Lobster Poutine

Haven't updated this for quite some time now.  I'm blaming it on work, which has been stressing me out a lot lately.  The responsibilities, low pay, no medical and dental plans, long hours, and the lessening amount of time that I have for myself....that's why I went to Vegas a few days ago for 4 days.

I think I have discovered time traveling because the second day of Vegas disappeared way too quickly.

Anyway, I've entered this competition at our restaurant called "Top Apprentice".  Basically, contestants in the restaurant will compete with each other by creating a plate that will fit in the Joey, Local Public Eatery and Nimby's Burger restaurants.  After winning that, the 2 winners will then compete in the regional(with other Joey restaurant winners) by recreating their winning dish and by competing in the glass box competition.  After that will be the dreaded black box competition.

This got me really excited as this was the only opportunity for me to be creative and showcase what I can do.  Contestants are required to submit their recipes, specs, and costing of the plate together with proposed selling price.  Did I mention that whoever wins might get a chance to have their food featured on the menu?  

The way I tackled this was to create a plate that would at least fit in two restaurants(I went for Joey and Local as opposed to Nimby's which was a burger shack).  So I decided to go with something I've been wanting to do for some time now but just didn't have enough reason to be spending that much money.  I decided to make a Lobster Poutine.  

Poutine?  What is a Poutine?  A Poutine is a dish created in Montreal.  A dish that has been called by many as the "Hangover Cure".  Basically, it's just french fries, with cheese curds on top and gravy.  Disgusting?  You'd change your mind once you've tried it.  

I got the recipe from Chuck Hughes who competed in Iron Chef America.  I made some changes to it by adding more of the mirepoix and aromatics to mask the lobster-y taste a bit and by using cream instead of butter to make the gravy.

Served this to judges and they loved it!  Wow, it's already 11pm.  I'll post the recipe tomorrow since I have to be up by 4am for work.

Baked Halibut Medley with Tosazu

Work has been pretty tough the last couple weeks.  Patio season has arrived(the weather here in Vancouver for the year is usually composed of 70% rain and 30% sunshine), which means 50 more covers on top of the 250 covers per turnover.  Now this is what we call The Juice in kitchen lingo.

The Juice, is usually made up of the following:  not having the right amount of bodies on the line.  Ideally, your pan-fry station needs at least 3 bodies, ovens/salads station needs 4 bodies and your entree station needs 3 bodies on a busy lunch rush to operate smoothly.  Each body on the each station has a specific task.  For example, on entree, you have your call cook who calls out orders, your grill cook who's in charge of cooking and your finish cook who makes sure that everyone is hitting their bill times and maintaining the order on the line.

If the kitchen is well prepared for the lunch rush, they would've added 1 more body on top of the 10 bodies already on the line.  This extra body is quite valuable.  He's considered the ninja of the line, jumping from one station to another to help out ease the tension from any station that needs help the most.  This person must be proficient with all the stations.  We call his own station, The Bermuda Triangle, the lost station of the kitchen.  This guy is your swing-man.

Another basic component that contributes to the creation of the behemoth that is called The Juice is, the amount of bills rang into the kitchen within the span of 10-15 minutes.  Imagine the whole restaurant's orders being rang in the span of 15 minutes.  I'm quite sure that you'll be in the fetal position after seeing the amount of bills hanging in front of you and from your printer(this is called a white out when there isn't any space to stick your bills on).

These last couple of weeks, I've been working at least 10 hours a day.  It's starting to take a toll on me.  They say that cooking is therapeutic, and they're right.  On my day off I made something from Nobu's book.  Baked Halibut Medley with Tosazu.

 Baked Halibut Medley with Tosazu:

1 piece Halibut belly
1/4 cup of chopped green onions
3in. square kombu
1 packed cup of bonito flakes
1/2 teaspoon sugar
3 tablespoons soy sauce

First, take off the skin from your halibut belly and save it.  Separate the meat from the belly and chop it into chunks. 

