- Today I want to show you
how to make a party ahead. A little bit, you know,
party food. For that usually for me it's like a large piece of something in the middle of the table. Which can be done ahead,
like a whole salmon or a whole braised ham. And this is what we are going to do today, actually, a braised ham shoulder. It's quite available in
different part of the country, relatively
inexpensive and there's a certain way of using it. Usually, it will come slightly smoked and so called pre-cooked. That is, it is entirely cooked and you could have it just the way it is. You get a great deal,
however, if you re-cook it. Which is what I'm doing here. I have here a piece of shoulder pork, which I put in the lot of water, see? A lot of water, and that cook very slowly. It should not go above like 180 degrees. If it goes too fast,
it breaks, and the pork tend to be dry. So you keep it at 180 degrees and you can use one of those thermometers to keep it just under the boil. And in that time, you keep it like an hour and a half. It does different things. First, you re-cook your ham. Do your pork, you know?
It may shrink a little bit. But the taste is much much better. And secondly, with a lot of water around it can wash up a great deal of the salt. It makes it milder in taste too. So it's a good thing to do. So, water, and you let it cool off in the water like I have done here. Now, we want to trim it. Sometimes, you know, depending where the rind is here. Cause this is where the bone is in. I remove that rind from the top and sometimes, you know, I put it back on top of it. Coring it like this. But I know a lot of people tend to avoid the skin so you can remove it or put it back. But one way or the other, between the layer of skin on top and the meat, there is a large layer of fat. The top fat. That you want to remove. So I cut right from me to the meat, you know? That will improve not only the taste of it but of course most of the fat is in, I mean, a great deal of the fat we're leaving in the surface of the skin. That's what you want to do, remove it. Again, you know, when you finish removing this on top, you can put that back. I think we're going to
remove it altogether. In addition to that,
you see the color of the meat here. Very leathery and tough. I want to remove some
of that, a small layer of that, because it's too tough. So, just cut a little bit of this. It is not gonna waste
food because ultimately the taste is going to be so much better. You can give that to the dog. That's what I put in mine. I have several dogs and I put that in their food. So, you go all around
like that to be sure that the thing is streamed. Nicely, all around. You remove all of that black skin. So, now it's been re-cooked, now we cook it in the oven. So there is different level of cooking. Now we have this. All of that, we don't use it really. Or that can simply be
the trimming for the dog. On top of that now, we
want to create a type of topping, you know.
That we will put on top. Put it this way. This is made with dried
mustard, I have Cayenne pepper, and I have paprika here. We are going to mix that in a bowl with a little bit of honey. That's going to be our very spicy type of topping. I'm sure you can do your own, sometimes I do it with
apricot for example. Apricot preserve, you know, is very good with that. Puree of onion, sometimes. But something like that
simple is good too. So, all that should do, you spread that on top. You know, I call
that party food because it is nice to have when you have guests. First, you should actually do that ham the day before. Re-cook
it in water the day before. Then you leave
it to cool off overnight, you know, in the water.
Then you can pick it up and you can trim it how
I have shown you here. Then put that topping on top of it. And now it's ready to go into the oven. Even when it comes out of the oven, it's not when you serve it, really. You serve it when it's lukewarm. We are going to have some juice, it's going to form a bit of a caramel in the bottom. And we're going
to do a soathe with that. So now I put that in the oven for a good hour. On 375 degrees or so. To form not only a crust, but a nice juice on the outside. Now with this, you know,
the pork, even though we did remove a great
deal of fat. It's still quite rich. So what we
want to do with this is a kind of sour dish, you know. And I do a sour kind
of pickle cabbage dish. Which goes very well
with it. And into this, very simply, we put a small cabbage. Though there are one
pound cabbage, several cabbage type, very leafy like this. Nice looking, I need a bigger knife here. You cut that into inch or two-inch pieces you know. It is going to
kind of melt in there. So we put that into,
preferably, a stainless steel type of pot.
