Category: Old World

Pan Seared Lamb Loin Chops with Garlic Cream Sauce

The thing that makes this dish is the garlic cream sauce.  A fusion between Mediterranean and French flavor profiles, this dish is at the same time both tangy and mellow, sweet and savory and all-around amazing.

Time – Active: 60 minutes
Time – Inactive:  2-4 hours of marination for the lamb and 45 minutes to roast garlic
Level: Easy
Cost: $8-10/plate
Serves: 4-6

Ingredients

For the Lamb:

  1. 2-3 lbs Lamb Loin Chops (figure on 3 per person; they’re about 1/4lb each)
  2. Juice of two lemons (divided)
  3. 6-8 garlic cloves, minced
  4. Kosher salt and pepper
  5. 1/4 cup olive oil
  6. 2 TBSP clarified butter, Canola, or vegetable oil

For the Garlic Cream Sauce:

  1. 3 heads (that’s right, heads) of garlic
  2. 3 TBSP olive oil
  3. 2 TBSP unsalted butter
  4. 1 small shallot, minced
  5. 1/4 cup brandy
  6. 1/2 cup dry white wine
  7. 1 140z can low sodium chicken broth
  8. 1/4 cup heavy cream
  9. Salt, to taste
  10. Juice of 1 lemon.

Instructions

Combine 1/4 cup olive oil, minced garlic, juice of three lemons, salt and pepper, and lamb loin chops in a mixing bowl and toss to coat.  Cover and refrigerate.  Allow to marinate for 2-4 hours.

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Remove most of the outer paper from your 3 heads of garlic.  Cut the top off the heads (opposite the root end), exposing the garlic cloves inside.  Drizzle 1 TBSP olive oil over each clove.  Place in an oven safe baking dish, cut side up, and cover tightly with aluminum foil.  Place in oven and roast until very soft and sweet, about 45 minutes.  (Begin checking after 30 minutes; use a cake tester or toothpick to test for softness).  Remove from oven and allow to cool, remaining covered.

Reduce oven temperature to 275°F.  Place marinated lamb loins on a wire rack set on a baking sheet, and bake until internal temperature is around 125°F, approximately 30 -45 minutes (cook with temperature not time; use an instant read thermometer to verify).

While the lamb is coming up to temp in the oven, use a butter knife to help coax the roasted garlic cloves out of the heads.  They will be soft and sticky so if they come apart a bit that’s okay.  Reserve the roasted cloves in a small bowl.

Once the lamb is up to temp, remove from the oven and allow to rest for a couple of minutes under loose foil.  Meanwhile, in a large heavy bottomed skillet or sauté pan, heat either 2 TBSP clarified butter, vegetable or Canola oil until very hot, around 400°F.  Carefully add the lamb loins to the hot pan, and sear, about 3 minutes on each side until deeply browned and you have a nice crust on your lamb and a beautiful fond in your pan.

Note:  Work in batches if you have to.  4-6 loins at a time is probably a good number, but remember:  each time you add a loin to the pan, you reduce the overall pan temperature somewhat.  Add too many and your lamb loins will steam, not brown.

Once you’ve got your lamb seared off, remove them from the pan and allow them to rest on the wire racked baking sheet loosely tented with aluminum foil while you make the garlic cream sauce.

Pour off the fat in the pan and lower the heat.  Melt 2 TBSP unsalted butter in the pan.  Once butter is melted but still slightly foamy, add the minced shallot and sauté until fragrant, 1 minute, being careful not to brown.  Add 1/4 cup brandy and flambé.  Add white wine and chicken broth and bring to a boil, scraping up any remaining fond from the bottom of the pan.  Add 1/4 cup heavy cream and reduce sauce until thickened to desired consistency, 8 – 10 minutes.  Once sauce is thickened, off the heat and stir for 2-3 minutes to bring down the overall temperature.

 Note:  For a smoother, creamier sauce, use an immersion blender to pureé or transfer contents of the pan to a blender and blend until smooth.

