Archive for January 2012

Beef short ribs

January 21, 2012 Recipes No comments

Warning about recipes. Read this first!

BEEF SHORT RIBS
Yield: 2 servings (approx 8oz uncooked)

INGREDIENTS
1 # Beef short ribs (should be about four pieces, 3″ long or so)
8 oz Mushrooms, sliced
2 tsp Garlic, minced
1 C Red wine
1 C Stock (any kind)
4 ea Thyme sprigs
tt Salt and pepper

METHOD
1. Season all four sides of the short ribs with salt and pepper. In a medium saute pan over high heat, sear all four sides of each rib. Remove ribs to an oven-safe dish.

2. Sautee mushrooms in the same saute pan, which will soak up all the fat, and then start to release their moisture. Just before the mushrooms are nicely seared, add the garlic and finish searing the mushrooms stopping before they become soggy. Remove to the oven-safe dish with the beef.

3. Deglaze the pan with the red wine and stock. Bring to a boil, then pour over beef and mushrooms. Add the whole thyme to the dish.

4. Cover well, and braise in the oven for 5-6 hours at 275F.

5. Remove ribs from sauce, cover, and chill. Chill sauce.

6. The next day, remove solid fat from the top of the sauce. Reheat the sauce and bring to a boil. Reduce by 1/3 or 1/2, then add the ribs and reheat thoroughly. Be careful with the meat, it should be very tender at this point.

7. Remove ribs, keep warm, and season sauce. Skim sauce of any excess fat or scum, if necessary. Drizzle sauce over ribs and serve immediately.

NOTES
8oz of raw beef is a decent portion for a plated meal, but chowing down at home, I can eat a full pound of these things, easy.

COMMENTARY
I love a good braise, and nothing braises quite like beef. A braise means low, slow, and moist; it’s the complete opposite of roasting (but I violate that rule when I “roast” a turkey).

The crucial step to a good braise is to make the dish THE DAY BEFORE YOU NEED IT! If you make it ahead of time, let the meat chill, and then reheat and season, the gelatin present in the meat will have a lower melting point the second time around, making the meat even more tender and succulent than if you try to serve it right out of the oven when you first make it.

Fattier, tougher meats work best for a braise. Although I will braise a chicken, it takes a little more care because it will dry out, even though it’s sitting in all that moisture.

Top Chef fans, viewers, and other professional chefs: It KILLS me when one of those “chef-testants” say they’re going to braise something during a 30 minute Quick-Fire challenge. HELLO!!! Not a braise!! For fuck’s sake, why doesn’t Coliccio call them out? Any first-year student knows the definition of a braise. Why are these (supposed) super-talented chefs butchering the language and using terms so lazily? As a mentor of mine taught me: Words have meaning and power. Use them properly!

And now my rant is done. For now.

Hummus

January 15, 2012 Recipes 2 comments

Warning about recipes. Read this first!

HUMMUS
Yield: 28 fl oz

INGREDIENTS
30 oz Chickpeas, drained
1 fl oz Lemon juice
1 tbl Garlic, minced
1 fl oz Tahini
1 tbl Ground cumin
6 fl oz Olive oil
2 fl oz Extra virgin olive oil
tt Salt and pepper

METHOD
1. Drain chickpeas, then place in a pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil and cook until they’re EXTREMELY soft. You should be able to mush them easily between your fingers. Drain and reserve cooking liquid.

2. Combine chickpeas, lemon juice, garlic, and tahini in a food processor and puree until mostly smooth, then slowly drizzle in both oils. Puree until extremely smooth, and add a little of the reserved cooking liquid to thin out, as desired.

3. Season to taste

NOTES
#10 can of chickpeas yields 64 oz drained chickpeas

COMMENTARY
Are you Greek? Turkish? Lebanese? Egyptian? Let the brawling begin over the origin of hummus. Personally, I don’t think it matters. Let the hate mail flow.

The secret to this recipe is something I learned from a Lebanese friend: Boil the crap out of the chickpeas. I used to just puree the canned chickpeas, right of the can, but it never got super-smooth. There have been times when I boiled the chickpeas until they actually started falling apart. Maybe that was taking it a little too far, but the point remains. So anyway, thanks Joe, for the tip!

A lot of restaurants I’ve been to serve a very thin, pale hummus, and I think that’s because of more water, but also increasing the ratio of tahini. But practice this recipe and do what you want with it, to your own tastes.

Enjoy!

Birthday party at Starry Nights

January 15, 2012 Blog postings No comments

Last night Starry Nights hosted another birthday party, this time for a young woman who turned 30. Her boyfriend had put so much energy into this event, it was impressive. The theme was pink, black, and white, and the event coordinator he hired did a great job customizing the room. The dessert table was quite impressive, centered on (of course) a delicious cake by Starry Nights!

The menu was Chicken Satay with my famous (yes, famous) Peanut sauce, Crudite with Hummus, Sliders, Crab Cakes with red bell pepper aioli, and Gougeres (Matt!! The gougeres!!)