For the skin, fry it on a pan filled with hot oil until it is nice and crispy. 

 

As for the meat, grab a tray and place an aluminum foil on it.  Place your ring mould on the tray and spray the insides.  Place the halibut meat that you've chopped inside the mould and bake it in a 350F oven for 15-20 minutes.

 

While waiting for your halibut to cook, heat up your soy sauce in a sauce pan and add your rice wine vinegar, sugar and kombu.  Bring it to a simmer and as soon as it simmers, take it off from the heat.  Add your bonito flakes and let it steep for 5 minutes.

Once your halibut is cooked, top it off with the crispy skin and chopped green onions.  Serve it with the tosazu sauce.

Friendly Black Box Competition

Lately, I've been watching a lot of Chopped on The Food Network.  Chopped is very similar to Iron Chef except that they really don't know what the ingredients are(the contestants on Iron Chef know what the secret ingredient is before hand).  One of the many differences between the two shows is that on Chopped, you really have to start from scratch, from zero to something, and that you are given 4 secret ingredients instead of just 1.

So me and my friend at the restaurant tried to do something similar to this.  There were originally 4 of us who were going to this but backed out at the end. 

Our rules were:
1.  3 secret ingredients: protein, starch and vegetable
2.  No time limit
3  Helping each other out was fine, since this is just a friendly competition to help build our repertoire.
4.  All 3 ingredients must be used in a plate.
5.  $20 limit for our secret ingredients.

Me and my friend went to the nearest grocery store and started shopping.  We quickly distanced ourselves from each other like spies trying to hide an evil plan.  There was no room for error.  A quick peek into your basket from your competitor will give that extra few minutes for them to plan what to cook. 

Our grocery bags were double bagged, just in case the bag's transparency would give off the identities of our SECRET ingredients.

As soon as we got to the restaurant, we quickly exchanged bags.  No words were spoken except for a sly grin on our faces and nod of the head.  It was quite reminiscent of old mobster movies where a family member from each mob would meet up in the centre and exchange baggage and would just exchange a few threatening phrases.

As soon as recieved my bag, my heart started pumping...hard.  Maybe it was because of the excitement but it was also mostly due to the fact that I didn't know what was in it.  A time bomb or worse, some weird organ from an animal?

I opened my bag, and to my relief I saw lamb chops, celeriac(celery root) and button mushrooms. 

This bag wasn't too bad. 

A few moments after opening my bag, I hear someone cry out in agony. 

"What am I supposed to do with these? Shrimps...yeah.  Zucchini, Daikon and Yam?  This is uncalled for!"

Indeed it was.  Earlier, I saw my friend standing at the protein isle, Just in front of the chicken hearts.  So for my pre-emptive strike, I bought him zucchini, yam and shrimps.  I knew he didn't cook a lot of asian food.

Off we go! 

I stared at my ingredients for a few minutes to try and regroup in my head.  I had lamb chops, mushrooms and celeriac.  I'm used to cooking a lot of asian food but I can't do it with these ingredients since celeriac is unheard of in Asia.....I think.

After some time, I've decided to recreate that tenderloin steak  I did a few days ago.  I have decided to cook the lamb on the pan and to try and extract some flavour  from it by cooking it with chicken stock.  I also grabbed some flat leaf parsley, lemon,  green peppercorns and salt to make a green peppercorn gremola for garnish.

As soon as I was done with the gremolata, I started peeling my celeriac.  I have decided to make a puree.  To make this puree, I used some shallots, garlic and chicken stock together with celeriac.

After my celeriac has been cooked, I rushed to the blender and poured my ingredients for the puree in it.  Like a mad scientist, laughing menacingly, I started to blitz it.

Now for my lamb chops.  People always gave me a confused look whenever I described to them how I cooked it.  So, here it goes.  I seared my chops on both sides on the pan.  As soon as the last has been seared, I added chicken stock, garlic, rosemary and thyme to increase the flavour and juiciness.  When the chops have cooked in it for a bit, I took it off from the pan, transferred it to a plate and placed it inside the oven.  to cook further.  