Squeeze juice of one lemon into sauce and stir to incorporate.  Taste for seasoning and adjust with salt and/or pepper as necessary.

Note:  Lemon and cream taste great together, but they are not friends.  If you add the lemon while the sauce is still too hot, the acidity in the lemon will curdle your cream sauce, and that will suck.  So make sure it is cooled down somewhat before adding the lemon juice.  Also, pro-tip: never add cream to a sauce with lemon already in it as that will almost always result in curdling the cream; instead, do it in the order prescribed here:  Reduce cream sauce, off the heat, allow to cool, and stir in lemon juice at the end.

Serve lamb with rice pilaf, Caesar Salad, and garlic cream sauce on the side.

Traditional Coq Au Vin

This beautiful French classic is rustic country farmhouse cooking at its best.  While many of the recipes on this blog feature quick, 1 hour prep-and-cook dishes suitable for a weeknight when the temptation is just to grab fast food on the way home from work, the recipe in this post isn’t one of them.  To the contrary, this is a step-by-step (and there are a lot of steps) method for preparing a traditional French dish that has graced many a farmhouse table in France – and in America, thanks to Julia Child – for decades.  To that end, a few words are in order here:

First, don’t skim past this recipe.  I know, I know, the temptation is to just ‘swipe left’ and move on.  I do that when I’m researching recipes online too, but please, give this a try.

That being said, do wait until you have an afternoon off to try this – and you definitely SHOULD try this.  This recipe is a great way to experiment with all kinds of techniques – how to break down a whole chicken, sautéing, braising, deglazing, reducing, flambéing, thickening a sauce.

I’ve categorized this recipe as “Advanced” because of the sheer number of steps, but actually none of them are that hard – read the instructions over a few times to get a picture of the game plan and you’ll be fine.  However, there is quite a bit of prep and a lot of different pieces that have to come together in order for this dish to turn out right, so leave yourself a bit of time.  Cooking is supposed to be a joy, not a burden – so make this when you’ve got some time and are in the right frame of mine to spend a few hours in the kitchen.

Second, while the origins of this dish come from the days when some old rooster had outlived his usefulness and therefore in order to be made edible he would need to be braised for hours on end, this recipe only requires about 90 minutes of (inactive) braising time in a 350°F oven.  The reason for this is because the young chickens we buy in the grocery store these days are already so tender that if we were to braise them for 8 hours, they’d turn into mush.

Third, because this is rustic country cooking, there are no set rules on exactly what must (or must not) go in this dish.  Julia Child’s recipe doesn’t include carrots; Paul Bocuse’s recipe does include carrots; I like carrots, so I included them.  Julia Child calls for cooking the mushrooms, aromatics and onions separately, and then mixing them all into the dish at the end as a sort of garnish.  This makes sense if you’re going to be braising your tough old rooster for 8 hours – the mushrooms and onions would never survive – but we’re not using an old rooster here so in this recipe I recommend just cooking all the stuff in the pot at the same time to achieve a better marrying of flavors.

And so on – the point here is that this post is as much of a method as it is a recipe.  Learn the method and you can make all kinds of amazing stews, using whatever you have laying around – and that, at its heart, is what rustic country cooking is all about.

Lastly, the good news here is that this dish is cheap.  If you are an efficient shopper, you can probably get everything you need here to feed 8 people (or four people twice, or yourself for a week) for about $15.00.

Let’s get cooking!

Time: 3.5 hours (90 minutes inactive)
Level: Advanced
Cost: About $2.00 per plate
Serves: 8

Ingredients

For the Stew:

