Little plates

Whenever I go out to a good restaurant, and I see tons of great stuff on the menu I want to try it all. Not everyone offers a tasting menu. But that's one of the things I love about tapas restaurants-the chance to try several things at one sitting.
Couple that with the concept that says that anything you can do large, you can do small, and you've got it. The challenge for this type of menu is that everything is cooked to order, and there's very little prep time involved. It makes it a little hectic, and it would be hard to do it for a huge crowd without a well set up mise en place.

Little plates night
Salmon crudo amuse bouche
Sauteed salmon "Nigiri" with tatziki
Cajun-style barbecue shrimp
Steak frites

Salmon crudo was a recipe of necessity. They had some good wild caught salmon fillets at the store, but they provided a bunch of the belly meat which left varying thickness of the fish. Solution? Cut off the thin part, skin it, and make a sashimi style appetizer.

Per person:
Bite size portion of salmon
Finely minced ginger, a pinch
1/4 tsp of toasted sesame oil
Sea salt
Pulp of a thin half-slice of lime
Lime zest

From Big 'Dawg Eats

With the remaining salmon, I cut into portions that looked like a big piece of nigiri sushi.
Cut salmon into ~2x4 inch portions, season with salt and pepper, and sautee on high heat to medium rare. Set aside.
The tatziki was a little unconventional, but consisted of 1/2 cup of sour cream, tbsp of good olive oil, juice of 1 lime, 1/4 cup of diced cucumber, salt, pepper, and parsley. You can sub plain yogurt and mint or dill, and it goes great with lamb or oily fish.

From Big 'Dawg Eats

The bruschetta was store-bought, but tasted pretty good. Harry and David for the olive/tomato relish and local supermarket for the ciabatta that we toasted in the oven.

For the barbecue shrimp, I took 12 in-the-shell shrimp combined with olive oil, parsley, 4 cloves of minced garlic, cayenne pepper, crystal hot sauce, and some Dizzy Pig Jamaican Fire Walk rub, combined in a bowl to dress. 2 tbsp of butter, and some oil in a large skillet, and cooked them on high heat until just pink. Shrimps out, reduce most of a bottle of beer with a tbsp or so of molasses for sweetness and color. Finished with butter (3-4 tbsp) until thick, and return the shrimps to the sauce. The result? Can you believe that it wasn't spicy enough? Ultimately, we should have left the relish off the bread, and just used it to sop up the sauce.

From Big 'Dawg Eats

The frites were really just thinly sliced, fried new potato chips with home-made Crystal hot sauce aioli. Totally forgot to do the microwave blanch, they would have been crispier. For the mayonnaise, consult any book, but it's really pretty easy. In your blender, combine 1 whole egg with 2 yolks, 1 tsp of mustard powder, 1/4 cup of red wine vinegar, and salt. Blend to combine, and with the blender on, add olive oil very slowly at first until you get your emulsification. Keep adding oil until you get the consistency your looking for. The mustard is a good binder, and you can use prepared dijon mustard if you like, as well. To complete the aioli, mince as much garlic as you can stand (3-4 cloves or more), and add to your mayonnaise with juice from a half lime, a little salt, and Crystal hot sauce (or your favorite) to taste and color.

The steak was ribeye that we had cooked a night or two ago, and intentionally left one of them pretty rare for purposes of reheating. The mushrooms were stemmed, sliced thinly, and sauteed in butter with a little salt. Add just a dash of water to the pan and it creates a mushroom sauce. Cup of red wine reduced to molasses consistency for a little sweet kick on the meat, and that's it.

From Big 'Dawg Eats

The results? Well, the plate tells the story. The beauty of this menu and the way it was prepared, was that it didn't all have to come out at the same time. With young kids in the middle of going to bed, we cooked one or two, took a break and dealt with the kids, and then came back and cooked some more.

From Big 'Dawg Eats

Wine pairings:

Adegas Morgadio Legado del Conde 2006 Abarino

From Drop Box

Charles and Charles 2008 Rose

From Drop Box

Descendientes de J. Palacios "Petalos" 2007 Mencia

From Drop Box

Sometimes Less is More

As I reminisce about some of my favorite meals, rarely does it get fancy-steak frite comes to mind. Last night I realized what Sundays must have been like before everyone ate standing up.

The meal: roasted chicken and 'roasters' with steamed brocoli.

A simple roasting pan with a good bird, legs tied-stuffed with rosemary, thyme, sage and a cut lemon. Salt/pepper over the top-into the 400 degree gas oven for 20min/pound, add the roasters for about 40min at the same temp in the other oven and that's it. Pull the bird, deglaze the pan with a little stock for gravy and all set.

I guess the important lesson was the ease of the meal, little need to tend it and, most importantly, the freeing up of time to spend enjoying with friends sitting around a fire, good conversation and better wine.

May the upcoming holiday season be fierce with friends, family and good libations-not necessarily in that order.

