Chicken Francese

This was a really simple chicken dish with a butter and wine sauce.  Overall, this dish is very similar the the traditional schnitzels of Germany. So here we go.

The first step was to make the sauce.  Flour, chicken broth, white wine, red onion (should have used white but I didn't have any), lemon and butter.

The first part of the sauce was to saute the onions in the butter.  The onions cooked until they were soft.  From there I added the flour until a bit of a roux was formed. 

From there I added the wine, chicken broth and lemon juice.  I then let it simmer until the sauce thickened.

Here is all the stuff for the chicken portion of the dish.  You need chicken breasts, parsley, flour, salt, pepper, olive oil, eggs and milk.

I coated the chicken with eggs and flour after seasoning with some salt and pepper.  I then pan fried the breasts in the olive oil.  This is what they looked halfway through the frying process.

The final plate.  You can see the faulty red specs in the sauce from the red onion that was because I didn't use white onions.  Of course the flavor of those onions are the same so no impact there.  Overall, this dish was awesome.  If you ever get a hankering for a riff on schnitzel this would be a recipe to try.

Alinea at Home: Black Truffle Explosions

So, I was doing well, then life got busy again.  Anyway, I got really excited for this dish after I had it at Alinea.  Turns out, I should really leave some things to professionals.  So here we go.

I don't know exactly what happened to the first picture but this is the start of the dish.  This mixture includes, black truffle juice, salt, butter and a couple of gelatin sheets.  This whole mixture was used to make the filling of the ravioli.  I poured the mixture into shallow bowls and let it chill for a while.

The start of the pasta dough.  "00" Flour.  This is a special flour that is much higher in gluten than other flours it supposedly  makes really good pasta.  We also have eggs, milk, olive oil and a bit of cornmeal.  So normally when I make pasta I make Italian grandmothers turn in their graves because I use a mixer.  This time I actually did the well method.  This is where you push the flour to the side, pour the liquid in and then swirl things around until all the ingredients come together. 

This is the completed pasta dough.  Once it got to this point I let it rest four about 45 minutes. 

I busted out the pasta machine for the first time in a while and rolled out the dough.  I probably should have rolled it through one more level.  More on that in a bit.

So here are the completed raviolis (before going into the boiling water) and the toppings, parmesan and black truffles. 

The final plate.  It was good, naturally not as good as the restaurant version.  For two primary reasons.  I didn't either roll the dough thing enough or cook it long enough and the truffles I got were obviously crap.  You can tell because they are a solid peanut butter color on the inside not sort of white with veins.  The picture below is what this looked like at the restaurant. 

Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Yellow Pepper Sauce and Tapenade

Well lookie hear, two days two blog posts, maybe things are looking up at my house.  Tonight I had Sam over for dinner and I roasted off a pork tenderloin and served it with a charred yellow pepper sauce and a little black olive tapenade. I was disappointed that I overcooked the pork, but we both absolutely loved the dish.

The first step was to make the charred yellow pepper sauce.  This part of the dish included, a yellow pepper (naturally, peanut oil, honey, dijon mustard, saffron, rice vinegar and garlic. 

As you can see this is the charred part of the dish.  I roasted the pepper over an open flame on the stove until it looked like this. Once the pepper had roasted I peeled it and sliced it and it went into the food processor with the rest of the ingredients.

Next up was the black olive tapenade.  For this you need pine nuts, olive oil, anchovies, nicoise olives and garlic.  In order to make  this part of the dish all of the ingredients went into a food processor until they were combined.

Time for the main show.  Ancho chile powder, paprkia, salt, pepper and pork tenderloin. I combined the chile powder and paprika to make a rub to be placed on the tenderloin after I coated it in a little salt and pepper.

The seasoned pork tenderloin ready to go into the pan.

Here is the tenderloin after being seared on all side.  It's now ready to go into a 400 degree oven.

After spending about 15 minutes in the oven, the tenderloin was ready to rest for a few minutes before slicing.

And here is the final plate.   Like I said, this this was a home run, every little morsel was consumed between the two plates.  I really wish I hadn't overcooked the pork, but overall it was still delicious. 

Beans, Greens and Sausage

Do people still read this blog, if so you guys must hate my freaking guts right now.  Over the past month, I have been completely unable to keep my repeated promises about posting more.  So I'm just going to quit telling you about my posting prognosis.  No more speculating in this space about the potential of life slowing down and allowing me to bore you guys to death on a regular basis. 

So in this version of DFA's food schedule reboot, we have Beans, Greens and Sausage.  This dish, isn't really a soup, isn't really a stew and isn't really a casserole.  It's like the food version of the No Labels political group here in the US (except that this dish actually has a reason to exist other than to outflank the low information voter in the US and convince them to vote for Democrats). 

So enough unfunny, unrelated to food tangents from me and into the reason why you're here.  The food.

The first step was to make the sausage.  This dish has a very unique addition, grapes.  In this case they get treated unlike I've ever seen before.  They get roasted off along with the sausage after the sausage seared on the stove top.

