Oui, Chef

Fare for the family table

Entrees

Nobu’s Spicy Shrimp Tempura

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One of my favorite features of Bon Appetit magazine has always been the r.s.v.p. section.  This is where readers write to ask the Bon Appetit staff to chase down chefs in order to discover the recipes of their favorite restaurant meals.  I’ve never written in myself, but have loved reading about people’s special food memories, and their quest to uncover the secrets to making a beloved “restaurant” dish at home.

That said, the boys and I came across a dish this past Spring, that had I not already had the recipe in a cookbook I owned (how lucky was that?), I almost certainly would have been begging Bon Appetit to get it for me.  My desperation not only driven by how perfectly tasty the dish is, but also by Grid relentlessly hounding me to figure out how to make Nobu’s “Tempura Shrimp with Creamy Spicy Sauce”….man, you’d think I never feed the kid.

The dish is so addictive that when we ordered it as a shared appetizer, I started to really fear that someone was going to get hurt, as the four of us stabbed our chopsticks into the serving bowl to fight for our share.  It got UGLY in a hurry!

 

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Gemelli with Rapini, Sausage and Raisins

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This is absolutely one of my favorite pasta dishes, and one that is an excellent vehicle for introducing rapini (or broccoli rabe) to your kids.  Rapini is a delicious bitter green, that served on its own, is a tough one for kids to love, the flavor being just a little too sharp and funky for your average ankle biter.  In this dish, the sweetness of the raisins, and the luxurious mouth-feel afforded by the fat in the sausage, keep the bitterness of the rapini in check, much to the delight of the youngsters.  It is a quick meal to toss together, and so easy that it can be prepped top to bottom by anyone old enough to use a knife, just be sure to save the act of slipping the sausage meat from their casings for your least squeamish child.  Serve it with a simple green salad and a crust of country bread

Gemelli with Rapini, Sausage and Raisins

by: Steve Dunn
yield:
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Ingredients

  • 1 pound Gemelli or other small shell-shaped pasta
  • 1 pound (about 4 links) sweet Italian sausage
  • 1 bunch broccoli rabe, stem bottoms trimmed, washed well
  • 3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
  • 2 cups low-sodium chicken broth, reduced in half
  • 1/4 cup dry white wine
  • 1/2 cup golden (or dark) raisins
  • 1/4 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted
  • 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
  • Fresh ribbons of parmesan cheese, peeled with a vegetable peeler

Instructions

  • Set a large pot of salted water on to boil for the pasta. Place low-sodium chicken stock in a pan and reduce by half to 1 cup, add dry white wine and reserve. Lightly toast pine nuts in a dry skillet, reserve.
  • Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. When shimmering, squeeze sausages from their casings, dropping bite-sized pieces in the hot skillet to saute, stirring occasionally, until nicely browned. Using a slotted spoon, remove the sausages to a bowl, leaving behind the drippings in the skillet. Cook the pasta to producers instructions for al dente.
  • Trim the ends, wash, dry, and cut the brocolli rabe into 1-1/2” pieces. Add to the drippings in the skillet and saute over medium-high heat until wilted and just starting to take color. Add the sliced garlic and pepper flakes and cook 1-2 minutes, add the reduced chicken broth, wine, and raisins and cook another 3-4 minutes, until the broccoli rabe is just starting to soften, but still has a nice bite to it. Drain the pasta and add to the skillet, chuck in a few large knobs of butter and the pine nuts, and toss to combine. Check seasoning for salt and pepper, and serve topped with ribbons of freshly peeled parmesan.
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Local Organic Steak with Kalamata Chimichurri Sauce

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I love my grill.  I love the act of cooking just about anything on my outdoor grill, from the freshest swordfish, to thick, fat-marbled, beef rib-eye steaks.  Every man I know is the same, even guys that avoid cooking in their kitchens at all costs.  Put them next to a screaming hot grill and they have an almost instant primal reaction to the thing…..it’s like we’re all back living in a cave and trying to tame fire for the first time.

