There are people that will go through their entire life never having experienced the pure joy of fresh fish topped with a perfectly made brown butter sauce. That so many will not allow themselves to enjoy this tarragon walnut brown butter sauce makes me sad.
Now, there are lots of good reasons to not eat butter. If it's against your religion, God bless you - I have no issue with that, or the wet blanket of a deity that controls your thoughts. If you are on a legitimate no-fat diet (for health reasons, not tube top reasons), then I'm not talking to you.
Maybe you just don’t think we have the right to vigorously tug on the teats of other species for our own pleasure. Okay then. But, if you are simply afraid of the calorie count, it's time to do some math.
Consider the brown butter sauce recipe I just posted. A 6-ounce piece of white fish is about 200 calories. If you spoon over a couple tablespoons of this unbelievably delicious sauce (a very generous portion, by the way), you've only added 200 calories, for a grand total of 400!
That's like the best dietary value ever! So, get some nice fresh fish (everything works); poach, sauté, broil, grill, or bake it, and spoon over one of life's greatest simple pleasures. By the way, this sure was nice served next to that asparagus pie we made. Enjoy!
Ingredients for about 4 portions: 3 tbsp unsalted butter 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice 1 tbsp chopped fresh tarragon 2 tbsps chopped walnuts salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
It's not often a dessert recipe inspires a savory dish; it's usually the other way around, but this asparagus pie is a direct result of my love for cherry clafouti.
Cherry clafouti is a rustic French dessert that features whole cherries baked in a sweet egg batter. If you'd like, you can check out the clafouti video recipe I did last spring.
I've always thought the same batter, minus most of the sugar, would make a great base for a vegetable dish. Since I had a bunch of beautiful asparagus sitting on my cutting board, I decided to test my idea.
It came together almost exactly as I had imagined. I love it when that happens. The simple batter formed a delicious, creamy, lightly browned crust around the buttery asparagus. The flavor was pure, the texture luxurious. Enjoy!
1 pound fresh asparagus, trimmed, cut into 2-inch pieces 2 tbsp butter, plus extra for the casserole dish 1/2 cup flour 3/4 tsp sugar 1 1/4 cup milk 3 large eggs 1 tsp chopped fresh thyme 3/4 tsp salt pinch of fresh ground black pepper 1 tbsp lemon zest
This recipe doesn't pretend to be anything it's not - this is simply a super-fast casserole that shares a few similarities to chicken enchiladas. If you are Mexican, and were/are lucky enough to enjoy authentic enchiladas, this will not remind you of Mom's - or even Dad's.
But having issued the standard ethnic recipe disclaimer, I'll say, these aren't bad. As long as you choose a high-quality green sauce and a decently cooked rotisserie chicken, you should end up with a nice, easy, fast dinner.
Please buy some good cheeses and grate them yourself. You'll see me using a pre-grated Mexican cheese blend, which was me not wanting to waste a product sample I had received for a review (the verdict? Grate your own cheese!)
This low-quality video was posted on YouTube a long time ago, but for whatever reason was never posted here. In fact, I don't even have a decent photo of the final dish, which is why you see this crappy screen shot here. Enjoy!
Ingredients: 1 rotisserie chicken 8 oz Monterey Jack cheese 8 oz cheddar cheese 1 tsp cumin 1 tsp salt 3 cups green enchilada sauce 10 corn tortillas 2 tbsp hot sauce Photo (c) Flickr user Sung Sook
Time is short and the work list is long as we get ready to head up to Sonoma for the Dry Creek Passport event (you can read more about it in last year's post), but I squeezed out enough time to finish this lamb meatball video recipe.
It tasted great, but I put in way too much breadcrumb, and as you'll see the results were extremely bouncy balls. The ingredient amounts below are the new and improved quantities in case you want to try these.
Speaking of being busy, I'll apologize in advance for blowing off your emails and/or comments until this event is over on Monday. I'll try to keep up, but if you are ignored, try again next week when things return to normal. Enjoy!
Ingredients: 1 1/4 pound ground lamb 1/2 cup breadcrumbs 1/2 cup milk 1 egg, beaten 1 tbsp chopped rosemary 3 cloves minced garlic 1 tsp dried oregano 2 tbsp olive oil pinch of cayenne 1/4 tsp cinnamon 1 tbsp cumin 1/2 tsp black pepper 1 1/2 tsp salt 1 tbsp tomato paste 2 tbsp chopped mint 3 cups tomato sauce 1 cup chicken stock red pepper flakes
Could there be a more representative image of spring than a couple ladybugs having sex on a spear of asparagus?
This great photo by Flickr user Benimoto inspired me to post these links to some previously published asparagus recipes.
