Lucito
Yesterday I posted one half of this great combination I like so much, and today it is only normal to post the second half, a wonderfully divine potato recipe. I have always been a potato lover, and this brings my love of them to another level. It is not an everyday dish as it involves using truffles and truffle oil, but it is nice to indulge ourselves once in a while. I normally use the cheaper Italian black truffles in jars and Italian truffle oil, a combination of olive oil and truffle flavor. I have not found a ready supply of the around here, and I am still looking around. The Padrino used to bring us some when he visited in the old days, but lately he has been forgetful about this <wink, wink>… The recipe is simple to make and yields wonderful results. If you really want to be fancy you can carve your potatoes in cylinders around 1.5-2" in diameter before slicing them to get uniform slices, but I normally do not go to this trouble as I prefer my potatoes with the skin on. Enjoy them with a nice juicy piece of bavette…
Ingredients
2 pounds medium potatoes
2 medium Italian black truffles
3 tbs Italian truffle oil
1/4 pound clarified butter
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/2 tsp salt
Preparation
1. With a mandoline or a very sharp knife cut potatoes into thin slices.
2. In a large pot of boiling water add the potato slices and blanch for 3-4 minutes.
3. Place the potato slices in cold water to stop the cooking, and then pat dry.
4. Cut the truffles into very thin slices or shavings.
4. Butter a 10" round cake mould and place a layer of the potato slice in it, carefully overlapping them slightly.
5. Pour a bit of the melted butter on the potatoes, add a few truffle slices, pour a bit of truffle oil and salt and pepper to taste.
6. Repeat the layering process until you use up all the potatoes.
7. Press down firmly on the potatoes so that they stick together well.
8. Place in a preheated 400F oven and bake for 30 minutes, or until a nice brown crust develops.
9. Turn the pie mold over a serving dish and cut into portions like a pie.
Lucito
Last week I posted some pictures of various dishes we like a lot and I mentioned that one of my favorite ones was a bavette de boeuf recipe that I have been making since our French butcher, Roger, showed us this inexpensive cut of meat. He worked in a little Italian butcher shop in St-Léonard, an eastern suburb of Montréal. I was raised in this neighborhood where a lot of Italian people resided. A bit over 20 years ago this butcher shop was recommended to us and we started to get our meat there regularly. Years after I moved up North to Mont-Tremblant, where I was born, I was still driving 100 miles to Montréal to go get my meat at that shop as they had the best beef, veal, lamb, and pork that you could get, and also great grain-fed chicken, turkey, pheasant and quails. Roger was from France and the only non-Italian in the shop. He was my regular butcher and was always recommending the best cuts to us. One day I was not sure about what to buy and I was thinking of maybe getting some beef tenderloin, and he suggested that I get some bavette as the taste is far superior. Bavette is not as tender as tenderloin by its nature, but well marinated its well marbled texture will melt in your mouth. I always liked meat with coarse texture like flank and the bavette is similar. If your butcher does not know this French cut, the North-American name is flap meat, or more exactly bottom sirloin butt flap. Its taste is very distinctive and once you have it, nothing else will compare.
I normally marinate it for some hours before cooking, or even overnight if you want it extra tender. I accompany it with a sturdy port wine sauce, and my favorite side dish is Salardaise Potatoes made with some nice Italian truffles and truffle oil. It is best grilled over real charcoals, but can be successfully made on a grill pan on the stovetop and finished in the oven. It is a cut that works greatly with the cook and hold methods. I like to entertain with this meal as everything can be cooked slightly ahead and held until you are ready to serve. It permits me to sit down with the guest and to have the first course with them while the main course is holding in a low oven. This way I do not have to do last minute cooking between courses. Leftovers are wonderful, and years ago, when the Padrino was visiting, we invented a wonderful lunch treat the day after one of our famous 6 hour meals. By the next afternoon we were getting a tad hungry and we looked at what we had for leftovers. We discovered some nice cooked bavette from the night before, some great Brillat-Savarin cheese from France, and my favorite Montréal style bagels. We made some incredibly satisfying sandwiches on the bagels with simply a thick layer of Brillat-Savarin, some nice slices of bavette, and a bit of honey mustard. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water…