Sadly, as a resident of the Northeast, my opportunities to grill outdoors in the winter are fairly limited.  We’ve had such a bad spell of weather as of late, that I haven’t even bothered to dig a path through the snow to my grill, you know, just in case we have a day that creeps above 40℉ and tempts me to fire up the beast.

That said, we have found ourselves doing more braising, making pastas and soups, and generally taking a break from grilled meats.  It’s been all good, and natural, and seasonal, and in keeping with the proper rhythm of life in New England.

That was, until the other day when Peyton said she was “really…really…REALLY hankerin’ for a steak, and questioned if there was there anyway…PLEEEEASE that we could cook one indoors, because she really missed the sizzling, juicy, charred goodness of beef flesh done on the grill!”  Clearly, she has been working on connecting with her inner cave woman.

Happily for her (and for all of us, really) there is a perfectly excellent way to cook steaks indoors, one that imparts many of the flavors that open-flame grilling does when cooking on an outdoor grill.  There are two keys to crafting a “grilled” steak meal indoors to satisfy your inner caveman (or woman as it were), the first is to start with a nice thick steak (at least 1 -1/2″ – 2″ thick), cut from organically and humanely raised cattle.  Second, you need BIG heat.  For me, that translates into a fully pre-heated cast iron grill pan over a high flame to start cooking your steak, and a pre-heated 425℉ oven in which to finish the cooking.  Oh….and you might want to be sure you have a good kitchen exhaust fan too.

I’m a proponent of adding complexity to the flavor of a good steak.  For a filet, that may come in the form of a nice sauce bernaise, or perhaps a dollop of compound butter on top, for a  sirloin or well marbled rib-eye, it is hard to beat a great chimichurri sauce.  I was first introduced to chimichurri when I used to travel to Houston frequently for work.  There was a great Argentinian restaurant there called Churrascos, that served fabulous steaks with the best chimichurri.   The freshness of the parsley, the acidity of the vinegar, and the bite of the garlic are all perfect foils for the melting fat and earthy chew of the beef.  It is so quick to throw one together, that once you’ve tried it, you’ll be making it a lot, I promise.

So let’s begin, shall we?

Kalamata Olive Chimichurri

by: Bon Appetit Magazine - February 2009
yield:
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Ingredients

  • 4 tablespoons fruity olive oil, divided
  • 4 garlic cloves, finely minced
  • 1/4 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
  • 1 bay leaf, broken in half
  • 1/3 cup finely chopped shallots
  • 1/3 cup finely chopped fresh Italian parsley
  • 4 tablespoons roughly chopped, pitted Kalamata olives
  • 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

Instructions

  • Heat 2 tablespoons oil in heavy medium skillet over medium heat. Add shallots, red pepper, and bay leaf. Stir until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add garlic and sauté, about 2 minutes. Remove from heat; stir in parsley, olives, and vinegar. Season chimichurri with salt and pepper, and add a little water by teaspoonfuls to thin as needed. Let sit at room temperature while you cook your steaks, remove the bay leaf before serving.

For the Steaks

  • Preheat oven to 425°F. Season steaks on both sides with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper. Brush heavy, large oven-proof grill skillet (preferably cast-iron) with vegetable oil. Heat over high heat until just smoking. Add steaks. Cook until nicely browned, about 4-5 minutes. Turn steaks and transfer skillet to oven. Roast until instant-read thermometer inserted horizontally into steaks registers 125°F to 130°F for medium-rare, about 10 minutes.
  • Let steaks rest at least 5 minutes. Thinly slice crosswise, and spoon chimichurri over.
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Chicken Pot Pie "Provencal"

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Happy New Year!

I hope you all had holidays filled with lots of love, laughter and great food!  We here at “Oui, Chef” are just starting to get back into the swing of things after our holiday travel.  We’re warming up the stove, cleaning the cobwebs from the pantry, and re-stocking the fridge so that we can share more fun, family friendly recipes with you as we launch into 2010.  Today we’re sharing a chicken pot pie recipe that I came up with earlier in the Fall, and I have to say that I’m really proud of this creation….it ROCKS!

