Day 25 Continued:
The potatoes are Idaho spuds, but a bit of slightly boiled heavy cream and butter is added in stages as they are being mashed. Then of course seasoned with salt and pepper.
The butter is dead easy to make. Take half a cup of red wine and a finely chopped shallot, place them in a saucepan on high heat and reduce the wine. A whole fucking lot. Somewhere in between 2-4 tablespoonish. Remove to mixing bowl and allow to cool. When cool, place in food processor with 1 sprig finely chopped parsley, 8 oz of unsalted butter, and salt and pepper to taste. Mix well.
From here you can serve at room temperature or place it on a sheet of plastic wrap and roll it into a log and refrigerate it. For long term storage freeze it and pull it out whenever you feel like beef.
Day 25: Faux-Filet au Beurre Rouge et Pommes Purée (Sirloin with Red Wine Butter and Mashed Potatoes)
Steak is one of the most frequently butchered dishes in the American kitchen. Millions of cows have given their lives only for them to be cooked into blackened chucks that resemble hunks of charcoal more then beef.
Here I cooked a steak using a method so simple a monkey or Rachael Ray could do it. I must note that this works best with thick steaks like strip, porterhouse, rib-eye, fillet mignon, etc.
First rest your steak for 10-15 minutes before cooking. Yes rest your raw meat in the open, the reason being is that you want to decrease the temperature difference between your meat and your eventual cooking surface. If you are already starting to freak out about bacteria and germs, keep a cleaner kitchen slob
Next put your oven at 500 degree Fahrenheit. Yes your oven. Next place your cooking vessel in it. It should be heavy. The kind of heavy that would leave you with no doubt what would give way first, the pan or a skull. The best cooking vessel for this purpose is the 12 inch cast iron skillet, a pan that makes everything from steaks to cakes. If you don’t have an ovenproof skillet, go buy a cast iron and cure it.
Next season your target piece of meat. First you want to place a small bit of oil all over the steak. If the first thing that came to your mind was extra virgin olive oil…stop just stop. You want something with a high smoke point, a good vegetable oil. Peanut has one of 450. If you have a peanut allergy canola has one of 435. The next step is to salt your meat. Simply place a generous sprinkle or two of salt on each side and rub it in. Do the same with pepper, don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. And remember the cardinal rule of seasoning, “If it needs to seasoned at the the table, you fucked up.”
Turn your stove as high as it goes. Open up a few windows and turn on a fan or two. Put on your heatproof gloves (you do have ones that can take the heat rather the just having pretty patterns right) Take your pan out of the oven and put it on the range.
Now place your meat best side down first on the pan. It will sizzle like mad and a shitload of smoke will pour out. You may be scared and frightened now wanting to move the steak or take it off the pan. Don’t fucking do it you fucking idiot. The reason you have this insanely hot pan cooking your meat is to induce a sear on the outside of your meat. Moving it would destroy all of the work.
Keep the meat on the pan for 30 seconds and then flip it. Cook for another 30 seconds. Then place the whole thing, pan and all, in the oven immediately.
Here cooking times vary on the desired final temperature of the meat. For medium rare cook 2 minutes, open oven, flip, close, and cook 2 more minutes. I prefer rare because I feel there is not enough danger and risk in my life, so I subtract 15-30 seconds depend on how ballsy I feel that day. Medium well do the same. If you want well-done, stop eating meat. If you want it blue, you probably don’t need to read this (also you have brass fucking balls)
Finally take your meat out and place it on a rack with a plate under it to catch juices. Cover it loosely with tinfoil and let it rest for 5-10 minutes. Do not skip this step
Now technically this is not the “best” method for cooking steak. However this method is so quick and efficient that everyone from home cooks to restaurants (maybe even some with Michelin stars, although they will all tell you to shut the fuck up if you ask them)
Next post has the rest of the meal. I just felt that properly cooking beef is so essential to learn how to do properly that it deserves it own special post.
Day 24: Salade Niçoise (Salad of Nice)
Being sick means that cooking is hard. Sorry for the break, illness (still ill in fact) and other aspects of my life have now made the title of this blog inaccurate.
Today we have some classic French bistro food. First I crushed a garlic clove, impaled it on a fork and rubbed it around a salad bowl. Add a 2-1 ratio of extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar, mixed with your garlic studded fork. Season with salt and pepper.
The inner leafs of Boston lettuce, blanched haricots verts, tomatoes, boiled red bliss potatoes, green bell pepper strips, and olives are the primary vegetables in the salad. Add in the bowl along with a quartered anchovy fillet per diner and toss in a combination of extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar.
Divide the dish among the plates/bowls, place a sprinkle of olive oil, and finish with a bit of high-quality canned tuna, a quartered hardboiled egg, and whole anchovy fillets.
Day 13: Fondue de Crabe avec Prosciutto sur Canapé avec Cantaloup (Creamed Crab with Prosciutto on Toast with Cantaloupe)
Another 30 minute meal that beats the crab out of anything that other quick cooking host on the Food Network. Sautéd crabmeat with a pan cream sauce that contain, heavy cream, egg yolk, shallots, butter, and dry sherry. Served with slices of prosciutto cooked briefly cooked on a broiler with toast.
The cantaloupe is simply piece of cantaloupe cut up and served raw.
Day 11: Suprêmes De Volaille Véronique/Riz á l’Indienne (Chicken Breast with Grapes and Curried Rice)
Today’s dish is quick if you know what you are doing in the kitchen. I browned strips of chicken in a pan and then moved them to another pan. In the first pan shallots are added and cooked. Then the obligatory white wine is added for sauce construction. Fat is poured from the second pan to the first. Then the French secret culinary weapon known as heavy cream is deployed to the sauce. I then add in fresh grapes and reduce the sauce. After the reduction, I then reintroduce the chicken and cook all the way through.
The rice is simply rice cooked with butter, onions, garlic, chopped gala apples, and curry powder in chicken broth with a bay leaf for additional flavor.
Day 5: Provençal Tilapia with Red Peppers/White Wine Potatoes/Tomatoes and Braised Carrots/Parsnips
Today’s dish was tilapia with red peppers, potatoes boiled in water and white wine, and tomatoes. I cooked the carrots and parsnips in the oven with chicken stock, butter, and salt for about an hour.
Generally when a dish is referred to a Provençal it mean “of Provence” or “of the style of Provence,” the region of France that direct borders Italy. The dish here is a delicate mix of flavors with neither the fish nor the vegetables overpowering each other. Doing this dish with chicken or beef would likely result in the vegetables being overpowered by the meat in the dish.
Parsnips are a root vegetable that has a relation another root, the carrot. The cultivation of the parsnip originated in Italy during the Roman Empire, expanding as far a England due to the expansionist tendencies of the Romans. Parsnips, along with other root vegetables such as turnips, were eventually replaced with the introduction of the culinary titan known as the potato.