Because of discoloration. You want it to keep a nice color. And into this, we put an onion. Sometimes I put an apple in there, it's quite good. But then here we put only onion, cut into diced pieces or so, here. That's it. You know, though these are country dishes, they've done a great deal
in Poland and Germany. You know, those types of thing sometimes was cumin seed. Here I
am putting just cider, sweet cider. I tried to go get my cider, and I make my own cider,
and in a farm which have beautiful apples.
Organic farm, you know. I press it myself. I like the cider when it's cloudy and fresh.
Those are muscat raisins, again, sweetness. Cider
or vinegar in there. Put a dash of salt. A tiny bit of oil. Tablespoon. That's about it. Sometimes I put a piece of butter,
it's not even really necessary. I put that to cook. This has to come to a strong boil. Come to a strong boil
and will cook like a good thirty five minutes.
So that the juices are reduced and be culled by the cider and the sugar in it. It is going to start to caramelize at the bottom of the pan. Give it a bit of a color to the onion and the cabbage, so it's quite good. So, that will be served with our ham. But after the first course, something which is also very good for parties because it can be done ahead. We serve a leek. A leek with a type of vinegarette. That's one very French and very normal dish in France. The leek, we call the asparagus of the poor, because it's very inexpensive
at the market and you cook them, serve them
with vinegarette to like an asparagus. Here,
unfortunately, it is more expensive than asparagus. However, a lot of people use a lot of
the leek. All you lose is the bottom part, here, the root. And after that, the first or second layer, just look at it if you feel it, it is too tough and fibrous. You can remove it. By the time you feel this is a bit more tender, you can cut it here. This one will be cut here. This happens to be a large leek.
This one probably here. Just see where the color change, you see that this one is damaged
here so we'd cut it here. This one probably
here. This one there. And so on, as you see how I get inside the leek itself. The color becomes lighter, light green and it's more tender. And this is the way you want to clean it, open it in half, and now you have to clean that under water. Lukewarm water. To clean it up good. Even this,
I don't even discard that. I wash it, put
it in a pot and keep it for stock. You know, that's what we do in professional kitchen. So this is what I have done here. I clean up the leek and put it in there. This is stainless steel inside. Just with a cup and a half to two cups of water. So that by
the time it's finished cooking I have almost no water left. So that I have all the nutrients and all the vitamins that I have. And all the fiber that I have in there. Because I have none lost. I don't clean it up. I don't wash the leek under water when they are cooked, you know. And we are going to do that vinegarette type of things for the leek. And I will do it with tomato, Worcestershire sauce, red wine vinegar and a little bit of olive oil that I am going to use here. So, French mustard first.
I like a lot of mustard. A little bit of Worcestershire sauce. Vinegar, I always have a problem to pronounce the name of that sauce. And olive oil on top. Crack pepper. Dash of salt. Crack pepper.
And that's basically in there to give it some color. We are going to do a bit of tomato. I have that tomato here. Which has
been dipped in boiling water. I will peel it off like this. Again, this goes with my pieces of leek. I keep it for stock. Cut it in half. And again, press the seed out, you know. I'll press the seed in there. You see, press all the seeds out so the juice and seeds are removed, the skin is removed. And all of that stuff goes in the stock. You know, I keep it. Cut that in tiny dice. This is a nice sauce for a poached fish also, you know. That's that. You want to mix this. Add your tomato to it, and don't mix it too much. You want it to be separated. I have found people who
have tried the sauce and said, "I don't want
the vinegar to separate from the oil." What I wanted to hear was, "I don't want the mixture
like a mayonnaise." Very thick. So, I want
it to fold in between when we put it on this. Now what you do there just press your leek more or less to remove most of the
water. Leftover, this is still lukewarm, you know,
the way it would be. And keep that water! To make soup with it. That's great. Then we
cut that into two inches, about two to three inches. And when I arrange it here, you
see. I will arrange some of the lighter green, some of the darker green. Some of the darker green here. Lighter color and so forth so that, you know, the thing is nicely mixed together when you serve. All I have here, you know, if you go in France in a small bistro and all that. You're going to have those leek vinegarette. A great deal. It's a classic dish
here. Do it ahead also. Do it ahead and put that sauce ahead on top of it. This is what is going to go through it, you know.
