Savage Kitchen

Mornay Béchamel Sauce - Season 2

Mon, 16 May 2011 16:11:00 GMT

If there are two extremely vital sauces which every fine cook should know, they would be gravy and nacho cheese.

“But wait!” you may say. “I want to cook at a nice restaurant, not Momma’s Pie House. Nothing against Momma’s, that is, just… you know. Gravy??”

Well, here’s the beautiful thing about those two sauces: they’re both based on béchamel, one of the four classic sauces. Where’s it from? France, of course, and it was named after a steward for Louis XIV. Can’t get any fancier than that.

It’s surprising, really, how many common things we associate with junk food or ball park eats or what-have-you and, truth be told, those exact things have very austere origins.

Bechamel is a beautiful sauce in its simplicity, and white gravy is almost exactly the same. Milk, butter, flour. Add some black pepper, maybe some sausage, you’ve got a great biscuit topping. Add some sautéed shallots instead, a bit of white wine and maybe some truffle oil? Same sauce, sure – but now with a totally different flavor profile.

Now, take that béchamel, add some cheese, and you’ve got a mornay (this week's episode). If you use cheddar, maybe a bit of American cheese, some canned tomatoes and jalapenos, you’ve got a damn good nacho cheese sauce. But what if you, instead, use some gruyere instead? Pour it over a toasted baguette with some thin sliced, quick seared ham? Well, now you’ve got a croque monsieur, one of the best sandwiches in the world. A sandwich that’s a tad bit fancier than, say, nachos. Or if you use some blue cheese and pour it over a chateaubriand? Top that. I dare you.

So if there’s one thing to take away from all this, learn the béchamel – it’s like a Swiss-army knife, tons of uses both fancy, and homey.

BECHAMEL

1/4c BUTTER
1/4c FLOUR
1Qt HEAVY CREAM

SALT & PEPPER
1 DICED SHALLOT (OPTIONAL)

Melt butter in a sauce pot, when melted the flour is added. The mixture is stirred until the flour is incorporated, and then cooked until at least the point where a raw flour taste is no longer apparent about 2 minutes. Slowly add the cream stirring constantly to a smooth consistency. Simmer about 5-8 minutes. If sauce gets to thick just thin to desired consistency by adding more cream.
If using the shallots add in with the butter and cook about 1 minute.

Remember this sauce is a base for many other sauces.

Mushroom en Croûte

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 06:00:00 GMT

So the last time that we talked about mushrooms, we were covering duxelle. The key lesson with the duxelle had been patience, and how you couldn't rush it – if you cooked it too fast, you'd scorch the mushrooms and get that nasty burnt flavor.

For the mushroom en croûte, we're going to go back to talking about patience, but this time in regards to baked goods.

The first thing to cover would be the dish we're preparing in the video – the mushroom en croûte. The pastry we wrap around the duxelle-stuffed portabella mushroom is what's called "puff pastry". Reason why? It puffs up! Hmmmmm... ; ) Puff pastry is technically known as a laminated dough, since it consists of many layers, like laminate flooring. Croissant and danish dough are also laminated, and they all share the similar attribute of layers of butter and dough. The butter melts and steams, causing the pastry to rise up. There's a specific temperature you want to use when baking these kinds of dough, and 375-400º F is about right.

Now, some people tend to crank the oven up even higher than that, which can work for an en croûte – up to a point. The higher heat browns up the pastry rather nicely, which looks great, but this all goes back to the patience thing. One problem is that the pastry doesn't cook all the way through, so you don't get all the crispy, crunchy layers out of the pastry that you should. The innards of the en croûte won't heat up either, so you'll have a nicely browned and attractive appetizer, but it won't be as crunchy or as hot inside as you'd like.

It may pain you to have to wait by the oven for the en croûte to cook all the way through, and you may want to pull it out when it gets golden brown. But the important thing about puff pastry is that you cook it longer than you'd think, since it really needs that extra time in the oven to get completely crisp. Puff pastry is tough – don't worry about it, it can handle the long time – and don't stress about it drying out, either. You've got all that delicious, moist filling inside to counterpoint the crunchiness of the shell.

So bake it hot (but not too hot) and for a while, and you'll have an en croûte that's just right.

