Recipe Lottery #1 from Cafe Boulud Cookbook

Ok, just had an idea. Not sure if this has been done but I’m guessing it has since everything else has been done before but for me this is a new idea, gives me a chance to try things I might not normally attempt to cook or eat and might even be fun.

The idea is that I pick a book, in this case the Cafe Boulud Cookbook that arrived today, randomly select three recipes and then choose one of them to actually try making.  I’ll do this draw three times and attempt to cook one of the three selections from each draw over the course of a week.  That make any sense?  If it doesn’t now then it will shortly.  One last point, if I was truly brave I’d just use one random number and make whatever it picks but I really don’t feel like making “Beet and Tongue Salad” so that’s why I’m going with three selections.

So, how do I go about picking random recipes?  Closing my eyes and picking a page is one idea but not a very good one so instead I will turn to http://www.random.org and use their number generator.  Put in a minimum, in this case 14 since that is the page number of the first recipe, and 359 for the last page.  This isn’t an exact random recipe selector since some recipes take many pages and other pages might have a couple of recipes but it approximates things well enough.

Let’s get started.  207, 155 and 109.  That let’s me choose between

1. Crab, Mango and Cucumber Salad
2. Crisp Potato Cakes with Chicken Livers and Herb Fromage Blanc
3. Chestnut, Celery Root and Apple Soup

Seriously???  What a dumb idea…  Well I’m not eating Chicken Livers so #2 is out.  The soup sounds ok but not really something I’d enjoy making or eating.  I’m going with the Crab,Mango and Cucumber Salad and although I’ll make it as close to the original as possible, I’ll probably leave my cucumber slices on the side of mine.

Round #2.  Please be kinder to me you evil random number generator.  114, 56, 216

1. Beet and Tongue Salad.  LOL.  My comment I wrote above about Beet and Tongue Salad was written before I did this draw.
2. Duck Civet (Duck slowly braised in red wine ragout)
3. Clams Casino

I would have been prepared to try the Duck Civet but thankfully I was spared and Clams Casino is actually something I’m looking forward to making.

Round #3.  207, 301, 17.  207 is a repeat of something I’m already making from round #1 so draw a new number: 78

1. Celery Duo
2. Root Vegetable Cassoulet
3. Potage Parisien with Sorrel Cream

So you’re probably thinking that the book kinda sucks but I just ended up getting a lot of weird recipes.  For round #3 I’m going to go with the Potage Parisien with Sorrel Cream which is basically a leek and potato soup.

So, to recap, the winners are

1. Crab, Mango and Cucumber Salad (I modified this because I picked up the wrong kind of crab)



2. Clams Casino



3. Potage Parisien with Sorrel Cream

Sunday or possibly Monday night will probably be my first chance to knock off one of these dishes and in order to squeeze in all three within a week I’m thinking about doing one or more for lunch.  We’ll have to wait and see how things works out

Roy