The sauce will go through it. The tomato in it will devil up and warm the food. Taste, you know. And this is it on our first party dish of the day. And when you make nice party, you know. I'll find you want to decorate the table a little bit. A nice way of decorating the table is to do something I have done here with an apple. An apple swan. Which is relatively easy to do. Do it with a green one, yellow one, red one. The hardest part of it, you know, you cut the base and that base will become the head of the
swan. And you just have to carve a head free hand here. This is really the hardest part of it, you know, just make the head.
Often, my swan looks like a duck, but it's okay. And that's it. You cut this out of it, you see. This is the head, the hardest part. And that'll make you a little hole here in the skin to make the eye, you know. Though, this is your hardest part, that you can eat. Put that on the side. Now, you want to do a wedge. Here, and it's just like we're cutting a little wedge. And cut another little wedge. And another one, those are going to be the wing, of course. You do another one on the other side. I did four here. I think I need glasses. Okay, and you can put them right back on top of it. This way. They fit. Then you turn it to do the same thing on the other side. One. Two. This is a classic thing, you know, that you teach student in school, also. But when my daughter was small, I
used to make rabbits. Look at this one, it's
broken. Doesn't matter. Just put it back, don't say anything to anyone. Put it there
and it's going to work just fine. Then after the two wings, now we do the tail. It's on top of it, what you are doing actually
is two or three wedges. From the center, you are going to extend in the back to do the
tail. Here we have them here. And in front of it here, you want to make you a hole to put the head. Just carve out a little hole here. Okay. So, now it's fun time.
Time to put this back. One this way. One this way. One this way. Make a long tail, you know. Now you extend the wing this way. The
other wing this way. And that's about it, you know. When you are ready to go somewhere,
you fold it back. Fold the whole thing back. Put lemon juice on it so it doesn't discolorate. And you take it to a party. You can fan it up on it on the table to do stuff. You put the red wing on the yellow one, the yellow one on the red one. And you can do a nice little piece like this. Now on our menu, what we have to do is the dessert. And for the dessert, we have a classic American dessert. Strawberry shortcake. And we'll use half a
cup of flour for this. Regular flour. Half a cup of cake flour. Note that I go directly into the flour and level it off. This is what a cup of flour is for me. Three cups of flour when you measure them this way is going to be one pound of flour, if it's measured this way. And here, we add a teaspoon of baking powder. Half a
teaspoon of baking powder. What is the difference? Baking powder is made from- The-the-the
baking powder, right? It's made from- No this is not the baking- Yes this is baking
powder. And baking soda, I'm sorry. The baking
soda is made of baking- Baking powder is made of baking soda and cream of tartar mixture.
What does the cream of tartar do? It gives acidity to it. So when you have something acidic, like I have here with sour
milk. Instead of using baking powder, you use baking soda because you already have your acid in it. Sometimes, you know, it happens that you say "I just have baking soda, I don't have baking powder." It
doesn't matter, put that little bit of acid in it. It will work. A bit of lemon juice, or in that case, here we have buttermilk. So, you grab that together and you don't really want to, you want little pieces left
over in this. You know, you don't want it to
be too. And we put the liquid in it. And you mix it gently. You want to gather it
gently. You don't want to make much of a dough with it that. A soft type of dough. Okay,
that's about it, you know. You have to be very gentle with this. And we spread it out. We cook it. We cook it right away.
So it's easy to make, you know. And what I am going to do, which makes it easy, you know. I put it directly onto my baking sheet here. I don't want to fool around with it too much. Its easier if I take a piece of plastic wrap directly on top, you know. And I
use this to press it to the thickness that I
want. I don't want to lose anything, so I'm going
to do them like a square. So just press that square, you know, about that thickness. You'll feel it be right. Now you cut them. You
can move them a little bit away, you know.
This way. This one here. And that's it. I mean,
those often aren't done wrong, but you know the
shape really doesn't have anything to do with it. Okay. So this goes into the oven now.
