Tag Archive for 'sauce'

Steak with mint chimichurri sauce

Published
by
marc
on July 21, 2008
in Beef and Latin
. 11 Comments

Perhaps it’s your body telling you that you need more iron, or maybe it’s a commercial you saw on TV, but sometimes you get a hankerin’ for a big juicy steak that just can’t be satisfied by any other means. In New York that usually means you head to Peter Luger’s, Strip House, Craft Steak, or one of the other dozen premium steak houses in town. This also means your wallet will be about $150 lighter.

Being on a budget, I almost never go to a steak house as it’s about the easiest thing you can make at home and it will cost less than 1/3 of the price. All you need is a good cut of meat, a heavy bottomed pan and timer. I went with two 10 oz. dry aged rib eye steaks from Whole Foods at $25 a lb. It’s not the best piece of meat I’ve ever had, but it was a heck of a lot better than most steaks I’ve had in restaurants and took me about 10 minutes from start to finish.

The trick is to get a heavy bottomed pan (which means the heat is distributed evenly) really hot then sear the steaks on either side for a few minutes. Doing it over medium heat ensures an enticing brown crust without destroying a stainless steel pan and a sheet of aluminum foil prevents a huge mess of splattered grease.

Chimichurri sauce is an Argentinian condiment served with meat that usually consists of oil, parsley, and some kind of acid, but for my version, I opted for mint and lime. It lightens up the heavy hunk of beef and provides a nice tart contrast while the olive oil adds some extra body to the meat.

I served this a with truffle creamed chard which I’ll tell you more about tomorrow.

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Roast duck with mango riesling glaze

Published
by
admin
on May 25, 2008
in Dinner, Fusion, Poultry and Roast
. 13 Comments

Normally I could go on waxing poetic about the wonders of duck, but as of right now our relationship is tenuous at best. So to is my unflagging admiration of the Cooks Illustrated publications. I just spent over 2 hours of my weekend preparing what has to be the most complicated roast duck recipe ever and it just didn’t live up to expectations.

I should first start off by explaining why I love duck so much. Not only is it incredibly flavourful, it’s a self basting wonder-meat that comes out moist and juicy on the inside and crispy on the outside with little to no effort. Normally I’d just salt and pepper it, stick it on a roasting pan and pop it in a 350 degree (F) oven, forgetting about it until it is ready to serve.

My only gripe (if you can even call it that) with the ducks we get around here is that they are obscenely fatty. While a lot of the fat does render out, there is still usually more fat between the skin and the meat than I’m comfortable eating.

The other day, I was thinking about what would make the perfect glaze for roast duck. I was picturing a reduction of wine and mango creating a shiny caramelized sheen over the crisp underlying skin. Given my past issues with the fat content I also wanted to find a way to get the crisp skin and moist meat without the ticking coronary that usually comes along with it.

My first stop for any technique related question is almost always Cooks Illustrated. They’ll literally test hundreds of combination’s of ingredients, proportions, and cooking methods to come up with the “perfect” recipe. They’ve never let me down (until today), and I have to credit their publications for a good deal of culinary training. I flipped open my copy of The New Best Recipes cookbook and sure enough there was a recipe for “crisp roast duck” that promised less fat due to a 2 step cooking method. It seemed like a lot more work than duck is supposed to take, but I decided to give it a try.

To give you an idea of the Thomas Kelleresque amount of work that went into this recipe, you first steam the duck (to let some of the fat render out), then cut it apart, then roast (constantly removing fat from the pan), taking the breast out early then returning to finish. The roasting time (post steaming) seemed awfully long given that the steaming almost completely cooks the duck, but I was determined to see it through.

By the time the breast meat was supposed to come out of the oven (so the legs and wings could cook longer), the breasts were about 1/3 of their original size and were starting to look more like jerky than duck. I decided that enough was enough and glazed all of it and threw it under the broiler to try to limit the remaining cooking time. If I’d actually cooked it for as long as I was supposed to I’m sure I would have been eating cardboard.

