PRIME

We picked up these huge prime, dry aged rib eyes from Fox and Obel on Sunday and ate one of them for dinner. One was easily enough for 2 people so I froze the other one.

This steak was grilled on the Egg at about 550 degrees over hardwood charcoal, Jack Daniels barrel and a couple of olive wood chunks. The egg allows for an awesome crust on the outside of the steak as well as a perfectly cooked overall piece of meat. The intense oven-like environment inside this thing just kicks so much ass.

I made a simple heirloom tomato compote to go along with this cow. Just a little olive oil, sherry vinegar, black pepper and salt. A quick simmer to bring the flavors together and that was that. Honestly, I would have preferred a simple tomato salad, but these particular heirlooms were not at the peak of their season. They needed a little something to intensify their flavor.

Moo. Resting on my cutting board for 20 minutes before carving. Moo.

Do I really need to say anything about this?


Ok... I will, these ribs were smoke-roasted on the BIG GREEN EGG for about 4.5 hours at 225 degrees. (F) I used the same rub that I usually put on my pork shoulders and sprayed them with apple juice throughout the cooking process. During the last hour of cooking, these were basted with a mixture of Bowers Barbecue sauce (spicy) and apple juice. I like to keep my barbecue information to a minimum on this blog because I have another blog totally dedicated to barbecue. So click the link above if you want more info on the topic!

How we roll on Sunday... Again and again...

Sunday at my casa is a beautiful thing. Basically because it's a day I have off. For me, a day off pretty much guarantees a day of cooking. Actually, for me, every day guarantees cooking, but days off are when I cook for nothing more than my own personal enjoyment. I can also guarantee that I won't be the only one enjoying the fruits of my labor. To be honest, as much as I love cooking, I really don't like cooking for myself alone. In order for me to really enjoy it, I prefer to be sharing it with someone else. As a result of my cooking-enjoyment-criteria, Sunday at my place has become an epicenter of yummy food. It's a day when several of my friends are able to make it over here for some good eating/cooking. It's a tiny festival of culinary delights and usually a flight of wine tastings that would crush a Yellow Tail drinker with the blink of a ... tail. (turtle, mongoose, kangaroo, cat)

Sunday is also cool because I usually have very little idea what kinds of ingredients I will be working with.

People bring me stuff.

They bring me ideas, ingredients, demands! The bottom line is that I usually only have a vague idea about the items my friends are about to bring to my house before the cooking starts. Yea.. I have some shit that I've had in mind all day.. and have shopped for myself... But who knows what Brad or Chris might bring. They work at one of the the sexiest seafood joints in the city... anything could happen... and usually does! Then there is cheese, a couple of my friends are in the cheese biz... this also comes in handy on Sundays. (more on this later)

This random “offering” usually results in a “menu” of scattered items. It's not supposed to be a nice flowing concept where everything falls into place.. It's supposed to be a bunch of guys and girls playing with awesome ingredients and having a good time. And on that note, I can honestly say that this is my favorite way to spend time with other humans... Ever, ever. (well, almost)

I must say that cooking on the fly like this usually requires a well stocked pantry of oils, spices, vinegars... A well stocked pantry is a great way to make last minute decisions about how to prepare different ingredients... Things worked out great tonight, but I could have seriously used some lemons or other fresh citrus for this dinner.

Below I have some pictures from the evening. I left out a few things... Including the wine list... but you will get the idea.

Here we have Brad. I like to bloom his head in some white wine along with some Spanish saffron threads and then add the whole mixture to a simmering pot of garlic, black cod, kampachi and octopus. It makes an excellent stew to serve with none other than... CRUSTY BREAD!

Kona Kampachi


Kona Kampachi is a sexy fish. This stuff makes great sashimi! Though that's not what we did with it this time. I seasoned it with... well... I honestly don't want to say... Ok.. Sumac... then I pan seared it just a tiny bit and served it with some sauteed fiddlehead ferns. This may have been my favorite course of the evening.

Above: Ferns in the pan with garlic and olive oil.
Below: Plated Kona Kampachi
Pork Tenderloin

I know what you're thinking. "What the hell is pork tenderloin doing on this evening's menu?"
Well, brad and I are testing out some menu items for an upcoming catering gig. Most of our proposed menu was formulated on the fly over a few glasses of wine. So we thought it would be a good idea to test some things out before the actual event. For this one, we have a tenderloin which was butterflied and then stuffed with a mixture of shallot and some beautiful dates (which he brought over... have no idea where he got them). Then we rolled the whole thing up in bacon and roasted it. For this roast we brushed it with some pomegranate molasses to give the bacon a nice glaze. I think in the future we will reduce some fig-balsamic and use that instead. This dish will eventually be served with more components... we just wanted to test out the pork part. I must say, it was awesome with those dates. A classic play on sweet and salty. Loved it.

Here is a pic of the pork sliced on some plates.

Sweet Grass Dairy!

