What is it that sets individuals apart from the masses, be it chef, writer, photographer or what have you? Is it their creativity? In part, yes. Is it their execution? Most definitely that is a large part of it. But there is a single factor that encompasses all these little attributions that make up what successful individuals possess, they have their own style, their own way of doing things that you can immediately relate to their work.
For the individual, it’s a combination of beliefs that they express in their work, whether it’s the precise cut of a carrot brunoise, the clean yet rustic styling of a photograph, or the phrasing of a passage in your story. It is these beliefs that help you define your style, your own way of doing things. What do you believe in? Can you see it expressed in your own work? If not, don’t worry, it takes time to develop, but be aware of it, look for those things that will help you stand out. If you can recognize it, then highlight it. It may not make you famous, it most likely won’t make you wealthy, but it will give you credibility.
I’ve noticed over the years my propensity to add cheese (part of my style) to many of my dishes, both sweet and savory, especially goat cheese. If you look back over all my posts, goat cheese is the most used main ingredient. I love goat cheese, fresh, soft, aged, grating, flavored and I use it whenever I want to add brightness to a dish. It’s a tart cheese, more so than cow’s milk cheeses, due to higher amounts of fatty acids like capric acid.
Here is a simple summer dessert most definitely enjoyed with friends on the patio.
Serves 8
Almond Poundcake
3 ½ cups AP flour
½ cup cornstarch
1 tsp salt
¾ lbs butter
3 cups sugar
8 eggs
1 cup milk
1 tsp almond extract
¾ cup almonds, slivered or sliced, toasted
Method
1. Sift together the flour cornstarch and salt.
2. Combine sugar and butter and whip on high speed till it becomes pale yellow, about 4 minutes.
3. Add eggs to the sugar and butter on low speed, one at a time.
4. Scrape bowl to remove and butter from sides or bottom.
5. On low speed, alternate add four and milk in 3 stages.
6. Add almonds and almond extract.
7. Fill greased pans by 2/3
8. Bake at 350° for 50-60 minutes, test with a toothpick.
9. Remove from oven and cool before removing from pan.
Cherry Goat Cheese Ice Cream
5 cups heavy cream
3 cups milk
Pinch of salt
3 cups sugar
2 cups cherries, pitted and rough chopped
7 oz mild goat cheese
12 large egg yolks
1. Combine cream, milk salt and half the sugar in a sauce pot.
2. Scald the cream mixture, meaning, remove from heat right before it comes to a boil.
3. In a mixing bowl, combine the remaining sugar and eggs yolks and whip hard for 60 seconds.
4. Add a 1/3 of the hot cream to egg yolks, stirring constantly.
5. Pour the egg yolk mixture back into the remaining cream and place over a low heat.
6. Stirring constantly, allow cream to thicken until it coats the back of a spoon, taking care not to let the cream boil.
7. Strain through a chinois.
8. Add the goat cheese and cherries, stirring until the goat cheese has melted.
9. Place in an ice bath to cool as fast as possible.
10. Refrigerate the mixture for 6-8 hours before processing in your ice cream machine.
Cherry-Whiskey Sauce
2 cup cherries, pitted and halved
2 Tbs butter
4 oz. whiskey
1/4 cup sugar
1. In a sauté pan, melt the butter over medium-high heat.
2. Add the cherries and sauté till soft, about 45 seconds.
3. Remove from heat and add the whiskey and sugar.
4. Return to heat and cook until a syrup has formed.
5. Pour warm over the poundcake and ice cream.
Note: You can use 4 cups of cake flour in place of the 3 1/2 cups of AP flour and 1/2 cup corn starch. This is just a common substitution for a lack of cake flour.
I’m living every dad’s dream right now, a little break from the family. The mrs. has left and taken both the girls with her to Europe for two months. For now, there is no more fighting for bathroom time, no snarky remarks about sports on TV, no crying, no spilled bowls of cereal, no arguments about who the toy belongs to, no need to be quiet after 8 pm and a plethora of scary movies without commentary.