  1. 2 whole chickens, roughly 3-4lbs each, broken down into 8 parts
    • This is not that hard to do – don’t get scared, go for it!  Watch this this video a couple times and you’ll be fine.
  2. Approximately 3/4 of a bottle of drinkable red wine
    • 2 buck chuck is fine – it just has to be something you’d drink.
  3. 2 -3 sprigs fresh thyme
    • If you don’t have fresh thyme, make a little pouch using a coffee filter and some cooking twine.  Tie bay leaves (ingredient #4) and 2 TBSP dried thyme up in the coffee filter – you want the flavor of these herbs in your sauce, but you don’t want them IN the sauce per se
  4. 2 bay leaves
  5. 1 small shallot, minced
  6. 12-16 oz Crimini or brown mushrooms, quartered
  7. 6 carrots, roughly julienned
  8. 3 cloves garlic, minced
  9. 4 0z bacon, sliced into lardons
  10. 2-3 TBSP olive oil
  11. 1 lb boiler or pearl onions
  12. 1 140z can low sodium chicken broth
  13. 1/3 cup brandy
  14. 4 TBSP butter, divided (one set of 3 TBSP plus 1 TBSP)
  15. 6 TBSP flour, divided (two sets of 3 TBSP each)
  16. 2 TSP paprika
  17. Salt and Pepper
  18. 1 TBSP tomato paste

For Serving:

  1. 1 package egg noodles, prepared according to package directions.
  2. Crusty, rustic loaf of French bread

Part 1:  Prep

  1. Break down chickens into 8 parts; marinate chicken parts in red wine along with two sprigs thyme and two bay leaves, refrigerated, for about 1 hour (probably about how much time it will take you to complete steps 2-5 here in the Prep section and steps 1-5 in the following Cook section).
  2. Prepare veggies: Mince shallot, quarter mushrooms, julienne carrots, mince garlic
  3. Slice bacon into lardons
  4. Pearl Onions: Remove root end and slice a small X into the cut end (the same end you just removed) – this will help keep them in one piece
  5. Locate and prep: Chicken stock; brandy; pearl onions, butter
  6. In a small bowl, mix 3 TBSP butter and 3 TBSP flour into a fine paste and set aside.

Part 2:  Cook

  1. Preheat oven to 350°
  2. In a 2 quart sauce pan, bring 1 quart water to a rolling boil. Add the onions and boil for two minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and rinse in a colander under cold water. When they are cool enough to handle, peel them by squeezing the intact end – the soft onions should slide right out of their skins.  Set aside.
  3. Blanch your bacon lardons in the boiling water – you want to remove the smoky flavor from the bacon or it will overpower the gentle flavor of the chicken (I skip this step when making beef stew, which is heartier and less delicate).  So, add your bacon lardons to the boiling water and while you are peeling the onions, allow bacon to boil for 10 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon, pat dry, and transfer to a large heavy bottomed sauté pan.
  4. Remove chicken from wine and pat dry with paper towels.  Reserve wine and herbs – do not discard.   In a large tossing bowl, season chicken with salt, pepper, paprika, 3 TBSP flour; toss to coat and set aside.
  5. Sauté bacon in sauté pan; once fairly browned and most fat has rendered, remove with a slotted spoon and transfer to a large, oven-safe Dutch oven, leaving bacon fat in sauté pan.  You should have about 1/8 inch deep fat in the pan; if not, add vegetable oil or clarified butter to get fat to 1/8 inch depth.
  6. In the same sauté pan, brown chicken on all sides (start skin-side down) in bacon fat, working in batches, about 5 minutes per side, and transferring to Dutch oven once browned.
  7. Fish thyme and bay leaves out of reserved wine and set aside.
  8. Deglaze the pan: Lower heat and slowly add reserved wine to pan. Add 14oz can chicken stock as well.  Bring liquid to a boil and scrape up any remaining fond (the brown bits on the bottom of the pan).
  9. Stir in 1 TBSP tomato paste and stir to incorporate, 3 minutes
  10. Dump liquid from pan into Dutch oven with chicken and bacon. Wipe pan dry.
  11. Add 2-3 TBSP olive oil to the pan and heat over medium heat
  12. Add carrots and onions and sauté, stirring occasionally until browned around the edges, about 10 minutes, then lower the heat.
  13. Add shallots and sauté until translucent, 3-5 more minutes, being careful not to brown.
  14. Add garlic and sauté until fragrant, 2 more minutes, being careful not to brown.
  15. Transfer carrots, onions, shallots and garlic from pan to dutch oven with chicken, bacon and wine.
  16. Add mushrooms and 2 TBSP butter and sauté until browned and the mushrooms have absorbed most of the liquid in the pan (the pan should look fairly dry), 2 -3 minutes.
  17. Add 1/3 cup brandy and flambé
  18. Transfer mushrooms and any liquid in the pan to the Dutch oven with chicken, bacon and wine.
  19. Give everything a good shake to settle.
  20. Add reserved thyme and bay leaves.
  21. Mostly cover (IMPORTANT:  Leave lid slightly askew with about a 1/4-1/8 inch gap on one side to allow steam to escape, which will prevent liquid from boiling over in oven), and cook in 350°F oven for 90 minutes.
  22. Intermission:  While the chicken braises, treat yourself to a glass of wine (possibly that last 1/4 bottle?) or a beer, and possibly some nuts or a nice hunk of brie – if you made it this far, you’ve earned it!
  23. After 90 minutes, carefully remove from oven. Remove lid and fish out thyme and bay leaves; discard.
  24. Using the lid as a strainer (so, slightly askew with about a ¼ inch gap), pour liquid in pan through a wire mesh into a saucepan. Return any little pieces caught in the strainer to the Dutch oven. Leave covered at room temperature.
  25. Bring braising liquid in the saucepan to a boil; reduce to a simmer, skim off any fat that accumulates at the top (alternatively, use a fat separator in step #24).
  26. Stir in butter/flour mixture (from step 6 in the prep section, remember that?) to thicken, 10 minutes. Taste for seasoning and make sure raw flour taste is gone.
  27. Add thickened sauce back to Dutch oven. Allow to sit at a bare simmer while preparing noodles and bread

