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"Surf and turf" - Fillet Mingnon, cooked sous-vide, Maine Uni and Veal Stock Sauce, King Crab.
This is an original idea - sweetness and "brine"-ness of uni with stock are quite enjoyable, but veal stock needs to be reduced a lot more.
"Poached Escolar, Broccolini, Potato Crisps, Bearnaise Sauce."
This dish has been photographed and described by numerous Flickr members, although this picture taken by Ulterior Epicure, and the description thereto remain my personal favorites.
Escolar was poached sous-vide in Extra Virgin Olive Oil, at 54C for only 5 minutes, and was served rare with blanched broccolini ( original recipe calls for sea beans) and crispy banana potato chips.
Curious Detail: escolar sells for about $8.-/lbs wholesale, while sea beans sell for about $15.-/lbs, and it's still a hard-to-find item - this gives me an idea how particular "Le Bernardin" is to the quality of their ingredients.
Lobster Salad, Vietnamese Style:
- barely cooked Lobster Claws, Arugula, Vietnamese Cellophane Noodles, Black Garlic Nuoc Cham Dressing.
I have reserved claws from the same lobster used in Lobster Grilled Cheese Sandwich, and cooked a la "Per Se" style - i.e. repeatedly covered them with boiling water for about three minutes, which resulted in a very tender texture. Nuoc Cham dressing was made with black garlic , chillies, lime, lemon and yuzu juice, generous amount of fish sauce and brown Muscovado sugar - delivering sweet, sour, salty and umami flavors, complimented by sweetness of the shellfish and slightly bitter crunch of arugula.
I would go against Chef Keller's salads with this any day of the week.
Spaghetti with shiitake mushrooms, parmesan, and pepper.
I had to try this recipe after drooling over a gorgeous picture of it among jenblossom's photos. Recipe originally from Food & Wine Magazine.
Gougeres - Pate Choux, Comte flavor.
Pretty straight-forward prep and presentation, inspired by "French Laundry". I wouldn't mind to try a more aggressive cheese sometime - sharp Cheddar, perhaps? For this meal these were perfect , though.
"Poached Escolar, Broccolini, Potato Crisps, Béarnaise Sauce."
I got an early start tomorrow, so I didn't want to open a bottle of red tonight, but I still wanted to have strong wine overtones to Béarnaise, so I added a touch of red vermouth and just a touch of sherry vinegar, as well as tarragon, shallot, black pepper, and very little of allspice,clove and fenugreek to Béarnaise base. I absolutely love making custards and custard based sauces, but this one was something else...
I would make this dish again anytime.
Heart and Tongue, Sichuan Style:
- Pork Heart, Pork Tongue, Sweet Chili Oil, Honey, Black Garlic, Bok Choy, Sichuan Peppercorns.
This is a very interesting dish, and on quite a few levels.
The inspiration came from a recent "Australia" episode of "No Reservations" with Tony Bourdain. In this episode they had a segment shot at Dainty Sichuan Food Restaurant, the food of which is pictured by avlxyz.
Real Sichuan Food is hard to find outside of China. Multiple levels of flavors, and the much sought after balance between hot dried chillies and floral Sichuan Peppercorns is complemented by sweet overtones and spicy accents of other ingredients - it is not an easy craft.
This dish is not an attempt to cook authentic Sichuan fare, but rather to introduce original flavors of Sichuan cooking to Western palate.
Pork heart was brined and cooked sous-vide for 24 hours, pork tongue long-braised witrh Sichuan Peppercorns, Kaffir Lime leaves, Orange Peel and Soy Sauce, and quickly tossed in sweet chilli oil, with Black Garlic, garlic, ginger, Nu Er Hong Rice Wine and Sichuan Peppercorns.
This dish truly worked out for me - the complexity of flavors and balance between hot and sweet flavors was nicely complimented by slightly numbing coolness of Sichaun peppercorns.
I saw an interesting dish on a menu at Congee Village in NYC:
"Boiled Conch with Asparagus" ( item S520 on the menu, "Seafood" section, $20.95)
Although I did not try it, primarily because of the cost - I still wanted to make a replica of that plate. This is how it turned out.
Conch was cooked sous-vide @ 77F for 12 hours, and had almost abalone-like texture, asparagus was quickly blanched, sauce was simple light soy with soaked fermented beans and preserved lemon. Unfortunately, I ran out of fresh chillies - my idea was to quickly pickle them and use as a garnish on the conch, perhaps with strings of orange zest.