- Chef Savage

MUSHROOM EN CROUTE

6          PORTABELLA MUSHROOMS
½ C       BALSAMIC VINEGAR
1C      WATER
6          CLOVES GARLIC
2          SHALLOTS

4C      MUSHROOM DUXELLE
1C      FETA CHEESE
1#      SPINACH
1         SHEET PUFF PASTRY

PROCEDURE

Preheat oven to 275 degrees.
Take mushrooms, flip them upside down and take the stem off and scrap the fins with a spoon. Place in a baking dish.
Chop garlic and shallots in a food processer and slowly add in vinegar and water till combined. Pour vinegar mixture evenly over mushrooms and then cover with foil. Cook in oven for 1.5 hours. Most of the liquid should evaporate but not all and the mushrooms should be fork tender. Cool mushrooms in refrigerator.
Mix together Duxelle and feta. Split mixture between the six mushrooms.
Steam the spinach and place over the Duxelle covering it entirely.
Take thawed puff pastry and using a lattice cutter roll it over the pastry cutting the whole pastry in one direction. Very gently cut the pastry sheet into 4x4 squares. Take one square and carefully spread open trying to keep the each opening the same. Then place over the mushroom and tuck the extra pastry under and repeat till all are covered. Spay each with a vegetable spray and bake in a 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 140 degrees.

The Savage Kitchen: Tuna Provençal

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 14:55:00 GMT

À la mode…

It doesn’t really mean “with ice cream,” it actually translates to “in the style of” and is, truthfully, a fantastic way to cook.

Tuna Provençal is a dish prepared à la mode de Provençal, and the long name describes the key accompaniments to the tuna: in this case olive oil, tomato, and garlic. À la Bourguignonne, on the other hand, is “in the style of Burgundy” and includes red wine, small mushrooms and white onion. There’s numerous other “styles,” so named for the regions from which they emerged, and they all include their specific set of ingredients. Take your Provençal dish and add some black olives and anchovies, and you’ve got a dish à la Nicoise.

Now, how is this exactly a fantastic way to cook? Well, imagine you have some surprise guests coming over for dinner, and you have no clue as to what to make. An easy way to toss together something delicious and that’s sure as hell gonna impress them, is to proudly proclaim that you will be preparing “chicken à la Bourguignonne.”

What will you have to do? Well, sauté some chicken in a pan, deglaze with red wine, toss in some mushrooms and onions, and you’ve got it. Not difficult at all, and your guests will think you a culinary genius, all because you knew the key ingredients for a style of cooking.

These styles are highly flexible, which means you can really substitute most any protein you’d like, and as long as you have a relatively balanced amount of the ingredients (i.e. not handfuls and handfuls of garlic and only half a tomato) you don’t need a specific recipe. Just use some basic techniques, keep the key ingredients in mind, and you’ll be good to go!

-Chef Savage

Tuna Provencal

Ingredients:

6-6 oz. tuna steaks
Salt, fresh cracked black pepper
¼-cup olive oil
4 cloves of garlic fine chopped
1-cup diced onion
1-cup diced yellow bell pepper
2-cup diced fresh tomato
1-cup chopped calamata olives
1-cup chopped green olives
1-cup basil chiffonade
2 cup white wine
3/4 cup freshly grated Romano cheese
Fresh basil sprigs

**********
Method:

Season the tuna. Heat the olive oil in a large sauté pan. Start to sauté the garlic and onions for 3 minutes. Add the bell pepper and sauté for a 3 more minutes. Add the tomatoes and the olives and sauté for an additional 5 minutes. Add the wine and allow to reduce by half. Add the romano and the basil, toss. Sear the tuna in the olive oil very quickly and remove. The Tuna will be rare. Place a little Provencal mixture on a plate and place tuna on top. Place more Provencal on top of tuna. Garnish with romano shavings and fresh basil sprigs.

The Savage Kitchen: Chateaubriand

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 20:20:00 GMT

There’s no room for fear in a kitchen.

You can’t be scared of knives, you can’t be nervous about that expensive piece of steak in your hand, and you most definitely can’t be scared of the flames leaping up out of the range like a ravenous demon’s breath.

A recipe, or a technique, can help alleviate this fear – take today’s Chateaubriand marinade, for instance. Having a steak fresh out of the marinade in hand and ready for that screaming hot pan in front of you is a thrilling experience, but it is at this key moment when the weak fall aside. For not only do you need to go ahead and cook that steak, you’ve got to char it. Sear it to hell and back, developing that amazing caramelized crust that defines the very essence of the chateaubriand.