Ingredients
Bavette and Marinade
2 pounds bavette in one piece
2 tbs Worcestershire sauce
2 tbs soy sauce
4 tbs port wine
1 tsp crushed thyme
1 tsp crushed freeze-dried chives
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
Sauce
3 tbs butter
2 tbs flour
1/4 pound of fresh chanterelles
2 tbs very finely diced sweet red pepper
2 tbs very finely diced French shallots
2 tsp fresh chives finely sliced
2 tsp finely crushed Herbes de Provence
2 tbs beef extract
1/2 cup port wine
1 1/2 cup beef bouillon
salt and pepper to taste
Preparation
1. Clean the bavette well and remove any piece of remaining fat.
2. On both sides of the bavette and with a very sharp knife, cut a pattern about 1/4" deep, an inch apart, in two directions 90 degrees from each other. One of the series of cuts should be with the grain and the others across.
3. Place the prepared bavette on a large bowl or plate and rub into it half of the marinade ingredients. Turn the bavette over and repeat the process with the remaining ingredients. Cover and marinate for a few hours or refrigerate overnight.
4. On a very high heat BBQ or grill pan, sear the bavette for about 4-5 minutes, turn and repeat the process to the other side. Place the seared bavette in an oven-proof dish and place in a preheated very low oven (~250F) while you prepare the sauce.
5. In a medium saucepan put 1 tbs of the butter and sauté the mushrooms, red peppers, and shallots until tender and reserve.
6. In the same saucepan melt the remaining butter and add the flour to it. Mix well with a wooden spoon and gently cook the roux over medium heat until it starts taking color. Be careful not burning it.
7. When the roux reaches a light brown color, add 2/3 of the port wine and incorporate well.
8. Slowly add the beef stock while mixing until you have a nice thick sauce. Lower the eat to a very slow simmer.
9. Add the reserved mushrooms, shallots, and red peppers. Mix well.
10. Add the chives, Herbes de Provence, beef extract, salt, and pepper. Mix well.
11. When all the ingredients are well incorporated, add the rest of the port wine and blend well.
12. To server cut the bavette in thin slices on the bias across the grain and ladle a few spoons of sauce on the meat.
Lucito
Some of you must be wondering why posting has been light and the promised site updates still are not up. The story is a long one, but I will keep it short. If you have been a regular reader since the start, you remember that when we launched the site it was down most of the time due to the fact that when we moved to the new condo we had frequent power failures that were keeping the server silent for days at a time. After a month or two the situation stabilized and we managed a long uninterrupted period of power. About 3 weeks ago the regular blackouts started again and we have been experiencing blackouts almost daily. On Friday we had a long conversation with the utility company, and the jest of it is that there is a huge amount of new construction in our neighborhood, and the construction companies overload the grid by illegally connecting to it and thus bring it down on a regular basis. They are doing their best to prevent this and to fine the people, but it is difficult to prove and they do the same thing again the next day. Hopefully things will improve in the coming weeks. We also plan to upgrade out server as it is starting to show the wear of all of those power peaks followed by abrupt failures. We are also looking getting a huge UPS for it and the router so that we can keep running while the power is down. We are also looking at the possibility of purchasing a cheap generator so we have stable power.
Another thing that kept us from publishing was that some unexpected urgent work showed up, and the delivery was made difficult due to the lack of power. At least we finally delivered and we will be able to resume regular postings by tomorrow and also we will be able to finish the site upgrades we were promising last week. Until then have fun in the kitchen.
Lucito
I came across an interesting little kitchen gadgets today while reviewing some RSS feed and it seems to be a great thing when you have to prepare some food that need to be tied with kitchen twine. It is called the Food Loop and it is simply a silicone tie rap that is heat resistant up to 675F and it would be very useful when you are trying to tie a roast and you are running out of hands. I have no idea if it works properly and even of the price as they seem to only list stores where it is available, but it would be a very valuable aid in the kitchen if it works as advertised. Since I do not endorse the product and actually never have tried it, the only thing that I can say is buyer beware. If they are affordable and work well I would not mind having a dozen or so in my gadget drawer.
Lucito
Today I was going through hundreds of photos to select some that I will use for the redesign of the blog. I came across some pictures of dishes I cooked or cooked by great chefs I know. They all brought back some fond memories and I would like to share a few with you today.
Here is some Sweet and Sour Pork Cheng Tu Style from a Chinese meal I did for a Christmas party for Normita’s office a few year’s back.
Orange Beef from the same meal.
Shrimps in Black Bean Sauce .
Chicken Stuffed in Cucumbers.