We can brush it, actually, the top with a little
bit of that buttermilk, you know. It is nice to
brush it. Directly into the oven. I have one
here and I have another one, which is cooked, right on top here. So I'm going to put it
in the back for the time being while we are doing the sauce. Which goes with that, the
strawberry. And that's very easily done, you see,
what I have here. I have strawberry, a lot of
them kind of damaged so what you do is remove
the hull, of course, and then you the white part
underneath, you know. Which tend to be a bit
more sour, you know. And any other damage part, just put it in there and the rest you keep it. With those trimming, we're going
to do the sauce, see? So here you got a piece
and again in there. Now I put those trimmings in the food processor with some
raspberry jam, you know. And that's it. You have
your sauce right there. You could put a little bit of leek if you wanted to. Not really necessary. Puree. And we're going to put our pieces of berry in there. I think it's
about enough, just enough to moisten. Now remember,
we do the recipes for four so it's not that
much. I have enough of a sauce here, really.
Here we are. And there. And that can be done
ahead, you know. Its great. And now we can assemble
it together, you know. Its not- You would not want
to assemble it earlier, you know, because it's
going to get dry. Now you don't want to soak
the- You don't want to get that too soft, you
know. So look at this one. Its nice. I can cut it
up and its still warm, of course, in the center.
I think it's nice and short. This is the way I like it, nice and fluffy. Mmm. Good. Smells good. Then some of those on top. You know. And they're on. This is your real
classic American dessert. The strawberry shortcake.
And when I have guests coming from France, I
always serve that to them. Cause it's delicious and because it is American cuisine, you
know. A little bit of sour cream or even a little bit more juice on top here. I like it dripping. A bit of the sour cream if you
want to splurge with it. Maybe a sprig of mint,
you know, if you want a bit of color here or there. And that's it. We have a beautiful dessert here, that you assemble at the last moment, remember? And now, we're going to do the pork, which I have in the oven.
She's finally cooked. Look how beautiful and
crystallized it is. Dark. With those juicing the
bottom and in the juice, I'm putting a little bit
of vinegar and sometimes even a little bit of
water. Just to melt those solidified juices that
I have in the bottom. Remember, there is some
sugar, some honey in there. So you have those
juices. And on this, you can baste this with
it to have nice shiny deep rich color. I will
also show you the cabbage, which now are reduced,
still hot. And I think we are going to arrange
this right in there. Cabbage on top. Do it
like a bed of cabbage. Nice and very earthy
looking. And we can put our roast, you know, right on top of it. With some of the juice
on top of it, you can keep some of the juice to serve separate. Because now, you know,
at the table, all you have to do is to cut into
this. See the beautiful, juicy color and it's nice and well cooked. And now the best part
of the party is to enjoy the food. This is a great
looking roast that you bring to the table like
a centerpiece, you know. Put a big thing like
that, like a big roast, and you can let your
guests help themselves. They can slice and all
that, its nice. I know that pork, you know, is high in fat but remember what we did.
First, we re-cooked it. Which made it much much
better in taste, which eliminated quite a lot
of salt also. Then we removed basically all
the visible fat from the top. Then glaze it in
the oven. That on top of your cabbage there,
you see, the cabbage is very high in fiber and
with the raisins in it, the aciditives, the
sweetness with the richness of them make a terrific dish for a party. Easy and relatively
inexpensive. Of course, with that, we have a refreshing leek. Leek is always good in a
salad like that. A warm ... The juice of the
leek make fantastic soup. And you have that type of
tomato oil sauce on top which makes it also
quite special. And with this we have, of course, the decoration of our swan. Which can always
light up a table, you know? A nice salad. And
finally, we have our strawberry shortcake here. The strawberry shortcake, the dough is
very delicately done so that it can crumble and
be soft. A bit of sour cream on top, if you
want to cut down you can have a light type of
sour cream. Or even some yogurt, it's fine. Or mix it all together. But it is going to be
very satisfying to your guests and I'm sure they
are going to love it. With that, you know, at
a party we like to serve, any type of wine is
fine, but this is a dry type of wine which is
from the south of France. Very dry, that everyone
liked. I hope you are going to like it too. I hope you are going to try my dish. I enjoyed
making it for you. Happy cooking!