At this point, I was starting to scare myself that maybe I've have used to many methods to cook it and that maybe the chops will come out well-done instead of my goal to have it cooked medium-rare.  I  followed on since I've already dug myself a hole so deep that I can't climb back up.

For the cooking liquid left over,  I used this as some kind of sauce and added some butter to help it thicken up some more.  

As for the mushrooms,  I've decided to keep it simple.  Just sautee it.  Simple enough, right?

I was ready to plate my food.  So did my friend.  Before we started cooking, we have decide that we'll plate our food into small tasting plates.

We have also decided that there weren't going to be winners for this.  This is just for fun.  A programme to get our minds and artistry to get going again, since we make the same kind of food in the restaurant every day.  Menu changes doesn't occur often at the restaurant.

This was also an opportunity for us to showcase our skills to our fellow cooks and to inspire them(some of us don't go to culinary school).  People I work with gets discouraged, saying they need to go to school to progress themselves in the restaurant.  In reality, all you need to do to progress are dedication, lots of reading and practice and a lot of hardwork.  Lots of it.

The end result looked good! My friend prepared to different plates, because he's that good(apparently he almost qualified for team Canada's Bocuse d'or).

Our general manager, sous chefs were just finishing their meeting so we decided to serve our food to them.

It was demolished quickly.

Asian Glazed Pan Fried Quail with Sweet Soy Reduction

The last couple of days I've worked have been crazy!  Ideally, we, the day team or prep team, come in the morning to prep 2 days worth of mise-en-place.  Due to higher sales in both the day and evening business, our mise-en-place have been depleted within a day or maybe even just hours.

My prep team have been working exhausted, not because we've been drinking the night before but because of what I've mentioned above.  Ironically, we aren't your typical restaurant employees.  You know, the kind of people who work at a restaurant and drink a lot after their shift(as Anthony Bourdain would describe it in his book).  We are the complete opposite of that.  We're actually responsible adults.  We work hard during the week and party harder during our weekends.

Here's an overview of my prep team:

Line Coach: Used to be an actor and Sous Chef at another restaurant.  Well aged and knows his responsibilities(married).

Garde Manger:  Has a degree in Geography.  Very educated.  He wants to be an Urban Planner so I'm trying to hook him up with my references.

Saucier(me):  Has a diploma in Architectural and Building Engineering and a background in Civil Engineering.  Gets paid way less than the dishwasher....seriously.

Prep Tournant:  Finished his diploma in Culinary Arts.  The hardest working and the official Prep Speed Demon of our restaurant.  This guy can finish his day in a blink of an eye.  Same as me, gets paid way less than the dishwasher...and I'm still not joking about this.

These are the guys preparing the products at the restaurant.  There's usually only 3 preppers working in a day but on fridays we have 4, just in case it's a big day.  We all love the place we work at and if we see anyone not treating it well, they'll be facing the fall in corner.

Asian Glazed Pan Fried Quail with Sweet Soy Reduction:

4 Quails

1/4 cup Soy Sauce

1 Clove of Garlic

1 tsp. Sesame Oil

2 tbsp. Sugar (4 tbsp. more for the Sweet Soy Reduction)

3 tbsp. Vegetable Oil

4 tbsp. Water

With a pair of shears, cut through the quail's breast.  Also, cut the quail's backbone and neck.  In this way, you'll end up with two pieces from a single quail.

In a small saucepan, add your soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic and 2 tbsp of sugar.  If you want it a little bit more sweeter, feel free to add some more sugar.  Bring this mixture to a boil.  Once it boils, reduce your heat so that it just simmers.  Let it simmer for 5 minutes.  Take it off the heat and let it cool.  