This is a very light and enjoyable appetizer.
Hand-made Tagliatelle, Fresh Truffles
Inspired by Pasta at "Per Se" - this plate is the centerpiece of the entire dinner.
Simplicity could be so deceiving...
This is yet another replica of a dish by a great Chef - Debbie Gold/The American Restaurant in Kansas City, MO. Some meals and restaurants are close, yet the seem so far... This Chef and her restaurant are just an arm's length away, I've been told. Not sure when there is a chance, but I am enormously excited about trying the food of The American Restaurant.
Also, and as always, there are some credits due: Many Thanks to the Ulterior Epicure for sharing original Foie Pastrami pictures and his insight, as well as the entire American Restaurant photo collection.
Few details:
Foie is Hudson Valley Foie Gras, cured for 18 hours in salt/Lyle's Golden Syrup/curing mix brine with pickling spice I traditionally use to prepare Corned Kobe Beef brisket, and then flash smoked over oak and cherry sawdust.
Disclaimer: original preparation seem to be considerably more refined - my guess they separate the lobes into smaller pieces, cure those,then put them through a tamis, and reshape the liver in a terrine mold, but I may be wrong. Anyway, I want to preserve the natural shape and feel of foie gras.
Also, I went for a pretty coarse pastrami spice spice, whereas Chef Gold seem to have chosen a finer grind.
Kumquat/Pink Grapefruit marmelade was made with two principal ingredients with 4 whole cloves (ground cloves would be completely overpowering) and touch of Berbere African spice ( chilli, ginger, coriander, fenugreek, cardamom and many others, with predominance of chillies).
Chocolate Sauce - made with 70% chocolate, cream, butter and a touch of glucose for extra viscosity.
Caraway crackers - home-made crisps crisps with roasted caraway.
Overall, this is a phenomenal dish - will make again anytime.
Angel hair pasta tossed with olive oil, lemon juice, and sautéed onion, sprinkled with black pepper, lemon zest and freshly grated Parmesan. The simplest thing but so good.
Don't you love Farmer's Market? I do.
Today I bought some Morels.... Ahhhh... although they were asking $25/lb- we shook hands at $20.- ( noteworthy: downtown foodstore is selling these for $60.-/lb.).
What could be simpler? Risotto is made with Carnaroli Rice, mushroom stock (Chef Keller's recipe), Morels ans Italian Parsley... all I can say - glad there is a little left over.... ;-)
What can I say? I have no imagination of my own - tonight.
Ulterior Epicure has pictured and described the original dish from Tocqueville and suggested it to me - it was intriguing.
I used unbelievable fresh www.flickr.com/photos/nicknamemiket/3549923413/in/set-721... Purple Uni from CA - easily, the highest quality products I've seen, made pasta from scratch using fresh Farmer's Market eggs, and incorporated organic soy, touch of rice vinegar, sea salt and yuzu in the sauce. Just like the original - this pasta features seal lettuce in the sauce, and sprouts as a garnish.
I am at a loss for words ... this plate is in the league of it's own...
Smoked Duck, Asian Pickles, Tomato Pearls, Hawaiian Black Salt.
This dish is meant to be a replica of Sushi Kaji plate from Renee's latest set.
I smoked duck breast over oak saw dust for just a few minutes, brushed it with marinade made with light and dark soy sauces, Xaioxing wine, Five Spice powder and a touch of Kafir lime leaves ( similar marinade sans kaffir lime, is usually used in a Chinese dish called "Smoked Fish", although fish is not smoked at all, but rather gets said flavor from five spice mixture). The duck breast was then poached Sous-Vide at 61F for about 35-45 minutes, and served with home-made Asian pickles ( carrot, turnip, shitake mushrooms, pickled in rice vinegar with Rock sugar, ginger, Sichuan peppercorns and smoked chilies - I wanted to enhance smoked flavor, without using a lot of actual smoke). Also, I added a touch of pickled eggplant , but kept in on the side - a nod to a common friend SiFu Renka and I happen to have.
Plain tomatoes would be a little boring, so I made Beefsteak Tomato Pearls for garnish, and added a touch of black salt for color contrast.
This dish would pair very well with sake, but today I opted for Belgian Kriek Cherry beer , which worked really well.
Overall, this was an outstanding plate - great flavors, texture and secondary flavors. Will do again in a hearbeat!
