Most of horror films are crap. Well, maybe I just do not like them much. This one is pretty good, it is well made and scary most of the time. Not sure it really makes sense or comes together well but this is a decent horror film.
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The killing of a Sacred Deer (Yorgos Lanthimos – 2017) C
I’ve really liked Lanthimos unique vision and style. His films are always a bit off, the dialogue stilted and artificial. The subject matter mostly horrific. We have all that here. We have good actors doing excellent work. Yet, yet compared to his other work there seems to be no point to it here. The horrible circumstances and events that happen to the surgeon, his wife and his family seem sadistic for no purpose. Not my favorite this one.
Glandoulat: Red Beans and Pork with Carrots from the Southwest of France
Cool name but really this is a delicious classic combination of pork and beans made all the more refined and nuanced because it’s another recipe from Paula Wolfert’s The Cooking of Southwest France. It’s perfect for the cool weather months and simpler to prepare than a Cassoulet or Garbure (It’s been a while since I made a good Cassoulet now that I think about it. I should change that.)
Like almost any bean dish, first we soak the red beans in plenty of water overnight. Next day I put the beans in a clay pot with an onion stuck with a couple cloves and a cinnamon stick. I do love cooking these dishes in clay pot and let them take their sweet time and simmer slowly. To flavor the dish we reach out to Pancetta, garlic, parsley, thyme and bay. I pureed all that in a food processor to a smooth paste. This stuff just smells great.
In a separate pan, I seared pork shoulder chunks in fat. What fat? I’m sure one would wonder. Well, this is southwestern French cooking so traditionally we are using duck or goose fat. As it happens I have duck fat in my freezer….and pork fat…and bacon fat…and chicken fat. Nice fat collection that I use for different dishes. I usually save any fat from the surface of stock and add it to the appropriate jar. This is delicious stuff that lasts forever in the freezer and makes good dishes great.
When the pork, seared in a mixture of duck and pork fat, was well colored I added chopped onions and carrots and sauteed that until they barely got some color on them. The entire contents of the pan then gets added to the beans in the clay pot plus the pancetta/garlic paste. Now we let the whole thing gently simmer and bubble away until the beans are very tender. The aroma as this happens is one of those most memorable comforting smells ever.
This is a beans, pork and carrots dish. So now on to the carrots. Easy task this one. I peeled some nice organic carrots and sliced them crosswise. I then sauteed them in butter with a pinch of sugar until barely done. On another note these are some cool carrot pictures.
I do love a good baguette with these types of French bean dishes. I have upped my game a bit since I last posted about a bean/baguette meal. Using my sourdough starter and a recipe based on the one from the Tartine book I made some delightful baguettes. They were definitely one of the best I’ve made so far. Deeply browned, crispy crackly and with a tender flavorful crumb and perfect for sopping up the awesome juices.
To bring it all together I scraped any solidified fat from the beans and brought them to a gentle simmer again. Then I added the glazed carrots to the clay pot of beans and put them in the oven, uncovered. This melds the flavors together and starts developing a “crust” on the surface. I stirred the crust in and returned them back to the oven. I did this a few times until service time. The last flourish is to sprinkle the dish with a mixture of minced garlic and parsley, a couple of tablespoons of cognac and some sherry vinegar.
Incredibles 2 (Brad Bird – 2018) B
It’s fine. Does exactly what is expected. Some laughs, some cool action set pieces and fun characters.
Kingsman: The Golden Circle (Matthew Vaughn – 2017) B-
It’s a fun romp that picks up on some of the threads of the first one. It’s not nearly as fresh and new, it cannot be I suppose but it does what it promises. Cool fights, silly premise, over the top villain,…and Elton John.
Tartine Baguettes
Time for another gratuitous bread post with mostly picture. Well, these are more than just gratuitous I suppose. This is, after all, a journal for me and a record that I go back to if I want to verify something and try not to repeat mistakes. These beauties are the most delicious and damn near perfect baguettes I’ve made so far. The flavor is delightful and almost nutty. The crust and crumb are in perfect crispy/tender harmony.
Like most of Tartine bread recipes these make use of natural leaven for the fermentation and flavor. I have posted before about how I maintain my rye sourdough starter and make the leaven in more detail here. Baguette recipe also uses a Poolish as well. Poolish is made by mixing equal parts of flour and water with a very tiny amount of instant yeast. This sits for several hours until bubbly.
Shaping baguettes is a bit tricky because you need to handle the dough more than a boule shape for example. Too much handling can deflate the dough instead of maintaining all the flavorful bubbles in there. The Tartine book directions are pretty clear though and I got some decent baguette shapes, a total of 4 from the recipe that fit neatly on my baking stone (2 at a time).
Good bread crust depends on steam that helps develop a thin crackly crust with lots of tiny bubble on the surface. Using the “bake in the Dutch oven” method takes care of that by trapping the steam in the pot. With long shapes like a baguette that is not a possible baking method. To trap some steam in I used a large disposable aluminum baking pan, like the one you use to bake a turkey in. This fit neatly on top of the baguettes covering them and the baking stone for the first 15 minutes of the bake time. The result was very good and simulated steam injected professional ovens well.
I mainly baked those to go with a French bean and pork dish (next post). That’s an excellent combination of course, but these baguettes were so good with some butter and salt. They are by far better than the vast majority of baguettes you can find in town.
Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey) A-
A really wonderful adaptation of this superhero story. It looks unique and beautiful. It features an excellent cast, a good story, it’s funny, has a lot of heart and just all around a lot of fun. Nice surprise this one.
