Surfas Restaurant Supply & Valentine's Day

It seems there's a frozen food for every level of foodie. Convenience stores have those wonderfully cheap Tina's frozen burritos. Supermarkets take it up a notch, with everything from Michelina's (my college preference) to Lean Cuisine and Smart Ones (Camille's work food of choice) to those frozen pasta bags that actually resemble real food after some time in a frying pan. Trader Joe and trader pals Jose, Ming, and Giotto have stuff that you could seriously fool people into thinking was more expensive.

And then there's Surfas Restaurant Supply in Culver City, which is more expensive and could seriously fool people into thinking you're some kind of chef. In fact, when I went to buy my Valentine's Day dinner ingredients, the kindly clerk asked, "Are you a chef?" Apparently, duck confit, dried figs, juniper berries, and foie gras are not the normal purchases of, say, aspiring screenwriting foodies who blog in their spare time.
I found Surfas because they are one of the few places in Los Angeles that sells foie gras, which Camille and I tried for the first time a couple months back and which I've been anxious to cook myself. It's insanely delicious, and not just because it makes you sound like a peace-mongering Frenchman when you say it. Rich, creamy, smooth, delicate -- it tastes absolutely sinful. And according to animal rights activists, it is sinful. Look, if these geese and duck had watched The Shawshank Redemption, then they'd know to get busy living and fly away. Really, it's their fault.

Anyway, I'd planned on only buying foie gras, but being in Surfas is being the proverbial kid in the candy store. The fridge and freezer section alone contained numerous items of culinary holiness like creme fraiche, duck fat, rillettes, and, yes, frozen duck confit. Confit is another dish I've wanted to try, except it's one of those things that requires a lot of lead time, what with the curing in salt for days. Now, in the time it took me to grab the frozen duck and foie gras out of cold storage, I had pretty much finished my main dish. And get mistaken for a chef, no less!

Duck confit, seared foie gras, fig and port charoset, pine nut cous cous.

This dinner is incredibly rich. The duck confit is wonderfully crisp on the outside, juicy within, and savory all over. It could easily be replaced by a lighter poultry dish to help offset the richness of the foie gras and the figs and port. I mean, if you're a wimp like that.

The thing that puts seared foie gras over the top is the texture. Yes, it's creamy and rich, but searing it properly gives it a crust and a lovely bite. It crunches slightly, then melts in your mouth. All geese should have the good fortune of exiting the world in this fashion.

According the the Epicurious recipe I got, the fig and port charoset is apparently a staple of Jewish seder. I don't know anything about that, but it ends up being a sweet, sticky fig chutney mush which works really well as a side dish. Plus, you'll have an open bottle of port begging you to finish it off while you're cooking, which is just fine and dandy.

The first two ingredients are cheats. Of course, cous cous is insanely easy, so it's not much of a shortcut to buy the prepackaged box. As for the confit, there's that curing in salt business. Yeah, no...

Ingredients
2 confit duck legs and thighs
1 package pine nut cous cous
1/3 lb. foie gras (about two 1" slices)
1/2 cub dried figs, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup port wine
3 tbs. vegetable oil
1 tbs. butter

Equipment
oven
2 small pots (seriously, who calls small pots "saucepans?")
1 frying pan

Preheat oven to 375.

Place duck confit into the oven and bake 20-25 minutes. Good job, chef.

Combine port and figs in small pot #1, bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the oil over medium-high heat, add the onions, and cook, stirring often, until the onions lightly caramelize, about 15-20 minutes.

Place the onions in a bowl and let cool slightly, add the port and figs, and mix. Add pepper to taste. Set aside.

Cook the cous cous. It should take about 6 minutes tops.

Turn the oven off, flip on your broiler, and move the duck confit to the top rack just underneath. Broil for 1-2 minutes until the skin is crisp. Remove and let rest.

Wipe down the frying pan (or use a fresh one) and melt the butter over high heat until the bubbles subside. Lay in the foie gras slices and sear for about a minute. Flip and repeat. In order to quasi-sear the sides, tilt the pan so the butter pools in one end, then use your spatula to splash the hot butter over the foie gras. Remove to a paper towel to drain.

Plate and serve.

That'll do, salt pig. That'll do.

So, last night Camille went out on a company excursion to an LA Kings game that involved alcohol, a party bus, and a luxury suite at Staples Center. I stayed home to write and bake cookies.

It did not occur to me until this morning that, basically, Camille went out for a late night of boozing and sports with the boys, while I stayed in the kitchen and baked.

That's right, I am a domestic god.

In other news, those Nestle Tollhouse break-and-bake cookies are the bomb.

So, my latest purchase from the Church of Williams-Sonoma: a salt pig. It's basically a wide-mouthed container for kosher salt, providing easy access to the flavor-enhancing mineral whenever I'm in a pinch. (Get it? Salt in a pinch? Tip your waitresses.) As it is a pig, I've decided it needs a name. The product is manufactured by Emile Henry, so a quaint French name will do.