Meet the best dessert I've made up to this point:
Chocolate Heated to 94 Degrees ( "Alinea" recipe)
Braised Cherries and Strawberries ( original recipe calls for figs), Floral Tea Sauce ( original recipe suggests Earl Grey), Dubai Tea Ice Cream ( "Alinea" uses cassia), 72% Bitter-Sweet Chocolate Chip, 64% Bitter-Sweet Chocolate "Melt"
If only pictures could show taste and aroma... This was an amazing combination of flavors!
Grilled matsutake (wild pine mushrooms), natto (fermented soybeans), steamed rice cooked with bamboo charcoal, and grilled prime rib eye steak.
On the advice of my beef-loving sushi chef, (they happen to know a little something about food!), the best steaks can be found in the Japanese food markets. When asked what cut or grade, he simply advised to get the most expensive cut. So that's what I did, resulting in this heavily marbled rib eye. It was so thin and well-marbled that it took just a total of 1-1/2 minutes on the ami (Japanese fish grill) at high heat. If this seems too short, it wasn't, and perhaps this photo illustrates why... Just sea salt and pepper was all that was needed for seasoning, and the results were great! (If only it was cut thicker... They were all cut very thin.)
The matsutake was also grilled on the same ami after being brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt and coarse black pepper. It was then hand-torn into small shreds while still hot.
The bamboo charcoal was simply placed in the rice pot after first being cleaned and thoroughly boiled. They were then cooked together, and the resulting rice was served with the natto.
Dinner at home
Nov. 4, 2005
Made using a recipe from Dîners fin de mois by Cyril Lignac that was originally brought to my attention by a French blog friend...merci!
NOTE: The recipe below uses half of the original ingredient measurement quantities that were listed in the cookbook recipe, which was supposed to serve 4 people...I actually find that this still serves about 4 people...a little goes a long way!
INGREDIENTS:
8 oz. penne pasta
4 fresh figs
2 small goat cheeses (weight/unit size of cheese was not provided, use your judgment/taste)
2 slices of prosciutto (Parma ham)
25 g (about 1 oz.) sliced almonds
4.5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1.5 tablespoons balsamic vinegar (recipe said to use white balsamic vinegar if you could find it, otherwise just regular balsamic vinegar)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
Salt (I forgot to add this in, but found I didn't even need it)
DIRECTIONS:
Cook the penne according to package directions.
While the pasta is cooking, mix together the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and lemon juice.
Brown the sliced almonds in a pan or toast on a baking pan in the oven for about 10 minutes at 350F until lightly browned.
Slice each fig into thin wedges, and each goat cheese piece into bite sized pieces. Cut or tear each slice of prosciutto into smaller bite sized strips.
Drain the cooked pasta and toss with the olive oil/balsamic vinegar/lemon juice mixture. Allow to cool slightly.
Placed cooled pasta on plates and top with the figs, prosciutto, goat cheese and toasted almonds. Use salt to taste if desired, though you may find it seasoned enough already because of the goat cheese and prosciutto.
Bon appetit!
First attempt at bread using recipe from Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a Day. In case you can't tell, it's the size of a large roll. Did something wrong but it still tasted YUMMY!
A small appetizer for the New Years dinner:
Apple Kimchi
- skyr, brown sugar, sweet and sour apples, prosciutto crisps
Exact replica of a dish at the Bar Ssäm, and one of my favorite kimchi varietals. Really good plate.
I love making dishes made by incredible Chefs - replicating and sometimes improving the original. Not so long ago, however, a friend and someone who's epicurean opinion I value above others asked me why I don't spend more time doing original stuff.
Well, here is one:
Frog Legs Sous-Vide, Cauliflower Tempura, Watercress-Yuzu and Pear-Saffron Sauces, Heat of Bird Eye Chilies
This dish is inspired by pictures made by Bu Pun Su and yummyinthetummyblog
Interesting thing about this plate - both salsas were made without a touch of oil/butter, and were thickened with xantam gum.
Overall the dish worked: liked it, but did not love it.
Salad:
- poached shrimp, green beans, black-eyed peas, sliced cucumbers, cucumber water, chorizo oil.
This plate is very heavy influenced by Chef Michael Anthony and food style of Gramercy Tavern in NYC. Shrimp was poached sous-vide in sweet cream butter, green beans and black-eyed peas were blanched to al dente and seasoned with black pepper and Meyer lemon juice, cucumber water was seasoned with black mineral salt and drizzled with chorizo oil just prior to service.