The whole party was a success, and the guests really seemed to have a great time. I know this because the bar tab was one of the highest per capita we’ve ever done. The only hitch was that the birthday girl forgot her ID, so my client had to go get it. But he did, and it all turned out ok.

Rebekah was one of the floor staff last night. I love having her on the team, she’ll eat anything! She mentioned that she loved my hummus, so I’ve decided to make that the first official recipe of Kung Fu Chef 2.0.

Recipe disclaimer

January 15, 2012 Recipes, Soapbox rants 4 comments

Cooking is not a science (and neither is baking for that matter, but that’s a topic for another day, I’m sure), and cooking is not an art (Definitely a topic for another day!). Cooking is a craft. This means that it can be learned and perfected.

The easiest way to succeed at cooking is practice. And one of the parts of this practice is to read the recipe, several times through before you start anything. For god’s sake, do not start making a souffle and THEN realize the oven has to be on at 450F. Your souffle will die well before the oven gets hot enough. So if you read the recipe through before you start, you’ll be able to avoid many pitfalls, even if the recipe is poorly written.

All recipes are only a guideline. Don’t take ANY recipe as gospel, not even baking recipes. You can always change things, and depending on who wrote the recipe, your results may vary.

Recipes can be written to any skill level. Professional/kitchen/production recipes have a completely different format than the ones you’d find online (at say, AllRecipes), or the ones you’d find at Cook’s Illustrated (which are RIDICULOUSLY long and detailed. Just try actually using one of these things in a production environment. You’ll get your ass handed to you by the chef.)

Some constants do exist, though, or at least, there are some conventions that should be observed. All of the recipes on this blog will follow these conventions.

  1. Ingredients should be listed in order of their incorporation, meaning sequentially. This makes the recipe much easier to keep track of where you are in the process.
  2. Descriptions of ingredients in the ingredient list matter. “Onion, minced; 32 oz” is not the same as “Onion; 32oz”. The first means to mince a bunch of onions, weigh it out until you have 32 oz. The second means take whole onions and weigh out 32 oz. The first option is much easier and accurate in a production environment; the second is much easier when you’re in the store shopping.
  3. “Oz” or “Ounces” ought to ALWAYS be weight. If the recipe writer intends volume measurement he or she damn well better be using “Fl oz” or “Fluid ounces”. Chalk this one up to being on the avoirdupois system instead of the metric system (not that I particularly love the metric system, it’s absolute shit for measuring temperature. The gradients aren’t as finely divided as Farenheit).
  4. If the writer means volume, the recipe should use “fl oz”. Yes, I realize this is the same as #3, just said differently, but I feel pretty strongly about this one. Part of me is a pastry chef and this indiscriminate use of “ounces” really kills me.

Oh, and just for shits and grins, here are two simple recipes written to extremely different audiences. Mostly tongue-in-cheek, but there is some truth here. Obviously, most recipes will fall somewhere in the middle on this spectrum.

Mayonnaise, Detailed version
aka the Microsoft PM
1 Large AA chicken egg
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon white refined sugar (cane or beet)
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard (Pardon me, but do you have any Grey Poupon?)
1 cup Canola oil

1. Separate egg yolk from white by carefully breaking the shell in half, and pouring the egg back and forth until the white falls away and you just have the yolk remaining. Place yolk in the work bowl of a food processor.
2. Pour vinegar into food processor with the yolk and add the salt, sugar, and Dijon. Put the lid on the food processor and pulse four times for 1 second each pulse.
3. Take off the lid and scrape down the sides of the work bowl. Replace the lid.
4. Turn on the food processor and slowly drizzle in the Canola oil through the little hole in the lid of the work bowl. This should be a thin, steady stream, at a rate of about .25 fluid ounces per second.
5. Remove the lid of the work bowl and scrape down the sides. Replace lid and pulse 4-6 times (sorry for the lack of specificity here) until everything is completely homogenous.
6. Remove the lid of the work bowl and dip a tasting spoon into the mayonnaise and taste. Evaluate for acid, saltiness, and sweetness. Adjust each seasoning as necessary, since flavor may vary, based in large part to the variance between the size of any given egg yolk.
7. Scrape mayonnaise out of work bowl into an airtight container and seal tightly. This will keep in the refrigerator for at least one month.

Mayonnaise, Professional version
aka Who the fuck can’t make mayo?
Make mayonnaise. Season to taste.

Suicidal fly

January 4, 2012 Blog postings No comments

So this is freaky-weird: a fly just flew into the heavy cream I was pouring into a bowl.

I almost didn’t believe it, but there it was, the drowning fly in the cream. WTF. This has got to be one of the weirdest things I’ve seen in the kitchen.

Flys are a common problem from time to time, and eradicating them takes a little effort. Unless, apparently, you’re trying to make whipped cream.

And yes, I dumped the cream and cleaned the bowl.

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