One of my biggest vegetable pet-peeves is undercooked asparagus. Many cooks are so afraid to overcook it, that they tend to not cook it long enough, and this results in a crisp and still bitter stalk.
There's a perfect degree of doneness when the spears are barely firm, tender, and sweet. Go buy a couple bunches of fresh asparagus and give one of these recipes a try. Enjoy! Asparagus and Chicken Noodle Casserole
I've always thought that more home cooks would try recipes that call for brining the meat, if it were simply referred to (incorrectly, by the way), as a marinade.
Marinating sounds easy, brining sounds complicated. When people see "marinade" they think oil, vinegar, and a few spices rubbed on some meat. Mmm… marinade.
But, when they see "brine" in a procedure, I think they anticipate formulas, ratios, and percentages. Mmm…math?
For all practical purposes, a brine is really nothing more than a water-based marinade. Molecularly-speaking there are big differences between brining and marinating, but as far as cooking skill, or amount of prep work, there is no difference.
This video recipe for maple-brined pork roast is a delicious way for you to experience just how easy a simple brine really is. What a brine does that a marinade doesn't do is force moisture and flavor into the roast. I love the way the meat gets infused with that subtly sweet maple flavor.
I paired this roast pork loin with the rocket beans side dish, which just recently aired, and it was perfect match. By the way, the leftover pork loin, sliced thin and served cold, makes a sandwich that's to die for. Enjoy!
Over the last few years, Arugula has gone from rare and exotic, to common and mainstream. Bags of baby arugula line almost every lettuce case in the country, and it appears on restaurant menus with such frequency one could make the case it's over-used.
Another, infinitely cooler, name for arugula is Rocket. My sources deep within the European foodie subculture report that this is the term most commonly used. That's where this lovely, and extremely easy bean side dish gets its name.
While rocket is a wonderful green for salads, I really enjoy using it as an herb in hot dishes like this one. The secret is a very, very brief cooking so it keeps its fresh spicy flavor, and bright color.
This makes a great side dish for so many main courses, and in the video you'll see it next to a maple-brined pork loin that I'll be airing soon. By the way, don't let the bacon fat in this recipe scare you. Believe me, it's way more afraid of you than you are of it. Enjoy!
4 strips bacon, sliced 1 tbsp olive oil salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste 15 oz jar or can butter beans, drained and rinsed 3 cloves garlic, minced large handful arugula, chopped 1/2 lemon, juiced
It's not often I can work a Vanilla Ice song into a video recipe, but here it fit like a pair of baggy pants.
This quick and simple lemon icing recipe is what I frosted my Easter bread with, and it works nicely as an all-purpose glaze for all types of cookies, breads, and pastries.
You remember that comedian, the one with the big porn-stache, that did the, "you might be a redneck if" routine?
By the way, if you were at one of his shows, you were a redneck. This recipe reminds me of that bit. You could come up with a whole list of "you might be a bad cook if…" statements, but one of them for sure would be, "you might be a bad cook if you buy icing."
There can't be an easier recipe than a simple sugar icing. Can you stir? Good, then you have what it takes. I'm assuming if you do buy your icing, it's because you simply don't know the recipe, or just assumed (like everyone at a Jeff Foxworthy show is a redneck) it was too complicated. It's not. Enjoy!
Ingredients: 1 cup powdered sugar 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice 2 tsp grated lemon zest, optional 1 tbsp milk 1 small drop food coloring, optional
Easter is a very underrated food holiday. What red-blooded, red meat eater doesn't salivate at the site and smell of a garlic-studded roasting leg of lamb?
I've always enjoyed the simple pleasure of a properly cooked hard-boiled Easter egg, and its colorfully decorated shell. And, of course, there's the chocolate eggs, tucked down in pink plastic excelsior grass.
Remember how you would slowly lift the egg out of the basket and immediately gauge the weight. In a millisecond you knew if it was a feather-light, hollow chocolate shell, or heavy and dense - filled with solid chocolate or some other exotic goo.
If you were lucky enough to grow up in an Italian-American home, there's a good chance you got to enjoy the smell of freshly baked Easter bread, with its unmistakable anisette aroma filling the air.
The smell was heady, but so was the sight of those glossy iced braids, bejeweled with candy sprinkles (click here for the icing recipe). The sweet, spicy, eggy, buttery taste was complex, but at the same time, familiar and comforting.
This loaf of Easter bread is one of my favorite holiday traditions, and an authentic family heirloom recipe. Made the same way as my mother, and her mother, and her mother's mother made it. I hope you give this a try, and remember, it's never too late to start and old family tradition. Happy Easter! Enjoy!