Please take a look at the entire Dinner in Sioux Falls picture set.
I wanted to make a non-traditional dessert for Easter, and settled on a Lime Tart ( recipe from "Le Bec Fin" cookbook). Luckily there was some Pate Sablee and Lime-Kumquat filling left, so I made a plated version as well.
Pate Sablee is made with all-purpose and cake flours and almond paste, custard filling made with juice of lemons and kumquats, as well as finely minced kumquat rind.
Bruschetta:
- Heirloom Tomato, Toasted Country Bread, Heirloom Tomato Sorbet, Pancetta, Young Garlic Air
This particular plate is a replica of "Pa amb tomàquet" pictured by Kathryn Yu.
(One more time: Congratulations Kathryn and Dan!)
I absolutely loved the flavor combination, my version is missing fuet, which would only make it better.
OK, let's look at it:
Beef Tartare (Kitfo) with Spiced Clarified Butter (Niter Kebe), Feta Cheese (Ayib), Teff Flatbread (Injera), Spicy Sauce (Awaze) and Bird Eye Chili Spice (Mitmita )
This dish has no less than 30 different spices and aromatics, and is truly quite tasteful.
Awaze was made with garlic, ginger, honey, Seltzer water and Berbere spice mix.
Original recipe calls for Tej - Ethiopian Honey Wine, but I was not able to find it anywhere in town (I will try making it at home, though).
Berbere spice mix is well described on www.ethiopianrestaurant.com/ethiopian_spices.html :
"Berbere : A popular Ethiopian seasoning prepared from red chili peppers, garlic, & other spice. Berbere is sun-dried then mixed with more spices & used in wots. Berbere is the source of the dark red color in all the hot dishes in Ethiopia. Finely minced onions, berbere, water and seasoned butter are cooked long and slow over low heat until they become emulsified. Although red pepper is the main ingredient in berbere, its is sun dried together with almost 20 other spices and herbs before being milled extra-fine."
Not necessarily a great picture, but this is something I wanted to make for a very long time: "Lemon Verbena and Clover Honey Vanilla Ice Cream".
Every single ingredient (sans spice) was purchased fresh at the Farmer's Market: Whole MIlk, Lemon Verbena, Yellow Clover Honey, Fresh Eggs. I made the custard using vegetable rennet and a touch of stabilzer.
This is something else .... herbal, clean, crispy, not too sweet. I really enjoyed the taste, but will work on the texture and the presentation going forward.
My workday started at 4:30 am today , and that is not even counting an hour-long drive to work - for the record: I am not a morning person. So, to fight the fatigue I did what I always do - mental cooking. On my way home I stopped at the Whole Foods Market, and that is all she wrote.
This is a plate heavily influenced by a similar dish at Fäviken Magasinet, as described and pictured by Food Snob - a dear friend I have not yet met in person.
Cod Seared with Honey
- Atlantic Cod, clover honey, Rutabaga sauteed in Irish Butter, Fennel Vainaigrette, Lemon, Yolk and Mustard Sauce, Clover Shoots.
The original dish was: Slices of Cod Lightly Brushed with Honey and then Seared in a dry pan, Rutabega Roasted Slowly in the Good Butter, Alcoholic Vinegar, Green Juniper Berries and a Cream of Duck Eggs and Gammelost.
OK, their presentation is more "natural", but I like mine better. Green Juniper Berries are next to impossible to find in the US, but I wanted to see and taste something bright green on my plate, so I opted for the fennel/rice vinegar vinaigrette to add acidity ( next time will make fennel-en-gelle). Cod was absolutely perfect - both the "prima materia" and the way it was cooked. The sauce was a disappointment - I will re-make this dish with pimped-up Hollandaise next time ( Gammelost is a soft, aged cheese - again I couldn't find anything similar in my corners, but as a rule of thumb - I do not like pairing cheese with fish). I suppose I can try bechamel, but smoked Yuzu Hollandaise is still more intriguing to me. Rutabaga with Irish butter was absolutely phenomenal!
Overall, a successful dish, sans the sauce.
Foie Gras, Hibiscus-Beet Gelée, Blood Orange.
This is the dish inspired by Foie dish I had at Corton, also Ulterior Epicure posted a description and outstanding pictures of the same plate.
