Tag: sear

Categories
Fish and Shellfish The Book

180. Seared Salmon with Balsamic Glaze p.290


The recipe

Jacques Pépin said it best, if you’re going to fry fish, try to do it at the neighbours’ house. I was working from home the day I made this dish, and my dining companion wasn’t getting back until 9 pm so I decided to make fish for lunch. As regular readers know she’s not entirely comfortable with things that come from the sea, fish least of all. Salmon is her most hated fish, so I try to be polite about cooking it when she’s not around. The dish is as simple as it gets, requiring just a few pantry staples, and some nice Salmon fillets (I quartered the recipe and just made a fillet for me). All the recipe involves is seasoning the fillets with salt and pepper, pan frying them until they’re just cooked through, and once the salmon is out of the pan deglazing it with a mixture of balsamic vinegar, water, lemon juice, and light brown sugar. Once this sauce is reduced it’s spooned over the salmon and served.

What the book fails to mention is the billowing clouds of fish smoke that will fill your poorly ventilated apartment, and that the first thing your dining companion will say when she gets home is “gah, fish!”, or that your pillows will smell like fried fish, and that a week later the kitchen pantry will still have a faint fishy odor. The fish is seared over highest heat in a non-stick skillet (more cancer, yay!), and it started smoking right away. After the recommended 4 minutes the skin side of the salmon was black and charred, not seared. I reduced the heat a bit to cook the top side of the fillet, and got it out of the pan once it was nicely browned. When I cut into it the fish was still pretty much raw in the thicker part of the fillet. I only served myself the skinnier side which had cooked through. I made the pan sauce, and brushed a bit of it onto my fish, but it picked up a lot of the burned flavour from the pan, and I over reduced it as well (that pan was really hot).

I suspect that my modifications to the recipe got me into trouble. I was supposed to cook 4 fillets in a 12 inch skillet, but I did one fillet in an 8 inch skillet. With less fish per square inch to cool the skillet down the fish may have burned faster. I think my fillet was a more like 8 ounces than the recommended 6, which would explain the under cooking.

Despite the snafus, the fish tasted quite good. I peeled off the blackened skin, and the meat of the thinner half of the fillet was nicely cooked. Even with the slightly burned flavour the pan sauce worked well, it was a touch sweet for my taste, and if I made it again I’d increase the lemon juice, but it did compliment the salmon’s flavour nicely.

I guess this is one of those recipes that you can’t vary from too much. Many Epicurious posters appear to have had success, so I’m going to assume that this is just me. Make sure to cook the right number and size of fillets and you’ll probably be OK. Even done properly your house is going to stink though. I usually try to do this kind of smelly frying on the side burner of the grill, to better let the neighbours enjoy the fishy smell. Alas, I was out of gas the day I decided to make this. I was happy with the flavours of this dish, and it was dead simple, and lightning fast, but I was less happy with the fine film of fish oil that settled onto every horizontal surface in the whole house. I’ll plan on trying this one again and following the instructions more closely next time. For now I’ll give it at

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

145. Cider Braised Pork Shoulder with Caramelized Onions p.476


The recipe

I love to braise. It’s almost worth suffering through the interminable and bitter winter of Montreal to do it. Of course you could braise all year round if you really wanted to, but somehow simmering meat for hours in the middle of July just doesn’t sound like a good idea. Braised meats are delicious, so I’ve tried letting someone in the kitchen at a restaurant suffer through the heat, and ordered it. Unfortunately it’s just too heavy to be enjoyable, and the process of doing it myself is one of my favourite parts. You really need a miserably blustery day to truly appreciate the joys of a good braise. I love the side benefits of the whole house smelling wonderful for a day, and the comforting knowledge that dinner is getting itself ready, and the more you ignore it the better it will be. With our oil heating, leaving the stove on is also a pretty economical way to heat the house.

You can’t beat a braise for thrift either. You can keep your precious tenderloins, give me the gnarliest, toughest, and cheapest cut of meat you can find, and it will turn to gold after a few hours with Le Creuset. It’s amazing to see this awful slab of meat transformed. The fat renders, and gets skimmed away, the connective tissue dissolves and become that elixir of mouth-feel, gelatin, and even the toughest cuts yeild to a fork. Those braising bits have so much more flavour than the quick searing cuts of meat, it just takes a little time to coax it out.

This recipe starts with a skin-on picnic ham. You score the skin, and insert cloves of garlic into the meat, add salt and pepper, and then brown it thoroughly in a heavy pot (cast iron is your friend). Once the meat is browned, you remove it, and sauté a whole whack of onions in the pot. When the onions turn golden, you add unfiltered apple cider, and the meat back to the pot. Then you seal it up, stick it in a 325 oven, and walk away for the next three hours or so. When you’re ready to serve, you remove the meat, and reduce the braising liquid to two cups. If the lid of your pot doesn’t have an extremely tight seal this will have happened naturally.

You can serve the pork right away, but it’ll taste better if you let it cool in the braising liquid, refrigerate it overnight, and then serve it for dinner the following day. This also makes defatting the sauce easy. The recipe doesn’t call for it, but I think it’s a necessary step. There’s a huge amount of fat on a pork shoulder, and most of it melts into the sauce. Even if you don’t have time to cool it it’s worth letting the liquid sit, and skimming part of the fat away. That’s one of the recipe’s biggest weaknesses. I defatted my sauce, but I don’t think I would have enjoyed it nearly as much if I’d followed the recipe exactly.

