Sunday, September 7, 2008

Rosie Continues With Her Remouillage. Plus A Bit Of Down Home Cookin'.

Following the instructions from The French Laundry cookbook, (OK, scratch that. I don't believe I've followed any instructions from TFL.) I took the leftover whatever from my first veal stock and made a second veal stock. Here are the leftovers.
I added water and brought to a slow simmer to extract whatever flavors might be left in dem bones.
Oh lookie. My moonflower is opening. If anyone would like seeds for this lovely vine, please e-mail me and I will happily send you some.
I simmered my remouillage (second moistening or extraction from the bones) for 4-5 hours. Then strained.
On the left is yesterday's veal stock. On the right is today's veal stock.
Hmmm. Looks like two bosoms.
I added both stocks together. Tomorrow, I will simmer again for hours, wasting time and energy, just to intensify the tomato taste since there's no veal in there. But there WILL be next week! So, forget about the non-veal stock. Let's get on with tonight's dinner.
Mr. Hawthorne and I were jonesin' for some greens. Sometimes your body just screams for what it needs. Mr. H. put in a piece of smoked ham along with mustard greens, kale, and turnip greens. Added in a bit of water, then some turnips and taters. Good ol' southern cookin'.
Next I made corn bread in a cast iron skillet, using lard, not Crisco. Mr. Hawthorne remembers taking corn pone as a child and crumbling it into buttermilk. What a treat for him. He remembers having this dish at his grandparents who had no indoor plumbing. There was an outhouse and the Sears & Roebuck catalog was the toilet paper. Good times, my friends. Good times.
Here are the greens, turnips and taters, corn bread, and corn on the cob (5 for $1 at Harris Teeter.) That corn bread is amazingly, righteously, good. Damn good. And the thing about this dish? It was made exactly the same 200 years ago. That's something to think about.

3 comments:

  1. I really love dinners like that! Particularly the corn bread in a iron skillet. It's the best.

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