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This is a pretty good example of intimidating French food. Not so much in the ingredients – the only odd one there is preserved lemon, which really isn’t that odd, seeing as how easy they are to find at Whole Foods or Middle Eastern groceries. No, the intimidating thing here is the method, which asks you to take some fish, add a couple egg whites and some cream and throw it in a food processor so you can make a mousse of it.
It only gets Frenchier from there.
I wasn’t sure about this one. For one thing, there’s no picture of the end result: a steamed sausage of fish mousse filled with lemony spinach. I can honestly say that I had no idea what the hell I was doing when I made this. Perhaps it was just the inability of my pregnancy brain to figure it all out, but I really didn’t know what I was doing. I had no image of what the final dish should look like. The whole thing was very perplexing to me.
This is a recipe broken into three parts: a tomato sauce for accompaniment, the spinach filling, and the fish roulades themselves. Let’s start with the tomato sauce.
Tomatoes, lemon peel, garlic, and some butter to cook it all in.
Easy. Everything’s just thrown into a pan and softened before getting transferred over to a blender to become a surprisingly small amount of sauce. True, I had halved it because I only had two decent tomatoes, but it was maybe a half-cup of sauce. I was starting to have my doubts. But, it was easy to make, especially since it could be made ahead of time, so it had that going for it. Into the fridge it went.
Next: the spinach filling.
Spinach, wilting happily away with some garlic, lemon, and (more) butter.
This was also quite easy and fast and suitable to make ahead. Pretty standard stuff: spinach, garlic, more lemon, plus a little water to help the spinach cook a bit. It didn’t drain very well, though, which may or may not have caused problems later. Dorie does not specify wringing it dry, but it might be worth doing. Even though most of the liquid stayed in the pan, the spinach was still pretty wet.
But, moving on to the main event: the fish roulades. This wasn’t going to be so quick and easy.
Also, I had – as I mentioned before – no visual reference and therefore no idea what I was doing.
Cod cut up into pieces, plus two egg whites and a half-cup of heavy cream, ready to go for a whirl.
The cod mousse after whirling.
I have no idea if it was supposed to look like that. Dorie said it should be smooth – nope. It should be thick – well, yes. Sticky? Definitely. Two out of three? Okay, good enough for me.
Then, things get really fussy. Plastic wrap (one of my least favorite things to work with) is laid out on the counter. A quarter of the puree went onto and was smoothed out into a rectangle, thin but not too thin. A quarter of the spinach is then spooned onto the middle of the rectangle, and then it’s all rolled up into a neat sausage.
Fish sausage. Two words that probably shouldn’t go together.
Except, not so neat. Almost immediately, liquid began leaking out. Spinach juice? Cream? Cod juice? A combination of the three? All I know is this: I hate rolling things, I hate twisting them closed, and I hate things that leak liquid and leave a mess all over my counter. The entire time I finished rolling these out, I was thinking, this had better be the best damn fish dish I’ve ever eaten.
Once the roulades were all made, they went into my good old bamboo steamer to cook for about 10 minutes. While that was going on, I sauteed some asparagus with bacon, which assured me that at least something edible would show up on the table.
Upon opening the steamer, I found that a lot of liquid had seeped out of the roulades and was stuck in the plastic wrap. It made a horrible mess on my cutting board. And the roulades just fell apart when I moved them from steamer to cutting board. Delicate? Yes. Infuriating? Yes. But I was so hungry by this time that I had ceased to care what the dish looked like. All I wanted was to eat!
Cod & Spinach Roulades with Tomato-Lemon Sauce.
I wish I could blame my assessment of the flavors of this dish on the pregnancy, but the truth is, I find that flavors are enhanced when I’m pregnant. Maybe it’s because my sense of smell becomes truly super-human. I don’t know. But things just taste . . . more.
Except for this. It didn’t taste more. It tasted mostly like nothing. And spinach. It tasted mostly of spinach.
Which is fine. I like spinach. But the fish mousse had no flavor whatsoever. Maybe I didn’t salt it enough. But by itself, it was like eating an egg white omelet. Nothing. Just nothing. Geordie concurred. Not even the tomato sauce helped, because I found the tomato sauce to be bland too. None of the flavors stood out to me, not even the lemon. Thank goodness for the asparagus, because otherwise, this meal would have been a complete waste.
Some of the Doristas really liked this (check out their links!), but I was mostly unimpressed. Yes, it was fussy and kind of a pain in the ass to make, but I could have forgiven that if it had just had some kind of flavor. Any kind of flavor! When done properly, I imagine this does have an air of elegance to it, that it does stand out as an impressive dish. But, if it has no flavor, what’s the point?
Not going to repeat this one. Sorry, Doristas, but it just didn’t work for me!
I’ll confess: I made these today. Like, this morning.
This is not something I normally do for the Tuesday and Friday cooking assignments, but this past week – these past two weeks, really – have been a struggle as far as focus is concerned. Check out yesterday’s post, and you might understand why.
