When Ideas Are Better than Reality

Have you ever had a great idea and thought..."I can do that!"  
It starts out pretty innocently: 

Step 1.  Accept invitation to dinner and agree to bring a dish. 

Step 2.  Decide to bring a White Fish Terrine from Richard Olney’s book Simple French Food because Annie made it for one of our cookbook club dinners (see  July, 2009) and I just loved it.  Note the word "Simple" in the title....NOT!   It was an ambitious project for me but since I’ve always wanted to try it, I thought this was the time!  GREAT IDEA!!

Note to self:  Make sure I have 2 days when I have nothing else to do but make this dish….or now in hindsight, scrap the whole idea!

Okay, so first I go shopping to buy various ingredients.  I decide to buy the whole fish because the recipe calls for fish heads and carcasses to make a fumet.  So I purchase whole petrale sole, and whole striped bass for the white fish, plus 10-12 Dover sole filets to line the terrine.   His recipe says to remove the fish eyes…ugh!  That was totally gross.  I don’t mind gutting the fish, removing gills, etc. but poking out the eyes?  AND, it’s not easy to get those eyeballs out of the skulls!  Anyway, add other ingredients, carrot, onion, leek greens, parsley, herbs and spices.   Olney doesn’t say how much of the herbs and spices to add and I now see that I put too much.   Refrigerate strained liquid for at least an hour to get it to jell and set.

Meanwhile make the duxelles, panade and forcemeat…again, not real clear amounts so I think I put too much greens into the forcemeat mixture….and not enough salt.

After baking the terrine in bain-marie, I unmold the terrine and it falls apart!!!  E-E-E-E-EK!  "Bill, come into the kitchen, I need your help, RIGHT NOW!"  Quick, put the loaf pan back over the terrine and turn it right-side up again.   I leave it in the loaf pan and hope that it will magically re-form in the refrigerator overnight….and make Plan B.   My "Save" worked and the terrine firmed up with the natural jell from the fish.  It wasn't tight but presentable. . . barely.

This terrine has an aspic covering using the fumet and gelatin.  How I saved  the terrine, at least in how it looked, was I put some of the aspic into the crevasse that ran down the top of the terrine to fill it in before adding the the multi-layers of aspic.   As you can see, it sort of looks okay.

And, when I served it, the slices also fell apart…no way to save that!  Oh well, great idea but poor execution.  It didn’t even taste that good.  Definitely needed more salt and the texture wasn’t very terrine-like.  Sigh…I was pooped by the time I was done!   IF I make it again, I would do several things differently to change the texture and taste!   Then again, maybe this dish is a "been there, done that" experience.

The only thing I loved about this dish was the tomato cream.  A savory whipping cream made with juice from sieved tomatoes, herbs and S&P.   Now I have to think some other dishes I can use the tomato cream with!!  Yum!

DOUGHNUT UPDATE:  If you remember, I was on the search for the perfect doughnut recipe that creates a crispy doughnut that has holes in the the raised dough (see Oct, 2011 post).   We were at Manresa on Monday to celebrate David Kinch's new cookbook release (and saw Jeffrey, David & Michelle there too. . .you were all invited!).  This is a beautiful book, the cover is embossed, the photographs are stunning and David is a true writer because you will want to actually "READ" this book instead of just doing the recipes.   Back to Monday.  I spoke to the baker who makes all of their bread and churns their butter.  Manresa is the only restaurant where the bread and butter is a course.  The breads are always divine and the butter is churned at the restaurant (the butter comes from special cows who only produce cream for Manresa).  Anyway, I asked her what advice she had for me to create the doughnut of my dreams.  She suggested trying a poolish starter.  I had no idea what a poolish was. . . thank goodness for Google!  So when I have the time (another whole day process), I will give a poolish doughnut recipe a try.  I'll give you an update report when I do.

What culinary adventures have YOU been having?