The sausage half way through the searing process.  That browning is why I love love love my stove.  Can't pull that off with anything but a gas range.  The old girl is coming up on her two year anniversary soon.  Time really flies when you're having fun.

Once the sausage had seared off it went into a 400 degree oven with the grapes to finish.  Meanwhile I made the rest of the ingredients for the dish.  Onion, garlic, mustard greens, cannellini beans, chicken broth and red pepper flakes. 

The first step for this part of the dish was to sautee off the onion in a little bit of olive oil until they were soft.

The next step was adding in the garlic and pepper flakes.  As always you only want to cook the garlic until you can smell it.

Next up was the mustard greens until they wilted just a little bit.  From here, this mixture had a the cannellini beans and the chicken broth added until the greens were cooked through.

 Here are the completed sausages and grapes.

The final plate. 

This dish, for being so strange was really delicious.  I can't tell you guys (if anyone is still reading) how much I miss just cooking and talking to faceless people out in internet world about it. Cooking is one of my true passions and I absolutely love sharing it with people.  Whether I share it with you or now sharing it with my girlfriend (this is a challenge, she's not very adventurous, HI SAM!).  Doesn't matter, it's all the same amount of fun.  Food to me is meant to be enjoyed and I understand not wanting to spend the kind of money I do on food on a regular basis.  But if you're traveling, go find the best restaurant in town (NOT A CHAIN!).  If you're reading about food or watching food TV and you see a restaurant somewhere that sounds interesting, save your money and go to it.  It will be an experience you never forget. 

I'll end this post with a question/discussion.  What have been some of your most memorable food experiences?

Shrimp Scampi and Cheddar Biscuits

I know I sound like a broken record sometimes, but life is too freaking busy right now.  Trying to balance an insane work load with a dog and a girlfriend is overbearing sometimes.  Thankfully, I found out today that reinforcements are on the way in the work world so if all goes to plan, I'll be off of doing things I haven't had to do in a while by the end of the summer.  It's still a long ways away, but at least it looks like there is light at the end of the tunnel. 

So enough of my ranting and raving and on to what ya'll come here to read about, my witless banter on food.  This dish was simple enough (thank god considering everything).  I love shrimp and I love biscuits so I knew this one would be a homerun from the beginning. 

First step was to make the biscuit dough.  This required, flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, cream of tartar, buttermilk, cheddar cheese, butter and an egg.  I first combined the dry ingredients then combined the butter until the whole mixture was like very lightly wet sand.  Then the cheese, buttermilk and egg went in. 

Once everything had come together this is what the dough looked like.  I let the dough rest until I had prepped all the ingredients for the shrimp then prepared to bake off the biscuits and hopefully time everything right to make sure it was all hot when ready to serve.

No pictures yet, but now that the shrimp stuff was all prepared I put the biscuits in the oven.  I prepped five, fairly evenly sized balls and they went into a 450 degree oven.

Here are the completed biscuits.

All the stuff needed to make the shrimp.  In order to make this dish you need, shrimp, garlic, cilantro, lime juice, butter, chipotle pepper, white wine, olive oil and salt. 

I sauteed the shrimp off until they were most of the way cooked through. 

Now it was time for the garlic to go in. 

In order to deglaze the pan I poured in some of the white wine. 

I finished the sauce with a pat of butter.

Before the shrimp had gone into the pan I mixed the lime juice, cilantro, and chipotles and then once the shrimp were done I tossed the meat and the pan sauce with the lime juice in order to complete the scampi.

I really know I need to quit beating myself up over it, but I hate putting out sloppy plates.  The dish was outstanding just like I had hoped, but ugh, I need some food decoration lessons. 

Beef Carpaccio

Man, I'm really starting to suck at this blogging thing.  I seem to always promise to start posting more often again and then life gets in the way.  This time it was the result of a car accident.  I hate that I don't post more often.  One of these days I'll be able to get a handle on it. 

I'm going to shoot for a couple of posts today, with everything going on I've been jonesing to cook a lot of stuff in a day.  Today started with a beef carpaccio appetizer.  Something my mom and girlfriend will probably kill me for eating.  Ultimately, I don't care, it's freaking delicious. 

Naturally, in order to make beef carpaccio you need beef tenderloin.  This is a section of a beef tenderloin I bought a couple weeks ago (yes mother I had it in the freezer until I needed it).  Once it was thawed I wrapped it in plastic wrap and partially froze it for a couple hours.

From there I slice it thin and took a meat mallet to pound it out thin.  Unfortunately, this cut sat in my fridge a little longer than I might have liked which is why the meat isn't all pink.  But from here all I needed was the side dish.

So to dress the beef I made a quick arugula salad with a vinaigreet that had salt, pepper, white wine vinegar, dijon mustard and olive oil.

The entire final dressing, lemon, parmesan and the completed salad.

And the final plate.  It was freaking outstanding.