But I made them, I got them done. I still need something to occupy my time and my mind, and baking and cooking still seems like a pretty good way to do that. When I can, anyway – who knows what kind of food aversions may pop up in the next few weeks, but so far so good. There’s nothing in madeleines that seems likely to offend.
Okay, and now I’ll be honest: my madeleines were just okay.
I’m not sure how many madeleines I’ve actually eaten. Not many. I don’t remember anything about them, whether I liked them or not.
Really, the only thing I’ve ever known about madeleines is that they’re soft, kinda cake-y cookies that have their own little pan. Oh, and they’re French. Obviously.
That’s about it, really. Not only do I not know much about madeleines, I don’t have much to say about them. I know how to make them now, and I know that I don’t think they’re terrific. I liked the financiers I made last week better. Those had a more nuanced flavor, a hint of nuttiness that accompanied the egginess. They were way more interesting to eat.
Also, I think the baking time was off. My first batch burnt at seven minutes. I kept an eye on my second batch (pictured above) but they still got a little on the brown side. I realize they’re supposed to get a little browned, but probably not that browned. And I don’t think I was under-filling the cups, because the batter was almost overflowing when I spooned it into the molds. So, once again, this book and my oven don’t get along. This time around, however, it’s too much time; usually, it’s not enough.
I don’t know. It’s not that I dislike the madeleines – I did like them. But I didn’t love them. And I probably wouldn’t go to the trouble of making this recipe again. I’m wondering if I just need a different recipe. A lot of the recent recipes from Baking with Julia have been rather underwhelming for me lately. These didn’t do it for me. Maybe a different recipe would. Or maybe a variation on the recipe. I’ve seen flavored madeleines out there, and maybe that’s something I need to try. Because, by themselves?
Meh.
Maybe with coffee. I realize tea is more traditional, but I don’t drink tea, so it will have to be coffee. Maybe that’s what it’s missing.
Again, this might just be me. To see how the other Dorista bakers feel about these madeleines, check out the Tuesday with Dorie links, especially our hosts at Counter Dog, who made very lovely madeleines indeed. Don’t give up on madeleines on my account! I’ll give them another try in the future. Happy baking!
I’m not going to draw this out: I didn’t like these cookies.
I wanted to. I tried. I went into it with an open mind, even though I wasn’t especially keen on making them. I have my own reasons for that, but I was determined to make these. Call it therapy. But these just didn’t work out for me.
Mocha Chocolate Chip Cookies with Dried Cherries
The flavor was okay. I didn’t mind the flavor so much. But I didn’t think it was great either. What you’ve got here is a chocolate chip cookie (supposedly with huge chunks, but I went the lazy route and just threw in some over-sized chocolate chips) spiked with instant coffee. Thrown into the mix are dried apricots – I substituted dried cherries, because that’s what I had on hand.
That all worked together rather well. I replaced some of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat, which gave them a extra dose of complexity, and I liked that too. The cookies had a very deep flavor, much more nuanced than a typical chocolate chip cookie. And I liked that.
What did I not like? How freakin’ flat they were.
This is how they looked coming out of the oven, which is how I would have liked them to stay. But as they cooled, they deflated and got crispy, and that ruined them for me.
It’s hard to see from this picture, but you can get an idea of exactly how flat they were. Some of them also had holes (not very big ones) so you could see right through the cookie, and that is one of my biggest pet peeves about cookies. I want solid cookies. Solid, soft cookies.
I do not like flat cookies.
Well, I’ll amend that. I do not like flat cookies that have bumpy textures to them. I like flat cookies that are hard and have crunch to them. I do not like thin, chewy cookies or thin, crispy cookies; I prefer soft, moist cookies that are ooey and gooey and maybe a little on the underbaked side.
In other words, I like a cookie that has more brown sugar than white sugar, plus a little shortening mixed with the butter to keep the cookie from thinning out and crisping up.
When Geordie got home, he immediately tested one and said he liked them. But, he added, they probably weren’t for everyone. To which I replied that I agreed, because I didn’t like them at all. That kinda surprised him a little, maybe because he had just inhaled three of them, which I didn’t realize until after he told me. It didn’t surprise me that he liked them, because one of Geordie’s major food groups is coffee. He wasn’t sure about the dried cherries, but not so unsure that he wasn’t going to eat any more cookies.
Just to further prove that I was in the minority about these cookies, he took all two dozen of them to work and returned home with none. Granted, he said that the people who didn’t like coffee didn’t try any (and I can’t blame them), but most everybody who had a cookie liked it.
I’m willing to accept that these are good cookies, if you’re into the flat, crispy cookie thing. I’m not. I didn’t like them, and I won’t be making them again.
Our lovely host this week was Galettista. To see how the other bakers felt about these cookies, check out the links at the Tuesdays with Dorie site.