After your soy mixture has cooled down, place it in a container big enough to place all your quails.  Let your quails marinate for at least 2 hours(24 hours would be preferable) in the fridge. 

Add oil to your pan and heat it to medium high.  Take out your quails and save the marinade for the sauce.  Gently place your quails, skin side down first.  Be careful with the oil splatters when you're putting it on.  Cook your quails for 2 minutes on each side.  Quails can be eaten medium-rare.

While cooking your quails,  pour your marinade and water in a saucepan and add the rest of the sugar.  Reduce this to 1/2 the original volume or reduce it to your desired consistency.  Take it off the heat and let it cool to room temperature.

To serve,  arrange your quails on a platter and drizzle it with some of the Sweet Soy Reduction.

Serve and enjoy!

Chorizo and Thyme Sofrito Sauce

I've always been wondering what kind of cooking style I want to do.  There are a lot of styles out there.  There's the classic french, american, asian and so on and so forth.

Filipino cuisine?  I was wondering about that too.  Is there even such a thing?  Maybe not, cause I haven't seen one done at a professional level.  I think it's because the things that we cook are too ethnic and too homey.  If you think about it, Filipino cuisine is the modern equivalent of east meets west cuisine.  It was a fusion of malaysian, chinese and spanish cooking.

Still, here I am trying to figure out my style.  I guess I want to go the asian route because I'm already very familiar with it.  I grew up with asian fruits, vegetables and cooking.  I remember when I was a kid growing up in the Philippines, that we had a lot of produce in our backyard and frontyard.  We had mangoes, avocadoes, guavas, jackfruits, soursops, java rose apples, manzanitas, calamondin, kalamungay and a few more.

I never realized how lucky I was back then, to have all those produce for free at my old home.

Enough of my mindless rant. 

Chorizo and Thyme Sofrito Sauce

Sofrito Base:
10 ripe Tomatoes
3 cups of diced Oions
1 cup of Olive Oil
2-3 Bay Leaves
Sugar, Salt and Pepper to taste

Add your onions and olive oil to the pan and cook it on low heat for 30-40 minutes or until your onions start to caramelize.  Your onions should be sweet to the taste.

While your onions are cooking, slice your tomatoes in half.  After your tomatoes have been sliced, grate it.  Save the juice and throw away the skin

Once your onions have started caramelizing, add your grated tomatoes, bay leaves, sugar, salt and pepper.  Let it keep cooking on low heat for another 20 minutes so it can develop some more flavour.

With this base, you can add anything to it.  This is a basic Spanish sauce used in tapas.

Chorizo and Thym Sofrito Sauce
Sofrito Base
4 sprigs of Thyme
5 Spanish Chorizos, diced
4 cloves minced garlic
2 tbsp Vegetable oil

On a medium heat pan, saute your garlic and chorizo.  Add your Sofrito base and plucked thyme leaves once your chorizo is cooked.  Reduce your heat to low and let it develop some more flavour for another 30 minutes.

This sauce takes a lot of patience but once it's done, it'll be packed with lots of flavour.  This is perfect for a pasta dish.

Serve and enjoy!

Miso and Maple-Crusted Scallops with Edamame Coulis

 

 

For the last few months I’ve checking out a place called The Dirty Apron.  This is one of those neat culinary stores here in Vancouver.  The store is comprised of three components: the kitchen supply store, the butcher shop and the classroom.  Yes, the classroom.

The Dirty Apron offers classes at night to anyone.  You could be a professional trying to learn a new style/cuisine or you could be an avid home cook who wants to serve something new.

While checking out their website, I saw a recipe for a Maple-Glazed Scallop with Pea Coulis.  At this point, I’m still thinking about that Miso Caramel-Glazed Cod with Smoked Tuna Broth and Soba Noodles.  So I decided to tweak their recipe a bit and went the asian route.  Thus, Miso and Maple-Glazed Scallops with Edamame Coulis was what I ended up with.

