Pigs, prunes, and potatoes. Not very inspiring. But Longe de Porc aux Pruneaux (Roast Pork Loin with Prunes) is tasty…if you like prunes.

First, you butterfly the pork so that you can shimmy all the prunes in the middle. Then you tie up (and curse while tying) the pork with butcher's twine to keep the prunes in place. After searing the pork with the carrots and onions, you roast it in the oven.

Meanwhile, you steep the prunes in Ceylon tea. {I bet you could steep them in all sorts of flavors such as star anise or cardamom.} Sounds crazy, but it's tasty…if you like prunes!

The key to this dish is the sweet and sour reduction called a gastrique. Basically, it's a caramelized sauce of vinegar and sugar. I think any meat tastes better with a sauce, and pork pairs nicely with something a little sweet balanced by the acidity of the vinegar.

After roasting the pork, set it aside and deglaze the pan with some water. Add the pan juices to the gastrique. Taste and season, et violà, you have a delicious roast pork loin with prunes…if you like prunes.

The second part of this course is the puréed potatoes (which should have been puréed celery root, but I forgot about that ingredient when I was at the grocery store and ended up using my baby potatoes which I just smashed, skin and all).

Recipe: Longe de Porc aux Pruneaux (Roast Pork Loin with Prunes)

Serves: 6

Ingredients: 

You can find the recipe for Longe de Porc aux Pruneaux (Roast Pork Loin with Prunes) and Mousseline de Céleri Rave (Creamed Celery Root Purée) in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home. To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with their recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes
The light flavor of pork paired perfectly with the prunes hidden inside…if you like prunes, which I do! The sauce lightly drizzled on top added depth, moisture and sweetness to each bite.

I think next time introducing some apricot into the juice would bring an interesting color to the sauce that would complement the prunes and add some zing. In fact, I may also try combining chopped prunes and apricots to stuff the pork, for the same reasons.

Next Class
• Savarin aux Kiwis et aux Fraises (Rum Savarin with Kiwis and Strawberries) pages 409-410

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Running total: $1,346.91 + $22.00 (pork) + $4.23 (other ingredients) + $3.42 (potatoes) = $1376.56
($4.94 per serving)

Butter used so far: 12 pounds, 6.5 tablespoons

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Photographing poultry is not easy. Desserts are so much prettier.
Try this:
Click here for images of chicken. Click here for images of dessert.
I rest my case.
This is the last in the series about poultry (next week is frog legs!), and the recipe calls for guinea hen (or guinea fowl). I like my white meat, and this bird is generally dark meat so I had a feeling I wouldn't like this meal.

For this dish, you will have to sauté and set aside many times, which for some reason reminded me of square dancing calls (not that I square dance, but I have watched relatives!).

Circle right.
Bacon, blanch and fry.
Set aside.
Pearl onions, peel and sauté.
Set aside.
Mushrooms, sauté.
Set aside.
Guinea hen, dry, dredge and sauté.
Set aside.
With half the wine, deglaze.
Half Sashay.
Add Bouquet Garni, lardons, pearl onions, and mushrooms.
Split Two.
Cover and bake.
Promenade.
Pan drippings, reserve.
California Twirl.
Chestnuts, sauté.
Set aside.
Arrange chestnuts, lardons, pearl onions, mushrooms, and guinea hen in casserole and bake.
Couples Circulate.
For the sauce, shallots, sauté.
Rollaway.
With the last of the wine, deglaze.
Dosado to a wave.
Pan drippings, pour in.
Weave the Ring.
Reduce.
Pass thru.
Whisk in butter and serve.
Alamo Style.
Recipe: Pintade à la Cévenole (Guinea Hen with Mushrooms and Chestnuts)

Serves 6 (picture shows half a recipe)

Ingredients:

Bisque de Homard, or Lobster Bisque, is a once-in-a-lifetime soup. At $16 per bowl and $97 for a tureen, the word “soup” seems too simple and unworthy a description. Technically, it’s a bisque, but it needs a name deserving of its expense and grandeur. So you know what you’re getting into. So you’re prepared to savor every sip. So you’re prepared to slave in the kitchen for a whole day!

A bisque is a thick, creamy soup, traditionally made with seafood, such as lobster, crab, langoustine, shrimp, or crayfish. Unlike a chowder, it doesn’t contain any potatoes. Recipes for bisque in the 18th century included the ground shells of the seafood to thicken the soup. In this recipe, the shells are used to flavour the broth, but then strained out.

The lobster


First, the lobster. At $15.99 Canadian per pound {flown in from Nova Scotia to the prairies}, these two little innocent homards set me back $65. Boxed up and on ice, they came home with me twitching their antennae and looking uncomfortable.

After seeing what was in my cardboard box, my nephew looked at me curiously, possibly wondering if I’d decided to bring home a new pet. When I told him why there was a pot of water bubbling and boiling on the stove, he again looked at me with his big, blue eyes and said, “Isn’t that torture?” Oh, this wasn’t going to be easy. I took a deep breath, avoided the question, and picked up the smaller of the two, quickly squeezing it into the not-so-big stock pot and held the lid on tight (so it wouldn’t escape?!).