The wife, being from Germany, goes back every year for an extended period of time to visit with family, they are all very close. It’s very different than my family and what I am used to. While we enjoy seeing each other, we can go months without so much as an email between us. It wasn’t always like that. Before my mother passed she was the glue that kept everyone in touch. She arranged phone calls, trips, get togethers and the like because she knew how each person in our family was a little bit disconnected. Then you get together and promise to stay more in touch, and while your intentions are 100% pure, life gets in the way. You work 70 hours a week, the girls have school and gymnastics and play dates, the yard needs work, the bills need paid, and pretty soon your well intentioned promise fades.
While they are gone for those two months, I take the time to do those things I want. I visit friends I haven’t seen in a while, I go to bed later, I sleep in, I take longer showers and I spend alot more time with the camera. I take over the kitchen and don’t have to worry about anybody tripping over light stands or knocking over tripods. After two weeks of this, I am recharged. I’ve been productive, I’ve caught up around the house and I’ve made progress. By the third week, I begin to miss the fighting for bathroom time, the snarky remarks about sports on TV, the crying, the spilled bowls of cereal, the arguments about who the toy belongs to, the need to be quiet after 8 pm and the plethora of scary movies without commentary. Six more weeks to go…
But for now, I’m still in that first two weeks so things are good, and I’ve got a new post to prove it. This dish is going on the menu this week, it’s a simple and light dish. I’ve chosen a delicate black bass to use, a Seafood Watch ‘Best Choice’ fish although you can use a different fish if you choose.
Black Bass, Grapefruit & Crab Salad with Caramelized Bok Choy, Ginger-Citrus Dressing
Serves 4
1 ½# black bass fillet, 6 oz portions
cooking oil
Kosher salt
Grapefruit & Crab Salad with Caramelized Bok Choy
2 grapefruits, segmented and juiced
4 heads baby bok choy
4 oz crabmeat, rock or lump
¼ cup cilantro chiffonade
Cracked Black pepper
1. Blanch the whole heads of baby bok choy in lightly salted boiling water, 2 minutes.
2. Shock the bok choy in ice water.
3. Half the bok choy lengthwise.
4. Heat a sautee pan up with a scant amount of oil and sear the bok choy, cut side down, until it browns.
5. Remove from pan and allow to cool.
6. Save 4 halves of the bok choy for plating, remove the core and slice the remaining heads into thin strips.
7. Place the thin strips in a mixing bowl and toss with the remaining ingredients.
Ginger-Citrus Dressing
Juice of the 2 segmented grapefruits from the salad
3 limes, juiced
1 oz fresh ginger, grated
1 Tbs. garlic, minced
2 Tbs. soy sauce
¼ cup honey
4 oz neutral salad oil (safflower, sunflower, canola, rapeseed, light olive, basically your preference)
1. Combine the lime juice, grapefruit juice, garlic and ginger and allow to macerate for 5 minutes.
2. Add honey and soy sauce and mix well.
3. Whisk in the salad oil until fully incorporated.
To Plate
1. Season fish with salt.
2. Heat a sauté pan with just enough cooking oil to cover the bottom of the pan.
3. Sear the bass skin side down in cooking oil.
4. Flip and continue cooking until your preferred doneness.
5. Remove the fish to paper towels and allow to drain for a moment.
6. Place one half of the seared bok choy on each plate.
7. Top with the fish.
8. Set the grapefruit & Crab Salad next to the fish.
9. Top with the Ginger-Citrus dressing, allowing it to pool below the salmon.
10. Serve immediately.
I’ve always prided myself on the fact that I rarely cook with butter and/or cream. When I started in this business, it was cream sauce this, butter sauce that, and while there are a myriad of things that you can do with each in regards to making sauces, none were ever exciting to me. They were rich, fatty and lacked the brightness that was much more appealing to my palate.