The recipe calls for doing EVERYTHING from scratch, and as such, it is not a recipe that you will be whipping up for a weeknight dinner, it is more of a Saturday or Sunday cooking project.  That said, there are a number of shortcuts (I list them at the end of the post) that you could take when making this that would make it much less time intensive, and if you wanted to serve the filling “chicken ala king” style over some rice or pasta, you could easily pull this together during the week.

I have always been a big fan of pot pies, and I dare say, this was one of the best I’ve ever had, I do hope you give it a try.

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Macaroni and Cheese with Ham

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I’ve been searching for some time for a homemade mac and cheese recipe with which to break Muppet of her addiction to a certain, well known, boxed mac and cheese mix comprised of a tasteless cheese powder and sad little pasta shells.  All prior efforts have failed miserably with the dish either being “too cheesy”, “too dry”, “too crunchy on top”, or “too spicy” due to the incorporation of various seasonings.

The whole “too cheesy” thing makes no sense to me at all (I mean, can there really be such a thing?),  but I have been sympathetic to her other critiques and carried forth in search of a suitable replacement to her favored bowl of cardboard shells and re-hydrated cheese goo.  I am happy to report that finally, with the help of my very talented food-writer friend Melissa Pasanen (long-time correspondent for the Burlington Free Press, as well as a staff writer for Edward Behr’s incomparable “The Art of Eating”), and Chef Rick Gencarelli, I have found a mac and cheese recipe that will hopefully serve to banish all boxed versions from my house in the future.

 

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Cream of Mushroom Soup

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I love the holidays!  Starting with Thanksgiving, which is my all-time favorite, right through to New Year’s Eve, I love the rolling feast of it all.  With the advent of on-line shopping, I have finally been able to eliminate the one aspect of the holidays that used to make me dread them like the plague, and now that “retail” Christmas shopping is out of my life, the holidays are nothing but cheer for me!  They are a time to reconnect with friends and family, and to celebrate our health, peace and good fortune.  They provide ample opportunities for opening a few special bottles from the wine cellar, and most happily for me, offer a temporary pass to indulge in all sorts of delicious if not altogether healthy foods.

That’s not to say that I spend every day of December in a race to ingest as many fat and sugar calories as I can, but I certainly don’t watch myself as I do during the balance of the year.   I send my internal food police on a brief vacation so that I don’t feel like they are about to haul me away in handcuffs at every turn.

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Bouchon's Quiche Lorraine

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OK. 

This is not a recipe for the casual, "I just like to throw it together" kind of cook, and certainly not one you will be whipping up in a rush on a weeknight, but if you have any interest at all in making what is likely the best quiche on the planet, I urge you to stop clicking on your mouse and hang with me here for a while.

It also is not a recipe that you can give your kids free reign over, but it does have plenty of elements that the kids can help with, and I encourage you to make them part of the process.  Not only will most kids LOVE this quiche, but I think it important that we make the effort to train our next generation in the fine art of quiche making, an art that is still alive and well in Europe, but sadly died here in the States in the "real men don't eat quiche" days of the early 80's.  Americanized quiches baked in factory-made, soggy pie shells, with over-cooked, curdled custards make me want to scream….our kids deserve better, don't you think?

This dish is actually not difficult to make, but as with every recipe Chef Thomas Keller creates, it IS exacting, and therein lies its brilliance.  Keller is not one of those chefs who lives on the bleeding edge of culinary adventure, like Heston Blumenthal, Feran Adria, or Grant Achats.  These guys make their livings pushing the edge of the envelope with regard to cooking technology and high tech ingredients, that allow them to reconstruct food in ways that leave diners giddily questioning what exactly it was they just ate. 

In contrast, what Keller does better than anyone else is rip classic dishes down to their most basic elements, and then reconstruct them using only the finest ingredients, and with such a finely honed and thoughtful technique, that the end result is a dish that is instantly recognizable for what it is, but is of a quality that has been elevated almost beyond measure.  When finished, you will immediately recognize this dish as a quiche, but what you will have created will make every other quiche you have tasted seem like a cheap, plastic imitation.  Successfully creating this dish will not require technical wizardry on your part, but it will require a tight eye on a few key details.  The rewards for your vigilance will be ample, I assure you.  You game?…..Then let's go.

