Recently in Sauces Category

Served with a smoked shallot and asparagus orzo.

Too busy to write a detailed post, and I think it'll be more fun if I just answer any questions you have about it in the comments. Anyone?

It doesn't take a foot of snow to get me in the mood for soup. To do it right, a great soup starts with a great stock, and I was lucky enough to have the carcass to the smoked turkey we had for Thanksgiving. Because it had so much flavor I was able to get a stock with a ton of flavor in 4 hours. The only seasoning I used was Survival Spice®, aside from a bit of Sriricha hot sauce at the table.

The rest was pretty straight ahead, and I used a few bolillo rolls to make some quick garlic bread, drizzled with Tibvrtini Olio Extra Virgene di Oliva.

I got a gallon's worth of stock for my work, and used half of it for this soup. I guess I can make 2 batches of brocolli cheddar soup with the rest!

I've been fooling around a lot with Indian food lately, and out of all the curries I've dabbled with so far, this was my favorite. The base of this dish was a hot curry paste that's added to the skillet after the eggplant, onions and chicken were browned individually.

The paste sauteed until the the smell was driving me crazy, then I added a can of diced tomatoes and some water. I let it simmer for about 15 minutes, then added everything back in. It simmered for about half an hour while I made some basmati rice.

The plating was uber simple- just a good scoop of rice, the curry, and topped off with some cilantro and toasted sesame seeds.

Dang. I think there's leftovers.

This was the dish I alluded to in my "Wokking the Plank" post last week, using more of the ingredients I picked up at Lee Lee Oriental Market recently. I picked up some baby bok choy and some baby eggplant that looked good, and some larger scallions. I made some homemade teriyaki sauce, using only half the sugar to marinate the salmon.

Once the salmon was under the broiler I added the remaining sugar to the marinade and reduced it by about 30%. I stir fried the eggplant first in some peanut oil to get a good color on it, then put it aside while I did the bok choy. I added the eggplant back, tossed in the scallions, then added a bit of the sauce to give it a nice color.

I topped it with some toasted sesame seeds after I took the picture, and we feasted until we couldn't eat any more. Good, good stuff.

Our internet has been really spotty tonight, so I'll post this quickly while I can, and tweak it later. These were marinated in soy, rice wine vinegar, and tons of fresh ginger and garlic all afternoon, baked in the oven, then tossed in homemade teriyaki sauce that I reduced with the leftover marinade, along with some Scirachi hot sauce, scallions, and toasted sesame seeds.

I made a few veggie sushi rolls that I've posted before, too, nothing new but fantastic nonetheless.

Been cooking? Let's hear about it!

(All natural top sirloin and Yukon Gold potato, smothered in a Shiner Bock- balsamic reduction, with red onions and crimini mushrooms)

Well, Julie's out of town again, which means I catch up on eating some foods we generally don't eat together. Steak is one of them, and I really did this one up.

I always prefer to use some good demi-glace or stock in a pan sauce, but lacking that I collected whatever juices I could once I seared the steak while I reduced about half a bottle of Shiner Bock, loosening the fond from my cast iron skillet to get every bit of meaty flavor. I added the juices to the pan along with a glug of decent balsamic vinegar and some dijon mustard, then added my diced red onions and sliced crimini mushrooms. After giving it a saute, I added a generous pat of butter off the heat, then seasoned the sauce to taste.

It's kind of a mess, in terms of plating, but the sauce was so unbelievably good I didn't want to save the leftovers.

Update: I was only able to eat half of that last night, and just had the leftovers. A fall apart sirloin with a sauce packed with flavor. Amazing.

Today's food experiment included a desperate search through the pantry for something fast. I've never used canned soup in a sauce, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

I rubbed two chicken breasts with our Survival Spice® barbecue rub, which of course works like a champ, then roasted them along with some sliced onion and peppers, until they had some good color, then dumped in the cans, seasoned them with more Survival Spice®, then let it all simmer along until it was done. Made some smashed parsley buttered potatoes, and plated it all together.

How was it?