At my first job as a professional cook, the sauté station consisted of several proteins, several flavorings and gallons upon gallons of cream and butter, each one made a la minute. Within an hour of service, my palate was exhausted and useless by the insane amounts of cream sauce, finished with butter. I was unable to taste the difference between a tarragon-mustard cream and a shit sandwich.
That being said, there are still places I will use a butter or cream sauce, although I prefer to keep them lighter. For example, I do a mustard cream sauce as an option for the steaks at my restaurant. The sauce is, in actuality, a bordelaise finished with Dijon and just enough cream to lighten it a shade.
You’ll be more likely to find purees, reductions, juices, oil infusions and broths on my menu. To that end, I have an array of equipment to help facilitate, buerre mixers, conventional blenders, food processors and masticating juicers, all designed to extract flavor in one form or another. In addition to brighter flavors, purees and juices add color and help to punctuate a presentation.
This recipe uses Chinook Salmon but you can use any other fish you would prefer. For the remainder of the dish, I make my version of a seafood chowder, chock full of ingredients that are enough to make up starch and vegetable swimming in a cream and butter base. While I don’t do a lot with cream or butter, I do go big when I do!
2 ea. 6 oz salmon filets
1 fl. oz olive oil
2 oz pancetta/bacon, diced
2 oz. yellow onion, diced
½ oz garlic, minced
3 oz. potato, diced
4 oz. corn, cut from the cob
1 cup white wine
¾ cup heavy cream
2 oz lobster meat
3 oz. butter, room temperature
1 Tbs. tarragon, minced
Kosher Salt
Method:
1. In a small sauce pot, heat the olive oil or medium heat.
2. Add the pancetta/bacon and cook till it begins to crisp.
3. Add the onion and garlic and sweat for one minute.
4. Add the white wine and potatoes.
5. Reduce the wine by half.
6. Add the cream and the corn.
7. Reduce the liquid by half.
8. Remove from heat and add the lobster and tarragon.
9. Stir in the butter until fully incorporated.
10. Season with salt.
Sear or grill the salmon to your preferred doneness. Place the chowder in bowl or plate. Top with the salmon and garnish with lobster claw and tarragon oil.
Here it is, my first day off from the restaurant, and I’m celebrating with a new post. It’s been 47 consecutive 14-18 hour days, but who’s counting. Honestly, I probably could have taken a day off sooner, but chefs, by nature, are control freaks. It’s not that I don’t trust my staff, but what if… While I don’t plan on having an extremely relaxing day, it will be nice to spend time with the Mrs. and the girls. Soon, they’ll be in Germany for another couple of months during the summer so I need to get as much time in as I can before they leave.
As an admitted control freak, I will force myself to try not to think about the restaurant, but I’m sure it will happen without my noticing. Not that I think things are going wrong, but more, what could I be accomplishing on a day I would have free reign to do as I pleased in the kitchen. I had a day like this last week and it really was fun working on a personal recipe.
Armed with a slew of cheeses from Cypress Grove and an insane passion for spring produce, I whipped up this little number. The gnocchi recipe is based on a ricotta gnocchi I’ve done in the past but adjusted for a dryer chevre log. The vegetables can really be anything you have on hand but with access to a guy who brings me produce daily, I splurged.
Serves 4
Gnocchi
1 cup Cypress Grove Goat Cheese
1 cup whole milk
2 eggs, beaten lightly
1 cup Cypress Grove Lamb Chopper, finely shredded
½ tsp. grated fresh nutmeg
2 cups all purpose flour
½ tsp. kosher salt
1. Combine the goat cheese, milk, eggs, lamb chopper, nutmeg and salt in a medium size mixing bowl.
2. Mix well.
3. The batter to this point with be a little lumpy which is fine.
4. Add the flour and stir until all the flour has been incorporated and a wet dough forms.
5. Remove the dough to a floured work surface and working in batches, shape the dough into ¾ inch ropes. Cut the dough in 1 inch increments and remove to a floured baking sheet.