I thinking Toulouse.

Pseudo-Memories of France

Ah, comfort food. I love a dish that's warm, hearty, savory, and brings back fond memories of my childhood in provincial France playing marbles, cycling, and thumbing my nose at those dimwit American tourists.

By France I am actually referring to quaint little San Lorenzo, California and quaint, ridiculously suburbanized Castro Valley, California (East Bay!) where I never so much as sniffed a French bistro. Probably a good thing as San Lorenzo and Castro Valley are not exactly culinary havens. I did trek to Paris (among other European stops) after graduating college, though. Here's a tip if you're backpacking through Europe on the cheap: Don't go to the Moulin Rouge. I know, I know... I, too, loved Baz Luhrmann's filmic ode to bohemian love, and I, too, have a silly man-crush on Ewan McGregor. Just keep in mind that Montmartre is on the outskirts of Paris, so when you finally get to the Moulin Rouge and realize it costs at least $200 for dinner and the show, you'll smack yourself in the head, decide to pass, and look around and see that there's merde to do in the immediate vicinity. My buddy and I visited the various souvenir shops and settled in at a restaurant across the street that, judging by the English menu, catered to tourists. It was here I had my first croque monsieur, the egg-less sibling of the croque madame. I've tried to replicate it in the past without making bechamel sauce, one of those French "mother" sauces that scare the bejeezus out of a novice cook like me, and boy is that a mistake. Without bechamel sauce, the croque monsieur/madame is just a dry sandwich. So, grab your whisk, it's sauce making time. Your wrist will hurt, but you'll feel like a chef afterwards.

Before you start the sauce, though, start your broiler and place your oven rack right up under it. Huzzah for pretty blue flames!

I used a bechamel recipe from Williams-Sonoma. You're basically going to make a roux (French word alert! It's the thickening agent behind every sauce and gravy made from butter and flour. And it's pronounced "rue.") and then whisk in milk and cheese. The recipe calls for gruyere cheese, which is some salty good stuff. If you're wondering if you have to continuously whisk the entire time... yes, absolutely. Do NOT stop whisking! I stopped for ten seconds to peruse the recipe and the sauce burned slightly. Since I'm a lazy mofo, I pushed on with the lightly toasted bechamel. It's still good, it's still good.

If you're saying to yourself, "Butter! Milk! Cheese! How healthy is this?!" The answer to your question is: You clearly don't love food. Go eat a carrot.

After making the bechamel sauce, the hard work is done. All that's left is to do the math, as we used to say in Calculus (not bragging, I barely passed). Assemble your dish.

Don't buy sliced bread for this. You're not eating it with your hands, so get a nice, fresh bread that'll sop up the sauce but still hold together. In other words, slice it thick. I bought some organic deal from Whole Foods, not because it was organic so much as it was round. Thems round loafs is fancy! It smelled good and was slightly soft. It ended up being some kind of sourdough, which wasn't in the recipe but works splendidly.

I used a croque madame recipe from, yes, Williams-Sonoma, but it called for black forest ham, which I didn't have. I did have a bunch of leftover rotisserie chicken from Costco... perfecto! (Perfecto is not a French word.) Toast the bread first, then pile on chunks of chicken and ladle the bechamel over the whole thing. Top with more grated cheese. Throw it back in the broiler until the cheese begins to melt and brown. At this point, you've pretty much got a croque monsieur that's waiting to be madame-ed. Get a pan with oil going and fry an egg.
You probably think you can fry an egg. I used to think so, too. But I never did it the same way twice. Then I realized that once the egg is down in the pan and frying... leave it the hell alone. Let it cook. Don't flip it yet. Just don't do it. Leave it be until the whites are all, you know, actually white. Not partially white. White. If you want over-easy, flip it once. It's not a steak, there's no reason to flip and flip and flip. Cook it through on one side, flip once, cook it to your desired doneness on the other. Camille doesn't like runny yolks, so I let hers go a little longer before flipping to make sure the bottom of the yolk is cooked.

Okay, so the broiler has probably done it's business by now. Take out the sandwich, plate it, top it with an egg. That's it. The recipe calls for topping each piece with another slice of bread to make a sandwich, but the tourist trap eatery across from the Moulin Rouge made it open-faced, and since I'm sentimental, I did the same.
The bechamel turns what is otherwise a mundane, dry meat and cheese combination into a rich, creamy, hearty, comforting dish. Savory chicken, tangy bread, cheese... that stuff hits the spot. Even better, as hearty as it is, it doesn't weigh you down. It brings back fond memories of France that I don't really have (damn you, Moulin Rouge! Damn you to hell!). Mmmmm, sentimental sandwich.