A friend of mine at Sweet Grass Dairy in Georgia recently sent me a bunch of cheeses to sample. Over the next few weeks I will be sampling these cheeses and writing about the ones I enjoy the most. For starters, I went right for the easy one. It's called HEAT. It's a raw, skim cow's milk cheese infused with guajillo, ancho, chipotle, arbol, and piquin chilies. They also add cilantro and smoked paprika. I tasted it raw and it had a nice... well.. heat to it. I like very hot foods so this was only medium-hot by my standards. It was even more mild when melted.
See below.

I thought this would be cool on a panini so I made one with pastrami, french bread and thousand Island dressing. By no means an attempt at refined cooking. Just a damn good melty sandwich! As I said, melted, the heat from this cheese was subtle but really awesome in"gooey form".

Good times were had by all, so thanks to everyone who contributed to another kickass Sunday.

Bugs and other creatures...

Here's a pic of a langoustine that brad brought over last week. I just split it open, sprinkled it with a little Old Bay, lemon and olive oil and threw it on the grill. It was quite tasty. The tail meat was sweet and rich with a sort of lobsteresque flavor. More concentrated than lobster really and very tasty.


These guys got boiled for lunch! Another simple and awesome meal. I just threw them in a big pot with some trinity (Onion, Celery, Green Bell Pepper), about a cup of Old Bay, Some hot sport peppers and some hot sauce. After they were cooked through, I dumped them into a big serving bowl, sprinkled them with more seasoning and hot sauce and we ate them with crusty bread and some corn which I boiled along with them in the same pot.

As we were eating these, I recalled the one that pinched my finger until I bled while they were still alive. He was a brave soul. I wonder if he liked having Old Bay all over him as much as I did...

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Sumac Again! (This time it's Escolar and Pizza)

As you can see, I have been playing with sumac around the house lately. Last night I made some Escolar, dusted with sumac, with a tomato-brown-butter... and a spicy, white pizza, finished with sumac.

Can I just take a moment to say how delicious escolar is? It's an awesome fish. It's flesh is dense, oily and holds up to a number of different cooking methods. The only drawback to this fish, is that it must be consumed in smaller quantities. Eat too much and the wax-esters in this oily critter can have undesirable affects on your digestive system. (to put it gently)

Anyway, here's how I cooked it: I started with two small fillets, seasoned them with salt and sumac. I got some copper nice and hot and seared one side of each fillet in grape seed oil. After about 1 minute of searing I flipped the fish, added shallot, halved grape tomatoes and about 4 tablespoons of cold butter. Then I put a lid on the pan and put it in a 375 degree oven for about 6 minutes. When I pulled it out of the oven, the fish was where I wanted it so I removed it from the pan and set it aside. At this point the pan was full of shallot, tomato and butter... resulting in a lot of liquid and fat. I heated this mixture over medium heat and let it bubble away until some of the tomato water began evaporating and the butter began to brown. I then seasoned it with some Maldon salt and some black pepper and called it a sauce.

Apart from that sauce, I also threw some baby arugula, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and grape seed oil into my vita-prep and ran this on high until it was smooth, clean and green!

To serve, I put one fillet of escolar on a plate, spooned the tomato/butter mixture over the top and finished the plate with my arugula puree. The lemony sauce cut right through the brown butter and played with the tomatoes. Every bite of this dish was a playground on the pallet as the flavors bounced back and forth off of each other in some kind of harmony. I was dipping my finger in the leftover sauces on the plate when it was all over... just to get one last taste of this sexy combination.

At some point, Aubrey said, “God... That was good, I wish we had a lot more!” To which I replied, “Yea... But then we would be crapping our pants later.”

Damn the Escolar!

OK so, That was a small portion for “Dinner” so as I mentioned before, I also made a pizza to go along with this course. When I make pizza, I like to make my dough a day in advance and let it rise in the fridge overnight. This way the yeast really has some time to do it's thing, eventually resulting in a more developed crust texture. Also, I added a little truffle salt to my dough when I was making it just to keep things interesting.

I actually ended up building and baking this pizza after serving and eating the escolar dish. I had all my mis en place ready so I didn't have much work to do and pizza is always best made and eaten as fresh as possible. The first thing I did was roll my dough out nice and thin and then par baked it on my pizza stone for about 2 minutes at 500 degrees. I find that par baking the dough before building the pizza makes it easier to move into the oven with all the toppings on it. I've had enough ovens with cheese burnt to the bottom or back of them to know how important it is to make a clean transfer from counter top to oven! So after about 2 min in the oven, i pulled the pizza out onto one of my cutting boards which was dusted with a little cornmeal. (I usually use semolina for dusting but didn't have any)

Next I brushed the semi-cooked dough with Frantoia olive oil, sprinkled it with crushed red pepper and began topping it with grated fontina, thin rings of red onion, thin slices of orange tomato and some arugula. I slid the whole thing back onto my pizza stone and baked it until the edges began to brown up and get crispy. About 10 minutes. After pulling it out and slicing it, I plated it, dusted it with yes... sumac, grated some Parmigiano-Reggiano over the top and finished with a little drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. It was a perfect follow-up to the escolar course and a nice finish to our dinner.