it’s true that just as in the food world, organic can be pretty hard to define.  There are other terms, like “sustainable” “minimal intervention” “biodynamic” “salmon-safe,” and it gets pretty complicated.  I guess I’m just happy when I’m choosing wines for my list if I know that the grape-grower/wine-maker is paying attention to tradition, respect for the land, respect for the consumer, and if their goal is for the wine in the glass to be a conscienciously-made, pure expression of the grapes, without flavor additives, pesiticides, or other chemicals getting in the mix.

Now here’s where our friend Sergio Esposito comes in to help us understand the goal of organic viticulture.  Of course I recommend reading the book, but I’ll just quote here some of what he says and see if anyone wants to argue with me.  It takes a kind of devotion and commitment to make wine this way; Esposito describes  ”This courage of conviction — the determination to make a drink that directly contradicts convention because you believe in its unerring and morally necessary authenticity…”  I would love people to come around to thinking that it’s certainly worth trying these wines…at least give them a taste!  There may be plenty of bad organic wine out there, but there’s plenty of other bad wines out there too, no???  Esposito quotes one winemaker, describing the process of producing  biodynamic wines:

“What is wine?…Wine is a family of bacteria, which together make life.  This life — in the form of thousands and billions of fermentations — takes a simple grape to a wine.  In every berry, we have everything a wine needs to develop….there are more than a thousand things you can legally add into your production process.  You can add drugged-up yeasts and banana flavor if you want…. If the thing that makes a wine unique is its terroir, then the wine must taste like the earth from which it came….if you work in real agriculture, things are unpredictable.  You can’t send your e-mail with the exact day of bottling…If you need to work in this chemical way, maybe you’ll one day…be really happy but your wine will be soulless, and why did you become a winemaker in the first place?”

Though my reduction simplifies things a bit far, it gives a good idea of the direction of the discussion and the details included in the book are eye-opening and exciting.

About two-thirds of our list is made by producers who are committed to making their wines in a radically clean, conscious, “organic” way…I’d love some day for it to be the whole list, and I think it can be.  Too many people are changing their ways, going back to traditional methods, and seeing fantastic results.  At a certain point, labels aren’t useful…we’ll let the wines speak for themselves.

People really seem to “get it” so far! I’m so pleased: we have so many little gems on our wine list, and this is a great way to discover them. If you want to, try a glass or a half-bottle; if you love it, buy another half (it’s the same price, anyway!) or try something else. We’re going to have a lot of fun with this in the summer. Next time you’re in the restaurant, be sure to check out our “Wine Discoveries” and let me know what you think!