Miso and Maple-Glazed Scallops with Edamame Coulis

Scallops(fresh if possible)

2 tbsp Sake

½ cup Miso

¼ cup Maple Syrup

½ tbsp Unsalted Butter

1 Shallot(finely diced)

1 Garlic Clove(minced)

¾ cup Edamame Beans

70ml Vegetable Stock(or chicken stock)

20ml Heavy Cream

2 tbsp Olive oil

Salt and Pepper to taste

In a saucepan, add your miso, maple and sake and mix well on medium heat.  Stir well and let it incorporate together for 2-3 minutes.  Do not reduce.  Take it off the heat and let it cool down to room temperature.

Add your scallops to the marinade and make sure that your scallops are fully slathered with the marinade.  Place in the fridge and let it marinate for at least 30 minutes.

While your scallops are marinating, you can prepare your Edamame Coulis.

Drizzle your saucepan with olive oil and saute your shallots and garlic together.  Saute for a couple of minutes.  Add your stock and bring it to a boil.  Once it's boiling, add your cream and edamame and bring it back to a boil.

Puree your mixture with a hand blender.  If you don't have one, place your mixture into a regular blender.  Puree it.  You can serve your edamame in chunky form or if you want a smooth texture, put it through a fine mesh sieve.  Season to taste.

Take out your scallops and wipe off the excess marinade.  Sear on both sides.  Add your butter once both sides have caramelized.  Don't overcook your scallops or it'll feel like your chewing rubber.

Serve and enjoy!

Chocolate and Toffee Crackers with Maldon Salt

I love Mondays.  Everyone might be suffering the Monday blues, but I'm enjoying it.  It's my day off, usually, and it's also the only time  I can find to do something productive, let's say cooking.

I'm not saying that the rest of the other days weren't that productive.  It's just that usually after getting off of work that I'm so exhausted that I can't get myself to do anything else.

A few days ago, I made a Chocolate and Toffee Crackers with Maldon Salt, with the recipe I found on *Simply Scratch*. It's super easy to make and it only requires 5 ingredients.  The Maldon Salt in this recipe really balances out this little treat.  You'd think that it's going to be really sweet, but once you get that small piece of salt in your mouth, it mellows out the sweetness.

Chocolate and Toffee Crackers with Maldon Salt
Box of Crackers
1 cup of Butter
3/4 cup of Brown Sugar
1 cup of Dark/Bitter Chocolate
Maldon Salt

Before anything else, preheat your oven to 350F.  Chop up your butter into small chunks so that it melts faster.  Place your chopped butter in a sauce pan together with your brown sugar.  Whisk your it until the brown sugar has been fully dissolved. 

While still whisking your mixture, to avoid the bottom from burning, let it reach to a boil.  Once the bubbles start appearing, take it off the heat so that it doesn't further reduce.  I've reduced it so much before that once it cooled, it felt like I was eating a piece of rock.

Place an aluminum foil on your baking sheet.  Spray it with a bake spray or just brush it with some melted butter for more flavour.  After brushing or spraying your foil, line up your crackers close to each other on the sheet.

Pour your toffee on the crackers and spread it all over.  An offset spatula would be the tool of choice for this task but a regular spatula will fare well.

After spreading your toffee, sprinkle your chocolate chunks on the crackers.  Place it in the oven for around 5-10 minutes, just enough to let the chocolate melt.

After 5-10 minutes, take it out of the oven.  Just like the toffee, spread your melted chocolate all over and let it cool for a bit at room temperature.

Once it's cooled down, sprinkle your Maldon salt(Coarse salt, fleur del sel or kosher should work here as a substitute.) on top.  Don't go crazy or it'll taste like eating very salty chocolate crackers.  Place it in the fridge for 30 minutes so it solidifies.

You can keep these small treats in a tightly sealed container at room temperature or in the fridge.  Serve and enjoy this with a cup of coffee or tea.