Fear can enter in here and make you stop early – fear that you’re overcooking it, or fear of the smoke rising up from the pan. Don’t let this take over. Stand strong, move ahead, sear it right.

When I switch from cooking at the Cliff House to cooking at home, there are a few adjustments to be made. At work, if I want some perfectly caramelized peppers and onions - the kind with the crisp, sweet, roasted flavor on the outside but still a bit of crunch – I can set a pan on high flame for a few minutes, getting it smoking hot, then toss in my oiled vegetables and quick sear them with a few tosses of the wrist.

At home, this is a lot harder to do. Without the commercial vents above my home stove (like the ones at work) smoke fills the kitchen; oil spatters from the pan and will flame up, and the family starts to freak out and may begin to contemplate ordering pizza. This may happen when you try the chateau at home – but stay strong. Let your pan get really hot, sear the steak well, and you’ll be glad you did.

You just may want to turn a fan on - and tell your family to calm down while you’re at it.

- Chef Savage

Chateaubriand

Chateaubriand Marinade
Yields: 1 qt
4 cup    orange juice
1-cup   balsamic vinegar
1-cup   sugar
3 tbl     Sweet Chili Sauce (hot pepper sauce found at Asian markets)

Mix all ingredients together. Use as a marinade for beef tenderloin (We use 8 oz portion of the thickest part of the tenderloin). Allow the meat to marinate over night.

Chateau Potatoes
5lb Yukon potatoes
½ lb butter
1 qt heavy cream
½ lb bacon
1 c diced red & yellow peppers
½ c chopped chives
½ c chopped artichoke hearts
½ c sour cream
Salt, pepper and garlic to taste

Boil potatoes and strain. Melt butter in cream and add to potatoes. Whip together with all ingredients.

Sautéed New Potatoes
Boil New Potatoes till fork tender. Sautee with bacon and shallots.

Cabernet Gastrique
Reduce 1 bottle of your favorite wine to a syrup consistency.

Truffle Butter
1 oz Truffle peels mixed with 1# butter

To cook Chateaubriand: Heat a cast iron skillet on medium high. Char the tenderloin on all sides. This will cook the chateau to about medium rare. Finish in a 350° oven until desired temperature.

Bon Appetite!

The Savage Kitchen: Veal Jus

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 15:03:00 GMT

What's the fuss about a simple stock?

So one of the first things taught in culinary school to the legions of charming, innocent and happy students is how to make a good stock. That, and how to not cut your hands off with a knife.

It’s a really basic, simple thing, but one of the key factors of a good stock is using good ingredients. There are some chefs out there who will just throw whatever they have on hand into the stock, turning it really into the proverbial “kitchen sink.”

Tomatoes that are bit too soft? Sure! Some of these carrots that are looking wimpy? Why not! It’s just stock! Ignore that moldy celery, it’s gonna cook out!

But the problem with this approach is that if you throw all this nigh-garbage into your stock, you’ll get a mediocre product. The extra long cooking time can cover up the bad aspects of some of these ingredients, of course, and that’s why these chefs do this, because they feel they can get away with it.

Don’t do that.

A stock is like a foundation. It’s the beginning, the genesis of soups, sauces and all manner of wonderful things. If you have a gorgeous multi-million dollar house on a shabby foundation, no one’s gonna want to buy your place when the walls are cracking and pipes are breaking and the roof is leaning to the side like some Italian monolith.

An excellent stock can make beautiful sauces, rich soups and stews. A mediocre stock? Well, the best you can ever hope to get is a mediocre sauce. If mediocrity is what you’re shooting for, heck, go for it – but if you want to have great sauces, take the time and lay your foundation right – make a great stock.