One that failed (sort of)

I'm batching it! Yeah, the wife and monsters are out of town. Don't get me wrong, I miss them terribly, but it does give me a chance to take some risks with dinner that I otherwise may not have had.
I was shopping for groceries last night, and I was looking for a good meat that I rarely have. I found a pack of ground lamb, and I thought it would be a great idea. It was, but I managed to screw it up. But, that's one of the purposes of this "forum."
Here's the menu:

"Reduced" balsamic and herbes de Provence vinaigrette
Really, it's how you describe things that make them sound better than they are. It's not a reduced vinaigrette, I just didn't feel like adding mustard. I later found out by watching a Bobby Flay grilling show that the mustard is actually essential to help the oil and vinegar emulsify. I also cut a corner and failed to add shallot. I didn't have any, but I guess I could have added red onion which I had left over.

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp herbes de Provence (just get a bottle of them at the spice rack at the grocery store)
1/2 tsp salt (Kosher to taste)
pepper
High quality extra virgin olive oil.

This is a post about salad dressing as much as it is about anything. It's really easy, and it tastes really fresh. The ingredients are pretty simple, and you'll think twice about buying it again if you make it right. Here's the breakdown:
something acid
dijon mustard
salt and pepper, don't skimp
some other seasoning if you want
high quality olive oil (just check at your grocery store, and look online if you don't find what you want. Order it and wait a couple of days. It's worth it.)

figure about 3:1 oil to acid. Here's your chance to put what you want. It can be red wine, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, lime juice, champagne vinegar, apple cider vinegar, fresh tomato pulp either green or red, etc.
When it comes to other seasoning, you can add whatever you want. Think about it. This can be bacon and bacon fat (ummm bacon), garlic, herbs of whatever you want, red pepper flakes, sherry reduction, parmesan cheese, it's up to you.
Dijon mustard, I think you should add, just don't add too much or it overpowers the dressing. It does help emulsify the dressing, so it's important. Remember chemistry?
Salt and pepper addition depend on what else you've added. If you've put bacon, then you don't need much. If you're making a cucumber and tomato salad, then I would recommend more, since I like them salty.
Now, add everything, then drizzle your oil into a medium sized bowl and whisk like crazy to create your emulsion. You'll know you're there when the whole thing starts to thicken. Taste it, season, and you're done. Isn't that easy?
So mine, I cheated and used balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, herbes de Provence, and emulsified with oil. It worked great but would have been better with some crusty bread (baguette). I put it over a small cucumber and a couple of sliced Roma tomatoes.

Provencal lamb burgers and sauteed fingerling potatoes
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tsp of fresh thyme (do you have an herb garden yet?)
1 tsp of fresh rosemary, minced
salt, pepper
EVOO

Combine all the ingredients and make a paste. The saltier the better. Combine with about 3/4 pound of ground lamb. Let them heat up to close to room temperature.
Sear over medium high. Not too hot, or else you'll have raw burgers. Not too low, or they'll be well done. Uggh.

Next,
4 fingerling potatoes, peeled and sliced about 1/4 inch thick
thyme, rosemary don't make them too green
salt, pepper
olive oil
Toss the potatoes, and cook over medium high heat about 10-12 minutes. If you must, drain on paper towels to cut some of the fat off of them. I think they're better if they're in a separate pan from the lamb burgers.

Why my dish sucked
I had the heat too high, and even though the crust on the burgers was great, they were a little underdone. You're choices then are to wrap in foil and let them rest for about 10-15 minutes, or put them back on the fire. I did the latter, and screwed them up because I let them overcook. There's a reason lamb must be rare to medium, because it otherwise tastes too gamey. So, the flavors were there, the cooking technique was wrong.
The potatoes, on the other hand, were just fine.

Do over
I would have cooked the lamb better, grilled them maybe, and then made true burgers out of them using grilled bread and Manchego cheese. Maybe even make an herb aioli (garlic mayonnaise) with some mint to bring another herb into it. Live and learn.
Sorry no pictures.

Wine pairing
Tiza Malbec, 2005

On Frites...

Love me some steak frites. Problem is that double frying at home on the stove top is a huge pain in the ass and makes a helluva mess. I've been working on a solution that actually is working better for me than double-frying...

1st: I use russet potatoes, peel, and slice 3/8 inch with the mandoline and toss in water to remove the excess starch. I let soak atleast an hour with one change of water.

2nd: For the first cooking, drain the potatoes, dry with kitchen towel and toss with a tablespoon of your frying oil in a microwave safe bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and vent the top. Microwave on ~60% power for 5 minutes. Stir potatoes, recover and repeat.

3rd: Heat oil in your favorite frying vessel to 375 degrees. Blot potatoes well with lots of paper towels. Working in relatively small batches (don't want the oil to cool below 300) toss a big handful of potatoes with about 1 tsp of sifted corn starch (saw this on Tyler's Ultimate) until well-coated. Drop in the oil and fry until GBD. Drain on cooling racks and salt liberally. Keep warm in 200 degree oven until ready to serve...will get soggy if you wait more than 30 minutes.

Comment: the corn starch trick was genius! I generally try to follow classic recipes but without industrial frying equipment the frites always end up soggy. Give this a try and let me know what you think.

JW