Miso Caramel-Crusted Black Cod with Smoked Tuna Broth and Soba Noodles

For a long time, I've been wanting to make this dish.  This dish is the equivalent of candy.  People sometimes call this "fish candy", which when you consider it is true. 

I have read a lot of cookbooks with different variations/interpretations for this.  Nobu Matsuhisa of Nobu, uses 5 ingredients for the marinade: sake, mirin, miso, sugar and water.  James Walt of the famous Araxi restaurant in Whistler only uses 3 ingredients: sake, miso and sugar.  There's also Frank Pabst of Blue Water Cafe, a sister restaraunt of Araxi, who uses 4 ingredients(sake, mirin, soy sauce and sugar) but substitutes miso with soy sauce.

I can keep going with the different variations but there's always something that's prevalent in all recipes.  All the recipes mentioned above listed sake and sugar in the ingredient list.  They also call for the fish to be marinated in this asian concoction.

This dish is quite easy to make.  The only problem you might have with is the price of sake and cod and also some of the asian ingredients like dried kombu and bonito flakes.  Buying a bottle of sake should be fine especially if you do a lot of Japanese stock(I just used the one I had from last summer so that saved me some money).

Let's talk about cod.  This piece of fish is quite expensive!  The local fish mongers at my place sells this for around $16/lb!  If you can find a cheaper substitute for this fish, by all means substitute it.  The recipe will work for any kind of firm white fish.  While I was at the shop, I was so tempted to just buy the halibut belly for this.  In the end, I spent $32 for the fish alone.  Hmmm...

Trust me with this dish.  It's so good that you'll even want to eat the fish by itself.

Miso Caramel Marinade:

2 tbsp Sake

1/2 cup Miso

1 1/2 cup Fruit Sugar(Any kind of sugar should work.)

Smoked Tuna Broth with Soba Noodles:

4 cups Water

1 stalk Lemongrass, chopped

1 inch Ginger, chopped

1 small piece of Kombu

3/4 cup of Bonito Flakes, packed

3 tbsp Soy Sauce

1 1/2 tbsp Rice Vinegar

Soba Noodles

Shiitake Mushrooms(Didn't specify an amount for this cause I must've used a lot of it.  I love mushrooms)

2 fillets of Black Cod(You can use Halibut for this or even Halibut belly if you're just eating the fish by itself)

 

1.  Place your miso and sake in a double boiler(stainless steel bowl on top of a pot of boiling water) and mix well to incorporate the sake into the miso.

2.  Add the sugar and mix well.  

3.  After 1 minute, turn off the heat and keep mixing every now and then.  Leave your bowl on top of the pot for 10 more minutes so that the sugar dissolves.

4.  Let the caramel cool down before adding your fish in to marinate.  Marinate for at least 30 minutes.  If you're patient enough, you can marinate it for up to 2 days.
5.  Take out your fish and take off the excess caramel while making sure that there's still some left on the fish.
6.  Place your fish in a 400F oven for 20-25 minutes or until it starts to darken.
7.  While your fish is cooking, heat up 4 cups of water in a pot.  Also heat up a pot for your soba noodles to cook in.
8.  Add your ginger, lemongrass and kombu in the pot.  Let it simmer for 10 minutes. 
9.  Add your bonito flakes, soy sauce and rice vinegar to the pot.  let it reconstitute for about 10 minutes.
10.  Strain your broth into a bowl and discard all the strained ingredients.
11.  Place your broth back into the pot and let it boil.  Once boiling, add your shiitake mushrooms and cook it for around 2 minutes.
12.  In the other pot of water, cook your noodles until it's al dente. 
13.  Take out the noodle once it's ready and run it through cold water.
14.  Serve your noodles, cold, in a bowl with your hot broth and place your fish on top.

I also tried to just make the fish minus everything else, and it works great with rice or vegetable and potatoes but I thought that it might be missing something.  Maybe a sauce?  Nobu uses an orange tamarind sauce with his fish.  

Nah!  I'll just stick with the fish for now.