- Chef Savage

VEAL STOCK

5 LB          VEAL BONES
8oz CAN      TOMATO PASTE
5 CUPS      MIREPOIX
2 Cups             Onion, Cut into Eighths
1 Cup          Carrot, Rough Chopped
1 Cup          Celery, 2 Inch Segments
1 Cup          Leek, Halved and cut into 2 Inch Segments
5 EA          BLACK PEPPERCORNS
4 EA          WHOLE GARLIC CLOVES
8QT          WATER, Cold
2 EA          BAY LEAVES
1 OZ          FRESH THYME
1 OZ          PARSLEY STEMS
1 OZ         ROSEMARY
2 QT          RED WINE

PROCEDURE
Spread bones in a roasting pan and roast for about 30 minutes at 425º F, turning once. Remove the pan from the oven and paint a thin layer of the tomato paste over the bones. Spread the vegetables in the pan and roast an additional 15-20 minutes, until the vegetables begin to caramelize.
Remove the pan from the oven and move all of the bones and vegetables to a stockpot. Place the pan over high heat on the stove and deglaze with the wine, scraping the pan with a whisk or metal spoon to remove the caramelized drippings. Pour the wine and drippings into the stockpot. Add the peppercorns, garlic, bay leaves and fresh herbs. Fill the pot with enough cold water to cover the bones.
Over medium heat, slowly bring the stock up to a very gentle simmer - don’t let it boil. Adjust the temperature to maintain a gentle bubbling. Every thirty minutes or so, skim off any foam that rises to the top of the pot.
Let the stock simmer gently for at least four hours. If you have the time, it can simmer for up to 12 hours. Add a little more water and lower the heat if you are getting too much evaporation.
When the stock is done, remove the solids and discard. Strain the stock through a very fine mesh strainer or through a colander lined with three or four layers of cheesecloth. Chill quickly over ice and then refrigerate. When the stock has thoroughly chilled, the fat will separate and rise to the top, where it will congeal. Remove and discard.

The Savage Kitchen: Pheasant Confit

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 22:57:00 GMT

Pheasant Confit: Delicious Juicy Goodness

I imagine that if you took one of your ancient relatives (just a couple hundred years back) and brought them to the present day, and then showed them the inside of your refrigerator, they’d probably scratch their head in bewilderment.

“Why?” you would ask them. They would point to the bottles of pickles and jellies, cured sausages and maybe that package of bacon, and then turn to you and ask, in the same tone, “Why?”

A lot of the stuff we cook with (and don’t necessarily think about) has a specific reason for being the way it is. That reason almost always boils down to preservation, or namely the lack of a proper method. – at least before the advent of refrigeration, and that’s really a rather recent accomplishment.

This week we cover pheasant confit (not the usual duck or goose). Confit is one of those old-school methods of preserving food, and it’s unique in that it really uses two methods. The first is brining, which is a method of increasing the amount of salt in a product, thereby making it less hospitable for bacteria. The second part of a confit is the storage – in the fat it was cooked in. The procedure originated in France, and like a lot of other unique foods, was originally designed to dramatically increase the shelf life of a product.

We’ve grown so accustomed to these items as staples that we continue to practice the same techniques developed hundreds of years ago, but now simply for the development of their flavors. That great flavor of a ruben, with the smoked meat and sauerkraut, is almost entirely thanks to old preservation techniques.

So enjoy your confit, and take a moment to thank those old French chaps for not having a fridge of their own.

-Chef Savage

Pheasant Confit

6ea        Pheasant Legs
16c      Rendered Duck Fat

Brine
2ea      Oranges (cut into 8 pieces)
2ea      Lemons (cut into 8 pieces)
½ c      Kosher Salt
½ c      Sugar
1c      Orange Juice
10      Garlic Cloves
2      Bay Leaves
1oz      Fresh Thyme
1oz      Fresh Rosemary
1oz        Fresh Parsley
6      Black Peppercorns
1gal      Water

Procedure
Place all ingredients for brine in an 8qt sauce pan and bring to a simmer for about 10 minutes. Remove from flame and cool. Once brine is cool, pour into a 2 gallon container and place legs into the brine and let set for 12 hours covered in the refrigerator. If running short on time you do not have to simmer the brine as we demonstrated.
Pour brine through a colander and discard liquid. Place pheasant legs in a roasting pan and cover with some of the remaining mixture from the colander. Melt the fat and pour over the duck.
Place pan in a 250 degree oven for 4to6 hours or until the meat falls of the bones. Start with 4 hours and check in 30 minute increments. Cool and store in duck fat. (You may leave it in the fridge for several weeks; just make sure the legs are covered completely in fat)

The Savage Kitchen: Mushroom Stuffed Pheasant Breast with Raspberry Demi

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:00:00 GMT

The Beauty of Butchery

Something that occurs naturally to chefs (and probably doesn’t often cross the mind of everyone else) is butchery. Maybe not going so far as to render down a live animal into the beautiful little prepackaged segments you’d find in your local grocer’s meat department, but slicing up a whole chicken or a side of a beef is a surety.