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Cider Brined Pork with Calvados, Mustard and Thyme

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This dish is an easy mid-week meal, and was inspired by a treat we had while traveling through Brittany a few years ago. The sugar from the cider brine causes a deliciously sweet caramelized crust on the chops, and the brining process renders the inside of the meat perfectly seasoned and moist. I like the dish with a nice thick chop, but it would also work well with a cutlet, or pork tenderloin. The bite of the mustard, the sweetness of the cider, and the silkiness of the cream make for a well rounded sauce to complement the meat.

Boris helped me in the kitchen for this meal, though to be honest, most of his work this night was in prepping a special appetizer for his brother Gridley,  who had requested Nobu Matsuhisa’s “Shrimp Tempura with Creamy Spicy Sauce” as a special 17th birthday treat.  Details of that fabulous dish, and Boris’ excellent spicy mayonnaise will follow in a later post.

 

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Farmer’s Market Cheddar Melt

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This open faced sandwich was inspired by a trip to our local farmer’s market the other day. While there we bought a loaf of delicious whole grain bread, some locally cured ham, organic apples, some sharp cheddar cheese, late season arugula, and a nice little acorn squash (although a sweet potato would have worked equally as well, I think). In keeping with these local New England flavors, we added some maple syrup and a tangy cranberry chutney to the dish. I love the contrasting flavors and textures of the sandwich, the peppery arugula along side the sweet squash and smokey ham, the gooey cheese juxtaposed with the crisp apple, and all of it popped by the tangy cranberry chutney.

Tell me, what kid wouldn’t like a sandwich with sweet fruit in the middle, and gooey cheese melted all over the top of it.  This sandwich would be delicious with a bowl of Butternut Squash Soup with Apple Cider Cream!

Enjoy – Steve

Farmer's Market Cheddar Melt

by: Steve Dunn
yield:
Cooking ModePrint Recipe

Ingredients

  • Whole Grain, artisan baked bread
  • Smoked ham, locally cured, thickly sliced
  • Roasted acorn squash, smashed
  • Organic honey-crisp apples, cored and sliced (or any other local apple you have handy)
  • Vermont, sharp cheddar cheese

  • Arugula
  • Whole grain mustard
  • Cranberry chutney

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 400℉
  • Split acorn squash in half, top to bottom, and scoop out the seeds. Please 1 teaspoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of maple syrup in the cavity of each half, and place in a baking dish . Sprinkle the squash with kosher salt, and pour a little water into the dish to keep the skins from burning and sticking to the bottom. Place in the oven and bake for 1 hour (or longer if you have a big squash) Remove the squash from the oven and let cool. When cool enough to handle, scoop the insides into a bowl and mash with a fork, making sure the butter and maple syrup is evenly distributed, check for seasoning and set aside.
  • Set your oven to broil. Cut a thick slice of the bread and toast it. Build your open faced sandwich starting with the mustard, then the sliced apples, the smashed squash, the arugula, the ham and finally the cheese. Place the sandwich on a sheet tray and pop under the broiler, cook until the cheese is bubbling and starting to brown.
  • Remove from the oven and serve with a big spoonful of cranberry chutney (I have a great recipe I'll share in a future post), some squash soup, or a simple green salad.
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Butternut Squash Soup with Apple Cider Cream

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This is a favorite recipe from Epicurious.com that I have cooked for years.  Each Fall when butternut squash are abundant, I make a huge batch of this soup and freeze about a half-dozen gallon sized ziploks of the stuff to get us through the Winter.  The recipe calls for a little cream which can certainly be eliminated if you are trying to watch such things.  When I make this, I do not add the cream prior to freezing, but will swirl a bit into the soup after it has thawed and been reheated.  This allows me to serve some without if someone requests it that way.  The drizzle of cider cream on top at service is a delicious touch, one I recommend you NOT skip unless you really must.

This year I got my squash from my guitar teacher, who, much to his surprise, found a bevy of the beauties growing out of his compost pile behind his garage!  How cool is that?

 

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