After a steam bath of only two minutes, it was bright pink and ready to be cracked, arched, pulled, separated, and unhinged all in an effort to get the meat from the exoskeleton! I had lobster juice in my hair, on my nose, and even on my big toe!

In the middle of this dismemberment, my daughter walked in and asked what I was doing. Not wanting to spoil her dinner by having her view the gross green goo from the stomach that I was trying to get rid of, I quickly said “Oh, nothing. Why don’t you go play outside.” I failed. She saw it, and she’ll probably never eat lobster!

Finally, the meat extraction was done. I pulled out my mom’s 37-year-old Weight Watchers scale & bowl with its crooked red indicator arrow hoping I would have ¾ of a pound of lobster meat. 5 ounces! That’s it. That’s all. I thought about sucking the meat out of the small legs, but decided to hope for the best from lobster #2. The second lobster didn’t fare much better, but I went ahead with the 12 ounces total that I got from these two beasts.

Watch a pro clean a lobster
Here’s a great video showing how to get the meat out of the lobster, one of the hardest parts of this recipe.

I found this placemat handy that my mom got when they visited Prince Edward Island and attended a Lobsterfest.

The cognac
After dealing with the lobster, you cook the aromatics (shallots, leek, carrot, tarragon, and parsley with some butter) along with the choice shells from the lobster for extra flavor. Next, you flambé the lot with 1 cup of Cognac!

According to the French, Cognac is made from eaux-de-vie, which literally means "waters of life". This strikes me as ironic after moments ago killing the lobster!

Cognac is a brandy named after the town of Cognac in France. At the local “liquor board store”, I was able to find Hennessey, which is a prominent French winery that specializes in making cognac. After pouring this liquid gold into the pot, I lit it on fire. Everyone quickly took pictures. We watched. We waited. I had to hold my dad back from plopping the lid on top to put the fire out. Finally, after 5 minutes, the fire finally died out!

If that wasn’t enough alcohol, you then add a bottle of white wine. Finish it off with some tomato paste, salt, pepper, cream, and water. And let it bubble away for a while. After straining it, I had to add some water to bring it up to 6 cups. This seemed a shame, as I thought it would dilute the taste, but it didn’t.

The meatloaf
While the bisque bubbled and with the lobster meat extracted, I was ready to make the meatloaf…I mean “mousseline”. That has a much nicer ring to it, don’t you think?

A bit of a purée in the food processor, a dash of salt and pepper, a drizzle of foamy egg white, a touch of cream, and a sprinkle of chervil. {Chervil has been playing hard to get with me. I’ve looked in every grocery store I go to. Finally, in the small prairie city of Regina, Saskatchewan, I find a lonely bag of chervil on the shelf. “Doesn’t have much taste”, my sister says. She’s right! It looks pretty, though!}

I shaped the puréed meat into footballs, or "quenelles" as they're called, {easier to do with your fingers than the two-spoon method}, and poached them in some of the expensive broth {I would use water next time to save the broth for mouths rather than frying pans} with a buttered parchment paper circle as a lid. Ten minutes later, the lobster meatloaf was ready to garnish the bisque.

The thickener
Finally, to thicken the bisque, you use rice flour and butter to make a roux. {I don’t know why rice flour is used instead of all-purpose.} After slowly adding the broth to the roux, it simmers again to develop even more flavor.

To finish the bisque, you add a liaison of cream and eggs. This time, the cookbook says to bring it all to a boil AFTER adding the liaison. I did not want any curdling action since I'd spent all afternoon and so much money on this soup! I heated it to a suitable serving temperature, and bingo, presto….finally the bisque was done.

Like the Cream of Chicken Soup, this bisque wasn’t thick or viscous. It was creamy, though.

Recipe: Bisque de Homard (Lobster Bisque)

You can find the recipe for Bisque de Langoustins (Langoustine Bisque) {I substituted lobster for langoustines} in the book Le Cordon Bleu at Home (affiliate link). To see how the rest of the Whisk Wednesdays group fared with this week's recipe, click here (or check out the sidebar) and then click on each blogger!

Tasting Notes

This soup had a rich, creamy flavor that was smooth and pleasing to the palate. The quenelles that floated on top of the soup provided a different texture and satisfying bite of lobster meat.

A dollar for every sip. Was it worth it?

“A bargain at thrice the price~!” says my mom. {But she’s my mom.} Next time, I’ll use shrimp.

Next Week (August 6)
• Consommé Madrilène (Chilled Consommé with Red Peppers and Tomatoes) pages 267-268

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Running total: $506.28 + $97.96 ($16.33 per serving!) = $604.24

Butter used so far: 6 pounds, 26 tablespoons

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Just a note that I'm away for a couple days at a cottage without internet (yikes), so I may not get around to everyone's blogs in the next few days. I promise to catch up when I get back.