This was a very good dish, but disappointment of the night. Great flavors, but my Hibuscus Gelle turned out way too thick. I have a slight preference to seared Foie, but not everybody agrees ( you know who you are! LOL)
Noteworthy: I bought a Hibuscus Plant and harvested flowers just to make this Gelee, flavorwise the result was quite satisfactory.
Stir-fry: Fava Beans and Pea Shoots
This is very simple and straightforward: garlic, ginger, chili paste - stir-fry, deglaze with rice vinegar, pea shoot - stir-fry, fava beans - stir-fry, and serve. Very classic Chinese technique, with an addition of French methodology, i.e. deglazing with alcohol or vinegar.
Super fresh and clean flavor, nice shot of spice,
This is my attempt to replicate almost identical dish I had at Casa Mono in NYC.
Minor differences: they used grapefruit - I used Pomelo, original dish calls for baby octopus to be flash cooked - I sous-vide mine, they use extra virgin olive oil for garnish - I used Spanish Chorizo oil. Overall the replica worked: Pomelo matches fennel better than grapefruit, in my opinion. However, advantage is clearly on the Casa Mono side - their dish just tasted better, for some reason.
Dressed Shrimp Sashimi
- Live Santa Barbara Spot Prawns, Shoyu, Lemon, Shrimp Coral, Black Pepper, Cilantro
I was lucky to score live (!!!) Santa Barbara Spot Prawns, so I just wanted to give it a taste both raw and cooked.
Prawns were seasoned with soy and lemon juice, and dressed with flash-cooked coral ( aka "head soup"), finished with black pepper. Delightful.
This was my first of many future visits to the super nice Grindhaus Sausage Shop in Hollywood, California.
We went there around 4 pm, and they had been very busy earlier on the day so they were sold out of almost everything, but they were in the process of making more sausages. We waited a little, and bought 2 freshly made spicy Italian, and 2 bratwurst sausages to be cooked at home for our lunch on Sunday.
I will only say that from now on I will never again be able to buy my sausages at the regular grocery store, I am spoiled for life......what a difference freshly made makes.
I only bought a few sausages since I wanted to try them first, for sure I will be buying many more next time, can't wait to try some of the different type of sausages that they make. I am so glad to see these type of shops that I usually only see in my travels, now opening in the area of Los Angeles. I should mention the awesome customer service too.
Grindhaus Sausage Shop
Grindhaus, 5634 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, California
Cheese Course:
- aged Manchego Cheese, Spiced Carrots, Golden Raisin puree.
Nothing new - this one is straight out of French Laundry cookbook, BTW. The flavors really worked - my favorite part how spices ( coriander, Indian black pepper, slightly citrus-flavored Vietnamese cinnamon, cloves and fenugreek) matched a touch of Meyer lemon and a drop of Valli dell’Etna Olive Oil in the carrot slaw.
Please take a look at the entire Dinner in Sioux Falls picture set.
There’s just something about chocolate and bananas. I went crazy and made two different banana pudding recipes…YUM!
Ingredients
1 box (small) banana cream pudding
1 box (small) chocolate pudding
4 cups cold milk (2% or whole (2 cups for each box))
4 bananas (peeled & sliced)
10 count chocolate chip brownie packs
Instructions
In a medium size-mixing bowl add the pudding powder from both boxes. Mix together all 4 cups of milk according to the instructions on the box with either a wire whisk or hand mixer. Once pudding has come to the right consistency set aside to prepare the banana and brownies.
Using a cutting board or what ever you fill comfortable using. Peel and cut each banana into slices approx. 1/2 in or so and set aside. Also cut each brownie into small bite size chunks.
In a medium serving bowl add a layer of the pudding mixture to the bottom of the bowl alternating pudding, bananas, and chocolate chip brownies. Chill or eat right away. I’m not sure why but when chocolate and bananas are served together it’s more than delicious. Enjoy!
Dinner is usually a frantic affair during work days and more than not kids are asleep at 8 PM. So under Corona lock down you can have dinner any time you want with your family and still be able to enjoy yourself.
That's chicken cheese burger with fried cooked by mother. Salad is available so is mustard sause as an extra (not in the frame).
On my side is a an excellent book by Mark Kurlansky on SALT. You would think what's the detail in salt. But when you read this book - I am on page 63 - you realize that without salt your very existence is not possible. In fact, if you loose salt you really become poisonous and die.
This book is a whooping 449 pages long !