To Finish:

Serve stew over egg noodles with a generous ladle full of sauce and bread on the side.  Serve with a robust red wine.

 

Truffle Infused Steak Tartine, Brandy Mushroom Cream Sauce, Homemade Onion Rings

This is not as hard as it looks.  Seriously: it sounds impressive; it tastes professional; it is guaranteed to wow anyone who eats it (even if that person is just you).  There are quite a few steps here, so read carefully, but you’ll be surprised how easy this is.
Let’s dive in.

Time: 90 minutes – 2 hours
Level: Intermediate
Cost: About $7.50 per plate
Serves: 4

Ingredients

For the Onion Rings

  1. 1.5 cups all purpose flour
  2. 1 12oz can beer
  3. 1/2 TSP baking powder
  4. 1 egg
  5. 2 cups vegetable or canola oil
  6. 2 large onions, cut into rings

For the steaks and mushroom-cream sauce:

  1.  4 boneless New York Strip Loin Steaks
  2. Salt & Pepper
  3. 2-3 TBSP clarified butter (also known as ghee, recommended), canola oil, avocado oil, or bacon fat – hell whatever you want as long as it has a smoke point of over 400°F
  4. 1 medium shallot, diced
  5. 3 cloves garlic, minced
  6. 80z whole mushrooms, quartered
  7. 1 TBSP unsalted butter
  8. 1/3 cup brandy, for flambé
  9. 1 140z can beef broth
  10. 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream

For the Toast:

  1. 1/4 cup good olive oil
  2. 1 TSP Truffle Oil (optional, but worth it if you have it.  Truffle oil is available from Amazon, Sprouts and Whole Foods for not too much and since a little bit goes a LONG way it’ll last you)
  3. 8 thick (1/4 – 1/2 inch thick) slices sourdough bread

Instructions

Preheat an oven to 275°F.

Place steaks on a wire rack over a lined baking sheet.  Rub steaks on both sides with a drizzle of olive oil.  Season both sides aggressively with kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.  Tent loosely with foil to prevent excessive browning and place them in the oven.  Bake in oven until internal temperature is about 115°F.  This will take about 20-30 minutes, but remember:  Cook with temperature not time.  Use an instant read thermometer to verify temperature.