The wonderful thing about this (the big secret, if you will) is that you can actually save a good bit of money doing this. It’s not really hard to do - all you need is a nice knife (the sharper the better!) and the will to learn. Practice makes perfect, of course, and if you’re able to devote a bit more time, you too can get in on the secret.

Whenever I’m cooking up some chicken at home, be it soup, sautéed chicken breasts or something as fancy as the Duxelle Stuffed Pheasant Breast (well, I guess I’d be cooking pheasant then, but… whatever), I just grab whole chickens and cut them up into the pieces I need. Then I can have choice – I could do full breasts, split ones, cook off the tenderloins for whatever, and maybe stuff the legs into a jambonette. That, and you get that wonderful carcass that you can toss into a pot with a few pieces of celery, carrot and onion and c’est voila! You’ve got your own, delicious, homemade chicken stock. Use it with that chicken meat you just cut up and you’ve got the best damn chicken soup ever.

That’s not even beginning to talk about what you can save by buying full loins or strips of beef from a Costco or Sam’s – learn how to trim and cut ‘em up, and you can do a big ol’ steak barbecue on the cheap. All in all, butchery is one of those things that can bring you a lot of joy, if you just devote some time to learning it.

- Chef Savage

Roasted Breast of Pheasant

Stuffed with Mushroom Duxelle with Raspberry Demi

Yield: 6 portions

Ingredients:

3 each whole Pheasants

Raspberry Demi-Glace:

2 tablespoons shallots (diced)

1/2 cup fresh raspberries

2 tablespoons raspberries preserves

1 cup demi-glace

Salt, pepper and sugar to taste

**********

Method:

Demi-Glace: Place shallots, raspberries, preserves and wine in a saucepot and reduce by half. Add the demi-glace and reduce again by half. Adjust the seasonings to taste.

Stuffing & Cooking: Trim the extra fat off of the breast and butterfly with a boning knife (the half of the breast that is opposite the wing bone). Place about 4 ozs. of the duxelle on the breast, skin side down. Roll the breast around the stuffing; try to seal the stuffing in. Place the stuffed breast, crease side down, on a roasting pan and bake in a 400° oven, with the wing pointing upward, for approximately 10 minutes.

To Serve: Cut in slices about 1/4" thick and serve in a fan with the sauce on the bottom.

A Quick n' Easy Artichoke Bisque

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 16:00:00 GMT

A rose by any other name…

Okay, so this is a bit of a preemptive strike against any foodies who may start clamoring about the usage of the term ‘bisque.’

You see, bisque is one of those dishes whose definition, and thereby ingredients, has changed over time. Classically, a bisque is just seafood. Well, if you go farther back than that, like, before the 17^th century, then classically-classically a bisque is a soup made with, and thickened by, game or seafood. They mostly used crayfish as the seafood, and as time passed, crayfish and lobster ended up becoming the main ingredients.

Even now, French culinary dictionaries are gonna say that a bisque is exclusively seafood. American ones will say that the term can include soups made with other meats or exclusively vegetables.

“So,” you may ask, “What’s the big deal?”

Well, nothing, really. What the stalwart defenders of culinary lexicon have probably forgotten is that food changes over time. The terms should shift as well. If a ‘bisque’ is seen more as a dish that’s thickened by pureeing the ingredients, then we can lump in the vegetable bisques and what-not.

So, cut the chefs of the world some slack if they use a term that, according to Culinary Dictionary X, is wrong. Unless, of course, they’re trying to call a pile of scrambled eggs on a plate an omelet. That’s just not cool.

- Chef Savage

Artichoke Bisque

4tbs      Butter
1 ea      Yellow Onions Rough Chopped
6cans    Artichokes In Water (16oz)
1qt      Heavy Cream
1/4lb    Gruyere Cheese (shredded)
Salt & Pepper to Taste

Sauté Onions in butter until soft.
Add Artichokes do not drain.
Add cream simmer 1 hour.
Blend with immersion blender till smooth.
Add cheese and blend again.
Pass through china cap.
Serve with warm crabmeat.

A Quick and Easy Home-Made Hollandaise

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:00:00 GMT

No Double-Boiler Required!