Ingredients: 1 package active dry yeast 1/4 cup warm water (100 degrees F.) 3/4 cup sugar 4 eggs 1 tsp aniseeds 1 1/2 tbsp anise extract 1 1/2 tsp lemon extract 1 tbsp lemon zest 1 1/4 tsp salt 2 tbsp vegetable oil 6 tbsp melted butter 1/4 cup milk 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more as needed *CLICK HERE for the icing recipe!
Cooking duck is surprisingly easy if you give up on the idea of cooking it whole. Sure that whole duck a l'orange looks nice on the magazine cover (except for that damn curly parsley), and your cookbooks are filled with seemingly simple roast duck recipes, but if you follow the technique shown here, you'll be enjoying duck at it's absolute best.
In the kitchen, a duck's breast and leg could not be more different. The legs need long, slow cooking to tenderize the succulent meat, while the breasts beg to be quickly pan-seared to a juicy pink. If you roast the duck whole, the best you can hope for is one of the two pieces to be okay, but usually what you get is a too-done breast and under-cooked leg.
I did this video for About.com a long time ago, but it just recently aired. I'll remind you again that I'm no longer able to embed my videos from their site here (also no podcast) - so when you click the video player below, you'll be taken to another window where the video will begin. You'll also get the ingredients and a complete transcript. Enjoy!
As promised, here is my basic version of chilaquiles, a classic Mexican mixture of fried tortillas, cheese, and salsa verde, often made with eggs to produce one of the world's great breakfasts. Like all the great breakfasts of the world, it has been long touted as a superior hangover cure.
It's ability to revive the body, mind, and soul from the ravages of alcohol poisoning is reportedly second only to the famous Mexican soup, menudo. Since mendo takes much longer to make, and traditionally contains, among other things, brains, cheeks, tails, hooves, and other organs, I tend to prefer the chilaquiles as my remedy.
According to the extensive research I did regarding the name, and by that I mean the three minutes I spent on Wikipedia, the word "chilaquiles" is derived from the Nahuatl word chil-a-quilitl, which means "herbs or greens in chile broth."
I can't say how that particular recipe eventually became what you'll see here, but thankfully it did - I can't imagine a bowl of stewed greens in a chili broth would work as well after a late night out at Senor Diablo's Casa de Las Margaritas Grandes. Enjoy!
Ingredients for curing 2 hangovers: 5 eggs 3 corn tortillas 1/2 cup cheese 1/2 cup salsa verde vegetable oil salt and cayenne pepper to taste
Check Out These Other Great South-of-the-Border Video Recipes:
Pasta primavera is quite a straightforward recipe - spaghetti or fettuccine tossed with an array of fresh spring vegetables. When done right, this is one of the year's great seasonal recipes. This looks, smells, and tastes like a cool, sunny spring day.
The thing I can't figure out is how chefs, particularly one running large hotel kitchens, came to call any pasta with vegetables, "pasta primavera." If you order this dish in one of those establishments, you will probably get a plate of pasta, with a heavy cream sauce, some black bits of oxidized basil, and large, undercooked chunks of vegetables, usually of the summer and fall variety.
Unfortunately for many chefs, this recipe serves as a way to clean out the walk-in of past-their-prime vegetables (Mmm…old squash and bell peppers), instead of what it should be - a celebration for the return of fresh green veggies.
You will see a great "chefs secret" in this video recipe for keeping the basil bright green. In fact, the second photo here shows the leftovers after 24 hours. They are still beautiful, and didn't turn that nasty grey-green-brown hue that affects leftover basil-based sauces.
I like to choose as many different green vegetables as I can get my hands on for this dish. I managed to include seven varieties, and could have added a few more without a problem. I'll admit, this one does take much more slicing and dicing than I usually subject you to, but the effort will be rewarded with a pasta worthy of its name. Enjoy!
Ingredients: 1/2 cup olive oil plus 2 tbsps 1 bunch green onions, chopped 1 large leek (dark green parts trimmed off and discarded), chopped, washed thoroughly 2 jalapeno, diced 1 bunch basil 3 cups chicken or vegetable broth 2 cloves garlic 2 green zucchini, diced 1/2 cup freshly shucked peas 1 cup sugar snap peas 1 bunch asparagus, stalks diced, tips left whole 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, or as needed salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste 1 pound fettuccine
There are people that will go through their entire life never having experienced the pure joy of fresh fish topped with a perfectly made brown butter sauce. That so many will not allow themselves to enjoy this tarragon walnut brown butter sauce makes me sad.
Maybe you just don’t think we have the right to vigorously tug on the teats of other species for our own pleasure. Okay then. But, if you are simply afraid of the calorie count, it's time to do some math.
