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Cooking with Herbs
I demonstrated seven dishes at Blandy Farm for Arborfest 2005 on Sunday October 8, 2005, with the aim of showing some new uses for some heirloom vegetables: butternut squash, leeks, and my beautiful Fin de Bagnols heirloom filet beans (haricots verts, French beans). The demonstration was divided into three parts and focused on side dishes to pair with each of three meats: pork, salmon, and redfish.
As always, I cook without formal, written recipes. There is clearly method behind my madness and I have attempted to convey that in the so-called recipes below. Treat them more as guidelines and feel free to deviate as you please and you will have captured the spirit in which I offer them.
Recipes
Apples with Bacon, Thyme, and Honey Butternut Squash with Sage and Brown Sugar
Sautéed Redfish with Porcini Cream
Apples with Bacon, Thyme, and Honey
Key here is the quality of the apples. I used Blushing Goldens because they are one of the finest cooking and eating apples that I know. Look for a crisp apple with good flavor and excellent acidity. Hint: go to a farmer’s market. You are not going to find such an apple at the supermarket.
4 slices bacon 4 apples, peeled and sliced 2 sprigs fresh thyme 2 T honey salt to taste
Slice the bacon vertically into 1/4” strips. Render in a sauté pan until almost cooked. Add the apples and toss well. Strip the leaves from the thyme and add. Cook until the apples are as soft as you want. Add the honey and toss well. Taste for seasoning.
Butternut Squash with Sage and Brown Sugar
Here’s a quick way to enjoy butternut squash in minutes.
1 T oil 1 small butternut squash 3-4 sage leaves 2 T unsalted butter 2 T light brown sugar
Cut the neck of the squash off just where the bulbous part starts; save the bulbous part for some other use. Slice the stem off. Stand the neck up on your cutting board and slice the skin off, all the way around. Split the peeled neck in two, lengthwise. Place the two halves split side down on the cutting board. Slice into uniform 1/8” half moon pieces.
Heat the oil in a sauté pan and add the squash. Toss and cook until the squash is soft, four to five minutes. Shred the sage leaves with a knife and add to the pan along with the butter and brown sugar. Toss well to coat the squash.
Herb-Marinated Pork Loin Steak
This is a marinade that I typically use for pork tenderloin or chicken breasts for the grill. I had never done a pork loin steak this way before, but it was so good that I will keep this in my little bag of tricks. I suppose you can buy center cut loin steaks at the store (I don’t really know), but I simply cut a ¾” steak off a loin that we had in our cooler.
This is one of those freeform recipes in that it really doesn’t matter what herbs you use in the marinade. At the restaurant, we use whatever we happen to have on hand. Whatever mix we make, it is generally half parsley. We use assertive herbs such as rosemary and sage sparingly. There can never be enough garlic. We avoid licorice tasting herbs such as tarragon and chervil. I don’t think cilantro has any place in this recipe; you may disagree.
The mix I made at the demonstration consisted of parsley, thyme, sage, rosemary, basil, and chives.
1 or more pork steaks 1 c assorted minced fresh herbs per tenderloin black pepper garlic, minced, one head per tenderloin extra virgin olive oil salt
Mince the herbs and garlic. Add them along with black pepper and enough olive oil to form a fluid paste to a seal top plastic bag. Place the pork steaks in the bag and massage the herb paste all around them. Place in the refrigerator overnight or longer.
Heat a sauté pan on high heat and film with oil. Cook the pork steak on one side until you can see that the bottom side has cooked. Flip and cook until done. Total cooking time is about 6-7 minutes for a ¾” thick steak.
Here’s a rip off of Szechuan Green Beans.
1 T oil ½ onion, diced ½ lb filet beans, strung and cleaned 1 clove garlic, minced water 1 T soy sauce, or to taste black pepper
Heat the oil in a sauté pan and start sautéing the onion. Once it starts to brown, add the beans and toss them until they are well coated. Continue cooking 2-3 minutes, add the garlic and cook for another minute. Add a splash of water to steam the beans (if needed). When the water is evaporated and the beans are done to your liking, add the soy sauce, toss well, and let it evaporate. Taste and season.
This is a long-standing staple of the One Block West lunch menu.
1 T oil oyster sauce salmon fillets sesame seeds
Rub the show side of the salmon (not the skin side) with oyster sauce. Put the sesame seeds in a shallow dish. Press the salmon, oyster sauce down, in the sesame seeds.
Heat a sauté pan over medium high heat and film with oil. Sauté the fish, moderating the heat so that the sesame seeds brown but do not burn. Turn the fish when half-cooked and cook the other side. Salmon is best when it is still a bit rare in the middle. Serve with a drizzle of oyster sauce and garnish with finely chopped green onions.
Oyster sauce is available in oriental groceries and larger grocery stores. Creamed Leeks
This is such an old fashioned dish that I think nobody thinks of it any longer.
2 T butter 4 large leeks ½ c heavy cream salt to taste
Clean the leeks and chop. Melt the butter in a sauté pan and cook the leeks until they are very soft, but not browned. Add the cream and continue cooking. Reduce until thick. Season.
Sautéed Redfish with Porcini Cream
Redfish is a mild white fish. I originally designed this sauce for halibut. Rockfish, grouper, or corvina are good substitutes.
¼ c dried porcini 1 c warm water ½ c heavy cream 2 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves stripped 2 fresh sage leaves, finely shredded salt and white pepper to taste
oil flour redfish filets salt and pepper to taste
In a small bowl, cover the dried porcini in the warm water and let rehydrate until soft, about 15 minutes. Remove the porcini from the water and chop. Place the porcini and the liquid in a sauce pan and reduce until ½ cup remains. Add heavy cream and herbs and reduce again by half. Season to taste.
Heat oil in a sauté pan and dredge the filets in the flour. Sauté over high heat until halfway cooked, then flip and cook until done. Sauce with the porcini cream.
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