Recipes are never very specific about how much you should brown meat for a braise. Older books spout that nonsense about sealing in flavour, but really you’re building flavour. The darker the meat gets, without burning, the more flavourful your braise will turn out. There’s nothing at all wrong with your browned meat looking more than a little black, just avoid billowing clouds of smoke.

Braised pork shoulders are always good, it’s nearly impossible to mess a recipe like this up. This particular braise was minimalist, with just a few ingredients. I think it could have easily accommodated another flavour, a sprig of thyme would have done wonders. It was also a little unbalanced, both the onions and the cider were very sweet, and a little vinegar would have been welcome. The texture was excellent, succulent and falling apart, with a thick hearty sauce to go along with he meat. It made quite a nice dinner, but it was an outrageously good sandwich the following day.

The recipe’s biggest weakness was the skipping of the defatting step, other than that I have only minor quibbles. If you’re OK with sweeter meat dishes, leave it as is, if not go with some cider vinegar. I’d add herbs depending on my mood, it’s very nice even without them. If you don’t braise a lot, this recipe is certainly worth trying. And, if not this recipe, then some recipe, get out there and eat low on the hog.

Categories
Poultry The Book

121. Duck Breasts with Orange Ancho Chile Sauce p.396


The recipe

This recipe was a show stopper. It’s the only recipe for duck breast in the book, and that’s a real shame. Magret de canard is one of the staples of the Québécois culinary scene, a distinctive take on the seared duck breast is de rigueur for any restaurant interested in cuisine de terroir. Fusion may have been the dining buzz-word of the 90’s, but it’s certainly alive and well. It would seem that every third restaurant to open in the city has a _________ inspired menu playing on Québécois classics, most likely in tiny, tapas style portions. This Mexican influenced magret would fit in beautifully.

The duck breast is seasoned with salt and pepper, and simply seared. The skin renders enough fat that oil isn’t necessary. The sauce is made with a purée of Ancho chiles, and garlic which is added to a caramel of orange and lime juices, then finished with butter. The sauce had a lovely balance of sweet, acid, and heat, which complimented the powerful flavour of the duck. Duck does wonderfully with a slightly sweet sauce, and the orange caramel fit the bill, the rounded smoky Ancho flavour tempered the sweetness and played up the depth and body of the duck.

Lots of people think they don’t like duck, and avoid it, or have only ever encountered it in Chinese preparations. A simply seared duck breast might be a revelation for them. My dining companion’s mother told us over dinner about her childhood experiences of eating duck. Apparently her family got it’s duck from local hunters, and they risked a mouthfull of buckshot with every bite. She recalls that it was too gamy and intense to be enjoyable, so she avoided it for the next twenty years, but these days she’s a fan. The duck we get today is raised on farms much like chickens, and the flavour appears to have mellowed. People deplore the fact that pork doesn’t taste like pork anymore, but no one complains that duck has lost its muskiness. I’ve never had duck from a hunter, but I’d like to compare some time.

Looking at that beautifully pink duck breast is making my mouth water. It occurs to me though, that duck is the only poultry you’d ever consider cooking to less than well done. A medium-rare chicken breast brings on gasps of revusion, not delight. Duck really does taste best when pink though.

If you’ve never tried a magret de canard I absolutely encourage you to, and the sauce The Book has paired with this one is a wonderful compliment. I loved that the sauce showed off everything I enjoy about duck breast, without trying to show it up. Duck Breasts with Orange Ancho Chile Sauce you’ve earned your five mushroom rating.

Categories
Beef, Veal, Pork, and Lamb The Book

8. Steak Diane p. 427

I can’t find a recipe to link to, and that’s a real shame. This dish was a knockout. The classic version uses tenderloin, here The Book calls for much more affordable sirloins. The steaks were flavourful and ended up fillet mignon tender after a pummeling with an empty wine bottle. The steaks were seasoned with salt and pepper, then pan seared. I cooked down some shallots in the fat in the pan, and added a mixture of beef broth, Worcestershire, lemon juice, Dijon, Cognac, and Sherry (I used port). I reduced the sauce, and finished with butter and parsley.

The only change I’d make to this one would be to leave the parsley out of the sauce, it wilted kind of unattractively. I’d leave it out all together, but a bit in a chiffonade over the steaks would look nice.

This took all of 20 minutes to put together and it blew me away. I’m a sucker for a pan sauce because they rescue so much of the goodness you left behind in the pan, and can add complimentary flavours and complexity. In this case the sauce was exceptionally well balanced, and enhanced the flavour of the steaks without covering anything up. I loved that this took no time to prepare (dicing a whole cup of shallots was the most irritating part), didn’t cost an arm and a leg, and left a big impression with my guests. Traditionally the cognac is added right at the end of the dish and ignited table side, the recipe doesn’t call for it but big flames can do wonders to liven up a dinner party.

This was so good I’ve awarded it the first 5 mushroom rating of the project. Well done Steak Diane, well done.