While steaks are coming up to temp in the oven, do three things:

  1. Prep Onion Rings:  Mix ingredients 1-4 in a medium bowl and whisk thoroughly to create a batter.  Slice onions into rings and add to batter.  Stir to incorporate.  Cover and set aside to let rest at room temperature.
  2. Prep Ingredients for Brandy Cream Sauce:  Dice shallots, mince garlic, and quarter mushrooms.  Get brandy, beef broth and cream ready to go.
  3. Prep Toast:  Slice sourdough bread into thick slices.  Add 1 TSP truffle oil to 1/4 cup olive oil and stir gently to combine, set aside and allow flavors to meld.

Once the steaks have reached an internal temperature of 115°F, remove them from the oven and pat dry with paper towels and allow to rest.

Increase oven temperature to 500°F for toast.

While steaks are resting and oven is coming up to temp, heat fat (ghee, clarified butter, avocado oil etc) over medium-high heat in a large sauté pan until almost smoking (about 400°F).  Once fat is up to temperature, carefully place steaks in the pan and sear until dark golden brown, about 3 minutes per side.  You should develop a beautiful fond on the bottom of the pan.  Don’t overcrowd the pan – two steaks at a time is probably good.  Once steaks are seared, remove them and set them back on the wire rack to rest, covered loosely with aluminum foil.  Reduce heat to medium-low.

Carefully add shallots and sauté until mostly translucent, 3-4 minutes.

Note:  Don’t burn the shallots.  If you’re not sure if the pan is too hot, test for temp by tossing 1 little shallot piece into the fat.  If it sizzles and crackles loudly or burns, turn down the heat. 

As the shallots sweat out their moisture, scrape up any fond left behind by the steaks to incorporate.  Once shallots are translucent, add garlic and sauté until fragrant, 1 -2 minutes longer.

Add mushrooms and continue to sauté until mushrooms have absorbed most of the liquid in the pan and the bottom of the pan begins to look a bit dry, 1-2 minutes.  Add 1 TBSP butter to mixture and continue to cook, continually scraping and stirring so as not to burn your fond, until the butter is absorbed into the mushrooms.

Note:  Mushrooms are flavor sponges.  Give them time to absorb the deliciousness in the pan.

Once the mushrooms have absorbed most of the liquid and butter in the pan, and the bottom of the pan is starting to look a bit dry once more, crank the heat up to high for about 20 seconds.  Lower the heat, add the brandy, and flambé.  Once the flames have subsided, add the beef stock and bring to a boil, scraping up whatever brown bits might be left at the bottom of the pan to fully incorporate fond.  Add the heavy cream, reduce heat to medium-low, and allow to simmer until sauce has thickened to a gravy-like consistency.  Stir or shake occasionally to prevent burning.

For the Onion Rings

While sauce is reducing, heat olive oil for onion rings in a large saucepan until it reaches a temperature of about 375°F.

Note:  If cream sauce ends up finishing while onion rings are still being made, don’t worry.  Just off the heat and cover, then continue as follows; it will keep warm long enough for you to finish the other steps. 

Once oil is up to temp, use tongs to remove onion rings from batter one at a time, shaking off the excess.  Fry in oil a few at a time, until golden brown, 3-5 minutes per batch.  Using a slotted spoon, remove and allow to drain on paper towels.

For the Toast:

Brush sourdough slices lightly on both sides with oil mixture.  Place on an ungreased baking sheet and bake in 500°F oven for five minutes or until beautifully golden brown.

Final Assembly:

While toast is browning in oven do two things:

  1. Strain the mushroom cream sauce into a bowl through a fine mesh strainer to separate the mushrooms from the liquid.  Reserve mushrooms.
  2. Slice steaks into thin-ish strips on the bias.

When toast is finished, remove from the oven and plate – two slices per plate to make four plates.

Place 4-6 strips of steak on top of each piece of toast, followed by reserved mushrooms, followed by a generous drizzle of brandy cream sauce (Don’t be shy!).  Fan additional slices of steak around toast to look cool, if you like, totaling about 1 steak per person.

Serve with onion rings, steamed asparagus (or any other green vegetable) and a robust red wine.