One of my biggest pet peeves with cooking – or at least, with other people's cooking – is a lack of flexibility. At work, that mostly comes about from inflexible diners and employees with no work availability, but that’s not what we’re talking about... I’m talking about flexibility with recipes. A lot of recipes are really strict and rigid, requiring items in strange amounts like “two cups plus a teaspoon of sugar” or “three and a half eggs.” Really? A half egg? From what, a half chicken?!? The great thing about most recipes is that you really can fudge the amounts; your sauce will be just the same without that extra teaspoon, and go ahead and use the whole egg. You’re not gonna kill anyone. But it’s not just amounts, it’s also in the procedure. So many recipes say “bake at 392 degrees for exactly 21.2 minutes” or such nonsense. Sure, a temperature range is great and all, but ovens vary, and my roast chicken in one oven may be done a lot faster than another. The recipe should focus more on the actual procedure, or what it is you’re looking for – golden brown crust, firm center, a certain internal temperature so that you don’t serve raw chicken. Then you might actually kill somebody!

Hollandaise is like that. There’s a half dozen ways of making it; I’ve seen it made in a bowl over a double boiler, over a fryer, in a blender… hell, I bet you could do it in front of a screaming hot oven, but you’d probably cook yourself as well.
But the reason the recipe is flexible, and that people can make it different ways and still come out with the same sauce – that’s because they understand what’s going on. Heat plus eggs equals coagulation, and when you add melted butter, you get the thick sauce you want.
So do the recipe however you want, and as long as you understand what’s happening, and more importantly, why, you can do anything!

- Chef Savage

Hollandaise Sauce

2 ea          Egg Yolks
1oz          Lemon Juice
1oz          White Wine
1oz          Worcestershire Sauce
2 shakes      Tabasco Sauce
½-3/4#      Clarified Butter
Pinch          Salt & Pepper

PROCEDURE

Melt butter in microwave in 20-second intervals till butter reaches 180 degrees. Be careful butter may boil over and could burn.
Place egg, lemon, wine, worcestershire and tabasco in blender. Blend on medium speed for 30 seconds. Slowly add butter till desired thickness. Finish with salt and pepper.

The Perfect Risotto

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:00:00 GMT

The King of Rice Dishes... and the Most Time Consuming.

If you really want to appreciate a fine risotto, I believe you need to be a vanilla ice-cream kinda person. I’m thinking the kind of person who can just enjoy the pure flavor and texture of well made ice cream. Now, we’re not talking about flavorless, bland, generic ice cream. That stuff is only good for… I don’t really know... feeding pigs?

Anyway, you might wonder what, exactly, ice cream has to do with risotto. It’s simple - risotto is a dish that shines best without a lot of stuff to it. The focus of the dish is the rice; that creamy, delicious Arborio that cooks down and falls apart, making its own sauce. You’ve got to season it, sure, and you can always add extra stuff, but if you put too much in, you overwhelm the flavor.

Just like vanilla ice cream.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with adding extra stuff to your ice cream (or risotto, for that matter). I mean, how could you pass up some bits of brownie, or a touch of caramel sauce on your vanilla ice cream? Well, you can’t, really. The same is true for a perfectly cooked risotto: add a bit of vegetable, or a few herbs, maybe some sautéed chicken, and you’ve got a beautiful thing!

The focus of the dish is the rice, and if you keep that in mind while cooking, you can’t help but make a fantastic meal. Treat the rice well, don’t cook it too hard, use a good, flavorful stock, and let the risotto be itself. Whatever you do, don’t treat it as a blank canvas on which to slap a hundred colors – the risotto is the masterpiece.

- Chef Savage

RISOTTO

2 C ARBORIO RICE

12 C STOCK OR WATER (HOT)

1 C ONION, DICED

1 C WHITE WINE

¼ C OLIVE OIL OR BUTTER

Salt & Pepper to taste

In a large non-stick sauté pan heat ¼ c olive oil and sauté onions. Add rice and sauté for 2-3 minutes or until rice begins to toast (do not brown). Add white wine and allow wine to be absorbed by the rice over medium heat. Add 1/3 rd of the volume of stock or water and stir with a wooden spoon. Reduce heat to low. As rice absorbs liquid add more until rice is al dente (20-25) min. Season to taste. Cool on sheet tray.

Mushroom Duxelle

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 16:00:00 GMT

An incredibly versatile paste or stuffing (think: Beef Wellington)!

How does that saying go? "Good things come to those who wait"?

