I admit it - I don't keep promises well!!

At least, not promises I make to myself about my blogs. 


I seems I haven't posted anything on either one since May. I need to slap myself!


I can't talk much about cooking because I haven't done much in the past few months. However, I will tell you that I finally made the No Boil Baked Ziti recipe I have posted from last year just a couple days ago. And, this time, I actually used ziti instead of rotini. It turned out wonderfully! I also used cottage cheese instead of ricotta - other than having curds instead of a smoother consistency, there was no difference!


Last night, I went to eat at the local diner and enjoyed some Flounder Francaise. If you haven't tried this, you ought to. It's really quite good. The flounder is covered in an egg batter and fried and set on a bed of cooked rice. It is all then covered with a creamy lemon sauce (not super lemony, which I like). I had two huge pieces of flounder and so much rice! The only thing I didn't like was the pimentos they added. I also had cream of broccoli soup, which was pretty good. 


If you're not much of a fish eater, try the Chicken Francaise instead. The chicken breast is flattened before being battered, so the piece of chicken looks huge when it arrives. It's also much more tender since it was flattened.


I had wanted to get breakfast for dinner, but they don't have grits after 3pm and I didn't want home fries. I just don't digest potatoes as well as I used to, so when I can substitute something, I do. Grits remind me of cream of wheat and I eat them the same way.

The Process of Poaching

I thought it would be wise to finally approach the letter of the day (yesterday, actually) without delay, especially since my sanity may be in question after having produced THREE “R” posts after forgetting twice that I’d already posted one. *sigh*

The topic is going to be about the process of poaching. Poaching consists of cooking “delicate” foods in water with the addition of an acid and, often, aromatics. It’s interesting because until I began looking at this, I thought the only thing poached was an egg…an egg I won’t even eat on Eggs Benedict because I just don’t like eggs cooked any way but scrambled. So, I’m learning something, too.

So-called delicate foods are foods such as eggs, poultry, fish and fruit. Based on what I’m seeing, poaching is similar to braising in that the food is cooked in a liquid. To prevent these foods from falling apart or drying out, the cooking is kept to a bare minimum.

Traditionally in poaching, eggs are cooked in water and vinegar, poultry in stock, fish in white wine and fruit in red wine. The vinegar and the wines are the acids, although it appears that chicken cooked in stock can be acid free, unless one of the aromatics has an acid content I’m not aware of.

One of the benefits of poaching is the reduction of fat content in recipes. Chicken that is poached can be used in a variety of recipes that require already cooked chicken. I’ve always viewed poached eggs as “frying in water”. Obviously, that’s not culinarily accurate, but the resulting egg is very similar to a fried egg cooked medium minus the fat.

Fish can be poached in a variety of bases such as water or milk; even coconut milk or olive oil. Fruits, while often calling for red wine, can be poached in white wine, brandy or even coffee. Dried fruits can be reconstituted through poaching as well.

All in all, poaching appears to be a very healthy way to cook these foods. I don’t know that I would ever use this method myself, but I saw a couple recipes I’d be willing to try if someone made it. I’ll post a few interesting recipe links below.

Cranberry Poached Pears with Vanilla Ricotta

Mediterranean Poached Fish

Creole Poached Chicken Breasts

Moroccan Ragout with Poached Eggs