And finally the entire table with the light meal…
The marvelous sweetbreads prepared by Chef Olivier of Cheval de Jade, our favorite restaurant in Mont-Tremblant. I proposed to Normita there a crazy summer on her birthday!
What Normita had the same night at Cheval de Jade, Salmon in Potato Crust.
My famous Oriental Scallop and Leek Soup that always makes a stunning start to a meal.
A Sweet Onions and Port Pie with a topping of goat cheese that I invented for our wedding anniversary a few years back.
A nice array of Sushi that our Japanese Chef friend Koishi prepared for us and delivered home in the woods, back in the days we were living at the edge of a wonderful lake in Québec.
Fried Shitakes at Soto the japanese restaurant where Koishi worked at the time.
A nice Japanese Fish Salad that I prepared as part of a nice homemade sushi meal.
A nice invention of mine for Valentine day somes years ago. Duck Breast Glazed in Honey with a Mango and Strawberry couli.
Memories from our honeymoon in Ixtapa. We went fishing one day and I caught a nice Dorado. We stopped at Isla de Ixtapa on the way back and they prepared it grilled on wook fire. A wonderful Dorado a las Brazas.
One of my all-time favorite creations, Grilled Bavette de Boeuf with Port Sauce with Salardaise Potatoes. The Padrino was known to fly to Canada, back in the days we lived there, just to have his fix of it. That and incredible quantities of fermented beverages.
A nice creation of mine from years ago, Thai Style Fish in Rice Paper. I found a full pictorial on how to prepare it that I will post one of these days.
I hope that you enjoyed the little pictorial history, and now I am starving from looking at the pictures, so I will go to the kitchen and prepare something tasty to eat…
Lucito
We are just emerging from a 2 week long programming binge to get one new product version out of the door, and I finally delivered late this afternoon. I then decided to review what the plans are for the coming months. We have to prepare and launch another new line of products in the next few months, but before we start we might have a semi-quiet week or so before we sit down with clients to do final interviews about business processes and start analysis so I will try to exploit that short period as best I can.
Tomorrow I need to catch up on office things that have been left untouched over the last few weeks and try to take it easy a bit as I worked through the last few weekends without rest. We have some meetings scheduled for Thursday morning, but after that I plan to update the looks of the site, redo a few little things on the blog, post the Padrino’s short bio that he finally it delivered this morning, and do some analysis before forging ahead with a preliminary version of the basic free cooking software package. We will definitely take the weekend off as I need rest, and it will be nice to spend some time with Normita as she had to work a lot too on weekends over the last month.
If all goes well, and I do not get swamped unexpectedly with works, you should expect a beta version of the basic cooking and recipe software to be available for download in about 2 weeks. Once well tested and stable we will slowly start adding features to the product on a regular schedule. We have yet to decide on which environment we will develop the product, as I would like to create a multiplatform tool that can run on Windows, Linux, and MacOS, but we will need to see first how we will structure it and how much already written code we can leverage. I will have more on that when I finish the analysis on Thursday. Until then have some fun in the kitchen…
Lucito
Sorry for the lack of postings in the last few days, but works has been hectic combined with major power problems in the neighborhood bringing down the server on a regular basis. We blew up more equipment with the power surges and this is not making work any easier. I hope that the electricity company manages to fix their problems as we have had power failures daily for the last few weeks. Hopefully on my side I will manage to catch up with work on Wednesday so that we can start posting on our regular schedule.
Tonight’s recipe is a creation that I did for Valentine’s Day. Normita wanted to have a cheese fondue, and we could not find a fondue dish in time. Of course a week and a half later there was one on promotion at the local supermarket so we will have our fondue one of these days when we are in the mood again. These cannelloni are easiest to make with the type or pasta that does not require pre-cooking. If you prefer you can use the regular pasta and pre-cook it.
Ingredients
4 green onions, finely chopped
1/4 pound brown button mushrooms, sliced
1/4 pound portobellini mushrooms, sliced
3 tbs butter
3 tbs flour
1 1/2 cup white wine
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 parmesan, grated
1/2 cup cottage cheese
1/4 cup mozzarella, shredded
1/2 cup gruyere, shredded
3 1/2 ounces prosciutto, finely chopped
1/3 pound sliced emmental
1 large egg
1 tsp herbes de Provence
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp white pepper
1/3 tsp nutmeg
8 cannelloni
Preparation
1. In a heavy pan sauté the green onions and the mushrooms in the butter until the mushrooms are nice and soft. Reserve 2 tbs of the mushrooms.