That could be applied to most everything in cooking. Sure, there’s plenty of stuff that’s really easy to do in no time at all, and you don’t really need to wait for them – fresh salads, a quick fired steak, seared scallops - all sorts of delectable items.
But a good stew or a hearty sauce, a slow baked meringue or a balsamic reduction – these are things that need time and patience to perfect.

Mushroom duxelle is one of those items that should be filed in the ‘Worth the Wait’ category of your recipe book. I’ve always liked it for the sheer depth of utility – concentrated mushroom flavor, ready to go, without having to take up a ton of space in a recipe.
Some things don’t reduce down well, their flavors don’t hold up to the prolonged heat: berries, herbs, fruits – those are things designed for low prep, their flavors immediate and fresh. Mushrooms, on the other hand, do great. The flavor mellows a bit, smoothes out and becomes uniform.

Here, at The Cliff House, we make these mushroom en croutes on the dining room menu, with marinated portabella mushrooms, feta cheese mixed with duxelle, all wrapped in a puff pastry crust. The duxelle lets me add super-intense mushroom flavor into the filling, without having to make it watery or taking up too much space for the feta. You can do the same thing with salmon or beef tenderloin, wrapping it in puff pastry, with a thin layer of that duxelle inside giving a new angle of flavor.

Of course, you have to wait for that – you can’t rush a duxelle. It takes time, a watchful eye, low heat, and ... did I mention time? If you cook it on too high a heat, you’ll scorch it and make it bitter. Too low and… nothing will happen, not very surprising there. Pull it off too soon and you won’t have cooked it enough, and it will be too wet; anything you add it to will be soggy. So, in true Goldilocks fashion, you’ve got to wait and make it… just right.

- Chef Savage

Mushroom Duxelle

3 pounds Crimini, Portobello or Button mushrooms
2 ounces butter or vegetable oil
3 tablespoons chopped shallots
1 teaspoon chopped garlic
salt and pepper, to taste

Preparation

Finely chop mushrooms with a knife. Heat butter in large skillet, add shallots and garlic, sauté till translucent. Add chopped mushrooms. Stirring regularly cook over low heat until all moister cooks out of mushrooms and mixture becomes dry. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
You may also add fresh herbs and white truffle oil to the finished product.

The Savage Kitchen: Pear Stuffed Quail

Mon, 17 May 2010 16:00:00 GMT

Sometimes, I think, the best things in life are surprises. Wait, scratch that... they can be the best, if they don’t give you a heart attack in the process!

When I was a teenager, back in New York, I’d go hunting for deer. I started young (in middle school) and continued to do it until my late teens. I’d be out in the field, creeping around, and stumble across a bunch of grouse or pheasant hiding in the bush. Sometimes I’d even bust into these groups of quail, tiny buggers that’d shoot out in front of me, ducking down and then swooping up and away. A faster person might have been able to gun a few of the cheeky birds down before they got out of range, but I never seemed to be as lucky. The only thing I "shot" was my nerves!

In cooking, surprises can also be good and bad. There’s the surprise of ordering a favorite dish and seeing it presented in a new way you can’t help but think: This is pretty good!

Or maybe your "significant-other" convinces you to order (against your will, of course) the fried calamari. You’ve never had it, you have no interest in squid, but when you pick up that first piece and savor the flavor, you’re surprised: Why haven’t I ordered this before!

Of course, there are always the bad surprises. You bite into a sandwich from some deli and find one of those little plastic bread ties inside and wonder how in the world somebody missed that. Or you order the chicken cordon bleu at some other place, and when the server slides the steaming dish in front of you, you gape at how oddly small the dish is and begin to think they’re serving quail breasts instead of chicken.

Those aren’t fun.

But as for good surprises, sometimes you find something in the dish you didn’t expect, some odd combination that just works, and the dish can interest you in multiple ways. Take this quail dish – inside the juicy bird is tender pear, blue cheese and walnuts. You cut through the quail and you find the fruit and cheese inside and you think that’s odd, but then you try it and you’re a believer.

Give this dish a shot – you’ll be pleasantly surprised, in more than one way.

P.S. I'm really looking forward to feedback from viewers who have tried these dishes at home!

