Vegetable stew

"Pot" 2 - second use of the Staub cast iron pot

My intention was to make a vegetarian dish; however, I poured in about 1/3 cup liquid from coq au vin leftover. So it was no longer vegetarian.

Heat the pot with a splash of olive oil.

Chop leeks and onions, surplus ingredients from making coq au vin. Into the pot. Lightly season with kosher salt.

While waiting for onions to become translucent, prepare the following ingredients:
- Carrots, peeled and chopped.
- Chinese mushroom, rinsed. (Reconstituted dried porcini mushroom would do too)
- Fried bean curd, blanched, rinsed under cold water and drained.

Deglaze with a splash of wine.

Carrots, in. Season with a bit of salt and sugar. Cover and simmer.

Mushroom and bean curd, in. Stir occasionally. Pour in coq au vin leftover liquid (optional). Cover and simmer for about 30 minutes.

Final seasoning to taste. Done.

Lessons learned:

• I was surprised to see the amount of liquid just from cooking leeks, onions and carrots. Self-basting feature really shines here.
• The lid smelled like staled Chinese mushroom and onions after rinsing with soap and hot water; it took several cycles to reduce the odor.
• Patience. Allow time to harmonize the ingredients and create big flavor.

Coq au vin

While I was shopping for an enameled cast iron pot, I also did research on what we could use it for (I suppose the later should have taken place first. Now it sounds like I just try to justify the expense).

Coq au vin seems the natural fit. The phrase had such magic that it was constantly chanted in my brain before I even got the pot. *chanting* Coq au vin...coq au vin...must...make...coq au vin *chanting*

Tons of coq au vin recipes out there. The one we eventually used is from the book "Gordon Ramsay's Maze". But WAIT! there's one line in smaller font: "recipes by Jason Atherton". Normally I would smirk at things like this. Do people really have to capitalize their name/brand to that extent? As I quickly flipped through the pages, one recipe caught my eyes: coq au vin! *chanting* Coq au vin...coq au vin...must...make...coq au vin *chanting* Before I realized what I was doing, I already swiped my credit card. Heck! Now we really have to make coq au vin.

According to the recipe, the chicken needs to be marinated in the red over night. So we did the prep work while seasoning the pot before its first use.

TripleQ did the cooking the next day. Originally I planned to do some errands after work. Got a message from him,
"You'd better come home straight from work."
"Why?"
"It smells so good there might not be any left."

Lessons learned:

• Pearl onions look pretty and have the delicate taste, but they're labor-intensive and slightly expensive. We can live with only leeks, onions and shallots
• We did not discard the vegetables, as instructed by the book. Instead, we scooped out the veggies before reducing the liquid. After a steamy hot bath in the wine, chicken stock and bacon grease, how can they NOT taste good?
• This is peasant food which makes any king green with envy. And serve it with the veggies from the same pot.

First post

First post is always a dreaded post. So just get it over with!
With the crazy schedule we have these days, micro-blogging (aka Twitter) works great for me to instantly express my thoughts. Somehow I have the feeling that tweets are disposable, judging by how difficult to dig through tweets to find certain pictures or recipes posted before. In addition, it isn't always easy to fit all I want to say in 140 char (I suppose I can post a photo which is worth 1000 words).
So here I am.