6. Cook the gnocchi in lightly salted boiling water, about 3-4 minutes.
7. Remove from water with a slotted spoon and drain.
English Pea Puree
2 cups English Peas
1 Tbs shallots, minced
1 Tbs. garlic, minced
½ cup dry white wine
¾ cup stock or water
1 tsp. kosher salt
2 Tbs. butter
1. In a small sauce pan melt one (1) tablespoon butter over low heat and sweat the shallots and garlic for 2 minutes.
2. Add the peas, white wine and stock.
3. Turn the heat to high and bring to a boil.
4. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer for 5 minutes or until the peas are soft.
5. Remove from heat and puree till smooth.
6. Strain and fold in the butter and salt.
Spring Vegetable Ragout
½ lb asparagus, trimmed and sliced into 1 inch pieces, blanched
4 baby carrots, blanched and sliced into discs
½ cup English peas, blanched
1 oz morels, washed and sliced into discs
1 Tbs. garlic, minced
2 Tbs. butter
2 oz. dry white wine
¼ tsp. rosemary, minced
1. In a medium size pan, melt the butter over low heat.
2. Add the garlic and sweat for one minute.
3. Turn the heat to medium high and add the asparagus, peas, carrots and morels.
4. Cook for 2 minutes.
5. Add the white wine and rosemary and cook till dry.
To Finish
1. Melt 2 Tbs. of butter over medium high heat.
2. Add the gnocchi and cook quickly until it begins to brown and crisp on all sides.
3. Toss with the warm vegetable ragout.
4. Ladle 2 oz of English pea puree in the middle of a plate.
5. Place the gnocchi and vegetable ragout in the pea puree.
6. Garnish with grated Cypress Grove Lamb Chopper cheese.
That Which Is Old Becomes New Again
It’s no secret that chefs recycle dishes they have done in the past, most times those dishes will be tweaked to make them better, make them more seasonal, or just because they work really well. The Lobster Tacos I’ve brought to the restaurant are a version of the ones I used to do a couple of years ago. This asparagus salad though, is exactly the way I created it more than 12 years ago. The only exception I make to the original recipe is the use of local asparagus.
Asparagus is one of the cool-season vegetables that does well in Colorado as long as we avoid that early spring snow. Local asparagus usually becomes available right around Easter at the earliest and is in full swing through May. Other vegetables that do well in the cool Colorado spring are horseradish, rhubarb and shallots. While asparagus is available year round from Mexico, Peru and California, it’s hard to beat asparagus grown just up the road.
Asparagus was easily one of the first vegetables I enjoyed as a kid. My mom would blanch it quickly so it was still crisp and drench it in butter and salt, so much butter in fact that a greasy chin was part of the fun. It is one of the most versatile vegetables being that the preparations are endless. A chef friend of mine candies asparagus tips to serve over sweetbreads and lemon risotto, yeah, it’s awesome. Save for the tremendous odor it imparts to urine, asparagus could be the perfect vegetable.
One of the beauties of asparagus is the simplicity and speed with which it can be prepared. The asparagus for this salad can just as easily be blanched but I like the slight bitterness the charred asparagus adds to citrus and goat cheese. This dish is extremely easy to prepare and could easily be used as the garnish to a simple piece of grilled fish.
Serves 4
- 1 # Colorado asparagus (if it’s not from Colorado, the recipe should still work)
- 2 blood oranges, segmented and juiced
- ½ cup filberts, toasted and chopped
- ½ cup tarragon leaves, fresh
- 4 oz. olive oil + 1 oz for grilling
- 4 oz. goat cheese
- Fleur de Sel to finish
- Cracked Black Pepper to finish
- Brush the asparagus with the 1 oz. of olive oil and grill just until the asparagus begins to soften, about 2 minutes.
- Portion the asparagus over 4 plates.
- Garnish each of the four plates with the remaining ingredients as they are listed.
- Serve immediately.
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