- Chef Savage

Pear Stuffed Quail

4ea Semi boneless Quail
4ea Pears, Red
8oz Roquefort Cheese
8oz Walnut pieces

Procedure:

Peel and core pears. Cut off the top elongated portion of the pear so as to make a ball.
Mix cheese and walnuts together and place in a piping bag. Pipe the mixture into the cored out pears.
Slide the stuffed pear it into the quail.
Take the legs of the quail and cross them over each other. Position the legs so that they cover the quail’s exposed cavity. Push a toothpick through the legs, and then through the stuffed quail so as to hold the legs in their position.
Place the stuffed quails in a small greased roasting pan, cover with foil, and then bake in a 300-degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

Cliff House Colorado Rack of Lamb

Tue, 04 May 2010 16:00:00 GMT

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” ~Confucius

Maybe the saying shouldn’t be that we make it complicated, but that we think it is. Gourmet food is in the eye of the beholder, whether from the premium ingredients within or the intricate processes required to make it. But just because gourmet food looks more complicated doesn’t mean it’s unapproachable for the average cook at home.

As a chef, the main task in my hands is the pairing of flavors, plain and simple: What goes well with what? That’s the question I ask myself, every day. Take a few simple, strong flavors, blend them together, you’ve got a dish. Use natural, fresh ingredients, you have a better dish.

The physical process, the manipulation of proteins and vegetables – that can look complicated. But transforming them from their rough, raw states into things of beauty is easier than you think, and it’ll take your better dish to a fantastic one.

Whenever I sit down to create a new recipe, the focus is flavor. When I created this Colorado Lamb dish last summer, the key idea in my mind was building the other flavors around the lamb. The execution of the dish might be complicated, but the flavors? Not by a long shot. The dish is dominated by simple, core flavor concepts: fruit (from the fresh apple and dried apricot), herbal (from the crushed mint in the filling) and the raw, natural gaminess of the lamb (the best part). These three simple flavors drive the entire affair.

Once you knock out the flavors of your dish, what’s left? The physical preparation? …and that’s the easy part. Don’t let the look of a rack of lamb scare you off: anyone can do it. Not only that, you can do it in no time at all; half an hour, tops. You’ll have an amazing meal to impress friends and family, and you’ll see how simple gourmet cooking really is.

And remember, in addition to trying this for yourself in your own kitchen, I will be offering this dish in The Cliff House dining room this weekend only! Utter the “secret phrase” at the end of this episode for an exculsive 15% discount only for viewers of “The Savage Kitchen”.

And if you love the dish, or if you have any questions, don’t forget to comment and most importantly: please, share it! Also, you can subscribe to our RSS feed for our latest videos, posts, and recipes.

Colorado Lamb

Stuffed with Apricots, Fuji Apple and Fresh Mint
Rissolée potatoes, Sautéed Spinach
Balsamic reduction
Serves 4

Ingredients

2 8 Bone Frenched racks of lamb
1lb Dried apricots
2ea Fuji apples
10 Mint leaves
2ea Russet potatoes
2lb Fresh spinach
4c Balsamic vinegar
1/2c Sugar
Salt and pepper

Procedure: Lamb

Clean silver skin from lamb and cut into 4 bone racks. Season the lamb with salt & pepper. Sear in skillet and let cool.
In a food processor blend apricot, peeled and cored apple with mint. Place in a piping bag.
Take cooled lamb and cut a slit through the center of the loin. Take piping bag and place the tip into the slit in the lamb and fill with stuffing. Don’t over stuff because when you finish cooking the lamb the meat will shrink and squeeze out the stuffing.
Wrap bones with aluminum foil to keep from burning.
Cook lamb in a 350 degree over for 10 to 12 minutes.

Rissolée Potatoes

Peel potatoes. Use a Parisienne scoop to shape the potatoes into small balls.
Simmer the potatoes in salted water until the potatoes are tender but not fully cooked.
Drain the potatoes.
Place the potatoes in a sauté pan and sauté with butter over high heat till potatoes turn golden brown.
Season the potatoes with salt and pepper.

Sautéed Spinach

In a large sauté pan cook spinach in butter till wilted. Season with salt and pepper.

Balsamic Reduction

Place Vinegar and sugar in a small sauce pan and cook over low heat till small bubbles appear about 15 to 20 minutes.
Pull from heat and place in small soup cup till needed.

Plating

Place spinach in center of plate. Cut lamb in half and place over spinach, locking bones together. Place potatoes around the outside of plate. Drizzle Reduction over the lamb.