2. Lower the heat and add the flour and cooked until it slightly starts taking a bit of color.
3. Slowly add the white wine and stir until very thick then add the cream.
4. Season with half the salt, pepper, and nutmeg.
4. Once the sauce is nice and smooth add half the gruyere and parmesan and stir until nicely melted into the sauce. Keep warm while preparing the rest of the recipe.
5. In a bowl mix the remaining parmesan and gruyere, the ricotta and mozzarella, the egg, the remaining salt pepper and nutmeg, the herbes de Provence, and the prosciutto.
6. Fill the cannelloni shells with the mixture.
7. Place a bit of the sauce at the bottom of an ovenproof dish and place the cannelloni on top of the sauce.
8. Poor the remaining sauce on the cannelloni and top with the sliced emmental.
9. Bake in a preheated 400F oven for 20 to 25 minutes until the sauce is bubbly and the cheese is melted and golden.
For those of you who tried to access the blog for most of today and could not, the reason was that a large chunk of Mexico City was without power, including our neighborhood. This meant that our office’s server was down, taking down the blog with it and that I lost a full day of work. Now I’ll have to work most of the night to meet pressing deadlines. I did not even have time to have lunch yet so I’ll take a short run to the kitchen and make something quick before getting back to work.
Lucito
A few days ago I posted a comment I had made on another blog about cooking for two and how to deal with leftovers. My advices was mainly to know your appetite, cook the required amount, and if you need to cook more plan what you will do with your leftovers ahead of time. This stuck to the back of my mind and I thought about how we normally handle this here as there is only the two of us. Our goldfishes and the colibris we feed outside do not count…
Here in Mexico the main meal of the day is what we would call lunch in Canada or the US and it is taken at 2-3pm instead of noon. The evening meal, which all of my life was the main meal, is either very light or just some fruits or a sweet bread. I have a tendency to skip it entirely unless I have a sudden craving for something or other. In a way I prefer this style of eating, as you never go to bed with a full stomach and lay there wondering why you cannot sleep because you ate so much. It still feel strange for me to go out to a nice restaurant in the middle of the afternoon, so we normally go out to restaurants in the early evening when we do so. If I go out on a business lunch, I can normally count that the business day will be over at the restaurant. Most serious business is done over a meal, so it gives you a good change to develop solid business relationships and eventually long-lasting friendships.
I am going through this long-winded story to explain the simple fact that during the week I mostly prepare lunches for Normita in the morning and will eat an easy-to-prepare meal in the afternoon as I do not have the time to do anything more involved. I always do single portion dishes so we normally do not have leftovers. When I do have leftovers, normally I use them the next day. On Fridays and weekends things are different as Normita normally finishes work early on Fridays and she joins me for lunch, and we normally plan something more involved on Saturday and Sundays. Friday’s lunch I plan a meal for two and I make sure that I do not have leftovers, so I cook accordingly. The weekend’s meals are a bit different, when we have company I deliberately make more than required, as I never like running short of food for the guests. I tend to use the leftovers the next day or freeze them if we cannot use them all. When we are alone, depending on the dishes we planned, I either will cook just enough, or plan the lunches for the beginning of the week around the leftovers.
Some dishes are much better in larger quantities like stews, soups, roasts, and things like that. I always do a larger portion and deal with leftovers according to their volumes. We used to freeze leftover soups, but now we shy away from doing that as we do not have much room in the freezer and also we ended up with unidentified blocks of ice with bit and pieces in them, and some months later we ended up throwing them away. Now I prefer using them right away and preparing lunches for neighbors and acquaintances.
Lucito
We are starting a new month and it seems that yesterday we were preparing for the end of the year and now we are already in March. Here in Mexico City the trees are already starting to bloom and soon the hot season will be upon us. Our real summer weather is normally from late March to the end of May as after that the rain season starts. In honor of the upcoming summer here are some pictures we took a few years back at the ‘Mercado de Jamaica’ a large world-renowned flower and fruit market just south of the historic center of the city, near where we used to live. It is a wonderful place to visit if you come to town as it had a huge variety of flowers for sale as well as a wide choice of fruits and vegetables. During the holiday seasons it gets very crowded as the entire city passed there to get seasonal offerings. It is a colorful mixture that is typically Mexican.
Lucito
