Archives for March 2014

I'm especially excited to share this recipe with you today because it comes from one of my Le Cordon Blue – Paris classmates, Aida Mollenkamp.  You may recognize her name as she's gone on to craft a pretty interesting career in the food biz, but back when I knew her she was fresh out of college and following her passion for food and entertaining by working toward her "Grande Diplome" at LCB.

While you can choose to study savory cuisine or pastry at LCB, the "Le Grande Diplome" program requires that you study both over the course of three trimesters, Basic – Intermediate – Superior.  Our days there started with a demonstration lecture and ended with hands-on "practical" sessions where we retired to the school's kitchens to cook the meal we had watched our chef cook that morning.  While each student had his/her own stove in the kitchen we all shared work space on long stainless prep tables.  As luck would have it, Aida and I set up as neighbors right from the start, and while most of our work in the kitchen was individual, much as you would in choosing a lab partner in science class, you discover pretty quickly the value of sharing space with someone who knows what they're doing and works smartly, efficiently, and cleanly.  Lucky for me, Aida was one of those people.

We pretty quickly developed a good working relationship, cheering each other on when things were going well, watching each other's backs and pitching in to help when they weren't.  We came to trust each other as critics before we presented our dishes to the chef at the end of each class, offering each other tastes of what we were preparing and asking for an honest opinion.  "what's missing"….."is there enough salt"….."how the hell are you plating this dish"?  At the end of our time together in Paris we parted good friends and I've enjoyed watching her build her impressive culinary career from a distance.

These days I keep on top of what she's up to by checking out her website and catching her two shows that air on both the Cooking Channel and the Food Network, "Ask Aida" and "Food Crafters".  Given that she's a California girl and I'm an east coast guy we haven't had the opportunity to connect in many years, but I'm confident that one day our paths will cross again.  Until then, I "visit" her when I need a fix by watching some of her on-line videos, flipping through her great cookbook Aida Mollenkamp's Keys to the Kitchen , or cooking some of her terrific food.  Check out the video below to meet Aida for yourself, and to get the skinny on this healthy, simple and delicious chicken and artichoke dish.

Cheers – Steve

It had been months since I’d had lamb, so the other day at the market when I saw that they had boneless leg of lamb on sale I picked one up. I didn’t have a particular recipe in mind when I bought the meat, I just figured I’d coat it in some sort of fresh herb rub, tie it up and roast it to a delicious medium-rare. That was the loose plan until, when flipping through TV channels the next evening, I came across the show “The Best Thing I Ever Made” on the Food Network and watched the episode in which Anne Burrell was cooking up this lovely meat “pie”.

Not to be confused with it’s close relative the Cottage Pie which is made with beef, this lamb based wonder is nothing at all like the bland, insipid versions you may recall having eaten as a youngster, served up by the well-meaning lunch ladies at your grade school (no offense to the army of hard-working lunch ladies out there, I’m just sayin’). Don’t let your memories of those gelatinous, mystery meat filled “pies” of your school lunchroom days keep you from making this rich, hearty version….it would be such a shame.

There’s nothing fancy about this meal either in ingredients or technique required, but as Anne explains in the video below, time is required to build flavors here and if you try to rush it you will end up disappointed. Most important is the browning of the meat at the very beginning, and for this reason she calls for cubed lamb shoulder (or leg), and not ground which is what many people use. It is much harder to properly brown ground meat, and without the beautiful mahogany crust on the meat and the resulting “fond” in the bottom of the pan, the flavor of this dish just won’t turn out as robust as it should. The ultimate success of this dish is all about capturing as much of that caramelized goodness from the browning of the meat and veggies as you can before de-glazing with the wine and stock, so pour yourself a glass before you get started and take your time here.

Check out Anne’s video below to get more of her great cooking tips, to score the full recipe, and to watch her actually craft this dish. I just love her style, don’t you?

If you don’t want to do the full monty you can always serve up the lamb stew and mashed potatoes separately, but it’s oh-so-much more special (and hardly any more work) to dress up your stew with the spuds and pop the “pie” under the broiler for a few minutes. If you like to practice advanced meal planning (and who doesn’t?) might I suggest even making a double batch of the stew and freeze half of it. Then, somewhere down the road you are only a fresh batch of mashed potatoes and a few minutes in the oven from a second shepherd’s pie.

I’m always looking out for you folks, yes?

This time around I took inspiration from my talented friend Lynda over at Tastefood who is always impressing me by crafting meals and desserts served up in individual ramekins, pots and goblets, and I decided to make single-person servings of this meal by spooning the stew into ramekins and then piping the mashed potatoes on top. They turned out pretty elegant for a dish of rather humble origins, don’t you think?

Cheers – Steve

 This is a recipe that I adapted from one I found in a Jaime Oliver magazine a while back.  I remember loving the picture that accompanied the dish, and while I no longer have the recipe on-hand I did remember enough about the elements to pretty successfully recreate it here (I think).

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Chicken Paprikash is practically Hungary's national dish, and while I've enjoyed it made with veal before I've never had a pork paprikash until I tried this great recipe from my friends over at Cooking Light Magazine.  The traditional chicken version of this dish is a braise of whole chicken parts with the skin and on the bone, and delicious as it is, I have to say I really like CL's take on it calling for cubed pork tenderloin to be used instead.  Not only does this version eliminate the fat of the chicken skin, but cubing the pork makes it so much easier to eat, and this dish is so tasty you're not going to want to be spending time cutting meat from bone when you could just be shoveling it straight in!  You hear what I'm sayin'?

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