Answer:

Good. I knew it might be salty, so I took it easy on the salt when I seasoned the potatoes and it worked out fine. I might use less stock if I did it again, which is certainly possible.

Been cooking? Email me pics! I'll admit I've been getting to them slowly, but they're still around here somewhere...

This is a quick and simple dish, relatively speaking, with minimal prep required, which these days is about at the top of the priority list. A beurre blanc sauce, literally 'white butter', is done with whole butter, white wine, lemon juice, parsley and shallots at its most basic form, but is really easy to embellish with things like red bell pepper, capers and whatever else you feel like throwing in there. My ratio of butter to lemon juice wasn't high enough to make this a 'textbook' beurre blanc, but this slightly lighter version was still amazing.

The main trick to a beurre blanc is to not heat the butter to the point of splitting. I dimly remember that being around 137º from my culinary school days, but the basic technique to this pan sauce is to give your skillet a quick wipe after you've removed whatever meat you've cooked, then adding the shallots, and sweating them a minute or two. Deglaze with a shot of white wine, reduce this to 'au sec', or nearly dry, then add your whole butter. Alternate between on and off the heat, swirling your pan almost continuously, until the mixture emulsifies. Thin with lots of lemon juice, toss in some chopped parsley if you like, or cilantro, then plate 'er up.

The acidity of the white wine and lemon juice makes this sauce much lighter than you'd expect. As far as the fish goes, all I did was season it with a bit of Survival Spice® and sauteed it in our Tibvrtini Olio Extra Virgene di Oliva, then kept it warm on a sizzle plate.

If you want to keep playing with butter sauces after you've tried this, a beurre noisette, or browned butter sauce is absolutely amazing, but that's another day.

This is a great beer, and it added a wonderful dimension to the pan sauce I put together last night.

I was determined to keep this as simple as possible, in terms of flavors, so I decided to create an utterly simple pan sauce. Fortunately, I still had some of the "semi-glace" that I try to keep on hand, and that's really all you need, but rather than crust my top sirloin with crushed black peppercorns, ala au poivre, I figured that I could just deglaze the pan with some butter, a few cubes of semi-glace, and some crushed peppercorns.

The steak was simple, too, I used some amazing Hawaiian sea salt on the steak before pan frying it in our Tibvrtini Novello organic olive oil, and some butter. Pulled it once it was medium rare, and let it rest on a plate.

Happily, as it turns out, I didn't have enough sauce to deglaze the size of the pan I used, so I needed to add some more liquid. I was planning on drinking the Ommegang Abbey Dubbel anyway, so I splashed a bit of it in the skillet, swirled to deglaze the fond, and reduced it until it was nappé.

Serving it with the rigatoni and cheese seemed like an unlikely match, but it was great, and the sauce worked really well with the pasta, too.

This was almost unbearably good, and pretty simple to put together. Here's another picture of the finished dish:

Happy Friday, everyone! Forgive the alliteration in the title, and the infrequent posting this week. There's nothing funny about this London Broil steak, but it was really good.

If you recall, I stumbled on a marinade of Tibvrtini Extra Virgine di Oliva, organic Tibvrtini Aceto di Vino Blanco, and some Survival Spice™ that I thought would work with this flank steak, and it did. I rubbed the steak with Survival Spice®, and put in a one gallon baggie, and made a mix of 2 parts or so Tibvrtini olive oil, and one part white wine vinegar, and poured it in to the bag.

I let it marinade for about two days, than pulled it out of the marinade. I'll rub it with more Survival Spice® before I cook it next time, because what the beef didn't absorb basically got washed away, but hey, it was a first attempt! I let it come to room temperature while I got the fire going, then grilled it over a medium hot pecan fire. I let it rest a few minutes, then sliced it across the grain, to cut as much connective fiber as possible.

This is really good stuff, and really simple- no chopping onion or garlic or measuring stuff, just rub it and give it enough marinade it to get it wet, then turn it twice a day or so.

Have a great weekend! Cook something good, willya? Email me a picture of something you feel like sharing.

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