While the breast meat was overcooked, the legs were still okay. The really disappointing part though was that the skin wasn’t crisp at all (probably because I took it out of the oven prematurely in an effort to save the meat). The only part of the recipe that worked was that the meat was less fatty than usual.

I read and re-read the recipe to see if I’d done something wrong, but I had uncharacteristically followed the recipe exactly as printed. On my scale of personal cooking disasters, this was a 10.0 on the Richter scale. I wouldn’t have even posted it were it not for the glaze that I made. Caramely sweet, slightly tart, and full of Asian flavour, it was about as perfect a glaze for duck as I can think of.

Next time, I do this, I’m going to try to steam it for a little less time (to get some of the fat rendering benefit without as much of the meat being cooked), then just stick the whole thing on a roasting pan to roast like normal. I’m also wondering if a slow roasting technique, like one you might use on pork shoulder, might work for duck (though I’m a bit doubtful because duck meat itself is actually quite lean without much marbling).

I’m not going to post the roasting technique since that part failed, but I’m curious to hear how you normally roast a duck?
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Nasu dengaku (grilled eggplant with sweet miso sauce)

Published
by
marc
on May 7, 2008
in BBQ, Japanese, Vegan, Vegetable and Vegetarian
. 14 Comments

Here’s part 2 of last night’s light Japanese dinner. But first I have to tell you about this left over stew I made tonight.

After eating Tacos Al Pastor for 2 nights, I was getting bored with them, but I still had almost half of the roast left. I felt like something a little saucier tonight, so I fried up some garlic and onions, cut the roast into big hunks and added it to the onions with some remaining marinade, cumin, half a can of diced tomatoes and some water. Twenty minutes later I had a delightful “Mexican” stew with big chunks of moist tender meat and an unctuous sauce redolent of chiles and garlic with a mild sweetness coming from the pineapple in the marinade. I served it with some sliced sweet onion, cilantro, limes for squeezing and warm tortillas.

I didn’t take any photos because I was thinking “how good could leftover stew be”, but honestly I enjoyed the stew more than I did the tacos. I don’t think I’d ever make a roast just to make a stew, but the next time I make the taco’s I’ll be sure to make extra to make this stew. Not only did the roast meat add an incredible flavour to the stew, it was also much more moist and tender than a typical braised dish.

Okay back to the eggplant from last night. This is a fairly typical Japanese dish you’d get at an Izakaya (Japanese tapas bar). The eggplant is grilled to bring out its smokey flavour and the miso sauce enrobes the eggplant adding a well balanced sweet earthy flavour of its own. Putting it back under a broiler for a minute caramelizes the miso sauce adding even more depth. It’s great as an appetizer with some beer or as a main with some hot white rice.

This recipe makes way more sauce than you need, but it keeps well in the fridge and can be used on all kinds of veggies or even firm tofu. If you want to put it on meat, make sure you start the meat on the grill first as the sugar in the miso will burn if you put it on too soon.

for sauce
1 C dashi
2 Tbs sugar
2 Tbs mirin
1/2 C miso (I used 1/4 C red miso and 1/4 C white miso)
2 tsp corn starch
1/4 tsp yuzu kosho (yuzu pepper) optional

for grilled eggplant
4 small Japanese eggplants cut in half lengthwise (or 2 Chinese or Italian eggplants)
vegetable oil for brushing
sesame seeds

For the sauce, whisk the dashi, sugar, mirin, miso and corn starch together. Heat over medium heat stirring until the sauce thickens. Take it off the heat and add the yuzu whisking it in to the sauce.

For the eggplant, slice them in half lengthwise and score a criss-cross pattern into them to help retain the sauce. Brush with oil and grill on a BBQ or under a broiler until the tops are a dark brown and the eggplant is cooked. Give the sliced sides a good coating of sauce, sprinkle with sesame seeds then put under a broiler to get a little caramelization (be careful, this sauce will burn quickly).

Serve immediately with some rice.

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