 

Hearty Beef Stew with Red Wine

Perfect for a cold winter’s night, this hearty stew takes about 30 minutes to prep and then cooks all day (or part of the day, depending on your method).  The addition of red wine makes it quite similar to beef bourginon, but this version also includes potatoes.  It can be made in the slow cooker or in the oven.

Time: 30 minutes (active prep), 4-8 hours (in the slow cooker), 4 hours in the oven.
Level: Easy
Cost: About $4 per plate
Serves: 4- 6

Ingredients

  1. 3 lbs chuck roast (to be cubed after browning it; more on that later)
  2. 1-2 TBSP olive oil or clarified butter
  3. 4-60z bacon, sliced into lardons
  4. Salt and Pepper to taste
  5. 2 lbs white potatoes, cubed
  6. 1 yellow onion, diced
  7. 4-5 celery stocks, chopped into 1.5 inch pieces
  8. 2 lbs carrots, peeled and chopped into 1.5 inch pieces
  9. 4-5 garlic cloves, minced
  10. 8 oz Crimini or Baby Bella mushrooms, halved or quartered depending on their size
  11. 1/4 brandy (optional, for flambé)
  12. 1 cup sturdy red wine (such as Cabernet, Shiraz, or Zinfandel)
  13. 1/2 cup concentrated beef stock
  14. 3 TBSP all purpose flour
  15. 2 TBSP Worcestershire sauce
  16. 1 TBSP Soy Sauce
  17. 1-2 tsp cayenne pepper, depending on how much zing you want to add, optional

Instructions

Note:  If going the slow cooker route, every time the instructions say “Remove and reserve” you can just dump whatever it is into the slow cooker.

Preheat oven to 275°F (or if using slow cooker, coat the bottom of the slow cooker with cooking spray).

Begin by heating bacon and 1 TBSP olive oil or clarified butter in a large skillet or dutch oven over medium heat.  Sauté bacon until fairly crispy and most of the fat has rendered.  Remove with a slotted spoon and reserve.

Next, pat the roast dry with paper towels and season aggressively with salt and pepper on all sides.  Sear the roast on all sides until golden brown.  Remove roast and allow to rest on a cutting board while continuing to the next steps.

Add onion, celery and carrots to the pot and sauté until onions are translucent and vegetables begin to soften, 5- 7 minutes, scraping up any brown bits that may begin to loosen as the onions begin to sweat.  Add garlic and sauté until fragrant, 1-2 more minutes.  Remove all items from the pan with a slotted spoon and reserve.

Add mushrooms to the pan and sauté until lightly caramelized and they have absorbed most of the fat/liquid in the pan (mushrooms are like little flavor sponges).  Once the pan is beginning to look a bit dry on the bottom, add 1/4 cup brandy and flambé.

Add bacon, onions, celery, carrots and garlic back into the pan with the mushrooms.  Add soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce and cayenne pepper and stir to combine.

Add red wine and beef stock and bring to a boil, continuing to stir to scrape up anything that might still be on the bottom of the pan.  Stir in flour.  Reduce heat and allow liquid to simmer, reducing by about 1/3 to 1/2.

Meanwhile, while the liquid in the pan is reducing, cube the beef on the cutting board and add it directly back into the pot.  Add potatoes.

If finishing in the oven, give everything a good stir to combine and then cover and place in a 275 degree oven for 3-4 hours.

If finishing in a slow-cooker, dump the whole mess into the slow-cooker, give everything a good stir to combine, and cook on LOW for 8 hours or HIGH for four hours.  Personally, I have found the low, slow 8 hour cook in the slow cooker to yield the best results.

 

 

Caesar Salad

This Homemade Caesar Salad is tangy, delicious and the perfect compliment to almost any meal. If the whole raw egg and homemade emulsion thing either makes you nervous, or it’s just too much work, you can make a simpler, equally delicious version that will last you longer in the fridge – just substitute the 1 cup vegetable oil and the raw egg for 1 cup of mayo (preferably Kewpie, but any mayo will work great).

Continue reading “Caesar Salad” →